I.

 

Peter Tilley had the magnificent head of a young god, with slightly curling blonde hair over perfectly shaped ears. He had dark brown, thoughtful eyes, his carriage was lithe and upright and entrancingly graceful, and though he was a little taller than average, the fact did not draw excessive attention to him. His skin was smooth and seemed to shine like brushed velvet. His broad shoulders supported strong but supple arms and neat expressive hands. He had straight, well calfed legs, fine serviceable feet and virile well shaped body. His genitals, at rest, were composed and central, but efficiently out thrusting when aroused. His buttocks were strong yet rounded, and though not in any way over prominent, had a startling allure so that people followed him with their eyes in the street.

Because of some problem in his native Australia he was already over fifteen when he came to Strumble, the Scottish border co educational school. They put him in the third class from bottom and in Araminta House. At Strumble boarding houses were distinguished by letters, but custom converted a letter into a name. A was Araminta, B was unromantically Bloggs, and so on. The boarding houses were what they were said to be: you slept in them, did prep in them, changed for games in them; but you went to classes elsewhere, ate meals in a vast common hall, collected books from a central library and of course exercised in the playing fields and games courts outside. Strumble was notorious (or famous) for mixed rugger.

Though considerably older than the average new kid, Peter began with a tosh, which was the word for someone who was to show him everything, teach him the routines, geography, local names, words and customs, known collectively as Expressions. His tosh was a girl younger than himself, yet responsible for him during his first fortnight, because she was a year his senior. She was called Siobhan McManus. Peter was told that at the end of the first fortnight he would have to take an oral examination in Expressions, to make sure that he knew what he was about.

This all seemed sensible, except that he was expected to know a good deal of school folklore, the names of all sorts of Distinguished Persons (the name for captains of teams and heads of houses) and a terrible and interminable school song originally composed in Gaelic. The examination principle was that new kid attended the head of some other house than their own for questioning, after evening prep. The night before his examination Siobhan, who had been doing her best to get this information into his head, told him that he had drawn the head of Disaster, a formidable, indeed dangerous young woman, called Sarah Manley. Dangerous was the word for a strict disciplinarian with a strong right arm.

Sarah was one of several Jamaicans at Strumble. She was very nearly but not quite black ("Thirty one parts in thirty two" she was heard to say.) She was tall, muscular and intellectual; Jamaican families who could afford the place sent their children to Strumble, safe in the knowledge that the punishments were mostly corporal.

Siobhan was alarmed; 'If I'd thought you might get her, I'd have made you work a lot harder.'

'Why?' asked Peter.

'Don't you remember anything?' she flared. 'She's dangerous, and if you don't pass, what happens?'

'I...'

'Not you, you fool, I ...'

'Have to accost her?' he hazarded a guess.

'Yes! Where?'

'In Hall?'

'Yes, and what does that mean?'

'...'

'You must be the only new kid ever who had not grasped this expression in the first hour since the school was founded at ...'

'Inchtuthill.' he said promptly.

'Yes, in ... ?'

'1689.'

'Quite right. You're a dreaming bloody idiot. You can manage that sort of silly thing and then you simply forget or ignore what matters. What happens when you have to accost someone in Hall?'

'Oh ... you get the swish.'

'In this case, not you - me.'

'Oh Gawd.' he said.

'Oh Gawd!' she mimicked him savagely.

He had seen it happen but had not heard the preliminaries. A second year girl, roughly his own age, had come out from her table with a monitor during lunch. Peter's mind had been elsewhere at the start, until she had lowered her regulation knickers to her knees. Someone peeled the back of her skirt upwards and she had bent half over with her hands on her knees. The monitor had put a cane to her bare bottom and swung it. It made a loud thud in the sudden stillness, and a pink quarter inch wide line had appeared across the cheeks. The cane had been swung a second time, and made a second line, by which time the first line had changed to violet. Then the girl had dropped her skirt, pulled up her knickers, said something to the monitor and returned to her table.

All Peter thought was that she had rather a nice bottom.

To save Siobhan's honour, he had stayed up late and muttered expressions to the book and the list of her written notes. Actually, he did not like her very much but he thought he owed her something.

Even with that preparation, he felt apprehensive when he woke up in the morning and continued to feel that way all day. By the end of evening prayers, after prep, he was in a nervous tizzy. He went to Disaster House, to find a knot of other worried new kids and waited with them in the empty lobby for Sarah Manley.

After about ten minutes the door opened and Sarah Manley came breezing in, all 18 year old smiles and energy. She sat on the edge of a table, the new kids stood in a semi circle around her and she fired questions at them in turn, beginning with a demand for a verse of that school song. Peter got through that part without too much damage. He managed some of the folk-lore but fell down completely on Distinguished Persons. Even the head of his own house, the Mighty Head Monitor of Araminta House, vanished from his mental screen.

As Sarah dismissed them, she said:

'Tilley, who's your tosh?'

'Siobhan McManus.'

She raised an eyebrow at him, and he hurriedly added:

'...Miss Manley.'

'Well, you more or less remembered that! Tell her to accost me in Hall tomorrow.'

'But that's not fair, Miss Manley.'

Sarah looked at him quizzically, but not without interest. 'Oh?'

'My mind went blank and she's not here. You can't swish her for that.'

'Shouldn't she have made sure that your mind didn't go blank, as you call it?'

Peter decided to tell a half lie. 'But she made me stay up late to get the hang of it all, especially last night ... '

Sarah looked thoughtfully at him and then said: 'You realise you're inviting me to swish you, instead of her?'

'Do I have to come back next week?' he asked.

'Yes.'

'Won't that do? I mean, I'll try very hard and you let her off.'

'Didn't you try really very hard this time? Is that what you mean? We have to make sure that toshes do their job.'

'Yes, I see that.'

'Tell you what: you both accost me tomorrow and then I'll decide.'

Peter walked back to Araminta House. He had a small shiver of apprehension for tomorrow. What, come to that, would Siobhan say about tonight? His notion of the way in which cane stripes, as he had seen on the girl's bottom, would feel was merely theoretical when it came to imagining them on his own: but in some way the prospect of their being laid across Siobhan's was even worse. To fail oneself was one thing: to fail someone else and so publicly quite another; and now, having reached Araminta, he would have to tell her.

He sought out the study bedroom which she shared with another girl, tapped lightly on the door, got no answer and opened the door quietly. The room was in darkness, and silent, only relieved by the regular breathing of sleep. He walked back to his own room, where his new room mate, Josh Raikes, was also fast asleep.