A Spanking in Time (Bexhill School) (4 page)

“So,” Henry looked around the table, “everyone agrees with me then – corporal punishment is a good thing and is here to stay?”

“Well, at least in schools,” said Marge, “I suppose when they leave, they’re getting a bit old to be put over someone’s knee.”

Margaret saw her mother glance at her. She blushed.

Chapter
4

Miss Holloway

Hardly anyone knew the school secretary’s first name: it was Marlene. Her parents had been fans of Miss Dietrich, and the little baby, adorned with the fairest of locks, appeared to be from the same mould. Everyone at Bexhill knew her simply as Miss Holloway. She had joined the school straight from secretarial college and had proved an adept and conscientious employee, discrete to the roots of her naturally-blonde hair. She was also very pretty and being apparently unattached, she attracted the close attention of the male staff, young and old, bachelors and also (sadly) the spoken-for.

She lived in a small flat a few minutes’ drive from the school. The deposit on it had been a 21
st
birthday present from her parents, and now she just about managed to cover the instalments from her salary. She was gregarious by nature and found it easy to make friends, with whom she would spend the weekends. She was not attracted to nightclubs – she found the noise and cigarette smoke annoying, but she enjoyed visiting the charming rural pubs which abounded in the local area. Her car was a much-cherished, second-hand Morris Minor and when, one day, it flatly refused to start, Dick came into her life.

Dick was not a mechanic as such, but he had been in the REME during his National Service and so had a passing acquaintance with engines. He also had a passing acquaintance with Annie, one of Miss Holloway’s best friends, and so when Marlene telephoned her to say she couldn’t make it to a pre-arranged date in the Miller’s Arms, Annie had volunteered Dick’s services.

He was quite good-looking in a slightly overweight way, with an easy charm and a box of tools. He spent an hour under the bonnet of the Morris, went off and fetched some obscure spare part with several wires dangling from it, and within another twenty minutes there was a reassuring burble from the car’s exhaust. Dick refused all payment, except for the cost of the new distributor, so Marlene insisted on taking him to lunch.

She sent him to her bathroom to clean up, expecting to find her towels covered in grease and the hand-basin awash with grime when she next looked in, but to her surprise, everything was neat and spotless, including Dick. They drove off in the Morris to a pub overlooking the sea, ate fish and chips and drank cider, and afterwards walked along the cliff path in the bright, blustery April sunshine. When they turned to walk back, Dick took her hand. Within a few hundred yards, their fingers were interlaced.

This was the late 1950s, so when they got back to Marlene’s flat, they didn’t tumble into bed: they exchanged a chaste peck on each other’s cheek and parted, promising to meet again soon.

They did.

***

Miss Holloway arrived at the school every morning just before eight o’clock. Her office was opposite the headmaster’s study and acted as a kind of ‘informatio
n centre’ for the school. Miss Holloway’s knowledge of the girls was encyclopaedic, gained from having to type out reports at the end of each term. She was often a source of intelligence about who had been selected for sports teams, which dormitory someone was to be in the following term, travel arrangements home, and even – discretely – what sort of mood the headmaster or deputy head might be in. This latter information was often sought by those nervously waiting their turn in Miss Holloway’s office before appearing in front of ‘Three Taps’ or Mrs. Winchester in order to be ‘dealt with’. Being ‘dealt with’ almost always involved physical punishment with a hairbrush, tawse, or cane.

It was the ‘waiting room’ aspect of her duties that bothered Miss Holloway the most. Punishments were meted out either after lunch or after supper. Girls who were to see the headmaster in the afternoon would report to
Mrs. Holloway’s office after the midday meal, while everyone else had a rest period. Sometimes there would be several of them slated for these awe-inspiring meetings. They would sit on the half dozen chairs laid out for visitors along one wall of the office until either Mr. Masterson or Mrs. Winchester buzzed on the intercom to tell the secretary to send in the first victim or the first group, if several girls had been involved in the same incident. The rest would fidget nervously on their chairs or else sit pale and immobile, like rabbits caught in a car’s headlights. They rarely spoke.

