by Mike London
One Monday morning, just as morning lessons were starting, Gillian Marshall and Rosemary Stevens, two fourth year girls at Melrose Road School, were limping away from their headmistress's office, each with one hand held to the back of their blue school skirts. They had both just received four strokes from Mrs Elliot's cane. The bottoms of the two girls were extremely sore and throbbed painfully.
It was certainly not the best start to their week, but neither of them felt that their canings had been unjust. They had both somehow managed to accumulate twelve demerit points that term. Any girl with that number of demerits would always be sent to Mrs Elliot and such meetings nearly always resulted in the girl concerned getting the cane.
So, neither girl was particularly aggrieved at having been caned. It had hurt more than they had expected but that, too, was no real surprise. Every girl at the school had heard it said that the headmistress somehow always managed to make any subsequent visits to her office more painful than previous ones. Both girls had felt Mrs Elliot's cane before and neither of them remembered their earlier canings to have caused as much pain as they were now in.
What both girls had felt rather unfair was that, in addition to their canings, they had both been told that they would have to attend lunchtime detentions for the next five schooldays, in other words, for the whole week. Lunchtime detentions were regarded as quite a serious punishment in themselves and were usually given just for one or two days at a time. Five was a lot to get, on top of a hard caning, just for having reached twelve demerits!
Mrs Elliots' reasoning was that this was not the first time that either girl had been caned for demerits - and yet, here they were again. She hoped that the additional penalty would make Gillian and Rosemary more careful about their behaviour in future and also make those girls for whom the risk of getting the cane was not a sufficient deterrent aware that other unpleasant consequences could arise from an excess of demerits.
Lunchtime detentions lasted for half an hour during the dinner break. Girls ate their school dinners at two separate sittings: the first from quarter past twelve to quarter to one and the second from five minutes to one until twenty-five minutes past. Afternoon school then started at half past one. The detentions were timed similarly. Girls on 'first sitting' for dinner would be in detention from five minutes to one until twenty-five minutes past and those on 'second sitting' would have to attend the earlier detention starting at quarter past twelve.
As there were two lunchtime detentions each day the number of girls attending each of them was usually low - most often between three and six girls. They were supervised by a rota of prefects. The usual rule at Melrose Road was that prefects could not make use of the slipper. There was an exception, however, for those supervising lunchtime detentions. They were permitted to give a girl who misbehaved in detention no more than three smacks with a plimsoll. This rarely happened and, on those occasions when it did, most prefects found that delivering just one whack to the seat of a naughty girl's skirt would ensure good behaviour from the whole group for the rest of the detention. There were no detention tasks for lunchtime detentions. The girls there merely had to sit still and in complete silence for the half hour, with their hands behind their necks.
There were also after school detentions, which lasted for an hour after school on Mondays and Wednesdays. These were supervised by a rota of teachers rather than by prefects. After school detentions did have tasks which would be assigned by the teachers, usually something boring such as copying out a dictionary or writing the same line over and over again for the entire hour. A girl who had not completed the task to the satisfaction for the teacher in charge when the hour was up would either be kept in detention until the teacher was satisfied or would be given an additional punishment such as the slipper or another after school detention.
Gillian and Rosemary were both due to eat at the first sitting that term, so after their meal they reported to the detention room just before five minutes to one. Four other girls varying in age from 12 to 16 were already seated with their hands behind their necks at desks scattered around the room. Girls were not allowed to sit next to each other during lunchtime detention.
The two girls went into the room and sat down a few desks apart, lowering themselves as carefully as they could. Once seated they, too, put their hands behind their necks. This was shaming in itself and they both knew that, before too long, it would also become very uncomfortable.
Gillian's heart dropped when she recognised the prefect at the front of the class. Before then she had been too intent on finding a place to sit, on carefully sitting down and on assuming the required posture. It was Teresa Butler. This was very bad luck. Unlike the other prefects at the school, Teresa seemed to actually enjoy using her plimsoll as a slipper on younger girls. Gillian had been in a lunchtime detention supervised by Teresa once before. There had only been four girls in detention that day and Teresa had found reasons for slippering every single one of them. And every time it had been the maximum of three whacks. The prefect had even managed to circumvent that rule by calling one unfortunate girl out for a second slippering just a minute before the detention ended.
Gillian's bottom was still really sore from the effects of Mrs Elliot's cane that morning. Teresa Butler was the very last person in the world she would have wanted to be in charge of detention that afternoon.
Teresa stood up and closed the door. She had been expecting six girls in detention and six were now present. None of them had arrived late. That wasn't enough for Teresa, though.
