Social Climber

From Blushes 8. One of the three source stories for the Blushes video Detention Room, as referenced (and quoted from) in the promotional magazine pieces for that excellent film. The pictures don't really match the text, and the focus of the story shifts rather abruptly towards the end, but nevertheless an excellent piece.

On this warm spring evening, Mr Eversley’s detention-taking has reached that point where any pretence of regularity about the proceedings has worn rather thin; regularity in the sense of how an ordinary detention after school might be expected to be conducted, that is, which is not to say that Mr Eversley hasn’t regularly been doing things in his own special way ever since he was appointed Deputy to the Headmaster several years ago.

Mr Eversley’s detentions are his own personal enterprises and have nothing whatsoever in common with those detention sessions which form a normal part of the school’s ordinary disciplinary procedure. The Deputy Head organises ‘his’ detentions several weeks in advance; then, with the cunning of a fox after a rabbit, he sets about ‘collecting’ those of the girls whom he finds ‘interesting’ in certain ways. How a girl looks in the tee-shirt and knickers they all wear in the gym is a ‘certain way’; demure girls, prone to blush on slight provocation, are always likely candidates, especially if they are pretty, while the knowing little cock-teasers amongst the senior forms are eminently eligible too, for different yet oddly complementary reasons. Fair-haired girls have a particular appeal, though not exclusively. This evening’s detention began in the same way as the one before had done, that having been a particularly satisfactory occasion from Mr Eversley’s point of view and well worth repeating this time.

‘Sit down.’ A thumbing of the academic gown back into place across the shoulders, a condescending look around the classroom; ‘In your desks — everyone look in her desk — you will find four safety pins and a brass-headed drawing pin. Yes? Anyone not in possession of those items?’ There are none in Janet Miskin’s desk it seems.

‘Please sir —’ Janet puts her hand up and looks wide-eyed at her teacher, a slight blush colouring her cheeks. Sir — I don’t have anything in my desk.’

‘No, I know you don’t, Janet — anyone else?’ Janet looks mystified in a dubious kind of way and glances round, wondering why she should be the odd one out. All the other girls have found their pins; there are no voices raised to say otherwise. Mr Eversley looks at Janet, whose blushes heighten on the instant. ‘Your pins, Janet, are on the ledge at the bottom of the blackboard. Go and fetch them and then come here.’

‘Y-yes, sir —’ Janet slides out from behind her desk with a flash of pale thighs and goes to find her pins. She returns and stands self-consciously beside Mr Eversley, pins clutched in her hand.

‘Now then —’ he says to the class in general, and — holds out an open palm into which Janet places her pins after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Some of you will remember this from our last meeting in this room.’ Some of the girls; Victoria and Susan and pert-breasted Lucy; do indeed remember and not without rueful looks on their young faces. ‘Although in the ordinary way I suppose we might say that the skirt which each of you is wearing —’ (All grey, with pleats at the sides and back; all a regulation four whole inches above the knee) ‘ — could be described as roughly circular in shape, around the hem-line —’ Mr Eversley twirls a finger in front of Janet, his unwitting assistant in the forthcoming demonstration; being bright the girl catches on and does a halting pirouette then stops, blushing again at being made the centre of attention. ‘— for this evening’s purposes we shall regard skirts as having four corners.’

Bewildered looks on the faces of most of the girls afford Mr Eversley a slight smile as he sends Janet to bring a chair, on which, he says, she is to stand. The chair is clattered into position at the front of the class and Janet clambers up onto it.

‘Here,’ Mr Eversley plucks at the hem of Janet’s skirt where it runs across the front of her left thigh. He lifts it several inches higher than is strictly necessary, though he may be excused that since no doubt he wishes everyone to see clearly what he means. Janet’s thigh, up to and a fraction beyond the leg-elastic of her navy-blue knickers, is treated to a cursory but observant glance from Mr Eversley, before he makes the same demonstration with Janet’s skirt  where it covers her other leg. Janet gets pinker in the cheeks by the second. ‘And here. Turn round, please Janet.’

Awkwardly Janet turns to face the blackboard.

‘Similarly at the back.’ Another pluck at the skirt and the crease along the underside of Janet’s chubby left bottom-cheek appears momentarily, the upward diagonal of her knickers seen for an instant. ‘One corner —’ Mid-thigh on the other side. ‘— and another. Everyone understand?’ A chorus of ‘yes sirs’ though muted. ‘Good. Now then — all of you place a safety pin at each of those four corners I have indicated, on your own skirts.

