BEXHILL SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, Assembly

by Adrian Akers-Douglas

  “Oh, darling,” Dick was almost hyperventilating, “that was wonderful. Was it good for you, too?”

  “Mmmm! Terrific!” At least she didn’t add “Thank you.”

  Minutes later, Dick was fast asleep, purring like a cat. Miss Holloway lay on her back, staring at the gently moving pattern made by the shadow of the trees on the ceiling.

  So that, she wondered, was it?

  Some more months would pass before she would find out that it wasn’t.

  Chapter 5

  Anna

  Anna, alone in the house, watched the raindrops running down her bedroom window. She was trying to stimulate herself, but somehow she couldn’t get into the required spirit. She sat up, straightened her knickers and lay back on her bed. What was the missing element?

  She shared the interests of so many girls of that era as they approached adulthood. Her hormones raged at the sight and sound of Elvis and his gyrating hips. Posters of a smouldering James Dean decorated her walls. Like most - if not all her friends, despite some of their fanciful boasts - she was still a virgin. Sex had only raised its head in her life in the form of some back-row fumblings in the cinema, where - despite her own arousal - she had always arrested the boy’s creeping hand before it had reached its goal. She had, of course, masturbated for years - something she acknowledged only to her closest friends during particularly intimate girly-talk sessions. But today none of the usual imaginary triggers - tall, lantern-jawed adolescents with smoky eyes, swivel-hipped rock musicians, or even assured and confident father-figures - was doing anything for her.

  She sighed, got up and sat at her dressing table. She examined herself in the mirror. She was tall for her age, with long legs that she knew attracted admiring glances from the boys, especially when she wore her most daringly short skirts (the ones she changed into at friends’ houses so that her own parents wouldn’t see them). Today, however, she was wearing jeans. She stood and half turned, examining her bottom. The jeans had been an expensive buy, but worth it for the way they clung to her cheeks. If anything needed some improvement, she thought, it was her bum: it was definitely on the small side, which meant that jeans and trousers had to be of high quality if they weren’t to look baggy on her.

  She sat down again and continued the evaluation. She touched her breasts: they were firm and developing nicely. Her face was pretty, she thought, even though - like her bottom - it could be described as petite. To try to disguise this, she wore her auburn hair full and long. Her hair was really good: glossy and shining with health. She rewarded it by picking up her hairbrush and sweeping it through the locks, teasing out the few knots. With a sudden insight, she pulled the brush from her hair. It had quite a long handle and the bristles were attached to a heavy, oval wooden head. It looked, she realised, a lot like ‘Stinger’.

  ‘Stinger’ was the hairbrush which the headmaster at Bexhill resorted to when scoldings had either fallen on deaf ears or when the offence merited the immediate use of physical correction short of a caning. Mr Masterson and his Deputy, Mrs Winchester, used the hairbrush mainly for first offences committed by junior girls. It was often their introduction to the school’s corporal punishment repertoire. Mrs Winchester’s brush, a little lighter and so less formidable than Stinger, was known as ‘Tingle’.

  Now, as Anna looked at the brush in her hands, she recalled the ambivalent emotions she had felt when Mr Masterson had been obliged to spank her with Stinger at the beginning of her first year at the school.

  The term had been less than a month old when she and a friend had been caught whispering together and sharing a stick of chewing gum during the Sunday chapel service. A teacher, whom they hadn’t noticed in the pew behind them, tapped them both on their shoulders and whispered that they were ‘on report’. Their stomachs somersaulted and they paid little attention to the rest of the service, and - most unwisely - none at all to the headmaster’s sermon. The teacher was as good as his word, and shortly after lunch both girls were summoned to see Mr Masterson. He looked grim as they stood before the desk in his study, their hands clasped behind their backs, fingers twirling nervously.

  Mr Masterson pointed out that whispering in church constituted some form of blasphemy, whilst chewing gum in the holy precincts ensured an express route to Hell.

