By Governess
liviaarbuthnot1@gmail.com
Copyright 2024 by Governess, all rights reserved
* * * * *Chapter 59
“You don’t seem to be very enthusiastic about this,
Sarah. But loving somebody often requires self-sacrifice. It’s not just
a nice warm, cosy feeling. It’s meeting other people’s needs whatever
they are.”
She smiled.
“As I will shortly be
meeting your very real need for discipline. And William’s need at the
moment is to have his bottom wiped. The lavatory paper if on the table.”
William had been listening to this exchange with increasing horror.
“And I want full co-operation, please, William. Otherwise, you will be
punished like any two-year-old, over my knee with the back of a
hairbrush. And I suggest, Sarah, that you sit down on the chair and
have William bend over your lap. That’s right. And now crunch up that
lavatory paper to make it nice and soft. And worm it right into his
bottom hole. Several times. We want it nice and clean. And throw the
bits into the chamber pot. And now give the whole opening a good wipe.
And when you’ve done that return to your desk. Now off the pot,
William.”
He was visibly distressed and quietly crying as he stood up.
“Pull up your trousers and pants, William, and take the pot out to the
main lavatory in the corridor and empty it. And then thoroughly rinse
it out in the sink and empty the spill down the lavatgory. Then, bring
it back here, and place it where it belongs in the corner for next
time. And then resume your seat.”
When he was seated, she turned to Sarah.
“Come out here Sarah Higgins.”
Slowly, and reluctantly the girl rose and came nervously to the front.
“You do know the consequences of passing notes in class, Sarah?”
“Yes, Mrs Fairclough”
“So, what is it?”
“T . . . to have my hands strapped.”
Mrs Fairclough frowned.
“You’ve been punished before for misbehaving in class, haven’t you, Sarah?”
She hung her head. Her reply was flat, lifeless and despondent.
“Yes, Mrs Fairclough”
“And how were you punished?”
“Three strokes on each hand, please, Mrs Fairclough.”
“But that was for talking, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Mrs Fairclough”
“Well. If you had just been talking, I would have doubled the
punishment. But you weren’t just talking, were you, Sarah? You were
writing a note and passing it around. That is much more serious.
Normally, I would have given six strokes on each hand for that, but as
you didn’t learn from your earlier punishment to behave in class, you
will get twelve strokes on each hand.”
Sarah went pale, and stuttered an apology begging not to be dealt with so severely. Bu to no avail.
“No argument, Sarah. You know the procedure. Out with your hands and
place the right over the left. After three strokes you will change
hands. And you will continue to do that until twenty-four strokes have
been given. And I don’t expect to have to remind you.”
Sarah
was standing with her right side to the class, and her face could be
seen in profile. Mrs Fairclough went and retrieved the tawse from her
desk. It was a two tailed medium weight belt that had seen much use and
was supple and well broken in. She draped it over her right shoulder
and studied the girl. Sarah Higgins was in many ways an asset to the
class, being friendly and helpful. But she also had a wilful spirit
that needed to be kept in check. and Diana Fairclough was more than
ready to meet that need.
“Are you ready to receive the first stroke, Sarah?”
The girl’s reply was a strangled whisper.
“Yes, Mrs Fairclough.”
Diana had first encountered the tawse when she moved to Northumberland
to teach, first in Berwick and sometimes over the border in Scotland.
Her own childhood had been dominated by the hairbrush and the cane,
with the occasional threat of the birch, and all these, whether
administered by her mother or her governess, were to the bare buttocks.
However, all teachers in both of the schools where she had taught had
administered the belt to a child’s outstretched hand. And that had been
her practice she had adopted.
However, she knew that
Cordelia had acquired a tawse for punishing Samuel and that both he and
Elizabeth were punished not on their hands but on the bottom. Not so
long ago she had questioned Cordelia about that: why not the hands like
everyone else? Cordelia had said that she had never spanked or whipped
a child other than on the bare bottom and that it just seemed natural
to administer the tawse in the same way. She had also added that
although the martinet was not exactly like the tawse, nevertheless it
was of a similar length and needed to be administered with a similar
action. As her mother had applied the martinet to a bare bottom, she
had naturally followed her practice, and did the same with the tawse
when she acquired one.