Several girls stand up to put the pins in at the front, while almost all do so to put in the back pins. Bare legs and the odd glimpse of navy blue can’t be helped as the girls pull their skirts round and twist them obliquely from the waist to see what they’re doing. One girl squeals as she sticks a pin in her finger: a couple accomplish the task still seated behind their desks. To Janet’s embarrassment Mr Eversley puts in her pins himself and doesn’t tell her to get down from the chair when he’s done it.

‘Sit down when you’ve done it,’ chairs scrape back under desks. ‘Hands on your head, please Janet.’

‘Sir! P-pardon, sir?’

‘Put your hands on your head, please.’

‘Er — yes sir.’ Janet reaches up and overlaps her hands across her crown, which makes her handful-sized breasts push themselves firmly against her blouse.

‘Pin number one — left thigh — goes here; when the time comes, that is,’ Mr Eversley takes Janet’s ‘number one’ pin, and with it, of course, the hem of her skirt and lifts it up to the apex of her left shoulder — he can reach quite comfortably — where he deftly slides it through the material of her blouse and clicks it shut. Janet’s skirt hangs like an untidy sash across her front while she blushes furiously; there being only some thirteen inches of skirt between hem and waistband when worn properly, and Mr Eversley having had to hoist it up quite tight in order to pin it to her shoulder. Janet’s knickers are visible from right hip to the waistband elastic on the other side, with indeed a tucked in ruck of the blouse the only thing hiding bare flesh above the top of the knickers. ‘Pin number two — right thigh.’

Each pin is put in in order, with Janet made to turn by degrees with her hands still on her head as each ‘corner’ is secured at shoulder level, and now that all four pins are made fast it is plain that one of those ‘certain ways’ in which the girl has gained Mr Eversley’s attention must surely have been the saucy-bottomed and plump-pubed way she fills out her slightly-too-small school knickers.

‘Face the class, Janet.’ Her bottom trembles firmly as its cheeks are obliged to brush themselves across the palm of Mr Eversley’s over-solicitous hand as she turns. She lets a faint ‘oooh’ of embarrassment  escape her as a finger slips under the elastic at the waist of her knickers and runs across her tummy. This same digit dips into the hollow of her navel as a ruffle of tucked-in but now un-tucked blouse which fringes the waistband of the hoisted-up skirt is edged aside; Janet pulls her tummy away from this intrusion, which makes her bottom push out behind. Her knees and her soft thighs press virginally together but she is paid no particular heed.

‘I shall want no sloppy pinning-up of skirts. If they’re pinned up properly I should be able to see your navel —’ his fingertip wiggles teasingly and Janet tries to wangle away without falling off her chair. ‘Is all that quite clear?’

There are ‘yes sirs’ from everyone, though some responses are little more than nervous whispers; one girl at the back of the room gets uncertainly to her feet with the hem of her skirt in her hand. Another girl does the same.

‘Sit down; I didn’t say you were to do any pinning-up yet. Did I, Victoria?’ He looks enquiringly at a blonde-headed girl in the front row, a girl who is sitting uneasily on an especially impudent young bottom which a whole series of certificates of merit: Most-frequently-spanked-by-Mr-Eversley; Most-often-strapped-by-Mr-Eversley; Most-enjoyable-to-cane (awardable by Mr Eversley); and, Most-likely-to-be-given-a-pinch-in-passing (Mr Eversley and others un-named). Victoria, who is essentially a thoroughly respectable girl, still can’t have her knickers taken down by the Deputy Head without blushing crimson to her ears, despite the regular opportunities he gives her to get used to it. If anyone told Victoria that Mr Eversley didn’t actually have any proper authorisation to take anyone’s knickers down on any pretext whatsoever, she’d call that person an idiot, yet it would technically be an accurate statement. She could have no way of knowing that Mr Eversley’s penchant for the un-knickered schoolgirl bottom, like his well-established private detention sessions, are only suffered by the Headmaster for fear that his deputy would blow the whistle on his own indulgence of his personal fancies which concern a few of the more-generously built senior girls.

‘No, sir,’ says Victoria dutifully, and wiggles her bottom ruefully in her seat as the look in his eyes seems to tell her that if anyone’s bum is going to get more than its fair share of punishment today it’s going to be hers — again.

