The Ingram-Lewis Chronicles

THE INGRAM-LEWIS CHRONICLES

OLIVER'S FIRST SCHOOL DAYS

A Homoerotic Short Story

By

Jason Land

This is the first of a series of, stand-alone, short stories set in the early part of the twentieth century, concerning the life and times of members of an English upper class family, the Ingram-Lewis's.

*****

The cane was tapping gently across a splendid pair of naked buttocks in perfect condition for their first, how shall I put it, encounter with the realities of life in the English Public school system? The Headmaster who was wielding the cane looked admiringly at the quality of the arse he was about to beat. Two beautiful, well rounded globes, virgin territory, hitherto totally untouched by any cane, or any other implement of corporal punishment for that matter. They were a sight for sore eyes, eyes which had not looked upon any boy's arse since the end of the school year in July. So, the Headmaster, who like many of his kind was an inveterate beater of boy's arses, was suffering from severe withdrawal symptoms, not having had the opportunity to administer what he euphemistically referred to as "corrective percussive therapy" to anybody for the last two months. It was now September, the beginning of the new school year, with an intake of new boys who had to be taught the manners of young gentlemen, which throughout the British upper class education system usually involved liberal use of the cane and the birch. So things would soon look up and the Headmaster could look forward again to setting his young flock on the right road, which inevitably would involve liberal application of the cane to naked buttocks. In fact the Headmaster enjoyed nothing more than applying the cane to a pair of naked buttocks and watching their owner squirm with pain.

The Headmaster was relishing the tension he was allowing to build up in the owner of those two delightful globes whose pristine beauty he was about to defile. He continued tapping gently, getting the feel of where he proposed to lay the first real stroke of the cane and trying to decide what sort of pattern he should imprint on the boy's backside, a backside which in a few minutes time would be changed forever with the baptism of fire it was about to suffer. But there was no rush as he was truly savouring the moment as he prepared himself for the delicious moment when the cane would crack down for the very first time on the naked rump and the owner would enter the real world of the English public school system. I doubt, however, that the same could be said for the owner of the arse about to be roasted. He was certainly not savouring the moment, bent as he was across the beating stool, trembling with fear at what was to be his first thrashing ever.

The above scene was being enacted - a good word to describe the situation - in the Headmaster's study of Rigby Court Preparatory School for Boys, where the pupils were given a rigorous preparation for the entry a few years later into Rigby School, a small but nevertheless academically acclaimed Public School. For those of my readers who are unfamiliar with the English school system, a Public School is, in fact, a private fee (high!) paying establishment where members of the great and the good of British society send their offspring to be educated. What commonsense would define as a public school anywhere else, are called state schools in England. But of course, commonsense does not always triumph over tradition. So public schools are anything but public.

The cane-tapping Headmaster of Rigby Court was one, Gerald Gordon Inkpen, some 27 years and a strict disciplinarian. In fact, not to mince matters, Gee-Gee, as he was nicknamed by the boys, was a real martinet, whose favourite pastime, which, if questioned about, he would have vehemently denied, was thrashing the arses of his charges. Had he been in charge of an older group of boys, he might well have done more than just thrash the arses of the older boys, but as he wasn't he didn't. Like many unmarried school masters, the Headmaster was a closet homosexual.

The Headmaster rejoiced in possessing what had to be one of the rarest and most extraordinary surnames in the country. Inkpen was a name going back to 1200 AD. But in spite of his extraordinary name, Gerald Cordon Inkp'n, as he wrote it, dropping the E, was in fact a very ordinary man: very very ordinary indeed. And in spite of his high-flown name, the boys had nicknamed him Gee-Gee.

Rigby Court took boys as boarders from aged eight and tended to their educational and bodily needs until they left, aged thirteen, to move on to Rigby School. Serious preparation for the rigours of a public school education did not really being until the boys were aged eleven and a number of boys were admitted to the school at this age. The unblemished buttocks being presented to the doubtful pleasures of Gee-Gee's cane were the property of just such a boy: Cedric Oliver Ingram-Lewis. Called Cedric, by his father and always Cedric Oliver, by his mother and paternal grandmother, he was known as Oliver to all his friends, but all versions will be used depending on who is speaking.

