CHAPTER 5
But before I move on from the Sheldon Academy, there is one truly horrific event which I must tell you about, which confirmed forever in my mind what a miserable little sod our PT instructor, Mr. Slimy Simmons, really was and how he worked hand in glove with the Prick to make sure that he had a regular stream of arses to beat. This time, however, the full horror of the Prick's caning power was demonstrated to the whole school, and the victim was our classmate Toby.
Tobias Marmaduke Fitzherbert Devlin-Smith was also an orphan from a good family, as you can see from the absurd names he had been given. Toby, as we all called him, was a very popular guy and he, Charlie and I spent a lot of time together during the vacations, for his guardian, much like my Aunt Agatha and Charlie's parents, was really glad to have him more or less permanently out of the way. Toby was very popular with all his classmates and was always mouthing off some inanity for the general amusement of all. And it was his big mouth that proved to be his undoing and bring down the wrath of God, in the person of Mr. Woodderowffe-Pryce, the Prick, upon himself.
What happened was this. We were all then aged eighteen and in our final year at Sheldon when after an afternoon on the playing field we were in the showers, arsing around with each other as lads do. I do not remember now exactly how it came about, but somehow Toby said in a loud voice, "Oh fuck old Woody Prick." Of course, the ubiquitous Mr. Simmons happened to overhear his remark, and that was the beginning of the end for poor Toby.
Slimy told Toby that his rudeness and disrespect of the Headmaster would not be forgotten, but to our surprise he did not haul Toby off to the Headmaster's study as he usually did when he thought he had another piece of fodder for the Prick's cane over and above his weekly contribution of names for the Friday afternoon Punishment Parade. For the rest of the day Toby was really nervous about what might be the consequences of his indiscretion, but as the afternoon passed into evening and we all went to bed, his fears subsided, and he thought that the incident had been forgotten. Of course, knowing what a miserable rat Slimy was, he should have known better: it was merely the lull before the storm.
The school was run strictly on the lines of an English public school, and so we had an assembly each morning, where we sang a hymn, prayed, listened to a few nonsensical homilies from the old Prick and any useful information which he felt he should impart to us. Toby's gaffe had occurred earlier on the week, and as he had heard nothing, he thought everything was OK. The Friday assembly was always a particularly tense day, for it was at this assembly that the Headmaster announced the name of those pupils who would report to him after classes on Friday evening on his so-called Punishment Parade.
Having finished his general remarks and announced the list of pupils he expected to see in his study at the end of the afternoon, he suddenly drew himself up and adopted what I can but describe as his Old Testament Prophet look.
"The Bible tells us that we shall not take the name of the Lord our God in vain and that vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. Well in this school, good manners dictate that you boys shall not take the name of your masters in vain and any of you who do so can expect to be punished for your misdemeanour. There is no God here to exact direct vengeance, but as Headmaster I shall see to it that any boy who steps over the line will be severely punished. Now it has come to my notice that one boy among you has been mouthing off an insulting version of the name of one of our masters, actually of my own name, which is intolerable."
At this stage, Toby suddenly realised where all this was leading.
"Tobias Devlin-Smith kindly step up on to the platform," said the Prick.
Poor Toby was now trembling with fear as he mounted the steps and stood in front of the Headmaster.
"Is the information I have received correct," he thundered, "Did you or did you not in the showers earlier this week utter a lewd transmogrification of my name in front of your schoolmates? I will not lower the tone of these proceeding by repeating what I am reliably informed you said; but answer me, boy; did you or did you not take my name in vain?"
Poor Toby hardly knew what to say, but he realised that the repulsive Mr. Simmons, had, in fact, blown the whistle on him and told the Headmaster what he had said. He had to admit that this was true but added in his defence that he really had not meant it.
"I do not believe you, boy," roared the Prick, "And I intend to make an example of you, here and now, in front of the whole school."
Toby's heart sank into his boots.
"Mr. Simmons, the chair and the rod, (that antiquated word yet again!) if you please, here in front of me."
Simmons produced the requested items, as if from nowhere and it was clear to everyone that the whole thing had been stage-managed beforehand by the pair of them.
"Devlin-Smith, drop your trousers and underpants, bend over the back of the chair, put your hands on the seat and present your buttocks to me for corporal chastisement. Devlin-Smith I shall now give you a very thorough beating to teach you a lesson never again to take my name in vain; or for that matter, the name of any member of the teaching staff. Let this also be an example to the whole assembly of what will happen if anyone of you dares to overstep the line of polite behaviour."
And so he started roasting poor Toby's arse, bringing the cane down with the most fearsome blows. After each stroke he waited some five seconds – a hell of a long time when you are bent across a chair having your arse beaten – partly to give himself time to prate on about the misdemeanours of youth and the necessity of corrective punishment to set the miscreant to rights and partly to let poor Toby appreciate, if that is the word, the pain of each stroke.
