Chapter One

 

Personally, I place the entire blame for the affair squarely on the shoulders of Wendy Newton. It was her lunatic scheme that was responsible for my lamentable predicament, on the first week of term, in finding myself bent over the vaulting horse in the gym, with my knickers round my ankles, whilst our PE teacher, Miss Pearson, demonstrated the virtues of healthy exercise by belabouring my rear end with a length of rattan cane. Yes, I concede that concealing the merchandise was a sound idea in principle but what possessed the dozy bitch to think that my dormitory cabinet was anything approaching a secure hiding place for the contraband, I can only conjecture in despair.

Wait a minute. Hold up there. I can see you all blinking in confusion and bewilderment. That's the trouble with jumping straight into a story like that. It's all very well bolting off at the starting pistol but you're apt to leave your readers lumbering in the rear and clamouring for clarification. "Whoa! Slow down Michaela." they'll say, "We could do with a bit of back story here." Very well then. Allow me to explain.

The summer holidays had regrettably come to an end and now, in the first week of September, I and several hundred other unfortunates had found ourselves back beneath the uninspiring eaves of St Margaret Clitheroe's Catholic Girls' Boarding School or, as we students prefer to call it, Stalag St Maggie's; the grim institution of learning and indoctrination that had blighted its secluded corner of the southern English countryside for the best part of a hundred and twenty years. There was always a sense of impending doom when passing through the school gates, after the carefree days of summer, to face another year of bleak austerity and stern discipline.

The main gate to the school grounds was hardly an edifice to inspire much in the way of confidence in the future. It was a large stone portal with huge cast iron gates that could, with a touch of ground mist and a couple of gargoyles, have stepped straight off the set of a low budget horror movie. Some long-forgotten student had carved "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." into the stonework but otherwise there was no other adornment on the gate to forewarn the visitor that they were entering the accursed domain of St Margaret's. There had, it is true, once been a sign over the gate but it had been pinched a year before and replaced with a sign that read "Arbeit Macht Frei." That disgraceful replacement had since been removed and, let me say right from the start, that, in spite of the widely held conviction of the time, I had absolutely nothing to do with the matter. I know for a fact that it was Caroline "Curly" Johnson and her two mates that were responsible for the outrage. Of course it hadn't stopped Sister Claire from having me into her office for a sound caning over the affair. She reasoned, quite naturally, that since I was one of the few students who could speak German and understand the significance of the sign, I was most probably behind it. It was, in any case she considered, just the sort of thing I would do and so she'd better have me caned just to be on the safe side. But I digress.

So there we were, back in the old school; as foul a purgatory as one could imagine. Had the school been a Buddhist centre of learning as opposed to a Roman Catholic one, you would have been forced to the conclusion that the student body consisted of people who had led frightful lives of crime and debauchery, in their past lifetime, to warrant incarceration in a place like St Margaret's in this one. It was run by a body of nuns who, having eschewed all earthly comforts themselves, saw no reason to pamper their unfortunate students with basic humanitarian conditions. Why they should have imagined that cold and draughty dormitories, inedible food, lukewarm showers at best, rigid regulations and the regular application of draconian discipline could, in any way, be character forming for a future generation of Catholic womanhood is beyond me. One can only conjecture that they endeavoured to instil among their charges the notion that suffering in this mortal coil was but preparation for one's ultimate reward in paradise.

Be that as it may, it was with no great enthusiasm that the students of St Margaret's filed through the gates to face another year of desultory academic enterprise and boiled cabbage. Of course, the girls of St Margaret's have long found means by which to ameliorate their dismal lot. It was a combination of these consoling comforts, in fact, that led me to that vaulting horse and the unpleasantness afforded by Miss Pearson's cane, I have already mentioned.

First and foremost among the preferred leisure activities among the student body at St Margaret's was what, I believe, Shakespeare described as "country matters". This, as might be expected, was particularly prevalent among the girls of the upper school; girls who, upon coming into the flowering of their womanhood, were walking about with a potent cocktail of hormones coursing through their veins that no amount of cold showers and cross country runs could quell. It was the age when most girls would normally start to take an active interest in that other half of humanity that had hitherto been merely irritating objects of derision. This, sadly, was not an option at St Margaret's. The only human beings possessed of XY chromosomes on the premises were the sinister caretaker, Mr Bates, our priest, Father Ignatius, and an ancient gardener who could usually be found asleep in an old wicker chair behind the potting sheds.