Although the door to the headmaster’s study, just across the corridor from the secretary’s office, was made of heavy oak, there was no mistaking the sound of a thrashing: the smack of Stinger, the whack of the tawse, or the crack of a cane, all too often followed by a cry or a yell. At this point, even the bravest would start to chew their lips or flick nervous glances at the door to the study, waiting for the
sufferer to emerge, red-eyed, tear-stained, and clasping her backside. Then the anxious look towards Miss Holloway: who would be next? The fluttering in the stomach – half hope, because it was better to get the whole thing over with; half fear that the dreaded moment of truth had arrived.

Of course anyone might have been upset at having to supervise girls in such an obvious state of distress and it would have been quite normal to feel some sympathy for them in their plight, no matter what they had done or how much they might deserve what was coming to them. Miss
 Holloway’s problem lay elsewhere. To her shame and moral confusion, she found she was becoming erotically excited on these occasions.

Of course she felt an empathy with the poor, frightened girls, but she was undeniably turned on by what was happening just a few feet away in the headmaster’s study. The clearer the sound of the punishment coming from within his sanctum, the more thrilled she felt. She would see the waiting victims in a new light, imagining how they would
soon look, with their pants pulled down, their skirts raised, their hands grasping the wooden seat of a chair or the edge of the headmaster’s desk, their bottoms lifted – anticipating, pale and unmarked, the first swish of the brush or leather or rattan. On these occasions Miss Holloway could feel her own underwear becoming damp and she would blush inwardly at the depravity of her thoughts.

Some of the ‘victims’ fell into well-defined categories:

The wretched figure of the Fourth Former, awaiting her first taste of Stinger. At least she’d be allowed to keep her knickers on. Miss Holloway imagined her struggling to stay still as the heavy hairbrush smacked against the thin, tightly-stretched cotton.  How would ‘Three Taps’ position her? Holding her ankles, perhaps. But now the girl was moving so restlessly on her chair that one of her white socks had slipped halfway down her leg. The headmaster hated slovenliness: she would have to tell her to pull it up before she went in.

The Fifth Former, on report for disrupting her class, her bare bottom certainly facing the whack of the tawse, if not a cane. She was trying to look cool and calm, but her nervous blinking gave her away. The secretary had heard the older girls were usually told to bend over something – a chair, the desk, the conference table, perhaps even a sofa. They were
beaten harder than the juniors and the furniture helped to support them and prevent them from moving.

The elegant Sixth Former, almost a woman, folding and unfolding her long legs, embarrassed that the more junior girls knew that she was about to be thrashed. Sixth Formers almost always got the cane and a
Senior at that: heavy, whippy rattan, it would leave dark stripes on that shapely bottom for a week or more.

All these and many more like them fed Miss Holloway’s fantasies and caused her to wrestle futilely with the ‘dirty thoughts’ they engendered.

Then, one Wednesday afternoon, sports afternoon, the intercom from the headmaster’s office buzzed.

“Miss Holloway, would you mind stepping in here for a minute?”

“Of course, sir, coming straight away.”

She was surprised by the request. Some minutes earlier ‘Faster’ Fraser, the games mistress, had ushered three unhappy-looking girls into
Mr. Masterson’s study. When she emerged alone a little later, she stuck her head around the secretary’s door.

“Caught them red-handed smoking behind the pavilion. They’ll be for it now.”

“Poor things – it usually means twelve with the heavy cane.”

“Well, serves them right. They shou
ldn’t be smoking at their age. Or indeed at any age,” she added.

Miss Holloway had felt the familiar tingle in her stomach as she listened for the punishment to begin. Sure enough, after a couple more minutes, she heard the crack of a cane and the cries of one of the girls. If she listened hard enough, she imagined she could almost hear the swish of the descending rattan. She counted twelve strokes, and then there was a pause. Presumably the next bottom was being lined up. Miss Holloway reached down and pressed her hand against her lap.