He had not announced how many strokes he intended to deliver; he just pressed on, building up the pain in Toby's arse. It was clear to see that the Prick was intent on wreaking personal vengeance on poor Toby, for he had clearly taken the slur on his name to heart. And so he pressed on and on until finally, after the twentieth stroke he told Toby to get up, which he did with difficulty as his arse was raging with fire. He had borne the whole beating without a murmur, much to the admiration of the rest of us. He pulled on his clothes and started down the steps from the platform when Woody suddenly stopped him in his tracks.
"Devlin-Smith, where are your manners?" he roared, "Kindly return to the chair, drop your garments again and re-assume the position for you clearly need yet further correction."
Poor Toby had no idea what he had done wrong to deserve yet another dose of the cane, but could do nothing but obey.
"It is customary after you have received a beating, to thank me for having had the thoughtfulness to correct you: good manners demand it," intoned Woody Prick; and he then proceeded to give Toby's raging arse another four cuts of the cane.
And so poor Toby had had the maximum of the full two dozen cuts of the cane across his naked arse, a procedure that had taken some ten minutes.
Woody then terminated the proceedings by saying that he looked forward to welcoming (his very word) those on Punishment Parade to his study that afternoon and that they should not think that he was in any way too tired out by the present exertions not to able to do them justice. "Make no mistake," he said, "Those of you on today's parade will enjoy the same treatment as that I have just meted out to Devlin-Smith. All misdemeanours brought to my attention will receive the severest punishment. I am a great believer in the old maxim: 'Spare the rod and spoil the boy.' So believe me when I say to you all, there will be no spoilt boys in this school."
This was the most horrific example of sadistic brutality I had ever seen. I noticed that Mr. Simmons, the instigator of this gruesome occasion was smiling smugly to himself. Toby became the hero of his schoolmates because of his impassive manner as the strokes were being administered and his classmates gazed with admiration and awe at his bruised backside in the dormitory that night.
Looking back on things, I realize now that the relationship which Charlie and I enjoyed, and that is truly the right word, for we both enjoyed every minute of what we did together, was really strange. From the moment it was established that I was using my cock on his arse, things never, ever changed. Charlie loved being shafted and had never expressed any desire to have a return match, as it were. And now, years later, although I saw Charlie naked both in the showers and when we were alone together, I cannot, for the life in me, recollect what his cock was like! All I know is that I was chivvied in a good-natured way (envious, I guess) in the showers by my classmates, because, as I have already mentioned, I had, by the time I turned eighteen, an absolutely formidable piece of man- meat, which was the envy of everyone who saw it.
And so it was that when we left Sheldon, Charlie and I simply said goodbye as if we were both going home for the vacation and after that, I neither saw nor heard from him ever again. It was as if our relationship had been for nothing. Neither of us had any emotional attachment to the other, and we just parted, as friends, but without any lasting memories the one for the other. In retrospect, our liaison had been one of sheer physical necessity, and when we parted, I guess we both expected that somehow we would each find an agreeable partner to pick up where we had left off.
CHAPTER 6
But, before we leave Sheldon behind forever and allow my memories of my time there to fade, it is worthwhile recounting what happened to that slimy bastard of a sports master, Mr. Simmons, easily the most heartily hated master at my time at the school. It was in 2010 that Mr. Simmons suddenly, as if by magic, disappeared from the school. We the boys learned of his departure at the Monday morning assembly, when Woody Prick, the Headmaster among his customary comments, suddenly announced that on the previous Saturday evening, Mr. Simmons had been taken violently ill and had had to be rushed off to hospital. What the illness was and to which hospital he had been taken were left unsaid. And frankly, I don't think that any of us boys, and possibly even his staff colleagues, much cared.
Well, of course, there was a tremendous buzz of intrigue among us boys as to what had happened to Mr. Simmons, but nothing more was ever said about him. His illness, if illness he had had, clearly prevented him from ever returning to Sheldon; within a few days, a temporary PE teacher was in place, and within a month the post was filled by a full-time new face, Mr. Chadwick, who turned out to be a very popular staff member, both with the boys and his colleagues alike.
But fate, or better, chance, finally gave me the full story of Mr. Simmons's demise, in the form of Mr. Robert Crowther, my own popular form master who taught English literature and poetry at Sheldon. I am jumping ahead of myself here, as it is worthwhile recounting what actually happened regarding Mr. Simmons and here seems perhaps the best place to explain what actually happened as it brings to an end my involvement with the Sheldon Academy.
It was several years later, and at the time I was already well established as a professional Male Escort in New York. One of my regular clients, a man called Clarence Parmiter, worked at a high level in a well-known firm of publishers. I had known and serviced Clarence for several years, and he was one of my few clients who was himself gay. I am not sure why he needed my services, but, apparently he did, and I had just finished servicing his needs late one afternoon, when out of the blue, he invited me to a cocktail party which was being given that evening in honour of one of their new authors, for whom they had just published an anthology of his poems. I was not really sure why he should give me this invitation, but having nothing better to do that evening, I accepted, and so, together we walked to the nearby hotel, where the party was being held.
