her.
She sighed, got up and sat at her dressing table. She examined herself in the mirror. She was tall for her age, with long legs that she knew attracted admiring glances from the boys, especially when she wore her most daringly short skirts (the ones she changed into at friends’ houses so that her own parents wouldn’t see them). Today, however, she was wearing jeans. She stood and half turned, examining her bottom. The jeans had been an expensive buy, but worth it for the way they clung to her cheeks. If anything needed some improvement, she thought, it was her bum: it was definitely on the small side, which meant that jeans and trousers had to be of high quality if they weren’t to look baggy on her.
She sat down again and continued the evaluation. She touched her breasts: they were firm and developing nicely. Her face was pretty, she thought, even though – like her bottom – it could be described as petite . To try to disguise this, she wore her auburn hair full and long. Her hair was really good: glossy and shining with health. She rewarded it by picking up her hairbrush and sweeping it through the locks, teasing out the few knots. With a sudden insight, she pulled the brush from her hair. It had quite a long handle and the bristles were attached to a heavy, oval wooden head. It looked, she realised, a lot like ‘Stinger’.
‘Stinger’ was the hairbrush which the headmaster at Bexhill resorted to when scoldings had either fallen on deaf ears or when the offence merited the immediate use of physical correction short of a caning. Mr. Masterson and his Deputy, Mrs. Winchester, used the hairbrush mainly for first offences committed by junior girls. It was often their introduction to the school’s corporal punishment repertoire. Mrs. Winchester’s brush, a little lighter and so less formidable than Stinger, was known as ‘Tingle’.
Now, as Anna looked at the brush in her hands, she recalled the ambivalent emotions she had felt when Mr. Masterson had been obliged to spank her with Stinger at the beginning of her first year at the school.
The term had been less than a month old when she and a friend had been caught whispering together and sharing a stick of chewing gum during the Sunday chapel service. A teacher , whom they hadn’t noticed in the pew behind them, tapped them both on their shoulders and whispered that they were ‘on report’. Their stomachs somersaulted and they paid little attention to the rest of the service, and – most unwisely – none at all to the headmaster’s sermon. The teacher was as good as his word, and shortly after lunch both girls were summoned to see Mr. Masterson. He looked grim as they stood before the desk in his study, their hands clasped behind their backs, fingers twirling nervously.
Mr. Masterson pointed out that whispering in church constituted some form of blasphemy, whilst chewing gum in the holy precincts ensured an express route to Hell.
“And what,” he had asked, “did you girls learn from my sermon?” He waited in vain for an answer, because neither Anna nor Jenny had the slightest idea what he’d been warbling about. This inattention to his finely-crafted words proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. He reached down to a drawer on the right-hand side of his desk. Both Anna and Jenny knew the consequences of such a move and their eyes widened. Sure enough, the headmaster opened the drawer and extracted from it the legendary Stinger. He laid the hairbrush on his desk. It looked bigger, heavier, and altogether more sinister than the girls had imagined.
“Right. I think this is the first time either of you have been spanked since you came to the school?”
Anna managed a muted “Yes, sir,” while Jenny just nodded, transfixed by the sight of Stinger. The headmaster stood up and walked around the desk.
“I want you to stand here,” he said, pulling Anna gently towards him so that there was a yard or so between her and her partner