Cordelia Lavington 31 to 40

By Governess
liviaarbuthnot1@gmail.com

Copyright 2023 by Governess, all rights reserved

Chapter 31



“So, Graham, did you hear what I asked Mrs Simmonds to fetch from the infirmary?”

She raised her eyebrows in expectation of a reply.

“Well?”

“Ye . . . yes . . . Matron.”

“So, what was it?”

“S . . . s . . . some, ebro . . . ebro . . . “

His voice tailed off in confusion.

“The word, Graham, is embrocation. And do you know what an embrocation is?”

“No, Matron.”

“Then I will tell you. It’s an ointment that is rubbed onto the skin. For example, a boy with a bad cold who finds it difficult to breathe might have his chest rubbed with an embrocation to help him breathe better. Or a boy with a sore place might have an embrocation applied to that.”

She paused.

“So, Graham, where do you think you might need an embrocation applied?”

He flushed.

“I . . . I don’t know . . . Matron.”

“Well, it occurs to me, Graham, that as you and Clough have been rubbing each other’s genitals they may be a little sore. Perhaps they would benefit from a little embrocation. What do you think?”

“I . . . I’m not sure, Matron.

She reached out and placed her finger under his penis and lifted it.”

“Is it sore?”

She spoke in a low, concerned, almost reassuring, voice.

“N . . . no . . . Matron.”

She looked at him, secured to the bed, helpless and vulnerable. She smiled.

“But, in any case, this embrocation is not like an ordinary embrocation, Graham. In fact, it’s an embrocation made just for you. And, of course, for your friend, Clough.”

Her finger went under his scrotum and dug sharply upward into the sac. He gasped. She could feel the two tiny testicles within. The boy was now white with anxiety.

“Do you know why Mrs Simmonds has tied you to the bed by your wrists, Graham?”

Her voice was sharper now.

“No . . No, Matron.”

She held his genitals in her hand and gently squeezed them.

“Well, Graham, it’s because the embrocation is to be applied here. To the very place where Clough stroked and teased until you disgustingly spurted all over your pyjamas.”

Every boy in the dormitory lay still, listening intently.

“Tell me, Graham. Did you enjoy what Clough did? Was it pleasurable?”

She waited, her eyes on his small tense face.

“You will answer me, Graham. Did you enjoy what Clough did?”

Her voice had a hard edge to it now. The boy wilted before her gaze. He was biting his lip, his breath rough and quick.

“Answer me!”

Ye . . yes, Matron.”

“Yes, you liked what he did?”

“Ye . . . yes, Matron.”

She smiled.

“And if nothing were done, you would soon be wallowing again in the trough of sin.”

She waited, looking at him in his abject misery.

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Ye . . . yes, Matron.”

“But something is being done, isn’t it?”

She waited a moment before continuing.

“Tell the dormitory what happened to you and Clough this morning.”

“We . . . had . . . had . . . had our . . . our hands s . . . strapped.”

“Yes, to teach them that they’re not to wander inside another boy’s pyjamas. And I hope they have learned that lesson. Have they?”

“Ye . . . yes, Matron.”

“Good. But there’s another lesson that needs to be learned, isn’t there, Graham?”

“Is . . . is there, Matron?”

“Yes, Graham. And do you know what that lesson is?”

“N . . no, Matron.”

“Well, it needs to be learedt by this.”

She reached out and placed her index finger under his small limp little penis.

“So, what is that lesson?”

“Please, Matron. Please.”

“You have no idea?”

“No, Matron. Please, I’m sorry. Please.”

She paused for a moment.

“The lesson this needs to learn is that a boy’s genitals are not to be played with by another boy. That they are to remain in their own bed and kept inside their owner’s pyjamas.”

She paused.

“So how do you think that lesson might best be taught?”

He was in tears now, a small boy caught in a sticky web from which, he knew, there was no escape.

Mrs Lavington took a handkerchief from her pocket. It was small and scented, only recently taken from her dressing table drawer. She opened it and gently dried his eyes. Then she placed a cool hand on his brow.

“There’s no need for crying, Graham.”

She stroked back his hair.

“The Bible speaks of the pleasures of sin, and you need to learn that, however pleasurable, sin is hurtful and does you no good. That is why punishment is necessary. The pain of punishment teaches the true nature of sin. That, in the end, it leads to pain and hurt and eventually hell itself. Hell, where there is everlasting pain, and flames that burn forever and are never quenched.”

She looked across to Clough.

“I hope you are listening to this Clough. Because when I have applied the embrocation to Graham’s offending parts, I’ll be applying it to yours.”

She walked over to the table, slipped on the cotton gloves, and picked up the jar and spatula and handed them to Mrs Simmonds.

“If you stand on the left side of the bed, Mrs Simmonds. And when I am ready pass me the spatula with a good smear of embrocation on it.”

Mrs Lavington stood on the boy’s right and reaching down lightly grasped his penis, and slipped her hand gently but firmly up and down. He gasped, and despite his fear the shaft thickened. It was not a full erection, but helpful for her purpose. She looked up at Mrs Simmonds and reached out her hand.

The boy was desperate now. He knew some terrible punishment was imminent.

“No, Matron. Please Matron. Please. I’m sorry.”

He twisted his body away but she had him in her grasp. The chilli embrocation was smeared onto the glans and then down the shaft. She handed the spatula back.

“A little more, please, Mrs Simmonds.”

And this time the spatula was wiped across the boy’s scrotum. She waited. It was about a minute before there was a reaction. At first, he felt an itching warmth and wriggled a little not yet realising the burning agony that lay before him. But after half a minute, he began to writhe in earnest, howling and tearing at his fastened wrists.

Mrs Lavington bent over him and ran her hand through his hair. It was soft and dry but soon would be damp and disheveled as his whole body began to sweat from the agony and from the fear engendered by the terrible burning between his legs. He looked at her in desperation, a hopeless pleading in his eyes. She smiled down at him.

“I am afraid, Graham, the pain will last for a while yet.”

Again, her hand stroked his head. She felt sorry for him, but had no compunction about the necessity of punishing him. To lay with another boy as he had done was a most serious sin and had to be addressed. And what was more appropriate than to turn the member that had given such pleasure into a source of agonising pain.

She kissed his forehead and straightened up.

“And now you see why it was necessary to fasten your wrists to the bedhead. If we hadn’t, you would soon be running around the dormitory like a mad thing. And we don’t want that, do we? You would disturb all the other boys. But now we had better settle Clough down for the night.”

She walked over to Clough’s bed, followed by Mrs Simmonds. The boy was shivering and pale, having listened to all that had been said and done to Graham.

“Please, Matron. Please, no.”

But judgement had been passed and there was no staying the flaming, burning sword of justice. She wondered whether the executioner felt as she did as he stretched out a slender neck upon the block ready for the axe to fall. But when the axe descended, it brought oblivion to temporal woes. But for this boy, there would be no oblivion. Instead, he faced a night of acute suffering, the pale penumbra of the eternal torment that faced him should be die in his sins.

“Like Graham you are pleading to be spared your punishment, Clough. But that would not be a kindness. It might appear kind, but it would be cruel. Exceedingly cruel. I want you to imagine as you suffer that the agony will never cease, but will go on forever, to all eternity. I want you to imagine that, Clough. For, unless you learn to cease from the Devil’s work, you are heading for hell and everlasting torment. Not now, not next week, nor even next year, but when you die. When you pass beyond this world to stand before Our Lord Jesus Christ to be judged.”

She looked up.

“Pass me the spatula, please, Mrs Simmonds.

And the burning embrocation was smeared on to the small knob that had swollen with the caressing of Mrs Lavington’s gloved fingers. Practical fingers that applied plasters to cuts and grazes, but also fingers that wrapped around the handle of a hairbrush to administer the soundest of spankings.

And then more of the embrocation was applied to his little puckered sac. She waited, watching. And as she did so, she stroked his head as she had done Graham’s, and then bent over and kissed his forehead. She wanted him to know, before the agony built to an insupportable torment, that the punishment was done out of love to reform and to save.

Before she and Mrs Simmonds left, she addressed the rest of the dormitory, speaking clearly over the gurgling agony of the two boys.

“No boy is to get out of his bed until morning call. There is to be no talking and no communication whatsoever with Clough and Graham. And remember, this dormitory will be visited from time to time during the night. And if any boy is caught out of his bed or talking to another boy, then that boy may expect to be soundly punished by me in the morning. I am now going to switch off the lights and you will all do your best to sleep.”

When back in the infirmary, Mrs Lavington sent turned to Susannah.

“And we’d better check that dormitory first thing in the morning, as soon as the boys have left. When boys are wakeful, there’s the temptation to occupy themselves in other ways.”

Mrs Lavington looked at the clock.

“Just time for a quick cup of tea before returning home, Susannah.”

“Thank you, Matron. But tell me, do you still intend to report Clough and Graham to the Principal? Haven’t they been punished enough?”

“I know it seems harsh, Susannah. But it’s necessary. The hands that wandered into another boy’s pyjamas have been strapped; and now they are suffering in the very place where they experienced the delights of mutual masturbation.”

She paused.

“But there is something else. Because of the enormity of what they have done, they owe it to all the boys in the orphanage to provide an example of what happens to boys who sin as they have sinned, and to encourage others to resist the same temptation.”

She paused.

“And to achieve that a public flogging is necessary. I have already spoken to the Principal about it and he is in complete agreement.”

“That means they’ll be birched? Like that boy who ran away?”

“Yes Susannah. Like the boy Burgess who absconded.”



Chapter 32



As Mrs Lavington made her way home, there was a lightness to her step as she breathed in the fresh evening air. She opened the door.

“I’m back, Diana.”

Mrs Fairclough emerged from the drawing room.

“And how was it, Cordelia? An ordeal?”

“No, Diana, not an ordeal. But certainly demanding. But more to the point, how did you get on? I hope the children behaved?”

“Impeccably, Cordelia. We had a most enjoyable time together. After homework, William did some drawing and Samuel and Elizabeth showed me their rooms. And then, after they went to bed, I’ve been reading some of your punishment books from several years back.”

Cordelia smiled.

“Have you, Diana? And did you enjoy your read?”

“I did, Cordelia. It brought back memories of my own childhood, as well as that of my boys.”

She had been holding a book with her finger inserted into the page she’d been reading. She flicked a page back.

“Do You remember this, Cordelia? It’s dated 30 November 1926.”

Elizabeth is now six. She seems determined to test my patience at every opportunity. This afternoon, I told her to put away her doll and get ready for tea, but when I returned, five minutes later, she was still playing with it. She stared at me with a guilty look in her eyes. ‘So, young lady, what happens when you disobey me?’ Her lips puckered. ‘A spanking.’ ‘But you’ve already been spanked, and it doesn’t seem to have helped.’ She looked at me, her eyes wet but behind the tears I could see defiance. ‘Go and fetch the cane from its hook in the hall.’ I turned up her dress and, with her knickers down, she went over the arm of the sofa. As this was her first caning, I gave her only ten hard swishy strokes. She cried bitterly. But medicine is bitter. And usually, one dose is seldom enough!”

She looked up. Cordelia smiled.

“Yes, Diana, I remember that. At the age of six, Elizabeth was particularly difficult. A defiant little miss. She had a strong seam of wilfulness running through her. And she was not always truthful. And, I am afraid, that can still be the case.”

“Howard was very similar, Cordelia. A real rebel. We used to call him Wat Tyler”

“Wat Tyler came to an unfortunate end, if I remember my history. Wasn’t he killed by the Mayor of London in the Peasants’ Revolt?”

She laughed.

“Well, Howard was a rebel, but we didn’t go that far! We spared him his life! But not the rod. From an early age he’d been spanked with my hairbrush. But around the age of six, he became so wilfully disobedient and intractable that we birched him. Yes, at the age of six! I cut the switches myself and bound them up. Our housemaid at the time,, a most helpful girl called Greta, held him.”

“You mean she horsed him over her back?”

“Not then, but she did later. When he was stripped to his vest, she sat on an upright chair with him over her lap, one hand in the small of his back and the other wrapped around his body grasping him tightly. Then, I swished the birch across his firm, round little bottom. Greta was Swedish, and I’m sure she had been birched as a girl.”

“I still remember vividly the birching of Burgess, Diana, the boy who absconded.”

“Yes. But for that James used a much heavier birch. For Howard, at that time, it was a much lighter birch. But very swishy. The beauty of the birch, Cordelia, is that it can be bound up for each boy as needed. It can be made to tickle the smallest boy into obedience, and also provide a salutary flogging to an older boy, who needs thick throbbing weals raised on his flesh. Weals that are still visible two weeks later.”

“Yes, I remember, checking Burgess three weeks after his flogging and I could still see the faint marks of the birch even then. Did the birch raise weals on Howard’s bottom?”

“No, Cordelia. It stung dreadfully, as it was meant to, but it was light enough to leave only superficial abrasions.”

She frowned.

“I think that first time I gave him a dozen cuts. But I can’t really remember.”

She smiled.

“I should have kept a record like this!”

“And having birched him once, did you continue to birch him?”

“Oh, yes. After that first birching, Howard was regularly birched. Sometimes he would be spanked with my hairbrush, but I soon discovered that once a boy’s been birched, there’s no going back. He comes to expect it. Almost to want it.”

“Yes, it’s strange, but I‘m sure that’s right. My mother birched both my brothers. My older brother lived in constant dread of the birch, yet somehow, he was fascinated by it. Sometimes I’d catch him drawing little pictures of a boy being birched and once he made up a tiny bundle of twigs, real birch twigs, and I caught him with one of my old dolls. He’d pulled down her knickers and was swishing her across the bottom. But though he lived in fear of the birch, like Howard, he accepted it. And when told by my mother to fetch a rod from the bucket he did so dutifully and unquestioningly.

“Why do you think that was, Cordelia?”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t because he liked to be punished. He really feared the birch and he roared in agony at every cut. But later, when, as his sister, I’d comforted him, he was much brighter and happier and there was almost a sense of release. The birch was an ever-present reality, soaking in its bucket, but it was not just a visible presence. I’m sure it haunted his every waking hour. And his nights, too. I would sometimes hear him talking in his sleep and saying things like ‘Please, Mother, no, no’, and he’d thrash around between the sheets until he woke himself up.”

“But from what you say, he seems to have been fascinated by the birch, drawing pictures of it and punishing your dolls.”

“Yes, he feared it, but seemed almost to regard it as a companion. But that’s often the way, isn’t it, Diana. The thing we dread, we need to befriend to take the sting of fear away. As the weaker boys at school admire the prefect who is in the first eleven even though he beats those who fag for him. They admire his strength and even his good looks. They respect him. And many friendships are like that. They’re rarely equal. Almost always there’s a stronger and a weaker, one who rules and one who is ruled.”

“Yes, I’d never thought of it like that, Cordelia. And that’s how he related to the birch?”

“Yes. he admired its lithe, strength and its punishing power, even though he feared the agony of a flogging. But once caught in a disobedience and knowing he was to be birched, he somehow almost welcomed it.”

“Yes, Cordelia, we can dread something so much that in the end we just want it to happen.”

