Chapter Two

I soon picked up the routine of the school. The regulations were often onerous, the food was poor, and much of the daily round was tedious. But at least now I had companions of my own age, and was no longer subject to the insults of the odious Desmond. Furthermore, some of the lessons were stimulating. I soon began to make excellent progress in French, Mathematics was never my strong suit, but my English composition improved markedly. I do not think it would have been possible never to have fallen foul of the system of marks for minor offences. Several times in the year I was called to Matron’s room, having amassed thirty points or more. She administered punishments sometimes with a leather slipper, but more often with a heavy wooden paddle, which she applied with vigor, having first raised my skirt and pulled down my knickers. It was painful and undignified. The first time she stopped in the middle of the punishment, pausing to touch my bottom with her hands, smoothing and caressing, then squeezing. I disliked this intensely. I said to her, in a voice heavy with sarcasm, “Is this part of the punishment, Matron?”

“How dare you speak to me like that,” she retorted, and recommenced the punishment with renewed vigor. At the time, I believed that I had an aversion to any thought of sexual contact with a person of my own sex, but as the reader will discover, that was not really the case. Instead, I was merely reacting against an advance from a person who had no appeal for me physically. Subsequent punishments were administered in a more straightforward manner, without any unwelcome touches, though I had the impression that Matron wielded the paddle with extra power when I was bent over in front of her, doubtless as revenge for my scorning what I now perceive to have been her advances.

I soon realized, from listening to the conversation of my fellow pupils, that sexual attraction between girls was common enough. Several of the girls had what they called “crushes” on each other, or on female teachers. It would be some time before I came to experience how such feelings could go beyond the merely fanciful and find actual physical expression. But my mind henceforth allowed for the possibility.

Though I was to witness further demonstrations of the headmaster’s prowess with the cane, with the same sense of unhealthy fascination tinged with fear that I first experienced, I managed to avoid this punishment myself. In truth, it seemed to be applied almost exclusively for offences of a sexual nature, and my life up until the end of my first year, no matter what I learned of which things might be possible, was entirely blameless in that respect (apart, of course, from the frequent and furtive masturbation I practiced under the bedcovers). That state of affairs, however, was soon to change.

Shortly before my nineteenth birthday the headmaster called me to his study. I was terrified that I was going to suffer a caning, perhaps a private one, even though I had committed no crime. However, his expression was genial as he bade me to sit down.

“You have done well in your time here, Jane,” he said. “Your class work is good, in some cases excellent, and your general conduct satisfactory. It has been arranged that yo