Prior to his entry aged eleven into Rigby Court, Oliver had not had a particularly pleasant life. The Ingram-Lewis's were an old family from Northumberland and had originally been owners of several coal mines just north of Newcastle. As such, they had become very rich and their main pit, Ingram Deep, was one of the most profitable in England. It produced some of the finest steam-raising coal in the country. The family had more or less handed the management of their business to a professional managing director and simply sat back and collected the proceeds, which were considerable.

Oliver's father, Patrick Ingram-Lewis, was in the Regular Navy where he had attained the rank of Commander. As the navy was his fulltime occupation, he was rarely at home and Oliver was brought up by his mother and grandmother in the family pile, Ingram House, located near Hexham in Northumberland.

Commander Ingram-Lewis had himself been left without a father, who had died when his son was still at school and had been brought up by his mother. He had trodden much the same path as his son was now embarking on and had run the gauntlet of life at both Rigby Court and Rigby School, where he had been introduced at the age of eighteen to the forbidden pleasures of male sex. Boys at Rigby had no contact at all with girls. Remember we are there talking about Oliver's father in late Victorian times and buggery, to give it its official name, was rife in such places as Rigby. Although strictly forbidden and leading to horrendous birchings for any boy caught in the act, the practice was unofficially tolerated. The powers that be, governors and teachers together, realised that they were wasting their time in trying to stop boys experimenting with sex. It should also be added that the teaching profession was a refuge for what we today would call closet homosexuals. It was not unknown for certain staff members to give certain senior boys what was referred to as anal stimulation. More crudely put, the boys in question got their arses fucked. On the whole, most of them enjoyed the experience, but even those who did not, never complained. So at Rigby, as elsewhere in similar establishments throughout the country, a culture of hypocrisy reigned supreme. Everyone knew what was going on, but eyes were closed and nothing was said.

Of course you have to remember that under the benighted laws of the UK, buggery and homosexuality were punishable by imprisonment; so everyone kept mum. And on the whole, things worked out all right. The public schools turned out outstanding young men, the proportion of homosexuals in which was much the same as the national average. Many of the boys were what might well be called "frustration buggers", boys who fucked their school mates out of frustration and who, on leaving school and finding themselves in mixed company, reverted to regular sexual relationships with members of the opposite sex.

Patrick Ingram Lewis was first introduced to the delights of buggery when he was eighteen. He had committed a slight misdemeanour, for which one of the senior prefects decided to cane him. Summoned by Ashton, the senior prefect in question, to answer for his piffling faux-pas, he was offered six bare or three bare and... Six bare implied that he would be given six strokes of the cane across is naked arse and the other option of three bare and... Well, the meaning of the word "bare" was left to his imagination. Knowing full well just how brutal the prefects were in wielding the cane across their schoolmates naked arses, Patrick had taken the second option in the spirit of "nothing ventured, nothing gained" without any clear idea of what was about to happen. He thought that it could not be worse than the pain from the cane, a pain with which he was already intimately familiar, for as in most public schools, the cane reigned supreme at Rigby, wielded by both the Headmaster and the prefects.

After three stingingly awful cuts across his naked arse, Ashton told him to stay bent over the chair over which he had been caned. He was pleasantly surprised when he felt a hand massage some oil into the cleavage between his buns and into his anus, to be followed by the insertion of Ashton's long, smooth cock into his fundamental orifice. Patrick found the experience quite pleasant, although when Ashton finally shot his load, Patrick had no idea what he was supposed to do with the spunk which had just been injected into his arsehole. Anyway, all's well that ends well. Ashton shook his hand, told him not to mention what had happened to anyone and sent Patrick on his way. So that was how Patrick Ingram-Lewis was introduced to the homosexual sex act. He had, in the official verbiage of the day, been buggered and had, like many before him, enjoyed it. And in the great tradition of the English public school ethic, it never even crossed his mind to report Ashton for gross indecency, as it was officially called; it just was not done!