“Yes, Diana. Deep down we know that the reality when it comes will drive fear away and once that has happened, there is nothing left to fear – at least for a while. Which is why he was brighter and happier after a birching.”

She smiled.

“Not that that lasted long. Once used, the birch needed to be replaced. And the sight of my mother binding up a fresh rod was a vivid reminder of the consequences of further misbehaviour.”

“Were you ever birched, Cordelia?”

“No. I never was. Not that mother wouldn’t have birched me, if she’d thought it necessary. But she seemed content to punish me with the hairbrush and, when I was a little older, the martinet.”

“And that was less severe?”

“You mean less severe than the birch?

“Yes.”

Well, from my brothers’ reaction, I’d say that the birch probably had the edge. But that’s not to say the martinet was anything but a very unpleasant experience. It raised welts on my bottom and thighs, and I’d be dancing around clutching at myself and howling. Not that that was permitted for long. I was usually sent to face the wall with my dress still turned up and my bottom bare.”

“So, why do you think your mother birched your brothers. Was it just because it was just a bit more severe?” The martinet sounds severe enough to keep the naughtiest boy in order?”

“You know, Diana, I’m not sure. But thinking about it, she did believe boys were different from girls. That when a boy disobeyed, he did so because he regarded himself as above rules and authority. There was always arrogance, rudeness and disrespect in a boy’s disobedience. Or so she thought.”

“So why the birch?”

“Who’s supervising Clough and Graham’s dormitory this evening, Susannah?”

“Mrs Rowbotham, Matron.”

Cordelia gave a little frown.

“And that rule over my brothers was reinforced in a number of ways.”

“How was that, Cordelia?”

“Oh, sometimes she would make Charles accompany her into the fields, or to the end of the garden, to select the birch lengths with her. She’d hold his hand in hers and anyone who saw them from a distance would think it was a mother and small boy having a pleasant walk in the woods. But if they drew closer, they would hear her discussing with him the suitability of each birch length for flogging a boy; how supple it was; how thick and straight; and then when it was cut, they would see its being placed with others in a basket the boy was carrying. And when they returned to the house, she made no attempt to shield him from the sight of her binding the birch lengths up into a finished rod.

“And you know, Diana, how during a vigorous birching, little bits break off and deposit themselves everywhere”

“Yes, Cordelia, it’s one of the drawbacks of the birch over the cane or tawse.”

“Well, it needn’t be, Diana. My mother would usually flog a boy over the arm of the sofa and when she’d finished, he’d stand sobbing in the corner for ten minutes. Then, she’d make him go down on his hands and knees with his well flogged bottom in the air, and pick up every last bit of birch twig and place them in a small bowl. He could spend a long as he liked on the task, but when he was satisfied, he had collected them all, he had to tell my mother and she would come and inspect the room. And woe betide him if he’d missed any. She’d give him an extra cut for every little piece he’d missed.”

“With that hanging over him, he must’ve made sure he did a thorough job.”

“Well, surprisingly, Diana, more often than not he’d earn himself extra cuts. Down on the floor he couldn’t see as well as an adult standing up, and you have to remember he was searching for small bits through swollen, tear-filled eyes.”

“When you said the birch ruled him, Cordelia, it certainly seems it did.”

“Yes, Diana. And because of that my mother had a special affection for the birch. After she had bound up a fresh rod, she would swish it through the air and run her hand down its length and squeeze the whippy tracery that bushed out at the end and gently draw her hand over it. She seemed to love the feel of it and its lithe, prickly swishiness. And when she birched one of my brothers, she did so with an obvious relish, appreciating its power to rule a boy and bring him into conformity with her will.”

“But you said that she also punished them with the martinet”

“Yes, Diana. And when we came to England several martinets accompanied us. But often her preference was for the birch. I may have made her sound cruel, but she was really a very warm and affectionate mother.”

“I’m sure she was, Cordelia. But goodness, look at the time. James will be wondering where on earth I am.”



Chapter 33



When Mrs Fairclough had departed, Cordelia sat in the chair and picked up the punishment book. She re-read the passage about Elizabeth’s caning. What a little madam she had been at that age. And still was! The recent deceit over her reading in bed and then creeping down to watch her brother being punished was typical of the girl.

She walked over to the shelf where the punishment books were kept and replaced the volume Mrs Fairclough had selected. She then took out the very first. She read for a moment and then looked up. How the memories came flooding back. Samuel was nearly two and John was still alive. It was 1924.

I am continuing to train Samuel to use the chamber pot. I have always enjoyed the intimacy of changing him and because of that have postponed his pot training until now. However, a bottom, bare and ready to spank, is now required if he is to receive the firmer discipline that his behaviour demands.

. . . . .

I have decided that nappies are to come off and that he will wear only a short vest in the house and be confined to the kitchen during the day. There, when he has an accident, it is easily cleaned up from the tiled floor. When he does that, I am holding him close to the mess, expressing my displeasure with a stern ‘no’ and, after giving him a smack with the wooden spoon, putting him on the pot. After a few days he will be made to sit on the pot for fifteen minutes in the morning and try to establish a habit.

. . . . .

Samuel is very resistant to using the pot and much prefers to go on the floor. When he does that, he now gets three hard smacks with the wooden spoon and goes back on the pot to teach him that that is where he is meant to go.

. . . . .

Samuel is still very unwilling to co-operate with the new regime. I am now putting him on the pot for fifteen minutes in the morning and if nothing is forthcoming, he is taken off, smacked, and then returned for another fifteen minutes. That is continued until there is a bowel movement. Passing water seems less of a problem.

. . . . .

Today, I left the kitchen for a few minutes with Samuel on the pot. When I returned, I found he had got off the pot and wet and messed all over the floor. I picked him up and held his nose close to it. I spoke very sharply, ‘No, Samuel. No. No. No’. I then smacked him hard and returned him to the pot and made him sit there for the rest of the morning. Tomorrow firmer measures will need to be taken.

. . . . .

Today, I put Samuel on the pot and then ran some strong string around the rim of the pot and through the handle and up over his small body. At first, he thought it was a game, but he soon realised it was serious and that there was no getting up until mother released him. I kept him on the pot until there was a bowel movement. It took two hours. I then allowed him up and let him play in the kitchen on the tiled floor. There were no accidents. I felt I was making progress.

. . . . .

Samuel was tied to the pot again first thing in the morning. He grizzled and resented it but was left there until he went. It took four hours. During that time, I let him play with his rag doll rabbit. It was a great relief for both of us when he could be released and allowed to play normally. However, despite that he had an accident in the afternoon. I rubbed his nose in the mess like a naughty puppy, smacked his bottom with the wooden spoon and put him back on the pot. He was made to sit there for a full hour. I was very disapproving throughout and he knew he was in disgrace.

. . . . .

It is now a week since I started the new regime and there is no doubt that it is working. He is now starting to have a bowel movement soon after being tied to the pot and as a consequence is soon released from his bondage. There have been one or two accidents and these have been dealt with as before.

. . . . .

Another week has gone by. Samuel is still being tied to the pot in the morning but during the day he now makes his way to the pot when he wants to go.

. . . . .

It is two days since the last entry. I am now putting him on the pot first thing but without tying him. He is now effectively trained. It is a great relief. John has been very supportive throughout.

Cordelia flicked over the pages.

Today, Samuel got his first spanking. A very important event in a small boy’s life! He’s certainly had his bottom smacked when being trained to the pot, but that was part of the training process and not a proper spanking. But today was different. It was the first time I had taken his trousers and pants down to discipline him. And appropriately it was for his first deliberate act of defiance. I had told him not to crawl up the stairs. He looked at me and I pointed up the stairs and shook my head and said ‘no’ very firmly. I could see he understood. Yet a few minutes later he was clambering up on his bottom. Again, I said ‘no. And added ‘disobedient boy’ and as I brought him down struggling under my arm, repeated ‘no’ several times again. In the drawing room, I looked him in the eye and said quietly but firmly, ‘A boy who disobeys has his trousers taken down and is spanked on the bare bottom.’ And for the first time he was given six stinging smacks with the back of my hairbrush. He looked surprised when I started to take his trousers down and then chuckled thinking it was a game. But when I turned him over my knee and brought the brush down smartly across his bare bottom, the laughter stopped and he could see nothing amusing in it! Afterwards, I stood him in the corner for a few moments with his trousers and pants around his ankles.

For years I had wondered what it would be like to spank a small boy. Often, when a girl, I’d played spanking games with my dolls. But spanking Samuel with the hairbrush on his firm little bottom and hearing his vocal and lively response are very different. As different as a real, jumping, darting rabbit is from a dead one. And somehow, I felt like a real mother for the first time.

Cordelia smiled and turned over more pages. And then more again. After that first spanking, Samuel quickly learnt that spankings were to become his mother’s consistent response to naughtiness and disobedience. And given his disposition, they became a frequent occurrence in his young life. Many of the later entries were quite brief.

Trousers came down today for six with the hairbrush. Tears and very subdued afterwards.

. . . . .

Samuel cantankerous and disobedient. Over my knee for the hairbrush. Ten strokes.

. . . . .

But some were much longer.

Samuel very difficult today. I brought the hairbrush from the hall table and placed it in his sight as a deterrent. Unwisely he persisted in his bad behaviour and was spanked. I applied the brush harder than usual and when I had finished there was a speck or two of blood where I had broken the skin. I must remember that at his age his skin is still very soft and easily worn away. I must be more careful. Still no harm was done. A few surface abrasions after a spanking are nothing to worry about. The important thing is that the spanking is given and the child learns from it.

. . . .

And some quite extended.

Today, Samuel discovered the power of defiance. That if he doesn’t want to do something, he has only to dig in his small heels and refuse.

At morning prayers, I require him to shut his eyes and put his hands together. But today when I said, ‘Put your hands together, Samuel’, he shook his head and refused. I repeated it and he still refused. So, I told him that after prayers we’d have a little talk about it. I said prayers, including a prayer that Samuel might learn to be obedient, and asking for strength to provide the training he needed.

At the end I explained that children put their hands together to keep them from playing with things and to honour God by giving him all our attention. ‘So, I want you to show me how you put your hands together, Samuel, and I want you to keep them together until I give you permission to let them drop.’

I waited. He shook his head.

‘Samuel, you know what happens when you disobey, don’t you?’

He nodded.

‘So, what happens?’

“Spanking.’

‘Yes. So put your hands together or I’ll have to spank you.’

He shook his head. And his hands remained wilfully apart. I could see he was defying me for the sheer pleasure and satisfaction of doing so. I knew this was a very serious moment. That I had complete responsibility for this small boy and that it was my duty to break his will and make him submit. However, long it took. And however painful it might be. And I knew that God was watching me.

All sin is rooted in our wanting our will to prevail over God’s will. Samuel’s holding his hands in a particular way was not in itself sinful. But then neither was eating an apple. But by the eating of an apple, Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden to the ruin of the world. What made it sinful was that God had commanded them not to eat. And they had defied him. And my command to Samuel to put his hands together gave him the choice of obeying or disobeying. And he was choosing to disobey. And for that there needed to be a consequence. A consequence that not only marked his sin but which drove him to substitute obedience for disobedience. I was determined that by the time I had finished, he would put his hands together and keep them together for a full minute.

His eyes followed me as I went to fetch the hairbrush from the hall. I pulled out a kitchen chair and sat on it, and beckoned to him. I spoke firmly but gently. I knew that it would be very wrong to speak with anger as though my concern was not his disobedience but my own affront at being defied.

‘Come here, Samuel.’

Reluctantly he came and stood beside me. And I was pleased when he allowed me to take down his trousers and bare his bottom without a struggle.

‘Good boy. And now over my lap.’

I lifted him up and made sure he was safe and secure.

‘You are being spanked, Samuel, for disobeying me by refusing to put your hands together when asked.’

I gave him three hard strokes with the hairbrush. He stiffened and screamed but there were no tears. I lifted him off my lap and stood him in front of me.

‘You will now sit on the stool for ten minutes, Samuel. No, don’t pull your trousers up. At the end of ten minutes, I’ll ask you to put your hands together and keep them there. If you refuse, you will be spanked again. Do you understand?’

He nodded. And there he sat for the next ten minutes. I sat at the table, keeping an eye on him, and also praying quietly for strength. At the end of ten minutes, I asked him to put his hands together but again he refused and was spanked, and returned to the stool for a further ten minutes. Still he refused, so he was spanked a third time and went back on the stool. He was sobbing but the sobs were angry and there was little evidence of any contrition.

‘Samuel, I’m going to keep on spanking you until you put your hands together. So, the sooner you obey, the sooner you can pull up your trousers and play with your bricks. And next time, I will be spanking you here, Samuel.’

And I bent down and gave him a sharp smack to a well-rounded thigh.

‘Spanked here.’

At the end of the ten minutes, I asked him quietly but firmly to put his hands together. Again, he refused. I picked up the brush, stood him of the stool, and bending him forward against me and with an arm firmly around him, I brought the hard wooden back of the brush smacking down across his left thigh. He screamed like a rabbit when the teeth of the trap spring shut across its leg. And slowly, I gave him six strokes to each thigh. I did it unhurriedly to break his determination to outlast me. To let him feel the smarting pain and learn to dread a repetition. At the end, he was sobbing and choking. So, I sat him on the stool and left him for several minutes.

‘So, let’s have those hands together, please Samuel.’

And praise to His Name, he put them together.

Cordelia shook her head and heaved a sigh. She remembered the warm satisfaction she had felt when Samuel submitted and the flush of love for him. There was something almost beautiful in the redness of his bottom, no longer a baby’s bottom, along with the marks on his thighs. His thighs, she remembered, had needed some cold cream for the spanking had been severe and had resulted in the skin being broken in one or two places. She got up and returned the volume to the shelf. She pulled out a later volume devoted to Elizabeth. She turned the pages.

Elizabeth is now six. And what a little madam! She is the sort of child spanking was invented for. But I can see so much of myself in Elizabeth, particularly her wilfulness. So, I have to be careful not to make allowances for that. It is all too easy to say ‘Oh, she’s just like me.’ As if that were an excuse acceptable to Our Father in Heaven! Today, I sent her upstairs to wash her face before we went in to town. When she came down, I could still see by a smudge on her cheek that she hadn’t done as I’d asked.

‘So, you’ve given it a good wash, have you, Elizabeth’.

‘Yes, Mother.

‘Are you sure?’.

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘Fetch me the face flannel, please, Elizabeth’.

She reddened but went upstairs and brought it down. I suspect she had thought of wetting it under the tap but realised her damp hands would give her away.

‘But this isn’t wet, Elizabeth?’

She hung her head.

‘I know, Mother. I’m sorry.’

I sighed.

‘And what happens when you disobey, Elizabeth?’

‘I . . . I’m spanked’

‘And if you lie?’

‘I’m spanked for that, too.’

‘Then you’d better fetch the hairbrush, hadn’t you?’

‘But Mother, you can’t spank me. I’ve said I’m sorry. You can’t spank me, if I’ve said I’m sorry’.

‘But how do I know you’re sorry, Elizabeth? ‘

‘But I’ve told you I am. Please, Mother.’

‘But you told me you’d washed your face? And had you?’

