The Girls of Cropton Hall

by Stanlegh Meresith

  Julia just stood there. Cigarettes were one thing, and serious enough - the implications of the paint and brush were quite another and protest rose immediately.

  "Miss, those aren't ... I know NOTHING about those. I didn't..."

  Miss Bainbridge cut her off sharply. "We shall continue this discussion in the Headmistress' study, Bennett."

  "But, MISS," said Julia, raising her hands in frustrated protest. "I swear I didn't know anyth..." Miss Bainbridge suddenly froze, staring fixedly. She put down the pot and brush and grabbed Julia's right wrist.

  "What is this?" she said, turning Julia's palm face up. "What is this black stain? Hm?"

  Stock still and speechless, Julia stood open-mouthed. Her heart heaved with a horrible lurch and an awful hollowness engulfed her.

  "Nothing to say? I thought as much." The Deputy Head, keeping a tight hold on Julia's wrist, pulled her towards the door. "You're coming with me, Bennett." Julia was almost yanked off her feet. "Miss Gibson, be so kind as to bring the rest of the evidence, please."

  "But, Miss, I..." began Julia.

  "SILENCE!" bellowed Miss Bainbridge, giving vent to the fury born of the morning's upheaval. "You have NOTHING to say!"

  Gabrielle stood helpless, shocked and dismayed, as Julia was dragged out of the door by the furious mistress. Miss Gibson, looking very serious but pensive, gathered up the incriminating paint and brush. She glanced around at the remaining girls. Patterson, red-faced, quickly looked away. Barton and the other girls just seemed shocked. She turned to Gabrielle.

  "I think it might be best if you came along too," she said quietly. "Do you have a lesson first thing?"

  "No, Miss," said Gabrielle.

  "Very well, then. Why don't you come with me?"

  ---oOo---

  Julia was sitting on the bench outside the Head's study when Gabrielle arrived with Gibbo. The mistress knocked and went straight in, the paint pot and brush in one hand, the cigarettes in the other.

  "Oh Julia!" said Gabby, sitting down next to her friend.

  "I don't know what's going on, Gabby, but there's something VERY wrong happening here. I swear that was the first time I'd ever SEEN that stupid pot of paint and I did NOT leave those cigarettes in my desk."

  "But ... you do smoke?"

  Julia looked at Gabrielle in irritation. "Yes, I do smoke, Gabby, but..."

  "You told me you didn't."

  "I know. I'm sorry. I thought it best not to..."

  "But Julia, I thought I was your friend! I could've got into a really embarrassing situation if..."

  "I know, all right? Now, please, Gabby, I'm in a lot of trouble here. I..." She raised a hand to cover her eyes. Her shoulders began to shake. Gabrielle remained motionless. After a few moments, she said,

  "Julia, I'm sorry, but I just don't know what to think. You lied to me." There was an awkward silence. Julia was still, and eventually raised her head. A tear hung at the corner of her jaw.

  "Gabby, it's not a big deal, all right? I was protecting you."

  "Protecting me? And what about this?" Gabrielle took Julia's wrist and turned over the stained palm. "Tell me that didn't happen painting SWACK on the crest."

  Julia pulled her hand away sharply, hurt and shock in her face.

  "Gabby! You don't honestly thi-"

  "I don't know WHAT to think," said Gabrielle, close to tears. "Do you deny it?"

  "Of COURSE I deny it! It wasn't me! I didn't do it! Gabby, how can you sit there and ask me..."

  The door opened and Miss Gibson appeared. "QUIET, you two! Bennett, in here," she said grimly, holding the door open. Julia got up, still looking with hurt indignation at Gabrielle. The Head Girl, flushed and confused, lowered her gaze. Julia walked past Miss Gibson into the study. The mistress closed the door after her and turned to Gabrielle. She noticed a tear drop into the girl's lap.

  "What's the matter?" she asked, leaning over her star midfielder. Gabrielle looked up, her face twisted in anguish.

  "I ... I don't know what to think, Miss. Julia told me a week or so ago she didn't smoke and ... and now she admits she does, though she says those weren't her cigarettes. Then she's got that black stain on her hands and the paint and the brush were in her desk and yet she says it wasn't her. I ... I don't know what to believe. I want to believe her but..."

