A. N. Dedeaux - An English Education Read online

"Well, you'll just have to try again harder, won't you."

  They were both grinning and laughing at me. These few cuts seemed to be matters of amusement to them, but we knew how viciously they stung.

  "What are you waiting for? Bend over, Jane Eyre!"

  I put my hands on my knees. "Sealey," as we called her, a plump, dark junior mistress, flipped up my skirt behind. "Hullo, hullo. Button undone. Can't have this, can we!" She did it up and stroked the bursting globes.

  I set myself for it. Parker had by now written twenty-one dorm lines, and three in her study, across my lower person. One place, on the right, was extremely tender and contused.

  Miss Hall took a long time. And a long run. About three springy paces of her endless legs—and then it came, wrapping itself fiendishly about me.

  THWWLLICK! Full across.

  "Haow!"

  Whether it was that my flesh was warm and wettish, from run and tub, the swipe streaked atrocious pain up me. I waited, panting.

  THWLLLCKK!

  "Yow!"

  A long, long pause and then the scalding third. I leapt up and hopped and danced in front of their grinning faces. Still puffing I ducked a curtsey and was about to escape when again I was lugged back once more by the earlobe. It was a humiliating process.

  "You don't think we're letting you off for undone buttons, do you?"

  "Oh Miss, please, have a heart."

  "Bend over."

  Three more frightful slices. I was growing very sore. Finally, for being "all wet behind one ear," I was adjudicated three more still. Sealey gave me these, and I had to bend and put my hands on the floor and part my legs widely behind me. They were excruciating and I hobbled from the room, mewling.

  An hour later the Duty monitor for the day, a great girl called Hutchinson, swirled past me in a side corridor, looking sumptuous in her white.

  "Oh I say, Eyre." She turned back and felt into a little leathern bag at her waist. "I nearly forgot. You're on Demerit tonight. Untidy locker on inspection."

  She handed me a button with UNTIDY on it. My lips were giving way. Tears mutinied to my eyes.

  "Ber but I've just had nine. . . ."

  "Well, you'll get three more, won't you. Oakes is on Duty and she always makes it hurt. Cheer up!" And she patted my cheek. "It won't kill you, quite."

  I was "up" for my first Duty caning. My stomach shrank, my sides caved in. Sure enough, the dreaded list went up shortly before Evening Hall.

  "Hard cheese, Eyre," said a voice in the crowd around it.

  "Good Lord, Maud is in for eight!" There were six names: I was to suffer last. "Jennifer's hardly going to have much fun." The notice, whose letters squirmed like snakes before my eyes, read:

  The following will attend on the Duty Mistress at 9.00 p.m.

  Drayne, J Palmer, T. Morris, M.

  Wragg, T.

  Ponsonby, E. Eyre, J.

  Tardy

  Idle

  Pert

  “

  Inattentive

  Idle

  Untidy

  5

  4

  4

  4

  3

  3

  3

  [this was Maud]

  Needless to describe the content of the hours that passed between that simple reading and our evening prep where, eyes glazing over well-bethumbed Ovid or stealing a crucial glance at the clock above, the six culprits sat with cringing skins and sinking stomachs, occasionally receiving the sly glances of other girls.

  Promptly on the chime of nine Hutchinson strode in and went up to the mistress in supervision. Then she came down the aisles collecting us. She tapped me on the shoulder with a whispered "Wanted," and I hectically amassed my books in my desk and followed the rest out. Without the door she called our roll to see that all were present, then said "Hurry up, get into line. Now follow me." We did so to the far end of the building where we went down some wide steps to the formal Duty chamber. It was the most miserable rank imaginable who lined up along the wall one side of this, while the Prefect stood opposite with the great black Demerit book in one hand. After some minutes a few senior girls appeared, and chatted with Hutchinson; they liked to see the punished girls come out after their chastisement and squirm and writhe their way up the stairs. Finally, the sharp staccato of a mistress's high heels might be heard. Miss Oakes came into view.

  The Latin mistress was young and energetic, with short curly blonde hair and square shoulders on a chunky body. Her close-fitting black velvet tunic, with the big L in gold on the left breast, hung without a fold from the bursting body, while the skirt hem barely covered the buttocks, under which smoky stockings were tautly gartered. She bounced into the room as we curtseyed and Hutchinson followed in with her.

  One of the great girls at the side said, "Ouch . . . ouch . . . whew!"

  I took a deep breath. Apprehension was filling me wholly. We were going to get it. There was no avoidance now. The ineluctability, the march of events, had us in its sway and I fear that just in front of me Thomasina ('Tommy") Wragg was gently crying.

  Then the door abruptly opened and the monitor called, "Come in."

  We entered and lined up, one behind the other, on one side of the room. This was timbered and raftered and far too large for the task assigned it, that of corporeally correcting the skin of not so very terrible sinners of the fair sex. Its size alone struck awe into our hearts, even if its appliances did not suffice for that task. There was a large fire, Miss Oakes sat on the edge of a worn deal table confronting us with three or four of the most ferocious canes I had ever seen behind her, and the Prefect stood beside our rank with her book. But all the furniture we could see was the board.

