It was a summer afternoon in North London.†† In a pleasant well-furnished room, a middle-aged man was bent over the end of a sofa; his trousers were neatly folded on a chair at the other end of the room, his boxer shorts were pulled down to the top of his thighs and the tails of his shirt pulled up so that his buttocks were bare. ††He had wanted, had almost a physical hunger for this moment for nearly two weeks and now it had come.
The other person in the room, a smartly dressed lady, held a straight-handled cane in her left hand.†† The cane was longer, darker in colour and heavier than a school cane.††† The cane came down hard and the man pushed his face into the sofa as if he hoped its cushion might absorb the pain he felt when the cane landed.†† There was a quiet pause and then the cane made an arc through the air again.†† It is doubtful if, at that moment, the man had the composure of mind to wonder about the origin of Miss Svensonís unusual cane.
The cane had not been purchased from an Internet site but from a shop in Walthamstow recommended to Miss Svenson by a Miss Blackstock, an elderly lady now living on the South Coast.†† For many years Miss Blackstock had been the strong and inspiring headmistress of a North London school; she had felt it her duty to make as much of the son of a labourer as the son of a general practitioner.††† And if either stepped too far out of line, corporal punishment was her remedy. †††This cane was certainly not standard London local education authority issue and she used it only on the most recalcitrant boys. †Miss Blackstock was feared and loved in equal measure.
Tommy Jones owned the shop in Walthamstow selling modest three-piece suites, beds and imported cane furniture. ††Edith Blackstock was Tommyís childhood sweetheart and marriage had not dulled his fondness for her.††† The cane furniture provided a clue that in the early 1950ís Sergeant Tommy Jones had been stationed at Ipoh in Perak during the Malayan Emergency.†† A useful by-product of this service to Queen and country had been his cane furniture import business that put bread on his familyís table. ††Once in a while Edith came to his shop just to chat and drink the thick sweet tea he made with condensed milk to remind him of the Malay drink ìteh tarikî.†† Tommy was proud when Edith became a headmistress.†† One day she came to the shop red-faced with frustration with one of her pupils, a boy who could Öbut again and again chose not to.†† Tommy told her she was too kind, ìyou have to be cruel to be kindî he said and made the first of the canes for her from a dense jungle rattan.
Raised red lines marked the middle-aged manís buttocks.†† The beating was over.†† Miss Svenson didnít let him stand up immediately so that he had time to regain his composure.† When he did stand up, boxer shorts now pulled up and shirttails hanging down so that he looked like an actor in a West End farce caught in flagrante delicto, he thanked Miss Svenson and meant it.
He had thanked Miss Svenson again at the door as he left.†† Walking back towards the tube station to make his way home, he reflected that the very system that had nurtured his need had also enabled him to earn the wherewithal to satisfy that same need.†† This irony would not have troubled Miss Blackstock.