Retribution

It was certainly not the first time, nor, in all probability would it be the last, that a Rugby XV, the pride of any English boys’ public school, had disgraced itself by its behaviour after an away match at another school. So perhaps my story today about what befell the rugger XV of Frogmore Academy after its away match with its arch rival, the Rigby School XV, may appear old hat at first sight; but allow me to assure you that it is not. The exemplary retribution exacted from the lads of the Frogmore team on their return to the school in expiation of their bad behaviour can but be qualified as an extreme example of the art of flagellation, as practised in English public schools well into the twentieth century. Today what was then done to errant lads would be classified as grievous bodily harm; how times and attitudes have changed: for the worse in many people’s opinion.

We are, of course, still in the age when corporal punishment was not only considered by the masters of any public school worth its salt, as a necessary and beneficial adjunct to the process of turning out well-educated, young gentlemen, but was also accepted by the unfortunate recipients – those future, hopefully well-educated, young gentlemen – as being part and parcel of daily life. And of the top-flight northern public schools, of which Frogmore considered itself to be the leader, both the cane and, even worse, the dreaded birch, not to mention other less common implements of punishment, were more or less in daily use.

Scarcely a day – or evening, when the boys were in their respective houses – passed, but what some poor unfortunate, having broken one of the school’s myriad of pettifogging rules or having committed some more serious misdemeanour, found himself offering his naked bottom for correction: that mealy-mouthed, Frogmore speak for beating, to one or other of the numerous people who were authorised to wreak vengeance on their naked flesh.   And make no mistake, danger was everywhere; not only were the Headmaster and the six housemasters all true believers in the virtues and liberal use of the cane and never reticent to use it, but the eighteen upper-sixth formers who had been appointed prefects, together with the head-boy himself, who had almost the status, but not quite, of a master, were also, to the last man, all enthusiastic enforcers of the school rules and had no hesitation whatsoever in beating the  naked arses of their schoolmates at the slightest infraction. Add to this a certain number of irascible masters of the old school, by and large, antediluvian hangovers from a bygone age, who still used the cane in class, albeit on their pupils’ clothed bottoms, you can see why the sound of the rattan cane delivering its painful message as it mated with a boy’s buttocks, was heard more or less daily at Frogmore.

But to get back to the story of the Rugby XV and its fall from grace, the match between Frogmore and Rigby had been the most important of the season. The two teams were neck to neck in the Northern Public Schools Rugby League and the outcome of this final match would decide who were to be the year’s champions. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Frogmore team was psyched up before the match even began. The match was to be played on Saturday morning; so the Frogmore team, as the visitors, arrived at Rigby, near Lincoln, the preceding Friday afternoon and were entertained to supper by the home-side.  Come Saturday morning, Frogmore well and truly thrashed the Rigby side and after lunch, in boisterous high spirits they were taken, by their hosts to Lincoln Station to take the afternoon train back to York, a journey of some two hours.

And it was at Lincoln Station that things already started to go wrong. In fact, the writing had been on the wall before the Frogmore team even left for Rigby. Normally two masters: one, the senior classics master, in his day a keen sportsman, who was also the rugby coach, together with one of his junior colleagues, chaperoned the boys on their away matches. The School took its responsibilities seriously; although the team members were all eighteen years of age, they were still legally in the care of the school. So it was considered obligatory for two masters to accompany them on all excursions outside the school premises, to read the riot act if the need arose. But on this occasion the fickle finger of fate decided otherwise. Literally, just minutes before the team was scheduled to leave the school, the senior classics master suddenly fell ill and was rushed to hospital with a suspected ruptured appendix.

It all started to go seriously wrong at Lincoln Station on the way back to Frogmore, where the team had a half hour to wait for the train. Prior to their arrival at the station the team had been boisterous, but the refreshment buffet at the station was open and licensed to sell alcohol. So to celebrate their victory, ignoring totally the forceful remonstrances of Mr. Appleby, they spent the next half hour consuming large volumes of beer. The female buffet staff looked askance at the team; but as the boys maintained, that they were were all over eighteen, which was true, they were served.  But it went even further, for the whole team bought additional bottles of beer to take with them on the train to York. So by the time, some two hours later, the train pulled into York Station, the entire team was already two sheets to the wind.

With a half hour to wait for the connection on the branch line to Frogmore, the boys, working on the principal that nothing succeeds like excess, again availed themselves of the open buffet to take on board more drink. As far as exercising any control over them, Mr. Appleby might as well have not been there, as he was completely ignored by the boys he was supposed to be controlling. By the time the train arrived at Frogmore Station, the boys were all more or less totally tipsy. Mr. Appleby heaved an internal sigh of relief that they had all arrived in one piece and that providing that the short walk from the station to the school could be accomplished without mishap, the whole incident could be put to bed and forgotten and he could wash his hand of what had been for him, a nightmarish affair. It never crossed his mind that because the boys had systematically defied him, he could, after arrival back at the school, quite justifiably thrash the whole lot of them.

But it was not to be. The way to the school led up Frogmore High Street, past the King’s Arms hostelry, into which, in spite of Mr. Appleby’s protests, the boys all trooped, intent on making a night of their victory celebration, Now just the act of crossing the threshold into a public house bar would have earned them a Headmaster’s beating if caught; though all of age and legally free to to drink, alcohol in any form, entry into public houses were strictly forbidden by the school rules. Mr. Appleby was beside himself with despair, not knowing what to do with a group of young men, supposedly all gentlemen, but who, thanks to the alcohol, were now completely out of his control and were exhibiting loutish behaviour which belied their class. To all intents and purposes, Mr. Appleby might just as well have not been there

As one man’s money is as good as any others, the landlord, who made his living by selling beer, although somewhat wary of the invasion of what was basically a working-class, public bar by a group of fifteen, upper-class, young men, did not refuse to serve them. From then on, fuelled by the alcohol, the situation rapidly deteriorated.  The regular, local, working-class customers, all of whom spoke with strong Yorkshire accents, resented the invasion of what they saw as their pub by a group of young men, whom they thought of as toffee-nosed toffs. Talking loudly in their cultivated, upper-class way as they quite naturally did, they soon, quite understandably, raised the hackles of the local regulars. And so, not surprisingly, it was not long before a group of young, working-class lads, who, like the Frogmore rugger team, were already well oiled, started a fight. Then, as they always do on such occasions, things went rapidly from bad to worse, as the Frogmore rugger team, all beefy types, defended themselves against the onslaught, giving as good as, if not better than, they were taking from the locals. 

But as glasses started to fly and be broken and chairs were knocked over, the landlord decided that he had had enough and called the local police station. By the time the police arrived, the King’s Arms young regulars had already scarpered and the Frogmore Rugger XV found themselves escorted in custody to the local police station, where a livid Headmaster shortly arrived.  He managed to persuade the landlord of the King’s Arms not to press charges and promised that all damage would be paid for by the perpetrators. He then went on to impress both the landlord and the police sergeant in charge of the station that Saturday evening that the entire team would be flogged so thoroughly that not one of them would sit down comfortably for at least a week. As far as the fracas at the King’s Arms was concerned, the matter was over. However, for the fifteen members of the Frogmore Rugger XV and their chaperone, Mr. Appleby, the matter was just beginning.

What has not yet so far been revealed, is that, adding insult to injury, three of the team’s members were prefects: and not only prefects, but the present head-boy himself, Philip Brasher, and two of the six house-captains of the school: Thomas Fenner of York House,  and Brian Parry of Derby House.  Luckily none of the three prefects was team captain, that honour having fallen to a non-prefect member of Chester House. But as senior prefects, the triumvirate of Brasher, Fenner and Parry, all of whom had already established in the first four weeks of the autumn term their individual reputations with the cane as being strict upholders and enforcers of the school’s rules, found themselves in what had become an invidiously untenable position. 

Here were three senior boys, charged with maintaining order among their fellows, who had themselves willingly participated with evident enjoyment in precisely the sort of serious misdemeanour that they themselves were supposed to censure and punish if committed by others. But as they were to learn and experience the following morning, in betraying the trust placed in them by the Headmaster, what was sauce for the goose was also to be sauce for the gander. In saving all of them from police charges, the Headmaster had acted altruistically to protect the good name of the school from scandal; but the team members were under no illusion that in bringing them back to the school uncharged by the police, none of them would be allowed to escape the dire and painful consequences of the definitive pain which would be visited on each and every one of their bare backsides the following morning.

It is doubtful if any of the team members, all of whom were almost totally inebriated as they fell into a sound sleep in their respective beds late that Saturday evening, were aware of what was in store for them the following morning. However, in the cold light of day, as Sunday morning broke, having slept off the effects of the alcohol, the full enormity of their behaviour hit more or less all of them. In a word, they realised that they were in deep trouble, which filled them with a sense of foreboding. Spread across the six houses the team members of the rugger XV learned at breakfast, along with the entire school, that the obligatory, non-denominational, Sunday-morning service in the School Chapel would be brought forward to nine thirty and would end at ten thirty rather than at eleven. The whole school, knowing nothing of the bad behaviour of the Rugger XV, was agog, wondering what was about to happen.

