Miss Svensonís Detention
The boy stared at the list in uncomprehending terror. There on the notice board, in full view of the rest of the school was his name on that most dreaded of lists ñ Miss Svensonís Detention.†† Every Tuesday lunchtime there was one or sometimes two names posted there.† The unfortunate boy then knew that he was to report to the Headmistress after school had finished on Friday for what was termed a detention but all the pupils knew that Miss Svensonís detention hour included much more than the writing of lines or an essay under her eagle eyed supervision. Miss Svensonís detention meant corporal punishment usually with the cane and frequently across the bare bottom.
The boy now experienced what every other boy whose name had graced that list had felt ñ a knot in the pit of stomach as he realized that he had over three days to wait before he would know for certain the fate that awaited him at the hands of the fearsome Miss Svenson.
Every student examined that list with fearful expectation after lunch on a Tuesday ñ even the girls, for Miss Svensonís righteous fury could occasionally be visited on a girl although to the boysí regret no girl had ever been punished in front of the boys even though a few boys had not been spared the ultimate humiliation of being punished in front of the opposite sex.
That was probably why his friends who saw the list offered him brief but heartfelt expressions of sympathy. The girls on the other hand revelled in the torments they could impose on any boy whose name appeared on Miss Svensonís dreaded detention list.
ìAre you going to get the cane?î they would ask grinning with malicious pleasure at the thought.
ìYouíre going to get it on the bare, you knowî, they chortled, their eyes bright with the prospect of his humiliation.
ìYou donít mind if weíre outside the door listening, do you?î
The boy felt his mouth dry at the prospect. Was it the pain that was likely to be inflicted on his bottom that was causing him the anguish or was it the humiliation of having to lower his trousers and pants and bend over Miss Svensonís desk? He was going to be incapable of thinking about anything else for the next few days. Indeed the reason why he was on Miss Svensonís list was not clear to him but he knew it wasnít a mistake. Miss Svenson never made mistakes and any attempt to question why he was going to be caned would probably increase his sentence. He would simply have to accept his fate and whatever punishment she chose to inflict on his bare backside.
Time seemed to stop. That first night at home seemed to last for ever. He tossed and turned in bed seeing the image of the ice blonde Headmistress tapping her cane menacingly across her open palm, waiting for the dreaded words ìTake down your trousers and bend across my desk.î Would he have to take his own pants down? Would she let him keep them on?† Would she take them down herself? It was long past midnight before he finally fell asleep.
He passed her next day in the corridor outside the sixth form common room. He stopped and stared at her, expecting some kind of comment about what he would face on Friday but she swept by without even glancing in his direction. Would she remember him better next week after she had given him twelve strokes of the cane across his bare bottom he wondered or was he just someone who would simply occupy the ten minutes of her time after school on Friday when she routinely caned any boy who was on her Detention list?
He realized that much as he dreaded the inevitable caning there was something about it that was enticing, something that caused his heart to race when he thought about the encounter, something that caused him to think quite differently from the way he thought about pain in any other context.
Was it the caning that was causing him this highly untoward response or was it the prospect of appearing in front of Miss Svenson? Almost before he had phrased the question he knew the answer. It wasnít just appearing in front of Miss Svenson it was the knowledge that for however brief the time would be he was hers alone for those minutes. He wasnít just some boy who filled out the assembly hall, a face she passed without noticing in the corridor.† His person, or at least his body, would merit her full and exclusive attention for that brief precious passage of time.
Surely, he thought, he could arrange to be alone with her without the need to suffer a painful and humiliating punishment?† Could he not invent some charitable enterprise, something that would attract favourable publicity for the school, anything that required him to be closeted with Miss Svenson for considerable time?† It had to be something that would cause her to remember him with pleasure.
He was lying awake in bed that second night when he realized that the reason why he didnít follow up any of the excuses that occurred to him was because he didnít want to. At some level, at some very basic level, he wanted her to punish him. His rational self could not accept it but he knew deep down it was true.† He didnít want to talk about the weather with Miss Svenson and he didnít want to be caned by anyone else, woman or man.† The truth was that it was the combination of these two ideas, the punishment session and the fact that it would be carried out by Miss Svenson that caused him to experience those frissons of excitement that had been running through his body since he first saw, with heart-stopping panic, his name on the Headmistressís Detention list.
Working it out in his mind gave him a great sense of calm. When Friday arrived, he knew as he shut the front door of his house that when he opened that door again he would be carrying those distinctive parallel red marks of Miss Svensonís cane. Now, remarkably, the taunts of the girls and the sympathetic unspoken looks of the boys meant little to him.
The girls could no longer get to him. When they teased him with the prospect of what lay ahead for him at four oíclock he just smiled. When they told him they had heard Miss Svenson practising for his arrival by whacking the cane down on a pillow or the back of the leather armchair in her study he laughed. The girls were taken aback. Previously this image had never failed to get a rise out of the boys who were due to be caned by Miss Svenson. It was something they dreaded, something that they couldnít bear even to think about let alone have it form the subject of the girlsí conversation. Now here, finally, was a boy who was impervious to such remarks, a boy who was not intimidated by the appearance of his name on the Detention List , a boy who, however bizarrely, appeared to be looking forward to the trip to Miss Svensonís study even though the whole school knew the reason why he was going there.
At four oíclock, as the bell rang for the end of the last lesson of the day, he thrust his well-thumbed copy of the short stories of Guy de Maupassant into his locker and slipped into the toilets. He splashed his face with cold water, dried his hands on the roller towel and ran a comb carefully through his hair.
He knew that by taking these extra few minutes he would be late for Miss Svenson and she would undoubtedly add on extra strokes to his punishment but it didnít bother him in the least.† Nothing she was going to do was going to upset him. He might be going to his execution but he would go at his own pace and effectively of his own volition for he wanted to demonstrate to the cane-wielding Headmistress that the number of strokes he was to receive and the severity with which those strokes were administered would not break his spirit and would not cause him to panic. He wanted her to punish him. He wanted her to take the cane out of her cane cupboard.† He wanted her to take down his trousers.†† He wanted her to place him in whatever humiliating positions she could devise for him. And what gave him more pleasure than anything else was he knew that this was precisely what she was going to do.
It was seven minutes past four when he knocked on the door of Miss Svensonís study. The seven minutes would be the first thing she was going to mention.† He heard the slightly muffled call, ìCome in!î
He opened the door to see the woman he was longing to meet standing in front of him, a slight but highly becoming frown disturbing her traditional equanimity.† A fearsome if iconic crook-handled cane lay on her otherwise empty desk. The boy exulted quietly. So far it was all working out perfectly.