  “And what,” he had asked, “did you girls learn from my sermon?” He waited in vain for an answer, because neither Anna nor Jenny had the slightest idea what he’d been warbling about. This inattention to his finely-crafted words proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. He reached down to a drawer on the right-hand side of his desk. Both Anna and Jenny knew the consequences of such a move and their eyes widened. Sure enough, the headmaster opened the drawer and extracted from it the legendary Stinger. He laid the hairbrush on his desk. It looked bigger, heavier, and altogether more sinister than the girls had imagined.

  “Right. I think this is the first time either of you have been spanked since you came to the school?”

  Anna managed a muted “Yes, sir,” while Jenny just nodded, transfixed by the sight of Stinger. The headmaster stood up and walked around the desk.

  “I want you to stand here,” he said, pulling Anna gently towards him so that there was a yard or so between her and her partner in sacrilege.

  “Good. Now both of you bend over and grasp your ankles.”

  The girls exchanged frightened glances and did as they were told.

  Mr Masterson moved behind Anna, lifted up her dark blue Sunday skirt, and folded the hem securely inside the waistband. The white shirt-tail thus revealed he arranged on top of her lower back. He took a step across the room and did the same to Jenny, pulling the elasticated bottom of her white knickers down so that they lay stretched tautly across her cheeks.

  He went back to his desk, picked up Stinger and smacked it against the palm of his left hand.

  He took up position beside Anna. “You’re each going to get six.” He tapped Anna’s bottom once with Stinger. Anna suddenly remembered the headmaster’s nickname, ‘Three Taps’, and realised that she was on the verge of experiencing the celebrated procedure. He ran the brush up and down the curve of her cheeks, making Anna wince. “Keep still until I tell you to get up.”

  Tap. Tap.

  “I won’t tolerate girls who cannot show respect for their surroundings, especially in chapel.”

  Tap. Tap. Tap. Anna dug her nails into her ankles. The smack, landing mostly on her right cheek, made a noise like a thunderclap. It was followed immediately by a burning sting. Anna cried out but held her position. The second stroke came almost immediately, landing symmetrically on her left cheek. Anna rocked forward on her toes.

  ‘Three Taps’ moved across to Jenny. Anna was so absorbed in trying to manage the pain which was radiating out from Stinger’s impacts that she hardly heard Mr Masterson telling Jenny to stick her bottom right out, or registered the distinct tap which followed. Then she clearly heard a double tap and saw Jenny screw up her eyes.

  “And as for chewing gum - you know that this is not allowed anywhere in the school.”

  Tap. Tap. Tap. Jenny bit her lip just as the first stroke landed athwart both cheeks. She gasped. The second stroke produced a cry of “Oooww!” and she rocked forward so much that Anna thought Jenny might lose her balance.

  ‘Three Taps’ returned to his position beside Anna and whacked her hard, twice, landing the hairbrush right across the centre of her bottom. Anna bucked and wailed.

  Jenny got the same treatment a few moments later, howling rather more loudly than Anna.

  “Last two, Anna. I hope you’ve learned a lesson.” It seemed to be a rhetorical question, so Anna just hung on to her ankles for dear life as the final two strokes were delivered, one to each side of her backside. The first elicited an “Ooouch!” and the other an “Ooooww!” Both delivered with feeling.

  “You, too, Jenny. Any more irreverence in chapel and it’ll be the cane. Now stay still for the last two.” It was all Jenny
could do not to bounce up as the heavy wood twice struck the lower part of her cheeks, sending a searing sting pulsing through her body.

  Mr Masterson walked slowly back to his desk, replaced Stinger and closed the drawer. He took his seat.

  “All right, you can get up.” Both girls straightened themselves and adjusted their skirts. Both were snivelling.

  “Sign the Punishment Book here, please, and don’t let me see you on report again. Next time, it’ll be on the bare.”

