by Paul Rosemount
Emmaline Carstairs hurried down the corridor toward the headmistress's rooms, trying to conceal the shameful object in her hands from any of the girls who might still be up at this time in the evening, while touching it as little as possible. This was her first term in Deanchurch Academy, her first position since qualifying as a teacher and the first challenge to her authority - and she was quite aware that she hadn't handled it well. It didn't help that the senior girls who'd defied her were only seven or eight years younger than she was herself, and seemed far more developed than she remembered being at that age.
She arrived at the headmistress's door and gently knocked for admittance, then, in response to Miss Crowhurst's call of "Come in - it's not locked!" quickly slipped inside.
"Miss Carstairs? What brings you to my door - not trouble, I hope?" the headmistress said, looking up from the desk where she was checking the marking of some essays.
Emmaline hesitated. She thought of herself as a modern woman, in tune with the modern liberated attitudes of the nineteen-thirties; if her discovery had made her blush with embarrassment, what effect might it have on someone like Miss Amelie Crowhurst, brought up in the reign of Queen Victoria? She realised she was blushing again, and that Miss Crowhurst was regarding her quizzically.
"Perhaps, if the matter is not too urgent, a glass of sherry... and then you can explain what that thing is you're clutching," the headmistress continued.
Emmaline gratefully accepted the glass Miss Crowhurst poured her, and after a couple of deep sips, calmed enough to launch into her story.
"I was passing senior room 'C' when I... well, I felt a need to use the facilities," she began. While the younger girls slept in dormitories, the senior girls enjoyed the privilege of four-bedded study-bedrooms, each with its own attached bathroom.
"I went in; the girls seemed a little nervous, but I put that down to my unexpected intrusion as they were getting ready for bed. However, after washing my hands, I went to dry them and this fell out of the folds of the towel!" She placed the offending object on the desk and waited for Miss Crowhurst's reaction.
The headmistress neither gasped nor fainted - as Emmaline had half-expected her to do. She didn't even blush, but merely raised one well-shaped eyebrow and allowed a wry smile to lift one corner of her mouth as she studied Emmaline's offering. It was a large, pink, and (in Emmaline's extremely limited experience) realistic representation of a human penis.
Miss Crowhurst poked it with an enquiring forefinger.
"India rubber," she said. "Sturdy fellow, isn't it. If this is her basis for comparison, some girl is likely to be in for a disappointment on her wedding night, wouldn't you say?"
Miss Carstairs was speechless; after her own feelings of shame and embarrassment, the headmistress's calm and even faintly amused attitude shocked her. Surely she, Emmaline, should be the one taking it calmly and Miss Crowhurst the one who should be calling for the smelling-salts. She gulped her sherry, and continued with her tale.
"Of course I confronted the four girls from room C at once, and demanded that they tell me which of them had brought such an object into the school."
"And?" Miss Crowhurst raised that eyebrow again.
"They refused to tell me! I tried appealing to their finer feelings. I asked them what their parents would think of their conduct. I promised them that the first girl to tell would escape whatever penalty the others would incur. I even threatened them with the strap! But all they would say was that they knew nothing about it, and when I told them that I would report the matter to you, they said that you wouldn't expect them to sneak on their friends - that it wasn't the Deanchurch way."
Emmaline's account tailed off. She couldn't tell the headmistress of her embarrassment, of the cheeky defiance of the girls concealed behind a mask of wide-eyed girlish innocence as they'd asked her to explain what the thing was and what it could possibly be used for, of her own flustered feelings of helplessness and the certainty that the girls were secretly laughing behind her back. The headmistress's expression, however, revealed that she'd guessed most of it.
"It's true that loyalty to one's friends is one of the virtues that we seek to instil in our girls..." Miss Crowhurst began thoughtfully.
"You're not going to let them get away with it?" Emmaline interrupted, aghast. She couldn't face those girls again if all her attempts to impose her authority on them ended in humiliating failure. She'd have to resign, her career over, she thought desperately.
"Certainly not," snapped Miss Crowhurst. "If such an incident had occurred when I was a girl, the culprit would have faced immediate expulsion - after a sound birching to give them a foretaste of the punishment they could expect when they reached home! But we must move with the times; girls now enjoy more freedom, and are expected to be more independent than they were before the Great War, which in some ways, is no bad thing. Our school board would no longer countenance the use of the birch, and as for expulsion, it would be unfair to spoil a girl's chances in life over a single incident, especially since we have yet to find out which one is responsible."
Miss Carstairs stared at the headmistress as if seeing her for the first time. Once again, her expectations had been turned upside-down; instead of her own attitudes being modern and progressive and Miss Crowhurst's conservative and outdated it almost seemed that the opposite was the case. With new eyes she noted that under the traditional scholar's gown that, alone of the staff, Miss Crowhurst wore, her dress, though simple and severe, was of a modern cut and that her hair, instead of the expected dowdy bun, was styled into a helmet of neatly-pinned pewter waves - quite fashionable.
