by Theo Jones
"Now, what was it I was doing...?"
Miss Amelia Musgrove, Headmistress of St. Hilda's School for Girls, sat at her desk, struggling to recall what it was she was about to do. Were there any clues? She scanned her cluttered desk which she really must sort today, but the trouble was it all looked like work in progress. Then she spotted the punishment book; she must be about to give some miscreant the cane. Oh, yes, look the cane was out, hanging on the back of the chair.
Then she remembered, Jennifer Horn, 6th Form, caught smoking out in the bushes; she was waiting outside now, hands on her head, probably the last girl whose bottom she'd ever tickle... how strange. Thirty odd years of walloping girls' bottoms, a long chain of swipes, and here was the final one. Perhaps she should let her off, as a final act of mercy, like an abdicating monarch.
"Nonsense, Amelia! Smoking? She needs a jolly hot bottom!"
She spoke her thoughts out loud quite often these days, sometimes without even realising. As she opened the faded blue book she saw she'd already entered Horn's name, offence and punishment; six strokes, quite right. She left the book open, got the cane and placed it over the empty pages. There, that wouldn't slip her mind.
Anyway, tomorrow she was off, final Assembly, then a walking holiday in... where was it now? Italy, that was it! She'd be sad to go but at least she wouldn't have to deal with those governors any more. Bloody fools, what did they know? Of course, she wasn't the woman she had been, but she was still worth two or three of them. When she got to sixty it started... the little comments, the wonderings, the questions. They wanted her to retire.
She stood her ground. "Gentlemen, I have all the virtues, except resignation!"
She lasted another year before all that muddle at the Founder's Day. They didn't like her speech, couldn't take the truth. Oh, there was that girl who got hurt in the pageant, wasn't there? Anyway, more than half of the governors voted and gave her no choice. Got to go, old girl, she told herself. Chin up! Just like in the Suffragettes in the old days, she would show no weakness, certainly not to men. She made only one stipulation.
"I want your solemn commitment that my successor will be a woman."
They'd sworn, of course, for whatever that was worth. She remembered the broken promises of the politicians only too well. She smiled, seventeen, she'd been, in the hols from St. Hilda's, when she'd heard a speaker at Hyde Park. The thrill of listening to those rallying words, the justice of it, the radical truth.
She'd had to lie to her parents about her activities - lectures, walks in the park, exhibitions, when actually she'd been to meetings or marches. They found out when she was arrested and fined 30 shillings for breach of the peace, for disrupting a public meeting addressed by that rat, Mr Asquith! It had been so exciting, hats flying everywhere, shouting, fists waving, brilliant!
Her mother and father had been mortified as they had picked her up from the Magistrates' Court, having been held in the cells all night with the other doughty fighters for the Cause. They had sung rousing campaign songs all night, Amelia feeling part of a noble struggle, ready for more deeds not words. The heady feeling of sisterly solidarity lasted through to the end of the court hearing, when she was suddenly alone in the carriage, heading home with her solemn and silent parents.
As she lay over her mother's knees in the drawing room, skirt lifted and drawers lowered she cried, "But Mama, I was doing it for the cause of women!"
Mother snorted in derision. "And I'm doing this for the cause of our reputation and pocket book!" With that she set about her daughters bottom with a will, her mahogany-backed hairbrush sounding a veritable tattoo on the reddening flesh, as the maids sniggered outside the door.
After a time in the corner she had been sent to her father's study, skirt pinned up, rubbing her bottom with one hand, while stopping her drawers falling to her feet with the other. She had to walk through the hall and up the main staircase like that, and somehow all the servants had managed to be doing some essential task or other in the vicinity. Which cheeks are redder? she wondered as she passed the frankly curious gaze of the youngest of the maids.
She had knocked timorously at his dark, heavy door and waited, and waited, shivering, although it wasn't cold. Cook came by. Cook? On the first floor!
"Oh, dear, dear, Miss Amelia!," said Cook. "Come by the kitchen later and I'll make up an ice pack for you!"
"Come!" Father's dark voice summoned her in.
He had delivered a scathing lecture about her behaviour and then a blistering six strokes of the cane on her bare, crimson cheeks. During the first four she had wept until it felt as if all her tears were shed, until the last two, when it transpired there were more. The ice pack had been very helpful, although the sniggers and sideways glances of the scullery maid, when she went and asked for it, were blush making.
Then she was kept in, well supervised, until it was time to go back to Hilda's, where she secretly proselytised for Women's Suffrage to the oiks and made clandestine contact with her sisters of the purple sash in town. On a day's pass she was arrested again for trying to set fire to a letter box. Her companions vanished - there was no one to sing songs with then, just the chilling words of the hulking sergeant.
"This not being London, Miss, we find we have more leeway, as it were. Now, there'll be some talk about what to do with you, but I'll tell you now, my vote goes for giving you the birch, off the books, of course!"