  The girls signed their names opposite the entry which recorded for posterity that on Sunday, 29th September, 1957, they’d each received six strokes of the hairbrush over their pants for offences committed in chapel.

  “You may go.” The headmaster indicated the door. The girls slunk out, even omitting the customary “Thank you, sir” as they left.

  “Wooo!” said Anna, rubbing her bottom furiously, “that really hurt!”

  “Much more than I thought it would,” agreed Jenny, clutching her cheeks. “Well done. You were pretty brave!”

  “Oh, I wasn’t! You made much less noise than me! Let’s go and look at our trade-marks.” ‘Trade-marks’ was the school slang for the visible after-effects of any thrashing.

  Jenny’s dormitory was the nearest, so they went in, pulled down their knickers, and examined in the long mirror the wide, red-purple blotches which glowed across the pale skin of their backsides.

  “Sitting down isn’t going to be much fun”, Jenny observed, massaging her still-stinging cheeks. “Let me look at yours.”

  It was as she was running her fingers over the welts on Anna’s bottom that the door swung open, revealing Matron. It only took a glance at the two surprised girls for Matron to register the situation.

  “Ah, so it was you two. I heard the headmaster spanking someone. I hope it was for your behaviour in chapel. I saw you whispering together all the time until Mr Desmond spoke to you. If he hadn’t put you on report, I’d have done so. I’m glad to see you got your just desserts. Now, pull up your knickers and be off with you.” She held the door open for the two embarrassed girls, who made their way downstairs to join their friends. As always on such occasions, they became the heroines of the hour, with a cluster of girls around them eager to hear every detail of the ordeal.

  Now, as she sat at her dresser, hairbrush in hand, Anna remembered the ambivalent emotions she had felt on that occasion. She recalled the trepidation as they had made their way to the headmaster’s study and knocked on the door; their rising fear during the brief interview with him as their imminent fate became clear; the stomach-knotting terror as he reached down to extract Stinger from the drawer; the nightmare of the slow and deliberate preparations: the bending over, the sensation of cool air on her bottom as her skirt was raised, and then - worst of all - that awful wait for the third tap. The spanking, once it had begun, was almost a relief. Of course it hurt: each swat stung like mad, but every time the brush landed it was one more stroke counted off towards the allocated six.

  Thinking about the episode again, she remembered that there had been another element present, a perplexing undertone which she could not understand at the time and which she had driven from her mind. Now it came back to her again: in some way, perhaps subconsciously, she had the impression that she had actually enjoyed the experience. How could this be? Surely people couldn’t get pleasure from pain, could they? But that, on reflection, was exactly what she had felt, although she hadn’t recognised it at the time: a completely unexpected feeling of sexual arousal, both as she herself was being spanked and from witnessing Jenny undergoing her punishment beside her. It was confusing, shameful even. No wonder she had driven it from her mind at the time. But now that she confronted it afresh, she couldn’t deny it.

  She looked at the brush in her hand. She placed it on the bed. She piled her two pillows one on top of the other in the centre of the mattress. She unzipped her skirt, took it off, and folded across the back of a chair. She slipped her panties down to her ankles and kicked them gently onto the chair’s seat. She pulled up her shirt, feeling the fresh air on her backside, just as she had in the headmaster’s study. She could already sense the tingle of arousal which had been so lacking a few minutes before.

  She lay down with her hips on the pillows, her bottom raised. Clasping her hairbrush tightly, she reached around behind her and rubbed it gently across her cheeks, awakening a frisson of desire in her lower belly. She lifted the brush and whacked it down. It stung a little, nowhere near as much as Stinger had, but well enough for her purposes. She experimented with different holds and ways of delivering the smacks. Soon her bottom was turning pink and her breathing was becoming heavier and faster. She increased the rhythm and intensity of the blows and after a few minutes her bottom was throbbing in harmony with her heartbeat. She knew her orgasm was close, so she dropped the brush, pushed two fingers inside her, and groaned as a wave of fulfilment crashed over her.

