A. N. Dedeaux - An English Education

by P. N. Dedeaux

  There was a deathly still, then the cane made its whirry whupp!

  The girl gave a harsh gasp. The mistresses looked on smiling. Another meaty thump broke the silence. I blinked and jumped. The air positively resounded to the third.

  "Hooooo!" Her feet could be heard trampling in the stocks.

  "Feeling warmer, Miss Marowney?" He delivered the fourth, solid cut and I do not think there was a drop of blood in any of our faces in that class. "You a Major, child?"

  "Nunno, sir, Minor."

  "Well you have a major pair of posteriors and I'll give you another."

  "Oh sir, nosssir . . . OWWW!"

  "There. Now sit down on those fat idle cheeks, keep your hands in your lap and your backbone straight. I believe you have some good marks there to work on, Duty mistress."

  Miss Boyden grinned. "Six of the best in my room at four o'clock, Audrey."

  "Yer-yess, Miss."

  "This girl here,"—and I heard Mr. Brocklehurst's cane tapping a new desk—"see that she gets two hours Detention this afternoon for Slouching."

  "Yes, sir," said the Duty Prefect, inscribing.

  "Make sure she spends a half hour of it on the stoutest carrot you've got. Right up her."

  "It shall be done," said Miss Boyden, still with her impish grin.

  There was then a long and positively electric silence. Only the creak of leather boots was heard and then suddenly a panicky whimper shivered our spines. It came from the back of the room.

  "Oh no, sir, please, sir . . . not me, sir, please oh please spare me oh no sir, please sir. . . ."

  And so on.

  "If there's one thing I can't stand it's a sniveling girl."

  "No sir, please sir. . . ."

  The poor child appeared to have completely broken down. We sat horrified, spine-chilled while the sound of a physical struggle ensued, the girl pleading and whimpering the while. Finally Mr. Brocklehurst said, "Get her over for me, tight," and the monitor hurried forward.

  Thhhh-whack!

  "Yah!"

  Two . . . three . . . four, each followed by a cry.

  "Hold her still."

  "I'm sorry, sir, she's struggling so."

  "Get her tight for this last one or you'll feel twelve like this across your own backside, Prefect."

  THHHHWLACK!

  "Yeow!"

  A pause. The Reverend's breathing could be heard, alongside the sinner's weeping whimpers.

  "A thoroughly disgraceful exhibition. Miss Temple, I am sending this child up to you for the birch."

  "With pleasure," said our noble Head, in her soft purr of a voice. 'Three dozen on Saturday. For resisting chastisement."

  The man came slowly forward. Every mind in that class wanted but one thing—his immediate absence. He stood facing Miss Satcherd for a long while. When he broke the silence every heart dropped a yard. Mine fell to the region of my heels like a ton of bricks.

  "I mean to make an example. Which of these girls needs whipping, Miss S.?"

  The mistress replied quietly, "They all do, sir, at varying times."

  Mr. Brocklehurst nodded in agreement, bending his silky stick under his chin. "You are right. It is what they understand. I've a mind to order a whipping for every pair of cheeks in this room. Do you remember when I once flogged the whole school at a time, Miss Temple?"

  "Vividly, sir," breathed that woman.

  "Went through 'em like a dose of salts, didn't we? And I'll wager the last one felt fully as tight as the first."

  "They didn't seem to like it one whit."

  "Well—which is the laziest in this room?"

  Miss Satcherd gave the closest to a sly smile I had ever seen on her lips. After a moment she said, "Helen Burns."

  "Burns! Burns . . . stand out, Burns."

  There was a soft movement behind me, accompanied by a stifled sigh, and Helen slipped from her desk and up the aisle, her short skirt swinging over her full posteriors. She stood facing Mr. Brocklehurst, almost as tall as he in her heels, her back to us, quivering, doomed.

  "You Helen Burns?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "What have you to say for yourself?"

  "Nothing, sir."

