by Justin Maynard
Gerda
Harriet Maynard was an old lady, and as such she was content to think of herself. After all, seventy five was old, even in these days when adolescence lasted until one turned forty, and nobody was middle aged until sixty. People never admitted to being old, they simply died in the fullness of their years. Not so Harriet. She had enjoyed a long and full life, and though still employed, her chief occupation these days was taking her ease. That was her invariable habit in the hour before dinner, when she would sink into her armchair by the fire of her sitting room and enjoy a sherry or two, while reminiscing over the various episodes of her life; and often dozing off, sometimes to dream of them.
When I say that Harriet was still employed, I do not mean to imply that she was burdened by heavy cares or exacting duties. She was the nurse at the Red Hills Girls' Academy of which school her nephew, Andrew Fisher, was headmaster, as the post is still called at institutions enjoying a certain quality and the self-confidence it supplies. Harriet had served for many years in posts where real nursing was required and the work of every day, so the odd colds, scrapes and the very occasional sprain or broken bone that afflicted the girls taxed neither her competence nor her energy. The duty that most interested Harriet, and which prompted the clearest recollections that transported her back to a colourful period of her life, was in attending the sessions in which her nephew inflicted corporal punishment upon the girls. Corporal punishment for pupils in their final year had been reintroduced to schools when the government belatedly realized, following the London riots of a few years ago, that discipline was necessary to the young. Red Hills was one of the few schools which adopted the measure seriously.
Harriet got no lubricious pleasure from witnessing such punishments, but neither did she feel sorry for the girls, who endured what she thought of as a few mild stripes. That did not stop them from squealing and kicking as the cane lashed their bottoms, for it usually was the cane that was the instrument of correction.
"My word, what would these soft little darlings think of receiving real punishment," was the thought that always occurred to Harriet when she witnessed a caning. Her duty on such occasions was to ensure that no real damage was done, and to offer such soothing care as she deemed necessary. In truth she considered no care necessary but the passage of a very sort interval of time. Such a contrast to her experiences in a previous position, where post-punishment nursing was the work of several days of dressings, ointments and soothing words.
These musings were interrupted by one of the senior girls with a message from the deputy head, Miss Sloan, who requested Nurse Maynard's attendance in the senior dormitory. "It is Amanda Parker complaining of her bottom," said Miss Sloan, with an impatient shake of her head. "She needs nothing but another dozen cuts, as far as I can see, but you'd better have a look at her." The girl, a chubby 18 year old brunette, was lying face down on her bed moving with apparent discomfort when Harriet arrived. She quickly raised the hem of the nightgown and examined a very white bottom of ample proportions that was crossed by a handful of red stripes, the result of a visit that afternoon to the headmaster's study. A modest result to be causing so much fuss, was Harriet's opinion.
"Well, girl, you won't die from those stripes. Think yourself lucky you are not worse. You'll be right as rain tomorrow."
Harriet stopped to exchange a word with Miss Sloan before retiring to her own quarters. "I had a word with Andrew today after he had seen to, if that's what it was, that wretched girl. I told him, diplomatically, that he has heavy enough duties without burdening himself with the discipline of the girls. The truth, between ourselves, is that he is no good at it. He half-heartedly dishes out these mild canings, and because he gives a dozen he thinks the culprits are well punished. The result is that no lessons are learnt, and the little madams continue with their pranks and disorder without any real fear."
"I know that only too well," replied Miss Sloan. "It frustrates me to a degree. This school exists because of its reputation for corporal discipline, which has all but disappeared elsewhere. The parents of these girls basically want them off their hands while they lead the high life, and as long as the kids are out of sight and out of mind they are content. They like the idea of strict discipline, partly because their guilt at their own selfishness is transferred to their daughters and they are happy to see them punished. These girls need it, or they will grow up to be as spoilt, selfish and dissipated as their parents."
"Indeed," replied Harriet. "I hadn't thought it through that far, but we agree that the girls need real discipline and correction when it is merited. To that end I persuaded Andrew to hand on the duty of thrashing the older girls to you. Of course I will continue to attend."
"Oh wonderful, well done! You will certainly see more energy and vigour, and you will not see the same girls bending for the cane week in week out. Once a term will do most of them."
Harriet was confident of her choice. Miss Sloan was a tall and powerful woman in her thirties, who jogged and exercised in the gym regularly, so she had both strength and stamina. More that those qualities, however, was a look in her eye, a look of implacability, determination and, yes, cruelty. Harriet had seen that look before.