She waited despondently in the cells until Duggan, the porter and Mrs Simmonds, the matron came to take her back to Hilda's. Amelia couldn't resist a quip to the sergeant, as she left.
"It rather looks as if your vote counts for little, Sergeant."
"Ah, well, Miss, you're the expert on votes, I reckon."
It was a grim, silent ride back, for the cane, of course, thought Amelia, or expulsion. She stood shivering in the icy presence of Mrs Winifred Simons, the ancient headmistress, as she was loudly berated for her hooliganism. Then came the shock.
"You will go with Matron, who will prepare you for punishment. You will then be taken to the library where you will be soundly birched, witnessed by the assembled sixth form. Sergeant Meredith's vote carried the day, after all, Miss Amelia Musgrove!"
She had thought she might faint or wet herself at these terrible words but, though she went a very pale shade of white and trembled head to toe, she did not beg or repine from her actions. The birch, though! In the library was a wooden block, with a step to kneel on, for birching. It hadn't been used for years, not in any girl's memory. It was there but, really, only as a sinister curio, a reminder of the past. It remained in the rules as the ultimate punishment, but who took that seriously? Really, no-one! However, Amelia's political hooliganism had posed the police, the school and her parents a stark dilemma. She could be prosecuted, but surely that was too severe, she'd be sent to a reformatory. She could be expelled but then a promising academic career would be lost and she'd be at a loose end, open to mischief. The cane seemed commonplace, inadequate; so it was that Sergeant Meredith's suggestion prevailed.
His idea had been to have her held over the table in the police station by school staff, who'd have taken her drawers down, and he'd give her a sharp dozen or so strokes, 'off the books'. He'd found that plenty of parents, and youngsters too, would agree to that, rather than Court. As he said, they had some leeway.
However, the headmistress had been insistent that she would carry out the punishment herself, at school, in a feminine environment, for reasons of propriety. It was a shame, but the sergeant had to agree. Amelia's parents, consulted by telephone, were in accord, adding only that it should be a very sound birching indeed.
In a daze, Amelia was marched to the infirmary by Matron. There she was undressed and given a strange, stiff cotton gown to wear. It fell to below the knee but was open at the back, fastened by little ties. As it was put on, she felt sick. The purpose of the garment was clear, it was to allow her bottom to be easily uncovered.
Her offers to undress herself were ignored, she was to be stripped! When that was done, and the punishment gown put on, Matron peremptorily took her over her knee and gave her a good, sharp taste of the hairbrush.
"You need your backside warming up, Miss. Also, you were properly cheeky to that sergeant, so we'll make sure you've had your mouth washed out, as well."
Amelia had yipped and yelped as the brush danced all over her bottom, then stood, hands on head while a big square bar of wet carbolic was inserted in her mouth and carefully twisted around. It was disgusting, the taste was terrible and she could feel suds dribbling down her chin. She hadn't cried, but the odd tear had rolled down to add to the mess.
Then, the soap still in her mouth, she had been marched, hands on her head, through the long empty corridors to the library. Her bottom was hot and stinging, her bare feet cold on the polished wooden floor. She was breathing heavily through her nose as suds dribbled down her front, while Matron would slap her bottom every few steps, as if to hurry her up. She was terrified.
They reached the big double doors of the library and Matron stepped forward and knocked firmly; there was a long, pregnant pause and then they both swung open, a prefect pulling on each one. All the sixth form, friends and enemies, were sat in rows either side; every face turned towards her: pale and anxious, gleeful, pitying, shocked.
At the end stood the birching block, dark and battered and ancient. Mrs Simons in full academic regalia stood next to a large ewer, out of which protruded the handles of two birches. Duggan had made them up while Amelia was in the cells.
"One for use, Ma'am, and one to be on the safe side," said Duggan.
"Thank you, Duggan. I shall need them both!"
Matron slapped her up the aisle, hard deliberate open handed smacks, between the rows of her open-mouthed peers. Then she stood, trembling from head to toe, hot-bottomed, hands on head, carbolic in her mouth. Mrs Simons looked at her disdainfully before intoning her offence and punishment.
"Amelia Musgrove, you have engaged in a wicked, deliberate attempt at arson against His Majesty's Mail. The fact you failed is no mitigation, neither is your supposed motivation. The authorities have agreed your punishment rests with me, you are lucky it is so, but I will not shirk from my responsibility. You are to be soundly birched. Matron, remove the soap and prepare her."
The carbolic was taken, leaving Amelia grimacing and working her mouth, to lessen the taste. Then Matron carefully undid each of the ties from her waist downwards. Amelia could feel her cold bony fingers at the task, and led her to the block. She had sworn she'd be dignified, strong and defiant but as she was made to kneel on the step and bend over the rounded top, she began to whimper.
Not to be reposted, reproduced or distributed, in part or whole.