We do not need to go into details as to where this new knowledge led the young man. Suffice it to say that in the remaining two years he spent at Rigby School, copulation became one of the key elements in his life. Initially confined to his school mates, where fucking was rife, Patrick allowed his curiosity to take him into the forbidden pastures of the town. He was an attractive young man, very well endowed where it mattered most and, as such, had no problem in finding willing female company. What the school authorities would have said about that and what they would have done had they known, remains a matter of conjecture, as they never did find out about Patrick's extramural sexual escapades.

Much to his surprise in his final year at Rigby, Patrick was made a prefect. Patrick had not been a bad pupil but even his kindest judges would not have rated his performance as stellar. Patrick had not been particularly rebellious in his time at Rigby, but he had, nevertheless, for one reason or another been a regular visitor to the Headmaster's study. There his "bare bum" .to use the vulgar expression common among the boys, had suffered regular roasting, all of which he had taken with a shrug as being part and parcel of public school life. But even worse had been the beatings dished out by the prefects whose job it was to maintain rule and order outside the classroom. Limited by the school rules to a maximum of six strokes of the cane across the recipient's naked arse, the prefects managed, by dint of constant practice, to deliver excruciatingly exemplary pain to the supplicant. It goes without saying that they much enjoyed making their schoolmates suffer and the word "maximum" might just have well not have been there, for not one prefect ever gave less than the six strokes. Indeed, a prefect's beating, even with fewer strokes of the cane, was quite often much worse than any that the Headmaster himself ever delivered. These boys were great practitioners of the "more from less philosophy" in that they all studied methods of applying the cane to the supplicant arses which came their way, to ensure that every stroke delivered s maximum pain. So with practice a prefect could achieve in six strokes what the Headmaster did in twelve; they were just very, very efficient.

But now, like a gift from heaven, Patrick was a prefect himself so that he too could now apply the cane to the naked arses of any miscreants. He thought of it as poetic justice; the ability to give to others what he had so often received him. He smiled inwardly to himself, as he composed what he thought was an apposite pseudo-biblical quotation on the matter, which ran:

"To him who hath so often received, so shall he in the fullness of time experience the joy of giving!"

And let us be quite clear, in his final year, Patrick Ingram-Lewis really experienced the joy of giving, as he dispensed his percussive generosity on every possible occasion. Not even the smallest infringement of the school rules escaped his attention. If he caught the miscreant in the act, six stinging cuts of the senior cane the bare arse were automatic. But the ability to administer corporal punishment opened up another joyous pastime to Patrick. As a sexual athlete, Patrick rapidly was acknowledged by his classmates as being "one hell of a shafter". If the occasion presented itself and conditions looked propitious, Patrick indulged in what was to become his greatest pleasure: fucking the arse of the boy he had just beaten. He found it unbelievably erotic, once his victim's arse was flaming with the weals of the cane, to provide the hapless lad with what he referred to as "anal stimulation" was the height of sexual pleasure. At buggery he was a past master, as were many of his schoolmates, but for sheer eroticism, nothing compared with fucking an arse he had just beaten. But he was careful in his actions and limited them to the boys in the last year at school all of whom were aged eighteen and were young men rather than boys. Of course, what he did was strictly forbidden, but so were all sexual activities: forbidden but tolerated. And if no one complained, which no one ever did, then where was the harm. Let's be frank; no boy was ever raped and once initiated into the joys of sex, no one ever complained, for the truth of the matter was that for those who indulged in it, anal sex rapidly became a pleasure, which few would forego.

A prime case of what could happen was the following incident. Passing the lavatories one day, Patrick smelled smoke, entered and found a sixth former, Roderick Pennington, quite alone, leaning against one of the wash basins, smoking a cigarette. Now smoking was on the strictly forbidden list, but, nevertheless, many boys took every chance they had to "have a drag" as it was commonly called. But having caught Pennington red-handed, Patrick had no option as a prefect but to follow through with the inevitably painful consequences for the miscreant.

"My study, at eight this evening, straight after supper, Pennington and don't be late, I hate to be kept waiting to correct someone."