With such meagre resources for romance available, it might be supposed that the sex life of St Margaret's schoolgirls would pretty much wither on the vine. Far from it! The girls simply redirected their affections to the one inexhaustible source readily to hand... each other. To put it bluntly, the entire upper school was a labyrinth of sexual and romantic liaisons as a result. The daily drama of cheating, unrequited love, bitter jealousies, clandestine gropings in the locker rooms, secret trysts after lights out and all the rest of the rich tapestry of sexual/social interaction kept everybody endlessly amused and was about the only thing that made life at St Margaret's even barely tolerable.

Of course, none of this met with any approval from the school authorities. Indeed, the nuns had been waging unrelenting warfare on the sexual proclivities of their charges for as long as the school had existed without, it must be noted, any discernible success. Now I've often wondered about that. I mean if you wanted to try and find some way of curbing lesbianism would you honestly think that a place like St Margaret's was just the way to do it? "I know... let's take a few hundred randy schoolgirls, stick 'em all in an enclosed space where they have to live, eat and sleep together, twenty four seven, and with bugger all else to do. That'll take the snap out of their knicker elastic!" I mean... come on! You must have been dipping into the communion wine if you think that's any way of suppressing abominations of the flesh.

So yes, in spite of the ceaseless campaign of the school authorities, the Bard's rural affairs were, by far, the most enthusiastically endorsed participant sport at St Margaret's. The girls, moreover, took their leisure most seriously and were prone to be most inventive about it. It was this that had inspired Wendy Newton's latest madcap business venture; a venture into which she had roped her colleagues in general, and me in particular, with the subsequent regrettable consequences over the vaulting horse I have already touched upon.

Wendy is a member of the elite sorority of associates and cronies forming the inner cabal of the Dead Fish Liberation Front, of which I, to occasional regret, am also a member. Indeed I am, in many respects, at least symbolically, the founding member, for the DFLF takes its name from the insurrection I inadvertently provoked on the occasion I nailed a kipper to the underneath of Sister Maria's classroom chair, by way of livening up an otherwise terminally dull Divinity class. I shall not recount that disgraceful incident here for I have recorded it in detail elsewhere in these chronicles but, suffice it to say, it had been the genesis of our secret society. The DFLF had started with high ideals of resistance and the cause of student rights but, by this juncture, had pretty much deteriorated into a sort of social club of subversion and illicit activity; usually for profit.

It was with profit in mind that Wendy had formulated this latest scheme. During the holidays, Wendy had invested a considerable chunk of the DFLF's budget into this enterprise. She had (and please don't ask me how) managed to buy up a sizeable stock of toys which she proposed we sell, at a handsome return, among the girls of the upper school. Now by "toys" I am not referring to innocent playthings. She was not wanting to flood the sixth form with Barbie dolls or Plush unicorns or something. These were definitely "toys" which would not have gained approval as "age appropriate" among the authorities. I have to say it was a most innovative and eye-opening collection. God knows where the barmy bitch had got them from but there were a couple I wouldn't have minded trying out myself with my beloved Jackie.

On the face of it, the whole scheme was a no-brainer. Half the damn sixth form would have been lining up to acquire these startling accessories to their love lives and Julia had even suggested that, since access to the village shops was limited, we might run a profitable side-line in providing a ready supply of batteries. Doubtless, with careful management, we might have done very well out of the enterprise.

Careful management, however, is not the DFLF's forte I'm afraid to say and, almost from the start, the scheme had begun to unravel. The first problem had involved actually infiltrating the contraband into the school. Student bags were now routinely inspected at the start of a new term; a legacy of a spot inspection the year before which had uncovered reams of pornography, several weapons and enough alcohol to keep the entire Upper Sixth in parties for a month. With that route blocked, Wendy had had to secrete the goods in a bush on the other side of the grounds' perimeter wall adjacent to the copse behind the playing fields. Then, at the first opportunity, she'd sneaked out and tossed the stuff over the wall to us as we'd hid in the copse. Wendy, unfortunately, couldn't so much as toss you a glance without it going astray and we'd had assorted dildos and other items flying about to every point of the compass. Pauline had even, much to her disgruntlement, been obliged to shin up a tree to recover a strap-on that had become entangled in the foliage. It was the kind of farce only the DFLF could have stage managed.