  The man smiled. "Good. This is good." He walked round her and, raising the skirt behind, ran an assessing hand over the long and opulent slopes of Helen's superb buttocks. "You're lazy, aren't you?"

  "Yes, sir," she admitted meekly.

  "I know a lazy rump when I see one." Then he tipped her sweet round chin in his fingers and his pale eyes bore into her brimming mauve orbs. "Not been thrashed today?"

  "No, sir."

  "Ye're going to be now." Still gazing into the girl's eyes, he said, "Do we have a soko, Miss Boyden?"

  "We do, sir," agreed the Duty mistress with alacrity. My eyes flicked to the side but one of the maids was obscuring my vision there.

  "Ever had the soko, girl?"

  "No, sir."

  "I think you'll agree it's twice as tight nor an ordinary birch, after a few. Take 'em off."

  Impassively, her lovely face as gentle as ever, Helen began the unbuttoning necessary for removal of her knickers. Miss Boyden came forward whistling the dreaded soko through the air and saying, "This should make her sit up a bit, I think."

  Our mentor took the rod and tested it, desolatingly, on the air himself. The soko birch was the worst instrument we were subjected to at Lowood. I felt sick looking at it, then. It was composed of long lean strips of greyish-white whalebone, used in stiffening corsets; at Lowood three of these were set, in parallel spacing, in a sort of wooden handle which thus held them half an inch apart, so that one might not diminish another's smart. It was simply that these fiendish fangs were, as well as whippy, so intolerably tough. The tips were hard as stone and as Mr. Brock-lehurst thrashed them on the tabletop now they made wiry raps that took all taste from our drying mouths. They were far too cruel for schoolgirls to bear, the weals lasted weeks, yet they were an approved article of furniture in even the most elegant ladies academies. Helen Burns looked on apprehensively as the Prefect in waiting attended to the man's laconic order, "Bare those buttocks now." She was to be made into an "example" for the second time that term. When the monitor had finished tucking her skirt up in her belt, Helen turned modestly a little, presenting her back alone to Mr. Brocklehurst.

  The latter extended the quivery rod to Miss Boyden with a smirking bow.

  "Your honor, mistress. D'ye think ye can draw with a dozen?"

  "I'll do my best, sir."

  Miss Satcherd interposed. "If I might be so bold, Reverend. This is a hardened, cynical child. She can take a thorough count."

  "Very well, make it fifteen."

  Helen looked sickly at the soko. Her lips had fallen open. She turned yet more, very slowly. I began to feel a heat behind my face. There was a girl across the aisle from me, moving on her seat in a rhythmic, surreptitious way. Suddenly we knew we were all aware of the strong penile tube that had grown perpendicular up one side of Mr. Brocklehurst's thin fawn trousers. Fatty quiverings shook Helen's hams.

  "How do'ye want her, Ma'am? Bent?"

  "Slightly bent, sir, if you please."

  "Backboard," the ogre then snapped, "straps!" The Prefect hurried forward. Helen was facing fully away from us now, superbly bared. Her arms were hoist in the backboard and then, as if fettering some desperate fugitive, the monitor now applied a series of straps to her lower limbs—at ankle, knee, and thigh.

  "Good," said the reverend when this was done, "now call on your courage, girl, and think of your Saviour. Matron, fig her." Mrs. Harden creaked elaborately forward. When the vile ginger suppository had been duly inserted, against clenching, Mr. Brocklehurst rapped his cane on the class mistress's table. "Take up your position, girl, and prepare to suffer."

  With a last lost look at him Helen realized she had no other course than to hop forward in her bonds. She did so, attained the table and leant across it. She was simply secured there by the medium of
the maids, one at either end of her backboard. Her superb crupper spread, deeply divided, her thonged legs a trifle bent beneath as the upper body held to the worn deal tabletop. I began to feel giddy. The anal crater gleamed slickly central.

