This story contains graphic descriptions of consensual and non-consensual corporal punishment and descriptions of caning. If this offends you, you may prefer to stop reading.
Although the setting of this story is within a school, all the participants in this story are adults over the age of eighteen years. None of the characters depicted are real, and any similarity to real places or people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Please comment and score. Any constructive criticism, positive or negative, is welcome. Far too few folk comment or score.
As always, any errors in editing are mine and mine alone. As I sometimes do, I have included endnotes which both explain the background to this story and some of the colloquial English terms which I have used, and non-British readers may not understand. If you do not wish to read them, then please don't.
Silence is Golden
This is the story of my sexual awakening and how I learnt that I was a bisexual and a masochist. None of us chooses our sexual orientation, and I don't know why I need to feel pain to be fulfilled. I'm simply wired that way. This is how I got to where I am now. I know that if I had made different choices earlier in my life, I wouldn't be here, writing this today.
I don't claim to be perfect, so please don't judge me.
SW
August 11
th
, 1993. Liverpool
***
I remember my first day at the Senior school. It was a frightening experience. I was a twenty-three-year-old woman with a lot to learn about the ways of the world, and, not for the first time, I doubted my decision to come and teach there.
***
I had been privately tutoring French for two years while living with my ailing mother and my younger sister, Mary. After my mother's death the previous December, I had been left with nowhere to live. She and I had shared the rent on a semi-detached house on the outskirts of Plymouth, and while my earnings covered the rent, her widow's pension, work pension, and savings covered everything else. Fortunately, Mary had already left home and was away at University in Liverpool studying history and receiving a full student grant.
Mt father had died five years earlier of a heart attack. He was French and had met my English mother in 194I when she was nursing him after he was seriously injured at the Battle of Damascus. Following his evacuation from the beaches of Dunkirk with the British Expeditionary Force, he fought with the Free French Army and was dispatched to Syria, where he lost his right foot. He had been a language teacher before the war and was fluent in English, German, and French, and following his injury, he worked as an interpreter and translator for the military. After the war, he continued to work as a translator and court interpreter, this time as a civilian. It was only natural that I learned English and French from birth, and later my father tutored me in German.
I was born in 1943, a year after my parents married. My mother later told me I was a "lucky accident," and it was five years later when my sister, Mary, arrived. I had a loving upbringing, albeit in a world with post-war rationing, shortages of food and clothes, and in a tiny, cramped flat. I remember sharing a room with my baby sister until I was twelve years old.
My father was a confirmed Anglophile and was extremely grateful for being evacuated to Britain and to the Allies for liberating France. Although he returned many times to visit France, he continued to live in England. My mother did not want to live in France and could never get to grips with the language. She would get very frustrated when my father, sister, and I conversed in French, but he insisted it was important we continue to practice the language.
I was an intelligent child, but not exceptionally so. I passed my eleven-plus examination and was accepted to a local grammar school, where, unsurprisingly, I graduated with straight As in A-level English Language, English Literature, French, and German.
Teacher training followed, but before I could get a job at a school, my mother suffered a stroke and was partially paralysed on her left side. She was only forty-six years old when it happened. The doctor suggested that the stress of losing her husband may have caused it. Then, two years later, she was dead. She left my sister and me a thousand pounds each, but that would not last forever, and I needed a real job and somewhere to live.
When I saw a job advertisement for a French Language teacher at a public school near Exeter, it was the perfect answer. Although the salary was not excessive, a small cottage was offered rent-free to the "successful candidate." When I applied for the job and attended the interview, more in hope than expectation, nobody could have been more surprised than I when I was offered the job.
***
So, there I was, on the stage at morning assembly, on the first day of the summer term. Sitting on the stage with me were the other members of the teaching staff: fifty-two men and including me, four women. In front of us in the large hall, over three hundred boys were assembled - a sea of faces, and all their eyes were focused on me.
The headmaster, Mr James, was on his feet speaking, but I barely heard what he was saying......until he called me forward to introduce me.
"This term, we have a new member of staff. This is Mademoiselle Corbin, who will be teaching French and German. I know that you will all make her very welcome."
Standing beside him, I suddenly felt exposed and naked, but I knew how important it was to appear confident, so I pulled my shoulders back and smiled. The pupils would have seen a tall, dark-haired young woman with a good figure wearing a long black dress, a white cotton blouse, sensible black leather shoes, and a black school gown. I hoped I looked the part that I was there for.
