Back to school

The schoolmasters who lurk in a corner of my mind have been rather busy over the past 48 hours: perhaps all this Japanese travel is making me homesick for more traditional scences!

In years gone by, each idea would have been noted as the potential basis for one of my stories. Yet, time being too tight to write as much as I’d like, they’d have more likely languished for years in my “ideas” file, never to see the light of day. That’s partly why I love blogging – having the ability to capture and share the essence of a good plot, far more immediately. And, of course, readers’ imaginations can then be trusted to do the rest, doubtless just as well as I could in a longer piece of writing.

First, there was the case of the “star chamber”. As in all good public schools, prefects were entrusted with administering discipline to their fellow pupils – only, in this particular establishment, their powers were limited to setting lines, awarding detentions, or making girls stand in line outside the prefects’ room, facing the wall, hands on head. Inflicting corporal punishment? Most certainly not within their remit, although a miscreant could naturally be reported to the housemaster should a caning be deemed appropriate.

So when one such housemaster discovered that his head of house had been taking matters into her own hands, punishing girls over her knee with a plimsoll in the changing rooms before an assembled group of the house prefects? Well, that would be a most serious matter. The young lady would be called into his office, stripped of her prefectorial powers (and with it, of her prefect’s tie and blazer), and awarded the maximum-permitted eight strokes of the cane on the bare.

Second, a call to a headmaster from the local constabulary. One of his girls had been caught red-handed in a large, expensive house a mile from the school – with some of the owner’s wife’s jewellery in her pocket. The householder had proposed an innovative approach to dealing with the matter – and hence to keeping it from the courts and off the front pages of the local newspaper. Would the headmaster care to join them – bringing a cane?

Again, it would seem, eight strokes were the most allowed under the school rules. But this, it was agreed, was not strictly a school matter – and, given the severity of the offence, it was agreed that that should be doubled. The punishment took place in the drawing room, administered by the headmaster, the girl (with jeans and knickers removed) touching her toes in front of both the gentleman she’d burgled and the police officer concerned.

And then to matters more personal for my final headmaster (and into territory where my mind doesn’t usually wander). As usual at the end of the week, he was perusing the punishment reports sent in by each of his housemasters. There, amidst the typed lists of the girls who had been caned (with their offences and number of strokes duly noted) appeared the name of his own daughter, studying in the lower sixth.

That she’d been punished – four strokes – wasn’t altogether surprising: most girls were, at some point, and he’d always insisted that she be shown no favours as a result of her father’s status. But for smoking? He and she had long had a firm agreement on the matter: she wouldn’t. Ever. She’d given her word, her guarantee, her promise – and the consequences of breaking it had always been plainly understood. The headmaster – no, daddy – tidied his desk, took down his cane, and awaited her imminent arrival in his study…