  "Now flog her, Miss, as you have never flogged before." With arrogant contempt for feminine feelings the man then stroked up his monstrous erection, which had brought a blush to many a watching face, and throughout the chastisement he often left his hand there, or stroked appreciatively, the while he gave instructions for the greater severity. Then the silence stiffened. Miss Boyden drew back.

  She swung and cut—the whirring whoosh was twice as high in pitch as that of the wooden birch.

  Whu-whu-whuwhilUlck!

  Three frightful dark furrows were clawed across the arse. Helen jerked, then the inner cheeks could be seen cringing as the true pain chewed into them. She had had one.

  "Well cut," said the Reverend. "But come down more, Ma'am, and you will draw quicker."

  She did. She "drew" at five, a frightful slice that made poor Helen shoot her legs back. Six, seven, eight. . . . She now had two dozen thin black weals, several bleeding, across her rump; yet she had not uttered a sound. This did not please Mr. Brocklehurst.

  "Does it hurt you, girl?"

  Forced to speak, Helen suddenly yelled—"Yes, sir! I am in hell."

  "In order to prepare you for heaven. Whip on, mistress, and see if you can make this stubborn sinner sing."

  A frightful beauty fell. The whalebone tips lashed inexorably into the so vulnerable fat and Helen cried and bent her knees. She caught another whistler just like that and I became aware that the girl across the aisle, who had clearly been frotting herself against the little saddle-like riser in our seats, which made us part our hinds, had stiffened suddenly, tense. I saw her face. It was dazed with rapture, lost.

  "Good. A fine cut. Splendid."

  Some of the welts now exuded blood all along them. Helen was being cut to ribbons. When it was all over she fell back and thumped hard to the floor before us, still in her backboard. She writhed there like a worm, mewing her agony, and grinding her bottom into the floorboards. But when she looked up at our patron it was with tears in her eyes, tears of gratitude—"Th-thank you, sir." She bent awkwardly and kissed his soil-stained boots.

  "Take this girl up to the infirmary," said Mr. Brocklehurst coldly, "and have her attended to. That is how you all should be punished. And daily."

  With which he left the room, followed by his grim cortege. When they had gone, breathless silence held the room. Glossy, gleaming, Miss Satcherd stared at us from her dais, head back, triumphant also. She was clearly very excited. The hands which held the cane across her thighs trembled, and her breasts showed her hastened breathing.

  She came slowly down among us lesser mortals, her lean legs swinging. Every single one of us was terrified. Chastisement roamed the room like a beast. She advanced slowly, smiling in a strange fixed way. Finally, she stopped and faced the girl across from me who had been masturbating during the sorry seance.

  "Stand up, Barbara Tennant," she said. She had seen. The girl rose, knowing. She began to whimper. The mistress felt between her legs. She said nothing for a moment, still rigidly smiling, like some puppet. Then in a whisper she got out, as someone suffocated, "Report to me at six o'clock. And God help you until a quarter after."

  It had to be admitted, however, that The Brock (as we used between ourselves to refer to him) was eminently just. It was during my penultimate year that I had chief occasion to attest to this. By this time I had in common with my colleagues grown wholly to appreciate the finer niceties of the rod, and even to enjoy its play upon the temptingly denuded backside of a lesser girl.

  During one of his longer stays, of inspection and diversion, the Reverend caught out a culprit well fitted for his mettle. This was a butcher's boy, a big sullen lout who used to deliver his goods to the kitchens on certain mornings of the week. This ignoble lad had contrived to find a grating through which he could peep up into a place where we senior girls were permitted to repair to relieve ourselves. So our natural needs had afforded him many a moment of masturbatory solace. Caught in flagrante delicto, with a prick as stiff as some crowbar, the spunky boy had been sentenced instantly to a severe whipping by Mr. Brocklehurst.

  I was one of the three innocent girls whom he was at the time over-, or to put it bluntly, under-seeing. When Miss Temple summoned us and told us that we would be witness to the punishment of this rash butcher's boy, there was much natural merriment amongst us. The whipping was to take place in a small stone dairy shed apart from the main house, and we three went to it a-twitter of excitement. We wanted to see this dolt who had taken advantage of us behind, as it were, well whipped.

