One of my Christmas presents was a novel by William Corlett called “Now and Then”. Part of it (the “then” part) is set in a boys’ boarding school in the fifties, and includes one of the most detailed m/m caning scenes I’ve read for ages.
It’s too long to quote here in its entirety (there’s lots of delicious anticipation), but here’s an extract anyway. The narrator has been caught reading after lights-out, and is in front of the panel of prefects who will deliver his punishment. One of the prefects, Walker, is his secret boyfriend.
(Under the cut, because it’s lonnnng.)
I am bent double over the back of the two chairs with my backside uppermost. The flannel of my trousers is stretched tight across the seat. I am perspiring. It’s difficult to breathe in this position. The waiting seems endless. I hear footsteps as Dixon returns down the room.
‘That’s better,’ I hear him say. ‘What an inviting little fanny, don’t you agree?’
Then I hear Heslop say:
‘You understand, Metcalfe? We don’t want to do this. We are doing it for your good… Each prefect will give you one stroke of the cane. The punishment shall begin.’
As he finishes speaking I hear the sound of footsteps running swiftly towards me. They stop, there is a moment’s pause, and then, with a whistle of wind, the cane is lashed down across my buttocks with such strength that it almost knocks me off the chair back. Pain fizzes up the nerves of my body. I clench my teeth.
The footsteps retreat and then a moment later the process is repeated all over again.
The second lash seems to find exactly the same narrow line as its predecessor. I imagine the wound opening, like a knife cut. The third stroke lands wide of the target, cracking down on the base of my spine, connecting with the bone. A knife-like stab of pain surges up my back and into the front of my head between my eyes.
‘Shame! No score, Wickstead!’ one of them says.
The next blow is precise and stinging and makes me gasp, but somehow I manage to clamp my mouth closed and no noise escapes my lips.
‘Nice one, Walker!’ I think it’s Morrison who says it. I don’t feel disappointed. It all seems part of the system. If I turned round now and told them what happened last week in his study, they’d probably congratulate him and punish me more.
The final lash of the cane is administered by Dixon, because it is his punishment that is being carried out. He also misses the mark, catching me low across the back of the thighs, which is clever of him because the arse is numb with pain now but the thighs are untouched.
‘Get up,’ I hear Heslop say.
I wonder if I will be able. I force myself to climb off the chairs. My shirt has come untucked from my waistband and is sticking out beneath my pullover. But I don’t bother to adjust it.
‘You can go now,’ Heslop says, turning away towards the fire, as though the incident has all been rather boring.
Well, I don’t think it was boring. Although in the context of the novel I feel sorry for the boy, standing on its own this scene is really rather delicious, I think.