A New Broom Sweeps Clean

Meanwhile, the unfortunate Butterworth, whose cock had also risen to the occasion during the beating and was now was also leaking a little pre-cum, limped back to his class and sat down at his desk with some difficulty. The teacher taking the class looked at him with a certain sympathy and indicated that if he wished he could move to the back of the classroom and remain standing, for which gesture Butterworth was infinitely grateful, for the pain of the cane was still intense. At the morning break, his classmates clamoured around him to find out what had happened.

"Listen guys; just take a look at this." And he dropped his trousers and underpants to show his class mates his richly striped arse. "Guys, you had better believe that this Headmaster is for real; he means what he says and, boy, does he know how to lay it on with the cane; I'm still in bloody agony; my arse feels as though it is on fire. My advice to you all; watch your step; otherwise you'll get the same. And, guys, what he forgot to tell us this morning, was that all beatings are on the bare bum: eighteen strokes he gave me! I get the impression too that the "classic six of the best" is for the birds; I reckon twelve is the minimum he'll dish out and he really seems to enjoy his work; frankly, guys, I don't think it can get much worse than this. Talk about a cold bloody shower after the look-warm Baldwin era; this is fucking ice cold water into which this guy is throwing us. So, yes, things are changing and changing fast and we had all better learn and learn quickly, otherwise life is going to be very painful for all of us. I reckon that we are moving into a phase where the cane will reign supreme and there will be a hell of a lot of sore arses."

So much for the wisdom according to Butterworth: and there was a great deal of sense in what the lad had just said. Of course, what he did not know was that things could get worse. The cane was going to "reign supreme" as Butterworth poetically put it; but what he and the others did not realise was that the dreaded birch was hovering on the horizon: the birch, one of the most painful of all forms of corporal punishment; and yes, Dr. Waterlow had every intention of using it. The old adage, "Spare the rod and spoil the child" was to become the unwritten motto of Rigby School.

CHAPTER 7

The Court of Prefects was created and functioned as the main enforcer of out-of-class discipline in the school. Dr. Waterlow, in his efforts to bring back a sense of dignity and hierarchy into the school, decided that the prefects should each wear a mortar board to set them apart from their fellow students.

Three prefects were appointed from each of the five houses constituting the school and the senior prefect from each house was nominated House-Captain,

The Head-Boy, named Jonathan Lightfoot, who had been personally elevated to the post by the Headmaster, had the additional distinction of wearing a mortar board with a gold tassel. As the Headmaster pointed out to the prefects, when they were in town, the cap rule applied equally to them. And so the prefects, when outside the school premises always wore their mortar boards, which they quickly saw as a mark of real distinction. The Headmaster warned them that in spite of their elevated status, the prefects were subject to the same rules as every other boy in the school: they too had to abide by the rules, which they were, in fact, also appointed to enforce: no one was above the law!

The Headmaster also reiterated his remarks from the first assembly; prefects would henceforth address each other by their surnames only and would be addressed by the other boys with the style Mr. preceding their surnames and deferentially as "sir". Each prefect had his own study bedroom but the Head-Boy, in keeping with his superior status, was accorded a suite of two rooms: a study and a separate bedroom. In terms of the hierarchy established, the Head-Boy had almost the status of a master and the other prefects, whilst addressing each other with their surnames, had always to defer to him and address and refer to him as Mr. Lightfoot and use the deferential "sir" whenever appropriate.

Thus in the Court of Prefects, Dr. Waterlow had created strict hierarchical structure, plain for all to see, in which the pecking order was clear. The Head-Boy was top dog: the House Captains came next and the other prefects were in third place. Of course, the prefects revelled in their superior status, which allowed them to lord it over the other boys, including their own classmates. They had been given the authority and they had eve intention of using it to the full. Like all boys in the English public school system, where beating was accepted as part of daily life, they took great pleasure in seizing upon every minor infraction to beat any miscreant. Dr. Waterlow, himself a great believer in the merits of corporal punishment and himself a regular arse beater, nevertheless tempered the enthusiasm of the prefects by limiting the number of strokes they could administer to a boy on any one occasion to six: the classic, "six of the best" which figured so graphically in the stories in the boys' magazines of that period.