At the end of the service, which was, as usual, conducted by the Headmaster, he made the announcement, in ponderously heavy tones that the elite Frogmore Rugby XV, the pride of the school, had won the schools’ championship for which they had to be congratulated; but in spite of, or possibly because of their victory, they had allowed their exuberance to cloud their judgment as to what constituted gentlemanly behaviour. He went on portentously, leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind as to what had happened on the train journey homeland as to what the consequences now were for the team. “I regret to have to inform the whole school that the entire team chose to indulge itself in a series of incidents on the way home from Rigby School in Lincoln, which ended late yesterday evening in a brawl in the King’s Arms in Frogmore High Street, to which the police were called. In spite of admiration for and congratulations to the entire team for their victory, I am afraid that such bad behaviour which could damage the good name of the school cannot be allowed to pass uncensored. I would, therefore, like all members of the team, including the three prefects: head-boy, Philip Brasher and house-captains, Thomas Fenner and Brian Parry, all of whom forgot their responsibilities, to present themselves at ten forty-five in the gymnasium, when they will be held to account for their appalling behaviour.”

He then continued and doubt in anyone’s mind, if doubt there still had been, was dispelled as he said: “The team members will, of course, have the courtesy to present themselves in the gymnasium wearing only the appropriate attire for such an occasion.” The whole school listened to this last lethal statement in stunned silence. So there they had it; in spite of the kudos their victory had brought to the school, they were not to be pardoned for their subsequent misbehaviour and were all to be flogged on the bare. 

But the Headmaster was not yet done with his announcements: “As the team is composed of members from all six houses of the school, I have decided that it would be appropriate for all housemasters and all three prefects from all six houses of the school to witness their errant members purge their sins. So I suggest that both housemasters and prefects go directly to the gym, where seating for them has already been arranged.”

Flogging was not a rare eventuality at Frogmore, for both the cane and the birch, not to mention the Headmaster’s own little foible, a paddle, based on the old-fashioned bath-brush, were all in rude good health and in more or less daily use. It was only the odd boy, who managed by some miracle to complete his entire career as a pupil at Frogmore, without on some occasion, paying a visit to the Headmaster’s study and making the painful acquaintance of one or other, or indeed on some occasions, several of these implements of punishment. So more or less the entire school knew from its own painful experiences exactly what the rugger team was about to suffer. And in sympathy with the team members for their fate, the whole school figuratively shuddered at the thought of the pain which was to be visited on the naked arses of the team.

Although corporal punishment was almost an unavoidable fact of life at Frogmore, never in living memory had there been a mass execution of such a size. It was mind boggling: fifteen senior boys, including two house captains and the head-boy himself, were to have their naked arses flogged in one session, which would commence at 10:45 in the school’s gymnasium.  But who would wield the rods of vengeance? What rods would be used? How many strokes each lad would suffer? Would the three prefects be stripped of their positions and demoted to the ranks in view of their complicity?  These and many other questions of burning interest to the rest of the school would remain unanswered until after the event and the beneficiaries of this painful occasion, the team members themselves, could be questioned by their peers, as they inevitably would be. But as the housemasters and all the prefects were ordered to attend as witnesses of what promised to be a massacre, in addition to the fifteen unfortunate team members themselves there would be plenty of first-hand observers to interrogate afterwards.

So in one way or another, the facts of what actually happened, as ever, would eventually all be revealed and the whole school would be able to satisfy its prurient curiosity, regaled with a blow-by-blow account in all its gory detail, of the painful punishments, which had been visited on fifteen naked arses. It was the sort of event, embellished by time and retelling ballooned into cataclysmic proportions, which would be handed down to future generations of boys as a school legend. Just listening to the Headmaster’s announcement had already stirred many cocks among the chapel congregation and would give rise later that same day to a considerable number of wanking sessions, in private or in groups, where boys attempted to imagine and relive what had happened during the beatings and wondered what it would have been like actually to have been present.

It seems to be an inescapable fact that corporal punishment, especially when a boy is beaten on the bare, is often associated with sexual arousal of all involved: the unfortunates themselves, the floggers and the witnesses.  Although most boys genuinely sympathise with their schoolmates whenever they are beaten, whilst they are expressing their pity, they equally would have enjoyed,  almost to the last man of them, if  given half a chance, to watch their classmates suffer and enjoy their own, spontaneous and totally uncontrollable arousal, which observing the act inevitably provokes. Seeing someone else being thrashed, especially on the bare, is a very erotic experience for most lads –and also for more men than you might think, whether they admit it or not. But as school beatings are often one-on-one events, limited to the wielder of the rod of justice and his unfortunate victim and are hence unwitnessed by any third party, masturbation becomes the means allowing a boy’s prurient imagination to recreate the actual scene as if he had been there.

But as we will see shortly in the bloodbath of the mass beating of the rugger team, the close relationship between corporal punishment and sex is not limited to observers, but also affects both the beaters and the beaten.  And such sexual arousal is not limited to boys as many masters find that when they beat a boy they are embarrassed by the total lack of control they have over their own cocks and have to make attempts to disguise the fact that they are sporting an uncontrollable erection. To put it at its mildest, it is not unknown for a master – even a headmaster – having just beaten a boy to relieve himself of the sexual tension built up by performing the act, to lock himself away and relax by jerking himself off.

But philosophising apart, let us move on to what can but be called the slaughter, to which the Headmaster had clearly given a  lot of forethought to make it as dramatic, and surprisingly for a man in his position, highly homoerotic as possible. The Headmaster, himself a confirmed, true believer in the use of corporal punishment to improve a boy’s behaviour, was himself still an enthusiastic and competent practitioner of the noble, if not-so-gentle art, of thrashing boys’ naked arses. Appointments with the Headmaster in his study to be corrected, as Frogmore speak had it, were viewed by the boys with fear, strongly tinged with horror, for he spared neither the victim nor himself in his moral crusades of excessive brutality; any boy benefitting from his ministrations could be sure of leaving his study with an agonisingly painful, bruised and battered, well-beaten arse.  With the Headmaster, there were no half measures; if a job was worth doing, then it was worth doing well; and whenever – which was quite often – the Headmaster thrashed a boy on the bare, even the most begrudging of critics would have to admit that he did it well.

But today, the members of the rugger team were about to be forced to offer their arses in an act of mass retribution: one which what would be passed down through future generations of schoolboys and inevitably embellished over time, as the most imaginatively awful, mass beating ever of senior boys – young men really: one which the victims would remember for the rest of their lives as an experience they would have willingly foregone; but one,  given the full horror of the occasion, that they never would never forget: one which they, to the very last man of them, would have preferred never to have had etched onto their naked arses, even though they were to go down in the school history as a legend.

At ten forty-five precisely –who would have dared to be late – the dramatis personae, in the form of fifteen members of the rugger team, were ushered into the gymnasium. They found an audience of the six housemasters and all the prefects, barring the three who were members of the ill-fated rugger team, together with the unfortunate Mr. Appleby, misery written all over his face, due to his failure as chaperone to the misguided team, already seated there, in a single arc of twenty-two chairs, as in the front row of the dress circle at a theatre, waiting for what was evidently going to be the show to begin. In front of the audience on what was to be the stage, were arranged twelve chairs in three rows of four chairs each, back-to-seat, with their backs towards the audience. There was a good space left between the chairs in each row and between the rows themselves.

In front of the chairs had been installed a portable lectern, behind which was a table, on which were lying the instruments of punishment selected by the Headmaster for use that day on the rugger team. Already laid out were three of the Headmaster’s pet paddles and three, fearsome-looking, straight-handled, senior, punishment canes. The three foot long canes, just under half inch in diameter, made from a particularly dense variety of rattan, were some 20% heavier than the normal rattan canes of the same dimensions, rendering them  particularly potent deliverers of pain when used in the right hands.

The fifteen team members, all wearing the appropriate attire of gym shorts and vest and nothing else, were all barefooted and were, not surprisingly, nervous when they saw the chairs set out so formally as, reading the writing on the wall, they realised for the first time that they were to be flogged together as a group. They were told curtly by the Headmaster to stand in line against the wall to the right, with their hands on their heads in the perfunctory manner in which first formers were usually treated on their not-infrequent visits to the Headmaster’s study. The Headmaster surveyed the group from his lectern and made them acutely aware for the first time of the blood curdling punishment to which they were shortly to be subjected.

“Gentlemen and I still address you as such in spite of your lamentable behaviour yesterday, which I presume was an aberration and will never be repeated, you will, after the severe punishment to which you will now be subjected in retribution for the errors of your ways, I hope, resume the good manners, which this school has taught you.  You will all now be punished in the traditional Frogmore way with which I think you are all familiar: that is say; you will each receive a beating on your bare buttocks. However, I regret to have to say, that in view of your appalling behaviour yesterday, the beating you will each today receive will be unusually severe, as I propose to teach you that lesson, to which the homily, you will never forget is usually attached: a lesson, which, if you are wise, you will wish never to repeat. Now, the head-boy and the two prefects will kindly separate themselves from their team-mates and move to the other side of the room. The rest of you, meanwhile, will, prepare yourselves for the traditional Frogmore punishment by removing your shorts; you will then resume your positions against the wall with your hands still on your heads, until I tell you otherwise.”