‘No,’ says Mr Eversley ‘pinning up, corner by corner, is to be done as a penalty for failing to pay attention in the proper manner.’ He pats Janet’s plumped-out knickers. ‘Back to your seat — and take your pins out.’

Then, with ‘pinning-up’ partially explained and the use to which the drawing pin is to be put as yet a mystery, Mr Eversley proceeds to examine his girls in that very art of ‘paying attention’ by which he apparently sets such store. He reads aloud from Milton — Samson Agonistes. He goes on for three lines then stops.

‘Susan — recite the first line of the poem.’

Susan, a pretty girl with shortish hair which has a faint auburn tint where the light catches it, is absolutely stumped for any single word of that first line.

‘Um — sir — I’m afraid I don’t remember —’

‘Stand up.’ The girl gets to her feet, pale-faced. ‘Stand in the aisle, Susan.’ She edges sideways. ‘Pin number one, please.’

‘Yes sir.’ Her words are a mumble. She tugs her skirt up towards her shoulder and her knickers come into plain view. She fiddles with the pin and fixes it at last. She is told to remain standing. The reading is continued.

The girls discover that whenever Mr Eversley asks for a line to be repeated it is always the line before last that he wants them to give him. This realisation does not provide any kind of salvation, however, since in order to remember any line at all they have to concentrate intently upon the line being read. Inevitably, such a need for concentration makes it impossible to remember any further back than the last line. Penalties are incurred by girl after girl, and pins have to be fastened to blouses every half-minute. As girls’ knickers are revealed and pins one and two are inserted , plump little pubic swells pushing with innocent provocativeness under snug navy-blue queue in the aisles alongside vacant desks; and because the two front pins on their own are more than enough to hoist skirts almost to waist level at the back, Mr Eversley takes to patrolling the classroom front to back as he reads. Cheeky, smackable young bottoms looking lined up under close-snuggling school knickers reveal that if there is one criterion that all these girls must have met, to have caught Mr Eversley’s eye, it was spankability.

After fifteen minutes there are still girls with only three pins in while most have all four tugging their skirts humiliatingly up from their waists. There is no pretence of fairness in Mr Eversley’s questioning — auburn-haired Susan got four of the first six questions and was the first to have the visibility of her navel checked by Mr Eversley’s adventurous finger. Her knickered bum has attracted several passing pats and one lingering squeeze. Her face, like all the rest, is pink with embarrassment. Mr Eversley paces down the central aisle and stops directly behind four-pinned Victoria.

‘Line before last, please Victoria.’

‘Yes sir — um — er —’

‘Remember it? Hmm?’

‘Er — n-no sir — not really.’

‘No, Victoria, I don’t think you do. How many pins do you have in?’ He can see perfectly well that it’s four.

‘Four, sir —’

‘Four. Then you know what to do, don’t you. The same as last time.’ Victoria begins to blush more vigorously.

‘Um — t-take my knick —’ she’s too embarrassed to say ‘knickers.’

‘Take your knickers off, Victoria. Remember?’

‘Y-yes sir,’ she nods, her cheeks pinker by the second.

‘Come along then.’

Victoria bends her knees and slides her knickers down to her ankles. She slips her feet free and stands up again, her knickers in her hand at her side.

‘Drawing pin, Victoria.’ he prompts her.

‘Yes sir,’ Victoria finds her drawing pin and walks uncertainly to the front of the class. She pins her knickers to the ledge below the blackboard then has to turn and walk back to her place with Mr Eversley’s eyes unashamedly on the blonde fuzz of hair at the apex of her thighs.

‘Haven’t you forgotten something, Victoria?’

She knows what it is, of course, and where it is. There isn’t a girl in the room whose eyes didn’t find the slim but weighty strap hanging from a hook beside the blackboard as soon as she came in. Victoria has to fetch the strap and walk back as before, naked from above her navel down to her socks. She hands the strap to Mr Eversley then kneels on her chair, facing her desk. She presses her breasts and her face to the uncomforting wood and her bottom looms helplessly behind, up in the air. Mr Eversley deals her elevated bum-cheeks a crisp, stinging stroke and Victoria squeals and rocks forward across her desk. She is left to whimper into her hands as the other girls wince at the sound of that first stroke of what is going to be a long evening detention session. Mr Eversley paces off up the aisle and nine young bottoms flinch at the thought that their turn will come soon.