With the booty insinuated into the school, there'd then been the problem of a safe hiding place for it. In fact, we'd had what we'd considered a secure location. We'd hidden it in a couple of sacks in an old neglected storage cupboard behind the art room. Sadly, we were not the only persons with an interest in that cupboard and the other person who had seen the strategic advantages of it was the worst possible one imaginable; our deadly rival and arch enemy Stephanie "Slippery" Stockworth-Smyth. Stephanie was already running a profitable business providing rental on pornographic DVDs to her fellow students. However, during the scandalous affair of the purloined DFLF meetings minutes ledger, that I have described elsewhere in these chronicles, her business stock, concealed among her effects in her dormitory, had been revealed to higher authority and Slippery Steph, much to our enormous gratification, had been soundly caned by sister Claire as a result. Since then, she had sought out a safer hiding place for her stash. It was just bad luck that she had chosen the same place we had selected.

When Wendy had found Stephanie rummaging in the cupboard containing our contraband she had simply panicked. Of course, in an ideal world, with honour among the criminal classes, one might suppose we could have come to an understanding with Stephanie... "You turn a blind eye to our dildos and we won't mention your mucky films"... or something. One underestimates the dangers of neglecting Slippery Steph's penchant for treachery at their peril, however, and Wendy removed our stash hastily. Now that was all well and good and quite in order but then the brainless halfwit decided, without consultation with anybody else, to hide the blasted stuff in my dormitory cabinet. She would later protest that she couldn't hide it among her own things because Stephanie had seen her with it and could direct a search party to her belongings. She also bleated that it had only been a temporary measure until we could find somewhere safer. She also pouted sulkily that it was all my fault in any case and that the stuff would have been perfectly safe if I'd just managed to stay out of trouble for five minutes.

I suppose she had a point. I have to confess that I was not entirely blameless in the ensuing debacle. I have already noted that we St Margaret's girls all find ways to ameliorate life in the old school. Sex, as I have mentioned, is a favourite recourse but alcohol comes a close second. Best of all is if you can combine the two together. On our first weekend back at school, the same Sunday that Wendy had found out that our hiding place was compromised, I had had the inclination to do just that. My darling Jackie had been pining for me over the holidays and it was high time that we caught up. I myself, had spent our absence dreaming up ever more imaginative things to do with her, once we were reunited, and these had, by this time, become so lurid in detail that I had thought it best to ply her with strong drink before subjecting her to my base lusts. As I have mentioned, smuggling drink into school had become a hazardous affair but there was an alternative source available. The school priest, Father Ignatius, kept a prodigious supply of Irish whisky in his chambers and he was usually so addled that he would never miss the odd bottle. Thus I had mounted a raid on his liquor supply.

With any luck, this would have been simplicity itself. Most of the school had been press ganged into the dreary role of spectators at the hockey match in progress on the playing fields. I will have more to say about our school hockey team in due course but, suffice it to say at this juncture, that our first eleven was setting new standards for sporting incompetence and an afternoon spent watching them was right up there with watching paint dry in terms of entertainment value. I won't go as far as to say that the student body had to be marched out to the stands at gunpoint to cheer the team on but it wasn't far off. With the school virtually deserted and the nuns and Father Ignatius showing a good example down at the hockey field, I'd had a window of opportunity.

Gaining access to Father Ignatius' chambers had been simplicity itself. Most of the locks at St Margaret's were old and easily defeatable with the aid of a hairpin or bit of wire. Lock picking was something of a school speciality. It was a legend among old school girls that the lady who had nicked a certain princess's diamond tiara from a heavily secured castle in Southern Europe had first learned the tricks of her trade sneaking through locked doors after lights out at St Margaret's. Father Ignatius' door was child's play.

I once read in a school history book of an occasion when the Emperor Napoleon was being apprised of the marshal values of some general or other. He'd waved aside the eulogies of the man's strategic capability and tactical brilliance and said, "Yes, yes, yes.... but is he lucky?" It was a telling reminder that even the most flawless of plans can turn tits up on a single stroke of outrageous misfortune. Father Ignatius had, citing a severe headache, begged leave to be excused before the hockey game had even bullied off and, returning to his chambers, had walked straight into me whilst I was beating a hasty egress from his inner sanctum and bearing a bottle of his prized Tullamore Dew, clasped in my right hand.