But, as might well be imagined, the prefects practised caning cushions and pillows until they all had fine tuned their techniques to the peak of painful perfection. It was amazing just how much pain they managed to pack into those six permitted strokes. And, in the first few months of under the new Headmaster, when the shock of the new regime was still being felt, there was a daily parade of six or so boys before the Court each Monday and Thursday evening after supper, where the cane descended mercilessly on the naked arses of the miscreants; many were the boys who went to bed nursing a glowingly painful arse. Dr. Waterlow looked on in satisfaction as he saw that the prefects had managed to tame the worst habits of the hitherto undisciplined boys. His ideas were yielding fruit: things were improving.

But the pressing problem for the Headmaster was the replacement of the "old lags" as he saw them, the four housemasters who were still in charge of the four houses and who, in spite of paying lip-service to the new regime, still, dragged their feet and, in a passive sort of way, hindered progress.

In much the same way as fate had intervened for the Colonel in his search for a new Headmaster, so it was also for Dr. Waterlow. He himself, a product of Eton and Oxford, was a member of the C&O gentlemen's club in London's Pall Mall, a club whose membership was exclusively reserved for graduates of those two prestigious universities. Cambridge and Oxford. In London one day at the club, he met, by chance an old school friend of his from his Eton days and the two men sat down to lunch together, to reminisce over times past. Waterlow told his friend the saga of Rigby School and what he was doing as Headmaster to pull it out of the mire into which it had sunk.

Jeremy Foster, for that was the friend's name, told Waterlow, that he was at a bit of a loose end; foot loose and fancy free, was the way he put it. Like so many men of his background, in those now long gone days, he was what was known as a "gentleman of private means", another way of saying that he had sufficient income so as not to have to work to earn a living. By those who knew anything about anything, it was commonly referred to as "coming from old money", a much admired quality among a certain stratum of English society. In fact, Dr.Waterlow himself was of the same ilk; he did not need to work as he too was independently wealthy, but he enjoyed the life he had chosen as a school teacher. In fact he enjoyed the ability to indulge, in all legality, his penchant for administering corporal punishment on adolescent boys. And a public school, in spite of its misleading name was far from the public eye and was also a refuge for men of his sexual bent,

Well, it transpired that Jeremy had been acting as an unpaid service teacher at a number of public schools: a teacher who temporarily replaces a permanent teacher who for some reason is briefly unable to carry out his work. The upshot was that Jeremy, bored with his life, had found a certain fulfilment in this job and wondered whether he might not take up teaching as a fulltime profession. So Waterlow told him of the saga of Rigby School and his search for four new housemasters.

"Well, Andrew, I may well be able to help you. Listen; I get my temporary assignments through an agency which specializes in supply teachers for public schools: sort of the crème de la crème of temporary staff so to speak. Now, I know for a fact that a number of guys, all with educational backgrounds similar to ours, are looking for permanent jobs at the moment. It might well be that you could find the answer to your problem there. And, the great advantage for you, that I can see, is that all of these fellows would be available more or less immediately, as they are not tied to any one job for long. Now, while we are at it, I wonder if you might consider hiring me for one of the vacancies. I'm as free as a bird a bit bored with life and tied to no one. I find that I have quite enjoyed my recent foray into teaching, and as I have nothing more pressing to do at the moment, it might be fun to become a permanent master at a decent school. Where is Rigby, by the way?"

"Oh it's at a place called Market Ditchfeild in rural Lincolnshire about twenty miles from Lincoln."

"What a coincidence; I used to know it well, Spent a lot of time there in my Eton days during the long vacations, as my family has some good friends there: the Mornington-Crosbys; Andrew, you surely remember Charlie Mornington-Crosby; he was a year ahead of us at Eton and although he beat my arse something rotten, he and I hit it off together and became good friends, so much so that I was often houseguest at their pile near Ditchfeild: Mornington Hall; do you know it? But when we left Eton, he went on to Cambridge and I, like you to Oxford, and we just lost touch. Charming market town, Ditchfeild, as I remember it; peculiar spelling though, as I recollect: "E" before "I" and all that business!"