She hung her head.

‘No, Mother.’

‘Then how do I know you’re not lying now. Saying you’re sorry when you’re not? A girl is always going to say sorry to avoid punishment. Just as you are doing now.’

I looked at her.

‘You see, Elizabeth, it is wrong, very wrong, to say you’re sorry without meaning it. Saying sorry is a very important thing. It is by saying sorry, and meaning it, that a child is forgiven.’

I let my words sink in before continuing.

‘And tell me, Elizabeth what does a child say sorry for?’

‘F . . . for things she’s done wrong, Mother.’

‘And how does she know they are wrong? How does her mother make her know they are wrong?’

‘B . . . by spanking her.’

‘Yes, Elizabeth. By spanking her. So, think what it would mean if a girl was let off a deserved spanking just because she had trotted out the words ‘I’m sorry’ just to avoid punishment. She’d soon come to believe that all the wrong things she did weren’t that bad. And worse, if she didn’t know they were bad, then she wouldn’t feel she needed to be forgiven. Just think about that for a moment, Elizabeth.’

I waited.

‘And another thing. A girl who is truly sorry, who knows she’s done wrong, will accept her spanking without argument. Because she knows she deserves it.’

She said nothing.

‘So, go and fetch the hairbrush.’

She came back holding it, with what looked like a sulky expression on her face.

“You’ll get six strokes for your disobedience in not washing your face when you were told. Six strokes for lying about it. And I’m minded to give you a further six strokes for pretending you were sorry just to avoid punishment.’

I waited to see if she would argue, but she didn’t. I sat on the chair and beckoned to her. Her dress was lifted; her knickers taken down; and I pulled her over my lap.

Elizabeth responds to a spanking in the most direct and sensuous way possible. Her screams come in long gasping breaths. She twists her body and squirms, wriggling her bottom. And her legs kick and her arms reach out, with her hands clasping and unclasping. But she makes no attempt to reach back or fight the spanking. I gave her the full eighteen strokes. And then stood her in the corner for ten minutes.

Cordelia closed the book and returned it to the shelf. She smiled. How right she had been to write at such length and to record the actual exchange between herself and Elizabeth. She glanced at the clock. Time for her Bible reading.

Chapter 34



Mrs Lavington opened her Bible. She was reading through St Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, and had reached the third chapter. Yesterday she had studied the first half of that chapter about the evil of divisions in the Church. Today, the reading was from verse 10 onwards. She read it carefully, and then re-read it. She was particularly struck by the verses that spoke of building on the foundation laid by the Apostles and how that would be tested at the Last Day.

Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.

If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon he shall receive a reward.

If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

Afterwards she sat quietly and thought of how over the years she had been laying a foundation for each of her children’s lives. And how, when a child disobeyed and was brought to judgment, it was in a small way an anticipation of that last final judgment of which the Apostle was speaking. She was uncertain of what sort the fire would be that would test each Christian’s works at the Last Day, but she was quite clear how a child’s works were tested. By the fiery flame of corporal chastisement.

And it had been the same for her. She, too, had been a child who’d had to learn obedience by frequent and painful chastisement. When seven she had drawn a picture of a mother whipping her little daughter with the martinet, and each of its leather lashes were snakes, and each snake had a forked tongue flicking from its mouth like a bright burning flame.

She remembered how one Sunday before church, she had deliberately put on a different dress to that chosen by her mother. On the Lord’s Day, such defiance was regarded as particularly reprehensible, and she was whipped with unusual severity. The agony had been overwhelming, searching out every crack and cranny of her being. And even at that young age, she knew that somehow it should be cleansing, a fiery purgatorial suffering. But only if she submitted to it, without complaint, fully accepting her mother’s right to chastise her for her disobedience. Only then would all her wilfulness and self-regard be burnt away, leaving a small sobbing child who, like a phoenix would be born again from the flames. But how difficult was that. She remembered how she would often seethe under her mother’s ruling and refuse to submit to the punishment. And even though her mother would lovingly increase the severity of the correction to break her stubborn self-will, all too often that was to no avail. She would be plunged into the fiery waters only to emerge struggling and unrepentant.

And so often she encountered in her daughter the same refusal to submit with a willing and contrite spirit. Elizabeth could be as stiff-necked as she had been. That much was clear from the journal she had so diligently kept over the years.

She remembered, as a very young girl, when she was still living in Sainte Foy, listening to her mother’s discussing her behaviour with Mme Soler. She had just been disciplined, and was standing facing the wall with the marks of the martinet visible on her bottom and thighs. Strangely what she remembered most was the cold of the flagstones on her bare feet.

As you can see, Mme Soler, Cordelia has just been whipped. We are fortunate in having M Aillot to provide us with such excellent martinets.

We are indeed Mme Réglat. I, too, had to take the martinet from its hook yesterday. And like Cordelia, Anna spent time afterwards sans culotte. But to shame her for her rudeness, I made her stand outside in the street by the front door.

She sighed.

Why do our children choose disobedience and le petit fouet, when obedience is so much more pleasant for them?

That, Mme Soler, is a great mystery. But even where the martinet brings outward compliance, there may still be a rebellious heart. Only by the grace of God does a child learn l’obéissance du coeur.

But not, I think, without les coups de martinet, Mme Réglat.

Bien sûr, Mme Soler. But even la grande fessée only brings a child to the threshold of true obedience. A child has still to choose to pass over and accept la règle de la mère with a humble spirit. And for that la grâce du Dieu is necessary.

So, what is a mother to do, Mme Réglat?

Continue to apply the martinet for the slightest disobedience. And always sans culotte. Never tire of bringing the child to the threshold of true obedience and pray that a contrite spirit may be granted so she may step beyond and be renewed.

But how do we know, Mme Réglat, whether a child has taken that step? As you have said, a child may appear to be contrite and compliant, but still have a rebellious heart. How do we forgive a child if we cannot be sure of that?

Il n’y a pas de problème, Madame. If the child has received a whipping commensurate with her sin; if she is tearful and heart-broken; and if she is willing humbly to accept forgiveness; then forgiveness should not be withheld. Whether there is true contrition only God knows . . .

My mother paused and then added.

. . . and the child herself.

Mrs Lavington closed her Bible. How she remembered those words of her mother to Mme Soler.

Only God knows. And the child herself.

And she did know. It was a secret she shared uncomfortably with God. How deep down, in the marrow of her being, she resented her mother’s rule over her. And how a whipping although it quenched her disobedience did not wreak the change that she knew was possible. Sometimes her tears were verging on true contrition, as she looked into the land beyond. But only rarely did she allow herself to take a step into that world of grace and light. And when eventually, as an older child, she did, she felt only gratitude to her mother for bringing her, time and again, to that threshold of true obedience, that obéissance du coeur, and trusting that in God’s good time she would step across.

How she had dreaded the martinet cutting into her bottom, legs and thighs, and leaving red smarting weals. But looking back it was the means of her salvation. Like the Cross, a means of torture and shame, her whippings had become for her the gateway to a renewed life.

And she now applied the same stringent, unrelenting discipline to her children. And to the orphanage boys. She wondered how Graham and Clough were faring in the dormitory, wrists secured to the bed rail and with the chilli ointment burning their abused members. She had no regrets. It was a punishment commensurate with their sin and if it opened their lives to true and unblemished repentance, then it would be as nothing to the glory that would follow.

. . . . .

The next morning, she rose early and prayed and again read her Bible. It was a bright and glorious day. She went downstairs and stepped outside, smelling the freshness of the air. She felt full of life and exceptionally vigorous.

At half past six, the children came down and commenced their morning chore of preparing breakfast.

“Well, children, did you enjoy having Mrs Fairclough to help with homework and to put you to bed?”

They all nodded; and Samuel added,

“Yes Mother. She helped with my equations. She said we had all been very good and well-behaved.”

“And that is what she told me. I am very pleased with you.”

She smiled.

“If she had said any differently, you would all be looking forward to a sound spanking this evening. Now let us say prayers. And then it is William’s turn to say grace.”

During breakfast there was the usual chatter from the children and the occasional reproof from their mother about their manners. Toward the end of the meal, she decided to test William on his Bible reading. All the children were set a series of readings for the month, and this month they were reading through the first 12 chapters of the Book of Genesis. William was reading from a Bible for Little People which made comprehension easier. He didn’t like reading from a different Bible to his brother and sister, but his mother insisted.

“So, what was your Bible reading today, William?”

He wriggled. For the last few days, he had neglected his scripture reading, and he knew immediately that he might be in serious trouble. He couldn’t fathom why his mother regarded the regular reading of the Bible as so very important. He hesitated.

“It . . . it was about the world being made . . . Mother.”

“Really, William. I thought that was the reading for several days ago.”

She turned to her daughter.

“What did you read today, Elizabeth?”

“It was about Adam and Eve and the Serpent tempting them to eat from the tree. And they did, and everything went wrong.”

“Yes, Elizabeth. That is what I thought. Do you agree, Samuel?”

“Yes, Mother.”

She looked at her small son.

“So why is your memory so bad, William? Or did you read about the story of creation this morning by mistake?”

She watched as William grasped at the straw she had offered.

“Yes, Mother.”

She paused. She could sense the other two children holding their breath.

“So, what did you read yesterday, William? And the day before?”

There was a long silence.

“I . . . I read the story about the world being made.”

“You mean you read the same story three days running. Is that right?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Well in that case, you’ll be very familiar with all the details.”

She tapped her finger on the table.

“So, tell me, how many days did it take God to make the world.”

He bit his lip.

“W . . . was it, ten?”

“You think God made the whole world in ten days. Is that right, William?”

He nodded.

“Yes, Mother.”

“And what did God do on the very last day?”

“He . . . he finished it all.”

“And what was the very last thing God made?”

There was a long pause. He shook his head and his eyes filled with tears.

“I . . . I can’t remember . . . Mother.”

Mrs Lavington sighed. She spoke gently.

“I think you’ve been lying to me, William. Perhaps you’d like to tell me the truth?”

“No! Please Mother. I haven’t been lying. Please I haven’t.”

“You do know what happens to a boy who is caught out in a bad lie, don’t you William?”

He hung his head. His voice was low.

“Yes, Mother.”

“So, what happens?”

“He’s spanked.”

“A little boy might be spanked. But you are six years old, William. A boy of your age who lies would certainly be caned.”

She let her words sink in.

“You were caned the other day, weren’t you, William? Over your pyjamas.”

He nodded.

“Well, this time it would be across your bare bottom.

He reddened.

“Across my bare bottom . . . Mother.”

“Yes. Across your bare bottom. Like your older brother and sister, when they’re caned.”

Both Elizabeth and Samuel were sitting completely still, listening, scarcely breathing.

“Go and fetch the cane from its hook in the hall, William.”

“No! Please, Mother.”

“How dare you argue with me, William. Do as I say, this instant.”

Reluctantly he went and returned with the whippy length of crook-handled rattan.”

She stood up.

“Give it to me.”

He handed it to her and she held it in her right hand with the left gripping it half way down its pencil thin length. She shook her head sadly.

“I’m in no doubt, William, that today, and probably for the past few days, you have been neglecting your Bible reading.”

She turned to Samuel.

“Can you remember, Samuel, how I dealt with you, when you did that. Although unlike William, you owned up. But you still needed to be punished. So how were you punished?”

Samuel reddened with embarrassment. He hated his punishments being discussed before others.

“I was spanked, Mother.”

“Yes. With my hairbrush across your bare bottom. Ten hard strokes.”

She turned back to William.

“But you didn’t own up, did you, William. Instead, you lied to me. And we’ve already agreed that a boy who lies needs to be caned.”

By now William was quietly crying. All protest gone. A small, limp bundle of hopeless boyhood, facing the prospect of a painful punishment.

“You lied to me twice, William. First about having read your Bible when you hadn’t. And then denying that you were lying, when you were.”

She looked at him and raised her eyebrows.

“So, William, that should mean a double caning. Not twelve strokes, but twenty-four. But I’ll be merciful and reduce that to twenty. So, count yourself fortunate.”

She waited.

“Well? Have you anything to say?”

“Th . . . th . . . thank you . . . Mother.”

“But those twenty strokes will be preceded by a spanking with my hairbrush. It is quite obvious that you have neglected to read your Bible for several days now. I’ll punish you on your return from school. For now, hand the cane back on its hook in the hall.”

As they made their way across the meadow to the main orphanage building, William reached up and inserted his hand into his mother’s. He turned his face towards her, and in the early morning his eye lashes glistened, still wet with his tears.

“I . . . I’m sorry, Mama. I’ll do my Bible reading every day now.”

She slowed her pace and let Elizabeth and Samuel walk on. She spoke in a low, reassuring voice.

“I’m pleased, William. And pleased that from now on you’ll be reading your Bible as I’ve asked.”

She squeezed his hand.

“And will you lie to me again?”

He gave a little sob.

“No, Mama. I promise.”

They walked on in silence. Then, she squeezed his hand again. By now, the other two children were some way ahead.

“You do realise, William, that even though you are sorry for what you have done, when we return from school, the first thing I’ll be doing is spanking you, and then caning you?”

He looked up at her, imploringly, his eyes brimming with tears.

“Please, Mama. Not the cane. It hurts so much.”

She smiled, shaking her head.

“I’m sorry, William. I know it hurts. But a boy who has disobeyed and lied to avoid punishment cannot just be let off. As though he’s done nothing.”

They had now reached the main entrance.

“Now off you go to class. And remember I mean to speak to Mr Greaves sometime today about the lack of progress you’re making in your work.”

He said nothing but slowly made his way inside. Part of her regretted mentioning her talk with Howard Greaves. She wanted the caning he was facing to be the one thing hanging over him. The sole focus of his concern.

Chapter 35


Mrs Lavington made her way to the infirmary. She was told that both Clough and Graham had fallen into a fitful sleep around three o’clock. But in their desperate but fruitless tossing and twisting, their beds had moved out of position. When Mrs Simmonds had come on duty at six o’clock she had sponged the chilli ointment off their genitals and wiped them with milk.

“And what about the other boys, Susannah?”

“Mrs Rowbotham says that whenever she crept into the dormitory, they were silent and in their beds. Whether they slept with the sound of Clough and Graham suffering I rather doubt. But none seems to have left his bed.”

“And have the beds been checked for masturbation?”

“Yes, Matron.”

“And you found nothing?”

“No, Matron. Nothing at all.”

“Good. Given the example of what happens to boys who indulge themselves, I’m not surprised. And all the boys are dressed and ready for lessons?”

“Yes, Matron. Although I expect they’ll find it difficult to concentrate.”

“Well, I am sure no allowance will be made for a few hours of lost sleep. Nor should it be.”

She put down her handbag.

“But I’d better see Clough and Graham before they go to their classroom. Perhaps Anne would run across and fetch them.”

“Certainly, Matron.”

She had expected that both boys would look more dishevelled and exhausted than they did. But although their eyes were tired and they were a little flushed, they looked none the worse for the discipline they had received.

“Stand over there. And put your hands behind your back.”