The first whack of the next series was followed by a loud yell and then the raised voice of the headmaster. There was a long pause, followed by another whack and even louder cry. She could hear Mr. Masterson remonstrating with a girl. After another pause there was a crack as the cane landed for the third time. This was followed by a loud shriek and Mr. Masterson’s harsh voice. Shortly after that, the intercom buzzed. Miss Holloway hadn’t heard the girls leaving. Were they still in the study, and if so, what could the headmaster want? She wondered whether he’d broken the cane and needed a new one from the stock in her office. Ordering occasional replacements for broken canes was one of the duties Miss Holloway secretly rather enjoyed. When they arrived, carefully packaged in corrugated cardboard, she couldn’t resist the odd, discrete swish with the whippy, bendy rattan before she placed it on the rail with its siblings.

She went into the headmaster’s study with just a cursory knock on the door. The sight that met her stopped her in her tracks. In the middle of the room three chairs from the conference table had been placed in a row, about a yard apart, with their backs to the fireplace. Two girls were bending over, grasping the padded seats. The girl on the left was obviously the one Miss Holloway had heard receiving twelve strokes: her bare bottom was a grid of purple stripes from the join with her thigh to the top of both cheeks. Her shoulders shook with gentle sobs. The girl on the right looked r
ound as the secretary came in. Miss Holloway recognised her immediately as Mrs. Winchester’s daughter, Margaret. She was bending down, clinging on to the chair seat, but her behind was still white and unmarked. The girl who was, presumably, meant to be positioned over the middle chair was standing up, hopping from foot to foot, wailing and massaging three red lines that were etched across her backside.

“Ah, Miss Holloway. Sorry to bother you. These wretched girls have been caught smoking. As I expect you know, the penalty is a dozen
strokes. Jane took her punishment well, but Alice here keeps jumping up and won’t stay still. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to restrain her.”

Miss Holloway could hardly believe her ears. She was about wit
ness first hand everything she had fantasised about for so long. She didn’t trust her voice, so she just nodded to the headmaster.

“Now, I think if you go round in front of that chair and we try to get Alice to bend over again, perhaps you could hold her down by putting your hands on her shoulders.”

Miss Holloway moved into place, but Alice was still showing no signs of cooperating. She was jumping from one leg to the other, rubbing her bottom, and blubbering pathetically.

“Alice, get back into position
at once
. You’re only making things worse for yourself.”

Slowly and reluctantly, Alice bent over the chair, her tears
wetting the seat cushion. Miss Holloway placed her hands on the white Aertex sports shirt, just below the girl’s shoulders. She wasn’t wearing a bra; she could feel her body shaking with each sob. ‘Three Taps’ walked over to his desk, dropped the cane on to it with a clatter and opened one of the drawers. He drew out Stinger, feeling its weight. He smacked the back of the brush against his left hand.

“Right, Alice, the penalty f
or all this fuss is extra strokes, two for each time you interrupted. I strongly advise you not to move again until I tell you to get up.”

He patted her right cheek the regulation three times and then lifted the heavy brush and brought it down hard. It landed with a sibilant
smack, Alice’s bottom bounced. She squealed but managed to stay in place. He repeated the stroke on her left cheek, with much the same result. Four more times, Stinger smacked against Alice’s rapidly reddening backside, producing yells of anguish but only minimal movement which Miss Holloway managed to constrain.

‘Three Taps’ walked back to his desk, put Stinger down and took up the cane. As he returned towards the
three upthrust bottoms, he swished it twice, menacingly, registering its balance.

“All right, Alice. You took that spanking quite well. Now, we’ll start again with the cane. Twelve strokes and I want you stay in place this time. Miss Holloway, have you got a good grip on her?”

Miss Holloway managed a rasping “Yes, sir.” She was feeling almost dizzy with exhilaration.

For a few seconds, the headmaster held the long, thick cane against Alice’s burning bottom. Then he raised it high above his shoulder, paused for a moment, and brought it arcing down. Alice’s cheeks quivered, she bounced up and down, and howled “Ooooww!” at the top of her lungs. Miss
 Holloway held on tight and stopped the girl from getting up. From where she stood, in front of Alice, she couldn’t actually see the effect of the stroke on the girl’s
derrière
, but it required little imagination to guess at the vivid tramlines it had produced, to add to the three already there and the red glow produced by Stinger.