"Oh, come on Ingram-Lewis; have a heart, I was only having a drag. No one saw me so couldn't you close a blind eye for once and let the matter go. Come on, Ingram Lewis, you have a drag yourself sometimes, I know."

"My dear Pennington, that fact that I myself smoke a cigarette from time to time is immaterial to the present situation. You have had the misfortune to be caught smoking by me, a prefect, sworn to uphold the school rules, which I am sorry to say I have to do. Your mistake, Pennington, was to be caught at it by me, a prefect. If you wish to smoke, then you should take precautions to be more discreet and let no one see you. I know, as do the masters, that many boys smoke on the quiet. It is just your bad luck to be caught at it, for which I am afraid you have to pay the price: a rather painful price, I regret to say,"

"It's all so fucking hypocritical and you know it, Ingram-Lewis. There is no reason at all why you cannot turn a blind eye just this once and let it go."

"I suggest, Pennington, that you cool your language when talking to me in my capacity as prefect. You are so very wrong about thinking that I could, if I wished, forget this little incident. If I "turn a blind eye" as you put it and let you off scot-free, then the next thing I know is that you will have related our little encounter here to your pals, telling them how you sweet-talked your way out of an awkward situation. My standing and authority as a prefect would be undermined completely. So, Pennington, as I said before: my study at eight his evening and don't be late."

"Fuck you" said Pennington, under his breath. But of course, had he reflected on the reputation of Ingram Lewis as probably the school's greatest sexual athlete, he would have realised that any fucking which was to be done would be by Ingram-Lewis and not by himself. So, he reluctantly admitted to himself that he had been stupid to smoke somewhere where he could so easily be caught. It was entirely his own fault. He had made his bed and now was going to have to lie in it, although being realistic he knew that he was not going to have a very comfortable night in bed, for Ingram-Lewis's prowess with the cane was already legendary, on a par with his sexual prowess.

Patrick went by the prefect's common room and picked up a senior cane. The Headmaster had just that week issued the prefects with both junior and senior canes of a new model he had chosen himself. They were both very flexible, much more so than the conventional rattan cane used in most schools. In the right hands - and Patrick Ingram-Lewis did have the right hands - the new cane was capable of giving the recipient arse a very painful experience: very painful indeed. Patrick had not yet had the pleasure of testing out the cane on warm naked flesh, but he spent some time in the privacy of his study, in flexing and testing the cane on a cushion from a chair to make sure that he had the feel of this new this new, improved, implement. He wanted to be sure that he knew how to deliver its full potential on the arse he was now awaiting.

The appointed hour arrived and Pennington entered Patrick's study. The chair over which the unfortunate Pennington was destined to bend was already in the middle of the room. The new cane, bright and shiny in its pristine glory, lay on Patrick's desk. The observant Pennington also noticed that there was a bottle of baby oil standing on the desk, alongside the cane.

"Ah, Pennington, delighted that you agreed to join me this evening. Make yourself comfortable. Drop our trousers and underpants and bend across the back of that chair, if you please. No! On second thoughts I think it might be better if you shed your trousers and underwear completely and put them neatly folded on that other chair over there. We don't want them interfering in our little business, do we?"

"Oh, come off it, Ingram-Lewis, you don't mean to go through with this do you? Come on, I'm eighteen years old and one does not beat boys in their final year at school. All that's only for the younger boys."

"I am afraid I have to disabuse you of that notion, Pennington. At this school, all boys, from the day they enter to the day the leave are subject to the same rules, which are there to be obeyed. If they are broken, sanctions become automatic and boys are caned. In this case, it is you who will be caned. There is no negotiation. All miscreants get their arses beaten bare. That also includes us, the prefects, who are in a position of trust. If we break that trust then we too are subject to the same punishment as any other boy. The difference is that in our case the Headmaster would birch us rather than beat us with the cane, And that, believe me is much, much worse than the cane. I know as have experienced it myself twice in my time at Rigby. It is definitely something to be avoided. So, Pennington, jump to it. I want your bare arse over the back of that chair."