She sat at her desk and checked the staff roster for the week. She believed in making boys wait, allowing their anxiety and apprehension to rise. And that, she thought, was the secret of controlling boys. A constant background of fear to their lives. Fear that, of the many things expected of them, one may have been forgotten; fear that of their inevitable sins and mistakes, one might be discovered; fear that their friends might give them away; and the fear of punishment itself.

She looked up.

“I understand that both of you were unable to lie still last night. That you thrashed about in your beds so that they moved. Is that right, Graham?”

“Ye . . .yes, Matron.”

“So why was that? Clough?”

“Be . . . because the stuff that you rubbed on our . . . our . . . Because it burnt, Matron.”

Mrs Lavington nodded.

“I see. So, would you say it was a healing remedy. Graham?”

He hung his head.

“No . . . Matron.”

“And you Clough. What do you say?”

“No, Matron.”

“Well, I am surprised. Drop your trousers. And your underpants.”

They stood pale and trembling.

She stood beside Clough and reaching down held his small, limp, circumcised member in her hand. He winced.”

“So, it’s sore, is it, Clough?”

“Please, Matron. Yes.”

She did the same to Graham. And then walked purposefully across the room and put her head around the door.

“Mrs Simmonds, would you hand me the salve that was put on Clough and Graham last night, please. And the spatula.”

She unscrewed the lid, looking at them. There was a sharp intake of breath and they noticeably tensed. She dug the spatula into the jar. She spoke quietly, with a firm, concerned voice.

“As you both seemed to doubt that the ointment has done any good, perhaps another application is needed.

They stood as if transfixed, saying nothing.

“What do you think Clough?”

His voice was anxious and shrill.

“No . . . Matron. No. Please. No.”

“But you told me you didn’t consider it a healing remedy. Both of you did.”

They were white, as though chidden of God, and visibly shaking. She said nothing for a moment, savouring their fear.

“You see, the question is has the ointment healed your disgusting proclivity to fondle each other’s genitals.”

Again, she paused.

“You do understand what I am saying? Has it healed your disgusting behaviour of jumping into bed with each other and playing with each other under the sheets? That is the question.”

Again, she waited for a moment. And now her voice was like a whetted knife.

“Well? Has it?”

Both nodded vigorously.

“Yes, Matron . . . Yes.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“Yes, Matron. Yes.”

“Very well, then.”

And she screwed the lid back on the jar.

“But you still face a flogging by the Principal. No doubt a public flogging before the whole orphanage. So, you have that still to look forward to. Now, pull up your trousers and be off to your lessons.”

When they had gone, she sat at her desk. She picked up a pencil and twisted it between her fingers. And her thoughts went back to those early years in Sainte Foy. She recalled Mme Soler publicly disciplining her best friend, Anna. They had been watching a pétanque match in the village square. Anna was probably about six years of age, and had become bored by the endless throwing of the metal balls toward the cochonnet, and had started to complain and then to grizzle. When Mme Soler told her to desist, she pouted and began kicking and shuffling her feet on the gravelly surface. Then, she had picked up a pebble and thrown it into the midst of the playing area. Her mother was furious, and Anna was led away crying. After a quarter of an hour, Mme Soler had returned to the village square with a red-eyed and tearful Anna who had obviously received une bonne fessée. Anna’s small hand was firmly held by her mother, and in her mother’s other hand was a hairbrush. It was another half an hour before the match ended. As was usual it was followed by wine with crusty bread and rillettes. But before people began to eat, Mme Soler announced that her daughter had an apology to make. There was silence as she lifted Anna on to a bench. Everyone’s eyes were on this small, dark, six-year-old girl who tearfully stammered out her regret for what she had done.

And there was no surprise at what followed. Mme Soler was known to be une mère très sévère. She ordered Anna off the bench and sat on it herself. Then, she pulled the girl towards her, turned up her dress, and took her knickers down. Les marques du martinet were clearly visible on her buttocks and thighs.

Cordelia remembered how a few months previously, she had listened to Mme Soler talking to her mother about a new martinet for Anna.

I have asked M Aillot to make me a new martinet, Mme Réglat. Anna is becoming très volontaire. I’ve used the present one since she was three, and the lashes are too thin and light for a girl of her age. The new one with have lanières that are a little shorter and much thicker.

Bien sûr, Mme Soler. A martinet must do more than just tickle a child. It has to cut into the soft flesh. It’s the only way to ensure a child is obedient and polite.

And on that already well whipped flesh, Mme Soler spanked her daughter. Apart from a pigeon cooing and the distant sound of a dog barking, all that could be heard was the steady, remorseless smack of the hard back of the brush on Anna’s small compact bottom, punctuated by her screams.

It was not the first time Cordelia had seen Anna spanked. Mme Soler kept the hairbrush with its hard ebony back on a shelf in her kitchen. And it was regularly used. In Mme Soler’s eyes, a child’s rightful sense of self-worth could all too easily become overlaid with the scaly skin of sinful self-regard. And when that happened, that skin had to be to be painfully flayed from the child.

Like her own mother, Mme Soler spanked with a painstaking thoroughness, slowly inflaming each small buttock until the agony was almost insupportable. Some children are stoical under punishment. But not Anna. From the first smack of the brush, she was desperately pleading for forgiveness, begging her mother to stop. But to no avail. And before long she was wriggling like an eel. Her mother always continued until her daughter had been whipped to sodden, tearful submission.

The first time Cordelia had watched Mme Soler spanking Anna, she had felt a shivery, tingling feeling running all the way down her diaphragm to her stomach. She felt a strange, pleasurable constriction in her chest and she knew she wanted to see Anna spanked again. And it was not long before she did.

Several weeks later, playing at Anna’s house, Cordelia thought her friend seemed subdued and anxious. After about half an hour Mme Soler called both girls into the kitchen. She sat on an upright chair, and spoke to Anna in a quiet authoritative voice.

Apporte-moi la brosse à cheveux, Anna.

Anna reddened and bit her lip, but did as instructed. Cordelia realised that the reason for Anna’s subdued mood had been the spanking hanging over her. And she somehow knew that Mme Soler had delayed her punishment in order to shame her by spanking her in front of her.

As she sat at her desk, twisting the pencil between her fingers, Cordelia thought how shaming it was to be spanked in front of another. Both girls knew the other was spanked, but still Cordelia hated it when she was punished in front of her friend. For as she was stripped of her clothing and held firmly across her mother’s knee, her claim to independence and the right to determine her own small life were revealed as wholly illusory. All was in the gift of her mother. And however much she might struggle to assert herself against her mother’s authority, slowly the hard wooden back of the brush would force her to capitulate. And it was that surrender to her mother’s will in tearful brokenness that was so shameful. All the confidence and self-possession that she flaunted before her friends had been removed. Like the core from an apple. She was empty, hollow, and humiliated, and marked with the red and smarting weals of submission.

And of course, thought Cordelia, that was the intention of a spanking. It was not just a swift retribution for sin, but a process of breaking the will, of making a child aware that she was subject to her mother’s authority in all that she did. But where a child resisted loving correction and shamelessly refused to submit to the rod in private, then public shaming was necessary.

She thought again of Clough and Graham. So deeply ingrained was their commitment to masturbation that contrition would not come easily. She had leathered their hands and disciplined the offending member of each, but there was yet more to be done. She nodded to herself. Yes, a public flogging was necessary as it had been for Anna Soler all those years ago in the village square of Sainte Foy. She would report to the Principal later in the morning. She glanced at the clock. Just time to catch Howard Greaves before class started.

She made her way through the corridors and as she passed a classroom, she heard a boy being caned. She stood for a moment and listened to the remorseless swish of the rattan and the shrill squeals of agony that followed each cut. And it transported her once more to her childhood in Sainte Foy. She and Anna lived in adjacent cottages that shared a party wall. She would sometimes put her ear to the wall but she could barely hear anything for the walls were thick. However, for much of the year windows were open, and with her ears pricked, it was possible to overhear Anna being disciplined by her mother. As Anna was usually punished in the kitchen, Cordelia would then creep out into the shared garden behind the two cottages and sit, hugging her knees, against the wall, immediately beneath Anna’s kitchen window.

I will not tolerate disobedience, Anna. The sooner you learn that the better.

And then Cordelia would hear the clack clack of Mme Soler’s shoes on the stone flags as she went to retrieve the hairbrush from the dresser or to take the martinet down from its hook. If she heard the scrapping of a chair being positioned, then she knew that Anna was to be spanked. And she hugged herself even tighter as she listened to the distinctive sound of the hairbrush being smacked across her friend’s firm sensitive bottom flesh; and to Anna’s roars of agony. But sometimes there was no scrapping of a chair to be heard. Only a pause and the sound of Anna sobbing and protesting. And then she knew that Mme Soler was preparing Anna for the martinet.

She remembered her breathlessness as she listened and imagined the scene. She knew that into one of the beams was fixed a large metal hook. Sometimes Mme Soler would hang a bunch of herbs from it, but most of the time it was left unused. Except when Anna was whipped. She knew that Mme Soler striped her naked and then tied her wrists together in front of her. Anna then had to hold out her arms and a loop of cord went under the wrist binding to be pulled up and the two ends of the loop attached to the hook. dragging up Anna’s arms and forcing her to stand almost on tip-toes. Cordelia had seen this once when visiting with her mother but had been taken home before the whipping began. But listening, she could visualise Anna twisting and turning as she screamed and pleaded. Breathlessly, Cordelia would count the strokes. It was rare for Mme Soler to give less than two dozen, and often more. At the end of the chastisement, she knew that a sobbing Anna would be standing naked and ashamed in the corner of the kitchen for a good half-an-hour. But by then she had crept away back to her own cottage.

Cordelia at just over six years was already fascinated by her own bottom. Each night she would feel each buttock as she was undressing for bed and wonder at its soft sensuous firmness. And when she had been spanked, would examine the consequences and lovingly touch the tender flesh. But what she regretted was that she could not see the spanking as it was given: her desperate writhing as she tried to escape the pain; and the reddening of her buttocks as the implement of correction was applied. But as she watched Anna being spanked it was as if she were watching herself and listening to her own screams of agony.

Their mothers would often quote to them the old proverb Qui aime bien, châtie bien. And if chastisement were the mark of love, then both Cordelia and Anna were well loved. And looking back, she came to see that her arousal by Anna’s spankings and her eagerness to witness them was, too, a mark of love. For she was sharing in Anna’s sufferings as though they were her own. The hot smarting flesh was her flesh; and in that shared suffering they became one.

Cordelia shook her head at the memory, and continued down the corridor to the classroom where Howard Greaves was taking the register. He looked up as she entered.

“Good morning, Matron. Is it one of the boys you want to see?”

No, Mr Greaves, I was hoping for a word with you. Now is obviously not a convenient moment. Would it be possible for you to look into the infirmary later in the morning?”

“Certainly, Matron. I’ll look in at lunchtime.”

Mrs Lavington made her way back to the infirmary, and looked in on the sick room. A new boy had been admitted yesterday with a high temperature.

“Well, Cranston, how are you today?”

“I . . . I think I’m a lot better . . . thank you, Matron.”

Mrs Lavington placed her hand on his forehead.

“Yes, your temperature seems to have come down. We’ll keep you here until lunchtime, and if it remains down, you may return to your class this afternoon. And keep drinking the water that you are being given.”

She smiled.

“Boys have been spanked for not drinking their water.”

She returned to her desk and got on with some paperwork until eleven o’clock. Then, she told Anne that she would be with the Principal for the next hour.



Chapter 36

Diana opened the door.

“How delightful, Cordelia. I expect you have come to see James. He’ll be back in the next half hour. In the meantime, would you like some coffee?”

She rang the bell.

“And Mary will bring some of cook’s new shortcake biscuits.”

“I want to thank you, Diana, for looking after the children yesterday evening. They all say they enjoyed their time with you.”

She smiled.

“And I understand you helped Samuel with his equations.”

“Yes. Despite not having solved a simultaneous equation for years. Mathematics was never my best subject. But tell me, Cordelia, how did things go last night.”

“Very well. I caned the whole dormitory. Every boy must have known what was going on and was therefore complicit in the two boys’ sin. I gave extra strokes to Clough and Graham. And then I dealt with the pair of them as I told you. Wrists fastened to the bedrail and the chilli embrocation smeared on their genitals.”

“And was that effective?”

“Well, Diana, they suffered enough to shift their beds in the night. They must have thought those little dangling pieces of meat of which they’re so proud were being burnt away. Whether it will be effective in deterring further sinful coupling between the sheets remains to be seen. But I am hopeful that it will. But I know too much about boys to think they’ll forsake masturbation all together.”

Mrs Fairclough smiled.

“Yes; that would be too much to hope for. But your campaign will ensure that every time a boy touches his own genitals, he will do so in fear. And that is how it should be. It’s a disgusting and debilitating habit.”

She offered Cordelia a biscuit.

“But what did you want to see James about? I take it it is James you’ve come to see.”

“Yes, Diana. I wanted to report to him on the punishment that’s been given to Clough and Graham and to see whether in the light of its severity, he still considers a public flogging appropriate.”

Diana nodded.

“I am sure he will. But here he is. You can ask him.”

There were steps in the hall and the door opened and the Principal entered.

“Good morning, Matron. Enjoying cook’s special shortcake biscuits, I see.”

“Yes, Sir. They are truly excellent.”

She paused.

“But I called to update you on the punishments I have given to Clough and Graham for their sinful coupling, and to the whole of their dormitory who knew what was going and said nothing.””

And she proceeded to recount the events of the evening in some detail. Mr Fairclough listened intently and approvingly to all she said.

“So, the question is, Sir, do you still consider that a public flogging before the whole orphanage is still necessary?”

He shifted his weight in the armchair in which he sat.

“May I ask what you think, Matron?”

“I believe a public flogging is entirely appropriate, Sir. Both boys have been punished for their sin, but they owe it to the other boys in the orphanage to suffer publicly. All the boys should know that behaviour like theirs is wrong because they have been told it is wrong. But words are sometimes not enough. In the old days a mystery play used to bring the words of the Bible to life. People would see a vivid enactment of Jesus’s flagellation and crucifixion. And they went away shocked and cleansed by what they had seen. So, if the boys see Clough and Graham bared, hoisted, and birched until the blood runs, then they should be similarly affected. In my judgment it cannot but have a good effect both on the two boys and on all who witness their shame.”

Mr Fairclough had been listening with rapt attention.

“That is excellently put, Matron. Beautifully expressed. But when should this “enactment” take place?”

“Personally, Sir, I would summon them to your study, and inform them what is in prospect. And then let it hang over them for a week. Perhaps the flogging could be next Sunday after lunch. Of course, both boys would be denied food on that day until after their flogging. That is always best.”

“Very well, Matron, bring both boys to me at three o’clock this afternoon.”

He turned to his wife.

“And you are happy with that arrangement, my dear?”

“Certainly, James. We haven’t had a flogging like that for some time. In my view they’re the best remedy against slackness and can do nothing but good.”

He nodded.

“Well, Matron I’ll see you at three o’clock. And by the way, I am perfectly happy for Diana to assist in the punishment of the younger boys. How that is achieved, I’ll leave it to you both to decide.”

When he had departed, the two women sat down again.

“Have you time for another cup of coffee, Cordelia?”

