Chapter 23: Under Leaves

“Corkle,” says Dickle, “It’s time to move. Bring your girl. Pick her coat up. The first hour is over.”

He’s addressing this to Taudren, who’s sitting next to Remi Breech. He’s feeling angry, but not at anyone here - at his own dad, Molcum Corkle, for being a secret, lying governor of - apparently - his sister hero Yarra’s school.

The two governors, Munnet and Cotting, have let Headmaster Leezing dig a hole for himself by ineffectually ordering his vice-head Dickle from the private walled garden. Dickle, twitch-free, stares Leezing out, then signals Imenna Scutter to stand.

“Scutter,” Dickle tells her, “as usual you can’t keep your feelings to yourself. That damp patch gets you another H.”

Chairman Governor Cotting reacts to this. “This girl gets another? For egregious misconduct?”

Dickle nods. He taps a code into his chest cam, which he’s picked up off the stone seat’s arm rest, and tells it, “Miss Scutter is awarded a second H. As usual, she’s wet between her legs.”

“And the other?”

Dickle turns to Taudren and says, nasally, “Your girl Breech couldn’t keep her feelings to herself either, could she Corkle?”

Taudren sees Remi Breech’s hand go tense. He blinks. Dickle might have let him in, but the man is a teacher after all and that voice and those twitches and his sneery comments have made Taudren start to resent the man already. “Not sure what you mean, sir,” he says.

“Her incessant giggling, boy,” says Dickle.

“That was me, sir,” says Taudren. “I made her do that.”

Dickle is now frowning. “She was not reacting properly.”

“Yeah but I don’t know what I’m doing, sir. Two virgins together?”

Dickle looks annoyed. “I think she deserves a second HP.”

“Yeah but you were over there, sir,” says Taudren. “What’s egregious mean, anyway?”

It’s Cotting who replies. “Egregious sexual misconduct is the phrase. It implies that the girl was enjoying herself in the wrong sort of way.”

Taudren looks confused. “What wrong sort of way?” he asks. Remi’s nervous finger is touching his leg, though the others can’t see.

The other Governor says in his calm bassy voice, “Stimulated. A sign of that might be dampness. Between the legs.”

“She’s not,” says Taudren. “She did what I told her and I spanked her but she’s not. She was giggling cause I don’t know what I’m doing. You said if they do what we say, we should let them go home.”

The deep-voiced governor asks, “And you think she’s been good enough to go home, do you?”

“Yeah,” says Taudren. “She’s done her hour and she didn’t not do what I told her to. And all she did was giggle a bit because I don’t know what I’m doing.”

He can hear Remi Breech breathing quick, breathing shallow. He can see Imenna staring at him, mouth open, eyes blinking.

“Dickle?” asks Munnet. “We all heard your instructions this morning, I think. You were clear on that point. Girls who get their hour done in the right way ought to win a release.”

“I brought the boy in,” says Dickle. “If she goes, well I think he should leave as well.”

Munnet says Taudren, “I don’t fully understand the circumstances that brought you here. But you do appear to be present and participating. Mr Dickle seems to think you should go, however. Do you want to leave?”

This makes him think harder than he’d expected. Because it’s Laugie’s dad he takes it seriously. If he leaves he’ll probably just end up going home. And he doesn’t want to leave because Imenna is still here. Plus he really doesn’t want to see his dad right now. And he wants to talk to Yarra as well. “No not really,” he says.

Munnet turns his head. “You said you let the boy attend, Mr Dickle, and it seems he’s doing a reasonable job. I’m familiar with the rules, and I do believe he is allowed by them to stay.”

“Well I think they should all go home,” squeaks Leezing the Headmaster, though everyone ignores him.

Dickle looks like he’s in the process of swallowing a particularly foul-tasting pill. “Very well,” he says, twitch-sniffing. “I’ll escort the girl from the premises then.”

Chairman Cotting says, “I think the boy can probably do it, Dickle. We should like you to take us on a tour of the event.”

“Since you are its supervisor,” Munnet adds.

Dickle’s mouth projects forward in a pout, as his upper face shimmies in a bitter-looking wriggle. “Small gate,” he says to Taudren. “You saw where I put the key.”