"Let me think," the headmistress continued, "Room C - that would be Gail, Joy, June and Patricia - all good girls really, if a bit wild from time to time - though I find teaching restraint to a spirited girl far easier than instilling spirit into an apathetic one."
"But what are you going to do?" asked Emmaline "If you won't get one of them to tell on the others..."
"I forgot how new you are to teaching - though your application did say you had experience of handling girls and of discipline?" Miss Crowhurst commented.
Emmaline nodded, hoping Miss Crowhurst wouldn't ask for details.
"Very well - what we are going to do is, first discipline the girls for their disrespectful attitude towards you, secondly discover which girl brought that item into school, and thirdly see the culprit receives a just punishment."
"Yes - but how?" Miss Carstairs enquired.
"Watch and learn, my dear - just follow me." Miss Crowhurst finished her own sherry, selected a short but heavy leather strap from a cupboard and headed out the door, Emmaline following behind her. She strode briskly down the corridors that led to senior room C and immediately entered, surprising four girls of sixteen or seventeen in their nightgowns, engaged in quiet but intense conversation.
"Good evening, girls," she said.
"Good evening, Headmistress," the girls chorused dutifully, warily eyeing the strap dangling from Miss Crowhurst's hand.
"Now girls, Miss Carstairs has reported to me the discovery she made in your bathroom. I understand that she has already questioned you about the matter and that you have refused to answer her, giving as your reason the value you all place on loyalty to your friends - a value you say you have learned from me. While loyalty is, indeed, something which I encourage, I also value truth and justice. I will not ask any of you to betray a friend - that is not the Deanchurch way - but I will give the girl responsible the chance to confess to Miss Carstairs, and thus save her friends from any unpleasant consequences. I will allow you five minutes to make up your minds. If you are truly loyal to your friends, you will admit your guilt. Now I will step outside while you decide."
She did so, leaving Emmaline Carstairs to face four worried-looking girls. The girls looked at Miss Carstairs and then at each other. Emmaline tried to maintain a stern, but approachable, expression, looking at each girl in turn, willing one of them to come forward. The silence deepened. The four girls traded glances whenever they thought Miss Carstairs was looking away - communicating by fleeting changes of expression, tiny shakes of the head and surreptitious gestures with their fingers. The tension in the room grew almost palpable, but still no girl came forward. Behind her schooled expression Emmaline was anxious - what if none of the girls confessed - surely Miss Crowhurst could not allow them to defy her authority as well as Emmaline's?
The sudden opening of the door behind her made her start violently. Fortunately the girls were equally startled and did not notice her reaction. Miss Crowhurst entered.
"Five minutes are up. Has any girl owned up, Miss Carstairs?"
Emmaline replied in the negative.
"I see. Would the girl responsible care to do so now?" She looked over at the apprehensive girls, who remained silent.
"Very well. I commend the loyalty of three of you. As for the other, I can only hope that your friends' loyalty towards you is justified."
"Are you going to strap us for it, Headmistress?" one girl - Patricia, Emmaline thought - asked timidly.
"No, I am not. We uphold standards of justice here at Deanchurch, and it would be unjust to punish three innocent girls for the misdeed of one guilty one. Therefore, I will let the matter rest unless fresh evidence comes to light." The four girls relaxed with expressions of relief until Miss Crowhurst went on.
"Your defiance and cheek towards Miss Carstairs is another matter, however. We cannot let such lack of respect towards a teacher go unpunished. Miss Carstairs, I want you to take this strap and give each of these girls six smart strokes!"
She held out the strap to Emmaline, who took it and stood indecisively, uncertain of how to proceed.
Miss Crowhurst sensed her hesitation and stepped in, saying "On second thoughts, I had better demonstrate the Deanchurch way of administering discipline."
She took back the strap and turned to the nearest girl. "Gail, bend over the end of your bed, and lift your nightgown."
Gail reluctantly did so, rumpling up her nightdress around her waist to reveal her legs and pert schoolgirl buttocks, before reaching out and clutching two handfuls of bedclothes. Miss Crowhurst took up position beside her, glanced at Miss Carstairs to make sure she was paying attention, lifted the strap high and brought it down across the summits of Gail's outthrust rump.
It landed with a startlingly loud 'CRACK!' that seemed to echo from the walls of the little room, causing Emmaline to flinch and Gail to gasp sharply as her backside, now displaying a deep red band, convulsed. The headmistress turned to Emmaline, noting her reaction.
"You may think I am being severe - but in the long run letting a girl off easily is a mistaken kindness. If she does not learn her lesson, she will offend again and earn further punishments. If a strapping is merited, therefore, I strap hard, to spare the girl from future misdeeds and their consequences. As these girls know, I find it necessary to be cruel to be kind. Don't I, Gail?"
The girl bending over the bed gulped unhappily and replied "Yes, Miss Crowhurst," in a small voice.
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