6.30am and the alarm bell sounds at the start of another day at Blackfriars Grange.
Once again, Anna and the other women in her dormitory prepare for another day of misery and humiliation.
Pyjamas off and on with the absurd knickers, followed by the rough cotton blouse with rigid starched collar and tie. Then the grey wool stockings held up by a stiff, deep suspender belt, all securely encased in thick elasticated-leg bottle-green bloomers worn under a bottle-green serge gymslip. Everything was designed to humiliate. And it did. Finally Anna pulled on the clumpy school shoes and grey felt hat, remembering to tuck the elastic behind her ears and under her chin. Very neat, but very uncomfortable.
Anna was ready for class.
And she felt sick at the prospect.
In single file the ‘schoolgirls’ clattered down the corridor to their classroom. Behind her, Anna could hear the other new arrival, Catherine, breathing fast. This was to be her second week. Doubtless, she was feeling even more petrified, thought Anna. It was her fourth week.
Into the dreaded room they went.
It looked the same. It smelt the same.
Small, cramping desks. A blackboard and easel. Miss Beeton’s desk on a dais. And, above all, the punishment stool with before it, hanging on the wall, the dreaded paddles. As was her duty, one of the monitors took them down and oiled them.
Dead silence ... but for fast breathing. And a sob or two from Catherine.
Minutes passed.
Then a tingle of nerves as Miss Beeton’s heels could be heard clicking along the corridor.
In she swept, red hair bouncing, wearing a tight-fitting olive-green dress with calf-length boots to match.
“Good morning, girls!”
So bright, so breezy. Not a care in the world. As if that monstrous place with its iron regime was the most natural thing in the world. Hate burgeoned in Anna’s heart as Miss Beeton smiled at them.
“Good morning, Miss Beeton,” they chorused.
“Now it’s back to work. And I hope there is considerable improvement in the work of some of you ...”
Anna felt herself shudder as Miss Beeton’s swivelling gaze seemed to rest rather too long upon her.
“ ... and, Green, you will stop that noise, or I’ll begin the week by laying a strap across your bottom!”
Wide-eyed, dark-haired Catherine Green pressed a hand to her mouth.
“Latin ...” announced Miss Beeton ... and there was concerted audible moan. It was the most hated subject of all.
“Virgil’s Aeneid, starting at the beginning, each of you will translate a few lines.” A pause. “Now, you’ve all done it before, so there shouldn’t be too many errors. Open your books.”
Anna pushed up the lid of her desk and took out the Aeneid. Opening it, she gazed numbly at its opening lines. Once again, her brain seemed to have become like so much rice pudding!
Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
Italiam fate profugus Lavinaque venit
Litora —
What, in God’s name, was the translation of that?
A wave of self-pity swept over Anna. They were deliberately given these impossible tasks just so that they would fail them! Just to have a ‘reason’ for punishing them! Oh the monstrous vileness of it!
“Green, you will begin ...”
Anna heard the scrape of her chair as she stood up. There was a brief pause. Thank God it isn’t me, said Anna to herself. But, in due time, her turn must come. Anna almost burst into tears.
“... Arms I sing ...” came Catherine’s controlled voice, “... and the man, who first from the shores of Troy came ...” There was another pause. Anna envied her for having got even this far. She was experienced, of course, that made a lot of difference. But would she fail? Then Catherine resumed. “... fate-exiled, to Italy and her Lavinian strand …”
“Good,” said Miss Beeton perfunctorily. “You may sit down, girl.” She was pleased with the ‘progress’ Catherine had made during her first month in class. Originally, she had been as about as mentally lazy as ... well ... Anna, say. In time, the paddle and the cane had persuaded her to make an unpleasant but necessary effort!
“Next. Patricia.”
Tall Patricia, willowy and graceful, thirty-three years.
- multum ille et terris iactatus et alto
Vi superum, saevae memorem lunonis ob iram
Thus Anna read uncomprehendingly. A panic was already beginning to mount in her. She knew she would fail when her turn came! She listened to Patricia translating.
“ — much buffeted he on sea ....”
“On flood, Patricia.”
“I ... I beg pardon, Miss, on flood and ... and ... f-field ... by ...”
A long pause.
“Well?”
“Er ... oh yes ... by constraint ... of ... of Heaven ... and fell Juno’s unslumbering ire.”
The final words came at a rush.
“Passable.”
Patricia sat down. Was that a sigh of relief she gave? It would not have been surprising.
And so it proceeded, with each woman taking up where the previous one had left off.
The next two made a couple of errors ... and each got three strokes of the leather-covered paddle. Miss Beeton was aware of the difficulties of Latin so was less severe than when dealing with simpler subjects.
The next girl word perfect.
And the next ... or nearly so.
Then the seventh woman made quite a hash of it. Four or five errors. It was young, plump-bottomed Melanie. She was much shorter and plumper than Patricia. Twenty-seven or twenty-eight, Anna guessed. Big breasts were straining through her blouse; fat thighs wobbled. In silence the young woman knelt on the stool.
“Knickers down ...”
Obediently, Melanie’s soft-quivering buttock cheeks, so fulsomely rounded, were nakedly exposed.