Taudren nods.

“You may find us at your leisure,” Munnet tells the boy.

Taudren and Remi, dismissed, both jump up, then they’re quickly out of the secret walled garden - the gate opens from the inside with a simple handle turn. When they’re on their own, she says, “Thanks, that’s amazing that you’re letting me go!” and starts to run.

Taudren runs with her past the canteen block. Remi leads the way around the outside of the gym hall, then out in front of the school to the main gates, with the glass of the atrium glinting behind them. Taudren knows where the big key is, but Remi has reached the gate-in-a-gate before he can get to where it’s been stored. She turns the fat iron handle and the inner gate swings open.

“I don’t know why you did that,” she tells him, “but thanks! Sorry I ran! I just want to get out before they change their minds!”

“I know,” he says. “You wanted to go, right?”

She stares at him. “You’re kidding?” she asks. “You think I want to stay here? Today? Why did you think I ran just now?” She breathes in, breathes back out. “Your sister stuck up for me as well.” Remi says this as she’s stepped through the gate, ands on the wrought iron. “Tund and Eccar just lied through their teeth to get me that HP, and your sister called them liars! Out in front of everyone! She probably got her own HP because of that.” She stops. She swallows. “Does she really let you spank her?”

Taudren laughs. He says, “She’d punch me out first. Is she really a hero?”

“Not the only one,” Remi says. Then she starts to smile. “Sorry I giggled. It was just funny you doing that when you’re so much younger! I’m glad I got you now, though.” She looks away, then looks back. “You’re pretty good at it too. Don’t tell anyone I said that!” Then she reaches quickly forward and half hugs him round his neck, just quick, just platonic. “Tell her thanks from me!” she adds. “Tell her I think her brother’s top, too!”

She’s stepped away, backwards. She waves quickly, pulling her short coat on. Then turns and pelts it away towards the town.

Taudren watches her short skirt flutter, then pulls the inner gate back into place. It squeals against its hinges till it shunts against the main gate, bounces out a short way and drops back in without fully catching. Taudren doesn’t notice that it’s not fully closed. It wasn’t locked anyway. It’s no skin off his nose.

There’s more than one path through the undergrowth in the narrow stretch of wood along Coalbrook Road. Alid Borger chivvies the fit Mendelle Clitstrop down the path that’s closest to the playing field. She’s not playing by the rules - all her movements are reluctant, and the looks she gives him tell him clear as day that she thinks he’s just another wannabe-domineering loser. But Borger, Head Groundsman, is determined to top her. Groundsmen and janitors are different breeds, he’s arrogantly certain. No slip of a girl is going to back-top any groundsman under his charge today, even if she’s living in an athlete’s body with cynical eyes that wish nails in his shoes and thumb tacks in his underpants.

The lumpy Dino Moper just wants to get back to the groundsmen’s huts, where he’s done all that work, with the nearly famous SX girl from the database. He’s pumped up that he knows just who this girl is, too. He knows already that she’ll try to do whatever he tells her. He’s watched her loads on the SPD, even looked for her out on the playground when he can. He knows she’s in eleven plus - Dirty Dickle’s class, that one - and he’s seen her in some of the school’s rudest videos, right up top in their top two girls for most frequent clicks. She’s called Rossa Wilmutt really, he’s been told that before, but Moper’s started calling her Oy You today, or Oy You, Slut, or sometimes just Oy.

His chosen path just goes straight across the playing field, and he’s hurrying her on in a hop-and-skip run, just trying to make her get there faster. He doesn’t care who sees him with this slutty sort-of star, he just wants to start using all the bits he’s set up, or made from scratch, or scrounged, or cobbled together at home. He’s got supplies in for later and he’s even gone and found some useful vegetation around school grounds.

He’d started out being told what to do by his boss Alid Borger. Choller too, he’d been roped in on the effort. We can try setting this up, we can try setting that up. Borger made some stuff as well. Then his boss gave Moper a copy of the Orange Girl Rules, hot from Dickle’s desk early on last week. He’d been collared by Borger at a union meeting, one of those early-morning get-togethers of mad keen staff, which they’d held around the huts to keep them out of everyone else’s way. Borger had a few choice ideas for their Groundsmen’s Corner, as he’d started calling it. And Dickle must have thought the ideas were good too, to give out his rule book to a bunch of ancillary staff in the run-up.