  This simple affair was the guillotine in our lives of the moment. It was a plain upright board, or plank, resolutely accoutred with straps and bars, and for us it bespoke pain. We were going to have to bend over the board, buttocks bare, and be flogged.

  The mistresses believed in variety. Some took the proceedings with many monitives; tonight Miss Oakes seemed averse to such. She merely nodded—"All right, Hutch, let's get on with it."

  The monitor scrutinized her book. "Drayne?"

  "Here."

  "Tardy. Report of Miss Smith." The mistress said, "Have you anything to say?"

  "No, Miss."

  "Do you wish to appeal?" On another negative Miss Oakes said simply, "Five. Take them off."

  The girl, whom I did not know, was clearly used to the procedure. Her only visible signs of fear were certain grimaces of the mouth, as she gradually unbuttoned and undid her scant knickers and slid them off. As she went to one wall where we had to hang them on a hook, glimpses of alliciating white under-buttock could be seen. She was not a tall girl but had the same tantalizing liquid flesh of Georgiana, albeit fuller of form than she. "Put her over tight." With a much less certain look the girl approached the board. She stood to it slightly astride and Hutchinson positioned her.

  The feet went through two slots in the base, about half a yard apart. They were then securely stocked by bars behind the ankles. A further bar, adjustable at the knees, made any flexion of the legs impossible as well as undesirable. The top of the board came about hip-high, but contained a leaf which could be adjusted to various heights. Atop this was a leathern pommel against which you braced the pubis. Then an iron bar was adjusted just behind, in the small of the back; loosed on springs this bar then pressed there hard, cambering the loins, an effect all the more brilliantly produced as the monitoring Prefect then stood before the girl and, grasping her wrists, hauled her fully forward. Back curved, bottoms parted, tautened and arched out for the whip, the culprit was ready to suffer. And what a whip it was.

  The Reverend Brocklehurst saw to it that nothing was spared in the severity of these occasions and the Duty rods were those employed with effect in boys' reformatories. Yellow, shiny, well-waxed their entire surface they were longer than the classroom canes and thicker at the tip, though almost as whipp
y. I was to learn what such minor modifications meant in intensification of suffering. A sound Duty flogging— and I was witnessing one—was something not even the hardiest girl wished to repeat in a term.

  Bared by no more than a contemptuous flick of the cane under the skirt hem, the buttocks were well spread and stretched for treatment as the Prefect hauled on the culprit's arms from in front.

  After stepping the soles of her shoes in some rosin at the side, the mistress measured aim and stood back. She came about two paces forward, swinging; the sleek stick slickly divided the air with its drear whirr, then thumped into the underside of the cheeks, which it visibly drove upwards. The shock on the whole body attested to the gathered velocity of impact, while the involuntary squirm, and purple welt, affirmed its effect.

  "One," said the Prefect loudly.

  The mistress examined her weal. The girl in front of me ran her tongue on her lips. She was shaking. I caught her sick whisper, to herself, "Right in the crease."

  There was a long pause whose silence was merely underlined by the quickened breathing of the sufferer, then two fell. A trifle higher, but a full-bodied blow.

  The mistress said, "Damn!" Then, "Quite forward, please, Hutch." The third followed deep into the sulcal groove again and the girl gave a long exhaled "Ooooo-uuuuh!"

  Her head came up between her shoulders and I could see her eyes tight shut. Fatty writhings of her inner cheeks, poor pathetic wrigglings of the wounded rounds together, spoke- of her torment. She gave a short cry at the fourth but was silent after the fifth, her clenched mouth dribbling. The five thick weals flamed at the very bottom of her buttocks.

  Miss Oakes looked appraisingly at these fat, blood-thickened welts drawn full across the underseat, for the Duty strokes were always delivered low, into the tender sulcus if possible. With a smile she unlatched the ankle-stocks and the legs shot back, threshing and writhing.

  "All right." The Prefect released the sufferer from before and she jumped up, face crimson and contorted, grabbing at her inflamed flesh in rolls. The pain was mounting up in earnest now. She ducked a knee and mouthed an almost soundless "Thank you" to the mistress and then walked, or writhed, a-tiptoe to the side where she retrieved her scanty undergarment.

  "Not bad, Jennifer," said the mistress. "You can get an A." And so the monitor duly inscribed it in the book, each of our official chastisements being graded for stoicism under the rod.

  The girl made with ducked face to the door without putting on her knickers, as was the form. She looked thoroughly punished, through and through. Now it was the turn of pretty Teresa Palmer, up for four. A thin girl she went to her fate in demonstrable fear, whimpering at the board, "Oh Miss . . . please, Miss ... oh please Miss." She cried lustily at the first but pulled herself together and endured three more thudding strokes with no more than panted gasps. She too was allotted an A. She writhed like a dervish on her way to the door, however.

