by Philip Kemp
As the clock struck the half-hour Tom Paddler glanced up from his volume of Pliny. Half an hour before midnight: time to turn in. But first he must make his nightly round of the dormitories, to see all was in order and his young charges safely asleep.
Tom Paddler - or Dr Thomas Paddler, BSc, MA, D Phil, to give him his full academic honours - was headmaster and proprietor of the Warmington Academy for Young Ladies, a well-regarded private school housed in a Victorian mansion in the leafy hills of Berkshire. Some sixty girls, their ages ranging from 12 to 18, boarded there and received a wide-ranging liberal education. A very good education, too. The Warmington's fees were high, but then so were its teaching standards. As were also its standards of discipline.
This was a matter that Dr Tom always emphasised to parents of prospective pupils. There must be no room for misunderstanding. "Here at the Warmington," he would tell them, over tea in his study, "we believe in obedience, diligence, punctuality and courtesy. In short, in good behaviour as befits well-bred young ladies. However, as you know, girls will be girls. From time to time there will be high spirits, sauciness, and outbursts of mischief. These must be dealt with - kindly but firmly."
"Qui aime bien, châtie bien," Dr Tom would continue. The parents always nodded at this, not so much in agreement as to show that they too understood French. "There are those who maintain that young ladies should not be subjected to physical chastisement. I respect such views, but I do not agree. Girls - and believe me, I speak as one who knows - can be just as naughty as boys, and should be similarly punished. At the same time, I recognise that they are more delicate, more sensitive to pain. Therefore I would rarely use the birch on a young lady, and the cane should be strictly reserved for the most serious offences. However, no girl has ever taken any lasting harm - and many, I believe, have derived a deal of good - from a sound spanking, judiciously administered by hand or hairbrush. Should you decide to entrust your daughter to our care, it must be on the clear understanding that she may, if she deserves it, be spanked. Hard. On her bare bottom."
These days, of course, any headmaster who talked like this would have very few pupils, and would quite probably find himself up in court. But this was 1934, when newfangled ideas of education had yet to dislodge more traditional methods. So although a few parents looked disconcerted, and decided that the Warmington wasn't quite right for their dear delicate daughter, the majority readily assented to Dr Tom's methods.
Indeed it wasn't uncommon for a fond father to linger behind until his wife was out of earshot, and then murmur, "Couldn't agree more, my dear chap. Young Daphne's been getting her own way a damn sight too often, if you ask me. Mother indulges her, y'know - turning her into a spoilt little brat. 'Fraid I don't dare do it m'self any more, but a good smacked bottom's just what the young madam needs. Plenty of 'em, in fact - good and hard and often. And on the bare too, eh? That's the stuff! More power to your elbow, old boy!"
So the Warmington had thriven and prospered. And as Dr Tom looked back, he recalled some 300 girls who had passed through the school's portals since it was founded in 1922. Girls plain or pretty, tall or short, thin or fat, bold or timid, girls blonde, redheaded and brunette. He recalled their faces - but also another portion of their anatomies. For of those 300 girls, few if any had not at some point found themselves turned over Dr Tom's knee to have their skirts raised, their knickers lowered, and to be soundly smacked on their soft, squirming and deliciously bare girlish bottoms. And many had found themselves in that undignified posture far more than once. Rarely did a day pass without Dr Tom being required to administer at least one spanking, and often more than one.
Giving spankings was strictly the headmaster's privilege. Other staff members could hand out punishments such as detention, learning lines or whatever - but spanking was for Dr Tom alone. Not just because he was the ultimate authority - but because it was a task he enjoyed far too much to share with anyone.
Dr Tom didn't deceive himself. None of that 'this hurts me more than it hurts you' nonsense for him. He was well aware that he greatly enjoyed spanking teenage girls - and that he got a sexual kick out of it, too. Luckily for him, it was a kick that society condoned. Had it not been for that safety-valve, he knew, he might have felt tempted to intimacy with some of the older, prettier girls - with disastrous results for him, and for them. As he saw it, smacking their bare bottoms - an activity that, in that less knowing era, was regarded as wholly laudable on the part of a pedagogue - provided a satisfactory and innocuous outlet for his feelings. Only once had a spanking progressed to anything further - but more of that later.
Time for his late-night rounds. Dr Tom stood, picked up his torch, and went out into the corridor, closing the study door quietly behind him. He didn't need a light - every inch of the school was familiar to him - and on the wooden floor his felt slippers made no sound.
He approached the half-open door of the junior dormitory where the 12 to 14-year-olds slept, and listened. Soft breathing, the occasional restless murmur of a sleeper, but no other noise. The same from the middle dorm, the 15 and 16-year-olds. But as he neared the senior dorm where the older girls slept, the sound of a stifled giggle met his ears. He came closer, listening. Excited murmurs, and another giggle.