“Read that, it’s good,” Borger had told Moper as he pushed it at him once him and Choller had read it themselves. Moper isn’t the quickest of readers though, so at first he just ignored it. But Borger picked it up from where Moper had left it and gave it him again at the end of the Tuesday, just as Moper was about to head off back home. He took it out on the bus back to his uncle’s house. He’d sat at the back and there was nothing else to look at - he was late out that day and it had started going dark. He didn’t think he’d read the thing without drifting off and getting bored. And it was all a bit repetitive at first, a thicket of big words which just made the whole thing into a mish-mash of nonsense. Useless bits were repeated at the start of every new bloody paragraph. Punishees and punishers got him tied up, egregious as well, and conduct and misconduct. It took him minutes to get through each of those first parts and he hardly any of it meant anything. He nearly just dropped it on the old bus’s floor. The K28 was a long ride for Moper, going all around the houses, taking in back streets that didn’t have a fast bus. It was the only bus to his uncle’s house though, and he had loads of time. But Dickle was a rubbish writer. He’d never use a short word if he knew a harder long one. And he didn’t get why everything was numbered like that - but at least it meant he knew how far he’d got.

It was all a rubbish mush till he got to number 8. Girls over sixteen you could do with no clothes on - he got that once he’d translated it to normal talk, trying to make it make sense. 11 he had to read a few times, then he finally worked out that it meant you could spank the older girls literally anywhere from their knees to their tits, and that meant their bums and dirty bits between their legs. 12 and 13 were mash-ups of just really stupid long words. But in the end he got that they were allowed to make any girl do any rude pose - and that was any pose they could literally think of. And if it was an action, they could make her keep on doing it as long as they liked. And by that point he had his nose really stuck in this thing.

15 meant he could handle the girls to make them do stuff better, even move them about like they were grown-up dolls. And he’d started imagining doing all that. 16 took him ages again. Then he finally got that lower undergarments were knickers, and the thing meant you could wedgie them! That was actually allowed for him and everyone else, not just Dickle like he’d seen on the Kennigwort corner of the SPD.

21 meant you could just make stuff up! Make up different punishments that weren’t written down here. But 22 was a massive mush. You couldn’t stick your bits up their pussies, he worked out, but you could use your mitts to handle them. Which he’d said that before, but this one meant you could stick your own hands on their rude bits. But older girls were better again, because you couldn’t really do that with the under sixteen girls.

But from 23 on, he was trying to handle a massive stiffy and his brain wasn’t threatening to drift off at all. A few bits from then on were even written in nearly normal words. Stinging nettles, they were allowed! Fucking stinging nettles, and he could do the older girls all around their rude bits! 24 and 25 dropped his jaw again. You could make them drink just loads and loads, then not let them piss it out again! 26 and 27 he found he had to file away - he didn’t want to think about them, it was getting too much for his clunky brain. 30 he barely believed he was reading. 31 said not in their pussies again. But 32 was the dirtiest yet. He read it more than once, then he read it again. Then he filed it away. It was about random stuff and where you could out it. And if you did, you could still do whatever else to them as well, or make them do it to themselves, as you cracked them with canes and spanked their bug fat tits and made them squeal like piglets when you nettled them all over! He might have started out not wanting to read it, but once he’d got going, he’d even missed his stop, gone to the end, come back the other way, and missed it again!

Dino Moper had never felt confident with girls. They didn’t come on to him like they sometimes did with good-looking Choller. But Moper still lusted after girls, and imagined he might make them do whatever he wanted, like make them jump about and do the dirtiest things, then he could treat them like the dirty little things he’d turned them into!