"Jeremy, you may have put me onto a good idea. Let's explore the potential availability of staff as soon as possible, for this is, at the moment, my most urgent problem; I absolutely must get rid of these four laggards as they are a drag on everything I am trying to do at Rigby at the moment. But there is a constraint, in that the four who have to go are still teaching, if you can call it that and so I need to replace them with men who can take over their subjects as well as step in as housemasters. So, I need a mathematician, a historian, a chemist and a French teacher. Let's see what your agency has available."

"Listen Andrew, as far as French is concerned, I am your man, as my degree is in French, language and literature, and, if I say so myself, I did quite well as I took first class honours in the finals at Oxford. Why not leave it with me for a few days and let me sound out the field?"

"Now, how long are you staying in town? I thought we might catch up on a few things together. I seem to remember we had a rather good relationship together in our last year at Eton. Looking back on things now though, I wonder how we lost touch when we both went up to Oxford; different colleges and different subjects I guess."

"What I remember vividly, Jeremy, of our last year at Eton, was our being caught "in flagrente delicto" in the showers by the games master. You had your cock up my arse and were deep into rogering me when old Commander Smithson caught us. I remember vividly our standing there naked, being told to bend over, still dripping wet, in the shower room and his giving us a dozen or so whacks across our arses with that leather taws thing he kept hand most of the time. Then he hauled us of, just in our gym strips, barely dry to the Headmaster, who lectured is on the sins of such lewd and unbecoming behaviour. My god, looking back on it now, how he went on, before he bent us over the birching block and treated our bare arses to a twenty stroke roasting. My god, Jeremy, how could anyone ever forget that? It was the worst beating, among many, I might add, that I ever took at Eton. That was the only time I ever felt the birch. I was caned countless times by both teachers and older boys, but that birching was something very special. I am intending to re-introduce the birch at Rigby, by the way, as a sort of, "Sword of Damocles": the ultimate sanction, to hold over the boys."

Jeremy laughed and said," Well, we both seem to have survived and emerged at the end of the day intact; great days they were! But let me ask you this, Andrew. Did that birching cure you of your sexual bent or not. Did it, as I am sure the Headmaster hoped, put you on the righteous path to becoming a good and "normal" male? You know the old fart was such a hypocrite, as he was well aware that several members of his teaching staff were fervent practitioners of anal sex. "Do as I say, not as I do," was much the ethos of the school."

"Oh, come on, Jeremy; stop talking tosh; you know as well as I do, that you cannot change a man's sexuality by beating him; it's something which is an integral part of his makeup. Most guys like women and want to fuck them but some guys, like you and me, prefer sex with another man. Under the benighted legalisation under which we live in this country, promulgated by a set of legislators in Westminster, many of whom themselves indulge in the very acts they are legislating against, guys like us live under the constant threat of imprisonment if caught in the act. So the keyword to our our behaviour is discretion, discretion and more discretion; do not get caught it's as simple as that!"

"Do I take it then that you would not be averse to a little "relaxation" with me before you catch your train back to Lincoln this evening? Look, Andrew I'm staying here tonight and have a room booked; we have three hours and frankly nothing would give me greater pleasure than to renew, for old times' sake, my acquaintance with your hole and I guess, if I read you correctly, that my feelings might be reciprocated."

"Fuck you, Jeremy! You do have a pompous way with words; why do we beat about the bush all the time? Why don't we just say what we mean in simple English? So come on, let's go to your room and see if we still know how to fuck each other after so many years. Lord knows, we had enough practice at school and sex is much like swimming: once you can, you never forget!"

And that is exactly what these two old school friends did. For Andrew it was a heavenly experience to lie in bed with an old friend and for each of them to be able uninhibitedly to indulge their sexual fantasies on each other. It was a perfect end to what had been a very fruitful chance meeting and, as it turned out to a long term relationship.

