Roleplay, when it returned, was pitch-perfect.
A hotel room – leading to the backdrop: a school trip. Mary Kate, aged 17: a good girl, in the Lower Sixth. Bottles of wine taken from the executive lounge; partying girls drunk in their rooms; complaints from the manager to the master leading the trip.
She arrived at my room in uniform, downcast. Stood before my desk, as I explained my disappointment in her. Of all the girls on the trip, she was the one I’d least have expected to find in front of me in such circumstances.
She hadn’t let the younger girls drink, she explained. I noted that – and that it was precisely because she was the one girl I’d expect to set a good example that I felt so let down by her actions. The drinking per se wasn’t the problem: I expected the girls on a trip to enjoy themselves, and she knew I’d turn something of a blind eye, within reason. Sneaking into the lounge; taking the wine – not conduct of which she could be proud. And this, a few weeks before I had to appoint a Lower Sixth girl to be Head of House for the coming school year; before prefects were appointed.
She’d found herself before me in serious circumstances once before, I reminded her – as if she needed any reminding of how I’d punished her in her first year. And so she would understand that behaviour like this left me no choice but to cane her.
It was a sorry, sad, apologetic girl who bent over my desk, lifting her skirt. “No, sir,” she pleaded, as I pulled down her white knickers and pronounced sentence: twelve strokes, to be counted aloud.
And they were hard: delivered slowly, with time for each to sink in as they striped her, raised weals. She took them bravely, quietly, with dignity: it was a solemn, very punished girl who stood before me afterwards.
I didn’t expect her to tell the other girls that she’d been beaten, I explained: it was not something to be proud of. And for my part, the beating would go unrecorded in the punishment book: with conversations coming up about prefectorial positions, I thought it best to keep what had happened to ourselves, and it would avoid the caning being noted on her end-of-term report. But I certainly hoped we’d never have a similar discussion in future. And with that, I sent a chastened girl on her way.
—
A favoured pupil, oh-so-good, suddenly finding herself in deserved trouble and regretting her behaviour. A hard caning, bravely taken. Just perfect. As I reflected afterwards, I found myself picturing other scenes with Mary Kate – including one with no cp whatsoever, set a few weeks hence, in which I appointed her as my new Head of House.
Of course, other ideas followed – what of that first punishment, a few years back? What if something happened in her sixth-form year, and I persuaded the Headmaster to let me cane her rather than stripping her of her prefectship? What of her University tutor and his strap?
Lovely characters. Lovely scene. Lovely Emma Jane – as ever, such a delight to play with.