When Borger had told him he should take SX for the first proper hour, it was Dino Moper’s holidays come early! Because SX had the dirtiest body of the lot! That’s why Dickle did her all the time, that and cause he’d trained her up so good, she just jumped and did whatever you told her, like she’d bent and split her dirty bits wide just minutes ago, and he’d only half suggested it! And she’d done it like a total wet dream, as fast as she could and with nothing held back! And now he’d got her to the Groundsmen’s Corner where he’d done all that prep work for the last few days! Where those tech blokes had set up all cameras as well, being brought in by Dickle once he knew what the well-keen groundsmen were up to.

Moper was in a fever dream once he’d read that thing from Dirty Dickle. He used every spare hour he could - plus free overtime - to make all these games to make these slutty girls squeal and beg for their supper - and this just their first Humbler Saturday this year!

Garick Choller, by contrast, takes the slow path through the wood. The girl he’s got given by Alid - Garick is on first name terms with his boss - is a huffy year twelve called Erma Woller. Blonde flop-topped, country-boy handsome Garick, all rosy outdoor cheeks, quick smiles and catchy laughter, at first thinks he’d rather have been given the athlete. Erma Woller is shorter, fuller in her figure, rounder all around and a lot less athletic. Less graceful in her actions. But he’s come across the girl before. She’d talked about him in front of her friends, and she’d been nose-in-the-air sort of arrogant with it. Her voice is a bit annoying, too - too strained for her frame, with a girlie-girl squeak he thinks she’s got to be putting on to try to sound younger.

“Have I got to do that? Have I got to do it like that?”

These words come out as shocks when Rossa bleeding Wilmutt pulls this dirty routine for Dimbo Moper, right out of the blue. “Show us your snatch,” was all he’d said, and Wilmutt had literally gaped it at the groundsman as quick as any normal girl might turn and sit down.

“Minimum requirement for ‘show us your snatch,’” that’s what Alid had quipped straight after that.

But Woller kept on gabbling, “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, I’ve got to do that?”

When Moper storms ahead with that ultra-sub Wilmutt, right across the open field, and Alid directs the athlete up the outer path, Garick shrugs his shoulders and accepts his lot. He’s slapped this girl’s bum once or twice already, just to get a rise from Alid. It had wobbled pretty nicely - she might be rounder than the athlete but she was still quite firm - plus she’d flinched a massive twitch which was actually quite funny. And she was who he’d got for now - a year twelve, but clearly not one used to being targeted. A nice big reactor. He decided he could have a bit of fun with this one after all.

“Go up this track. Yeah, to the left, the path near the road.”

A natural path just winding through the ivy, made by nothing but schoolgirl’s feet and padding foxes.

“Hands up on your head, alright? And don’t take them off.”

“Have I really got to do just whatever you say?” She’s got a coat in one hand cause it was raining this morning - short, like all these orange girls have been told, not to cover their skirts when they’re travelling to school. He takes it off her, sticks it over one shoulder, then she does what he’s just told her, folding her fingers up on top of her head. It makes the girl’s breasts stick out through her shirt. She’s not as big as Wilmutt - SX, as they all know that girl from BaseGirlies - but she’s still got a couple of fill-your-hands-up jubblies.

“Slow down,” he says. Then he jumps in and gives her arse a meaty pair of up-smacks.

She squeals and gabbles, “God, oh god.” Her hands have jumped off her head so her big mop of curly auburn hair springs out, but she puts them back again whe he points and her hair is pressed back in. She cranes her head to see if he’ll do it again.

“Ever been spanked in the woods before?” he asks.

She shakes her head vigorously. He spanks her bum again, then he does it like they all did with the girl in the men’s bog, up between her legs.

She actually turns around this time. Hands off her head, she points. “You’re not allowed to do that!”

“Oh I am,” he says. “I really am. Read all the rules me, and that’s nothing, is that! Don’t you remember Dickle, this morning? Girls over sixteen, spankings - below the neck - anywhere at all. Unrestricted.”

“They’re not!” she insists.

He says, “Hands on your head!” which he’s gratified to see she hesitantly does. Then he pulls a few sheets from his work shorts back pocket. He hunts through for a minute, then turns the sheets and shows them. “Number eleven.”

She starts to read. “It says buttocks and thigh backs.”