She looked at the girl before her with narrowed eyes,
“Drop your hands, Sarah. And return to your seat.”
The look of relief on the girl’s face was all too evident. And as she
made her way back to her desk, Mrs Fairclough detected a touch of
arrogance in her gait as if she had somehow received what was a just
and deserved reprieve, proving her mistress wrong.
“Elizabeth come out to the front of the class, please.”
Elizabeth rose, her heart fluttering, walked reluctantly to the front.
“No need to be alarmed, Elizabeth. I just want to ask you a few questions and I want the class to hear your replies.”
She smiled reassuringly.
“First, I believe your mother has a tawse like this at home. Is that right?”
“Yes, Mrs Fairclough.”
“And who is punished with it?”
“Well, Mrs Fairclough, it was brought for my brother, Samuel?”
“And are you ever punished with it, too, Elizabeth?”
The girl reddened and looked down for a moment.
“Yes, Mrs Fairclough. Sometimes.”
“And when you or your brother are punished, how is it used?”
“I . . . I’m not sure I understand., Mrs Fairclough.”
“Well, here the girls have it strapped across their hands. Is that how your mother uses it?”
Elizabeth frowned, her face now quite pink.
“N . . . no, Mrs Fairclough.”
“So how is it used?”
“My mother punishes us on the bottom.”
“Punishes both you and your brother on the bottom with the tawse?”
“Yes, Mrs Fairclough.”
“And is that on the bare bottom?”
The girl’s cheeks were now more than pink. She looked down, covered in
confusion at such questioning before her classmates. She replied in low
voice.
“Yes, Mrs Fairclough.”
“Thank you, Elizabeth. You may resume your seat.”
The mistress looked around the class as if embracing them all in her concern.
“So, I have decided that any girl that needs the tawse will in future
receive it on her bare bottom. Hands are small sensitive bony
structures and are needed to hold a pencil or pen so you can do your
lessons. Rendering them sore and numb is unhelpful and hinders
learning, as I am sure you have all found from time to time.”
She looked at Sarah Higgins and beckoned to her.
“Come out here, please, Sarah.The girl felt the blood drain from her
face. For a moment she had believed her sentence had been remitted. Now
it seemed the punishment was still to be given but in a more shaming
and humiliating way. She felt her stomach begin to churn and tighten.
At the front of the class facing the left wall was a school desk. It
was like all the others with a sloping top and a bench seat. It was
there for those occasions when Mrs Fairclough chose to isolate a girl
from the rest of the class and seat her separately. Now the desk would
be used for another purpose. She pointed to it.
“Stand in front of the desk, Sarah. And lift your skirt”
Mrs Fairclough then took a cushion from the chair where she sat when
not actively teaching and placed it on the desk’s wooden bench.
“Kneel on it, please, Sarah, and keep a straight back.”
She lifted girl’s skirt and draped it over her shoulders, and then
peeled down the girl’s knickers and rucked up her undervest.
“Bend forward over the desk with your stomach hard against the top.”
Her bottom was pale and unmarked. She gasped as her mistress with a
hand in the small of her back gently pushed her forward into position.
Diana ran the tawse through her hand as she studied the girl’s bottom.
How had she wasted all those years strapping hands when skirts could so
easily be lifted, knickers taken down and a bottom such as this exposed
for the rod.