The Headmaster’s instructions were quite unprecedented, for he was intent on embarrassing the boys by making them stand half-naked with their genitalia fully exposed to the audience of housemasters’ and prefects.  Now nudity among public school boys was a daily occurrence as they all took showers together; but there was a world of difference in seeing your schoolmates naked in the changing rooms or showers and joking, good naturedly, about the merits of a guy’s assets and being made to stand, hands on head against a wall and expose your cock and balls, which had suddenly, with a vengeance, become your private parts as they were politely called, to the gaze of an audience. Even without onlookers gaping on, it would have been an embarrassing situation for the miscreants to be made to stand there naked. But faced with the unavoidable prospect of a painful beating, the undeniable symbiosis between corporal punishment and sexual arousal had already manifested itself; all the boys were already sporting uncontrolled and uncontrollable erections, which now free from any clothing constraints, were pointing rigidly outwards, as if challenging the Headmaster to do his worst. And they were soon to find out, his worst was exactly what the Headmaster intended to do.

So it was that the audience was treated to the unimaginable spectacle of twelve young men, dying with embarrassment, with their hands on their heads, naked below the waist, each defiantly sporting a rock-hard erection. Not for nothing is a man’s penis often referred to as his controllable flesh. To the very last one of them, their thoughts were the same: let the axe fall and get on with the floggings, for anything would be better than being made to stand there half-naked in public view. But the Headmaster had not yet finished as he prolonged their agonising embarrassment, by explaining to them precisely what would now happen.

“Gentlemen, I shall shortly be inviting each of you to stand behind one of the twelve chairs arranged in three rows in front of you. You may choose any chair you wish as all are equal and every boy will receive exactly the same treatment. I doubt that any of you are unaware of the procedure for boys being beaten in this establishment. However, in case any of you are unfamiliar with what is now expected of you as the young gentlemen, whom, I presume, you all still aspire to be, preparing to face inevitable and just retribution for your deplorable conduct, let me remind you of what is now expected of you. You will first stand to attention behind the back of your chosen chair and, on my order you will bend over its back, place your hands on its seat and hold your naked buttocks well into the air to receive the punishment, which you so richly deserve.”

“Whilst you are receiving the eye-watering beatings you deserve, I expect all of you to keep perfectly still with your hands firmly on the seat of the chair.  I will not tolerate any excessive histrionics or movements; and above all, whilst you are being beaten, your hands must not stray onto your buttocks in a futile attempt to mitigate the excruciating pain you are experiencing. Anyone who disobeys this order will receive extra strokes of the cane. Take this not as a threat but as a promise, which I shall not hesitate to keep. However, in view of the severity of the punishment which you will experience and the intensity of the pain you will suffer, you may of course give vent to your feelings in the normal vocal manner. No one will ridicule you for shedding a tear –or indeed many tears – which, frankly speaking, I expect all of you to do. Make no mistake, boys, you are going to experience the most severe beating of your lives to date and the results are going to be very, very painful indeed.”

“I am sure you are all eager to know exactly what form your punishment will take. Well let me enlighten you. First, you will each receive six pre-conditioning strokes of the paddle on the bare, to prepare your buttocks for the senior-cane. You will each then suffer eighteen cuts with a senior cane, of which twelve will be placed parallel from the bottom of your back to the top of your legs, when the final six cuts will be placed in crossing diagonals. I think that by the time you rise from the chair, you will all agree that you will each be sporting what I understand, in vulgar Frogmore parlance, is referred to as a well-beaten arse. I shall be satisfied that you have suffered adequate retribution for your sins if none of you is able to sit down comfortably for the next week. Make no mistake boys, this is not a game we are playing here and it is my aim and duty as your headmaster, to ensure that you suffer just retribution for your inexcusable actions yesterday. The pain you will shortly suffer, in expiation for your sins, will be such that you will remember this occasion for the rest of your lives.”

Having delivered this blood-curdling message and put the fear of God into the twelve lads standing there half naked, the Headmaster now turned and focused his baleful eye on the three prefects: the head-boy, Philip Brasher and the two house captains, Thomas Fenner and Brian Parry, all of whom, in spite of their elite positions at Frogmore, had to their shame, participated in the debacle on the journey back from Lincoln. “You three young men are all an extreme disappointment to me. You Brasher, in your elevated position as head-boy, the senior prefect of this school, instead of exercising your sworn duty as head- prefect to keep your schoolmates in order, allowed yourself to become involved in this extremely regrettable incident, which, as I understand from M. Appleby, started before the team actually left Lincoln station and was then continued when you arrived in York.” 

“What I find it totally incomprehensible and inexcusable is when, arriving back at Frogmore Station, in spite of your own personal beer-drinking in the train with your team-mates, you did not, when the team decided to enter the King’s Arms in Frogmore High Street, come to your senses and assist Mr. Appleby in his attempts to stop matters going from bad to worse. But in the event you did not; and the result was that the whole team finished up in a fisticuffs with a group of local lads and were taken to the police station, where I managed to convince the publican, who been foolish enough to serve you, not to press charges and brought the whole lot of you back to be dealt with here. And dealt with, with a vengeance, is now what is going to happen. As head-boy of Frogmore, you, Brasher, have a lot to answer for; and before you are much older and find yourself stripped of your rank, answer for it you will. But before we come to that, you and your two side kicks here have a job to do together.”

Brasher ventured a feeble excuse in mitigation on behalf of the entire team. “Sir, if I may say a word in defence of the entire team; I would draw your attention to the fact that we are all aged eighteen and as such under British law are considered as adults. Therefore, sir, I would respectfully remind you that in consuming beer and entering the King’s Arms, we were not in fact breaking the law of the land.”

“Yes, yes, Brasher, I know the argument well; I have heard it many times before, as I have prepared to beat many a boy aged eighteen, who has dared to venture into a public house during term time, which as you know full well is strictly forbidden by the school rules. So, Brasher, although you may do as you please out of term when you are not in the care of this school, and drink yourself into oblivion, which many young men do, during term time, when you are in the care of this school acting in loco parentis, you must and will obey the rules, or face the consequences, which, as you are now about to find out, are very painful indeed. Brasher you and the team have all made your beds and now you must lie in them; and I can promise you personally, that as your offence goes far beyond  a simple clandestine visit to a pub, your beds will prove particularly uncomfortable tonight. I intend to make this incident into an example to the entire school of what can be expected of such flagrant disregard of one of the key rules of this School.”

Having torn a strip off Brasher, the Headmaster turned towards the other two prefects: “Well as for you two, your behaviour is as bad as that of the head-boy; as house-captains, the senior prefects of your respective houses, it was your duty to maintain order among your team-mates, which, along with the head-boy, you singularly failed to do. Frankly, it must have been collective madness in the three of you that made you abandon the authority and prestige which goes with your rank as senior prefects and throw in your lot with the rabble-rousers. But what is done is done and cannot be undone and the three of you must live with the fact that it is axiomatic that as you have sown, so shall you reap; and believe me, when the time comes, as it soon will, you will reap a very bitter harvest.”   

“But we are not yet there, as I require you both, as future ex-house-captains to join forces with the future ex-head-boy and exercise the prefectural duty invested in you one last time and flog your team-mates, before you are reduced to their rank. I see from the punishment registers that the three of you have, during this first term of your tenure, each established what I can but qualify as stellar reputations for the frequency and efficacy with which you have corrected the misdemeanours of your classmates with the cane. Look upon what you are now being called upon to do to your team-mates as your flagellation swansong: a token of repentance for your bad judgement and an acknowledgement of the fact that you have forfeited your positions by betraying the trust I placed in you.  I could, of course have expelled the three of you for your behaviour, which goes well beyond the pale. However, I am loath to let this one incident, even though it goes way beyond being very serious, ruin three promising young careers.  I therefore think that after you have flogged your team-mates and been thoroughly flogged yourselves, together with your loss of status as prefects that you will all have done penance enough for your sins and I shall, therefore consider the matter closed.”

There they had it laid out on plate for them. The three of them were to be forced to thrash their team-mates before being flogged themselves.  The question which remained unanswered was who was to flog them.  But the Headmaster had still not finished with his discourse and what he said next sent a shiver down the spines of the three soon to be ex-prefects.

“Gentlemen, I think that I have now said enough and that we are ready to begin and let the paddles and canes, with your help, deliver their painful messages to the buttocks of your team-mates. The three of you, take off your shorts, approach the lectern and collect your paddles.”  A deathly silence chilled the air of the gymnasium as the entire company, beaten and beaters alike, plus the witnesses to what promised to be a spectacle of unsurpassed severity, suddenly realised that not only twelve team members were to be flogged on the bare, which was par for the course at Frogmore, but the three prefects performing the floggings would execute their task also with their nether anatomy naked.  The three prefects looked bewildered by what they had just heard. It was bad enough that the Headmaster had made the twelve team members, shed their shorts and stand there half naked with their hands on their heads. But now to order the prefects also to step out their shorts and beat their team-mates was just too awful to imagine.

