“Miss Alice took a last heady sniff of the buttercups beneath the window of her former office. Over time her various gardeners had tried to tear them out – poisonous, they’d told her, and a weed to boot – but the flowers would not yield so easily to their efforts. Season after season they would return, their presence a bright yellow sign of unbowed resilience. Miss Alice could respect that.
It would be their final season. For as much as she was aware, the new owner would bury the garden entirely and pave it over. Not even the buttercups could endure.
The decision to put the schoolhouse on the market had not come to her easily nor quickly. For untold years it had served as her mission to mold and shape the young sons of the formerly privileged classes, to educate those scions in the ways of a world in which they were no longer masters. Some had been resistant to this new paradigm, of course, and along with their Civics and Economics they could expect a lesson with the strap or the cane. Miss Alice had demanded only the best from her pupils.
But she was no longer that woman. Her previously grand height had once intimidated many a man not yet grown from boyhood. Now her bones were brittle, and she could not stand without a walking-stick. Her hair, once a flaxen gold, had faded to white.
A cold breeze blew across the moors, and Miss Alice couldn’t help but shiver and tuck in her shawl. The school had been shuttered for weeks, the last of its students returned either to their dwindling estates, or to London to seek out some new vocation. She could not serve them by haunting these empty halls like a spectre.
Already she had bid goodbye to the grand foyer, with its dusty chandelier that had never set right after the incident with Mr. Lessier. Goodbye as well to the stables, where rough horseman Mr. von Lüneburg felt for himself the bite of his riding crop. Goodbye to the cellar in which Mr. Johnston’s thrashing still echoed from the stones, goodbye to the library where the very modern Miss Entbridge had bravely and foolishly demanded equal treatment with her male collegues. Goodbye at last to the dormitories, where so many a lad had gone to bed with a striped and scarlet backside.
Much like the young men under her care, Miss Alice had not built this place as her home, it had been instead an unexpected inheritance from a forgotten relation. How exciting it had been in her youth, to have Providence bestow such a gift upon her! But the gift had become a weight, an obligation that she could no longer carry. With its sale, she could retire to Dover, where the air and the climate were more amenable to a woman of her years.
The queen was dead. Long live the king.
‘May I assist you?’
The voice was that of a man. Miss Alice had not heard him approach. Finely dressed, by the look of him, and carrying a briefcase, but she could discern no more of him at a distance.
‘This is private property,’ she called out, struggling to be heard above the wind. ‘If you have business here, you may reach my solicitor.’
The stranger chuckled. She’d taken him for a young man, but upon closer inspection she could see that his boyish face was lined, and his whiskers had gone to grey. He wore a Homburg tight to his head, with short sack coat of the fashion favoured on the continent.
‘I am indeed aware that it is private property, madam. But not, I believe, yours. Or does my bill of sale deceive me?’ He gestured toward his valise.
Miss Alice narrowed her eyes. ‘You are the new owner, then?’
‘I am he.’
His tones were clipped, but inconsistent. Miss Alice prided herself on a keen ear for diction, even at her age. The manner of his vowels and his lapses into the informal betrayed a man who in his youth had been given lessons in elocution. That had been her first insight into his nature, but the smug shape that formed beneath his mustache proved her intuition correct.
The stranger was of new money, she realized with some distaste.
‘And having bought my home, I suppose this makes you my master? Is this old schoolmarm to be run into the streets? For shame!’
He sputtered, caught off guard. No doubt he’d suspected that his apparent wealth would impress her into compliance. Miss Alice was not so easily moved.
‘Apologies, my lady. I meant only to escort you. A lady of your age and bearing should not travel alone.’
‘I thank you for your courtesy, sir, but I am not alone. My man is taking my effects to the inn in which I am staying, and will return forthwith. At that time the schoolhouse will be yours evermore, and you need not see me again.’
The stranger’s gaze softened. ‘That would be a great pity, Miss Alice.’
‘You know of me, then. You were a pupil here?’
‘Aye, madam. Do you not recognize me?’
‘Hundreds of young men have passed through these halls,’ she reminded him. ‘My role in their lives has been, but for the grace of the Almighty, instructive yet brief. Sometimes painful, yes, but pain is its own form of instruction. How do you imagine I would treat such impertinence from one of my students?’
He gulped. So he was one of hers after all. She would have expected him to beg her leave then, to retreat to his carriage or motor-car until the terrifying beldam had vanished into the hills.
Instead he said through trembling lips, ‘I remember.’
‘Do you, I wonder? What do you remember? Is it the shame in recognizing your misdeeds, or the embarrassment of prostrating yourself before a woman? You may be surprised how greatly these sentiments stick in the mind, more so than the agony of the punishment itself. And I was never one to hold back on the rod.’
