Skin and Other Stories Read online

  'If you're too obstinate to answer,' the voice was saying, 'then I'll have to decide for you.'

  I wanted desperately to answer because I knew which one I had to choose. It's the first thing you learn when you arrive. Always keep the dressing-gown on and take the extra strokes. Otherwise you're almost certain to get cut. Even three with it on is better than one with it off.

  'Take it off then and get into the far corner and touch your toes. I'm going to give you four.'

  Slowly I would take it off and lay it on the ledge above the boot-lockers. And slowly I would walk over to the far corner, cold and naked now in my cotton pyjamas, treading softly and seeing everything around me suddenly very bright and flat and far away, like a magic lantern picture, and very big, and very unreal, and sort of swimming through the water in my eyes.

  'Go on and touch your toes. Tighter - much tighter than that.'

  Then he would walk down to the far end of the changing-room and I would be watching him upside down between my legs, and he would disappear through a doorway that led down two steps into what we called 'the basin-passage'. This was a stone-floored corridor with wash basins along one wall, and beyond it was the bathroom. When Foxley disappeared I knew he was walking down to the far end of the basin-passage. Foxley always did that. Then, in the distance, but echoing loud among the basins and the tiles, I would hear the noise of his shoes on the stone floor as he started galloping forward, and through my legs I would see him leaping up the two steps into the changing-room and come bounding towards me with his face thrust forward and the cane held high in the air. This was the moment when I shut my eyes and waited for the crack and told myself that whatever happened I must not straighten up.

  Anyone who has been properly beaten will tell you that the real pain does not come until about eight or ten seconds after the stroke. The stroke itself is merely a loud crack and a sort of blunt thud against your backside, numbing you completely (I'm told a bullet wound does the same). But later on, oh my heavens, it feels as if someone is laying a red hot poker right across your naked buttocks and it is absolutely impossible to prevent yourself from reaching back and clutching it with your fingers.

  Foxley knew all about this time lag, and the slow walk back over a distance that must altogether have been fifteen yards gave each stroke plenty of time to reach the peak of its pain before the next one was delivered.

  On the fourth stroke I would invariably straighten up. I couldn't help it. It was an automatic defence reaction from a body that had had as much as it could stand.

  'You flinched,' Foxley would say. 'That one doesn't count. Go on - down you get.'

  The next time I would remember to grip my ankles.

  Afterwards he would watch me as I walked over - very stiff now and holding my backside - to put on my dressing-gown, but I would always try to keep turned away from him so he couldn't see my face. And when I went out, it would be, 'Hey, you! Come back!'

  I was in the passage then, and I would stop and turn and stand in the doorway, waiting.

  'Come here. Come on, come back here. Now - haven't you forgotten something?'

  All I could think of at that moment was the excruciating burning pain in my behind.

  'You strike me as being an impudent and ill-mannered boy,' he would say, imitating my father's voice. 'Don't they teach you better manners than that at this school?'

  'Thank ... you,' I would stammer. 'Thank ... you ... for the beating.'

  And then back up the dark stairs to the dormitory and it became much better then because it was all over and the pain was going and the others were clustering round and treating me with a certain rough sympathy born of having gone through the same thing themselves, many times.

  'Hey, Perkins, let's have a look.'

  'How many d'you get?'

  'Five, wasn't it? We heard them easily from here.'

  'Come on, man. Let's see the marks.'

  I would take down my pyjamas and stand there while this group of experts solemnly examined the damage.

  'Rather far apart, aren't they? Not quite up to Foxley's usual standard.'

  'Two of them are close. Actually touching. Look - these two are beauties!'

  'That low one was a rotten shot.'

  'Did he go right down the basin-passage to start his run?'

  'You got an extra one for flinching, didn't you?'

  'By golly, old Foxley's really got it in for you, Perkins.'

  'Bleeding a bit too. Better wash it, you know.'

  Then the door would open and Foxley would be there, and everyone would scatter and pretend to be doing his teeth or saying his prayers while I was left standing in the centre of the room with my pants down.

  'What's going on here?' Foxley would say, taking a quick look at his own handiwork. 'You - Perkins! Put your pyjamas on properly and get to bed.'

  And that was the end of a day.

  Through the week, I never had a moment of time to myself. If Foxley saw me in the study taking up a novel or perhaps opening my stamp album, he would immediately find something for me to do. One of his favourites, especially when it was raining outside, was, 'Oh, Perkins, I think a bunch of wild irises would look rather nice on my desk, don't you?'

  Wild irises grew only around Orange Ponds. Orange Ponds was two miles down the road and half a mile across the fields. I would get up from my chair, put on my raincoat and my straw hat, take my umbrella - my brolly - and set off on this long and lonely trek. The straw hat had to be worn at all times outdoors, but it was easily destroyed by rain; therefore the brolly was necessary to protect the hat. On the other hand, you can't keep a brolly over your head while scrambling about on a woody bank looking for irises, so to save my hat from ruin I would put it on the ground under my brolly while I searched for flowers. In this way, I caught many colds.

  But the most dreaded day was Sunday. Sunday was for cleaning the study, and how well I can remember the terror of those mornings, the frantic dusting and scrubbing, and then the waiting for Foxley to come in to inspect.

  'Finished?' he would ask.

  'I ... I think so.'

  Then he would stroll over to the drawer of his desk and take out a single white glove, fitting it slowly on to his right hand, pushing each finger well home, and I would stand there watching and trembling as he moved around the room running his white-gloved forefinger along the picture tops, the skirting, the shelves, the window sills, the lamp shades. I never took my eyes off that finger. For me it was an instrument of doom. Nearly always, it managed to discover some tiny crack that I had overlooked or perhaps hadn't even thought about; and when this happened Foxley would turn slowly around, smiling that dangerous little smile that wasn't a smile, holding up the white finger so that I should see for myself the thin smudge of dust that lay along the side of it.

  'Well,' he would say. 'So you're a lazy little boy. Aren't you?'

  No answer.

  'Aren't you?'

  'I thought I dusted it all.'

  'Are you or are you not a nasty, lazy little boy?'

  'Y-yes.'

  'But your father wouldn't want you to grow up like that, would he? Your father is very particular about manners, is he not?'

  No answer.

  'I asked you, is your father particular about manners?'

  'Perhaps - yes.'

  'Therefore I will be doing him a favour if I punish you, won't I?'

  'I don't know.'

  'Won't I?'

  'Y-yes.'

  'We will meet later then, after prayers, in the changing-room.'

  The rest of the day would be spent in an agony of waiting for the evening to come.

  Oh my goodness, how it was all coming back to me now. Sunday was also letter-writing time. 'Dear Mummy and Daddy - thank you very much for your letter. I hope you are both well. I am, except I have got a cold because I got caught in the rain but it will soon be over. Yesterday we played Shrewsbury and beat them 4-2. I watched and Foxley who you know is the head of our house sc