For some reason, it was obvious that the Headmaster was intent on making the occasion as phantasmagorical as possible, emphasising the strong relationship between male sexuality and corporal punishment.  Already the victims of this erotic drama – and make no mistake, it was an unbelievable piece of homoerotic drama which the Headmaster was in the process of choreographing – standing there, with their hands on their heads and their cocks, totally beyond their personal control, the whole team were by now figuratively dying from a combination of embarrassment and fear of what was about to happen to them: a total of twenty four strokes, six with the paddle and eighteen with the cane, was not a punishment which even the most hardy soul among them, could brush off as if it were a flea bite.

They had by now all realised that they were in for the hiding of their lives. What most of them now wished was that Headmaster would just get on with things, as in many of their minds, the waiting was worse than the flogging  to come; after all it was just another beating; they had all been beaten before and survived; so however bad, the sooner it was over and done with, the better. However, they did not reckon with the long drawn out agony the Headmaster had carefully worked out in his mind for them, which was to render this a mass beating like no other.

The Headmaster now again turned his attention to the twelve team members standing half naked against the wall: “Gentlemen, the time for action has arrived. You may now take your hands off your heads and each select anyone of the twelve chairs in front of you; as I have already said, there is no difference as to the chair you choose, as you will all receive exactly the same treatment from the three prefects, who are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to perform their last act of flagellation on your bottoms, before they submit themselves to punishment and are stripped of their elite status.”

The twelve team members could not but obey their Headmaster and within a few seconds, the seated observers were treated to the unbelievable sight of twelve muscular, naked arses pointed directly at them, waiting to be flogged, But any immediate relief felt by the twelve lads, that their punishment would soon be over and done with was immediately dashed to the ground, as the Headmaster instructed the three prefects in the manner in which the beatings were to be performed. The three prefects, each embarrassingly naked below the waist and with no means of hiding the sizeable, uncontrollable boners, which such erotic occasions inevitably produce in men, looked inquiringly at the Headmaster, awaiting his instructions.

Now that the stage had been set for the first act of the drama and the twelve dramatis personae were in place, the  Headmaster stood magisterially behind the lectern and gave the prefects the most detailed, blow-by-blow account of the beating they were about to perform at his behest: “Brasher you will deal with your four teammates in the first row on my left; you, Fenner, will take the middle row, whilst you, Parry,  will take the row on the right  You will each position yourselves on the left of your first subject, who will be the boy furthest from me in each row.  You will then place your paddle on the upper third your subject’s right buttock. On my count of three, you, Brasher, will immediately raise your paddle and deliver to him the first blow of this marathon flogging session; you Fenner will then immediately follow suit and place your first stroke; and you, Parry, will conclude the first round by delivering your first stroke.”

“After the maiden stroke, the three of you will then deliver the second and third strokes in a similar sequential way to the middle and lower thirds of your subject’s right-hand buttock. You will then each leave your first subject to savour what he has so far received and proceed to the second subject where you will all follow the same three stroke procedure/ And so you will continue with your third and fourth subjects, leaving all four each with their right hand buttock pre-conditioned to receive the cane. which is to follow. Now you will all return to your first subject, but this time stand to his right to allow you correctly to address his left-hand buttock. By now I think you have all got the idea, as you will do the same to your other subjects. So, gentlemen, at the end of this preliminary round, the twelve team members will each have had a foretaste with the paddle of what is to come.”

“You will then relinquish your paddles in favour of the cane and will then follow the same procedure. This phase, which will be tantamount to a master-demonstration in the art of delivering an excruciatingly painful, virtuoso parallel-stroke beating to the unfortunate, but deserving recipients, will be divided into two rounds of six cuts each. That is to say that you will each apply six cuts to your first subject and then move to the second and so on, before returning to the first and proceeding to apply the complement of six cuts. You, Brasher, will on my count of three, apply your first cut to your subject’s buttocks; and you, Fenner and Parry will then sequentially follow suit. Now just let me remind you that aim is to leave each subject with twelve, extremely painful parallel cuts of the cane, running from the bottom of his back to the top of his legs of his legs. So, gentlemen, I am relying on your expertise for the extreme precision needed to leave each subject with twelve parallel, non-overlapping cuts.”

“Now in the ultimate phase of this flogging, you will all again return to your first subject and apply successively six diagonal cuts of the cane, again in two phases:  three from the right and three from the left. If you three gentlemen do your job properly, each of your twelve team-mates will emerge from the ordeal, and let us be clear, it will be an ordeal, the proud possessor of a unique and artistic, if somewhat painful example, of that minor art form: flagellation on the bare. Your twelve team-mates will each be sporting what in vulgar parlance, eighty eight a well-beaten arse; but not only an arse which is extremely painful, which is the object of the exercise, but one which will give considerable visual pleasure to the prurient eyes of their schoolmates at the customary wake of the viewings which traditionally follow all beatings.”

This incredibly detailed blow-by-blow account of the floggings,  which were about to be visited on the twelve team members, already stretched across the chair backs awaiting their fate, had ostensibly been given by the Headmaster as orders to the three prefects who were to administer the beatings. Inevitably it was also heard by the twelve team members, referred to by the Headmaster in his discourse as the subjects, who saw their dream of a quick, if excessively painful, sharp shock was not to be. Instead they were to be treated to a long drawn-out, excruciatingly slow penance. It was as if the Headmaster, in their eyes their executioner in chief, had chosen not to cut off their heads with one sharp blow, but to tear them to pieces limb-by-limb. Yes, they all knew that they deserved to be punished – and punished severely – but not in such a long-drawn out, sadistic way. My God, what the Headmaster had in mind was that they would each be given a total of twenty-four strokes, but in such a way that they would each live through the entire nightmare of two hundred and eighty-eight strokes before being told that it was over.

But what did the three executioners, the three soon to be ex-prefects, think of the task in front of them? With apologies to Tennyson: Theirs not to reason why. Theirs to do as they were ordered by the Headmaster.  The Headmaster, having laid out, blow-by-blow, the fate of their twelve team-mates, the three prefects could do little other than obey him. He had, however, been singularly silent about details of their own punishment. That the three of them were also to be flogged was certain; but by whom and when was unknown. And would the fact that they were to be reduced to the ranks, itself a severe blow to their prestige, attenuate their inevitable encounter with the cane?

So, faced with what amounted to a Hobson’s Choice, they all knew that they had no option but to carry out the Headmaster’s wishes to the letter or face further sanctions on themselves. Now that push had come to shove, the three of them, like most senior prefects in authority in English public schools, whether they acknowledged it overtly or not, all enjoyed thrashing their schoolmates; as the Headmaster had noted, they all had developed during their first term as prefects stellar reputations from the frequency and efficacy with which they had wielded the cane. And enjoyment of the act of flagellation is a sine qua non possessed by all great exponents of the cane. Som although they would be flogging their friends, members of the same team to which they themselves belonged, they knew, but would never admit it, that they would enjoy making the subjects – the Headmaster’s word – suffer. The Headmaster, in coining the word subject had inadvertently thrown the prefects a psychological lifeline; the word somehow divorced from reality the odious task the Headmaster had visited on his prefects. And it truly was an odious task; he was making the three prefects beat members of the team to which they themselves belonged, for bad behaviour of which they too were as guilty as those whom they were being compelled to flog. It was frankly sadistic beyond belief. But the word subject somehow assuaged their consciences; they were flogging subjects rather than their friends.  Whether their team-mates would appreciate the difference as the cane bit eighteen times into their naked arses is another matter.

But the moment of truth, of reckoning was nigh as the three prefects assumed their initial places on the left of the first subject in each row.  Three paddles were placed as instructed on the upper third of each subject’s right buttock; the Headmaster drew himself to his full height behind the lectern as if about to conduct a choir, cleared his throat and counted aloud,  one, two, three. Brasher, like a clockwork toy, raised his paddle on the count of three and brought it down with a resounding crash on the first victim’s buttock and with this maiden stroke inaugurated what was to be a long, painful Calvary for the twelve lads. Brasher’s first stroke was followed immediately by Fenner’s, who delivered his first blow equally vigorously. Parry then brought the first round to a conclusion in a similar satisfactory way. And so it went on exactly as the Headmaster had outlined; he called each stroke and on the count of three, the prefects delivered their strokes in quick succession, once the rhythm had been established, the prefects got into their stride. Thoughts of what was to happen to them later were forgotten in the satisfaction, which is unfortunately so often associated with beatings on the bare of one boy by another. The Headmaster watched acutely to see that none of them was pulling his punches and saw that the mass flogging he had orchestrated would be a great success and serve as a warning to the rest of the school that no one at Frogmore was above the law. The increasing howls of pain accompanying the progression of the paddling indicated that the punishment was making its mark, literally and figuratively on the backsides of the recipients.