“For fourteen and fifteen year olds,” he tells her. Then he turns the sheet back and reads out loud. “It lets you spank, ‘any areas between waist and lower thighs for sixteen year olds,’ and they’re ‘not to be restricted below the neck for older girls. Which I think, that’s you, right? Cause you’re a year twelve? Not restricted. So, anywhere I feel like, shoulders to tippy-toes and all stations in-between. And just so you know, it also says, ‘There is no requirement to limit hand spankings by number - frequency - intensity - or time.’ And thats for all you girls. So I think you’ll agree that means, not just anywhere I feel like, but as often as I want.”

She’s frowning at him now. She peeps, “Really?”

“Yeah. As fast as I want...”

Her mouth does a pout.

“As hard as I want...”

Here eyes flare wider.

“And for as long as I want. And that’s just the spankings! One paragraph! This thing’s got thirty eight paragraphs! I’d read you the lot, but it’ll take all fucking hour and I’ve got better things to do.”

“And they’ve given you the list?”

“We’ve all see it, course, yeah. I picked this one up from the back of assembly. Trust me when I tell you, these HP rules for Orange girls - you older ones especially - there’s not a big lot you can imagine that they don’t let us do. So don’t start complaining when all I’ve bloody done yet is some soft little starter spank up between your legs!”

She’s staring, mouth gaping, eyes wide, breathing hard. In her put-on, squeaky girl-voice she asks, “Does that mean you can spank my tits as well?”

The way she talks, he thinks, you’d think she was crying, but I can’t see any tears. Showing her some printed rules seems to have shut her up a bit. He turns her and spanks her bum to move her down the path. The pants this gets from her are huffy, trying to sound a bit offended, but when he tells her, “Stand with your legs apart,” she does it with a little whine - she knows what’s coming - but she’s still done what he’s told her. When he smacks between her legs from the back, she stiffens up and brings them back together, thigh to thigh. But he tells her, “Get them legs back wide!” and she does it with a left-right shudder. He threatens, “Move your legs together again, I’ll spank you there till you start to think it’s normal!”

She opens he legs even wider with a whine.

He says,” Good. Don’t be stingy, now. You heard that Mr Dickle before and you seen how that other girl he’s always spanking does it.”

“Rossa Wilmutt’s super slutty though,” she squeaks out a huff. Then staggers both legs even further apart, trying to look over her shoulder at the bright-faced, grinning man-close-to-a-boy.

He hovers a hand just under her crotch. “You got no problem me spanking you here, right?” He pats with just fingers.

She shakes her big-hair head, hands pressing in tight.

“Or here?” He pats her bum, close to her crotch. She shakes her head.

“Or here?” He pats the creamy-smooth skin of her inner thigh so high he’s brushing one finger on her knickers. Then he starts to smack with a giggle in his throat - first thigh, then bum, then between her legs with his fingers up on her fleshy pudenda. It all makes Woller jump and squeal as she tries to keep her legs stamped apart.

There are voices to their left - younger lads, Choller thinks. Coalbrook Road’s not far through the trees, just behind that old wrought iron fence.

“It’s got to be that Humbler!” he hears a young voice skreeking. He isn’t surprised - the school’s all set up to be live-streamed today. And there’s been a notice up, on Kennigwort’s corner of the SPD, saying there’s a live stream coming Saturday. And he’d checked it out again this morning, before he came to work. It included action pictures of the ultra-slutty Wilmutt and the gorgeous Scutter girl. It had read:

Godminster All Girls

He slaps FX, (fresh, yr 12) Erma Woller up between her legs again.

“Go forward a bit. Keep your legs like that.”

“There’s voices,” she says.

“So what?” he says. He spanks her again. She grunts, two-steps forward, right and left, hands sticking to her head.

“We’re going towards them!”

He slaps her again - her bottom this time, and she wide-staggers forward with her torso rocking, wobbly.

“They’ll see us!”

“I mean, again, so what?”

Choller does know there’s a rule about this though. Punishments can be carried out anywhere on school grounds, but they should be out of sight of the general public.

The hidden boy’s voice says, “It’s a girl, look! I can see her!”

“Where?”

“Yeah, where? Oh, yeah!”