“Yes, Diana. Howard Greaves is calling on me at lunchtime, but there’s certainly time for another coffee. And some of the shortbread, too?”

Mrs Fairclough smiled.

“Yes, it is rather good, isn’t it?”

She rang the bell for Mary. And they chatted on. After five minutes, Mrs Fairclough rang the bell again.

“Where on earth has that girl got to?”

Shortly there was a knock at the door and Mary entered.

“And where have you been, Mary? Matron and I have been waiting here for over ten minutes.”

“I . . . I’m sorry, Ma’am. I was . . . I was on . . .”

Her voice tailed off in embarrassment.

“Are you trying to tell me that you were answering a call of nature? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes, Ma’am.

She hung her head.

“And don’t droop, girl. Stand up straight. A call of nature is no excuse. You need to establish regular habits that don’t interfere with your work. Do you understand?”

She bit her lip

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Then fetch the cane.”

She did so, and handed the length of crook-handled rattan to her mistress.

“Surely you were taught in the orphanage to have a bowel movement and to relieve yourself first thing in the morning. Before the day’s work began. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Well, that’s what I expect here. It may seem harsh to cane you for a single lapse but if we start making exceptions and excusing failure, the whole routine will start to unravel.”

She smiled.

“Isn’t that right, Mary?”

She cast her eyes down.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“And worse still, you kept a guest waiting. Mrs Lavington may be on the staff but she is still my guest.”

She flexed the cane.

“And as you have inconvenienced her as well as me, I am going to ask her to administer your punishment. If that is acceptable to you Matron?”

Cordelia felt a little tremor in her diaphragm as she looked at the girl in her neat, black and rather austere maid’s uniform.”

“Certainly, Mrs Fairclough. It is always good to bring home to children that disobedience and carelessness have wider consequences than they may think.”

The girl looked pale and anxious.

“So how is she responding to her training, Mrs Fairclough? Is she making an effort or is she a bit slapdash and lacking in commitment?”

“No, Mrs Lavington. She is starting to make a real effort. But I am sure that’s because the rod is not withheld when she is at fault.”

Mrs Lavington nodded.

“Then I would imagine twelve swishy strokes should be sufficient. Is that what you had in mind?”

“Yes. That should be sufficient. But well laid on.”

Mrs Lavington smiled.

“Any strokes I administer are always well laid on, Mrs Fairclough.”

She turned to Mary.

“Stand facing the back of the armchair.”

She stared for a moment at the girl’s soft voluptuous bottom beneath the cotton dress. Then, stooping down, she slowly ran her hands up the girl’s legs catching up the material as she went and draping the dress over her shoulders. Then, she inserted her thumbs into the waistband of her knickers and lowered them unhurriedly to her ankles. The girl’s legs were encased in black stockings, but above the garters the plumpness of her thighs flared upwards into the sensuous protuberance of her bottom. Her own daughter’s nine old bottom was delightfully small, round, and eminently spankable. But this was a bottom with the fullness that only came with puberty. A bottom ripe for chastisement.

“And now over the back of the chair.”

The girl wriggled up. Mrs Lavington took the cane from Mrs Fairclough, and she, without being asked, stood facing the girl and, reaching over the seat of the chair, firmly grasped her wrists.

Cordelia raised the cane. Only twelve strokes! She regretted being so sparing in her suggestion. This was a bottom capable of absorbing an enormous amount of punishment.

She brought the cane swishing down with all her skill, twisting her wrist and speeding its flight to the soft sensitive target. The smack of rattan as it cuts into a child’s buttocks is like no other sound, and if a listener at the door had been in any doubt as to its meaning, the agonised scream would have made everything clear. The girl kicked and writhed. But with her arms outstretched and her wrists firmly held there was no escape.

Another stroke was given. The cane descended as though on a spring, embedding itself momentarily into the round softness of the girl’s buttocks, the impact that produces the tell-tale tramline marks that are the visible evidence of a sound caning. Slowly the flogging continued, each cut given with the firm intention of causing that sharp penetrating pain that breaks the will and teaches a lesson no words alone can teach.

At the end of the allotted strokes, Mrs Lavington paused. She was tempted to arraign the girl for her struggles and to suggest a further dozen cuts. But that would be to trespass on Mrs Fairclough’s prerogative. And given the soundness of the caning, the girl’s struggles had hardly been excessive. Cordelia was aware of the ever-present temptation to go beyond what was strictly justified for the deep and pleasurable satisfaction of disciplining a child. And she was grateful for that self-knowledge. She saw nothing wrong in her enjoyment of punishment, but punishment had to be deserved. To punish otherwise was an affront to God. But so too was permitting a child’s wrongdoing to go uncorrected, either through laziness or sentimentality. And it was better by far to err on the side of severity than lenience.

“Thank you, Matron. You may get down, Mary. And before you adjust your clothing, I would like you to tell me exactly why you’ve been punished?”

The girl was sobbing quietly as she faced her mistress. Her face was damp and her hair dishevelled. Cordelia noticed that on either side of the slightly pouting lips of her vulva was a growth of soft brown hair.

“Well, Mary? I’m waiting.”

“P . . . please, Ma’am. I kept you and Matron waiting, while . . . while . . . “

“ . . . while you answered a call of nature. And what has twelve swishy strokes of the cane across your bottom taught you?”

“That I’m . . . I’m not to do that when you ring for me . . . Ma’am.”

Mrs Fairclough sighed.

“And how do you propose to do that, Mary. Unless you’re planning to go in your knickers. Well, is that your plan?”

She hung her head.

“No, Ma’am.”

“Do you remember what I said? About establishing a regular habit? Of having a bowel movement each morning before work?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Mrs Fairclough paused.

“I think, Mary, I had better supervise that for the next week. You will come to the small bathroom on the first floor at six o’clock tomorrow morning and you’ll sit on the chamber pot that I’ll have placed there. And you will not rise until there has been a bowel movement. Do you understand?”

The girl reddened.

“Ye . . . yes, Ma’am.”

“And in case you are wondering why I am putting you on the chamber pot, it is for two reasons. First, it will remind you that not to have regular habits at your age is the behaviour of a baby. And secondly, crouching as you will have to do on the pot will make it easier to have a movement. We don’t want you there all day.”

The girl was biting her lip and blinking back her tears.

“Now pull up your knickers and lower your dress. But first, for goodness sake, straighten your stockings.”

When Mary had gone, Cordelia smiled.

“Thank you for allowing me to correct Mary. I hope it will do some good. And before long I’ll be sending a boy along to you to discipline.”

“I look forward to that, Cordelia. But only if that’s helpful to you.”

“It will be, Diana. I’ll send him along with a note. Then, you’ll know what he’s done, and can punish him appropriately. But look at the time! Howard Greaves will wonder where I am. He’s coming for a chat about William. And thank you so much for the coffee and shortcake biscuits.”

Mrs Lavington hurried along the corridor and caught Mr Greaves just as he was entering the infirmary.

“Howard, come into my office. We can talk there.”

Mr Greaves had rarely been invited into Matron’s office. He looked around and recognised the scope it offered for disciplining boys. The stark shower, the low bench with a towel draped over it, and the pillar with the stool beside it.

“Do sit down, Howard.”

She gestured to an armchair. He sat crossing his legs.

“So, what can I do for you, Matron?”

“I just wanted to have a word about William. How do you find the boy?”

Mr Greaves rubbed his chin.

“Well, Matron, if I am honest, and I’m sure you would wish me to be, I find him inattentive and often disobedient. He’s been punished several times for poor and untidy work and, as you probably gathered, I had to cane him yesterday for being disruptive in class.”

“Yes, I saw the marks on his bottom. He confessed to what he’d done. A caning was certainly the correct response. My only regret is that he was caned across his trousers rather than bare. Which is what I would have done. I’ve told him that if he’s caned again in class, he’ll be caned again by me when he arrives home. And that they’ll be not a stitch between the rattan and his bottom to deaden the pain.”

“I can appreciate your wish to provide salutary punishment, Matron. I rarely cane boys bare, but I use a heavier cane to compensate for that. I’m not against bare bottom punishment. If it’s your wish that I punish William bare, then I am perfectly happy to do so. But it may look as though I am victimising the boy.”

“Then I suggest you tell the class that it’s his mother’s wish. You can say she’s most concerned at his lack of effort and poor behaviour. And that she considers a caning on his bare bottom is the most promising way to bring about an improvement. He’ll find that shaming, but that’s all to the good.”

She smiled.

“And if you apply the rattan to a bare bottom, he may be spared a caning when he returns home. I say ‘may’ because I am sure there’ll be occasions when I judge a little further reinforcement to be necessary.”

She paused.

“Edward Crawley provides me with a short note on Samuel’s behaviour each day, Howard. Would it be too much for you to do the same for William?”

“Yes, I can certainly do that, Cordelia. I’ll hand the note to him at the end of the day.”

“And how did you find William this morning?”

“Very quiet and lacking in concentration.”

“That’s because the first thing he’ll be doing when we return home is fetching the cane from its hook in the hall and bringing it to me. He’s been neglecting his Bible reading and had the effrontery to lie about it. But don’t let that stop you from caning him during the day if you judge it to be necessary. And cane him bare, as we’ve agreed.”

Chapter 37


Mrs Lavington was pleased with the outcome of her talk with Howard Greaves. That each of her children would now be bringing home a daily note record of their behaviour was a welcome development. It was not only a check on the appropriateness of any discipline given, but also a declaration to each child that there was no corner of their young lives where her writ did not run.

She knew from her own childhood how she had resisted her mother’s rule and sought to hide from its pervasive scope. How she had created a secret retreat in the woods where she and Anna could meet to discuss and share childish concerns. And how her bedroom, even shared as it was with her brother, became a small satrapy where she enjoyed a measure of freedom from her mother’s oversight. And looking back she recognised that in that freedom, in those secret places, her sinful heart had fomented rebellion. When a moth eats a hole in a garment, the threads begin to unravel and the hole enlarges until more and more of the garment’s integrity is destroyed. And so it is with a secretive child who seeks to place herself outside the ambit of her mother’s rule. Slowly, the cohesion that binds her to her mother’s will is eaten away. Outwardly she may appear compliant but in her inner being she is far from compliant, resenting her mother’s rule and in secrecy feeding that resentment.

A frank, open child who hides nothing, who rests in her mother’s love and who renders her obedience and respect, is an unending joy. But a secretive child is an abomination to the Lord. As the Gospel said, every one that doeth evil hateth the light neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. And she knew how, as a child, she preferred those dark hidden places away from her mother’s gaze. And how, when a little older, in the darkness of her room, between the sheets, she would touch and stroke herself in ways she knew would earn her a thrashing with the martinet were she discovered.

And she was determined that Elizabeth, who was so like her, should be protected from the ravages of that worm which in the bud of a young child eats away her life. And she knew the best protection was a diligent mother ready to identify the signs of that inner resentment that wasted and destroyed. On her shelf at home was a little book entitled Managing the Older Girl. In its pages was the warning that a mother needs to pay careful attention to all those little indications that open a small casement on a girl’s inner life. Does she obey with reluctance? Does she display a lack of enthusiasm for the task in hand? Does she work at her lessons with care and attention or does she daydream? Is there a hint of rudeness, or even worse surliness, in her response? Does she disdainfully flutter her eyes? Does an intake of breath suggest suppressed dissent? If so, then outwardly the child may be complying but inwardly she is rejecting her mother’s rule over her.

It had become fashionable to believe that a child is born into freedom. But as the Apostle Paul said a child differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all. From birth children are rightly in bondage to their mother and under her direction and tutelage. And that is in order to protect them from the ravages of sin. A mother has the responsibility under God to correct and punish sin, not just in its outward manifestations, but also in that hidden life glimpsed through that small casement which opens a crack on to the mass of anger and resentment that can seethe within, and which, unchecked, can eat a child alive.

She thought of the whipping William would be receiving later that afternoon. How he had flagrantly disobeyed her word, and worse had turned away from the Word of Truth itself, leaving it unread, and then lied and dissembled about it. For her the duty of punishing him would be undertaken without compunction. Indeed, there would be pleasure in breaking his will and rendering him compliant. He had passed into a desert place and needed to be returned to green pastures where flowed streams of living water. And it would be the rod of correction that would convict him and drive him home.

As she sat at her desk, she was aware of a boy crying. She rose and, opening the door of the infirmary, was confronted by Mrs Simmonds remonstrating with the boy Cranston. He was shaking his head and sobbing angrily.

“No, I won’t. I don’t want it. I don’t. You can’t make me eat it.”

Mrs Simmonds turned her head.

“I’m afraid Master Cranston is refusing his lunch, Matron.”

“Is he, Mrs Simmonds. Well, we can’t have that, can we?”

She stood in front of the distressed and sobbing child, and placing her hand under his chin forced his head back.

“Stop that noise, this instant, Cranston.”

And she smacked his face with a hard stinging slap.

“And why are you refusing to eat your lunch?”

“Pl . . . please, Matron, I . . . I don’t feel hungry.”

“I’m not interested in how you feel Cranston. How do you think I feel having a bad-tempered, wilful child in my infirmary? But I have to accept it and deal with it. Just as you have to accept and eat your lunch when it’s given you.”

Tears welled up in his eyes.

“B . . . but, it . . . it’ll make me sick . . . Matron.”

Nonsense. You’ll eat it and eat it with gratitude. And after that we’ll deal with your outburst. How dare you disturb my infirmary with your tantrum. Mrs Simmonds, give him an extra helping on his plate and when I return in ten minutes, I expect to see everything eaten and the plate wiped clean.”

She turned on her heels and returned to her office. Sitting down at her desk, she checked the teaching timetable. As she thought Diana Fairclough was free for the first half of the afternoon as the girls were receiving religious instruction from the chaplain. She would send the boy to her for a sound spanking or indeed for whatever punishment she considered appropriate. The boy was barely seven.

After ten minutes she returned to the infirmary.

“Well, Mrs Simmonds? Has the boy eaten his lunch?”

“Yes, Matron.”

“And the plate wiped clean? Let me see it.”

Mrs Simmonds showed her the plate.

“Good. So, Cranston, how do you feel? Are you feeling sick?”

“He hung his head.

“No, Matron.”

“You will look at me when you address me, please. Are you feeling sick?”

The boy looked up, flushed and anxious. He had only been admitted to the Orphanage a few weeks previously.

“No, Matron.”

“So, what was all the fuss about?”

“I’m sorry, Matron.”

“Eating your lunch after such a protest shows just how unnecessary it was. You deserve to be soundly spanked for such a pointless outrage.”

She looked at him.

“So, I have decided to send you to Mrs Fairclough. She will enjoy spanking a naughty little boy who refuses to eat his food and unnecessarily protests about doing so. Get out of bed.”

He stood in his pyjamas, his hands nervously twisting by his side.

“You do know who Mrs Fairclough is, Cranston?”

“N . . . no . . . Matron.”

“She is the wife of the Principal. And she takes a particular pleasure in spanking small boys who throw tantrums like a two-year-old. Stand over there while I write her a note.”

She returned to her desk and pulled out a sheet of paper.