Although the Headmaster looked upon his patent paddle as a pre-conditioning, device, to render a boy’s buttocks more sensitive to the cane, which was to follow, by the time the prefects had finished administering six stinging blows to their team-mates’ buttocks, the recipients of what one might look upon as the hors-d’oeuvres to what was to be a gastronomic excess of flagellation were, to a man already in tears.  The paddle, modelled on the old, long-handled bath-brush, was many times more effective than its ancestor when it came to delivering pain. Physically it was some four inches wide by six long and an inch and half thick and was made of fine-grained, well- seasoned beech. It was drilled with twenty holes to ensure that when it mated with the naked flesh of its target no air was trapped to cushion its power. It was drilled and fitted with a cylindrical ash handle about a foot and a half long; all in all, it was a formidable weapon.

Far from being an implement titillate a lad’s arse as a preliminary to the cane, the paddle was, in its own right, a formidable implement of corporal chastisement. Less stinging and biting than the cane due to its flat shape, it was, by its sheer mass, nevertheless capable of delivering excruciating pain. The twelve lads, who had just undergone this so-called pre-conditioning process, prior to the horrors of the cane, were all now sporting bright-red arses. With the stuffing already half knocked out of them by the onslaught with the paddles, those ever reliable indicators, their cocks, had all surrendered, what, as they had been standing there naked in line, had been their defiant erections, and were again discreetly flaccid, as their owners trembled at the thought of what was now to come.

And what was to come, eighteen strokes of the heavy-grade senior- cane for each lad, was a prospect which barely bore thinking about. It was hard to see how the twelve of them would bear the pain. But as the Headmaster was out for their blood, bear it they must as there was to be no respite. As the Headmaster had told them all chairs were the same and every lad would receive exactly the same punishment, he now announced the latest twist to his choreography:  the three prefects would change places during the canings. The eighteen strokes were not to be delivered as he had originally outlined, but were to be divided into three sets of six, two of which would be parallel whilst the final six would be applied as crossed-diagonals.  So the canings would begin with six parallel strokes, with Brasher on the right, Parry in the middle and Fenner on the left; then for the next six parallel strokes, Fenner would be on the right, Brasher in the middle and Parry on the left. Then, for the grand finale of the agonisingly painful, six crossed-diagonals, the original configuration would be retrieved, with Parry on the right, Fenner in the middle and Brasher again on the left.

And so the twelve lads, subject to what was, by any standards,  an unbelievably horrendous onslaught on their naked arses, would have the pleasure of being able to contrast the caning ability of their three, prefect, team members, whose own backsides had not yet been  blemished by either the paddle or the cane. As might well be imagined, the twelve lads who arses were receiving such lavishly unwelcome attention, could not have cared less who was wielding the cane. All they wanted was to get the whole ghastly nightmare over and done with and to be allowed to go away and nurse their wounds. But the scenario envisaged had been specifically designed as a drama to draw out the whole process to excessive lengths. This had been conceived with malice aforethought by their Headmaster, who was now showing what a died-in-the-wool sadist he truly was. Unfortunately for them, there was nothing – absolutely nothing at all– they could do to avoid it. Although the total number of strokes was within the limits laid down by the Board of Governors, this was retribution carried beyond the bounds of what was reasonable.

But the Headmaster was intent on wringing the last ounce of pleasure for himself out of the proceedings; he stood there and called out every, single one of the aggregate of the two hundred and sixteen strokes of the cane, which the three prefects were forced to apply to their team-mates’ arses. Each time on the count of three, the prefect in the left hand row was the first to bring down his cane on the hapless buttocks before him, with that inimitable crack of flexible rattan mating with firm, naked flesh of a young rugby player’s buttocks:  a sound which ricocheted undampened around the bare walls of the gym.  This first crack of each trio of cuts was then immediately followed by the crack of the cane of the other two rows, which followed their leader within split-seconds.

It has to be said that the Headmaster had truly thought the thing through and that the three prefects, all as guilty as their team-mates they were being forced to beat, applied themselves to the task as if there was to be no tomorrow. They thrashed their team-mates with as much vigour as they would have thrashed any boy called before them to answer for any misbehaviour. Make no mistake; prefects’ beatings are usually worse than those administered by masters. With the exuberance of youth and newly imbued with the power to thrash,  coupled with by the concept of pay-back-time for what they themselves suffered in the past, prefects rarely exercise good  judgment and thrash their schoolmates viscously with gay abandon. And that was the mould from which Brasher and his two side-kicks were formed. Their team-mates acknowledged their sterling efforts by crying out with pain; howls which became ever louder and more tearful, as the beatings progressed and the pain delivered became almost untenable. With their uninhibited vigorous approach, it seemed as if the three prefects had dismissed from their minds that once the mass thrashing was completed, they too would themselves face severe punishment, as yet undefined.

However, if they had thought that by doing the Headmaster’s bidding with a will that they would somehow earn bonus points:  good marks, which would diminish their own punishment, they were soon to find that they were sadly mistaken. The Headmaster was on the warpath and nothing would deflect him from the path of wreaking vengeance on everyone involved in the sad affair. “Vengeance is mine saith the Lord.” Deuteronomy 32: 35. Well at Frogmore, the Headmaster was the Lord; and by God, he was making sure that everyone knew it!

Some forty-five minutes after the first cane stroke had been delivered, it was finally over for the twelve team members, who had been bent over the chairs for over an hour and a half before the Headmaster gave them permission to stand up. Stiff from a combination of being forced to maintain themselves in such an uncomfortable position, together with the beating, made every movement, however small, utter agony as the lads hauled themselves onto their feet with considerable difficulty.  With misery written all across their tearstained faces, at least it was finally over; they had paid the price for their bad behaviour; and an exceedingly high price it had been; so now they could lick their wounds and move on from what had been a nightmarish experience. But even this was not to be as they had reckoned without the vindictiveness of the Headmaster.

Bedraggled and still sobbing as many of them were, with no longer a sign of a single, defiant-looking erection in sight, the Headmaster still gave them no quarter, as he ordered them to resume their former positions against wall and again to stand with their hands on their heads. “Keep your hands on our heads until I tell you otherwise,” he intoned. “You will now have the pleasure of watching your other three team mates, who from this moment are stripped of their privileged status as prefects, while they face retribution for their in the events which have led you all into this lamentable situation. Now, if I can have the assistance of two of the observers to move the chairs to the side wall, leaving just two in front of the lectern, we can pass to the punishment of the prefects.”

The three prefects, the canes they had just used still in their hands, were ordered to stand, half naked as they were, in front of the lectern behind which the Headmaster stood, looking like a hanging judge about to pass the death sentence on a convicted murderer, unable to hide the fact that unlike the team-mates they had just flogged, all the of them were still sexually aroused and were sporting rock-hard boners.

“You three members of the Rugger XV, the pride and joy of this School, in your elite status as prefects, have disgraced yourselves over and above your less-exalted team-mates, who have just met their Waterloo at your hands. As prefects with a sworn duty to maintain order and good behaviour among your schoolmates, you chose to ignore the obligations which go with the high office you have hitherto enjoyed. Not only did you make no attempt to stop your team-mates in their folly, but you actually joined them in their ill-advised actions. Your punishment will therefore be commensurate with your actions and the positions which you have until now held, which all three of you have totally betrayed.”

“Fenner and Parry, as senior prefects, captains of your respective houses, you are both hereby stripped of your office; as of this moment you are no longer members of the elite of this School and for your part in what was the most deplorable episode in the history of this School you will both now be flogged by the head-boy, your team-mate Brasher, as his last official act before he too is reduced to the ranks. You will each receive twelve pre-conditioning strokes of the paddle followed by eighteen cuts of the rattan cane.” In view of the solemnity of the occasion and the tone of voice in which the Headmaster had announced the severity of their punishments, it would not have been at all surprising to hear him add: “And may God have mercy on your arses, as Brasher most certainly won’t.”

So the two house-captains were to receive six additional swats of the paddle, before being made to suffer the same number of cuts of the cane as their team-mates.  I suppose they should have thanked God for the small mercy which the Headmaster, whose heart, as you, dear Reader, must by now have divined was not exactly filled with the milk of human kindness, was not upping the much more painful cuts of the cane. I wish I could say something kinder about the Headmaster; but the fact of the matter was that beneath his harsh, forbidding exterior beat a heart of solid stone.  Not to put too fine on a point on it, the Headmaster was a ruthless martinet, an utter bastard, who himself took great pleasure in thrashing boys on their naked arses.

