Kevin Pettifer - The Warden

As befits a British Government Department, Kevin's interlocutor – I rather like that word as it sounds very-upmarket, which is precisely what the man who had issued the convocation – another up-market word – was. Clearly a member of that rarefied fraction of British society, which consider itself as being made up of the great and the good, Mr. Ronald Geoffrey Chalmers, for that was his name, Principal Undersecretary of...etc. etc. etc., addressed Warrant Office Kevin Pettifer RN in that slightly disdainful and condescending manner that so many of the British upper classes still affect as if it were their God-given right,whenever they deal with someone whom they consider beneath them in the social hierarchy, but with whom they are, nevertheless, forced to have – as they would surely refer to it –social intercourse – more commonly called talk. (Oh yes; don't delude yourselves; class distinction is very much alive and well in Britain!)

"Well Pettifer (note the absence of his naval rank or even the honorific civilian civility: Mister) I am glad you were able to come today. Now to get down to the matter at hand immediately, I believe I am correct in saying that for the past five years you have been in sole charge of charge of physical education and – more importantly; indeed much more importantly in the view of many members of this Department, including, I have to say myself – discipline on board the training ship the Great Endeavour. Now as you probably know, the Royal Navy, in what passes for its infinite wisdom, has seen fit to tell us that it can no longer afford the luxury of what it quite correctly describes as a floating reform or approved school for a group of dyed-in-the-wool, irredeemable miscreants for whom it quite rightly, in fact, feels no responsibility whatsoever. It has therefore decided to scrap the ship at the end of this year and sell it off to the breaker's yard. All this, Pettifer, I am sure you already know."

"However what you may not know is that this department has been left holding the financial bag by this unilateral move on the part of the Navy; so we now find ourselves with some two hundred or so dangerous, young miscreants on our hands. We have therefore to find a solution of what to do with these youths, who are generally considered to be among the worst and most dangerous of young offenders, which is why they were isolated from society from the start on – well let's not mince words and call it what it really is – a prison ship, from which escape is well nigh impossible. So we have decided to create a new, high security, approved facility designed specifically to house and hopefully reform just such hardened and physically dangerous, repeat offenders as you presently have under your care on the Great Endeavour."

"The Department of Juvenile Corrections has had the good fortune to acquire, at a knock down price, a group of school buildings in a small town called Moulton-Midmarsh located on the Cambridgeshire fens. As these premises have been until recently used for more than a century as a boys' public boarding school, they are more or less ready for immediate occupation with only a few minor modifications. Now Pettifer, I have read your file very closely and you appear to have done an excellent job of maintaining order on board the Great Endeavour, aided of course by the re-introduction by the Home Office some years ago of corporal punishment; I see from your file that you are considered an expert in matters of administering corporal punishment and that you have never flinched from wielding the cane, on the backsides of any of the detainees on board the Great Endeavour whenever it was merited.

Along with most of the general public, I share the view that a good sound beating never did a boy – or even a young man, for that matter – any harm; and frankly in a reform establishment where young miscreants are confined against their will, I and many like me, feel corporal punishment to be an essential element of daily life. And in your favour Pettifer, according to the comments in our file made by several of your superior officers, you appear to be someone who administers punishment without fear or favour both to the internees, whom you – quite mistakenly in my own view – grace with the title cadets, which they probably do not deserve, but also to the younger seamen ratings when, as they so often do, merit it. So Pettifer, to come to the crux of the matter before us, we think you might be the ideal man to take charge of the new reform school at Moulton Midmarsh, to which we shall move these worst of humanity who are at present on board the Great Endeavour. So for them and I suppose for you too, it will be more or less home from home."

Kevin had listened to this discourse in total silence and when Chalmers had finished he could scarcely believe what he had heard. So scraping himself up off the floor where he had been metaphorically thrown by this totally unexpected announcement he said: "You mean sir – he automatically deferred as he always did to someone in authority, even though Chalmers was in no way in charge of him – that you are offering me the job of running the new school at Moulton Midmarsh."

"That Pettifer, is quite correct; we are, in fact offering you the post of Warden of the Moulton-Midmarsh Correctional Facility for Young Offenders, for that is the somewhat portentous official name which has been chosen for this new establishment. In a word you will be totally in charge of the new facility and for the staff under you – and of course for the inmates. Now as to the terms of your appointment..."

It is safe to say that Kevin Pettifer walked away from that meeting on air as he made his way back to the station to take the train back to Plymouth. He had had no idea – none at all – why he had been summoned to London; and now here he was with a contract in his pocket which only had to be signed to become effective and he would become the head and chief organiser of the new approved school; literally the master of all he surveyed; it was totally surreal; he could barely believe his good fortune. He had no clear idea where Moulton Midmarsh was; but did that matter? This was a job opportunity in a million and the salary was to be more than twice what he had been earning as a Warrant Officer in the Royal Navy. And to boot, this was an approved, reform school catering for exactly the sort of miscreant youths who needed the hands-on discipline with the cane at which he excelled; whether the lads would leave reformed was questionable; but at least they would know, after a year or so of discipline under Kevin Pettifer, exactly how painful a well-skinned arse could be and what an undesirably unpleasant state of affairs it was to its owner.