"Rosemary Stevens!" she called out. "Stand up and come to the front of the class!"
Rosemary was astonished. Unlike her friend she didn't know Teresa's reputation. She stood up and said, "But why, Miss? I haven't done anything wrong!"
"Come out now, Rosemary," the prefect replied, "unless you want me to send you straight to Mrs Elliot!" Teresa did not yet know that Rosemary had already had an extremely painful encounter with the headmistress that morning. "You were the last girl to get here and I am going to slipper you!"
Rosemary was still confused. "But I wasn't late! I got here on time! There's always going to be one girl who's the last one in!"
"My detention, my rules! Come out here right now. Otherwise, I will send you to the headmistress."
Rosemary seemed to have no choice. She thought that Mrs Elliot would be unlikely to go easy on a girl sent to her twice in one day. It seemed hideously unfair, but she had no choice. She began to walk slowly to the front of the class.
"Don't dawdle, girl!" urged the prefect.
Poor Rosemary felt twinges of pain at every step but she walked faster and stood beside the prefect who, for no earthly reason that the girl could guess at, seemed to be so angry with her.
"Roll your skirt up!"
Rosemary's mouth gaped open.
This was yet another manner in which Teresa's customs differed from those of the other prefects. On the rare occasions when other prefects slippered a girl during a lunchtime detention, they always did it over the girl's skirt, but Teresa Butler slippered over knickers.
Rosemary was cowed into obedience by the angry look on Teresa's face and her fear of another visit to the headmistress. But it was not an easy thing for her to roll her tight skirt up over her painful and swollen bottom. She squeaked and squealed and almost yelped as she tried to comply as quickly as she could with the prefect's command.
The sight of the difficulty that Rosemary was having and her involuntary yips of pain made Teresa realise that the girl had been caned earlier that day. But this knowledge did not prevent her from proceeding with the slippering.
When Rosemary had finally managed to roll her skirt up, the prefect curtly ordered her to face the door and bend over.
As she did so the fresh cane marks stretching across Rosemary's rear, only partly hidden by her blue school knickers, must have made it plain to Teresa, even if she hadn't realised it already, that the girl had been caned just a few hours earlier. In fact, two girls sitting at the far left of the class could see Rosemary's bottom as she bent and they both gasped aloud. They quickly did their best to avoid Teresa's attention but it had been clear as day to both of them that Rosemary had just been caned.
Nevertheless, Teresa hefted her plimsoll and delivered three hard slaps across the bottom of the bending girl.
Rosemary was no coward. She had taken her caning that morning bravely enough, though it had hurt more than she'd expected. Even now she managed to remain in position for the entire slippering, though she could not help crying out loudly every time the hard rubber sole of Teresa's plimsoll smacked down across her supremely tender rear. When she was finally allowed to stand, she realised, to her shame, that she had started to cry.
"Skirt down and go back to your place," ordered Teresa, curtly.
Pulling her skirt back down in place was even more painful than rolling it up had been. Rosemary did it as quickly as she could, just to get it done. Then she hobbled tearfully back to her place, hesitated and then sat down, yelping aloud.
Teresa ignored the involuntary cry of pain. She was rather worried that she might have overstepped the mark this time to an extent that could mean trouble for herself. She knew that Rosemary really hadn't done anything wrong and that none of her fellow prefects would have slippered her for being the last girl to come in. She also knew that there was a school rule against slippering any girl who had been caned on that day. Pupils at the school were never given a list of the rules, so the girls in detention were probably unaware of it. But Teresa had been given a typewritten list of rules when she had been appointed a prefect, and she knew that that rule was on it.
For the remainder of the detention, Teresa made no further use of her plimsoll. She could not help herself, however, from warning both Gillian and Rosemary to sit still and not to fidget, nor from giving Gillian a hundred lines to write out when her sore bottom prevented her from obeying.
Rosemary and Gillian left the detention room together. Gillian's bottom was beginning to feel a little better by now, though it still throbbed painfully. Rosemary, on the other hand, was feeling even worse than she had immediately after they had both been caned by Mrs Elliot that morning. She had stopped crying but her puffy eyes and the tears and snot still on her face showed that she had been punished very recently. She had not dared to take her hanky out during the detention to wipe her face after the whacking from Teresa, but had forced herself to keep her hands behind her neck.
"That bitch!" she hissed vehemently but quietly to her friend. "She didn't have any reason at all to slipper me. And then she gave me a full three whacks, and every one a real wallop..."
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