Dear Diana,

This young man, Cranston, has been in the infirmary with a temperature. He is now ready to be discharged and as evidence of his well-being chose to throw a tantrum over his lunch which he refused to eat. He maintained the food would make him sick. However, he was soon persuaded to change his mind and indeed was made to eat an extra helping. He has not been sick and the whole incidence was completely unnecessary and evidence of a recalcitrant spirit. I am sending him to you to discipline. He expects to be spanked, but how you deal with him is entirely up to you.

With my affectionate best wishes,

Cordelia

She inserted the note into an envelope and after sealing it, returned to the infirmary and handed it to the boy.

“You will take this to Mrs Fairclough and hand it to her. Mrs Simmonds will accompany you.”

The boy, still wearing pyjamas and with bare feet, was ushered out by Mrs Simmonds who propelled him down the corridor. When they arrived at the door to the Principal’s apartment, she knocked, and after a brief explanation to Mary the boy was admitted, clutching the envelope.

Mary, still smarting from her earlier caning, smiled. It was obvious to her that the flushed and nervous boy had come to be punished. She made him wait in the hall and knocked on the door of the drawing room.

“Come in.”

“Please Ma’am, there’s a boy to see you. And he’s wearing pyjamas.”

“A boy, Mary? In pyjamas? Then you had better show him in.”

She looked at the small boy clutching the envelope. And smiled.

“And what is your name?”

“C . . . Cranston, please, M . . . M . . . “

“You had better address me as Ma’am, Cranston. That would be the right thing to do. And is that envelope for me?”

“Y . . . yes . . . Ma’am.”

Nervously, he offered it to her. She took it and sitting on an upright chair opened it and read the contents slowly. She then reread the note, savouring each word, and as she did so she felt a slight constriction in her chest. She looked up.

“And do you know what this is about, Cranston?”

He shook his head, looking down and biting his lip.

“Well, it says here that you’ve been a naughty boy and refused to eat you lunch. Is that right?”

Ye . . . yes, Ma’am.”

“And why was that?”

“I felt sick . . . please Ma’am.”

Mrs Fairclough looked down at the note.

“It says here that you were persuaded by Matron to eat it even though you felt sick.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“And how did she persuade you?”

“She . . .she smacked me.“

Mrs Fairclough smiled, and stood up.

“She smacked you, did she. And where did she smack you?”

“On . . . on my face.”

Mrs Fairclough stepped forward and gently placing her hand under his chin tilted his head back.

“Yes, I can see the mark.”

She stroked his cheek gently with her finger. And then ran it, caressingly, down his other cheek.

“You have very soft cheeks, Cranston. Soft, round little cheeks.”

She paused.

“But there is another pair of cheeks, isn’t there. Just as soft and round, although perhaps a little fuller and a little firmer. Isn’t that right?”

He reddened with embarrassment.

“And where are they to be found?”

His eyes were now brimming with tears.

“Please, Ma’am . . . “

“They’re to be found inside a boy’s trousers, aren’t they, Cranston? They form the plump little bottom that he sits upon.”

She smiled and reaching out gently ran her finger down the cheek that still bore the faint print of Cordelia’s palm.

“But a little boy’s bottom is for more than sitting on, isn’t it Cranston? Did Matron tell you what she was asking me to do?”

His voice was barely audible.

“Ye . . . yes . . . Ma’am.”

“And what was that? Why has she sent you to me?”

“T . . . to be . . . to be spanked . . . Ma’am.”

“Yes, Cranston.”

She looked down at the letter she was still holding.

“What Matron says is . . . I am sending him to you to discipline. He expects to be spanked, but how you deal with him is entirely up to you.”

The boy twisted in his discomfiture.

“So, tell me again why you need to be spanked””

“Be . . . because I didn’t want to eat my lunch.”

“And why was that?”

“Be . . . because it would make me sick.”

“And did it make you sick?”

He hung his head.

“No, Ma’am.”

So why did you make all that unnecessary fuss?”

“I . . . I don’t know . . . Ma’am.”

“Well, I do, Cranston. It was because you are a thoughtless, silly little boy. An attention seeker who says the first thing that comes into his empty head. Stand over there with you back to the wall and place your hands behind your neck.”

She left the boy, quietly crying, and went to her dressing room. Opening a drawer, she took out an oval, rosewood backed hairbrush. She smacked it against her palm and smiled. This had been her first choice for disciplining her own children when younger. She had spanked them all from an early age and had continued to spank until she judged them ready for the cane or even the birch. Edward, her youngest, who was now thirteen, had been the last to feel the smart of that hard, rosewood back across his bottom.

When she returned to the drawing room, the boy was still standing where he had been placed.

“Come and stand here, Cranston.”

She pulled the cord of his pyjama trousers and watched as they slithered to his ankles.

“Step out of them, Cranston. Pick them up and place them on that chair. And come here.”

And turning him around, she hoicked his pyjama top up over his shoulders.

“And now, Cranston, you will be spanked as Matron intended.”

And it was like a living memory. Some years ago now, this might have been Edward. He had been a difficult child and rarely a week had passed without his being spanked. And she felt once again the thrill of having a small boy over her knee, trembling as he anticipated the punishment to come. And however much he struggled, however much he wriggled and writhed, there was no escape from that hard wooden back as it inflamed the cheeks of his soft little bottom. The spanking epitomised her complete control over his young life.

As a girl she had played ‘mothers and fathers’ with her dolls, and had frequently lifted their dresses and spanked them. But they were lifeless and unresponsive to her discipline. She remembered her own spankings. How they were an agonising assault on bare flesh and always brought tears to her eyes and left oval smarting marks on her bottom. And then, when she herself became a mother, she discovered how wonderfully different it was to spank a living child rather than a lifeless doll. And how she had delighted in the bodily transformation of soft, pale buttocks to a pair of red smarting cheeks. But the inner transformation of the spirit was less easily achieved. For a child only yields his will reluctantly, and needs the application of regular and unswerving discipline if a true spirit of obedience is to be inculcated and established.

She brought the hard back of the hairbrush down across the boy’s right buttock cheek. He gave a shriek of agony and writhed like an eel. But her arm was firmly around him and his writhing only served to emphasise his helplessness. She spanked slowly and with deliberation, allowing time between strokes. She wanted the boy to be in no doubt that the searing agony was fully intended and that she was taking a deep satisfaction in its infliction. After twenty-four strokes, Mrs Fairclough paused. She was of a mind to continue. But resisted the temptation. She lifted the roaring child off her lap. Immediately his hands clutched at his smarting rump, and he stamped and cavorted around, as do all small boys if permitted to do so. But that was something that Mrs Fairclough had never permitted.

“Stop that immediately, Cranston.”

She removed his pyjama top. And told him to return to the wall with his hands on the back of his neck as before. After ten minutes his desperate sobbing had been replaced by a gentle whimpering. She looked up from the escritoire at which she had been sitting.

“I hope you have learned your lesson, Cranston. Have you?”

“Please, Ma’am . . . Yes . . . Ma’am, I have.”

“And what is the lesson you have learned?”

“Pl . . . please, Ma’am . . . to . . . to do what Matron tells me.”

“Yes, Cranston. To do what Matron tells you. To do what any adult in this orphanage tells you. And to do it without fuss or silly excuses. Excuses such as ‘I can’t eat my food because I shall be sick.’”

She put her hand under his chin and tilted his head back.

“And did you really think you were going to be sick?”

“I . . . thought I might be.”

“But you weren’t, were you.”

She frowned and the boy shivered.

“What you need, Cranston, is to know what it’s like to feel really sick and to be sick.

He watched as she walked over to the bell pull. In a few moments there was a knock.

“Mary, I want you to go to the medicine cupboard in my bathroom. On either the first or second shelf you will see a glass bottle marked Syrup of Ipecac. Bring it to me with a jug of water and a glass. And then go and bring me the chamber pot.”

Mrs Fairclough stood by the escritoire and looked at the boy, damp and dishevelled. He had no idea what she intended, and that gave her a quaint satisfaction. On the top of the escritoire was a cane. She picked it up and swished it several times through the air before replacing it. The boy said nothing, but shivered nervously and nibbled his upper lip. How small and red his mouth was she thought. After several more minutes, there was a knock on the door and Mary entered.

“Thank you, Mary. Please place the tray there. And now go and fetch the chamber pot as I asked, and bring with it a large towel. And also a bowl of water and a sponge.”

Chapter 38


While Mary was fetching the chamber pot, Mrs Fairclough opened a small drawer in the escritoire and took out a safety pin. Then, seating herself on an upright chair, she beckoned to the naked boy, and easing her dress, stood him between her legs facing the room. Taking the towel from Mary, she draped it over her knees and, bringing the ends around the boy’s neck, fastened them at his back with the safety pin. The towel was like a large table napkin covering his front and spreading over her own lap.

“Pass me the Syrup of Ipecac, please Mary, with a spoon.”

Mary flushed.

“I . . . I’m sorry Ma’am but you didn’t ask me to bring a spoon.”

Mrs Fairclough gave an exasperated sigh.

“I do expect you to show a little initiative, Mary. Did you think the boy would be drinking straight from the bottle? Go and fetch a dessert spoon and hurry up.”

She stroked the boy’s head with a beguiling gentleness.

“And what did you have for lunch, Cranston. The lunch that you thought would make you sick?”

“It was a stew . . . Ma’am.”

She took the spoon from Mary, and pouring carefully, filled it with the Syrup.

“Swallow this down, Cranston.”

He made no protest but did as he was told. She handed the bottle and spoon back to the girl.

“And now a glass of water, please, Mary.”

She held the glass to the boy’s lips.

“Drink this down. All of it.”

She gave a small smile.

“The stew didn’t make you sick did it, Cranston. Despite your saying it would.”

She slipped her hand underneath the towel and gave his stomach a rub.

“And that’s where it is; but not for much longer. You clearly have no idea what it is like to feel sick or to be sick. But I am about to remedy that. In a moment, you will feel sick. Very sick indeed, Cranston. And you will not only feel sick but you will be sick. And you will bring up the lunch you didn’t want to eat into this chamber pot.”

She pointed to it and nodded at Mary who handed it to her. Mrs Fairclough spread her legs and pulled the boy further back into her crotch, and gripped him tightly. The chamber pot was held in front of him; and with her other hand she gently rubbed his stomach. Glancing across the room she could see herself and the small naked boy reflected in the mirror.

After what seemed a long five minutes, she could feel the boy shivering.

“Please, oh, I feel ill . . . Oh . . . ”

And he retched and vomited horribly. She pressed his head forward and made sure that all went into the pot. After a pause he vomited a second time and then a third. He was limp and shaking and making a strange rattling noise in his throat. He retched several times more but nothing further came up. He still felt ill and shivery.

“Dampen the sponge, Mary, please, and pass it to me.”

She handed the girl the chamber pot and taking the sponge wiped the boy’s mouth and face. Then, she lifted him on to her lap and put her arm around him.

“So now, Cranston, you know what it is like to feel sick and to be sick. So, let’s have no more idle threats about being sick when you don’t want to eat the good food that’s set in front of you. And stop whimpering. You are not ill.”

She waited for a moment before continuing.

“Unfortunately, the lesson you’ve had to learn has meant that your good lunch has ended up in the pot over there.”

She turned to Mary.

“Please go and ask cook to put a small potato and a little cabbage on a plate. I am sure there is some left after lunch. And bring another spoon.”

She stroked the boy’s back while she waited. It was warm despite his having been stripped of his clothes. After a few minutes, Mary returned with the requested plate of food. Mrs Fairclough unpinned the towel and lifted the boy from her lap.

“Put the plate on the coffee table, Mary. And you, boy, go and kneel in front of it.”

She smiled.

“We can’t have all that dinner wasted that Matron gave you in the infirmary, can we? Give me the spoon, Mary.”

And picking up the chamber pot, she dolloped several spoonfuls of sick on to the plate. The boy looked at her with dark, glistening eyes.

“P . . . please, Ma’am. I . . . I can’t. I’ll be sick again.”

She spoke with a warm reassuring voice.

“That’s quite all right, Cranston. You can be sick into the pot, and it can easily be scooped out and put back on your plate.”

“Please, Ma’am. I . . . can’t.“

She stepped across to the escritoire and picked up the cane.

“Let us understand one another, Cranston. If I say you will eat, then eat you will.”

She tapped the tip of the rattan on the table.

You already have a sore bottom, and with this swishy little cane, I can make it a great deal sorer than it is.”

Again, she rapped the cane on the table.

“Either you eat it without a caning or I cane you until you do eat it.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“So, which is it?”

His voice was hoarse and flat.

“I . . . I’ll eat it . . . Ma’am.”

She placed the spoon on the side of his plate.

“So, no more fuss.”

She watched as slowly he ate the potato and cabbage. She smiled. Some children delighted in leaving the best till last, but here the last was most certainly the worst and there was no delight in it. Already, he was visibly shivering, reluctant to consume the lumpy mess of vomit with its disgusting sickly smell. He looked at her imploringly.

“Eat it, Cranston.”

He shut his eyes and slowly ate. Once or twice he retched, but he kept it down. She replaced the cane on the top of the escritoire.

Picking up the face cloth and pouring a little water over it, she gently wiped his mouth.

“Good boy, Cranston. Now drink some water. No don’t gulp it down. Just a few sips or you might be sick again. That’s better.”

She sat on the chair and beckoned him to her. She sat him on her lap, putting an arm around him. She could feel him shivering.

“So, I hope you have learned your lesson. Have you?”

“Ye . . . yes . . . Ma’am”

“And what is the lesson you’ve learned?”

She felt him squirming as he struggled to give an acceptable answer.

“T . . . to do as . . . as I’m told . . . Please Ma’am.”

“Well, that is something all small boys should do. But what was it that got you into this trouble? What did you refuse to do that Matron asked you to do?”

“E . . . eat my lunch, please, Ma’am.”

“And will you always eat what is set before you in future?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“But you made a silly excuse for not wanting your lunch, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“And what was that?”

“I . . . I said it would make me sick.”

“And will you make that excuse again?”

He shook his head

“No, Ma’am.”

“Good boy. Now get down.”

He wriggled off her lap.

“And you may put your pyjamas back on.”

She smiled for she could see his red smarting bottom showing faintly through the thin cotton.

“Stand over there, Cranston, while I write a note for you to take to Matron.”

She sat at the escritoire and pulled a sheet from one of the pigeon holes at the back. The boy watched her nervously.

Dear Cordelia,

Thank you for sending Cranston to me. What an engaging child. But obviously one who finds the restraints of discipline difficult to accept. I questioned him closely and made him recount fully his folly and disobedience. He then received two dozen hard strokes with the back of my hairbrush. This was last used on Edward shortly before his ninth birthday. And I had forgotten how deeply satisfying it is to spank a small boy.

You know, Cordelia, I am wondering whether James and I might have the boy living with us for a while. I am greatly taken by him and would be able to provide the mother’s love and discipline that he needs - at least until he’s a little older. What do you think about that?

Anyway, for the moment, I am returning him to you well chastised. And in view of his silly excuses about feeling sick, I gave him a dose of Ipecac. He was very sick and was made to eat two spoonfuls. As I told him, it was the lunch he was supposed to eat, and rather than waste it completely, he could eat some of it. I am sure there will be no more foolish excuses about feeling sick simply to get his own way. I hope you approve.

