The Whippingham College Saga, Part 9: The Gauntlet is Thrown Down

A DRAMATIC ANNOUNCEMENT

  ‘Gentlemen, if I may have your attention please.’ The assembled house masters fell silent as the High Master of Whippingham College rose to his feet, his favourite cane, the famous 42-inch Black Mambo, in his hand. Seven pairs of respectful eyes rested on the face of Dr Septimus Seiss-Urquart, Ph.D., D.D., M.S.; seven pairs of expectant ears awaited the explanation for the summons to the great pedagogue’s luxurious lodgings, facing Great Quad.

  ‘Firstly, let me thank you all for attending this meeting at such short notice. I realise that this is normally a peak punishment hour for most of you and that some well-deserved thrashings have had to be postponed. I do hope that the wine my steward has selected has been enjoyed – it is a particular favourite of mine, a Chateau Fesses Bien-Battues, Premier Cru, ’51.’
  ‘An exquisite vintage, High Master, possibly the finest claret I have ever tasted,’ declared the one-legged Captain Lasher V.C., Master of Flagellators’, the most liberal (but still pretty strict) house at Whippingham (and the only one to retain its ceremonial ducking stool) and the most senior house master in terms of tenure of the seven seated around the banqueting table in Dr Seiss-Urquart’s palatial private dining room. The other masters murmured their assent. It was a fucking astounding wine, no one could deny that. Fucking astounding.

  ‘You are all, I am sure, curious as to why I have called this meeting this evening. As you know, I have had the honour to be High Master here at Whippingham for nearly twenty years and I have striven to maintain our reputation as England’s strictest and most exclusive public school. I hope I have succeeded in some small measure to maintain our pre-eminence in matters academic, sporting and disciplinary. However, my dear colleagues, the time has come for me to consider retirement.’ An audible gasp of surprise came from several of the assembled men as Seiss-Urquart continued. ‘I am of course under no obligation to lay down my cane yet as the College Statutes permit me to continue until my 100th birthday, but,’ and here the High Master dropped his voice for dramatic effect, ‘I feel that I am no longer up to the physical tasks which the High Mastership requires of me. Just a few years ago, I could thrash twenty or thirty boys in the morning and still look forward to whipping another dozen or so lads’ arses to mincemeat after lunch. However, now I have to confess that I feel tired after giving ten boys a dozen strokes each. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’

  ‘May I make a comment, High Master?’ interjected the Very Rev. Adolphus Samuel Psaydysste-Streke, the hawk-eyed and exquisitely cruel House Master of Thrashmore Hall, the only house at Whippingham to admit Roman Catholics (provided of course that they attended Anglican services daily and paid a 20% fee excess). ‘I am sure that anyone of us here would be delighted to deputise for you in any disciplinary matters. Admittedly, none of us has the same finesse and accuracy with the cane that you have so often demonstrated in the regular Public Floggings in Chapel, but what we might lack in artistry we would certainly make up for by strength and  perseverance.’
  ‘Hear, hear!’ muttered the assembled masters. ‘Hear, hear!’

  ‘Thank you, my dear Psaydysste-Streke, for your kind support. I will admit that I had considered some option such as that, but I reluctantly rejected it. In my opinion, if one of the little bastards in our care has earned a thrashing from the High Master, then, by Christ alive, he should receive exactly that! With all respect to you, gentlemen, the emotional impact of a flogging dealt out by a deputy, no matter how skilfully administered, is not the same! Whippinghamians deserve the best education which money can buy and that includes just punishment from the most appropriate person.’ Dr Seiss-Urquart paused a moment, his hand straying to part his buttocks slightly to relieve the pressure on his bulging haemorrhoids.

  ‘And there is one other factor in my decision to stand down from the High Mastership,’ he continued, ‘As you know, it is traditional here at Whippingham that senior academic positions cannot be held by married men. And quite rightly so, as the pressures of married life could well interfere with a master’s punishment schedules; a wife might well comment negatively if her husband were too exhausted from thrashing dunces, deviants and delinquents to be able to perform his marital duties sufficiently forcefully!’ At this, a knowing titter passed through the little assembly. ‘Yes, gentlemen, I have decided to put behind the bachelor’s life. My dedicated secretary, dear Miss Spankington, has agreed to do me the honour of becoming Mrs Seiss-Urquart!’

  At this bombshell, seven chins dropped. The house masters had all been absolutely certain that old Septimus Seiss-Urquart was as queer as the proverbial coot. Recovering first, the newly-appointed House Master of Mosley Hall, the fanatically loyal but moderately tactless Reginald Elgar (holder of the extremely rare Bachelor of Woodwork degree from Mansfield Hall, Oxford) stood up and proposed a toast: ‘Give her one from all of us, High Master,’ he tastefully intoned. Little did he know that Cynthia Spankington was listening at the keyhole as usual and that, in revenge for his quip, she would lace his coffee at Masters’ High Table that evening with a laxative so strong he would not get a wink of sleep that night for fear of pumping out his bowels all over his bedclothes.