The stranger stood rooted to the spot, his eyes downcast.
‘For myself, it was the ache. Going to bed with an empty belly and a smacked bottom, the memory still fresh, only to see it all play before me again in my dreams.’ He sighed. ‘I forget nothing.’
‘And that’s why you’ve bought my school, is it? You hope to tear it down, and in doing so banish this phantom from your mind?’ Miss Alice had just recently finished Dr. Freud’s treatise and found it utter hogwash, but clearly the stranger had glimpsed some kernel of reason within it.
‘Miss Alice, you have me wrong. There is no animus in my feelings toward you, and I cherish this house and the years spent within. How must I prove my sincerity?’
She considered. Perhaps she had misread him after the impudence of his arrival, for which he had apologized. If he had not been one of her students, that would have sufficed. But apologies, she had once instructed, were only words, no matter how sincere.
‘There is a willow tree over that hill behind you,’ said Miss Alice. ‘I ask you to climb that hill and cut from that tree four twigs. Each must be straight and supple and no more or less than an arm’s length. I will await your return in my office.’
‘I see,’ replied the stranger. ‘And then I will have won your favour?’
‘You will have begun.’
The stranger tipped his hat and strode away toward the distant hill. For what she had asked of him, the man was suspiciously eager. Perhaps his sincerity was true, but Miss Alice was beginning to doubt his motives.
She coaxed her own weary legs into perambulation. It would be a long walk from the garden to her study. Miss Alice had no one but herself to blame, she had with deliberate intent selected the room for having one way in or out. Any miscreant unfortunate enough to be called to Miss Alice’s office had made forfeit any need for discretion, and his passage would be made all the more torturous by the hallowed silence of his classmates.
Each tap of her stick on the hard floor struck another memory, of hard-fought lessons and hard-won victories. Despite what she’d told the stranger, she’d kept correspondence with many of her graduates. Mr. Lecour had settled in Canada with a wife and child. Mr. Gillespie and Mr. Aberforth had both gone into business and were doing well in London. Mr. Johnston, for all his trouble, was now an MP in good standing, and Mr. Fairchild had been decorated for his service in the Sudan.
For all that she’d cultivated her reputation as a strict and merciless tyrant, she did enjoy their letters as the years passed. And there were others, having been lost to distance or time, that she would continue to hold in her heart until the end.
At last she came to that great oaken door and removed her key from its ring. Once more more Miss Alice stood in her seat of power.
She had not returned to this place since the closing of the school. Her books, her furniture, the fearsome tools of her trade, they had all been packed away into steamer trunks back at the inn. Without them, the room had been left cold and empty. A single chair had been left behind by the workmen, she presumed to keep the heavy door open during the move and then forgotten in the aftermath. Such carelessness would not have been tolerated in Miss Alice’s time.
It was nearly an hour by her reckoning before the stranger reappeared, his face red and his rich boots smeared to his calves with mud.
‘Apologies, Miss,’ he mumbled, ‘The ground was not as solid beneath me as the terrain had led me to believe.’ He presented her with four slim branches, each trimmed of any petrified buds, and stood back with a look of pride.
Miss Alice took the first branch in hand and bent it. The branch snapped immediately.
‘Too hard,’ she pronounced, and reached for the next.
‘Begging your pardon, but it is November.’
‘Do not compound your failure with excuses, young man.’
The second branch snapped much the same as the first, and she saw the stranger shrink with the sound. His terror was a mystery. Or was it disappointing Miss Alice that he feared most?
The third branch broke as well. Perhaps the stranger had been correct in his assessment of the season. Miss Alice remained impassive as she reached for the final branch. She could still see strains of green along its length as she pulled the ends toward each other. The branch stayed.
‘Well done,’ said Miss Alice. ‘You may hang your coat and hat off the back of the chair. You have taken a switching in your time here, have you not?’
‘Yes, miss,’ said the stranger, taking off his hat. ‘You still haven’t asked my name.’
‘Nor have you offered it. Bend over, with your hands on the seat.’
He complied, with not even a hint of trembling in his palms as he placed them down on the chair. He was a man of discipline, then. She was not surprised, as the school had donated more than its share of soldiers to the Empire.
She lined up her switch with the seat of the man’s trousers. She brought her arm back, only to be struck with divine inspiration. Bringing her implement closer, she rapped his backside with only the most meagre share of her power.
‘Madam?’ the stranger asked, confused.
She repeated the gesture. ‘It’s no use. I’ve not the strength left to discipline you properly. I thank you for humoring an old spinster.’
‘Humour you? Madam, I offer honest contrition. If it does not offend, I would take down my trousers for you.’