With best wishes and thank you,

Diana

She inserted the note into an envelope and licking it, stuck it down.

“Come here Cranston.”

She stooped down and kissed him on the cheek.

“What is your Christian name, Cranston?”

“David, Ma’am.”

“Well, David, I hope you’ve learned your lesson. You will hand this to Matron on your return to the infirmary. Mary will accompany you.”

Mary had watched David Cranston’s discipline with a trembling fascination. She knew the mistress could be strict but she had never imagined her as strict as that. She had been sent to the girls’ orphanage after her mother died of pneumonia when Mary was five. She could barely remember those early years with her mother and the little she could remember was coloured by an understandable longing for a lost Golden Age. The Orphanage to which she had been sent was firmly of the Age of Iron. The hairbrush across the bare bottom for the younger girls was the normal response to rule breaking, while those who had passed their eighth year could expect to be stripped and caned, or in exceptional circumstances, birched. This Mary accepted with little resentment, and indeed the order and routine of the Orphanage offered some reassurance in an uncertain world. In many ways, the Orphanage became like a mother to her. But in her imagination, she had another mother, a mother who was warm and accepting and a companion in all her trials and tribulations: the mother she had lost all those years ago. Some children cope with hardship by an outgoing positive attitude; but others, like Mary, retreat into an imaginative world, and are labelled dreamers and time wasters as a consequence.

When she had been selected to enter service with Mrs Fairclough, less than a month ago, she had been pleased. Perhaps, her new mistress would be the embodiment of the mother she dreamed of. But Mary’s dreaming was too sentimental and unrealistic. Mrs Fairclough was concerned for her in a practical way but treated her, naturally enough, as a domestic servant rather than a child to be cossetted. And when she fell short, the rod of correction was not spared. This Mary accepted, as she had accepted the Orphanage’s discipline, but her anxiety and disappointment made her often slow and unresponsive, and daydreaming simply brought additional punishment.

As the door to the apartment closed behind her, she took the boy’s hand and squeezed it affectionately. She felt grateful for the pleasure he had given her.

“Do you feel better now, David?”

He looked up at her nervously.

“Ye . . . yes, Ma’am.”

“You don’t have to call me ‘Ma’am’, David. My name’s Mary. You can call me Mary.”

She wondered whether she should sympathise with him, by telling him she too was subject to the rod, but she chose not to. Already she was imagining herself in a position of authority over him, like an older sister, turning him over her knee and spanking him as the Mistress had done.

They walked in a companionable silence and his small hand felt warm in hers. When they arrived at the infirmary, she opened the door and ushered him through, reminding him that he should immediately hand Mrs Fairclough’s note to Matron.

As he entered, Mrs Simmonds looked up, and smiled. Mrs Lavington had told her she had sent him to Mrs Fairclough to be spanked. And the boy certainly had the look of a boy who had been soundly punished.

“Stand over there, Cranston and I’ll ask Matron whether she will see you now.”

She knocked at the door and entered. The boy could hear a murmur of voices and after a moment Mrs Simmonds reappeared.

“You are to go in, Cranston.”

The boy stepped across the threshold, and Mrs Lavington, who had an eye for such things, noticed how his hands were nervously twisting at his sides. His whole demeanour was of a boy who had been spanked and who was uncertain whether his ordeal was entirely over.

“Is that a note I see in your hand, Cranston? Then I had better have it. I assume it’s from Mrs Fairclough.”

She took the envelope and slitting it open with a small ivory letter opener, drew out the folded sheet and read it. She looked up.

“And did Mrs Fairclough discuss any of this with you, Cranston?”

“N . . . no, Matron.”

“But she spanked you and then gave you something to make you sick. Is that right?”

He bit his lip.

“Ye . . . yes, Matron.”

“So, you have learned your lesson?”

“Yes, Matron.”

“To eat what is put in front of you and not to make up silly excuses for refusing it.”

“Yes, Matron.”

She walked across to her desk and picked up a hairbrush.

“Are you sure about that, Cranston. Or do you need a further spanking to drive the lesson home?”

“Please, no, Matron. I won’t do it again. I promise. Please I won’t.”

She smacked the back of the brush across her palm. And let him inwardly writhe for a moment.

“Very well then. You may return to your class. I’ll discuss with Mrs Fairclough whether any further measures are called for.”

She sat at her desk and reread Diana’s note. Then, after a minute’s thought, selected a sheet of notepaper, and unscrewed the top of her fountain pen.

Dear Diana,

He is an engaging child, isn’t he? Did you notice his almost violet eyes? But there is a spirit of recalcitrance there that needs to be broken. His refusal of food was borne of obstinacy, and his excuse of sickness a mere fabrication to get his own way. I am pleased you spanked him soundly, and I trust the marks will still be visible at bedtime. And I have to say that your recourse to Ipecac was more than justified. What an imaginative way to teach that dissembling and falsehood have consequences. And then to make him eat his own vomit! A harsh lesson in the need to be grateful for what is set before him and a warning that food is not to be wasted.

Now your suggestion that you should adopt the boy into your household. I assume he would continue to attend school in the Orphanage, just as my three do. But for him to receive additionally that searching, discipline that can only be provided in a loving home would be of inestimable benefit. And he is of an age when the twig is green and can still be readily bent. It also occurs to me that Mary might well be able to provide some supervision of the boy and help him with homework, even get him ready for bed before prayers with either you or James. Altogether I applaud it as an excellent idea.

With the best of wishes, and I am glad I sent Cranston to you! Cordelia

She slipped the note into an envelope and went into the infirmary, and asked Susannah to take it along to Mrs Fairclough. Then, looking at the clock, she returned to her office, and settled down to some work at her desk. At three o’clock she would be accompanying Clough and Graham to the Principal.

Chapter 39


At ten to three, Mrs Lavington sent for Clough and Graham.

“Do you know why I have sent for you, Clough?”

The boy was pale and nervous.

“N . . . no, Matron.”

“Or you, Graham?”

“No, Matron.”

“Well, you’ll be pleased to learn you are to be honoured with an audience of the Principal. He is expecting you at three o’clock. And I’m to accompany you.”

She shepherded the boys out of the infirmary and along the corridor until they came to the door of Mr Fairclough’s office. She knocked.

“Enter.”

“Good afternoon, Sir. Clough and Graham, as you requested.”

Mr Fairclough looked up.

“Thank you, Matron. You two boys, stand over there.”

He looked at Mrs Lavington.

“Just remind me, Matron, how these boys have offended.”

“Both have been caught masturbating, not only alone but together.”

“And where did this take place?”

“In Clough’s bed, Sir. After lights out.”

“And what about the other boys in the dormitory? Did they know what was afoot?”

“I am sure they did, Sir. And the whole dormitory has been punished. Each boy received twelve cuts of the cane, face down on his bed, with his pyjamas pulled down.”

Mr Fairclough nodded.

“And have Clough and Graham been punished?”

“Yes, Sir.

“Thoroughly, I hope.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“And how exactly were they punished?”

“Each boy had the hand strapped with which he masturbated his companion. Twenty strokes with a heavy tawse. Then, each received a double dose of the cane when I punished the dormitory.”

“That would be two dozen strokes, would it, Matron?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Mr Fairclough nodded.

“And that is all?”

“No, Sir. Immediately after the caning, each was secured by his wrists to his bedstead and had a chilli preparation smeared on his genitals. They spent the night in considerable discomfort.”

Mr Fairclough smiled.

“Considerable discomfort, Matron? I trust that is an example of the English proclivity for litotes. In plain language, and without resorting to any figure of speech, might we say tormenting agony.”

“That would certainly be the more straightforward way of putting it, Sir. By the morning they had moved their beds in their fruitless attempts to escape the torment.”

Mr Fairclough looked across at the two boys pale and anxious as they listened to this account of their recent suffering. He frowned.

“And just as there was no escape from that bed, so in this Orphanage there’s no escape from a boy’s sins being discovered. And punished.”

He breathed in deeply.

“But I suppose you think the disgusting sin of your coupling in bed together has been punished enough.”

He stepped from behind his desk and tapped Clough under the chin.

“Is that what you think, boy? That you have been punished enough?”

The boy was speechless with fear. Mrs Lavington spoke quietly but with an edge to her voice.

“Answer the Principal, Clough.”

“P . . . please Sir. . . Y . . . ye . . . yes, Sir”

His voice tailed off hopelessly.

“And you, Graham? Have you been punished enough? Enough never to climb into bed with another boy again. Enough never to touch and abuse yourself again? Well?”

“Ye . . . Yes, Sir.”

Mr Fairclough returned to his desk and picked up a pencil, rolling it between finger and thumb.

“Good. I am pleased to hear it. An important lesson has been learned.”

He put down the pencil and stood up smiling: the hearts of both boys lifted at the prospect of dismissal

“And I am confident, too, that the boys in your dormitory who saw you punished will have learned a lesson, too, and in future will take great care to stay in their own beds.”

He paused.

“But what about the boys beyond your dormitory? What have they learned? What steps can we take to alert them to the need to keep themselves pure and chaste.”

He looked at the two boys.

“So, what would you suggest? Have you any ideas, Clough? Or you Graham?”

They swallowed and had difficulty speaking.

“N . . . no . . . Sir.”

He pointed to a pail that stood in the corner of his study.

“Graham, bring me one of the rods steeping in a pail in the adjacent room.

“Sir?”

The adjacent room, boy. The room next to this one with the door open. And don’t let it drip on the floor. Give it a shake over the bucket.”

He held out the implement of torture and the Principal took it from him and gave it a swish through the air.

“And do you know what this is, boy?”

He nodded.

“Ye . . . yes, Sir.”

“So, what is it?”

“A . . . a birch rod, Sir.”

“Yes. A birch rod. And do you know what a birch rod is used for?”

The boy was biting his lip, flushed and breathless.

“Ye . . . yes, Sir.”

“And what is it used for?”

“For . . . for punishing boys . . . Sir.”

“And have you ever been punished with a birch rod, Clough?”

“N . . . no, Sir.”

Mr Fairclough thrust out the rod.

“Feel the twigs, Clough.”

The boy reached out and ran his hand along the tracery of sharp twigs.

“Tough, prickly twigs, aren’t they, boy? Imagine those being swished across your bottom.”

He smiled.

“But no need to imagine for long. Next Sunday both of you will be flogged before the whole orphanage. As I said, we need to alert other boys to what’s in store for them if caught wriggling around in bed with another boy. Words are not enough. They need to see with their own eyes, the consequences of such sin. To see you hoisted and birched until you’re too hoarse to continue your screams for mercy. To see you carried out, shivering and whimpering and covered in bloody smarting weals.”

He paused, observing their pale faces and the nervous twitching of their fingers.

“So, next Sunday after lunch, you will both be flogged before the whole orphanage. And you will eat nothing that day until after your ordeal. Have you anything to say?”

Both shook their heads.

“Good. Have you anything to add, Matron?

“Yes, Sir. I suggest that until Sunday both boys wear a placard around their necks detailing their sin and announcing their impending punishment.”

“An excellent idea, Matron. May I leave you to arrange that?”

“Certainly, Sir.”

On their return to the Infirmary, Mrs Lavington dismissed the boys and told them to return before lessons the following morning. When they had gone, she sat at her desk. Edward Crawley had an acknowledged gift for drawing and lettering. She smiled. She would ask him to prepare the placards. The affront to his liberal principles would be most satisfying. He would hate to be associated in such a way with the boys’ public humiliation. She reached for a sheet of notepaper.



Dear Edward,

Two boys, Clough and Graham, were caught in bed indulging in mutual masturbation. They are to be flogged publicly next Sunday at two o’clock after luncheon. The Principal has also agreed that until then both boys should wear a placard around their necks proclaiming their sin and the punishment they are shortly to suffer. Knowing your artistic skill and your talent for lettering, I wonder if it would be possible for you to make the two placards that are required. That is also the Principal’s wish.

The eyelets through which the cord is to be threaded will need to be reinforced to ensure they are strong enough to last the week, as apart from in bed, they will be worn continuously. I would suggest the placards are on very stiff card and measure eight inches by six inches with large and bold lettering that is easily read. The text is set out below.

With much gratitude, and I would be grateful for the placards to be ready to hang on the boys’ necks first thing tomorrow morning before the commencement of lessons. C Lavington, Matron



She smiled as she inserted the letter into an envelope and sealed it down. Then, she went into the infirmary.

“Anne, will you take this immediately to Edward Crawley. There’s a little task I want him to undertake before tomorrow morning.”

“Certainly, Matron.”

Mrs Lavington looked at the clock. It was time to collect the children from the main hall and accompany them home. They were standing in a little group and all holding envelopes. She held out her hand, and took them.

“Thank you. You can each read me your reports at the end of tea.”

They made their way back to the house and there was a noticeable spring in Mrs Lavington’s step. She inserted the key and opened the door, and the children ran in. But before they could begin preparations for tea, Mrs Lavington placed her hand on William’s shoulder.

“But before tea there’s something that needs to be done, isn’t there, William?”

William had had already had a tearful day and his eyes welled up at the prospect of further punishment.

“P . . . please, Mother. I’m sorry. Please.”

Mrs Lavington smiled and shook her head.

“I am sure you are, William. But a boy who’s been neglectful of his duty and lied about it must expect to be punished. I don’t like punishing you anymore than you like being punished, but unfortunately, it’s necessary, and has to be done.”

She pointed to the door leading into the hall.

“Fetch the cane, and the hairbrush.”

He walked, slowly and disconsolately, to do her bidding.

“Put them on the table. And you children sit at the other end, and not a word from either of you. Why are you crying, William?”

“Please, I’ve already been caned by M . . . Mr Greaves.”

“Have you William. Well, I look forward to reading his report and discovering why that was. I trust he caned you on your bare bottom.

The boy reddened and looked down.

“Yes, Mother.”

“Good. That’s how all boys should be caned.”

Her voice softened.

“But are you telling me that because Mr Greaves has caned you, there’s no need for me to do so? Is that what you are saying?”

“Please, Mother. It really hurt.”

“Well, I hope it did. It would be a pointless exercise if it didn’t.”

She ruffled his hair affectionately.

“But perhaps you’re thinking that another caning so soon afterwards would be cruel and unkind. Is that it?”

He nodded and his reply was almost a whisper.

“Yes, Mother.”

“I see. Turn round and slip off your braces.”

She pulled down his trousers and underpants, and then, rucking his shirt and vest over his shoulders, stood back and examined his bottom.

“And why did Mr Greaves cane you?”

“He said it was for not listening.”

“What do you mean, ‘he said it was for not listening’? Were you listening?”

“Not very well, Mother.”

“You mean not at all. So, when he asked you to repeat what he had said, you couldn’t. Is that right?”

He looked down, biting his lip.

“Yes, Mother.”

“So, he caned you for inattention.”

He nodded.

“Yes, Mother.”

“And how many strokes did Mr Greaves give you. Your bottom is barely marked.”

“S . . . six . . . Mother.”

