Miss Strang Chapter 57

Miss Strang Chapter 57
By Governess

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This story is intended for ADULTS ONLY. It contains explicit depictions of sexual activity involving minors. If you are not of a legal age in your locality to view such material or if such material does not appeal to you, do not read further, and do not save this story.
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Chapter 57

Miss Strang pulled a chair from the head of the table. Like all the chairs around the table it was mahogany, but was the only chair with arms. It was a chair we were never allowed to sit in. The arms were flat, although ribbed, and were strangely low for such a chair. And each was carved at the end into a lion's paw with very realistic looking claws. As a child they had rather frightened me. Miss Strang pulled the chair in front of her desk, and placed it sideways on. She pointed to a spot behind it.

"Stand here, John."

She ran her hand along the top rail of the chair. It was smooth and shiny, and rather low for such an imposing chair.

"Stretch out your right hand and place it above the back of the chair.  No, John.  Not resting on the back, above it.  Just above the rail.  Like this."

She demonstrated with her own hand.

Nervously, he extended his right hand, and waited. Miss Strang stepped over to her desk and selected the recently purchased, heavier tawse. She drew the thick leather tails through her hand appreciatively.

I sat at my desk with Kennedy's Latin Primer open in front of me, my head filled with the smoky haze of conjugations and declensions. I watched as John awaited the first stroke across his outstretched hand.

I held my breath. Making him position his hand just above the back of the chair seemed a particular cruelty. As the heavy tawse smacked across his soft little hand, it would be driven down sharply across the wooden rail, bruising his knuckles and causing him additional distress. Both his upper and lower lips were turned in and pressed tightly together. There was a frown of anxious concentration on his smooth pale brow.

Miss Strang could not be described as cruel. Nevertheless, she relished those little disciplinary touches that verged upon cruelty, even if they did not decisively cross the boundary into that realm. It was this unrestrained and imaginative approach to discipline that singled Miss Strang out. A thoughtless and unconcerned governess might regard punishment as a necessary duty, as the required response to misbehaviour. But for Miss Strang punishment was never that, never merely a duty nor something simply to be done to a child. It arose naturally out of her relationship with him. And that relationship was one of love and caring. When we were hurt or frightened, her concern was never expressed with words alone but with the warmth of physical embrace. She was never slow to place an arm around us, or comfort us.

And there was not the slightest doubt that she saw punishment as but another aspect of this caring. An expression of her love, meeting our need for a discipline that would shape and help us to become pleasing to others and to God. And as with a frightened or hurt child, so with a disobedient and defiant child. Words were not enough. In both cases, there was a need for a physical expression that touched and healed the child. A sick child prospered and responded to a hand on his fevered brow and to the administration of a cooling draught. The disobedient child, to physical restraint, and to a sound whipping upon bare flesh.

And as for the little refinements, such as tawsing a boy's hand above the back of a chair, these were equally an expression of her caring. These made the child aware that his punishment was not some sterile duty or routine, but a lively, creative means of correcting his fault and rendering him acceptable to her and to the Almighty.

I watched as the tawse was raised and then brought swinging down with a dull smack across the reluctantly offered palm. Such was the weight and impact of the stroke that his hand, as intended, was knocked sharply downwards and rapped across the hard wooden rail of the chair. He snatched his hand away with a cry and shook it. Then, quickly placed it under the comforting warmth of his left armpit.

Miss Strang watched him impassively.

"Put out your hand again, John. The same one, please."

He was trembling now, breathing in short gasping breaths. His pupils seemed to have enlarged so that his eyes appeared as dark pools on a starlit night. The tawse descended with another dull smack across his upturned palm. He screamed, drew back from the chair and flailing his arm sank to his knees, sobbing and beating his head against the floor in his desperation.

Miss Strang said nothing. She looked down at the boy whom her punishment had reduced to such an exigency of anguish. He was heaving now, sobbing unrestrainedly.

"This will simply not do, John.  You are a boy.  And from a boy I expect fortitude.  A boy has many hardships to face.  He must learn endurance."

She waited, smacking the tawse against the palm of her hand. waiting.

"Well, John. What have you to say?"

"P . . pl . . . please, Miss Strang . . . "

"Please is not a word I wish to hear.  It is a word that a boy of your age should be ashamed to use.  A word used by a weak, soft boy who lacks grit and determination.  You are  behaving like a five year old girl whose doll has been taken away."

She paused.

"You will take off all your clothes please."

She turned to me.

And while John is doing that, Oliver, I want you to go and fetch one of Livia's dresses from her room. Preferably a soft summer dress. And if you can find a doll in her cupboard, bring that, too."

I went, my pulse racing. I opened the wardrobe and searched with nervous fingers among the dresses hanging there. I found what I was looking for. A dress in blue velvet with small embroidered flowers upon it. I held it up and imagined John in it. I smiled. And put it over my arm. On the shelf above I had a number of dolls which, although I had outgrown them, I was reluctant to part with. Among them was an old floppy rag doll. I reached up and pulled it down.

When I returned to the schoolroom, John was removing his vest and placing it with his other clothes upon his desk. He stood completely naked.

"So Oliver, which of Livia's dresses have you selected?"

I held it up and she took it from me.

"Well, that may not be the dress I was imagining, but it is still eminently suitable. Very well chosen."

