The Girls of Cropton Hall

by Stanlegh Meresith

  She sighed and looked around for Gabrielle, spotting her over on the other side near the front. She wondered if the Head Girl would be asked to play any role in the proceedings. She hoped not, as she knew Gabrielle wouldn't feel comfortable doing that. She smiled to herself, remembering her friend's deliberate (and successful) attempt to get herself caned the Friday before last - and just so she'd know what it was like! Who'd believe that? Julia admired her for it, though, so much.

  Suddenly, the Headmistress was there, framed in the doorway in her black gown and dark green tweed jacket and skirt, the cane in her right hand. She paused and surveyed the room, nodding her approval to Miss Bainbridge. Then she stepped forward and turned to usher in the two girls.

  Pale and frightened, Helen and Shirley kept their eyes on the floor as they entered. Three steps in, Miss Markham held the long cane out in front of them to indicate they should stop.

  "Barton, wait over here," she said, lowering the cane and indicating a spot behind her where Miss Gibson was standing. "Patterson - to the table, please."

  The two girls obeyed, heads bowed in embarrassment and shame. The silence in the room was so complete that the clacking of their black shoes on the wooden floorboards echoed in every hollow tummy. And every eye followed Helen Patterson as she stepped over to stand by the table where she would be punished. They saw her stop at the nearest corner, placing a hand on it as if to steady herself. Then she edged along, looking down fearfully at the centre, both hands now with fingers outstretched supporting her, step by inexorable step approaching the place she assumed would be required.

  The Headmistress walked round behind her, wafting the cane up and down in quick, light movements - not fast enough to produce a swishing sound; just a reminder of how tensile its suppleness was. She took up position to Helen's left, almost in line with the edge of the table along which the girl had just completed her short but difficult journey, and addressed the assembled classmates.

  "Girls, this has been a sorry affair, and I hope you have NOT heard the details because they are sordid and unworthy and are best soon forgotten. Both these girls have admitted their involvement and have apologised. They understand better now why they went astray and tried to hurt others and they accept the justice of what they are about to suffer. This caning is the tithe the school requires for forgiveness to be earned..."

  "Miss?"

  All eyes turned to Helen, many in astonishment. The Headmistress raised her eyebrows.

  "Yes, Patterson?"

  "I apologised to you, but ... I haven't apologised to Bennett, Miss."

  There was a tense pause before Miss Markham waved the cane in approval, saying,

  "Very well, Patterson. Go ahead."

  Helen looked around for Julia. Unfortunately, she started from the wrong side, the left, and her expression became increasingly desperate as her head turned slowly and she scanned the faces in vain. Eventually, Julia put her hand up and called, "Here?"

  Helen turned; all eyes turned.

  Helen stood up straight, removing her hands from the table, and took a deep breath.

  "Bennett ..." Her voice was tremulous but clear. "I'm sorry I wanted to ... hurt you and ... I'm sorry I did. I was jealous of you. I ... I felt so worthless and you seemed so ... confident, and everyone likes you and respects you and ... the truth is ... I like and respect you too, though I know I haven't ... " Her voice trailed away for a moment and she seemed to falter, but then she stood straighter and continued, "I hope ... I hope you'll be able to forgive me one day for ... for what I did."

  Julia held Helen's gaze and nodded her head firmly.

  Helen stood up to the table and bent herself forward, reaching out and wrapping her fingers around the far edge.

  Miss Markham's smile resembled the enigmatic Mona Lisa's but her eyes glowed with an admiring, fiery light.

  "Miss Bainbridge ... please," she said, nodding towards Helen.

  The Deputy Head stepped forward and lifted Helen's skirt and blazer out of the way. Using a safety pin, she attached a bunch of the hem to the collar. Helen half watched this with her head turned to the right, away from the Headmistress, towards Julia. Miss Bainbridge then inserted a thumb under the top on each side of Helen's knickers and, lifting them out and towards her to clear the buttocks, deftly lowered them in one swift movement to the knees where she let them rest. Helen faced forward, her chin resting on the wooden surface. Miss Markham took one step towards the table, directly in line with the girl's bottom. She held the cane out horizontally, shifting her position slightly as she measured its end against the far side of Helen's right buttock. Helen turned slightly to the left, her face strained with fearful expectation.

