Friday Night Straighteners by Mark Danelaw (Part 1 here)
St Denise
The hallway at Newton House outside the housemistress’s study was lined with dour girls. Nonetheless, here and there small conversations would happen, usually just rapid whispers lest they be overhead. Walking the line a prefect would patrol to keep order, although on occasion even these hallowed bottoms were not safe. It was ever thus on a Friday afternoon after the last lesson.
There were 10 measured academic disciplines at St Denise and the school policy was that all girls with a failing grade and the two girls with the lowest grade that week in any subject were for the high jump. That meant a whacking in accordance with previous academic failures and any reason their housemistress wished to take into account. This was measured against the whole school; that is all four houses. However, their housemistress Mary ‘Mac’ Macintyre was something of a legend, and Mac interpreted things somewhat differently. Her girls were the best and academic underachievement was not permitted.
Her policy was that the girls with the lowest grade in Newton would be given a straightener, that meant that every Friday without fail there were rather more girls for the high-jump.
Mac arrived like a woman in a hurry and the assembled girls fell to silence and stood to attention much as if the general of an army were parading them. She looked much younger than her 38-years, devoid of vanity she had allowed the small flecks of grey to streak her hair, which was tied back loosely and tossed over one shoulder. She was not tall, but years of tennis had kept her taught and given her a strong right arm. Her admin assistant, Miss Michaels, was ready outside her door with the list and handed it to the housemistress before beating a hasty retreat. There Mac paused as she scanned the list.
“Penny Clarke and Petra Klein,” she said with some distaste and then opened the door and ushered two late teen girl into the portal of doom.
“Penny, you again,” Mac said wearily, “and Petra, haven’t seen you here for a while but I suppose you have been backsliding?”
“Yes Miss,” Petra said, her very slight German accent betraying her origins.
“Oh dear Petra,” Mac said, looking at the grades printed under her name, “It seems you when you fail you go all in.”
“Yes Miss,” Petra agreed.
Mac took off her coat and changed her shoes to plimsolls while the girls waited. “Penny, third week running you have come last or second to last in maths. C minus, this time, well you are improving at least.”
“Yes Miss.”
“Any excuse?”
“No Miss,” Penny took an audible breath.
“Then its 18 this time,” Mac said and took up the standard cane, “Position.”
Penny swallowed and stepped forward and bent over the back of a stuffed armchair. As she did so she flipped up her skirt in back and adjusted her position.
Mac stepped forward and in one move slid her knickers down to mid-thigh and stood right back. The plimsolls gave her purchase for a short run and she expertly rolled into it as she slashed the cane across Penny’s bare bottom.
“One, thank you Miss,” Penny managed right after the loud swish-thwack.
Petra jumped.
Mac took another short run and landed a second.
“Two, thank you Miss.”
Penny’s smooth domed bottom had two white lines that rapidly turned pink and then red as the slowly rose as welts. Mac didn’t dwell.
“Three, t-thank you Miss,” her breathing was audible now.
Mac kept up a steady pace as lines like a pencil rack developed on her bottom and Penny’s words got ever more strained and decidedly wet. By 18 her bottom was fully red with darker red tramlines standing proud from her upper curves to where thighs met her rump. Penny started to cry in earnest for a moment or two.
“Stand,” Mac told her.
She did so, nodding as she pulled herself together. She resisted rubbing or letting her skirt fall.
“Petra,”
“Yes Miss,” the German girl came to attention.
“English, a D, Geography a C minus and Latin an F,” Mac looked as if she had just announced a murder.
“Yes Miss,” Petra closed her eyes. This was going to be very bad.
“I know English is not your first language, but I thought we had cracked that one?”
“Yes Miss, it won’t happen again Miss,” Petra said.
“Tell me about Latin,” Mac said.
“No excuse Miss, I didn’t do my homework,” she shrugged.
“Previously a B minus, so you got cocky?”
“Miss?”
“Complacent.”
“Yes Miss.”
“Very well, get into position, in fact remove your skirt and pants altogether, you too Penny, this is your third week… there won’t be a fourth,” Mac told them, “Petra, six for each subject and…” another 18 for an F, the usual, was quite a bill and with tomorrows detention her backside was going to be infirmary material, a detail her parents would not turn a hair about, she knew, but they were German after all, “…Six for the F with a dose of paddle to warm you up.”
Mac put down the cane and reached for a short leather paddle. “Bend over the chair Petra.”
“Yes Miss,” Petra marched forward with resolve and folded her hips over the chair and almost defiantly jutted her bottom backwards.
“I do wonder if some of you girls ‘ask’ for this, but after Saturday detention you will be cured of such curiosity,” Mac said and rapidly spanked Petra with the paddle.
So it was on an already cherry red bottom that she received 24 strokes, each one counted aloud.
“Now girls go and face the back wall with your hands on your head, you deserve special consideration, so you will remain there until I am finished. Just think all of your fellow students will see what well punished bottoms look like,” Mac told them.
The rest of the session was somewhat straight forward as persistent reoffenders were rare in Newton House. Mostly she had a run of six and 12s to contend with and each girl looked in horror at the example Jenny and Petra set.
The next part is here.
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