On the Bare

by Fiona Locke

  I covered my face and Peter gently peeled my hands away.

  ‘I am only going to give you six. And then this gentleman is going to give you six. You will count them and say “thank you, sir” after each one. When we have finished you will apologise to him for your childish antics. If we believe you’re sincere, the matter will be forgiven. Now let’s get this over with. Bend over and touch your toes for me.’

  His tone was patronising but loving and it was always my undoing. It made me feel like a child, safe and guided. I could seek refuge in a place where all my misdeeds could be corrected with corporal punishment, the slate wiped clean. Nothing in my adult life was ever as certain and there was a strange comfort in the inevitability of his discipline.

  I obeyed and Peter took up a position to my left, laying the switch against my bottom. He gave me one light tap before drawing back. I braced myself, pressing my fingertips against my shoes as he whipped the switch down sharply. A line of fire blazed across both cheeks, tearing an agonised cry from my throat.

  My hands flew behind me to clutch my bottom and I panted for breath, struggling to regain my composure. Eventually the sting began to dissipate and I got control of myself.

  ‘One. Thank you, sir.’

  The second stroke fell as soon as I was back in position, wrenching the words from me. ‘Two – oww! Thank you, sir.’

  Number three was the hardest yet and I bit back a little scream, my knees wobbling unsteadily and my hands wavering for balance. But I got hold of myself and counted.

  ‘Three. Thank you, sir.’

  He didn’t torture me by making me wait long between strokes and I did my best to make him proud of me. I locked my legs and breathed deeply as the pain of each burning stripe pulsed like fire throughout my skin.

  ‘Four,’ I gasped. ‘Th-thank you, sir.’

  Only two more, only two more, I chanted inside my head. Well, only two more from Peter. I still had another six to come from our guest.

  The fifth stroke sliced into my bottom and I peered between my legs at the businessman as I counted. His face was impassive, betraying no sadistic delight in my suffering.

  ‘Five. Thank you, sir.’

  I closed my eyes and absorbed the sixth stroke with only a slight shudder.

  ‘Six,’ I said after a few moments. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Good girl,’ Peter said kindly. ‘Now show me how brave you can be for the last six.’

  The men traded places without a word and I waited in the hollow silence, submissively accepting my fate. The businessman didn’t address the target the way Peter had; he merely brought the switch down, striping both cheeks with flawless aim. Had he done this before?

  I inhaled sharply as my bottom came alive with fire again. It was excruciating. But I accepted it, embraced it.

  I tensed and relaxed, then counted. ‘One. Thank you, sir.’

  Again the switch found its mark with admirable precision. I released the breath I’d been holding and counted, letting the pain wash over me, in and around me. I had found the resonance of the pain and it flowed through me like pure energy, transporting me to a place of serenity. I felt the next stroke land and I counted it, but I was somewhere high above the pain now, floating in a zone where time had slowed down.

  I felt as if I had stepped outside myself and I watched in blissful fascination as some other girl – not me – was whipped. She stood obediently touching her toes, her school skirt raised and her knickers around her knees, her white knee socks spattered with mud. The Japanese man sliced the length of birch into her bared bottom and she gasped with impossible pain. Or was it impossible pleasure? I couldn’t tell.

  In a dreamy voice she counted – four, five …

  ‘Six. Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Very good, Angie,’ Peter said, his voice full of pride. ‘You may get up now.’

  I drifted slowly back to reality, still dazed as I rose unsteadily from my position. Peter embraced me fiercely and I blinked away tears as my arms limply tried to return the hug.

  Then he held me at arm’s length and his face grew serious again. ‘Are you ready to apologise now?’

  I nodded meekly.

  Turning to the businessman, I bowed my head in a gesture of true humility, tears pricking my eyes. ‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ I said softly. ‘I hope you feel I’ve paid for my behaviour.’

  He couldn’t suppress a smile as he wrapped his arms around me and told me I was forgiven.

  ‘I think the rain has stopped,’ Peter said brightly, ‘so we should return to our selection. Tell me, Angie – which one of these was more effective?’