  The hush in the room was taut with held breath.

  All eyes followed the cane as it drew back and away.

  And then it came, swooping in vengeance and tearing the air with its swish, to land with a loud, thin, wet slap as it ripped into Helen's bottom, its tip digging into the side of the round cheek.

  Helen cried out, shocked, agonised, her head lifting sharply. Her knuckles clutched the table edge, white with tension, as her knees bent and her feet jerked up. Every girl saw the eyes clenched shut, the teeth bared. Every girl shuddered.

  Miss Markham waited for Helen's feet to subside and for the writhing of her torso and hips to cease before she prepared the second stroke. Many girls shut their eyes or looked away.

  As the cane bit again, its SMATT echoed off the windows. Helen screeched and her body reacted as before, though this time her legs stretched out straight behind her and she drummed the toes of her shoes on the wooden floor, making the rumbling noise that sometimes accompanies applause. She turned her face down, her forehead on the table top as she gasped and breathed, her shoulders rising and falling.

  From behind, Miss Bainbridge could see the pair of parallel tramlines, two red streaks already purpling at their edges. She watched as the Headmistress waited, impassively patient, for the girl to finish her obeisance to the last stroke.

  The third drew a new line above the others, and a wail of agony from the suffering sixth-former. She wriggled over the table, and her legs scissored the air in a gesture of futile protest. She was breathing heavily, gasping 'OW!' repeatedly in a whisper audible to those nearest.

  Miss Markham measured the fourth, proceeding at a pace she felt the girl could bear whilst delaying no longer than necessary. It sliced home into a space of white flesh between two previous strokes and Helen's squeal hit a high note that sent shivers down spines. She squirmed and writhed all over again, groaning and gasping, shaking her head from side to side.

  Once more, the Headmistress waited for the worst of the agony to pass, listening carefully to the girl's breathing, before she raised the Moluccan cane and delivered another scorching stroke to sear a new line of red fire into Helen's buttocks, this one beneath the others, denting the fleshiest part.

  Helen screamed. She rose up, her arms extended but her fingers still grasped the table edge. Her face was turned to the ceiling, frozen in a clenched mask for several moments, breath held, before she collapsed, sobbing aloud, her head turned to the left, her hair falling about her sweating face. And again her legs flailed behind her, her heels almost reaching her throbbing, striped bottom in the desperation of her efforts to endure.

  "Ow! ... Ow! ... Ow!" was heard clearly round the common room now, as Helen cried pitifully. But suddenly she stopped, and she turned her face to the surface again and she breathed very quickly and Miss Markham, side on, noticed her mouthing something. She watched carefully. It was 'Brave, brave,' over and over, 'brave, brave."

  "Last stroke, Patterson," she announced, adding quietly, "Hold on, brave girl."

  Helen remained face down and took a deep breath. She wiggled her bottom slightly, brought her feet together and straightened her legs, presenting her bottom for its final payment just as she had for its first.

  The last was the lowest. Molly flew and dug, catching the underhang, lif
ting Helen onto her toes and extracting a soul-curdling cry from her stretched, grimacing mouth. A girl on the left near Miss Markham let out a sob. Helen performed again her horizontal dance of writhing torment, the soles of her shoes visible for a moment to the girls in front as her feet flew up in uncontrolled reaction. She mewled in a continuous high-pitched tone for several seconds before again breaking into sobs as she lay slumped slightly askew across the table top. Her hair stuck in sweaty strands to her forehead as she turned to the left to see, through eyes misted by tears and pain, Miss Markham gazing down at her, nodding with pride and approval.

  Miss Bainbridge gazed in awed admiration at the Headmistress' handiwork: not one of the six distinct stripes on Patterson's bottom overlapped - indeed they were almost perfectly parallel.