Well, you can imagine my surprise, when I discovered that the new author in whose honour the party was being given was none other than Mr. Crowther, my old teacher of English literature at Sheldon. He was as surprised as I was to meet me there and I simply told him that I was an acquaintance of one of the senior staff at the firm and that he had invited me to join him, quite unexpectedly. Mr. Crowther had no idea what I did for a living, and I studiously avoided touching on the subject. The upshot was that he asked me to stay on at the end of the party and have dinner with him, which I willingly did. And, over the meal, among other things we discussed about Sheldon, here, totally out of the blue, I finally learned the facts leading up to the demise of Mr. Simmons, which I will allow Mr. Crowther to tell us in his own words.
"I had, over a period of several months become increasingly disturbed by what I considered the brutal, sadistic use of corporal punishment by the Headmaster, Mr. Woodderowffe-Pryce, the Prick as you the boys called him, and the way Mr. Simmons was allowed to hit boys during gym classes with the leather strap which seemed to be permanently in his hand."
"I came across the first indication that there was widespread corporal abuse in the school when, quite by chance, I entered, one Friday night at lights out, one of the dorms to find the boys all intent on examining the buttocks of one of their classmates, Toby Devlin-Smith, who had been given twenty-four cuts of the cane across his naked buttocks by the Headmaster."
"You must surely remember the incident, Sebastian, as you were still at Sheldon at that time. I had not witnessed the actual caning of this lad myself as for some reason, I forget why, I had not been at morning assembly that day. I was totally appalled by what I saw, for this poor young man's boy's buttocks were crisscrossed with dark welts from the cane, which were already turning black and blue. So, for the record, I fetched my camera and took a photograph of the lad's injuries. Talking to the other boys, I learned that Toby's experience was typical of any visit to the Headmaster, who was clearly a believer in hard caning. But on this occasion, as I was to learn, the beating had been given to Devlin-Smith in front of the entire school."
"I then asked Toby what had been his offence to merit such a severe beating, to learn that he had been overheard by Mr. Simmons referring to the Headmaster as the Prick as a result of which Toby had been humiliated in front of the entire school and given 24 cuts of the cane across his naked arse. I was amazed that such a minor offence if one could even call it an offence at all, had given rise to such a severe beating. So, my suspicions became aroused, and I took to visiting the dorms regularly on Friday evenings after the Headmaster had carried out his weekly beating exercise and I rapidly became appalled at the brutality with which the cane was being regularly used on the naked buttocks of the boys."
"So, from then on, over several weeks, I built up a photographic record of the backsides of boys who had been beaten and the nature of their offences. Occasionally, a boy merited a good beating, but not in the sadistic way that I was seeing corporal punishment being administered by the Headmaster at Sheldon. But more often than not boys were being punished for piffling misdemeanours, which in no way merited the severe beatings being inflicted on them."
Then by chance, one day in the shower room, I came across a boy who had just taken six or so whacks across his buttocks from the strap which Mr. Simmons always had in his hand in the gym. His buttocks were an angry red, and I learned that this was a regular occurrence during gym classes. Mr. Simmons lashed out at any boy whom he thought was slacking so that after every class there were always a few boys with sore posteriors. Again I was seriously disturbed by what I saw was a totally sadistic abuse of the system. The school rules stated specifically that only the Headmaster was authorized to administer corporal punishment, and here was Simmons lashing out at boys."
The matter became even more sinister when I analyzed the punishment book prepared each Thursday evening by the school secretary, Miss Pimlott, listing the boys who had to attend the Friday afternoon Parade. I discovered, to my amazement and utter disgust, that 85% of all the entries had been made at the behest of Mr. Simmons. It was now as plain as a pikestaff that he and the Headmaster were colluding to see that there was always a good Friday afternoon attendance at the Punishment Parade so that the Headmaster could satisfy his sadistic bent to the full. All this was made even more flagrantly obvious when I learned that Mr. Simmons was always present in the Headmaster's study when the Friday beatings took place; they were a pair of hand-in-glove sadist who enjoyed punishing the boys with the cane."
"For a while, in spite of a large photo dossier documenting case after case of excessive use of the cane, I had no clear idea of what to do. I wanted to do something to change things, but what? Well, the matter came to a head and enabled me to resolve the situation in a totally unexpected way. It was late one Saturday afternoon, and I just happened to be passing the door to the shower room, when I heard, through the closed door a muffled cry."
"Please sir, don't! Please, sir, don't! Please, sir, don't. I don't like what you are trying to do to me."
"It was obvious that the speaker was in considerable distress and so I opened the door to see what was happening. To my amazement, I found Mr. Simmons, with his trouser's fly open with his cock sticking out, in process of trying to bugger one of the pupils, a sixteen-year-old boy called John O'Brien. For a brief moment, as I watched, I saw Mr Simmons trying in vain to overcome the resistance of O'Brien, who clearly did not want or welcome the attention he was getting from the sports master. But, in that brief moment, as I watched, Simmons was intent on shafting the boy; he tried, unsuccessfully to thrust his erect penis into O'Brian's arse, which act was accompanied by a cry of anguish from the poor boy himself asking Simmons to stop. He would surely have then gone on to fuck the boy had it not been for my intervention."