  I blushed, gingerly pulling my knickers up over my scorched bottom. I smoothed my skirt down and gave him a pouty look.

  ‘If I may repay your kindness,’ said the businessman with a polite smile, ‘take both the trees. With my compliments. Prune them regularly and I’m sure they’ll flourish.’

  At our surprised expressions he added, ‘My supplier keeps me well stocked.’

  The Good Old Days

  ‘IT’S POSITIVELY VILE!’

  Amelia wrinkled her nose in disgust. She lifted the pleated grey skirt with two fingers and dropped it onto the desk like a dead rat. ‘I’m not wearing it.’ She folded her arms across her chest, signalling an end to any further discussion.

  The bookish woman behind the desk adjusted her glasses and gave a polite little cough. She lifted the phone and dialled a sequence of numbers while Amelia waited huffily.

  ‘Mr Chandos? It’s Miss North here. Sorry to trouble you, but I wonder if I could impose on you to come to my office? We have a …’ She glanced up at Amelia, then back down at the desk. ‘Situation. Yes, very good. Thank you.’

  Miss North rang off and gestured expansively for Amelia to sit in one of the chairs opposite the desk. ‘Mr Chandos is on his way. You may speak to him about your complaint.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Amelia said with excruciating politeness.

  She sat down, feeling a minor triumph already at the extra attention. Yes, she’d signed a contract and yes, she’d agreed to sacrifice a little glamour for the sake of authenticity. But the uniform was a step too far. The housemates on Big Brother got to wear their own clothes; why couldn’t the participants in this show wear their own school uniforms? Amelia was proud of the subtle alterations she’d made to hers, so that it set off her shapely figure. But in the drab grey monstrosity Miss North had given her, she’d look like an evacuee from the Second World War.

  Mr Chandos arrived and Amelia rose to greet him. He was younger than she’d been expecting – mid-forties, she guessed. She had imagined a crusty old buzzard of a headmaster, but the man in the crisp white shirt was darkly handsome.

  ‘The young lady has a complaint about the uniform,’ said Miss North in a patronising tone. ‘She refuses to wear it.’

  Amelia ignored her, giving Mr Chandos her sweetest smile. ‘It’s only that it’s so unflattering for TV. I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ he said pleasantly. ‘We’re going to be recreating the school environment of the 1950s. Authentic uniforms are an essential part of the atmosphere.’

  It was a tone he might have used to impart some dry historical fact – the date of a battle perhaps.

  ‘Look, I realise what you’re trying to do here and I’m being perfectly reasonable.’

  ‘Miss Rutherford, it’s quite straightforward.’ His tone was sharper now. ‘Either you wear the proper uniform of Queen Mary’s College or you will not be a part of the show.’

  Amelia’s eyes flashed. She desperately wanted to be on TV, even on a silly reality show like The Good Old Days. The whole point was exposure and a shot at fame. But to imagine her friends seeing her in such a horrid uniform … no make-up … To say nothing of the film directors who might see the show …

  ‘Oh, bother!’ she said at last, her mouth set in a resentful pout. She snatched the hateful garments from the woman’s desk and stalked off to fin
d the dormitory.

  Mr Chandos smiled knowingly.

  The Good Old Days was the show everyone had been waiting for. A social experiment on the effectiveness of school discipline. Twenty pupils had agreed to spend six weeks in a recreated 1950s school, subject to 1950s discipline.

  The theme had been explored before with modern students eating Spam fritters and languishing under the archaic ‘chalk and talk’ teaching regime. However, the authenticity had been severely compromised by the lack of corporal punishment – a famously prevalent feature of any such education in ‘the good old days’. Critics had derided the concept of a post-war English school giving timeouts instead of canings for bad behaviour.

  Mr Chandos intended to rectify that. His 1950s establishment would be authentic in every respect – especially the most vital one. And his guinea pigs knew exactly what they were getting into. They were all of legal age. They had signed consent forms and agreed to enter into the spirit of the thing. They would not be harmed or damaged – merely treated to the same punishment regime enjoyed by previous generations. They all seemed to think it was a small price to pay for being on TV.