“Fenner, Parry, replace your canes on the table behind me and then each of you assume the position across the chairs with which you are already familiar.”  Then turning to Brasher he said: “Brasher in your last act as head-boy of this School, before you too are stripped of your rank and privileges, you will now beat the two ex-prefects. So please take up the paddle again and let us begin this, the penultimate act, in this marathon of retribution. I will leave it to your good judgment as to how you choose to administer the punishment; but I draw your attention to the fact that both Fenner and Parry must both remain in place over the chairs until all sixty strokes have been given.” Having said that he would leave the flogging to Brasher, he then went on and told the hapless Brasher exactly what he should do. Couched as suggestions, his words were, in fact, orders to the head-boy as to how he should flog his co-prefects: “Brasher, I suggest you double each of the twelve parallel strokes to ensure that the two subjects get the absolute best out of their quota, I suggest you give each of them six strokes parallel and then double the first six strokes with the second. Can I take it, Brasher that you follow what I mean?”

“Yes sir, I understand exactly what you mean.” Fenner and Parry also had understood what the Headmaster’s suggestion meant of them for by applying two strokes to exactly the same place on a lad’s buttocks, the biting pain of the cane was transformed into utter agony for the recipient. It was clear that the Headmaster had couched his sentence on Fenner and Parry as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He had not increase the number of cane strokes, but by making Brasher double each cut, he had increased the pain for the recipients. He was bent on extracting the last pound of flesh from the two lads.

Brasher, who in his brief career as head-boy, in common with most of the other prefects, had enjoyed enormously beating arse at every opportunity that presented itself. In spite of the fact that he had known that he, Fenner and Parry would be facing similar painful consequences once they had finished flogging their team-mates, he had personally nevertheless revelled in what had been a unique experience for all three of them. After all, when does a prefect ever have the opportunity to participate in the administration of a mass flogging, the likes of which was now taking place?

But now, with his cock still hard as a rock from the uncontrollable sexual arousal of what he had just done, and was still about to do his team mates, he felt uneasy for the first time since the drama had started.  The Headmaster had already upped the punishment for the other two prefects, but had not mentioned what was to happen to him, the soon to be ex-head-boy. Brasher was not so naïve as to think that he would escape scot-free from his part in the affair; and quite frankly he was ready to take the punishment which he knew he deserved. But the fear of the unknown, coupled with the utter ruthlessness of the Headmaster was beginning make him very nervous. So, for the first time since the floggings began, he felt true fear gripping his body.

As he could do nothing to avoid his unknown fate, he suddenly found that he possessed sufficient backbone to prepare himself for what he knew was going to be a very painful, if not the most painful experience in his life to date; to face it with the equanimity of someone who acknowledges that he has made a dreadful mistake. So he marshalled all his sangfroid as he prepared to flog Fenner and Parry; he would show the Headmaster that in this moment of extreme adversity, in spite of his recent lapses in judgment leading to his present parlous state, that he was still capable of carrying out his duties as the head-boy of Frogmore. He would go out honourably: not slinking away like a beaten dog with its tail between his legs, but proudly erect, taking whatever punishment was visited on him without rancour or ill-feeling, He would perform his duties to the last, as an act of retribution for the error of his ways, if not to redeem himself in the eyes of the Headmaster, then to redeem himself in his own eyes.

Of course this boded ill for Fenner and Parry, whose arses would shortly feel the effects of the excessively severe beatings to which the Headmaster had sentenced them.  Brasher felt himself duty bound to carry out the Headmaster’s orders to the letter.  But you cannot walk away from your inner-self and as he prepared to flog Fenner and Parry, Brasher hated himself for what he was being compelled to do to his two co-prefects by the Headmaster. In his heart of hearts, in spite of his own as yet undefined future encounter with the rod of justice, he knew that he would enjoy thrashing their two naked arses; he always did; but he wished, in this case, he did not. However, as needs must, there was nothing he could do to rid himself of his personal feeling of guilt, for which, as he prepared himself to deliver the onslaught to the two naked arses in front of him, he silently cursed the Headmaster.

But in addition to the fact that Fenner and Parry were to receive what were, by any normal standards, over-the-top floggings, there was also the fact that he would be performing solo in front of an audience composed not only of the housemasters and his peer-prefects, but also of his twelve other team-mates whom he, Fenner and Parry, the very persons whom he was now being forced to punish, had just flogged. It boggled the mind that the Headmaster had conceived of such a contorted and tortured way of punishing the errant rugger XV. He had inflated this act of retribution, which no one would have denied him was unjust in principle, into an event, which smacked of the Spanish Inquisition.

Finally, some fifteen minutes later, the moment reckoning had arrived for the head-boy, Philip Brasher. He had beaten the hell out of Fenner’s and Parry’s arses and the Headmaster had consigned them to join their other team members, alongside whom they now stood, with their hands on their heads, sobbing uncontrollably in their agony.   Brasher now stood quite alone in front of the Headmaster to hear his own fate. The Headmaster did not spare him verbally as he upbraided the most senior prefect of the School for abandoning his duties: “Brasher I cannot begin tell you how disappointed I am with the entire rugby team for its abhorrent, ungentlemanly behaviour on its way back from Rigby yesterday. Frankly your collective behaviour was that of a set of street louts, totally unacceptable from members of this School. But what made the whole affair even worse was that three of the team members, Fenner, Parry and you, Brasher were prefects; and not only prefects but Fenner and Parry were heads of their respective houses and in your case Brasher, you were head-boy of the School itself, the highest honour that any school can bestow on one of its pupils; but now, thanks to a moment of aberrative madness, you have thrown all that away.”

At that moment, the Headmaster was interrupted in his harangue by the arrival of the school’s gardener, bearing a deep bucket in which, soaking in water, was a freshly made birch. He paused and said:  “Thank you, Jennings, for giving up your Sunday morning to take the trouble to make up a new birch for this sad occasion. If you could put the bucket of over here by the lectern, that will be all, thank you.”  

The eyes of everyone, including those of a now visibly trembling Brasher, were on the bucket, or rather, on its contents. Its arrival had resolved the question on everybody’s mind, Brasher’s included: the head-boy was going to be birched for his sins.  Brasher looked at the birch, horrified by what he saw and fearful of what it would do to his arse. And he had good reason to be frightened, as the Frogmore birch was like no other. Made from a bundle of slender, whippy, woody shoots from a pollarded maple, it was capable of inflicting exquisitely agonising pain on the buttocks of whomever was unfortunate enough to feel it. Brasher had, over his school career, like many boys at Frogmore, been caned by the Headmaster on several occasions and so he knew that his legendary reputation among the boys at Frogmore, was more than justified. But never, ever had he been birched.

In fact, although the Headmaster never hesitated to cane a boy, few had ever had the misfortune to be birched, as the birch needed to be used when freshly cut, as it had what, in modern day parlance, would be called a short shelf life. So gradually its role in the School had diminished in favour of the expedient handiness, not to mention the vicious efficacy of the rattan cane. Nevertheless, the threat of the birch, ever present, like the Sword of Damocles hanging perpetually over their heads, was truly an effective deterrent from the worst type of egregious behaviour: the boys all went in fear that one day they might feel its not so tender caress on their own bare backsides. But evidently the sins of the head-boy had been considered bad enough for a birch to be made up that very Sunday morning. Quite frankly, not a distinction which the head-boy welcomed having visited on him. 

But the arrival of the dreaded birch, the most universally feared of any implement of corporal punishment, had cut short the Headmaster, who now chose action rather than words. “Brasher please assume the position with which you, are, I believe now so intimately familiar, however, from a different perspective.  I shall first pre-condition your buttocks with twelve strokes of the paddle to enable them to benefit fully from twelve strokes of that most traditional of public school implements of flagellation: the birch. Your penance will then be completed by twelve strokes of the senior cane. I believe that your final act of penance as head-boy, conducted before a number of your peer group, some of whose members were involved in the same unfortunate affair as you yourself and others who are not in any way implicated, will bring home to the entire school that no one, not even the head-boy himself, is above the rules and will suffer retribution if they are broken, Brace yourself, boy, for  it is my unfortunate duty to give you the most painful few minutes that you have ever experienced in your young life to date.”

So there Brasher finally had it straight from the horse’s mouth; he was to suffer a thirty-six stroke flogging: twelve with the paddle, followed by twelve with the dreaded Frogmore birch, to be completed by, the sort of cream-on-the-cake: twelve, final cuts of the cane. It was a punishment just so mind-bendingly awful that he could hardly get his head around it. But there it was. The only positive thing one could say about this nightmarish situation, is that it was to be put into effect immediately, sparing Brasher, on whom his worst enemies would never have wished such a thrashing as this, the agony of waiting for the axe to fall.

Let’s face it, the Headmaster was an utter sadist and had seized upon the admittedly awful collective behaviour by the most senior boys in the School to make an example of them; and what an example it had been!  He had orchestrated a drama worthy of a Wagnerian grand opera, working his way upwards through the team, via the two house-captains, to end with a tableau worthy of Wagner’s Goetterdaemmerung (The Twilight of the Gods) as Philip Brasher, the head-boy, fell from grace.