  "But what?" asked the mistress gently.

  "But ... well..."

  She was interrupted by the sound of Julia's voice shouting from within the study: ' ... they weren't MINE,' followed by some indecipherable, angry words from Miss Bainbridge. Gabrielle looked pleadingly at her History teacher, who looked down in sorrow. They remained in silence, pondering Julia's unhappy situation. After a while they heard the unmistakable sound of a swish, and the cane thwacking into bare flesh. They looked at the door. Miss Gibson sighed and turned to Gabrielle once more.

  "Go on, Pearson," she said. Gabrielle was momentarily distracted, still looking in anguish at the study door. She shivered.

  "Well, Shirley - Barton, Miss - told me that Julia's a terrible liar; she only found out after they'd been friends a while, but she said Julia would lie about all sorts of things, especially to mistresses..."

  Another swish-crack was heard.

  "Bennett? What nonsense!" said Miss Gibson. "She may have been as big a nuisance and troublemaker as I've known in a long time, but she was never to my knowledge dishonest. No, no ... Miss Barton's putting funny ideas in your head there, Pearson."

  Gabrielle frowned.

  "Anyway," said the mistress. "No point sitting here distressing yourself now. I thought we might be able to help, but Miss Bainbridge says she'll wait till the Headmistress returns before getting to the bottom of the SWACK business. Come along. I'm afraid we must leave Miss Bennett to the consequences of having cigarettes in her possession, hers or not."

  Gabrielle suddenly felt with complete certainty that what was happening behind that study door was not right, was an injustice. She blushed with guilt at the way she'd talked to Julia, and felt panic forming in her stomach. Oh God! What is happening?

  Miss Gibson helped her up and they made their way down the short corridor. As they turned the corner into the main one, the sound of a third stroke could be heard, followed this time by a high-pitched yelp of pain. Gabrielle stopped and looked back, her face crumpling in anguished helplessness, her thought a desperate cry:

  "Where are you, Miss Markham? Why aren't you here? I need you now. We need you..."

  31. An Inadvertent Benefit of the Desire for Chocolate

  Monday 27th September 1953: 8.40 a.m.

  Julia Bennett was bent over, touching her toes in the middle of the Headmistress' study, trying not to cry. Her knickers were round her ankles, her skirt on her back and her bare bottom burning from the three strokes Miss Bainbridge had delivered thus far.

  She found it harder not having the desk to hold onto, and harder still taking a caning when she felt upset and betrayed by Gabby's questioning and doubting her. She was used to steeling herself to bear these punishments but that was when she'd felt strong in herself. Confused and hurt before it had even started, she found herself struggling not to just wail her heart out. That it was also completely unfair added to her overwhelming feelings of self-pity - they weren't my cigarettes ... and anyway, who the hell put them there?.

  Miss Bainbridge, however, was in no doubt on the matter. She hadn't used the senior cane yet this term, or indeed for a long time, and she glanced with satisfaction at the three vivid red lines that already adorned the girl's buttocks. She raised the stick high again, intent on as exemplary a caning as she could possibly administer, and sliced it in with another very determined flick of the wrist.

  When the long cane struck, Julia was rocked forward and she gasped at the agony of the searing stripe. Her legs bent and her mouth stretched wide in a grimace of endurance. She managed not to cry out this time but she was close to finding the pain intolerable. Her bottom was a stinging, throbbing hell. She whispe
red, 'Ow! Ow! Ow!' at the carpet as she strove to bear it.

  Miss Bainbridge stood back, the cane slack in her hand, and watched dispassionately as the sixth-former struggled to come to terms with that fourth cut. Two more to go, and she fully intended them to leave Bennett with a salutary fear of possessing cigarettes. She was about to prepare for the next one when she thought of Miss Bentley: 'A marathon, not a sprint, ladies,' the old Headmistress had been wont to pronounce. She waited. Bennett had stopped bending at the knees but she was breathing hard, her bottom thrust out below the blue skirt folded upon her back.

  Julia was just beginning to wonder what the delay was about, and half daring to hope that it might be over, when she glimpsed the Deputy Head raising the cane again. She braced herself, screwing her eyes tight shut, and grasped her toes as firmly as she could.

