by Pet Jeffery
I glowered at the sullen fifteen-year-olds of Form 5S. They were not at all what I'd expected of the girls in an expensive boarding school. While they all wore the uniform, they did so with a laxness that would have appalled the teachers in my grammar school days. All had unfastened the top buttons of their blouses, and they'd dragged their tie knots to half-mast. Where their desks failed to hide the girls' legs, I could see that my pupils had lifted or shortened their regulation burgundy skirts to reveal unseemly expanses of thigh. Their posture was no better; they lounged in their seats. Worse, it was obvious that none of them were paying the least attention to my carefully prepared lesson.
"Pay attention, girls." My voice sounded feeble, even to me. "I will require each of you to write an essay on Northanger Abbey for tonight's prep."
For an instant, I was pleased with my presence of mind to use the word 'prep' in place of the 'homework' of my own schooldays. My moment of self-congratulation ended almost as soon as it had begun. A blonde in the back row removed chewing gum from her mouth, before reaching down to stick it to the underside of her desk.
"Rattle rattling old Jane Austen," she said.
I was unfamiliar with the school slang, but 'rattle' clearly signified something very rude.
A moment later, the redhead seated next to the blonde hurled her copy of Northanger Abbey toward my dais. If she aimed at my head, her throw was alarmingly accurate; I had to duck to avoid the flying book. Almost at once, further improvised missiles and the shrill shouting of teenagers filled the classroom; I cowered behind my desk.
Then, suddenly, quiet reigned. When I raised my head from my refuge, I saw that Miss Grimes had entered; she carried a strip of quarter inch thick leather, about ten inches long and two inches broad.
I had first met Miss Grimes within an hour of my arrival at Hollidean Young Ladies' Academy. That was on Sunday, two evenings ago, the day before the girls returned from their summer break. The Headmistress, Miss Truscott, marked the occasion with a reception for all of her teaching staff. It was not exactly a party, although there was cheese and wine. The reception had been a rather gloomy occasion and Miss Grimes had been amongst the gloomier attendees. She dressed in dark grey, fixed her hair in a tight bun, might have been in her late twenties, but could have passed for fifty. She was a short woman, shorter than any of my teenaged pupils, but the ferocity sometimes seen in small people burnt fiercely within her. Miss Grimes' habitual expression was grim; standing in my classroom, clasping the leather strap, the set of her mouth was grimmer than anything I'd previously seen distorting a human face.
"Miss Smith," she said levelly, as she cast a withering glance in my direction, "I would thank you to keep your class under control. The din from this room brought my algebra lesson, next door, to an abrupt halt."
For a moment, I thought that she might whack me with her fearsome-looking strap. Of course, she intended no such thing; I was her colleague, not her pupil.
"Sorry," I muttered shamefacedly.
Miss Grimes snorted derisively and then turned to my pupils.
"By rights, I should whack the lot of you, but I can't leave Form 4G unattended for much longer. They're struggling with quadratic equations, which might not be enough to keep them out of mischief. I know this class well enough to recognise the ringleaders. Angela Farrier and Siobhan Madden step to the front, and up on to Miss Smith's dais, immediately. I don't have time to waste. Delay, denials, or excuses will translate into extra strokes. This isn't your first time, you know the drill, prepare yourselves for the strap."
Evidently, Miss Grimes really did know Form 5S. The blonde and the redhead, who had started the trouble, sprang from their seats. Pausing only to pull up their white knee socks, fasten their top buttons, and adjust their ties, they hurried to the front and mounted my dais. The two girls faced the blackboard, tucked their skirt hems into their waistbands, tugged their knickers down to their knees, bent over, and touched their toes.
To my surprise, I noticed that each Hollidean girl wore two pairs of knickers, plain white ones next to her skin and, outside of these, a burgundy baggy pair that matched the colour of her skirt. Probably, I focused on this detail to avoid thinking about the more uncomfortable aspects of the drama unfolding before me. Miss Grimes was obviously about to hurt two of my pupils; I had enough empathy with Angela and Siobhan to find that distressing in itself. Indeed, my bottom tingled in sympathy with the punishment the girls were about to endure.
Another source of disquiet was that this ran counter to my training. When Mrs Cox, at the college, had urged us to engage our pupils' interest, I was absolutely certain that she didn't mean us to do so through the medium of their bottoms. Nor did it help that I thought my father would approve. As the union convener at Jarrod's Shipyard, and a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, he had condemned my accepting a post in an expensive fee-paying school. Discomfort heaped on the bottoms of his class enemies would have appealed to him as a harbinger of the red revolution. My own quieter revolution against Dad's authority left his imagined reaction difficult for me to swallow.
Dazed by the rapid turn of events, I took a couple of steps back from my dais, retreating down the aisle between the rows of school desks, while my eyes remained fixed upon Miss Grimes. This allowed me a clear view of the strapping, although I don't think that had been my intention.