Brasher braced himself and the Headmaster brought down his paddle with enormous force on the upper part of the lad’s right buttock. From then on, he worked systematically; giving each buttock three resounding swats with the paddle before pausing for a good minute and repeating the whole sequence. After this co-called pre-conditioning, Brasher was already in agony, for twelve strokes of the paddle, although not delivering the bite of the cane nor the insidious  build-up of pain characterised by the birch, was in its own right a formidably painful experience. But the birch was a totally new experience for Brasher. At first, although not to be written off as innocuous,  the birch gives the impression of being a relatively mild form of punishment; but as the strokes build up and the skin is broken in a myriad places across the whole buttock area, this wolf in sheep’s clothing shows its true character. The pain gradually builds up and up until at the end it becomes well-nigh untenable, which explains why it is the most feared implement among the panoply of imaginatively inventive devices, which are used to flog the naked backsides of English public schoolboys. I leave it to you, dear Reader, to imagine how Brasher felt after twenty-four resounding strokes across his naked buttocks.

But the Headmaster was still not done with the lad, as he now went on directly and gave poor Brasher’s arse twelve swingeing strokes with the senior cane. The lad had to endure six parallel cuts, followed by six diagonals, applied in the form of a cross: three one way and three the other. By the time the Headmaster had finished with the lad, his arse, bruised and blistered was spotted with blood. In its own way it was a temporary masterpiece of the art of flogging, which resembled and rivalled a painting by Jackson Pollock.

As Brasher stood again before the Headmaster, hands on his head, with his cock subjugated and no longer defiantly erect, he managed, God lone knows how, to maintain his dignity and composure as he had promised himself to try to do.  “Brasher, I can but repeat that your behaviour has been deplorable and you have only yourself to blame for the punishment and indignities which you have just endured.  It remains only for me to tell you that as of now, you are no longer head-boy and a prefect of this School. You should consider yourselves lucky that I have decided against expelling the three of you: you Brasher, together with Fenner and Parry.  Now please go and stand with your team-mates, whose rank in this school as a sixth former you have just rejoined.”

The Headmaster made the whole team of fifteen boys, still half naked, stand for a full fifteen minutes more. He then made the team turn and face the wall, whilst the six housemasters and all sixteen prefects, together with an ashamed Mr. Appleby, walk past and view the damage to their backsides. He then dismissed the team and allowed them to return to their own quarters to lick their wounds and assuage their pain in whatever way adolescent, public schoolboys are wont to do.

And so there, ostensibly ended the unfortunate affair following the away match with Rigby - but not quite!

POSTLOGUE 

Later that Sunday afternoon, a nervous Mr. Appleby, in response to a note from the Headmaster, knocked on his study door. As he waited to be told to enter, he rehearsed in his own mind the explanation he would give for his failure to control the rugger team on its way back from Rigby.  A loud voice called across the closed door told him to enter, which he did with understandable trepidation, as he felt this summons from the Headmaster portended the end of his nascent career as a schoolmaster. After all he had seriously failed in his duty, so what other solution was there? But he reckoned without the inventiveness of the Headmaster.

“You wanted to see me Headmaster,” he began.

“I most certainly did,” said the Headmaster, from behind his desk, at which he was sitting. “Come in Appleby and take a seat,” he added, waving towards a chair facing him across his desk.  Appleby sat down and could not help but notice that there was a cane lying in full view on the Headmaster’s desk. Was it an omen he wondered?

“I’m afraid, Appleby, things went badly wrong for you yesterday on the return journey from Rigby. As master in charge, you were totally incapable of controlling the boys on their way back from Rigby yesterday afternoon. You allowed the exuberance of the boys on their victory to get out of hand; and as we all know things went from bad to worse with the whole thing ending up in a drunken brawl in the King’s Arms with the police having to be called in. Not a brilliant performance on your part as master in charge, I think you would agree. Perhaps you would care to explain yourself to me?”

Poor Appleby had no real idea why things had gone wrong, so he simply said: “I’m afraid, sir, when I remonstrated with boys about their growing boisterousness, they just ignored me; then as you said things just went from bad  to worse.”

“Appleby, you are here a Frogmore for a year as part of your teacher training course. I can tell you that you are seen by your senior colleagues in the history department as an excellent teacher and are also well liked by the boys. But they see you as a softy: someone they can ride and take advantage of with impunity, which is exactly what they did on the journey back from Rigby yesterday. When you joined us at the beginning of term, I handed you a cane and suggested you use it; but I see from the punishment book that you have not thrashed one single boy since you have been with us. Your problem, Appleby, is that you are seen by the boys as a toothless tiger. Are you afraid of using the cane on a lad’s backside? If you had shown the boys that dogs can bite as well as bark, then you might have done better in controlling them.  You have never to give an inch or the ,, a mile, which exactly the position in which you found yourself yesterday.”

“Headmaster, the reason why I have not yet caned a boy In any of my classes, is that I am myself reluctant to use the cane, You see, sir, at both my prep school and later at Eton, where both the cane and the birch are in regular use, by the grace of God, I managed to go through my entire school career without ever being beaten. So, the man you see before you is still a virgin when it comes to corporal punishment.”

The Headmaster was somewhat surprised by this confession. It seemed incredible that anyone could get through Eton with his arse intact; so he wondered looking at the angelic, young Appleby, whether he was also a virgin in the sexual sense of the word.  After a moment’s reflection he said: “Well, Appleby that is quite a remarkable revelation which you have just made to me and it goes to a long way towards the root cause of your problem in controlling the boys, It would have stood you in good stead, especially in view of the career path you have chosen, if you yourself had experienced the bite of the cane and seen first-hand, so to speak, its salutary effect on the recipient. I think it would have enabled you to overcome your reluctance to use the cane yourself on your current flock; a reluctance which may well prove your Achilles Heel in the future.”

Appleby saw a faint light at the end of the tunnel in the Headmaster’s words: in the future. So, it appeared that he was not going to be dismissed. But he had the good sense to eat humble pie, as he said: “So Headmaster, in view of my failure, would you like me to offer you my resignation, as I am beginning to feel that I may be on the wrong track in my chosen career and should perhaps think of some alternative activity with which to occupy my life?”

“No young man, before I allow you to throw away appears to be a promising career. I have an alternative which might just prove a solution to your problem, which, if you agree, I think might be well worth trying out before you burn your boats and abandon teaching forever. As I have already told you, you are considered by your colleagues to be a good teacher. So, it would be wrong of me to allow you to abandon a promising teaching career by throwing the baby out with the bathwater, when I believe that with a more understanding touch, the bath could be expeditiously drained, leaving the baby intact. I think that if you yourself were to experience what I will admit is the somewhat doubtful pleasure of the cane biting into your bare backside, it might well be your salvation.”

“It would bring you into the real world of the public school, with its attendant brutality, which somehow, in spite of your excellent education in one of the best schools in the country you appear to have hitherto escaped. But more immediately it would be an act of retribution for your own part in yesterday’s fiasco, which as master in charge, you could have avoided had you put your foot down. I think that it might allow you to find your own peace of mind in view of the important part you played in allowing matters to get out of hand. Overall, I am sure it would be good for your soul to do penance with the boys, whom you allowed to run wild, resulting in the severe and painful consequences for all of them that you saw this morning, for which you bear partial responsibility.”

Then showing a rare and unexpected soft side to his normally stern and somewhat brusque nature, he said: “Now let me offer you a glass of Madeira, whilst you think over a few minutes what I have just said to you. I myself always find a touch of alcohol very soothing in moments of stress; and appreciate that you, young man are feeling stressed right now.”

What had been left unsaid, but was understood from the pause for thought that the Headmaster had just given him, was that once the Madeira was finished, he expected answer, yes or no to his suggestion from Appleby.

Appleby was absolutely amazed by the Headmaster’s perceptive analysis of the reasons leading up to his failure, in which he had pinpointed his chief flaw, which was not as a teacher but as a master: one who was seen by the boys as a softy: as someone who could be taken advantage of with impunity.  He saw, as he sipped his madeira, mulling over the Headmaster’s words, that if he was going make a success of teaching as a career in the English public school environment, where discipline and holding fast to the rule were key factors, that he would have to harden his heart to the boys and call them out if they overreached themselves. So, if that involved thrashing the odd lad now and then, he would just have to steel himself and do what to him had, until now, been an abhorrent act. After all, he now rationalised to himself, several of his colleagues still used the cane regularly in their classes, so why not also he? The more he thought about it, the more the Headmaster’s suggestion that he might benefit from feeling the bite of the cane across his own bare arse, although not exactly a highly attractive prospect,  became less outlandish and less frightening than it had appeared to him to be on first hearing.

But the thing which made bite the bullet and decide in his own mind to submit himself to the not so tender, loving care of the Headmaster’s ministrations, was the fact that he felt himself partially responsible for the truly horrific, frankly, over-the-top punishment meted out to the entire rugger team, which he had been made to witness that very morning.  He knew he had let himself down; but equally he felt he had also let down the boys in his care. Had he had sufficient courage to exercise his undoubted authority over the boys and made them obey him, none of what followed would have taken place. But he had not done so and the result had been a mass-beating of the boys on an unprecedented scale. And so he saw that if he were to take a beating himself, in acknowledgment of his own deficiencies, in doing penance, he would assuage his own conscience and be at peace with himself and with the boys of the team; he would have shared their misery.