  After receiving a round of applause, Dr Seiss-Urquart continued. ‘As is also traditional here at College, it is the right of the outgoing High Master to nominate his successor from one of the seven house masters. So, at the beginning of the new academic year, one of you gentlemen will become the 18th High Master of Whippingham. A heavy responsibility and one which calls for a strong sense of justice and an even stronger right arm!’ Seiss-Urquart raised the Black Mambo above his head and brought it down with a finely judged slash on the table. ‘In recent years I have found it necessary to admonish and even humiliate some of you for failure of duty,’ and here the good doctor looked pointedly at Colonel Doom, Head of Flogwell House, causing the Colonel to recall how he had been beaten senseless by the High Master only a few terms ago. ‘However, what has been done is done. All slates are wiped clean. I shall choose my successor solely on merit and on what is best for our beloved Whippingham, not merely on seniority. This means that even the relatively unintelligent and insignificant Mr Elgar here stands a chance! In theory, of course.’

  ‘When will you make your decision known, High Master?’ queried the puny Mr De’Ath of Ramsbottom’s. He knew his own past record of vacillation and venery effectively ruled him out of the race to succeed Seiss-Urquart. However, he was eager to ingratiate himself with the new High Master as soon as possible. He was not on good terms with the head of Disembowellers, the dwarfish but devoutly Christian Dr Orlando Crucifix, and he needed to know how long he had to try and patch up their longstanding quarrel about whether it was sinful or not to thrash pupils immediately after they had taken Holy Communion.

  ‘A good question, Mr De’Ath. And the answer is: at the end of term. I shall announce my retirement to the School at the Closing Dinner in Great Hall and I shall nominate my successor at the same time. Until then, my decision to stand down as High Master is entirely confidential. Only you seven gentlemen know. Plus of course my beloved Miss Spankington, the future Mrs Seiss-Urquart. And rest assured, gentlemen, if a word leaks out about this, I shall find out who the traitor is and he will be sorrier than an orphan on Mother’s Day!’ the High Master snarled. ‘That is all; you may now return to your duties. I know there must be dozens of young arses waiting to taste your canes.’

  As the shell-shocked masters rose to their feet, Seiss-Urquart’s face cracked into a hideous smile of sadistic pleasure as he flexed the 42-inch Black Mambo, the world’s most painful rattan cane. ‘I shall be watching you all very carefully over the next six weeks. I shall be assessing each and every one of you: your houses’ examination results, the accuracy of your punishment records, your personal caning styles, the results of inter-house all-in wrestling contest, any excessive pashing and homosexual scandals,  house suicide rates, everything! So: may the best man win!’ As if to emphasise his words, ‘Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!’ went the Black Mambo on the polished surface of the dining table, causing the masters’ wine glasses to rattle and doing severe harm to the patina of the antique wood.

  After the seven had left the room (Colonel Doom, confined to his wheelchair after his near-death experience at the hands of the High Master, was pushed out lopsidedly by Captain Lasher), Miss Spankington entered and, without needing to be told, sunk to her knees in order to better fellate the High Master, whose enormous uncircumcised cock was already out of his flies. He was so excited by the events of the meeting he came rather prematurely, causing an unseemly stain on her starched blouse. He was in the process of wiping the warm sperm off his betrothed’s cheek when a knock at the door heralded the return of Professor Drawblood, the seven foot high ginger-haired head of Birchington House, a man famous for his penchant for strapping pupils on their calves with a leather tawse for minor spelling and punctuation errors.

  ‘Frightfully sorry, High Master, but I seem to have left my very favourite tawse behind,’ he exclaimed, his eagle eye having spotted the tell-tale spunkmarks on Miss Spankington’s chin. He stooped to pick up the polished leather strap from the floor. ‘Ah, there it is!’ he exclaimed and added jovially, ‘I wouldn’t want to be without this for long, High Master! I’ve got quite a few dim lads in my house and I find a good leathering with Old Strapper here helps their grammar no end! Naturally, I prefer a good rattan for more serious offences. My favourite cane is called “Old Slasher” and I’d be delighted to loan it to you – it’s got a wicked swing to it.’

  ‘Thank you, Professor, for your kind offer, but my own collection of canes is quite sufficient. Just piss off, will you?’
  ‘Do you think he saw anything, Septimus?’ asked Miss Spankington after the giant house master had left the room.
  ‘I couldn’t care a fuck what he saw, Cynthia, my angel,’ replied the High Master of Whippingham College as he carefully fingered his protruding piles back up his hairy bumhole. ‘Oops, up they go,’ he exclaimed.


CUNNING REGINALD CONSIDERS HIS OPTIONS

  Reginald Elgar, B.W.(Oxon) former Woodwork Master, but promoted to be head of Mosley Hall on account of his brutality and staggering patriotism was held by some to be, in the words of Dr Seiss-Urquart, “as thick as two short planks”, and few would deny that – but he was as cunning as a rat with two heads. In academic terms Elgar was not in the same league as his illustrious colleagues all of who were fine classical scholars, but he was possessed of enormous reserves of deviousness and he had accurately guessed who had laced his after dinner coffee with laxative on the night that Seiss-Urquart had announced his forthcoming retirement. By God, that filthy slag Spankington would pay for that.