She beckoned to John. His face was hot and tear-stained. His hair damp and adhering to his brow. He was bare, fearful and ashamed. He had been offered the chance to be stalwart and staunch in adversity, but had chosen to be soft and effeminate. And at that moment, I despised him.

"Come here, John. Raise you arms."

She slipped the dress over him and let it fall. It came to just below his knees. He was now a small tearful boy dressed as a girl. I shivered, imagining the feel of the soft material sliding over his body. I gave a wriggle in my own boyish garments that felt harsh and constraining. I thought how I had felt when I had been cropped and dressed as a boy. There had been excitement as well as apprehension. Such as a traveller might feel when his ship casts off, and he watches a slowly receding shore. Or, as when arriving in a new and alien land, there is strangeness but also the thrill of the new and unknown. And yet, after a few days, the new smells and sights had begun to pall. There was now loneliness, a sense of displacement and a longing for home.

What was John feeling now in my soft, clinging dress with its flowers and long sleeves, and its pretty little collar and velvet bow. Being stripped in Mr Wilberforce's shop had been shocking and deeply shameful. And yet for a girl to dress as a boy was to assume a mantle of honour. A girl might be proud of being a tomboy, but no boy was ever proud of being a sissy. A boy had a status and a glorious but unknown future ahead of him, in which he would exercise authority and be respected and his word obeyed. But not so a girl. Her place was to serve and honour the men in her life and in return to receive, if fortunate, their protection and their gratitude. So for John to be dressed as a girl was to lower him in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. It was to rip from him the epaulettes of an officer and to reduce him to the ranks.

"Sit in the chair, John."

He looked small and vulnerable and rather foolish sitting there in his pretty velvet dress. She sat the rag doll beside him.

"Here is your dolly, John."

She turned to me.

"And what is dolly's name, Oliver?"

"Amanda, Miss Strang."

She nodded, and stepped across to her desk and took out a reel of document tape and a pair of scissors.

"Place your arms on the chair arms, please, John. No, palms upwards. Like this."

She adjusted his hands so that the fingers extended just beyond the end of the chair with his knuckles resting on the lions' claws.

"That is better."

She pulled a length of tape from the reel and cut it. Then twisted it several times around his right wrist and tied it firmly with a secure knot. She then restrained the left wrist in the same way.

He pulled at his captive hands and I could hear the tightly wound tape squeaking against the shiny mahogany.

Miss Strang ruffled his hair.

"Tell me, John, why are your sitting in a chair dressed as a girl with your hands tied to the arms?"

She waited. He bit his lip.  Tears were running down his cheeks.  He shook his head.  Miss Strang took a small handkerchief from her pocket and wiped the tears away.

"No tears, John.  Answer me, please.  Why are you seated in a chair, wearing a pretty velvet dress with your hands secured to the arms?  Come now.  I demand an answer."

"I am sorry, Miss Strang."

"I am sure you are sorry, John, But sorry is no answer. Quickly now, before I become angry. It is a very simple question. Why are you in the chair?"

"Be . . because . . . because I didn't do the right exercise . . Miss Strang."

"No, John that is not the reason.  That is the reason your hands are being tawsed.  Why they will still be tawsed.  But that is not the reason you are in the chair.  Is it?"

He hung his head.

"No, John. That is not the reason. The reason you are sitting there in Livia's velvet dress with your hands fast to the chair, and a dolly beside you, is because you lacked the fortitude that I expect from a boy of your age when he is punished."

She pursed her lips and her eyes narrowed.

"You behaved like a girl of five.  A spoilt, little girl throwing a tantrum.  An emotional fit that would be unacceptable in any child, but which, in a boy of your age, is utterly contemptible.   Do you understand?  Utterly contemptible."

She paused.

"You do know what contemptible means, John?"

He hesitated.

"It means behaviour that disgusts any right thinking person.  It is behaviour to despise.  And any person guilty of such behaviour is also despised.  And shunned.  Do you understand?"

Whether he had followed Miss Strang word for word, he nevertheless understood. He was an outcast.

"You have shown yourself to be devoid of even a smidgen of manliness. And that is why you are dressed as a girl. And as you lack the courage to present your hands for the strapping they deserve, you are being forced to do so by restraint."

He was unable to hold back his tears.

"And you will remain dressed as a girl until your behaviour justifies your boy's clothing being returned to you."

I despised him and yet felt desperately sorry for him. He had always been a rather infuriating boy, too full of himself and dismissive of me for being a girl. Now he had been reduced to a small weeping little boy. A boy who could not take his punishment like a man. Who had had his status as a boy removed. And although I despised him, in his weakness and humiliation he had somehow became attractive and deserving of my condescension. I wanted to comfort him and to make things right for him.

Miss Strang stroked his head.

"What silky hair. Perhaps we should let it grow. How beautiful it would look. What do you think, Oliver?"

"Yes, Miss Strang."

She paused, and stepped back.

"But it is your hands rather than your hair that demand our attention."

Her long fingers closed around the split end of the tawse, and then drew it slowly threw her grasp. I could see John stiffen. There was no escape. He was fastened to the chair.

"And, John, this is your chance to prove that you have the necessary fortitude and endurance to bear your punishment like a man."

Again the tawse was drawn through her hand. She took a deep breath, relishing the feel of the leather.

(To be continued)