Diana, had three brothers, and three sons, and
all had been flogged on their bare buttocks. Her experience of girls,
however, was, limited to the classroom; and there, the tradition had
been to take the tawse to a girl’s outstretched hand. That was
certainly painful. And Diana found great satisfaction in making a girl
stand facing her, and witness the strap being raised and brought
heavily down to smack across her outstretched palm. But now it suddenly
seemed so inappropriate, and so uninviting a target. And, as she knew
from punishing her own boys, the buttocks could absorb an enormous
amount of punishment. Flogging a girl’s bottom might make sitting
uncomfortable and concentration difficult, but that would have to be
endured, and overcome, if necessary, by further punishment. But that
was preferable to leaving a hand beaten numb, and making a pen or
pencil impossible to hold.
She glanced around the classroom.
Some faces were rather pale; some flushed, possibly from excitement at
the prospect of seeing a bare bottom about to be soundly and publicly
whipped. And added to that was the knowledge that where Sarah was
today, they might well be tomorrow. She lifted the tawse, flicked it up
and backward and then, with a twist of the wrist, brought it swinging
heavily down across girl’s soft sensitive flesh of the girl’s bottom.
Shel gave a piercing scream and tried to pull herself upright, but Mrs
Fairclough placed her hand firmly in the small of her back and pressed
her down over the desktop.
“If you are resisting, Sarah, I am going to have to tie you down.”
She stepped across to her own desk and lifting it, took out a soft
leather strap. She ran this under the desk and over the girl’s body
securing it in the middle of her back. Thereafter, there was not a
sound in the classroom, other than the ticking of the clock and the
slow relentless dull smack of leather on bare flesh, accompanied by
piercing screams and sobbing gulps of the girl. Elizabeth sitting at
the back of the class watched intently. The sight of a child being
spanked or whipped was far from unfamiliar, but as the only girl in her
family, she rarely, if ever, saw another of her own sex dealt with in
this way. Sarah’s compact round bottom could have been her own, and she
realised that unless she took great care the next girl stretched across
that desk might indeed be her. It was bad enough to be exposed and
punished before her brothers with whom she had grown up, but to be
shamed before her classmates was quite another matter.
The
evident relish with which Mrs Fairclough laid on each stroke, and her
profound satisfaction when each raised a thick inflamed weal made clear
to Elizabeth that she shared with her mother the same deep commitment
to physical punishment and the same relish in administering it. And as
Elizabeth watched the progression of Sarah’s flogging her pulse
quickened and she experienced a throbbing excitement that made her
almost giddy. She wondered how friendly Mrs Fairclough and her mother
were.
. . . . . . . . . .
Meanwhile, Cordelia was
sitting in her office, wondering how William was faring in his new
class and whether he had yet had to sit on the pot in front of a room
full of girls. A good dose of humiliation for a boy was in her eyes
entirely appropriate. It should bring him to his senses and to an
understanding of just how disgraceful and unacceptable his two-year-old
behaviour had been. And she had to admit that there was a real
satisfaction and pleasure for her in such shaming. It was not
vindictive, but a recognition, that such discipline was needed to rein
a boy in, and to help build that inner strength that would enable him
to overcome the many temptations facing him. She could imagine
Elizabeth at the back on the class watching intently. Already she had a
keen interest in her brothers’ punishment and seemed to have no qualms
about the severity that from time to time was required.
In a
couple of days, Clough and Graham were to be flogged before the whole
orphanage and the Principal had invited her to administer the
punishment. She sat back in her chair, and gave a little frown. She had
enjoyed birching McCourt but when it came to providing severe
punishment for small boys, she really preferred the tawse. She loved
the suppleness of the split leather with its distinctive smell. And
there was something so satisfying in the way the tawse curled around
the buttocks and cut into the thighs, hugging and caressing the skin in
an agonising embrace. That was how she wished to flog Clough and
Graham, and wondered whether the Principal would agree. But first, she
would discuss the possibility with Diana after lunch. At the same time,
she would hear how William had fared in her class.
At one
o’clock, she slipped back to the house and made herself a sandwich. And
then. on her return to the infirmary, she wrote a brief note to Diana
asking whether she could call on her that afternoon, which she asked
Anna to deliver. Within the hour the reply came back welcoming her to
tea at three o’clock.