CHAPTER 8

On the train back to Lincoln, Andrew Waterlow reflected on the entirely unexpected results of his visit to London. His chance meeting with his old school friend, Jeremy Foster, had opened up a whole raft of new possibilities; he might, with a bit of luck, resolve at one stroke, so to speak, all his staffing problems and be quit of the last of the "old guard". Also, if he appointed Jeremy as head of French, then he would have a like minded friend close to hand, with the prospect of a stable sexual relationship with a guy he truly liked and with whom, when still at school, he had spent many happy hours fucking butt. The time he and Jeremy had spent in bed together earlier that afternoon, dispelled any fears he may have had that they had been too long apart. It was as if their school days relationship had ended just yesterday; it was a sublime reawakening of a forgotten relationship and as far as he could judge, Jeremy was just as enthusiastic about it as he was. All in all it was a very alluring and tempting prospect. He would await Jeremy's enquiries with impatience; as he said to himself, "Tempus fugit! Time flies; have to get on with things; I have to put the house in order."

The next day he called in the school head grounds man, whom he had ordered to get the old cricket pitch in order for the coming summer months. The pitch had been left to its own devices for several years, as the previous Headmaster had killed all competitive sports stone dead and so it needed a great deal of regular work to bring it back into a playable condition. But he also decided to sound out the grounds man on the possibility of making a series of birches, for he really had no idea whom else to ask. Canes were easy, as they could be ordered from the supply house, but birches had to be made regularly and kept in water, for the fine twigs from which they were made soon dried out.

"Well sir," said the grounds man, I could help you out I suppose, although I have never actually made a birch in my life, but in the old days, the days before Mr Baldwin that is, it was always Mr. Gresham, the head gardener who was asked to make such things. I think, sir, that perhaps in the interests of staff harmony, you might ask him about it first, sir and then if he declines and does not fancy taking it on again, I'll be happy to try my hand; can't be too difficult can it? Anyway , sir, all power to you for putting some order back into this place; it's not, of course for me to say, sir, but I reckon there's nothing like a bit'o stick, is there sir, to keep the lads in order; and well, sir, if you bring back the birch, well that'll be sort of icing on the cake, sir."

An inappropriate analogy thought the Headmaster as he said: "You say if I bring back the birch; do I gather that the birch was in use in this school prior to Mr Baldwin's arrival?"

"Oh, certainly sir. The old Headmaster, Mr. Baldwin's predecessor that is, dead and gone these past three years, was a great believer in it. It was just Mr. Baldwin with his new fangled ideas that banned it: and the cane too, sir; and just look where that has got us!"

Andrew called in Mr. Gresham, the head gardener, who declared himself delighted to hear that the birch was to be brought back and said that nothing would please him more than to become again the purveyor of this splendid implement.

"I remember in the old days, before the arrival of Mr Baldwin, I used to make made three or four birches a month, as the old Headmaster set great store by them. He used to tell me that if you wanted to give a boy a truly memorable beating, then nothing at all equalled a well made and well soaked birch. But just remember sir, I know it's called a birch, but I actually made it from hazel twigs, which are much more resilient and I gather that those who know about such things, believe the hazel twig version to be even more painful than the true birch. Anyway, sir, the old Headmaster used to call my birches the Rolls Royce of corporal punishment implements and he used them regularly. He was a great believer, sir in the saying, "Spare the rod and spoil the boy", as I suspect you too are, sir. But I must not chatter on, sir, as I have a lot of work still to do; but just one thing, sir, before I forget; will you want the birching stools brought back into the school? The old Headmaster had one in the little room of his study and the other in the birching room proper."

"You mean that we have two birching stools in store somewhere? But certainly, let's have them both brought back and put into use again. Where are they, by the way?"

"Well sir, they are safe and sound in the garden barn, where I keep all my tools and fertilizers and what-not. They are still in perfect condition. The old Headmaster bought them from a professional manufacturer of such and they have restraining straps for both wrists and ankles and they are also adjustable to suit different heights of lads; they really are the best that money could buy. I'll get them moved back later in the week, sir and I'll put them in their old places unless you tell me otherwise, sir. You know, Mr Baldwin told me to throw them away, but I somehow thought that they might come in again sometime in the future, so there you are, sir, I was right, wasn't I? Oh, and I'll put the special soaking pails back with the stools; I kept them as well, you see, sir."