Spectators’ Gallery

A lovely little story from Blushes 14

Harry Edwards toils up the main staircase with a pile of geography books in his arms, on his way to the staff room for afternoon break. The sound of a door opening at the far end of the upstairs gallery makes him look up; a blonde-haired girl turns about outside the headmaster’s study and pulls the door shut behind her, then comes along the gallery looking bemused and pale-faced. She barely notices the geography teacher until the last minute, then she steps aside with a mumbled ‘Sorry, sir,’ and goes downstairs. She isn’t crying and she doesn’t rub at her bottom the way girls do when they’ve been to the Head for a caning, but she looks upset and nervous. Harry goes along to the staff room and plonks his books down on a table.

‘Looks like one for the gallery tonight,’ he says quietly to Mr Morse, Maths and RE. Other ears prick up; note is taken.

‘Who’s that, then?’ enquires Mr Wallace, too casually.

‘Charlotte Price,’ says Harry, nonchalantly pretending to be unaware that the aforesaid Charlotte Price is probably the one girl that almost every member of staff would like to get a peep at in her knickers — or out of them.

‘Oh,’ says Mr Wallace, and goes back to his newspaper.

When the end of break bell rings, the staff room empties slowly. Mr Wallace leaves his newspaper on the table, Mr Morse neglects to take a folder full of prep to be marked, and Harry ‘forgets’ a couple of his books.

By the end of school, there isn’t a teacher who doesn’t know that Charlotte Price is going to be on view on Spectators’ Gallery tonight.

----//----

Shortly after supper, at about ten past seven, Charlotte is ‘on parade’ halfway along the gallery above the entrance hall, standing where all the headmaster’s after-supper reportees have to wait, by the little kink in the balustrade which is directly above the middle of the hallway below. No-one entering the building can avoid noticing her above them, and anyone crossing the hall would have to be singularly self-absorbed not to catch sight of her.

Charlotte is wearing a gymnastics tee-shirt, her socks and shoes, and her knickers; and a maidenly blush. Nervously her eyes wander to the end of the gallery as a door opens; Mr Morse ambles casually in her direction and affects surprise at seeing her there.

‘Dear, dear. Been a naughty girl, have we? Hmm?’

‘Yes, sir,’ whispers Charlotte, keeping her hands together behind her back as she’s supposed to, despite Mr Morse’s ill-disguised glances at the nipple-sized protuberances at the front of her tee-shirt and at the plump pout in her knickers where the tops of her thighs meet.

Mr Morse lingers, and Charlotte blushes more deeply, whilst the maths teacher speculates that she’ll ‘probably only get six, because she’s hardly ever in trouble’, is she. ‘Mind you, that’s on the bare, of course.’

‘Yes, sir, I know,’ mumbles Charlotte, her eyes on the floor.

‘Which means he’ll take these down,’ adds Mr Morse, unnecessarily, taking the opportunity to pluck pointedly at the waistband of Charlotte’s navy knickers.

‘Yes, sir,’ says Charlotte, almost inaudibly, not daring to protest when the elastic is tugged again and two beady eyes peer down into the shadow between her tummy and her tight-stretched knickers. Footsteps sound suddenly in the hall below. Charlotte gasps a tiny ‘ooo!’ as her knickers are allowed to snap back into place against her bare belly. Mr Morse ambles off along the gallery with studied nonchalance; the footsteps mounted the stairs below.

----//----

By the time the headmaster puts in an appearance, at eight o’clock, there is hardly a male member of staff who hasn’t found some excuse to be passing along the gallery while Charlotte is waiting for her caning. Humiliated by the ignominy of having to wait on public view, Charlotte is near to tears already as she is made to follow the headmaster to his study. The door shuts behind them.

Muted conversation, markedly one-sided, might be heard by anyone passing along the gallery, then there are several minutes of silence, before the muffled crack of a cane against bare girl-flesh sounds behind the door, followed by an urgent, high-pitched squeal. This sequence is repeated twelve times, slowly, before the door re-opens and Charlotte appears, red-faced and stripey-bottomed, with her knickers clutched in her hand and the headmaster slapping her bottom cheerfully as he tells her to ‘wait on the gallery, Charlotte, now that you’ve got something to think about. You’ll get the rest of your caning before bedtime. Oh, and you needn’t bother to put your knickers back on — we’d only have to take them off again, wouldn’t we, eh?’

With tears rolling down her cheeks, Charlotte takes up her position along the gallery again and the headmaster goes lightly down the stairs and out of the double doors. Miserably Charlotte touches at her bottom, perhaps wondering how much room there can be left to accommodate another twelve strokes when he comes back, then she looks up at the sound of a door opening. Unhurriedly, indeed deliberately so, the footsteps approach along the gallery —