by Pet Jeffery
Miss Salter, the House Mistress, towered over my bed. Bethany Griffiths, the dormitory prefect, stood at her side, hands on hips. In the dim light, I couldn't be sure, but I thought to see a smug expression on Bethany's face. The House Mistress reached down; a moment later, she grasped my wrist. I was in trouble again.
"Up you get, you bad girl," Miss Salter said to me. "I have business with you in my room." She glanced at the prefect. "Back to bed, Bethany. Your part in this little drama is over."
"Yes, Miss," Bethany answered, her tone suggesting that she'd have liked her part to continue, presumably to witness my spanking.
I would have preferred my part in the night's doings to have finished. There could be little doubt that the business in Miss Salter's room would be to the detriment of my bottom. Nevertheless, I had no real choice in the matter, so I rose from my bed and slipped my feet into my slippers. I reached out for my dressing gown.
"No need for that, Tompson, it'll only get in the way," Miss Salter said.
Although I had only been at St Elphin's for somewhere in the region of sixty hours, I followed her meaning without needing clarification. Miss Salter meant that my dressing gown would get in the way of her whacking my bottom or my thighs; it would be an extra encumbrance for her to lift. During my brief sojourn in the school, the staff had already smacked or whacked me repeatedly, always on my exposed skin, rather than through clothing. I had picked up enough of the St Elphin's ethos to realise that a pupil taking advantage of the scant protection that her nightdress and dressing gown might provide would be slacking, evading her punishment.
The only result of my voicing an objection would be a more severe chastisement, so I trotted at the House Mistress' heels, out of the dormitory, along the passage, down the stairs, the length of a further corridor, and into Miss Salter's parlour. The house mistress' room was a cheerful one, at least cheerful for anyone who wasn't awaiting discipline. The furnishings were chintzy, with brightly coloured framed prints adorning the walls. Three over-stuffed armchairs clustered around a blazing fire. Women occupied two of the chairs. Matron, a rotund person in a nurse's uniform, sat with her back to me; she was in the act of toasting a crumpet. Miss Sutton, my young and pretty form mistress in her early twenties, frowned at me as I entered.
"What has that young rebel, Miss Tompson, done this time?" Miss Sutton asked.
"She was talking after lights out," Miss Salter began my indictment.
"Loads of girls do that," Matron said without turning her attention from the fire and her crumpet. "Any dormitory prefect should be able to tell them to pipe down and end the matter without bothering the staff."
"Bethany did that, of course, and Leah Tompson was the only one to say another word. She called the prefect a rude name which, fortunately, Bethany didn't repeat to me. Tompson also told the prefect to boil her head."
Matron stifled a laugh, Miss Salter snorted, perhaps with indignation. As a matter of fact, I have never been foul mouthed; my supposedly rude word had been 'Hitler'; I'd said, 'Go and boil your head, you teenaged Hitler.'
My unwillingness to pipe down when Bethany told me to do so may, in part, have been because I found some comfort in my ordinary speech, speaking as people did in 1969. The way in which my dormmates spoke disconcerted me. Their words seemed to belong in an Angela Brazil story, rather than in the world I knew. I'd never read any of Miss Brazil's work, but I had an idea of it. St Elphin's girls described things they enjoyed as 'wizard'. I'd heard the phrases 'wizard wheeze' for a good idea, and 'wizard tuck' for sweets and cakes. The latter, I thought, sounded as though it might be a magical version of Friar Tuck. The opposite of 'wizard' was 'beastly', beastly Latin verbs and a beastly cane. Girls they disliked were 'rotters'. I gained a sense of having entered an alien world, and so enjoyed saying 'fab' instead of 'wizard', 'dodgy' instead of 'beastly'. I had no need for a modern equivalent of 'rotters'; criticising my fellow pupils obviously carried dangers of unpopularity. Only Bethany had incurred my wrath to earn harsh words.
"You should cane Tompson," Miss Sutton remarked dispassionately.
"I might have done so," Miss Salter replied, "except that I left my cane in Scholly this afternoon. The Brewster twins were up to mischief. And then, after I'd whacked them, there was a crisis in the kitchen and I forgot about my stick."
Scholly was School House, the large building in which were the classrooms, administrative offices, and much else. Somehow, Miss Salter leaving her cane in Scholly brought to mind the song I Left My Heart in San Francisco but with the lyrics darkened to 'I left my cane in a Scholly mill'. 'Mill' was St Elphin's slang for a toilet; I was picking up the language. I had no reason to think that she had left the cane in a toilet, but I could make 'a Scholly mill' fit the tune, and it brought a smile to my lips. Hastily, I composed my features lest a sign of amusement should provoke a more savage punishment.
"Madam Swish is in the dispensary," Matron said. Madam Swish was her cane. "Once I've toasted, buttered, and eaten this crumpet, I could fetch her. If I do say so myself, she's a better cane than yours."
"No," Miss Salter responded. "The girl should be in bed and asleep; I can't delay her whacking. I'll pop into my bedroom and fetch my hairbrush."