  He was. A whipping-scale had been set up in the small dairy and we three lined ourselves on a step one side of it, with a grandstand view. The place was bare but for a can or two, and some curd. Presently there was a hubbub outside and the big boy was brought in at the double, already whimpering and pleading, his hands fettered in front of him. He had on only his shirt and boots and he was led in like a great clattering dray-horse by leather-caped Nell, clearly enjoying her work. Mr. Brocklehurst brought up the rear, in shirt-sleeves, carrying the veritable rapier of a long, lean riding-whip.

  The lad did not look at us but whimpered all the time, "Please sir, oh please sir," the while Nell deftly drew him a-tiptoe by his wrists cuffed to the whipping-scale. She knotted his shirt-ends over one shoulder and the muscular bottom was superbly nude. There was still a strong curve in his thing in front, at which we girls nudged each other gigglingly.

  "Well, lad, not in the sullens today?" said the Reverend gloatingly, pushing his own shirtsleeve higher over the Dutch cheese of a bicep. "Let's see if ye still feel randy after a few of these."

  The boy hung limp, awaiting. Whether it was the presence of the fair sex to his nakedness or not, his thing curved even stiffer, like a stallion's, but at the first unfeeling cuts it subsided.

  Mr. Brocklehurst truly knew how to flog a bum in style. The soft whistle of his switch ended with a sound that made us flinch. He twined the waxy whipcord excruciatingly about the full thick arse, like some expert swordsman—and the contest was unequal. The buttocks soon began to make nervous bounds, the skin shuddered as the lashes licked in, leaving crimson traces fast turning blue. The cord cut like fury. What a whipping!

  We three devoured it with unashamed greed, I fear, admiring our mentor with a kind of dumb rapture. The boy began to howl, and dance, reeling on the whip-scale, until he purely screamed. I counted to twenty from that cunning wrist but still the Reverend was unslaked exempting no cranny of skin till the entire buttock was bleeding and raw. The floor was speckled with blood.

  "There, my lad, let that teach you to look up ladies' skirts. That make you want to wank off, do it?"

  The butcher's boy hung exhausted. At some prearranged signal between herself and the good Reverend, Nell now advanced with a smile. To our astonishment she gently palmed the now retired penis in her soft gloved hand. It responded at once and, fisting it expertly, she quickly made it grow, grinning the while.

  The boy began to groan, and trample on his toes. The stiff cock kicked blood-heavy. Mr. Brocklehurst flicked him hard with the whip-tip, on the left. Then another stinger on the right, where the flesh was fairly raw. The boy began his St. Vitus' dance again, moaning and groaning with his pleasure-pain as Nell continued to wank him. The whipping picked up, and so did his cock! Relinquishing it, Nell let it stand out turgid, bobbing, from his belly. Then with a quick nod to the Reverend she grasped the ball-sack and started milking it. Concomitantly the thrasher applied his whip with a zestful will and the boy wailed at the top of his lungs, "YAAAA-OIHHHH!"

  Together they forced the ejaculation from him. The engorged cockhead furiously spat, jetting in cloudy gouts that arched two yards or more, falling audibly on the stone dairy floor. Fisting the balls most painfully, Nell caus
ed her human hose to spout like a geyser, throbbing up its clots of semen which went flying through the air the while Mr. Brocklehurst belabored the agonized posterior with all his might. When it was over the boy hung panting, speechless, slack, and Mr. Brocklehurst himself was sweating.

  "That will teach him to look up your bottoms, I think," he opined to us then. "If you wish to apply extra cuts, you are at liberty to do so."

  We declined the offer, curtseyed and returned to the main buildings with lowered heads, thoughtfully.

  But the worst I ever saw during my terms at Lo-wood was the birching of Julie Severn and her friend, both of whom got the full six dozen that was allegedly our maximum at the block. They had been found guilty of a strange crime.