But more important than all these considerations, was the fact that he and his partner, Stephen Shaw, would not have to be separated, which for both young men would have been a fate worse than death; they had, over a four year period, become a solid item, as inseparable as if they had they been soldered together at the hip. But in total charge of the new school and its organisation, Kevin could offer Stephen a decent job there. And so it was with a feeling of unalloyed elation that Kevin returned to the Great Endeavour to impart this good news to his partner.

That night, in bed, Kevin and Stephen celebrated their good luck in what can but be described as a frenzied orgy of joyous, anal copulation. It is safe to say that never had they experienced together such intense sex; Kevin treated his partner to one of the hardest, but what was for both of them, one of the most rewarding anal fucks of their lives; this was followed a little later with a return bout by Stephen, who reamed out Kevin's arse as if there were to be no tomorrow; he pulled out all the stops and fucked his lover with such unbridled passion, that he brought both of them to what was the greatest orgasmic climax of their long partnership. Both young men thought of themselves as sexual equals in their partnership, which indeed they were; but there is an expression, primus inter pares: the first among equals; and that night this honour had to go to Stephen, who had copulated like a prisoner released from his chains.

A little later, looking back at the occasion, both young men realised that their unbridled love making had been an outlet, both physical and spiritual, for the mutual relief that they now felt from the knowledge that they would not be parted from each other when Great Endeavour went to the scrap-yard at the end of the year. Of course neither of them were absolutely what the future would be like or exactly what Stephen's position in the new school would be as Kevin still had to give some thought to that; but as they lay contentedly in each other's arms that night, they both could bask in that priceless commodity: peace of mind.

It has to be remembered that the relationship between Kevin, a non-commissioned officer and Stephen, a leading hand was truly exceptional; the three ranks (commissioned officers, non-commissioned officers and ratings) did not normally fraternise; and even within the ranks, men knew their exact place and status and deferred, as had always been the case, to their superiors. So the intimate relationship which Kevin and Stephen had for several years enjoyed, was totally exceptional; indeed it was practically inconceivable in naval or military thinking. Ranks were rigidly respected otherwise discipline and strict obedience, which were the backbone of the entire structure of any military or naval force, would become impossible. But it has to be said in spite of their intimacy – and no two men could be more intimate than Kevin and Stephen were in private – in public they both always followed strict navy protocol to the letter; Stephen, the rating, always deferred to Kevin, the NCO. So strictly did they observe this protocol, that on one ghastly occasion for both of them, Kevin found himself obliged to give his partner a fifteen stroke caning to which he had been sentenced by a sub-lieutenant who had caught Stephen asleep on duty.

Kevin had been beside himself with what he was obliged to do to Stephen; but his position and duty demanded it of him and so he could do no other but obey. And as he looked down on his lover stripped naked across the beating bench and saw that beautiful pair of undefiled buttocks, which he knew so well in a totally different context but which he was now obliged to shred, he had to steel himself to bring the cane crashing down as his duty demanded of him and leave his partner writhing in agony after a severe fifteen stroke beating. And there was no question either of soft-pedalling on the punishment, as the young sub-lieutenant who had sentenced Stephen to the punishment had insisted on being present. But that same evening as they later lay together as lovers in bed, things between them had not changed one iota; Kevin and Stephen were a totally inseparable item: a match made in heaven.

CHAPTER 3

Although at the time of his appointment Kevin Pettifer was unaware of the fact, the school buildings in which the portentously named Moulton-Midmarsh Correctional Facility for Young Offenders was to be housed, had been purpose built by the Home Office in 1899 to house a brand-new reform school then called Moulton-Midmarsh Reform School. A totally new concept at the time of its creation, the school had survived only ten years before being close down due the scandalous mistreatment of the inmates by the then Warden. The buildings had then been taken over by a newly-founded, boy's public school which, thanks to a very generous old-boy benefactor, had, after over a hundred year of occupancy, just moved out to more modern premises. And now in 2031, the Government of the day had re-acquired the buildings on behalf of the Department of Juvenile Corrections. So after well over a hundred years, the old buildings were again to be used for their original purpose: a reformatory for young offenders, thereby giving credence to the saying: "What goes around comes around."

Fact can truly be stranger than fiction. But to give the present reader an idea of what and where Moulton-Midmarsh is, I can do no better than lift a paragraph from my earlier writings which describe the place as it was in 1900.

"Moulton-Midmarsh was, and for that matter, still is, a miserable sort of town, stuck in the watery wastes of the fens, which were less well drained then than they are today; for as its name so graphically describes it, it was located more or less in the middle of a great watery wasteland. Its attraction to the powers that be had clearly been the fact that in those days, where movement from place to place was by no means easy, it was, to all intents and purposes, practically isolated from the outside world, as, surrounded almost completely by the road-less fenlands, it was accessible by only one paved road. Even that great Victorian preoccupation, the railway, had not arrived at Moulton-Midmarsh and the nearest station was at Great Moulton, some five miles away. Thus, with the risk of absconding being a real problem from such correctional establishments, the school's remoteness meant that escape from Moulton-Midmarsh was minimal: there was just nowhere to go or to hide."