  "AAAOOOOHHH!" she screamed the instant the cane flashed into her buttocks. It had caught her low down, right across her sit-spots, digging in mercilessly to deliver a scorching band of fiery pain. She fell forward slightly, bent again at the knees and had to force herself to bring her hands back to her shoes. "OOOOW!" she groaned, wriggling her bottom furiously, and a sob shook her as the self-pity and the pain and the injustice of it all welled up inside her.

  "Miss, pleeeease," she moaned, but she regretted it immediately. She knew it was no good, and sensed, even understood, Bainbridge's anger - even if it wasn't fair: what Bainbridge was really angry about was the SWACK on the crest yet Julia hadn't touched the bloody crest! And if she couldn't clear her name ... what will they do to me for that?

  She shuddered. The intense pain pulsating from her bottom was intensified now by the torment of the confusion and fear in her mind at the prospect of what lay ahead.

  Miss Bainbridge would not dignify Bennett's pitiful little plea with so much as a grunt and she noted that the girl hadn't repeated it. No. She should not expect the slightest mercy. She'd turned down the chance to be Head Girl and here she was flagrantly keeping cigarettes in her desk, and that wasn't all - she was almost certainly the perpetrator of the unforgivable vandalism too, though that would be for Verily to deal with.

  She waited for the girl to resume the punishment position and, forgetting Miss Bentley's dictum, tapped impatiently at the side of Bennett's thigh with the cane.

  "Legs straight, girl!"

  With reluctance and trepidation, Julia complied. Miss Bainbridge measured the cane horizontally against the very lowest part of Bennett's bottom, bending slightly at the knees herself to achieve the right height. She drew it back, further, further, took a small step back, and then unleashed the stick with a furious, wristy swipe.

  "AAAARRGGHHH! OOOOW! OOOOCH!"

  Julia fell forwards screaming, then knelt clutching that line where her buttocks met her thighs. Her face was flattened sideways on the carpet and she wailed. The toes of her shoes drummed against the floor. "OOOW!" she moaned repeatedly, her hands moving to clutch the sides of her head as deep sobs shook her shoulders.

  The Deputy Head surveyed the upturned and thoroughly punished bottom with its red and purplish stripes. "It's over now, Bennett," she said, slightly disturbed at how distressed the girl had become. She put the cane on the desk and went back to place a hand under Bennett's arm, gently trying to raise her. "Come along."

  Julia choked on a sob and coughed violently, but allowed herself to be helped up. Her face was streaked with tears and strained with pain. She winced as her skirt fell back and brushed against the swollen welts the cane had left and she stood for several moments, Miss Bainbridge beside her, getting her breath back and riding out the agony still stalking her backside. Gradually she regained some equanimity and reached down to pull up her knickers. Miss Bainbridge left her and went round to the other side of the desk where she sat and opened the punishment book. She was just unscrewing the lid of the fountain pen that Verily kept hooked over the cover, when a small, croaky voice said,

  "They weren't my cigarettes, Miss."

  Edith looked up sharply, ready to rebuke, but a moment's heart-sinking doubt flashed through her mind as she contemplated the dishevelled, pained features of the girl before her. She looked down again, trying to hide her confusion as she wrote:

  Mon Sept 27th - Bennett - 6 - Senior cane - Possession of cigarettes

  As she replaced the lid of the pen, she said, "Bennett, they were in your desk and as far as I am concerned that is an end to the matter. If, as you imply, they were placed there by some other person, then you will have to supply proof of that. In which case I will apologise unreservedly and whoever did such a thing will be most severely punished. In the mean time," and now she looked up at Julia with her sternest gaze, "you say you know nothing about the paint and the brush found in your desk. Very well, I am happy to let Miss Markham make her own investigations upon her return, though I have to say the evidence against you is overwhelming." She paused. Julia gulped. "However, before the Headmistress returns, you will tell me everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, you know about this SWACK nonsense."

  "SWACK, Miss?"

  "Yes, Bennett. What do you know about it? What is it?"

