by LSF Publications
by Mike London
Mrs Scott-Blythe burst angrily into the headmistress's office without knocking. Jean Taylor looked up in surprise and then compressed her lips at the sight of the chairman of the Board of Governors of Evershead Girls' Grammar School (Mrs Scott-Blythe refused to be known as a 'chairperson'). Since her election the elderly former pupil had become rather a thorn in her flesh.
"What is it now, Margaret?" she asked.
Still looking like thunder, Mrs. Scott-Blythe explained. She had been waiting at the bus stop for a 245 that morning and when the bus pulled up, rather late, a schoolgirl waiting behind her in the queue had pushed past her to be first aboard. Mrs Scott-Blythe noticed that the blue school uniform jacket which she was wearing bore the distinctive emblem of Evershead School.
Once aboard the bus, Mrs. Scott-Blythe had marched up to the girl and remonstrated with her.
"What difference does it make? You're on the bus, aren't you?" had been the response, but the school governor had continued to admonish the girl, demanding that she give her her name. "I'm going to report you to your headmistress!" she had said.
The girl had remained silent, however. Finally, having had quite enough of being stared at by half a bus load of passengers, she had got up intending to leave the bus at the next stop.
"What's your name, girl?" Mrs. Scott-Blythe had demanded, grabbing hold of her by her arm.
"Shut up, you stupid old cow and mind your own business!" had been the indignant answer.
The outraged Mrs. Scott-Blythe had refused to let go and was still holding onto the girl and demanding to be told her name when they reached the platform of the bus. Still trying to shake herself free, the girl had jumped off the bus and Mrs. Scott-Blythe had tumbled off after her. The girl had glanced round to check that her tormentor was not badly hurt, and had then made good her escape.
Mrs. Scott-Blythe was, in truth, only slightly grazed, but the injury to her self-esteem was worse. Breathing fury, she tidied herself up and, pausing only to have a cup of tea in a local tea shop to steady her nerves, made her way to Evershead School. Now she demanded that Mrs. Taylor expel the girl concerned immediately.
"Really, Margaret," said the headmistress, trying to calm the elder lady down, "I know you're upset, and the girl's behaviour was certainly inexcusable, but this isn't really a case for expulsion. And, in any case, I thought you said you didn't know the girl's name!"
"I know her face, though! I'll recognise her, you can depend on it! And if you won't expel her, at least you can cane that young madam's behind until she won't sit down for a week! And you can get her parents to pay for my dry-cleaning, too. The impudent minx! Pushing me off a bus!" Margaret Scott-Blythe was quite unable to conceive that she herself could have been at all responsible for the incident. So far as she was concerned the girl had deliberately pushed her off the bus - the fact that she had run off proved it. She continued...
"Take me round the classrooms, Jean. I'll recognize that young lady soon enough".
Mrs. Taylor grimaced. She was not attracted to the idea of the elderly school governor going around the school treating every class like an identification parade in a police station. "All right, Margaret," she conceded "I will cane the girl if we find her. From what you tell me it is clear that she deserves condign punishment. But perhaps we could narrow the field down a bit. Do you know roughly how old the girl was? Could you estimate the form she'd be in?"
Mrs. Scott-Blythe thought for a second or two. "Not a little girl," she said "definitely not. At least fourth form or above. A tall girl. Shortish brown hair."
"All right," said Mrs Taylor. She pulled open a drawer. "I really don't want to disturb the girls' classes more than is absolutely necessary," she said. "I've got photographs here of every form in the school taken last term. This one's the fourth form."
Mrs Scott-Blythe inspected the proffered photograph carefully, looking closely at each girl's smiling face. Finally, she handed it back to the headmistress. "She's not there, Jean," she said.
The photo of the fifth form was similarly scanned, again without success. As Mrs. Taylor passed the photographs of the sixth formers over, she hoped that Mrs. Scott-Blythe's scrutiny would be fruitless once more. She disliked using the cane at all, although she had not felt able to deny Mrs. Scott-Blythe's request in the circumstances, and she had only very rarely used it on sixth formers. Apart from a very small minority of girls who simply refused to be sensible, she felt that her sixth formers were mature enough not to need the cane - she preferred to reason with them.
So she hoped that it was all an egregious mistake of Mrs. Scott-Blythe's and that she would not recognise anyone from the photos. After all, sixth formers wore a different uniform to that of the rest of the school, and Margaret had not said anything about that. But, after another systematic inspection, the school governor pointed at one of the girls in the photograph. "That's the girl," she said. "Let's get her in here right away!"
The headmistress looked at the picture where Mrs. Scott-Blythe was pointing. "Are you sure, Margaret?" she asked. "That's Helen Warwick. She's one of the best-behaved girls at the school. She's a prefect! She couldn't have done it!"