‘What cheek!’ said Miss Alice, but let a smile creep across her visage. ‘A good whipping is no less than you deserve. Your offer is accepted.’
The stranger stood to unbuckle his suspenders. He was well built for a man of his age, and his modern clothing flattered the lines of his physique. His wife would be a blessed woman. She could not help but notice a scar running down from beneath the leg of his pants.
She struck him lightly again. His buttocks clenched as the switch touched them, but he did not appear to be moved.
‘I sense you are a well-traveled man,’ she said, prodding at the scar. ‘A sailor, perhaps? Or do I mistake the kiss of the lash?’
‘A sailor I was, but no mate left that mark. In truth, I had sought out an abbess in Siam who was known for her skill with the whip. She had a strong arm, but a weak eye.’
Miss Alice brought down the switch again, just enough that the stranger flinched.
‘You paid this woman to whip you?’
‘All too dearly.’
‘And did she also ply her trade upon the seat of your drawers?’
The stranger held his tongue.
‘No, ma’am,’ he said finally, ‘I was not so dressed as this. Forgive me, Miss Alice.’
Miss Alice didn’t even have to speak. Without prompt, the stranger pulled at the strings of his drawers and let them fall. Pants and trousers pooled alike at his ankles, he resumed his pose and offered himself up to her.
The skin of his bottom was softer than she had imagined, nearly hairless. While his upper body appeared fit and firm, there was a bit of fat on his lower half that recalled a much younger man.
She lined up the switch at the roundest part of his backside and drew back. This time, there was no need to restrain herself.
‘God’s breath!’ he cried, and bucked in place. A faint red line formed across his flesh.
‘I will not have profanity in this house, young man. If you must speak, I bid you count the strokes. This will be the first.’
‘Yes, Miss Alice! One, Miss Alice!’
She struck again. She’d not the strength she had in her heyday, but her wrist was no less sharp than it had ever been. The twig in her hand whistled as it painted yet another stripe into the stranger’s bare backside.
‘Two, Miss Alice! Three, Miss Alice!’
It had been a topic of hushed conversation through the years as to whether Miss Alice should be so cruel out of necessity or perverse delight. She maintained time and time again that her pupils were arrogant young men, members of the fallen gentry who had to be broken that they could be rebuilt. A soft heart would not earn their respect, much less their unwavering obedience.
And if earning that obedience made her come alive, made her blood race in her veins, then that was a secret between herself and the Lord.
The stranger whimpered as she continued to work the switch. Her earlier deception had gone unremarked, and for a moment she wondered if he could truly draw pleasure from the pain. He seemed familiar, somehow.
‘Eight, Miss Alice! I love you, Miss Alice!’
With his confession the branch split, coming apart in her hands. This was not the first she’d heard of those words, and the stranger was strange no more.
‘Mr. Cooper.’
‘Sir Eamon, if it please you. Many years ago, you had told me to make something of myself before I should see you again. Surely it has not been so long?’
She felt faint. Eamon Cooper had been her eldest student yet at the time of his matriculation, but his years had granted him no more decorum or maturity than any of his peers. Rejected by his middle-class father as soft, he was reckless and ill-mannered until introduced to Miss Alice’s unique methods of correction. At first his behaviour seemed to improve, but as her attention wavered he became ever more audacious in his attempts to regain it, culminating in his asking her to a village dance. Wisdom should have carried her, but Eamon saw past the hardness around her heart and he recognized the lonely soul within. But such an affair could not be, and she had been forced to turn him away. Now, years later, he stood half-naked before her.
‘I thought I might never see you again,’ said Miss Alice.
‘Feared, or hoped?’ The wry grin she remembered emerged despite the welts across his buttocks. ‘I’ve had an adventure, Miss Alice. I went to India at first, to travel the Silk Road. I joined a privateer fleet to fight in China. Ceylon, Siam, the Dutch East Indes… I can speak five languages now, play eight instruments. I made myself a fortune and worked my way back to the continent…’
‘Eamon, why are you here? Why have you bought my school?’
‘It’s not just me, Miss Alice. There’s a trust made up of a dozen of your former students who would have been blown away by the winds of history if not for this school. If not for you.’
‘So you intend to keep it open?’
He nodded. ‘A new age is dawning in the Empire, and the old order must adapt. We want to see your mission continue, your name carried on. We’ve begun to hire teachers, administrators, staff. We would… I would be honoured if you were to remain as Headmistress.’
Miss Alice felt faint, and groped uselessly for her cane. Intuitively, Eamon guided her toward his chair, and she thanked him wordlessly as she melted into the seat.
‘I don’t know how to thank you. The new school will have my blessing, of course…’
‘But.’