  Amelia stood glaring at her reflection. The shapeless grey blazer, the heavy woollen skirt, the itchy knee socks – all of it conspired to make her look fat. This was supposed to be her big break. Her big shot at fame. But the uniform!

  The creature in the mirror looked like a nightmare version of herself. Her flaxen plaits were like wilted daffodils, and without make-up, the harsh fluorescent lights brought her every imperfection into sharp relief. The straw boater was an indignity, but the knickers were the ultimate humiliation. An atrocity in thick bottle-green cotton, they came up to her navel and pinched around the top of each thigh. She’d never even worn shorts that covered so much, let alone underwear. It was too awful!

  She reached for her mobile phone before remembering that she’d handed it in along with all her other ‘modern’ items. For six weeks she would have access to nothing that wasn’t available in the schools of the 1950s. She was already feeling the ache of withdrawal and it had only been twenty minutes.

  ‘Hi! Cool uniforms, huh? I love the boater!’

  Amelia stared glumly at the new arrival – a pale girl with mousy brown hair and glasses. The dreadful uniform suited her perfectly.

  ‘I’m Lisa Jennings,’ she chirped. ‘You must be Amelia Rutherford. They said you were already up here. I’m so excited – are you? I mean, it’ll be like going back in time!’

  Amelia cringed as the girl prattled on.

  ‘People say they had like, better teachers back then and that our parents got a better education than we’re getting. I can’t wait to see how different it all is.’

  ‘I read the mission statement too,’ Amelia snapped, still glowering at herself in the mirror.

  Lisa positioned herself next to Amelia and gazed with childlike wonderment at their reflections. ‘Hey, don’t be sad,’ she said. ‘It’s like an escape from the pressures of the modern world. No email, no Internet. Things were so much simpler back then.’

  Did the girl always talk like that? Perhaps she’d been raised by motivational speakers – and not very good ones at that.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Amelia said, deciding to put on a game face. ‘Just wish I could text my boyfriend. I’ll have to see if I can find out where they took our stuff and sneak in to get it.’

  Lisa looked betrayed. ‘But that’s like, going against the whole spirit of the show. The idea is for us to experience life without all of that.’

  Was she for real? ‘Reality’ TV wasn’t about reality; it was about TV. No one would do it if there wasn’t an audience. Keira Knightley might wear a corset in some period costume drama, but between takes she’d be drinking double lattes in her air-conditioned trailer with her iPod and all the comforts of the twenty-first century.

  ‘The cameras are certainly authentic,’ Amelia said, nodding towards the open doorway where a man stood filming them. She wiggled her fingers at the lens. ‘Hi, Mum!’

  Lisa ducked away shyly and headed off down the corridor where Amelia could hear her infecting the new arrivals with her perkiness.

  Things got off to a smooth enough start and the pupils quickly overcame their self-consciousness about the role play. After a couple of days of hamming it up and showing off to each other, they began to settle into the 1950s routine. They were roused at dawn each morning for breakfast, morning assembly, and then the most tedious lessons Amelia had ever endured. Lunch was barely edible. Games were a joke. And after a vile dinner they were expected to do prep for two hours before going to bed.

  Amelia got on well enough with the other girls, most of whom weren’t boarders at their own schools and were soon homesick. A couple of them were frightfully common and Amelia couldn’t help but grimace at their regional accents, but she was still friendly towards them. The whole country was watching, after all.

  Darcy Pickthorn, from Cheltenham Ladies’ College, was made Head Girl, much to Amelia’s chagrin; she had wanted the position for herself. She found a friend in Hedy Lyttelton-Cole, though, a boarder from Gordonstoun. They shared class notes and helped each other study.

  The boys were generally a scruffy lot and the only one Amelia found appealing was Edward Gascoigne, whose movie-star looks almost made her forget his impenetrable Geordie accent.

  In class they were segregated – boys on one side, girls on the other. And they had all been taken aback by the bizarre teaching style in this ancient regime. One day Mr Franklin had whacked an inattentive boy across the back of the skull with an exercise book. The entire class had frozen with shock. Such a thing would have meant a lawsuit back home; here it was just par for the course. Here they had to suffer the withering sarcasm of teachers who weren’t obliged to entertain them and they had to memorise dates, parse sentences and use tables to figure out the square roots of ridiculously large numbers. The schoolbooks were a rude awakening too, filled with dense rows of text and few, if any, pictures.