  Julia looked down at the carpet. Her arse was blazing and throbbing for something she hadn't done (well, not this time, anyway); someone was clearly out to get her; and nobody would listen to her side of anything. Yet ... she was supposed to have been good enough to be their precious Head bloody Girl, AND she was their best hockey player. All in all, she thought, remembering Jack's favourite expression, they could take their sodding questions and shove them where the sun don't shine.

  "I don't know anything, Miss. Never heard of it."

  ---oOo---

  Monday 9.05 a.m.

  As Julia limped slowly into the Sixth Form Common room, seven or eight faces looked up to watch, some showing pity, others turning away without, or just embarrassed. But Shirley got up and came over. She guided Julia to the window where they could talk quietly without being overheard and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  "Was it awful?" she asked sympathetically. Julia nodded and tears welled up. She placed her hands very tentatively on the back of her skirt.

  "I am so sorry," said Shirley with real feeling. "But whatever were you doing keeping cigs in your desk? You always said that was too dange-"

  "I didn't!" said Julia loudly, a tear tipping from her eyelid to roll down her right cheek. She lowered her head to hide her distress from prying eyes.

  "What do you mean?" asked Shirley.

  "I didn't leave them there." Julia shook her head. "I don't know what's going on, Shirl, I really don't." Her shoulders shook and she covered her eyes with a hand.

  Gabrielle appeared at the door and looked around anxiously.

  "Julia!" she called out, frowning when she saw Shirley there too. She marched straight to where they stood, glared at Shirley and addressed Julia: "Come with me - now!"

  Julia looked up at Gabrielle, confused and questioning. "But..."

  "No questions," said Gabrielle firmly, taking her arm and heading quickly for the door. Julia, wiping her eyes, allowed herself to be led. She glanced back briefly to see a look of dark fury on Shirley's face as she turned away.

  Gabrielle took Julia upstairs to her dorm, shut the door and faced her friend squarely.

  "Julia, I am so, so sorry. I doubted you and that was stupid and ... and unforgivable of me. I don't CARE if you smoke, and I believe you completely, about everything, and I mean EVERYTHING." Julia's mouth opened in surprise at the coincidence. "Those weren't your cigarettes and I think I know who put them there."

  Julia looked overwhelmed. Gabrielle placed her hands on her friend's shoulders and gazed into her eyes pleadingly.

  "Can you forgive me, Julia? Please say you can!"

  Julia saw the remorse and the love there and pulled Gabrielle to her. "Oh Gabbs!" she said. "Yes! Yes, I do, and I'm sorry too. I'm sorry I lied to you. I didn't want..."

  "No, no! You don't have to explain anything. I feel so asha
med, Julia. You're the best friend I've ever had, and ... and I don't ever want to lose that."

  They stood, hugging tightly. Eventually, Julia pulled away.

  "But what do you mean you know who put them there?"

  "I don't have any proof but I'm pretty sure, Julia." Gabrielle paused and looked down, unsure how painful her revelation was going to be.

  "Well? ... Who? Tell me."

  Gabrielle looked up, wariness and pity in her eyes. "I think it was Shirley."

  "Shirley?" Julia was dismissive. "No, Gabbs. Sorry ... I mean, I know you want to help and everything but ... no, I can't believe that for a moment. That just isn't..."

  "Julia, you don't know what she said about you."

  Julia frowned in confusion. "What did she say?" She turned her face away, reluctant to hear it. Gabrielle took a deep breath, winced and launched quickly into the difficult truth.

  "She told me you were a terrible liar, and she said that you got her caned once by lying about her being with you when she wasn't. She said you always lie to mistresses and..."

  "She WHAT?" shouted Julia, standing back. Gabrielle nodded.

  "I'm sorry, Julia, but it's what she told me." Julia looked stunned and angry. "I told Gibbo after you went in ... in to be caned just now and she laughed and said it was nonsense. That's what made me stop and think ... oh Julia! I'm sorry! I should never have believed her. I shouldn't. But she was so convincing and she said it all in such a nice way, like she still admires you and likes you, so I didn't suspect ... well, I did, sort of, but ... oh I don't know why I..."

  "Gabby, it's all right," said Julia, taking her friend's arm. "But why, Gabby? WHY? Why would she ... DO that?" Julia stared off at the window, wondering.

  "She's jealous, Julia. Jealous of me and you, jealous about the hockey."