  Miss Markham had meant to nod to Miss Bainbridge at this stage, but she stepped forward herself, placed the cane along the edge of the table and reached over to unpin Helen's skirt. She laid the clothing carefully over her lower back then eased the girl up, placed an arm around her shoulders and whispered to her to pull up her knickers. Shaking and wincing, Helen did so, and then the Head turned her gently round for Miss Bainbridge to guide her to where Shirley stood with Miss Gibson.

  The Headmistress turned to the assembled girls.

  "That," she announced, "was NOT the behaviour of a worm, girls. That was a brave and honourable acceptance of punishment due." She looked around. Several girls were nodding and there was some whispering and an air of relief around the room, as if everyone could allow themselves to breathe again after the tension of the fearsome beating. Miss Markham looked across at Helen. Her face was still streaked with tears, but her eyes shone with a new pride as she stood awkwardly, her hands cupping her backside, next to Miss Gibson.

  The Headmistress tapped the tabletop with the cane.

  "Barton!"

  The hush descended again as Shirley walked forward unsteadily to stand at the centre of the table facing the Upper Sixth girls. She looked over at Julia, her pursed lips and her eyes expressing her regret and sorrow, and then she looked straight ahead over the heads of her classmates and bent forward. Miss Bainbridge stepped up to fulfil her bottom-baring duty as before and the Headmistress once again took up her stance. Shirley's plump white buttocks jutted out from her thighs as she held her legs tightly together and braced herself.

  The cane swished and struck. Shirley was jolted forward. She gasped and her left leg lifted slightly. She kept her head up, staring at a point on the floor a few feet in front of her. Her face revealed the effects of that first fiery stroke as she winced and her eyes scrunched up, her mouth forming an O as she tried to breathe through the pain.

  The second stroke elicited an audible, 'Aaaaah!' and this time both legs came up for a few moments as she clung desperately to the table-edge. Two angry red lines now bisected the virgin white flesh.

  As stroke followed relentless stroke, each delivered with deliberate, determined and equal force, Shirley's fortitude gradually crumbled. She was no stranger to the cane, but it had been over two years since her last taste. Nor had she ever felt a sting or a bruising jolt of quite such fierce intensity as that imparted by Molly in Miss Markham's capable hands.

  The third made her cry out and twist; at the fourth she screeched and squirmed over the table top; the fifth made her scream and thrash about, quite out of control and at the sixth she rose, as Helen had done, face stretched in a howl to the ceiling.

  The girls watched the punishment with a mixture of terror and awestruck fascination: flinching as each stroke flailed into the target they couldn't see, whilst staring in guilty curiosity at the tortured face of the recipient. And there wasn't a one who didn't at some point reach behind to protect her own rear.

  The Headmistress paused before delivering the last three strokes, allowing Shirley a little longer to still herself and gather her strength.

  And when they came, they came sudden, swift and sure: Thwipp! ... Thwipp! ... Thwipp!

  Everyone was caught by surprise, none more so than Shirley: her wail at the first became an agonised howl at the second, and a full-blooded wrenching scream at the third. Her body jolted at each stroke, the last catching her as she attempted to rise, her hands flying up from their grip, the cane swiping into her bottom as she half-stood, wide-eyed with shock and pain. Her once white bottom, streaked red with overlapping stripes, jiggled as she danced the clumsy caper of the caned. Her hands clutched her rear - too late, in vain - as her anguished face searched the ceiling for some relief from the intolerable throbbing sting.

  In her crazed capering, she had turned full circle and revealed her ravaged bottom to the eyes of the Upper Sixth. It was a sight that would haunt many dreams that night. Even Jean Atkinson, with an electric, blushing flash that left her stunned, now understood, now felt what all the fuss was about. She turned to Gabrielle, her mouth gaping. Gabrielle raised her eyebrows and nodded.

  Eventually Shirley calmed and then shame and embarrassment seemed to overcome her. She lowered her head and covered her face with her hands, sobbing as she stood, her knickers at her feet, her skirt still pinned high upon her back, her hair dishevelled ... exposed, abject, punished.