“Six strokes,” said Miss Beeton. She was still using the paddle.
The big buttocks clenched convulsively as they waited helplessly for the flame-burn of leather-covered wood on flesh ... and quivered even more.
Gasping and whinnying between clamped teeth, Melanie squirmed frantically as the strokes fell methodically. The wild juddering of the whole of her bottom was a hideous spectacle ... especially for those who still awaited their turn. They all knew just how burningly painful even that paddle could be.
But, bravely, Melanie did not cry out. Moreover, she kept her thighs together and thus managed not to rip her knickers. Red-cheeked but dry-eyed, she returned to her place. It had been quite a good performance. Melanie, though, had had over three months’ experience of the ways of Blackfriars Grange.
The eighth woman was word perfect.
The ninth made a couple of minor errors but escaped. Now Miss Beeton was on the front row. Anna’s heart had begun to pound.
Desperately, she tried to work out which lines would be hers ... but even then, she knew she would make little sense of them.
The tenth woman made more than half a dozen mistakes. Six strokes was her allocation with the paddle. Her gasping cries echoed round the room as her bottom changed from white to a rosy-red hue. She had only been at Blackfriars Grange a month longer than Anna.
Sobbing, knickers at half mast, she stumbled back.
It was Anna’s turn.
Trembling, she stood up. The print swam before her.
En Priamus ... she read. Well, that was fairly easy.
“In Priam,” she said.
“Lo, here is Priam, you stupid girl!” interrupted Miss Beeton.
Sunt hic etian Sua praemia laudi; Oh dear God, what did it mean!
“Er ... er ... f-first praise ... er ... here ... was ... er ... his ...” stammered Anna.
“Good Lord, what on earth does that mean?”
“I ... I don’t q-quite know, Miss ...”
“Don’t know? Of course, you don’t know. Because it is gibberish, Dobson! The correct translation is: ‘Even here, virtue hath her rewards.’ That is simple enough. However, it is quite obvious to me you are still not making enough mental effort!”
“P-Please ... I ... “
“Silence, girl! No virtue in that. And the reward here, Dobson, is the paddle. Come out!”
Wretchedly, Anna stumbled to the front of the class. It was all happening as she knew it must. She began to sob as she positioned herself across the desk. Oh the hideous injustice of it! How could she be expected to translate such rubbish?
“Knickers down ...”
All would be gazing ... mostly with indifference, few with sympathy ... at her bare bottom. She felt her flesh twitching. Then the moment of panic as her wrists were manacled. Anna was pulled a little forward, her bottom curving.
Ready ...
Down from its place came the paddle again.
A sobbing groan from Anna. She tensed. She clenched her teeth furiously.
Thhwwaaccckkkk!
What good did it do to clench her teeth? At once a yelping cry was torn from her as her head jerked up and back. The pain was too great. Always worse than one had told oneself it would be!
Tthhhwwwaacckkkkkk !
“A-Ahh ... a-a-ahh ... aaaahhhhhhhh!”
Full-sweeping strokes from Miss Beeton. Only during the first week or two was she wont to use anything less.
Tthhwwwaaacccckkkkkkk!
“Aaghh owww o-owww aagghhhh!”
Oh God ... the pain of it ... the pain of it! spreading ... burning deep ...
Thwaaaccckkkkkkk!
“A-A-A-Aggghh ... ooooowwwwwwww ... “
That was four. It was nearly over. But not yet. Anna felt her twisting buttocks clench and clench again in frantic dread as there was a momentary pause before the next stroke. She twisted the other way. Again her buttocks clenched.
It made no difference.
Tthhhwwwwaaaccckkkkkk!
She got it full across her quaking bottom ... and it set her writhing in torment yet again as her gasping yelps rang out.
Ttthhhwwwaaacccckkkkkk!
“Y-Yeeeee aaggh a-a-agghhhhh ... “
The last. Oh thank God, it was the last!
Click ...
Where were her knickers? Incredibly ... somehow . . . this time she had managed to keep her thighs more or less together. That was something. An improvement, one might say. She would not have the chore of mending them that evening. Wriggling, Anna pulled up her knickers and shorts. They fitted tight over her burning flesh. Sobbing, she made her way through a mist of tears to her desk.
“Ahh ... hhhaaa ...”
Oh yes, it was always so painful to put a tender bottom down to the hard wood of one’s desk seat! So difficult not to gasp out.
Burning ...
Oh so tender!
Vaguely, Anna was aware that young Maria had made an equal hash of her translation. Weeping loudly, the pretty, Italian-looking woman was placing herself over the punishment stool.
“Six strokes,” announced Miss Beeton.
“N-No ... ooo ... oooh ... n-no ... p-please ... please ...”
“And Maria, this time I am going to use the paddle!”
“No ... no ... m-merceee ... MERCEEEE ... EEEEEEE!”
It would be the first time for her, thought Anna, as she looked upon the girl’s neatly-rounded, twisting bottom. She felt faintly sorry for Maria. But only faintly. They all had to go through it.
In any event, one had not all that much room for sympathy for others when one had so many troubles of one’s own!
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