Miss Grimes lifted her strap behind her shoulder and brought it down upon Angela's bare bottom as swiftly as a cobra strikes. The heavyweight leather landed with a thwack loud as a thunderclap, or so it seemed. Angela yelled, kicked backwards with her left leg, but remained bent over as though ready for a second stroke. As the diminutive teacher moved her arm aside, I saw that the leather strip had left a bright red mark across the girl's rump. Meanwhile, Miss Grimes had lost no time in stepping behind Siobhan. Again, she raised the strap past her shoulder to bring it down with tremendous force on the girl's derriere. It exploded upon exposed flesh as loudly as before. Siobhan's shriek was higher pitched than Angela's, and her legs shivered but didn't kick. The two-inch-wide stripe across Siobhan's bottom was exactly as Angela's had been, although the mark from Angela's whack had now darkened to dull crimson.
Each girl had now received her stroke of the strap. I hadn't enjoyed watching Miss Grimes administer justice, and I was glad to think that she had completed the punishments. Perhaps I could now return to interesting my class in Jane Austen's work, if such a thing were possible.
"Thank you, Miss Grimes," I said, more to conclude her visit to my classroom than to thank her; on balance, I wasn't grateful.
Miss Grimes ignored me and stepped back to Angela. She raised her strap again, dashing it down on the girls' unprotected bottom for the second time. The noise of impact was, I thought, worthy of a Bonfire Night banger. At the same moment, Angela's agonised yowl assailed my ears. This time, the teenager jumped several inches, but landed on her feet and in a position ready to take a third whack, if need be. A scarlet stripe crossed the crimson mark at an angle of perhaps thirty degrees.
Surely one such dreadful whack would have been sufficient to teach a girl the error of her ways. How many times would Miss Grimes smash her unyielding leather upon the girls' soft skin? The fact that Angela and Siobhan had remained bent over showed that they had a better idea than mine as to how many strokes equalled a whacking. I imagined the girls chanting a table, as I'd done at junior school, twelve inches one foot, and so on. Except that, now, it would be, I hoped, two strokes equal one whacking. Despite my hopes, Angela didn't straighten herself after the second whack. Her remaining in position alarmed me; could she expect a third blow from that terrible strap?
Meanwhile, Miss Grimes moved back to Siobhan, this time giving her two whacks in quick succession, each sounded preternaturally loud in the hushed classroom, as did the girl's anguished yelps. After the two extra strokes, the marks on Siobhan's bottom resembled an asterisk. Then, the teacher gave Angela an extra blow, producing the loudest thwack of the punishment and the highest pitched wail from Angela's throat.
"That will do," Miss Grimes said. This announcement greatly relieved me; I believed that the strapping had tested me to my limits. "Straighten yourselves and adjust your clothing."
Both girls, I noticed, winced as they tugged their underwear over their afflicted bottoms.
"Thank you, Miss," Angela and Siobhan chorused.
This reaction astonished me. Could they be genuinely grateful for such painful treatment? Was there a school rule that compelled them to thank mistresses for corporal punishment?
"I hope," Miss Grimes said to the girls at their desks, "that I will hear no more from this class today. I don't have the leisure to strap every one of you, but perhaps Miss Truscott could make time from her busy schedule to cane the entire form." She turned to me. "I would thank you, Miss Smith, to keep order in your classroom."
Miss Grimes stalked from the room. Several of my pupils hurried to pick up books and other hurled objects from the floor. The two strapped girls descended from my dais almost as warily as they might step from a cliff edge. Margaret Brice handed Siobhan the volume she had thrown at the start of the riot. Angela and Siobhan returned slowly to their desks, stepping with a cautious gait that suggested to me clothing chafing their strapped bottoms. When they reached their desks, the two girls lowered themselves carefully on to their unyielding wooden seats. To judge from the expressions on their faces, sitting down caused them fresh anguish.
"As I was saying," I said, "for tonight's prep, you will each write an essay on Northanger Abbey. The title will be 'How do the girls of this form resemble Catherine Morland?'"
My hope was that the girls would reflect on how their heads, like the fictitious Catherine's, were full of silly notions. I had no expectation for great insights, but a little self-analysis would do my pupils no harm.
The form greeted the essay title with sighs and grimaces, but no raised voices nor token of riotous conduct. No doubt the girls were anxious to avoid another visit from Miss Grimes. I also preferred that the grim mistress remained out of my classroom. Although I attempted to steer my thoughts in other directions, I was aware that I found Miss Grimes' actions distressing. One factor was that her invasion of my form highlighted my failings as a teacher. Witnessing the whacking had been horrible. Worse, I wondered whether I had mixed feelings on corporal punishment, attracted to it, as well as repelled by the strapping. If so, what did that say about me? This was a question I hastened to brush aside to the best of my ability, but it resisted my attempts to banish it.
To my great relief, the remainder of the morning passed quietly. My pupils snorted or pulled faces, but there was no open rebellion.
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