  Miss Bainbridge looked at her watch. It was 8.35. She stepped forward and removed the safety pin, and gently helped Shirley to pull her knickers up. Miss Markham turned once more to the Upper Sixth.

  "Girls ... Barton has been properly punished for what she did and I'm proud to say that she took it with the bravery of a true Cropton girl. If any of you doubt that, then you lack imagination. You do NOT want to feel this on your bottoms." She swished Molly softly in their direction. "I ask you all to let this be an end to the matter, and to remember your duty of kindness to your fellow pupils." She looked round to catch her Deputy's eye. "Your nine o'clock lessons will be postponed by fifteen minutes so that you have time for a proper breakfast. You are dismissed."

  Sombre, and in almost complete silence, the girls filed out. Helen and Shirley remained standing by Miss Gibson near the door, Shirley still crying quietly, her hands on the back of her skirt, Helen looking drawn but somewhat recovered. As their classmates shuffled past, they eyed the two punished girls with varying degrees of sympathy and curiosity. Helen met the glances of several of them, something she would never have had the courage to do before, and the look they saw in her eyes was no longer the needy or envious aggression they'd come to expect and avoid, but a new kind of frank openness.

  Julia waited till most had left before she approached the little group. She looked to Miss Gibson for a moment. The mistress nodded and went to join Miss Bainbridge and Gabrielle who were putting chairs back in place.

  Julia stood in front of Helen and held out her hand. Helen looked at it in surprise for a moment before taking it. Julia spoke quietly and sincerely.

  "You were incredibly brave, Helen. That was a hell of a thrashing. Thanks for what you said - that was really brave too, in front of everybody like that." She paused. "And ... I'm sorry I called you ... you know. Never again, I promise. Anyway, you aren't like that any more. Now you're ... you're a lioness, Helen, you really are."

  Helen squeezed Julia's hand tight and looked down to hide the tears starting to stream down her cheeks. Eventually she managed, "Thanks, Julia, thanks." Then she turned away and buried her face in her hands.

  Julia turned to Shirley who was wiping her eyes and cheeks on her sleeve. Shirley began to say, 'Julia, I ... ' but broke into tears again and looked down, covering her eyes with her forearm.

  "Shirl ... it's all right. So now we've both got stripes ... and yours are a lot worse than mine, eh?" Julia put a hand under Shirley's chin to raise her face again. "Let's just forget it, shall we? Like Miss Markham said?"

  Shirley nodded and Julia took her in her arms and they hugged. At that moment, Gabrielle came over and stood just behind Julia, looking at Shirley with pity. Shirley pulled away from the hug, and looked from one to the other.

  "Is there roo
m for three?" she asked timidly. Julia exchanged a smile full of compassion with Gabrielle, and they both turned to Shirley and nodded.

  "There's room for everyone, Shirl," said Gabrielle, "room for everyone."

  35. The Unseen Tear

  Edith Mary Bainbridge: her diary

  Thursday September 30th 1953, Founder's Eve

  I'm exhausted! Dead on my feet! But throwing myself into preparations for tomorrow has been the best thing for me really, given how guilty I've been feeling all week about the Bennett incident. The girl herself was very decent about it and it's a relief her parents aren't coming, but still - many regrets there. I felt I let Verily down as much as anything.

  But I do believe that we may be in for the best Founder's Day ever this year. Heaven knows we've been working hard enough to make it so! Verily's been a Trojan, in complete charge, delegating left, right and centre and mucking in too - she hung half the paintings for the Art exhibition herself, AND supervised the fourth-formers putting up the bunting at the front this afternoon.

  There are so many highlights to look forward to: our best hockey team for a long time take on the Old Croptonians; the choir are sounding lovely and have a delightful programme Miss Halsey's put together; the orchestra's primed and ready with their Mozart (Miss Halsey very busy again); the Drama club are apparently very excited about the short pieces they've rehearsed; and the impression I get is that the girls are taking their Form Group performances very seriously indeed (mind you, the prizes on offer this year are even more enticing than usual, thanks to Sir Wilfred's generosity - among them a hamper from Fortnum and Mason's designed 'specially for girls).