It all depends on who you class as general public, Choller thinks. These lads know there’s meant to be a Humbler going on - It’s got to be that humbler, they said. So they’ve come down to see if they can clock any action with their naked pearly bluess. In Choller’s book, that makes them interested bystanders, not general public.

The path is heading towards the fence, like a talk-through spot that’s been there for ages. Choller tells Woller, “Two steps when I smack. And don’t close up your legs.”

“Why?” she asks, whiny. “They’ll see me!”

“Cause I say so,” he tells her, and this time smacks her bum.

Whens she clumps further forward he can see where the lads are. They’ve got their faces pressed between thick black uprights of the wrought iron fence, like they’re looking in through prison bars. The gaps are just wide enough for a pair of straight-on eyes to see through.

Choller slaps the girl’s bum again. The path goes close right up to where the faces peer through.

“Mister, is she doing a humbler?”

“Yeah,” says Choller. “How old are you, lads?”

“Old enough!” says one. “Aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” says another.

Choller can make out four faces now. Erma Woller is blushing bright red.

“Can you show us how you slap her?” another of the faces asks, as a third disappears, then shows up two gaps in the uprights along.

Choller smacks the girl several times and she thumps a few steps on, but closes up her legs.

“I told you, keep them wide apart,” he says, and slaps Woller’s left inner thigh, then her right.

“I feel stupid,” she squeaks, breathy, to him, though she’s moved her feet apart a bit more.

One of the boys laughs, then another, then a third.

Choller does it harder this time, giving three sharp slaps to her left inner thigh. The girl squeals and jerks the leg much wider.

“I told you,” he says, “you do what I tell you. Don’t bring them back together!”

“Oh, god,” she says.

“I told you we’d see something!” the third boy from the left says.

Woller is now quite close to the lads. She’s breathing pretty heavily.

“What’s she called?” asks the furthest boy right.

“FX, I think,” says Choller, “on BaseGirlies, anyway.”

But Woller has already husked out, “Erma.”

“Erma!” says the boy furthest left. “That’s a stupid name! Like my granny!”

Number three, the one who’d told them they’d see something, says, “Bet her tits are better than your granny’s, Looper!” Then he asks Choller, “Can she show us her tits then?”

“Shall we give em a show then, Erma?” Choller asks.

Woller shakes her head, tight.

“Go on!” says the boy.

Choller is now grinning from ear to ear. The girl is blushing furiously. He says, “show these nice lads your tits please, Erma.” Then, when she hesitates, he peppers her bum with a volley of smacks. “Quick!” he tells her.

It jerks Woller into action. Hands off her head, she starts scrabbling at the buttons on her crisp white shirt. As she does, she’s breathing heavily and her fingers are fumbling. Choller makes this worse by smacking her again. One button gets undone, then another. Then her white bra is showing. There’s a little cheer from a couple of the boys.

“What school d’you go to, lads?” asks Choller. Kennigwort?”

“Pavely,” says the lad who told them they’d see something.

“Junior or Upper?”

“Upper,” says the left-hand boy, Looper.

“Right. So you’re all fourteen, at least?”

“Yeah!” says the lad.

“Yeah,” the others mumble.

“Good,” says Choller. “Long way here from Pavely, nearly out of the district.”

“Two buses,” says Looper.

Woller’s fingers are still unbuttoning her shirt, but she’s slowed right down. Choller smacks her bum and says, “Come on, quicker!”

She swallows. She’s down to the last one. She slips the button through its eye.

“Now the bra,” says Choller.

“Tits out for the lads!” says the last boy on the right.

Woller’s worried face looks directly at Choller. Her fingers have gone to the clasp in the middle of her generous bra. Erma Woller isn’t the smallest of girls.

“Oh, just get on with it,” he tells her, impatient, “you’re not stripping down a pub.”

“Yeah!” says Looper, “Get on with it! Get your tits out, Erma!”

She unclasps the button, resists, then suddenly lets the two sides drop. And Erma Woller’s handfulls fall out. Her breasts turn out to have up-turning, puffy, generous nipples, each pointing outwards by fifteen degrees. They’re heavy enough to plump down into an under-breast crease. The lads cheer again. Woller steps back reactively.