‘But I chose the path of retirement willingly, Eamon. After nearly seventy summers, I no longer have the fortitude to tame untold numbers of young men.’
‘What of just one?’ he said, and that charming, frustrating grin returned.
‘Mister Cooper, I don’t take your meaning.’
The man was a mystery. Even after having his proposal rejected, he continued forward with apparent glee, reaching for his collapsed trousers.
‘The board of trustees have decided that I am to assume the office of Headmaster until a more suitable candidate is found. It is a duty I do not take lightly, and in truth I do not know if I am suited.’
An idea began to take shape before her. ‘You wish me to be your mentor, do you?’
‘I wish of you a great many things, Miss Alice. I would be your subordinate, your disciple, even your slave if you would have me. I pledge myself to your legacy until the end of my days.’
The end of his days could be a long while yet, Miss Alice reflected. Should she accept, she would stay among the moors forevermore. She would not see Dover. And this grim house would serve, in the end, as both her monument and her tomb.
But no longer would Miss Alice perish alone and forgotten.
‘Please, I beg you, do not cry.’
Eamon’s plea surprised her, and she discovered to her surprise that a tear did indeed sit undisturbed upon her cheek. She scraped it away with a fingernail and a faint chuckle.
‘I cannot recall the last time I cried, Mr. Cooper. And it is the height of presumption to deny me that right. It seems after all these years that I must still teach you the same lessons.’
‘Ah. Must I prepare another switch, Miss Alice?’
‘Rest assured, Mister Cooper, I need no stick to turn a man into a very sorry boy. Surely you remember?’
In her career as an educator, only once had Miss Alice ever taken her bare hand to a student’s seat of learning. The night of that village dance, Eamon had grown too bold and let his hand wander to her breast. Humiliated, she’d dragged him out to the stables and spanked him like an errant child, her palm leaving prints on his naked bottom that he would carry for days.
Perhaps it was that memory that compelled him, or perhaps it was instead that Eamon Cooper could not help but take the hard road. He laid himself across her lap and awaited the worst.
Maturity, however, had taught Miss Alice the value of restraint. Rather than immediately bring down her punishing hand, she tucked back his shirt tails, leaving him entirely bare from waist to ankle. She traced her fingernails across the testament to her switch’s wicked effect, and smirked to herself as Eamon shuddered beneath her. That would earn him extras.
Once he had stilled, Miss Alice went to work. When last she had spanked him, she had still been shocked by his affront and her onslaught had been brisk but unfocused. The years since had sapped her strength, but not her resolve. Her hard hand struck down upon Eamon’s unprotected flank, once, twice, again, moving slowly but covering ground. For his part, Mr. Cooper made the most curious sounds, his teeth digging furrows into his lip in a vain attempt to maintain composure.
Miss Alice proceeded without pause or mercy. She had not placed him over her knee to reprimand a youth who’d misplaced his manners. Eamon Cooper had his education from her, and more besides. He had returned in search of her rough touch, having tried to find it in the hands of others all over the world.
‘Oh Miss Alice!’ he cried.
It was not a plea, for despite the pain of ordeal he regretted nothing. He did not resist, did not cover himself even as she peppered his naked backside until he was mottled in shades of red and violet. Both the lady and her charge were weary by the time that Miss Alice chose to desist. She could no longer carry him, but no more could Eamon stand after such a scourging, and she set him with care upon the floorboards.
‘I accept,’ she said.
‘Pray, Miss Alice, to what?’
‘You honour me with your proposal, and so I will remain. Even on the grounds, if you will have me. My teaching days are behind me, but I will still have my reading and my needlework to keep me from languor.’
‘Of course, Miss Alice. This may now be my home, but it will always be yours.’
‘I will examine my school from time to time, of course. My legacy demands no less, from anyone attending this institution. If my standards are not met, I shall deem it a failure of leadership, and I will hold the Headmaster himself to account. What think you of that?’
Eamon smiled. ‘I believe I have just the house, madam.’
And so it came to pass that Miss Alice would remain among the stones and beams of the school that would continue to bear her name. On some days she would on an unspoken whim join to adjudicate one of the classes, to the terror of that lecturer. On others she would roam the hills collecting wildflowers, her presence barely noted by the student body.
Some believed that she was a former member of the staff anchored to the school by age and sentiment. Others would say she was a harmless eccentric from the nearby village. The most common theory, of course, was that she was mother or maiden aunt to Headmaster Cooper given that they shared a cottage near the school, though this was challenged on the basis that the small house had but one bed. It was rumored that odd noises could be heard issuing from that house some nights, as if a beating were taking place, but these were mere fancy. Such superstition, after all, was best left in the past.”
