Andrew and Philip Knight were identical twins. Like two peas in a pod. When they stood together side-by-side, you could look from one to the other and then from the other back to the one and never tell the difference. Sometimes to be helpful they might comb their hair differently or one might wear something distinctive like a ring or a badge.
But at St. Martin’s an elite boarding school near Brocklehurst conformity was the name of the game. Everyone was obliged to look the same. There was the traditional uniform of blazer and grey trousers. Hair was cut short. School caps were to be always worn in public. The school prided itself in producing boys who would conform. They had a role in life to fulfil. This was 1960 and there was still an empire out there to run.
So, you couldn’t tell Andrew from Philip and that was the problem facing Mr Whackerton, the boys’ housemaster and neither of the sixth-formers was about to put him out of his misery. A few days earlier the headmaster had announced that Widdicombe Woods was henceforth out of bounds. One of the younger boys had been alone in the woods when he had an accident and bust his foot. It had been several hours before he was found and could be taken to hospital.
What the headmaster had not known was that the woodland was a very popular habitat with the older boys. It afforded a solitary space for them to hide when their hormones got the better of them and they engaged in solitary ‘self-abuse’ (as the masters called it).
So it was that one afternoon a boy had been spotted emerging from the woods. Mr Henry, the junior mathematics master immediately recognized the boy. Or so he thought. It was undoubtedly one of the Knight twins. But which one?
Identical twins stick together. It is in their nature, so to speak. All for one and one for all was the Knight’s watchword. Mr Whackerton was determined to punish the culprit. And any boy who so flagrantly disregarded the headmaster’s expressed instructions could expect very severe punishment indeed. One of Mr Whackerton’s stoutest canes lay on his desk ready to be picked up, swished and used with great force across the seat of a boy’s trousers. But which pair of trousers should that be?
Andrew and Philip were eighteen years old and had been at St Martin’s for five years and they knew the ropes. It would be a beating for sure. They had been caned many times before (St. Martin’s was that kind of school) and with many months to go before they finally left the school for good there was ample time for another session touching toes in the study of one master or another. They were undeterred by the prospect of a swishing from Mr Whackerton.
‘You were seen coming out of the woods,’ the housemaster stated with utmost confidence as he glared at the two schoolboys standing before him. The pair stared blankly. Mr Whackerton was losing patience. The miscreants were making fun of him. This was dumb insolence. They knew that he could not tell which of them was the culprit. ‘Which of you was it?’ Mr Whackerton asked with a hint of exasperation. Again, no response.
Mr Whackerton had been a schoolmaster for his whole adult life. And before that he had been a schoolboy himself in a place not dissimilar to St Martin’s. He knew when boys were ragging him. So be it, he thought. If that’s the way they want it. ‘Very well,’ he said aloud, ‘If that’s the way you want it. You shall both be punished.’
He reached for the cane on his desk and flexed it between his hands. It was a little thicker and maybe an inch or so longer than the canes he used on the junior boys. It had the obligatory curved handle and several notches along its length. He wobbled it in the direction of the middle of his study. ‘Stand there. Side by side, a few feet apart’ he ordered.
Not quite nonchalantly, but certainly without dread, Andrew and Philip turned on their heels and faced away from the housemaster. ‘Touch your toes.’ The twins obliged. They were slender lads (the food at St Martin’s was not plentiful) and athletic enough to be able to assume a touch-toes position without strain. Mr Whackerton looked on with satisfaction. The boys wore regulation blazers and these were short enough that while in a bending position they rode up the boys’ backs away from the seat of the trousers. Even though it was not necessary Mr Whackerton nonetheless took hold of each boy’s blazer and pushed it further up his back away from the target area.
The grey trousers fitted snugly and in the bending position the buttocks were firm and round. Mr Whackerton could see the outline of their underpants and not for the first time in his career he rued the fact that regulations did not allow him to cane boys with their trousers at their ankles and across their tight white cotton underpants.
But this was no time for regrets. The limit was six strokes across the buttocks as normally clothed. Mr Whackerton had much experience and had perfected his own technique. This was well known to the boys and although both Andrew and Philip presented themselves submissively for punishment both eighteen-year-olds knew from experience that was to follow would be very painful indeed.
The study was not large but there was enough room for Mr Whackerton to take four steps back from the twins. His technique was to raise the cane to shoulder height and then walk (not run) at a fast pace, one step, two steps, three steps and then with all the strength that he possessed thwack the rattan cane into the stretched seat of the trousers. This he did and Philip’s body shuddered with the impact. It took a moment or two after the noise of cane connecting with bottom began to resound around the room that the pain registered. Many boys described the sensation as like having a red-hot poker pressed into the flesh. Of course, they were not to know the accuracy of this simile as none had ever been near a poker in their lives. Suffice to say that it hurt a lot. It was agony.
Philip’s hips swayed and his knees buckled but he remained in the touch-toes stance (just). He had pride. He would not let the housemaster know they he had hurt him and of course, he had no intention of letting himself down in front of (or more accurately, besides) his brother.
Philip’s intense pain began to ease as Mr Whackerton returned to his position and one, two, three steps delivered Andrew’s first cut. Andrew reaction mirrored his brother. People who are not twins often speculate whether one twin can feel the pain of the other. If one falls and breaks his arm does the other non-injured twin feel pain also? There was no scientific experiment taking place in Mr Whackerton’s study, but suffice to say that Philip felt Andrew’s pain and vice versa. Mr Whackerton would heve been delighted to know that in effect he was delivering twelve stokes to each boy.
The second strokes were delivered. Philip and Andrew exchanged looks of solidarity. Let Mr Whackerton do his worst, they said silently, he didn’t make us betray each other. The caning was terrific. Their bums were ablaze. Already welts were throbbing beneath their underpants. So what! They were sharing an ordeal and their brotherly love would be all the stronger for the experience.
Six of the very best strokes of the cane were delivered across two sets of buttock cheeks. Mr Whackerton who was no longer a young man was quite exhausted by the time he lay his cane back on the desk. The two boys remained bent over, touching toes. Ther backsides felt as if they had swollen to twice their natural size. Ther hearts pumped wildly. Their temples throbbed. And curiously, they were tremendously light-headed. A proper caning could do that to a boy. It was like taking a drug.
‘That’s over,’ at last Mr Whackerton gave them permission to stand. Andrew and Philip rose, stretching their backs as they did so. Each wanted desperately to rub away at their buttocks but schoolboy codes forbid this. No reaction to a beating was permissible until they were well away from the housemaster’s study. Soon enough the would be in the boys’ bog, trousers and underwear down lovingly inspecting and bathing each other’s wounds.
‘Go,’ Mr Whackerton dismissed them curtly. He was satisfied with a job well done. He had left the mark of cane on the boys. His duty was done. He quietly replaced the cane in a cupboard alongside a half dozen others resting there. He closed the door and settled down in the armchair to read the evening newspaper unconcerned that he had just committed an act of gross injustice on one of the innocent twins. But had it been Andrew or had it been Philip?
Picture credit: Generated by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)
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