  Elgar was sufficiently intelligent to assume that he stood as much chance of being selected as High Master of Whippingham as a Bantu had of being voted man of the year by the Chipping Norton Women’s Institute, unless a miracle intervened, or (more fucking like it) a miracle was engineered. But how could he move up from his lowly position in the pecking order? How could he bring about the impossible? It was a fucking challenge and no mistake.

  The House Master of Mosley Hall paced up and down in his study, weighing up the odds. Doom and De’Ath were unlikely choices: the syphilis scandal at Flogwell House and the fact that Doom had been thrashed to unconsciousness by the High Master must surely have put paid to the former’s hopes; and the matter of the Jewish boy who had been permitted to attend the school thanks to a bribe and who had paid for it with his life had surely finished off the latter’s chances. Admittedly Seiss-Urquart had said that everyone would be considered and that past misdemeanours would be set aside. But the fact that everyone knew that both these masters had been humiliated by the magnificent High Master surely would diminish their standing in their colleagues’ eyes? Elgar felt he was in a stronger position than either of them. But it would do no harm to discredit them even further. He therefore felt it would do no harm to spread a juicy scandal that they were a couple of transvestites.

  Captain Lasher of Flagellators’ was spectacularly one-legged and, although the suicidally heroic way he had lost his right leg rescuing his ship’s cat from sharks during the last war had earned him much respect, his limp made him an object of fun among those boys brave or foolish enough to grin. Lasher’s stump was not an automatic disqualification but it was a definite visual drawback when administering public floggings, Elgar reasoned. Maybe a bit of extra polish on the floor and Lasher might fall over to humorous effect. In any case, a whisper into the High Master’s earhole about Lasher’s nickname, “Old Pegleg”, might be helpful.

  Similarly, Dr Orlando Crucifix of Disembowellers had a physical disadvantage: he was only four foot six inches high (four foot nine with his super-elevator heels on); this meant he was unable to thrash boys stylishly (especially the tall ones), surely a key qualification for the post of High Master of Whippingham. Why, sometimes Crucifix had to content himself with beating the senior boys on their calves – gratifying painful but not exactly graceful. And the episode of the cannibalistic Crown Prince of Bongobongoland would not weigh favourably in the High Master’s calculations, for fuck’s sake. With a little extra skilful bad publicity, Elgar felt Crucifix could be eliminated from the race too.

  Thus the two strongest contenders would seem to be the ginger giant, the mighty Daniel Drawblood, the head man at Birchington, a truly terrifying sight in action with his cane in his right hand and a tawse or steel ruler in the other, or the former Jesuit, the Reverend Adolphus Samuel Psaydysste-Streke of Thrashmore Hall, a man renowned for his cold-hearted cunning and utter indifference to the suffering of the hapless pupils in his charge. Reginald Elgar was on good terms with Drawblood, as they both shared an interest in model railways and in watching the boys take cold showers; he suspected that Drawblood was a total fairy but he did not have any proof. Yet. But he had heard rumours of a juicy variety.

  He loathed Psaydysste-Streke for his needless savagery and for the ex-priest’s ill-concealed scorn of him, Reginald Elgar. He would need to try and improve relations with old Psaydysste-Streke in order to seek out his weaknesses – perhaps he could feign an interest in the torture instruments of the Spanish Inquisition, a topic he knew to be near to the heart of the sinister convert from Catholicism. There must be a dark secret for him to uncover.

  Elgar knew he had only a few short weeks to find out his opponents’ weakest points and to undermine their reputations in the eyes of Dr Septimus Seiss-Urquart, Ph.D., D.D., M.S.. Additionally, he needed to pay back that bitch Miss Spankington for the twenty-four hours of pseudo-tropical dysentery she had inflicted on him; by Holy Christ, she would suffer for that! He was a methodical man and he carefully set out the problems he faced on one side of a sheet of paper. Then, occasionally taking a gulp from his pewter flagon of extra strong ale, he detailed the possible solutions.

  After a few hour’s work (and another flagon or two from the giant barrel of Grottlebutt’s Old Speckled Rat Ale he kept in his outer office), he sat back in his chair, a broad smile dawning on his face. He began to laugh demonically until the tears ran down his cheeks and, slightly too late, realised he had urinated copiously in his slightly too tight trousers. Reginald was not worried by this mishap. For he knew he would be triumphant. He, Reginald Elgar, holder of the lowly (but very rare) Bachelor of Woodwork degree from Mansfield College, Oxford, would be the next High Master of Whippingham College! How his foster parents, his hardworking Uncle, Dogthorne Elgar (and his wife Fat Bessie), would have been proud of him had they not perished in a charabanc crash on the way to see the Blackpool Illuminations!

  ‘Fuck you all!’ muttered Reginald Elgar as he fell drunkenly off his chair with a damp squelch.