  There were also subjects they’d never encountered before. Mr Jones’s announcement that they’d be studying measures and mensuration was met with much giggling.

  ‘But sir,’ Edward said with mock ignorance, ‘surely it’s only girls who do that.’

  The childish joke continued throughout the lesson and Amelia couldn’t resist inflicting it on Mr Lewis when she decided to take a break from history.

  ‘Please may I go to the ladies’, sir?’ In a stage whisper she added, ‘It’s a Female Thing. I need to … mensurate.’

  Edward winked at her over the laughter and she imagined the wild speculation going on in the viewers’ minds back in the real world. Actually, she kind of hoped her boyfriend wasn’t watching.

  Week Two found the pupils getting restless. The novelty had worn off and the lessons were becoming truly tiresome. And while the cameras had been a major distraction at first, now they hardly noticed them. Amelia often had to remind herself that this was a performance, a 24/7 screen test. Thousands of people were watching her at all times. The spectre of corporal punishment hung over them and they’d all been testing the waters to see how much they could get away with. A morbid curiosity simmered just beneath the surface. Who would be the first to push too far?

  Although Amelia usually enjoyed English, swapping notes with Hedy was more fun than writing longhand compositions. They both agreed that Mr Campbell’s obsession with The Fall of the House of Usher was slightly disturbing and they spent one lesson filling a page with gruesome speculation about the reasons behind it. However, Hedy’s sketch of a dismembered schoolgirl was too much for Amelia and she blew their cover with an explosive burst of laughter.

  Everyone spun to stare at them as Hedy tried desperately – and unsuccessfully – to hide the note. Amelia was still shaking with suppressed laughter as Mr Campbell read over their efforts, but she sobered up quickly when he set them lines.

  I must pay attention in class. I must learn that, if I am naughty
and disrespectful, I will be punished. Two hundred times. To be done that evening after prep and handed in the next day.

  ‘And I shall check to make sure you get the paired commas right,’ he added.

  After the first dozen repetitions Amelia was beginning to regret their mischief. And when she finally finished the imposition late that night her hand was so cramped that she couldn’t believe she’d ever been amused by Hedy’s drawing in the first place.

  ‘I’m going to complain to Matron tomorrow about Repetitive Stress Injury,’ Amelia whimpered later in the dorm.

  ‘No such thing,’ came Lisa’s cheerful voice from the far corner of the room. ‘Not in the 50s.’

  ‘Oh, shut up and go to sleep,’ Hedy groaned. ‘My hand hurts too, you know.’

  Darcy compounded the humiliation by adding, ‘And you don’t want to get into any more trouble for talking after lights out.’

  Power really went to some people’s heads.

  A few days later Amelia was feeling restless again. She’d had it with the horrible knickers. The skirt was thick enough that she didn’t have to worry about an unsightly panty line, but even if no one could see, the ghastly things just made her feel hideous. Wearing sexy underwear made a woman feel sexy even when no one could see it, so the reverse must be true as well. There were no cameras in the loo, so she took them off and stuffed them into the bin. Of course, now there was nothing between her and the itchy wool skirt, but the trade-off was worth it. At least now the elastic wasn’t biting into her thighs.

  ‘What are you grinning about?’ asked Darcy as they gathered their books in the dorm and prepared for the next class.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ she said blithely, enjoying the sensation of cool air circulating beneath her skirt. Her little secret. In a way it was a pity no one knew about her rebellion; she was sure it would have been a hit with the audience.

  Divide £2,318 16s. 9¼d. by 139.

  Amelia stared in bewilderment at the problem before her. Not only was it long division, it was old money: pounds, shillings and pence. And she was expected to work that out by hand? With multiples of twelve and twenty where any sensible system used tens? And ninepence farthing! Two similarly monstrous problems had already been done on the blackboard with clumsy success. Amelia barely understood the amount, let alone the method.