by James Simpson
I was the canteen manageress at a very old established, traditional, semi-independent boys' grammar school in the sixties, very happy in my job, and fully intended to remain there until my retirement. However, one day an incident occurred which was so serious it nearly led to me losing my job.
It was a busy Monday morning and our annual audit was due. The Bursar, Mr Eric Williams, a very precise and pedantic semi-retired chartered accountant, had requested the canteen annual accounts, and I was in my office double-checking and entering and filing the latest invoices.
I had delegated kitchen responsibility for that week to my supervisor Maggie Jones, a capable organiser but a rather uninspired cook, who was in her mid-forties. At least I knew she would never take risks or allow bad practices.
The senior cook was Jackie Dawson who had only recently moved into the neighbourhood after being tragically widowed by an unfortunate accident. She was a superb and very experienced cook and produced inspired and delicious meals on our miserable budget. I had been extremely fortunate that, due to a personal tragedy, she had left her previous job as a chef and, after a gap at home, had looked for a less demanding position, eventually choosing ours. Her main course menu was an enormous improvement on Maggie's uninspired but edible and filling school stodge, although Maggie was a superb pudding cook. The only irritant was that the bursar was able to say 'I told you so, a shilling per portion is quite adequate if you know what you're doing.'
Another recently arrived employee who worked in the kitchen as a general help, mainly doing the cleaning and washing-up, was a young and very pretty Irish girl called Siobhan Fitzpatrick who had just come to England and was living with her aunty. She was a very willing and hard worker, but hadn't been well educated by the nuns. We were soon to discover just how lacking her education was.
I had approved the week's menu and budgets and was concentrating completely on the last quarter's accounts when Maggie suddenly burst into the room and shrieked, "Come quickly, Caroline, something's gone badly wrong!"
I put my pen down and with as much dignity as I could muster I entered the dining hall to find the Headmaster waiting for me.
He directed me to taste a teaspoonful of cottage pie; I carefully took a tiny taste and spat it out immediately. It was so salty it made me gag, and I drank a glass of water.
I looked at him and said as calmly as possible, "A little too salty I think, Headmaster; I shall investigate further."
The Headmaster replied, "A masterpiece of understatement I think, Mrs Brown. However, I shall leave the matter in your capable hands. Please report to me tomorrow morning after assembly. My secretary will phone you to let you know when I'm available."
Fortunately, we always made four batches, two for each sitting, and after tasting the batches we found only one batch that was massively over-salted so we quarantined the offending portions and managed to provide sufficient for the whole school, although not in the usual belly-busting portions we normally served up. Unfortunately, though, everything now ran late and the first afternoon class had to start ten minutes late, much to the Head's considerable displeasure.
Even more fortuitously, Joan had kept the best end of the beef aside and had made a delicious steak and kidney pie for the masters at the top table who, after the panic had all been sorted out and their food reheated, proceeded to fill their bellies with great gusto as if nothing had happened. Fortunately, this made sure that there were no complaints from the majority of the staff, precisely the opposite happened in fact.
As he walked out, Chalky White squeezed my hand and said to me with a smile, "First rate meal, Mrs Brown, and the bonus of ten minutes less with the lower fifth, enhanced even further by the pleasure of watching the faces of the boys when they tasted the salty cottage pie has made it a day to remember."
I now had to investigate the mistake and also explain to our tiresomely pedantic bursar why the accounts would be late. I knew that he would pretend to joke that I deserved six of the best like a naughty boy, but I also realised that there was a strong basis of desire behind his apparently harmless little joke. I could tell from the gleam in his eyes there was nothing he would like better than to cane me. In his wildest dreams! I thought.
A portion of the nasty food was sent to the Chemistry lab for analysis.
Eventually, we concluded the only rational explanation was that quite against all recognised procedure, Jackie had told Siobhan to weigh out the salt for one portion, and for some reason it hadn't been checked. After asking her how much she had put in, we realised that she had possibly weighed out ten times as much salt as required. To compound the error, somewhat amazingly, nobody had tasted that batch for seasoning, another oversight that none of us could understand as it was standard practice. However, Siobhan was sure that she'd put the right amount of salt in, and Jackie couldn't believe that she hadn't tasted all the batches.
We also discovered that although Siobhan was a bright girl, her reading and writing skills left much to be desired. This was presumably due to a very rural Irish convent education where the nuns had been far more concerned with teaching religion and beating the girls, than teaching them the 3Rs, and which had finished at fourteen when they were sent out to do menial jobs. Jackie had also admitted to being very tired that morning.
I was now ready to report to the Headmaster next morning.
That night in bed I talked to my husband about the problem. Obviously, Peter had been full of it at the tea table, but Derek, my husband, had shut him up.
Derek was fairly certain I wouldn't get the sack, but I was still really worried. He did say that the two gross breaches of procedure wouldn't go unnoticed and that disciplinary hearings didn't always go the way you expected.
He joked that we should be caned like naughty boys.
"Good grief! Do all men fantasise about spanking and caning a woman's bum? You're almost as bad as Eric Williams," I said, and told him in no uncertain way not to be so bloody silly. I hoped he didn't act like the abominable Williams at work.
As we went to sleep, he stroked my bum and joked that even if I did get a good caning, he would be happy to soothe my wheals and bruises when I got home, just like we had done for each other some twenty odd years ago when we were still at school and had become a couple. I suddenly remembered that he had been a rebel in his last years at school, and on more than one occasion we'd popped into the woods on the way home, where I'd soothed a bruised and battered male bum after his frequent canings.
I also remembered the occasion when he'd done the same for me after I'd been caned in my last term at school. That had been my first sixer after being caught smoking inside the groundsman's shed during games. I'd got it even worse after I was seen walking home hand in hand with him and kissing him goodbye while still in my school uniform; you'd have thought we'd been making love in public by the fuss the Headmistress had made and the severity of my caning. I received twelve strokes in two lots of six at fourteen day intervals six for indecent behaviour, and six for disgracing the uniform which seemed really excessive. If only they'd known that it made sure that I lost my virginity after the second caning as it was the best way to ease the pain, and we'd had time to take the necessary precautions and talk about it.
That idea stayed firmly in my mind and, as I lay awake while he gently snored, I remembered my several slipperings and those three canings at school and how much they'd hurt at the time, but also the strange, rather pleasant, hot, sexy and tingly feeling they left after the worst of the pain had subsided. I also remembered, when we were a little older, just how nice it had been when, if we were able to get out during the evening after one of us had been whacked, we used to sneak into his granddad's allotment shed and once more soothe each other's sore bums, while listening to the latest hits on a very crackly Radio Luxembourg. I concluded there was a definite logic in taking a whacking if it really sorted everything out.
I also realised that we had done rather well in life in spite of us both hating school. Fortunately, the local Co-operative Society had been good to us and many others by sending its juniors to Co-operative College for further education. Derek had joined as a junior in the milk department and become a milkman, but had joined up as soon as he was old enough in World War 2. He'd enjoyed most of his time in the Army during the war and ended up as a corporal and even acting sergeant in Germany where he'd been decorated for bravery. Occasionally, if he was very drunk, he'd say that he had discovered a hidden talent for killing, but he never spoke much about it. I knew that liberating a Jewish concentration camp had left deep scars and a seething hatred of the Nazis, particularly the SS, but not of the regular German soldiers who he regarded as brave and largely honourable opponents.
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