  Now poor Maud Morris, the answerer-back in the changing-room, was called forward. Her two faults were announced, she was sentenced to her awful eight, and she impassively peeled the thin fabric from her round bottoms. Bent over the board this was indeed an impressive rump, sturdy, well-parted, full of spring, with the afternoon's cuts clearly inscribed across the cheeks. Miss Oakes seemed to want to make sure the maximal severity permissible was inflicted, for any criticism of a mistress was conceived especially heretical.

  She bounded forward and lashed the young chubs till they juddered again. Ferocious weals barred the underneath proffered. With astonishing phlegm the girl silently reached six, after whose resounding whack she slowly stiffened, her cheeks squeezing in with her agony.

  Like a runner at the end of a race she gasped back, "No, please ... it is enough . . . dear God, to punish me so. . . ."

  Miss Oakes smiled, watching the pain do its work.

  "Relax," she said gravely. "Unclench them, Maud."

  The girl groaned. The Prefect pulled her arms and the cane sang in again.

  "Seven!"

  "YOWWW!"

  "Eight!"

  "HOAAAW!"

  Maud Morris writhed in perfect agony when it was over. She walked from the room slowly, holding herself and making dreadful deep groans.

  "Next."

  Wragg and Ponsonby were despatched in the same businesslike way and suddenly the room was whirling round me. I was there alone, facing the now slightly smiling mistress on whose upper lip I could see a droplet of sweat. It was happening, it was happening. . . .

  "Eyre?"

  "Here."

  "Untidy. My report, Miss."

  "Have you anything to say?"

  "N-no, Miss."

  I could not take my eyes from that frightful cane whose tip was pressing and bending at the floorboards before me.

  "Wish to appeal?" On another negative the mistress then said, "First time?"

  "Yes, Miss."

  She nodded. "Three of the best. Take them off." As I returned from hanging my miniscule knickers on the hook my beaten buttocks cringed in anticipation.

  "Over tight, Hutch."

  I was sick-throated as the monitor, first taking off my UNTIDY button, put me to the board. The leathern pommel came just to my height and, when I was pressed against it with skirt up in front, felt warm from the groins of the previous sufferers. My legs were stocked and straightened by the knee-bar. I bent over. Released across the small of my back the bar there, also padded with leather on its underneath, pressed most strongly. Its spring was very powerful, more so than I had expected and made me arch out my bottom behind. The Prefect then took my hands in hers. She did this by gripping my right wrist with her right, and I had to grasp hers back. Then the left was taken likewise, in her left, and with hands crossed over in this manner she hauled me forward. I realized I was on my toes and quaking all over.

  The mistress examined her meat, feeling out the sulcal groove with a finger, since it was a tradition that the Duty cuts were delivered here where, any girl will tell you, it hurts most. Due to the friction of the overhang the skin is more tender at this point. Before I knew it I was cut.

  "One," said the Prefect.

  Ah, what a stroke! It fell with less sound than I'd expected but jolted me forward with a grunt. A savage wave of flame laved my lower person. Heavens, how it stung. Suddenly, it seemed that a second wave rose and joined this first, mounting unbearably. I heard a breathless whine—my own—and cringed in my cheeks, so rudely assaulted. I held myself tense in spasm for what seemed minutes, then, exhausted, let my buttocks hang slack, and flaccid.

  I was thumped again. This time I gasped aloud.

  The monitor counted. The wave flamed. The pain ate in. Oh this was strict, indeed. The Duty cane doubled the agony. Again, a brief fury of rebellion helped me endure—it was unjust to be made to suffer so. Stocked, stripped, and given cuts to make a convict writhe, right in the tenderest part of our softest persons. But. where was the third?

  "You're clenching," said the mistress.

  "I cer-can't help it, Miss," I barely breathed.

  "Well, you'd better or you'll get extra. Relax them quite now."

  The third terrific stroke wrapped itself around me. I cried.

  "One extra for clenching," I heard in the mists above my head and behind my bruised back.

  It was given. I prefer to pass over what ensued. Somehow I managed to curtsey and leave that room. I was awarded but a C. What I best remember was the sudden access of pure white fire that attained me outside the door and sent me spinning like a dancer, grabbing great rubbery rolls of tormented flesh, in front of the grinning great girls there, as I tried in vain to pluck out the demon which was continuing to burn into and under my being.

  "Hooouuu-aaaaah!"

  "Tight enough for you, Eyre?"

  "Why did you get four?"

  "Feeling warm?"

  I got to the dormitory and put myself to bed, as was the rule. Lying on my belly in the half-dark, I felt those brutal weals, the skin all
hot and taut upon their bulges. I wished for the frame that birched girls were given, to raise the sheets off their flogged bottoms. The pain gradually dimmed, dulled and I felt warm all over.

  Presently the door softly opened and closed and a figure approached me, that of Parker. Another was with her, the monitor's friend Crawford. Holding hands by my bed they looked down at me softly smiling.

  "Bad luck, Eyre, we heard you got a Duty."

  "A real beauty," said her friend, "according to Hutch."

  "It did sting rather," I said with assumed bravado. "Can we see them?"

  "Oh all right," I said with a petulant shrug of my body.

  My sheets were peeled down, my gown up and cool air calmed my buttocks.