Miss Salter stepped into an adjoining room to reappear, a moment later, with a formidable-looking hairbrush. She walked to a small desk littered with papers, turned the chair to face the room, and sat down. It took no great deduction to perceive what she required of me. While I had no wish for her to whack me, I preferred her to finish the inevitable as soon as possible. So, I hurried over to the House Mistress, placed myself over her knee, and yanked up my long nightdress to expose my bottom.
We were away from the fire, on the far side of the room. For a moment, the night air felt chill upon my bare rump, but this lasted for no more than a few seconds. Almost at once the back of the hairbrush struck my bottom with a loud splat, and my derriere was uncomfortably warm. I yelped, partly in surprise, not having expected my punishment to begin so quickly. In my brief experience of the St Elphin's staff, they usually liked to pause, perhaps to increase the miscreant's tension, before landing the first whack.
The second, third, and fourth swats followed without pause, each fiercer, fierier, and more agonising than the last. My cries grew louder and higher pitched. Miss Salter took a short breather before continuing. My bottom throbbed and burnt, each fresh impact stung dreadfully.
I could easily have steered clear of trouble, that evening, by responding differently to Bethany's curt order to shut up. Why hadn't I said 'Yes, Miss'? Then, I could have settled for the night and spared my poor bottom. Everyone else had stopped talking when Bethany called for quiet. Marion had ceased her account of the pranks she'd played during the summer. Jeanette spoke not so much as another word on the topic of her upcoming birthday. Celia halted her glowing recollection of a boutique in one of London's smarter neighbourhoods. Heather fell silent on the subject of Austen House's lacrosse prospects.
My futile rebellion surely stemmed from the fact that I was twenty-three years old and nine years older than the prefect. Calling so young a girl 'Miss', as I was required to do, took an effort of self-control. I'd snapped at the prospect of meekly obeying her command.
Although I looked remarkably young for my age, I had a degree and a teaching diploma. When St Elphin's had summoned me for an interview during the summer, I'd assumed that it was for a schoolmistress' post. That was also my interpretation when a school governor wrote offering me a place. My older cousin Samantha, who liked me to call her Auntie Sam, lived a short drive from St Elphin's, and I'd accepted an invitation to stay with her until I took up my position.
While I arrived at Auntie Sam's home, my luggage did not. The clothes Samantha loaned me were better suited to a young girl, and my cousin took to dressing my hair in schoolgirl plaits. When I'd arrived for a three-day orientation, I had been unmindful that my hair remained plaited. My appearance was that of a schoolgirl and, considered fairly, there could be no wonder that Matron took me at face value. Despite that, I had been outraged when she took me over her knee for my first spanking.
Now, about sixty hours later, I had become accustomed to the school staff treating me in that way, although the bossiness of prefects could still rankle.
At first, I'd believed that an administrative mistake had confused me with a pupil, an error that the Headmistress or her Deputy would soon rectify. Auntie Sam dashed my hopes when she visited me at school. She explained that I needed to hide at St Elphin's, masquerading as a pupil, to evade ruthless men who searched for a treasure, of which I knew nothing, riches that had gone missing in the closing days of the Second World War. The villains would kidnap, perhaps mutilate, possibly murder me. According to this story, my mother probably knew the location of the hoard and might advance the information in return for my safety. In this lay the sole crumb of comfort in Sam's narration; I'd hitherto understood that an explosion had killed Mama.
However much or little truth there was in Samantha's story, I was stuck in St Elphin's as a pupil, and subject to frequent corporal punishment. Absconding was not an attractive possibility. Beyond the school walls stretched desolate moorland in which I would quickly lose my way. If I stuck to the road, the school staff would soon overtake me and return me for the whacking of my life. And, if Auntie Sam spoke truly, I had much worse to fear than even the world's most savage schoolmistress.
Now, my three-day orientation had finished. It was the evening of Monday, September 8th 1969. The hitherto almost empty corridors and dormitories had filled with girls. In the morning, the autumn term would begin, and with it the school year. Would I remain a St Elphin's pupil until the end of the summer term? Probably. Indeed, for how many years would I continue to be a frequently spanked schoolgirl? Having one's age regressed is confusing. When Miss Salter completed her furious assault on my bottom, she gave me some unexpected insight into my new status.
"That's it, Tompson," she said. "Up you get. Lower your nightdress and return to bed. It really shouldn't have been necessary to punish you. Any fourteen-year-old should have more sense than to cheek her dormitory prefect."
Fourteen years old? Wasn't I supposed to be younger than that? Had I lost track of the age to which Auntie Sam had regressed me?
"Fourteen, Miss? Am I?"
"Are you trying to be funny, girl? You're in the second form, aren't you?"
"Yes, Miss."
"Since St Elphin's takes girls from thirteen to twenty, how old would you expect a second former to be, even if you can't remember when you were born?"
"Sorry, Miss. I'm half asleep. And going to a new school is so confusing; I hardly know which way is up. Of course, I'm fourteen, born in..." Quickly, I did the mental arithmetic. "...1955."
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