Well it wasn't exactly the kind of girlish misdemeanour that could be brushed off with a bit of sincere contrition and a few Hail Marys down the chapel so Father Ignatius had had no option but, more in sorrow than in anger, to march me straight along to the Head Mistress's office to answer for my misdeeds under the gimlet eye of Sister Claire. Sister Claire had treated me to a long and thorough analysis of my moral failures and spiritual bankruptcy, going into my venal wickedness in what I considered to be quite unnecessary detail. Had Father Ignatius kept his mouth shut and confined himself to shaking his head sadly and tutting in the background, that might have been, more or less, the end of the matter. I'd have simply received a stern lecture before being ordered to drop my knickers and bend over for a sound caning on the spot. The whole thing would have been over in no time and I'd have walked away with a sore arse and a resolute determination to make sure that I posted lookouts the next time I wished to relieve Father Ignatius of his booze. Instead, the blasted man, feeling that he ought to contribute something to the interview, had commented that he had noticed several items missing from his chambers of late.

There had been nothing for it, therefore, but to order an immediate search of my belongings. Sister Juliana and Sister Mary Rose had been despatched to rifle through my effects. Unaware of Wendy's improvised measures to ensure the safety of our contraband, I had been unconcerned by this. I had been still shuffling my feet and clenching my buttocks in anticipation of the inevitable caning in Sister Claire's study when the true horror of the situation unfolded. Sister Juliana had taken one look at our business investment and fainted dead away, requiring Miss Pearson to be summonsed away from pre-match preparations on the hockey field to administer first aid. She had been so distraught that Sister Claire had been obliged to relieve her of her duties for the next week and pack her off to the Mother House for a few days of restorative prayer and contemplation.

Once the two sacks full of our merchandise had been deposited with an accusatory thump on Sister Claire's desk it had been clear that this was no ordinary naughtiness deserving of a routine caning. Sister Claire had been apoplectic and one had feared for her blood pressure. She had harangued me in no uncertain fashion and declared, as God was her witness, that she had never come across such a damnably wretched spawn of Babylon as myself in all her born puff. Even the commercial nature of the stock had been apparent. Wendy, in a misguided attempt at entrepreneurial efficiency, had thoughtfully attached price tags to each item in the inventory. Sister Claire, therefore, could add the crime of subverting the morals of my fellow students to my list of sins, as if the student body of St Margaret's needed any lessons in debauchery from me!

With the full seriousness of the offences now apparent, it had been evident that something spectacular by way of retribution was called for. I had been duly ordered to strip to vest and knickers and despatched to the chapel, to spend my time on my knees, imploring higher authority for forgiveness, while Sister Claire considered a suitable punishment for me. For the next couple of hours, I'd frozen my butt off in my underwear in the chapel; a large hall of worship that somehow manages to be icy cold even on a hot summer's day.

I must confess that I'd been seriously worried. It had seemed highly unlikely that I was going to get away with just a good thrashing. The dread word "expulsion" was looming in the air. Now you might find it strange that I should have feared being expelled from St Margaret's. With all that I have had to say about the dump you might have supposed that being chucked out on my ear was about the best thing that could have happened to me. Actually, it was far from the case. My home life was in a state of terminal dissolution you see. Daddy's business had folded in spectacular fashion and the old man had grabbed his secretary, and what loot he could, and buggered off to some Caribbean haven about one step ahead of the tax inspectors. Mother dearest was attempting to repair the damage to her personal fortune by swanning off to the United States to spend some quality time with her rich boyfriend and was not expected back before the New Year. The net result of this parental absence was the abandonment of the solitary fruit of their loins and the abrogation of all further responsibility for it. I was even dependent for my school fees on the charity of some mysterious benefactor. At this juncture in my turbulent career, St Margaret's, for all its patent faults, was about the only home I had left.

Had I but known it at the time, even while I was shivering miserably in my undies in the chapel, events were taking place to secure my future and a person of higher authority was interceding on my behalf to prevent my expulsion. This intercession, however, had not been sufficient to preclude me from all punishment and thus, after the hockey match had ended, Miss Pearson had arrived in the chapel to raise me to my feet by the lobe of my ear and to frog march me off to that vaulting horse in the gym.