By the time the detention has reached mid-point, with a whole hour still to go, nine of the ten occupied desks have bare-bottomed girls sprawled across them, knees on chairs and crimson-striped bum-cheeks jutting up without hope of succour from the intermittent visitations of that strap. Stifled sobs and gasps and plaintive pleading whimpers whisper around the room as Mr Eversley paces. He paces, and at length he comes to a stop behind Janet, the only girl still in possession of her knickers. He has been saving it up for Janet.

‘Line before last, please Janet.’

‘Er — sir — I’m ‘fraid I don’t —’

‘Knickers off, Janet. Pin ‘em up.’

‘Sir — please —’

‘Janet — knickers off!’

‘Yes sir —’ she wangles her pants down, oh so reluctantly, but he can wait. The long walk to the front of the class, another pair of knickers pinned up in surrender, and then ‘Hands on your head, Janet’ for the walk back.

‘Over, Come on, over you go.’ The strap flicks Janet’s bottom and the cheeks jiggle as she clambers up onto her chair. She sticks her bottom out because she’s seen him make the other girls do it and she squeezes her eyes tight shut.

----//----

It was then, just then, that he’d come in. Mr Potter the caretaker, or ‘Potty’ as the girls had called him. He’d been sent by the Headmaster to find Janet Miskins — a telephone message from home. There had been wails of humiliation from the girls but hardly a word of protest from Mr Eversley. The girl had been so confused she’d followed him out of the classroom with her skirt still pinned up and her knickers still hanging from the blackboard. She’d scampered back to get them and was half-unpinned when she came out again but he’d enjoyed that moment though, so close to all the lovely stinging bottoms and half-naked girls. But it was always like that, then. The odd glimpse, the crafty peep — how well he remembered some of those moments, though.

Some? No — he remembered it all so very well (or at least he imagined he remembered it all — some of his recollections were necessarily pastiched from his suppositions of the way things must have been). Most of the canings and strappings he couldn’t be too sure about — well, the caretaker wasn’t normally invited to witness such intimate moments between teacher and pupil — but then sometimes he’d managed to gain a vantage point where he could see and not be seen. (The detention room was best for that.) How he’d enjoyed seeing those little teasers get their bums thrashed, and how he’d promised himself that that was something he’d do himself, sometime, some way or another. The realisation that an ex-army bandsman might after all have the ability to teach something — music — had been a long time coming, but once the idea stuck he’d developed it assiduously.

He’d created an entirely new ‘him’ and set himself up as a teacher of music. And he’s surprised himself by being good at it! Quite by chance he’d met a fellow in the same line of business, Mr Chapman. In the same line of business and for the very same reason as it turned out, because he too had more of an interest in what hidden talents his pupils had inside their knickers than he did in what potential they had as musicians. Notes compared and tentative arrangements between the two had led to a flourishing association; it wasn’t always so easy to convince a girl’s mother that what her daughter needed if she is going to be really good was lots of knickers-down punishments and ‘special training’ — on the other hand it could be a simple matter to suggest a ‘course’ with Mr Chapman or Mr Potter — each having the ‘highest credentials’ and the other’s personal recommendation, naturally — and with oneself apparently removed from any actual involvement with the methods of the other gentleman it need be no embarrassment then to mention that Mr Chapman or Mr Potter did have a rather idiosyncratic way with his pupils, but it could be stated with certainty that such unlikely methods as he employed were invariably efficacious and that his reputation put his motives way above suspicion.

With the arrangement working splendidly in both directions there had been nothing to stop either of them capitalising on the gullibility of over-ambitious parents — and so the entente had continued. Ah yes — he had come a long way since his time as a school caretaker.

Mr Potter eased himself out of his chair and went out into the hall to look up the stairs. At the top his very own ‘Duty Girl’ dared risk only wary glances in his direction. Notionally ‘in charge’ of his two other weekend pupils, hers was the responsibility of seeing that both were ready for their last punishment of the day before ‘lights out’. Since he would find something not quite to his liking — he always did find something — the ‘Duty Girl’ too would later find herself bottom-up across her teacher’s big bed, paying the price that the ‘Duty Girl’ always had to pay at Mr Potter’s establishment. Her, and the others, when their turn came.