"Oh, yes, Jean. I'm absolutely sure! I told you I'd remember her face. A fine sort of a prefect she is! Calls the chairman of the board of governors an old cow and pushes me off the bus! You should expel her! But if you won't then I insist that you give that young madam a sore bottom that she'll remember for the rest of her days. I'm quite sure, Jean. Just get her here and you'll see her reaction when she spots me."
"All right, Margaret. I think you're mistaken, but I'll call her in and we'll see. If it is she I think that four strokes of the cane will teach her a salutary lesson." But Mrs. Scott-Blythe was not satisfied with this. She knew that under the school rules the headmistress was empowered to administer up to eight strokes to sixth formers and insisted that this was a case for the maximum penalty. Mrs. Taylor did not really agree but did not want an argument with the chairman of the governors. And Helen Warwick was probably completely innocent in this matter anyway. The headmistress dialled an internal code on her 'phone and spoke to her secretary.
"Amanda, could you find Helen Warwick of the Upper Sixth for me, please, and ask her to come here. She should be in room 54 for an English Literature class."
Helen was very surprised at the unexpected summons, but was not displeased at escaping from a very boring lesson dealing with the possible influences of Boccaccio on Chaucer's House of Fame.
"Do you know what this is about, Mandy?" she asked as they walked along the corridor together. Mandy Collins, the headmistress's secretary, was only a couple of years older than the sixth form girls, and was on first name terms with most of them.
"No, I've got no idea at all," Mandy replied, concealing the fact that she had a very strong suspicion. "It's very unusual for Mrs. Taylor to send for someone in the middle of class like this." She paused and then said, with a nervous little half laugh, "You haven't got any sins on your conscience, I suppose, Helen?"
Helen smiled back. "No it can't be anything like that. Maybe it's the theatre trip." As President of the girls' drama club, Helen was involved with the organisation of this event. It never occurred to her to think about the morning's episode. So far as she was concerned she had been pestered by a silly old woman and had got away from her. And as it had all taken place out of school and as the woman didn't know her name nor, so far as she was aware, that of her school, she could not imagine that this was connected to her summons.
Mandy still had her doubts, though. It was not like Mrs. Taylor to call a girl out of class just to discuss a school trip. She could have asked to see her during break or when she had a free study period. During her time at the school, Mandy had only twice had to call a girl to Mrs. Taylor's office during lesson time, and both incidents had ended the same way - with the girl concerned stumbling tearfully out of the office with her hands clasped to an obviously very painful bottom. Mrs. Taylor hadn't sounded in a good mood at all, either.
And there was another factor which suggested to Mandy that, surprising as it seemed, the eighteen-year-old prefect might be on her way to a caning. The secretary had seen the chairman of the board of governors burst through her office and into Mrs. Taylor's, clearly in the vilest of tempers. It had evidently been she who had induced the headmistress to send for the sixth former. She mentioned this to Helen.
"Do you know Mrs. Scott-Blythe, Helen?" she asked.
Helen shook her head. The name meant nothing to her.
"She's the chairman of the governors," Mandy informed her. But Helen could still not imagine what it could all mean and remained unworried.
Mandy was almost, but not quite, sure that it could all only mean one thing. She wondered whether she should alert Helen to the real likelihood that, for whatever reason, she was going to have her bottom caned. She felt that it would be an even worse shock if the girl was totally unprepared for it.
The other two girls whom she had escorted in similar circumstances had known only too well what they had to expect. They had both been very much younger than Helen, too: one in the second form and one in the third form. She remembered how little Karen Charlton, the second former, had walked along desperately slowly, obviously feeling very sorry for herself and looking dismally as though she was ready to start crying at any moment. Tracy Sharp had also known why she'd been sent for. She had put up more of a show of bravado than had Karen, even making a joke to Mandy on the way to the office. But the self-confident Tracy had not been able to hide her tears when she stumbled out of the headmistress's office into Mandy's after the infliction. Sympathetically, the secretary had handed the sobbing fourteen-year-old a handful of tissues from the box she kept ready for such events.
Mrs. Taylor used her cane only rarely, perhaps five or six times a term. But Mandy was well aware that the headmistress was a real expert in the infliction of corporal punishment, and that when she thought a caning was justified she laid it on good and hard and used all her skill. Tracy was by no means the only pupil whom Mandy had seen confident in her ability to take a caning before a visit to the headmistress's sanctum and crying and whimpering afterwards.
Mandy herself was no stranger to the cane. She had attended a local secondary modern where all the teachers were allowed to use the cane and most, especially the deputy headmaster, did - on girls as well as boys. Most of Mandy's punishments had been on the hands but she had known the humiliation and the pain of a well-caned bottom on two occasions, the last time only four years previously.
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