The senior dormitory, like the other two, held 22 beds: eleven on each side, each curtained off in its own little cubicle. Tom glided silently down the centre aisle between the curtains. The sounds came from the sixth cubicle on the left. In the darkness Tom nodded to himself. Rosie Arbuthnot. No great surprise about that.
He paused, his hand on the curtain, as from within issued a third giggle, louder than before. "Sshh, Susie, you idiot!" came Rosie's voice. "If old Spanker hears us, we're for it!"
"Too jolly right!" whispered another voice with a hint of Edinburgh to it. "Hot botties all round!"
Drawing back the curtain, Dr Tom switched on his torch. "How right you are, young ladies," he remarked pleasantly. "Hot botties indeed it is."
Three startled faces gazed at him. Rosie Arbuthnot, her long dark hair hanging loose, her habitual cheeky grin fading into a look of chagrin. Susie Harrison, blonde and giggly, though not giggling now. And Jenny MacGregor, her red curls bright in the torchlight, green eyes round with alarm. Between them on the bed, cake crumbs and an empty pop bottle or two.
"Well, well," said Dr Tom, "how charming. A midnight feast. Well, my dears, I hope you enjoyed your meal - because now, courtesy of 'old Spanker', it's time for your just desserts. May I request your presence in my study please, in two minutes time? Clad just as you are."
As he turned on his heel and started for the door, he heard stirrings and stifled giggles from adjacent beds. Some of the culprits' fellow-pupils, it seemed, were awake and much amused by the thought of the retribution about to be visited on Rosie, Susie and Jenny's defenceless derrieres.
"Now you'll catch it, you three!" hissed an excited voice. Dr Tom paused. "If any other young ladies would care to join the correction party...?" he offered. Silence instantly fell.
Back in his study, filled with a sense of pleasing anticipation, Dr Tom opened a drawer of his desk and gazed reflectively at the contents. What a delightful bonus at the end of the day: three soft girlish bottoms to smack, and all of them, as he knew from previous occasions, eminently spankable. Now, what to use? Dr Tom prided himself on not lapsing into routine when it came to chastisement. A culprit summoned to his study might know she was in for a spanking, but never exactly what form it would take. The punishment should fit the crime, but it must also fit the bottom - and each of the three miscreants merited different treatment. From the drawer he selected three implements and laid them on the desk.
There was a timid knock at the door. "Come in!" he called in a cheerful voice.
Rosie, Susie and Jenny entered apprehensively. As three of the naughtiest girls in the school, they knew all too well what they were in for. This term alone, they had already notched up nearly twenty spankings between them: five for Susie, six for Jenny, and no less than eight for Rosie, the most recent of them only that very morning. Sometimes during the holidays they complained to their friends of the ordeals they had to suffer at Warmington. "What?" said their friends scornfully. "A silly old spanking? Who cares about that?" To which Rosie and Co could only respond ruefully that you didn't know what a spanking was until you'd had one from somebody who really knew how to spank.
And if anyone knew, it was Dr Tom. He'd probably applied more smacks to more bare young female posteriors than any other man in England. The girls sometimes liked to debate how many spankings he'd administered since the school was founded. Dr Tom could have told them - exactly. He kept a punishment diary: name of culprit, nature of offence, how many strokes administered and with which implements, plus a few other colourful details. It made very pleasant reading during the holidays. The grand total to date, in the twelve years since the school was founded, was 6,422 spankings - an average of some 550 spankings a year, or roughly two a day throughout the academic year. Allow a conservative estimate of 150 strokes each - Dr Tom rarely bestowed less than a hundred spanks per chastisement, and quite often a lot more - and he could look back with satisfaction on some 960,000 well-deserved spanks applied to all those soft, bare, girlish bottoms. Since there was no sign that girls were becoming any less naughty - quite the reverse, if anything - Dr Tom confidently looked forward to celebrating his one millionth professional spank before the year was out.
Now, at ease in his big leather armchair, Dr Tom contemplated prospective spankees nos. 6,423, 4 and 5. Three pretty teenage girls, barefoot in their nightwear. Susie and Rosie wore long linen nightdresses, Jenny was in pale blue silk pyjamas. How charming they all looked, he thought. How even more charming they would look a few minutes hence, face down across his knee, their soft, spankable young bottoms all bare and ready for punishment - and how still more charming a few minutes later, with those same soft bottoms squirming and reddening beneath his merciless palm. No question of it, thought Dr Tom blissfully, I have one of the best jobs in the world.
He smiled benevolently at the three culprits. "A midnight feast, my dears? Delightful, I'm sure. But according to the school rules, where should you be at midnight? Rosie?"
"In bed and asleep, Sir."
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