“Well, I’m surprised. They must have been little more than taps.”

“Please, Mother. No. They really hurt.”

“Nonsense, William. If they’d hurt that much, I’d be able to see the marks more clearly and count them for myself. I see no reason to postpone your punishment. Indeed, I am inclined to give you extra for making such an unnecessary fuss. Turn around.”

He shuffled around, acutely aware of the presence of his brother and sister. For however often a boy is spanked, the shame of exposure never lessens. She pointed to the arm of the chair.”

He backed away, sobbing and choking.

“No, I won’t, I won’t.”

And he threw himself on the floor, kicking and writhing. Mrs Lavington stood and waited. She knew that after this initial outburst, a realisation of the enormity of what he had done would slowly dawn, and a growing fear of the consequences render him tractable. After a while he lay still, sobbing quietly.

Bending down, she pulled off his breeches and the underpants that were around his ankles.

“Now get up. And stand with your hands behind your back. I’m shocked at your behaviour. It’s no better than a two-year old.”

She shook her head.

“But you’re not a two-year-old, are you William? You’re a seven-year-old behaving like a two-year old. You will go without your tea and stand there in silence until I decide how to deal with you.”

“P . . . please, I . . . “

“Hold your tongue. I said silence and I meant silence.”

William knew that her command to hold his tongue was to be taken literally. He extended the soft pink member and gently biting on it, reached up and grasped it between finger and thumb. During his tantrum on the floor, the shirt that had been secured over his back had come loose. His mother repositioned it, hooking it over his shoulders. He cast his eyes down refusing to look at his two siblings as they gazed at his shameful exposure, with his small immature genitals prominent below a soft little stomach.

He watched as his sister and brother scurried around to prepare the tea. After grace had been said, the cheese on toast his mother had made was eaten gratefully. The smell would normally have made William hungry but the punishment hanging over him had taken his appetite away.

Before the table was cleared, Mrs Lavington handed to Elizabeth and Samuel the notes from their form teachers.

“What does yours say, Elizabeth. Read it please.”

“It says: Elizabeth has done well today and made a real effort with her long division. Well done!”

“And yours, Samuel?”

He opened the envelope nervously. He looked up.

“Read it please.

“I have nothing ad . . . adv . . .”

“Let me see. The word is adverse, Samuel. Start again.”

“I have nothing ad . . . adverse to report about Samuel’s work or conduct.”

Mrs Lavington smiled at the terseness of the report. Clearly, Edward Crawley resented her checking on Samuel’s behaviour in class, particularly as his report might be instrumental in the boy’s receiving a whipping that he could only deprecate. Still, she trusted his honesty and believed that at least today Samuel had done nothing that merited chastisement.

“Well done both of you. I am very pleased.”

She then opened the letter from Mr Greaves and read it frowning. She looked at William, standing is disgrace, exposed and holding his tongue.

“Let me read this to you, William.

I am aware that William has been in trouble at home and is to be whipped on his return from school. However, you made clear that I am still to expect the usual standard of work and behaviour from him as on any other day. I am, therefore, sorry to have to report that William’s attention was poor for most of the day and that I had recourse to the cane during the afternoon. As you asked, the punishment was given with his trousers and pants down, and he received six strokes across his bare bottom in front of the class. I hope this meets with your approval - and brings about an improvement in the boy’s concentration. H Greaves ”

She looked up.

“I’d be surprised, William, if the caning you received from Mr Greaves would bring about an improvement in any boy’s behaviour. However, when I’ve finished with you, you’ll have more than a maiden’s blush on your bottom, that’s for sure.”

When all the chores had been competed, and Elizabeth and Samuel were seated at the table to do their homework, Mrs Lavington turned to William. She felt her pulse quickening at the prospect of disciplining him so thoroughly. There would be much to write up in his punishment book before she retired to her bedroom later that evening.

“You may release your tongue. But you will only speak when spoken to. Is that understood?

“Ye . . . yes, Mother.”

“I have decided that as you have chosen to act like a two-year-old, for the next week you will go to the lavatory like a two-year-old and not a seven-year-old. In the house, you will use a chamber pot either here or in the kitchen; and in school, if you have to relieve yourself, whether to pass water or for a bowel movement, you will use a pot in your classroom. I will see one is brought from the infirmary and I will speak to Mr Greaves first thing tomorrow morning. Do you understand?”

There was a look of horror on his face.

“No. Please, Mother.

“William, I asked whether you understood.”

He hung his head.

“Yes, Mother.”

She nodded.

“That’s better. Now when we came in from school, I asked you to fetch both the cane and the hairbrush. Why was that? Do you remember?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“So, tell me.”

“Because . . . because, I didn’t read my Bible story book.”

“Yes, and for that I said you would be spanked with the hairbrush on the backs of our thighs. Do you remember how many strokes?”

“I think it was ten . . . Mother.”

“Yes, I did say ten. But in view of your tantrum, I’m going to increase that to twelve, six across the back of each thigh. In neglecting your Bible reading, you failed to learn that God made the world in six days. So that should help you to remember. One stroke for each of the six days of creation.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“And why are you being spanked on the thighs, William?”

“Be . . . because I’m to be caned on my bottom.”

“Yes. And what is that for?”

“For . . . for lying, Mother. For saying I’d read my Bible book when I hadn’t.”

“Good boy for remembering.”

She pointed to the armchair.

“Kneel in the armchair facing the back.”

She took an upright chair from the table and placed facing on to the seat. Then, picking up the hairbrush from the end of the table, she seated herself. For a moment she looked at her youngest son, completely bare apart from the shirt and vest rucked up over his shoulders. Then, reaching forward she sharply pulled him by the legs so that he slipped face down on to the seat of the chair. Another sharp pull, and his legs were straddling her lap, with his feet positioned either side of her waist. His smooth pale thighs were bare and exposed for her attention.

“So, first those neglected Bible readings, William. And this is going to be an opportunity for you to learn the order of the days of creation that you failed to learn through your disobedience. I will be spanking your left thigh. There will be a stroke for each day of creation and after each stroke I will tell you what God created on that day. And you had better remember, because afterwards I will spank the back of your right thigh and after each stroke it will be your telling me what God created. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mother. Please, please . . .”

She paused. She could feel his small body tensing. She raised the brush and brought it sweeping down with a final twist of her wrist. He gave a piercing scream. Mrs Lavington waited.

“On the first day, God made light and darkness.” What did he make on the first day, William?”

And through choking sobs he told her.

“Light and d . . . darkness, Mother.”

Again, the brush descended. There was another agonised scream, followed by fervent pleading.

“Please, no. Please.”

Again, she waited.

“On the second day, God made the sky. What did he make on the second day, William? And stop twisting around.”

“The sky. He made the sky. Please, Mother. No more.”

But the brush was raised again and brought smacking down on the boy’s tender thigh flesh. The scream was a desperate ululation of agony.

“And on the third day, God made the sea and the dry land. Repeat, William. What did he make on the third day?”

“Please, Mother, the sea and . . and . . . “

“The dry land, William. On the third say God made the sea and the dry land.”

And after he had repeated it, she continued, slowly working her way down his left thigh, until six smarting oval marks had been embossed on the soft flesh. William was sobbing, deep gulping sobs and heaving his small body to and fro in his desperation.

His mother waited. Several minutes passed before he had quietened and was crying quietly.

“And then there was a seventh day, wasn’t there, William? And what happened on the seventh day?”

“P . . . please, Mother . . . I . . . I . . . can’t remember.”

“On the seventh day, William, God saw that everything was good and he rested from all his labours.”

She paused.

“But as yet, William, I cannot say that all is good. You are a disobedient and untruthful boy in need of further whipping. And my labour to instil obedience and truthfulness is not yet complete. Is it?”

She laid the hairbrush lightly against the back of his other thigh. It was as yet pale and unmarked. He flinched.

“So let us see if you can remember what God did on those six days of creation, shall we?”



Chapter 40


Mrs Lavington raised the brush and brought it smacking down on the boy’s slack thigh flesh. He shrieked and bucked, but managed not to reach back.

“And that, William, marks the first day of creation. So, what did God do on the first day?”

She waited patiently.

“He . . . he made . . . the light and dark . . . please Mother.”

“Very good, William. That is correct. Light and the darkness. But what about the second day?”

The brush descended with a dull, smarting smack. Again, Mrs Lavington waited.

“And on the second day of creation, what did God make?”

He was sobbing, desperate for the torment to end.

“No, Mother. Please, no.”

“I’m waiting for an answer, William. No and please are not answers. I repeat. What did God make on the second day of creation?”

His whole body was racked with fearful hesitation. He knew he had to answer, but knew also that an incorrect answer would only prolong the torture.

“W . . . was it . . . the . . . the sky . . . Mother?”

She was surprised at his remembering so well.

“Yes, William. Well remembered. On the second day, God made the sky.”

Then the hard ebony back smacked down for a third time.

“And on the third day, William? What did God make on the third day?”

She waited for the smarting agony to abate, and then repeated the question.

“Please, Mother, please . . .”

“Just answer the question, William.”

“Please, was it . . . was it the . . . the sun and the moon.”

“No William it was not the sun and the moon.”

She raised the brush and brought it down with a sharp twist of her wrist across his thigh. He screamed and writhed, and began to kick with his legs.

“Stop that this instant, William..”

Slowly he quietened and lay sobbing, rocking his body gently, comforting himself.

“On the third day of creation, God made the sea and the dry land. You will repeat that and then I will then spank it in so you remember it. Is that understood?

“Ye . . . yes, Mother. Yes.”

“On the third day, God made the sea and the dry land. Repeat it.”

And so she continued. And the fourth, fifth and six days of creation also eluded him. And by the end the backs of his thighs were a sore and inflamed crimson and he was sobbing uncontrollably. She continued to sit with the boy limp and stretched out before her, heaving and sobbing. And she let him cry for a while after such an ordeal.

“You can stop grizzling now, William. I expect tears after a thorough spanking but enough is enough.”

She waited while he struggled to compose himself.

“Well, I hope you now know the days of creation and what the Lord God created on each day. And I suggest that tonight you re-read your Bible story book and make sure they are well and truly sink in. One of these days at breakfast I will test you again, and I shall not expect mistakes. So, take note of that.”

She gave him a sharp smack on the bottom.

“You may get up, William. And go and face the wall by the bookcase. He stood there quietly whimpering, knowing that his punishment was far from over.

She turned to her other two children.

“And how is your homework going, Samuel? What is your assignment this afternoon?”

“Please, Mother, Mr Crawley set us some English problems.”

“English problems? And what are English problems? Show me.”

She looked in his exercise book.

“I see. Words that sound the same but are different. They are called homonyms. And you are to show how each is used. She scanned her eye down the list of homonyms. A very good lesson.”

She frowned.

“But you have written nothing. Absolutely nothing. While I have been disciplining your brother, you have simply idled your time away. Why is that?”

“I . . . I’m not sure what I have to do . . . Mother.”

His voice tailed away.

“Surely, Mr Crawley explained what you had to do. Weren’t you listening?”

“Yes, Mother. Yes, I was.”

“Then why are you unsure what to do?”

“I didn’t understand.”

His mother shook her head despairingly.

“I’ve told you before, Samuel, if you don’t understand you must say so and ask for a further explanation.”

“I . . . I’m sorry, Mother.

“So, what are we to do?”

“P . . . please, Mother, can you show me?”

She nodded.

“What Mr Crawley is expecting is that for each pair of words you make up two sentences that show what each word means. Do you understand?”

“I . . . I think so, Mother.”

“Take this pair of words bare and bear. She wrote them down. They sound the same but each means something different. One is an animal. Which one is that?”

He pointed to the right word.

“Good. So, let us make a short sentence that shows you know a bear is an animal. Write this down in your book. I saw a bear in the zoo.”

Slowly and carefully, he wrote, as his mother watched. She felt a rush of love for him as he struggled to write neatly.

“And because you have mentioned a zoo that shows you know it is an animal.”

She paused.

“And now what about the other bare? What does that mean?”

“Does it mean not having anything on.”

“Yes. Something is bare if it is completely uncovered.”

She lifted her head questioningly.

“And what is often bare in this house, Samuel? When it needs to be punished.”

He looked down.

“Our bottoms . . . Mother.”

“Yes. And all too frequently, I’m afraid. So, let us make a little sentence to show you know the meaning of bare.”

She thought for a moment.

“Write this: all boys should be caned on the bare bottom.”

Slowly and laboriously, he inscribed it in his exercise book.

“Good neatly written and correctly spelled. And that clearly shows you know the meaning of bare.”

She smiled.

“And it will also serve as a little reminder to Mr Crawley of how boys ought to be caned. Now get on with the rest of the exercise. But remember it’s not just a question of making up a sentence with the word in it. The sentence has to show you know the meaning of the word.”

He looked puzzled.

“If you had just said I saw a bear that wouldn’t show that you knew what a bear was, would it? For all anyone knew, you might think a bear was a sort of hat. But by putting in the word zoo you show that you know it is an animal. And the same with the other bare. By using it together with bottom, you show that you know what it means. Now that’s enough explanation. I want to see the whole lot finished within the hour.”

She picked up the cane from the table, and flexed it between her hands, enjoying the display of its enormous flexibility. She turned to her younger son.

“Turn around, William. Before you settle down to homework, there is something that needs to be done. And what is that?”

“I . . . I have to be caned.”

“Yes, you have to be caned. And why is that?”

“B . . . because I lied.”

“And why did you lie?”

He hung his head.

“Look at me, William. A boy doesn’t look away when his mother is speaking to him. That is rudeness; and you’ll receive an additional six strokes.”

“No, please Mother. No.”

“And a further six for arguing. I repeat, why did you lie?”

“Be . . because I . . . didn’t want to be punished . . . please Mother.”

“I am sure you didn’t want to be punished, William, but you need to understand that each time you sin you need to be punished in order to be forgiven.”

She paused.

“You do want to be forgiven, don’t you, William?”

He hung his head.

Yes, Mother. Yes. Please forgive me. I’m sorry.”

“You lied to me twice, William. First about having read your Bible when you hadn’t. And then denying that you were lying, when you were. That is why you are receiving a double caning.”

She pointed to the armchair.

“Over the arm.”

He went slowly to the place of execution, breathless with the blood pounding in his ears. She had wondered, in view of the severity of the impending chastisement, whether he should be secured over the chaise longue. But decided to make him submit to his discipline by an act of will, knowing that if he refused, she could then secure him and punish him further, or ask Elizabeth to hold him. The girl would like that she thought.

“Right, William, over the arm of the chair, please.. And tuck your hands down between the chair and the seat. A dozen strokes for each of your lies makes a total of twenty-four strokes and a further twelve strokes for rudeness and arguing means thirty-six strokes.”

She gave a grim smile and flexed the cane again, and stepped back. His buttocks were faintly marked from his recent caning in class, yet pale compared to the deep, red soreness of his welted thighs. She waited, letting him twist in nervous anticipation of the punishment to come. Elizabeth was sitting motionless, biting her lip, with an intense rapt expression on a flushed face. Her mother smiled. She remembered how she had similarly watched her own mother punishing her brothers, and how she had experienced a similar breathless excitement.