Sitting comfortably back in her armchair, Harriet let her mind wander back across the years. I was a good while since she had thought of Gerda, and even now the image of the woman brought a chill to Harriet's stomach. "What a witch that woman was," Harriet sighed to herself. Her mind drifted back to the mid 1960s and her first association with Gerda. Harriet, though English, spent her late teens and early adulthood in Rhodesia, as it then was. Her father was a civil servant at home, who transferred to the Rhodesian service in 1955 when Harriet was 15. They moved to Salisbury, which Harriet soon loved, and she had a very happy adolescence there. After UDI Harriet's father stayed on, unlike many civil servants, and she trained as a nurse. She liked the profession, and was good at it, and when after a few years of practising her father, through his official contacts, secured Harriet a government post, she eagerly accepted it. If she had only known it would lead her to Gerda, she would have been on the first plane to England.
The post was as nurse at a reform school for girls. It was not a prison exactly, but the inmates were confined and had to serve set sentences in most cases. They were girls guilty of crimes, found to be uncontrollable at other schools, deemed to be in moral danger, or occasionally girls sent by request of parents who found them too hard to handle or too bothersome to an indolent lifestyle. There were usually about seventy girls, mainly local blacks, but about one quarter of them were white, whose parents generally were from the professions or the settler farmer circle. Most of the girls were not bad or even troublesome, but were victims of unlucky circumstances. Their unluckiest circumstance was the appointment of Gerda to the post of deputy director. That event represented all the bad luck of a cursed lifetime rolled into one frightful outcome. Gerda's real name was Inez de Villiers, or so she claimed, and she said she was Dutch. Harriet privately called her Gerda, and always thought she was ex SS, though being in her mid forties in the mid sixties perhaps made her a little young for that. She was a tall, straight-backed woman with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, topped by long blond hair invariably plaited and arranged in a bun; a veritable Wagnerian figure. Her steely, light blue eyes were like dead stones, and having them fixed on one, froze the very marrow.
Gerda's reign may not have been so absolute or so brutal had not her posting been complemented by that of the director, Simon Piper. Piper was an ex-pat nearing sixty years of age, who had seen long service in Rhodesia, if one could call late mornings, long lunches, gin-reeking afternoons, and general ineptitude service. His professional ambitions required a quiet day, the shifting of all responsibility and decision making onto his subordinates, and a very liberal intake of gin. In short, he was Gerda's dream boss. Effectively, Gerda took control of the institution and shaped it according to her desires, and dark desires they were. The nature of her reign was revealed by her first innovation, which was the commissioning of a special whipping bench to be constructed by a local carpenter. It was a fearsome looking object that was installed in a capacious room adjacent to Gerda's office. The bench consisted of a padded plank about 18 inches wide sloping downwards from the horizontal. A stout frame set the plank about three feet from the floor, and it had two narrower horizontal extensions about halfway up at the high end. The victim would be positioned with a knee on each of these extensions and the upper body extended along the top plank, which would result in her bottom being thrust upwards and ideally presented. Leather straps on the kneeling boards secured the ankles and knees, while the bench top had straps securing the waist and shoulders, with each hand secured to the frame. As the kneeling boards were two feet apart, the girl's legs were spread wide, opening her bottom and exposing her vulva. On the wall nearby was a row of pegs from which hung a series of straps and canes of various lengths and diameters. The chamber, equipped as it was, was a frightful sight, and it sent a shiver down Harriet's spine when she was summoned to it by Gerda for an inspection.
"This is where we will punish the wretches," Gerda said with proprietary satisfaction. "They won't get out of this room without being very sorry they were ever in it."
"Oh, you won't be too hard on the girls, will you? I'm sure they won't need severe beatings," pleaded Harriet.
"Hard on them! I'll be as hard on them as they deserve, and sometimes twice as hard. These creatures deserve sound punishment just because they are here. Any trouble they cause will result in severe thrashings that will convince them to change their ways. This isn't a charity, this is a prison, and will be conducted as such."
These words from Gerda convinced Harriet that the lady was a pitiless brute and that she could expect some very unpleasant and heart-rending duties in that room. Her fears were realized the next day when she was given a message to attend in the punishment room immediately. Upon entering the room Harriet was confronted by one of the native girls trembling before Gerda, upon whom she kept one eye while the other took in the dreadful bench and the row of implements on the wall.
"Secure this wench to the bench, and quickly. You are about to see what comes of disobedience here, as will this girl."
"Please, mam, I didn't mean anything wrong," interjected the girl.
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