***
The school was a typical 1960s British all-boys public school. The pupils were between eleven and eighteen years old, and because of its semi-rural location, most were boarders. Their parents paid a pretty penny for their sons to attend this bastion of privilege, where educational standards were high, and sporting achievements celebrated. On the wall of the assembly hall was a large wooden board on which the names of old boys who had won a place at Oxford or Cambridge were inscribed in gold letters. Next to it, a line of framed rugby shirts celebrated the three English and two Welsh internationals the school had produced.
The price of this excellence was not just money. Discipline was strictly enforced, and caning was a common punishment. Teachers were permitted to administer up to three strokes over fully clothed buttocks. This summary punishment was conducted in front of the class. For more serious offences, boys were instructed to change into gym shorts and a top and visit the headmaster, who decided their punishment. Additionally, school prefects, in their last year at school, were allowed, with their housemaster's permission, to give up to three strokes of the cane over fully clothed backsides.
At the girls' grammar school I attended, caning was a punishment of last resort and rare, and I was never caned - neither had my parents spanked me. I was most unhappy to wield the cane and confided my concerns to Mrs Murphy, one of the geography teachers. She told me she understood my reticence and sent boys directly to Mr James when necessary.
"I tell them to change into their gym kit," she said.
***
My pupils were, in the main, well behaved, although, as is often the case, soon after taking up my post, I needed to demonstrate my authority. It was the last lesson of Friday morning, at the end of my first week at school, and I was teaching the upper sixth arts class in preparation for their A-levels in just a few months' time. One of the boys was showing off and became rude. His name was Hall, and he was not very bright, having been kept back a year because of his poor academic performance. This made him one of the older boys in the form, and he had passed his eighteenth birthday. He was not expected to get to university, but this did not concern him since his father was an army officer, and he planned to join the military as well.
He put his hand up in class.
"Yes, Hall."
"Are you married, Miss?"
"What does mademoiselle mean?"
"Don't know, Miss."
I sighed. If he didn't know now, there was no hope for him.
"In French, mademoiselle means Miss, and madame means Mrs," I replied. "No more personal questions."
I turned to pick up a book from my desk, and when I looked up, his hand was raised again.
"Yes, Hall, what is it now?"
He looked me directly in the eye before speaking.
"Does that mean you're still a French virgin then,
Mademoiselle?"
I heard a murmur of disbelief ripple around the room as Hall continued to look at me with a smirk on his face. I looked down at my desk, composed myself, and for the next minute busied myself writing. When I looked up again, Hall had a look of triumph on his face and the boys were whispering amongst themselves.
"Class, silence! " I snapped.
The room fell instantly silent, and I continued. My voice was cold and calm. I hardly recognised it as being my own.
"Hall, come here."
For just a moment, I wondered what I would do if he refused, but he must have realised that he had already overstepped the mark, and he stood and approached my desk.
"I shall not cane you," I said. "I am not strong enough to do a thorough job, and three strokes are nowhere near enough for your impertinence. Change into your gym kit and report to Mr James with this note. When he is finished, you will join us again in this class. Do not even think about not coming back. If I do not see you back here by a quarter to one, I will give you another three strokes on top of whatever Mr James has given you. Now, run along."
***
For the next five minutes, there was some fidgeting amongst his classmates, but this settled once I started to discuss the upcoming A-level examinations. I had trawled through several years' past papers from each of the different examining boards that set the exam papers and provided the boys with a list of the most common topics and questions. The boys were more interested in this than whatever was happening to Hall.
That is, until he returned. It was twenty to one when there was a knock on the door, and I called "enter."
It was Hall He was wearing shorts and a sleeveless top and had black plimsolls on his feet. His face was flushed, and his eyes were red.
"I'm sorry, Miss. There was no time to change."
"Go to your seat and sit down," I said. "There are another five minutes before the bell."
"Miss," he said.
"Yes, what now?"
"I'm very sorry, Miss."
"Thank you, now please go to your desk."
Secretly, I was pleased that he had been well punished, and it was with some satisfaction that I watched him wince with discomfort as he lowered himself into his chair. I was sure I was not the only one in the room who wondered how many strokes he had been given, just as I was sure that I had established myself as someone not to be trifled with.
***
I was eating my lunch in the staff dining room when Mr James approached.
"Do you mind if I join you?"
"Of course not, Sir."
"Headmaster or Head will do, Mademoiselle Corbin."
He sat and continued to speak.
"What that young man said is inexcusable. I am minded to expel him."