  Afterwards, she lay on her bed in a warm afterglow, trying to come to terms with the new facet that she had uncovered in her character. Gradually, she felt less ashamed about it: it was her private fantasy, after all; no-one else was getting hurt. She wondered whether others felt as she did; she supposed probably not. She wished she could discuss it with her closest friends, but she was afraid that they might be shocked.

  When her mother came home, she asked Anna what she’d been doing.

  “Oh, nothing much.”

  Chapter 6

  Sally + Linda = Mischief

  The telephone rang. Linda picked it up.

  “Yes?”

  “What do you mean ‘Yes’?” said the voice at the other end.

  “What did you want me to say, Sally? ‘No’?”

  “I wanted you to say ‘Hi, this is Linda. I have some great ideas to amuse people who are bored to tears. If you are suffering from this condition, please sign up to my service.’”

  Linda smiled. “So, you’re bored?”

  “Terminally, and the holidays have only just begun. Shall we meet?”

  “Good idea. Where and when? How about in the café at Paxman’s tomorrow morning, about 10.00?”

  “Fine, I look forward to it. Come up with some ideas.”

  Sally and Linda were, to the regular dismay of the staff, best friends at Bexhill. They had what their own friends would have called an ‘irrepressible sense of humour’, which translated to the school authorities as ‘they can’t keep out of trouble’. The sad fact was that the two girls’ seemed to attract tribulations like honey attracts bees and their pranks at school regularly landed them in the headmaster’s or deputy head’s office, usually with painful results - not that such minor inconveniences seemed to deter them for long from dreaming up another escapade. And in truth, the exasperated teachers secretly found the two girls antics quite funny and they were glad to have them in the school. That didn’t, however, mean that they extended a moratorium to Sally and Linda when a good thrashing was merited.

  Sally lived in town, but Linda’s home was some ten miles outside, in the countryside. Fortunately, her village was served by a good bus route and so it was quite easy for them to meet in town. Thus, the following morning they greeted each other happily in the department store’s small café. They each bought coffee and a Danish pastry and took them to a corner table where they could talk without being overheard.

  “So what have you been up to?” Linda asked.

  “Oh, the usual stuff: a couple of rather dull parties. What’s wrong with all the boys? They’re so uninspiring - the only thing they’re interested in is sport.”

  “And sex.”

  “Well, they’re not getting any of that from me until they fix their spots and stop talking about football. How are you doing?”

  “I’ve been out a few times with a new guy. He’s OK, actually.”

  “Oh? Why haven’t you mentioned him before? What’s he like? Does he try to grope you in the cinema?”

  Linda flicked a piece of pastry at h
er friend. “My relationship with Peter has nothing to do with you, nosey! If you weren’t such a wallflower, I’d introduce you.”

  “You’d better not. If I fancy him, I’ll let him know that I don’t wear any knickers.”

  “Don’t you? You’re lying - I bet you do!”

  “I’ll just float the idea and let him find out for himself.”

  “Well in that case, you’re not going to meet him. You can make do with your own friends, zits and all.”

  The chatted happily until their coffees were finished.

  “What shall we do now? Shall we look around? I want one of those new ‘fit-and-flare’ frocks,” said Sally.

  They browsed happily for an hour. Suddenly, Sally said “Look! That’s the one, just perfect.” It was a floral A-line shirtdress, with a white belt. She swept it off the rail.

  “Where’s the changing room?”

  “Over there - look.”

  “OK, you wait outside and then tell me your opinion.”

  Sally disappeared into the cubicle and Linda could hear here slipping off her jeans and pulling on the dress. She opened the door and flounced out.

  “Well, what do you think?” She twirled so that the full skirt rose and revealed her rather shapely legs.

  “Faster,” said Linda. “I want to check whether you’re really wearing any panties.”