You can easily see why the then authorities had decided to build their new reform school in what was then a very remote place. Of course today, in 2031, it is less isolated than it was in 1900; the proliferation of the motor car in the intervening years has made the place totally accessible. This, coupled with further extensive draining of the fens, which are now given over to intensive vegetable cultivation, has, in the intervening years, turned Moulton-Midmarsh into a thriving and bustling, bilingual English and Polish small country town. But the old school buildings still remain: isolated and insulated from their surroundings by a high and forbidding perimeter wall: originally designed and still capable of exercising its original function: to keep the inmates in. So it was with a sense of adventure, that Kevin Pettifer, now the Warden to give him his proper title, and his – how shall I put it? – band of merry men, arrived in January 2031 to re-incarnate a reform school for the hardest and most irredeemable of repeat young offenders in Britain.

What I have just referred to as his band of merry men, might better be described as a number of young and muscular, highly experienced, ex-Royal Navy regular sailors, who, on board the Great Endeavour, had formed with Kevin the core of the punishment team. Kevin was acutely aware of the magnitude of the task he had taken on as Warden of the new facility, where corporal punishment was to be a daily fact of life for many of the detainees; and so he had persuaded the Department of Juvenile Corrections to twist the arm of the Admiralty and allow him to cherry pick a tried and tested group of experienced, young, strong-armed sailors who brooked nonsense and could be relied upon to quell any insurrections from the more vicious of the detainees.

Of course Kevin was fully aware that quite often his cohorts had exceeded their brief, which was to control the lads being punished; they usually went on, after he had finished administering the beatings himself, to bugger the last available arse before releasing its owner from his bonds over the beating horse and allowing him to go back to his berth to nurse his wounds; but provided he did not know officially about what happened after he had left his last victim to the tender loving care of his assistants, he turned a blind eye. Anyway it was a fact that although many of the lads he had just beaten, were more or less raped after he had left them to the not-so-tender-loving-care of his muscular sand sexually well-endowed assistants; but many of them actually enjoyed the post-beating stimulation of having their arses expertly reamed out by a sexually, well-equipped and well experienced, muscular young stud of a sailor.

So although homosexual relations between any men on board, from commission officers down to the lowest ratings – and let's face it all ranks from top to bottom indulged in sexual practices of one kind or another – were not against the present law of the land, they were nevertheless frowned upon and actively discouraged – in vain one might add – by the navy. Kevin was acutely aware that his own long-term relationship with Stephen Shaw would not be approved of by his masters, although many of whom, he was sure, were as active sexually as he was, but had to wave the flag in defence of the naval directives; however, there was nothing at all the navy could do to interfere with such relationships provided always that both parties discharged their duties correctly.

And so in formulating his ideas about how Moulton- Midmarsh would be run under his direction, Kevin had already adopted an attitude of tacit acceptance of sexual mores: that there was no way he could control the sexual activities of a group of healthy young males, whether staff or detainees. So homosexual activities between staff members, between detainees, and between staff and detainees would just have to be accepted and lived with; they were part of the daily life of such institutions and no amount of talk would stop them; the human sex drive was just an unstoppable and uncontrollable force and was no respecter of rank.

Kevin was under no illusions that the young men under his care were to be the crème de la crème – or now I come to think about it, better put would be the dregs of the dregs – of British juvenile criminality: a group of young, physically-vicious criminals who would stop at nothing if it benefitted them: a group of young tearaways who had to be fully controlled at all times. And if they fell out of line, as many surely would, they would be controlled and disciplined in the traditional way; the order of the day at Moulton-Midmarsh was to be short, sharp, shock therapy, in the form of the cane and the birch; all approved of and sanctioned for regular and more or less unlimited use under the present laws, in an, alas often vain and unsuccessful attempt to reform and rehabilitate these young men. For it had to be accepted that many of the internees were practically irredeemable, and the excruciating pain of corporal punishment which was applied to their naked arses as a deterrent from future misdemeanours was to many of them akin to an antibiotic to which resistance had developed: it just did not work; it was painful but it had no lasting effect on their behaviour. So many of them would spend the majority of their days in Moulton-Midmarsh sporting very sore backsides with which the school was happy to provide them on a regular basis, in the hope – really a vain hope in many cases – of reforming them. They would leave the school at the end of their sentences to resume their former life as professional criminals: men who would drift in and out of prison all their lives. In a word, they were the equivalent of square pegs, which all the will and force in the world – and Kevin Pettifer had both in spades, neither of which he ever spared – could not hammer into round holes. In many cases he realised that he was dealing with a group of young men who were potential future old lags.

Kevin had no experience of running a reform school other than that which he had gained on board the Great Endeavour. And so he gave a great deal of thought as to how best to set up this new school, of which the Department of Juvenile Corrections, with that metaphorical sigh of relief, was happy to wash its hands and leave to the care of the man they had chosen as Warden. And so Kevin Pettifer, with a large budget at his disposal really was completely in charge. He really was the master of all he surveyed. The DoJC even though it complained of lack of funds, was happy to throw money at the school it and let someone else deal with the problems.