So, when the Madeira was finished, he took his courage in both hands and informed the Headmaster that he would submit himself to him for a beating. It was a brave decision, for in spite of being essentially a gentle soul, he had already seen the Headmaster in action earlier that same day and had divined that the man had a cruel, vindictive and sadistic streak to his character and enjoyed making boys suffer. Thus it was with eyes wide open that he put himself in the hands of a man who actually took pleasure in thrashing boys’ naked arses. He was aware that he was putting himself in the hands of a man who would not soft-peddle when it came to laying on the cane. But in fact, to assuage his one conscience he wanted Headmaster to be as severe with him as had been with Brasher as he did not want to feel that he was letting the boys down again.

The Headmaster who had been hoping against hope that Appleby would accept his proposal, as there was nothing he would enjoy more than thrashing the naked buttocks of a twenty-five-year-old young man; it was just an enjoyable prospect, rendered even more so, as he would be flogging a twenty-five-year-old cane virgin. Could it ever get any better?

“Appleby, I congratulate you on making what I think is a wise decision: one which will, unfortunately, leave you in considerable pain, but from which you will emerge a totally different, more confident young man; more able to fulfil your evident potential as a teacher; and moreover, one who will no longer hesitate in the exercise of his authority, such has occurred yesterday. Now, down to practicalities; when did you envisage that your baptism of fire into the harsh realities of the real world would take place?”

“Well, sir, there are two sayings. The first:  There is no time like the present. The second: Strike whilst the iron is hot. So, sir, as we are both here right now, and as I am figuratively the iron which is to be struck, could we possibly get the whole thing over and done with right away? After all, you have spoken of the act as a sort of baptism and it is Sunday afternoon, so today would be a very appropriate time in my view for me to enter into the real world of Frogmore. After all, if I go away and we make a later appointment, I might have second thoughts, change my mind and scrap the whole idea. So as I am here, ready and willing, it would suit me, sir, if we could get the whole thing over and done with here and now. Then we can all put the traumatic events behind us.”

“Another wise decision, Appleby, if I may say so; and before we begin, let me just say that I admire your courage in offering yourself voluntarily for punishment,  as I have no authority whatsoever to flog you in your  present position as a trainee teacher here at Frogmore.  However, before you finally submit yourself to what will be your first ever experience of taking a beating on your bare buttocks, allow me to tell you that this will not be pleasant.  Indeed, quite the contrary, as it will be excruciatingly painful and as you have never been caned before, it will, believe me, be quite an ordeal for you. But you will survive the pain as thousands have done in the past; as the rugger team members are now doing; and countless generations of boys will doubtless do in the future However, I think, experiencing the painful sting of the cane for the first time at your age, you will find you will emerge from your ordeal free of the inhibitions which have, until now, detracted from your authority in the classroom.  You will also, by voluntarily accepting a flogging yourself, find solace in your penance for the way, in which I know you feel you failed the boys and brought this morning’s  painful retribution down on their heads.”

“Now, Appleby, I don’t think I need to tell you the degree of undress I require of you, nor the position to adopt across that armchair over there.  So if you would kindly ready yourself, I will proceed and try my best to help you conquer your inhibitions.”  The Headmaster picked up the cane from his desk, and Appleby, as he bent across the armchair, felt the insidious smoothness of this slender rod of rattan gently touch the mid-point of his buttocks, belying the pain it was about to deliver, “Brace yourself, Appleby, for this is not going to be pleasant. I intend to give you a total of twelve cuts, eight parallel and four as crossed diagonals to ensure that you leave here with what is vulgarly referred to by the boys as a well-beaten arse.”

Poor Appleby was trembling like a leaf as he waited for the first blow to land on his naked flesh. He closed his eyes and screwed his courage together, hoping that he would manage to conduct himself in this moment of adversity as the gentleman he truly was. Then the cane was suddenly no longer in contact with his naked arse and he suddenly heard a whining swish as the Headmaster brought it down through the air with maximum force, to mate with his bare flesh with a resounding crack, which he heard, before a split second later, the searing pain unique to the rattan cane, made his backside feel as if it had been touched by a red-hot poker. For someone whose arse had never before been touched by any implement of chastisement, it was the apocryphal baptism by fire. It was much worse than he had ever imagined it to be.

Until now, even though he had witnessed the fifteen team members being flogged that very morning, he had not realised the excruciatingly intensity of the pain that such a slender, flexible rod could deliver. Unlike the birch, where the pain insidiously builds up stroke after stroke, the cane delivers its painful message from the very first stroke. So, to someone like Appleby, for whom it was his maiden flogging, with an expert like the Headmaster wielding the cane and intent on making every stroke as painful as possible, it is not surprising that he now realised that he was in for a rough ride.  The Headmaster paused for about ten seconds, which seemed like forever to Appleby, waiting for the next stroke and started on a monologue of instruction about the finer points of the art of arse beating – his words!

 “Appleby, I look upon the act of beating a boy on the bare, as a minor art form. The first thing you must remember, when you come to beat a boy yourself, is not to rush things. Take your time; and above all, pause for about ten to fifteen seconds between each stroke to allow your subject time to enjoy – but that is not the appropriate word – to appreciate, the pain of every stroke.”  Then suddenly Appleby again heard the downwards swish of the cane as it sliced through the air at tremendous speed before landing with the same, sickening crack, delivering its second painful message alongside the first. He could scarcely believe that it was more painful than the first; but it certainly was. The Headmaster droned on: “I always look upon a boy’s buttocks as a blank canvas, which I am privileged to embellish with a temporary, abstract, if somewhat painful masterpiece. Whenever you beat a boy, I recommend you to think carefully of exactly where you wish to place each stroke if you wish to leave him with a pictorially tasteful beaten arse.”

Then with a sharp thwack, the third stroke landed on his arse; this time on a lower part of his nether-anatomy: the part on which he sat; the co-called sit-point. “It is important to remember,” the Headmaster went on, in what was fast becoming a master-class in the finer points of a giving a boy a bare-arse beating  “To remember that the lower part of a lad’s buttocks  towards the top of his legs, the part on which he sits, is the area most sensitive to pain, which is why you should always be more generous with the allocation of your strokes to that area, to ensure that the recipient benefits – or perhaps I should say, suffers – from his experience long after it is completed. A truly well-beaten arse should prevent a boy from sitting comfortably for at least three days after the event.”

The violence of the fourth stroke took Appleby’s breath away. “I always increase the severity of my strokes as the caning progresses; and I make a pause after half the parallel strokes have been given, to allow the recipient to savour what he has already received. Always remember, Appleby, that a beating is a punishment, which to be effective must be painful; the dog must not only bark, but also bite; and bite hard. So, Appleby, as it is your first ever encounter with the cane, and you have now felt the effect of the first four of the eight parallel strokes, I think we will pause for five minutes to enable you to digest and appreciate the feeling of a proper beating. We will resume in five minutes, after which I will place three of the four final parallel strokes on your sit-spot, as a practical illustration of the correct placing of  strokes to ensure that the recipient – unfortunately you in this case – experiences the maximum pain from his ordeal. We will then make another five-minute pause before I deliver the final four cuts diagonally, bring your total suffering to a neat round dozen strokes.  My dear Appleby, by now you have perhaps grasped the key fact which is that when a lad is beaten, maximisation of the pain is the name of game.”

On and on went the Headmaster; he seemed to have what he obviously thought was an instructive comment to make after each stroke. Appleby just wished that he would shut up and finish the job, which he was obviously enjoying.  By the time the twelfth and final stroke fell, the Headmaster had managed to drag out the beating to last a full twenty minutes. Appleby was finally invited to stand up and make himself decent again. He gingerly pulled himself to his feet from the position in which he had been bent for over twenty minutes. The Headmaster had quite clearly followed his own dictum and had not hurried things. For Appleby it had been the worst half hour of his entire life. As he struggled to pull back on his underpants and trousers, his arse felt as if it had been placed on a bed of burning coals; never in his life had he imagined that a beating was so painful.

Finally dressed again, he stood there before the Headmaster, who said: “Well, Appleby, let me congratulate you on your sangfroid; I think you took that rather welland I think you will find that the experience has changed your outlook on life considerably.  I hope you will find that you are now mentally better equipped to take no nonsense from any of the boys you are teaching, whatever their age. I can but recommend that you thrash one or two backsides to show the boys that things have changed. Let them see that you are in charge and will not be ridden by them. And I am sure that your voluntary suffering will have eased your own conscience about letting the rugger team down. Now, how about some tea?”

“Headmaster, if you will excuse me, I would prefer to decline your kind invitation as I would like to be alone for the next few hours.”

“My dear fellow, there is no need for you to excuse yourself, as I completely understand how you feel.”

They shook hands and Appleby left to nurse his sore arse in private.

THE END