SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS
501
A little later, I forget how, I learned that it was not after
all "Mrs. Form" who would do the beating. I cannot remember
whether it was that very night that I wetted my
bed
again, but at
any rate I did wet it again quite soon. Oh, the despair, the feeling
of cruel injl:lstice, after all my prayers and nsolutions, at once
again
waking between the clammy sheets! There was no chance of hiding
what I had done. The grim statuesque matron, Daphne by name>
arrived in the dormitory specially to inspect my bed. She pulled back
the clothes, then drew herself up, and dreaded words seemed to come
rolling out of her like a peal of thunder:
"REPORT YOURSELF to the headmaster after breakfast!"
I do not know how many times I heard that phrase during my
early years at Crossgates. It was only very rarely that it did not
mean a beating. The words always had a portentous sound in my
ears, like muffled drums or the words of the death sentence.
When I arrived to report myself, Bingo was doing something or
other at the long shiny table in the ante-room to the study. Her
uneasy eyes searched me as I went past. In the study Mr. Simpson.
nicknamed Sim, was waiting. Sim was a round-shouldered curiously
oafish-looking man, not large but shambling in gait, with a chubby
face which was like that of an overgrown baby, and which was
capable of good humor. He knew, of course, why I had been sent
to him, and had already taken a bone-handled riding crop out of
the cupboard, but it was part of the punishment of reporting your–
self that you had to proclaim your offense with your own lips. When
I had said my say, he read me a short but pompous lecture, then
seized me by the scruff of the neck, twisted me over and began
beating me with the riding crop. He had a habit of continuing
his
lecture while he flogged )'ou, and I remember the words "you dir-ty
lit-tle boy" keeping time with the blows. The beating did not
hurt (perhaps as it was the first time, he was not hitting me very
hard), and I walked out feeling very much better. The fact that the
beating had not hurt was a sort of victory and partially wiped out
the shame of the bed-wetting. I was even incautious enough to wear
a
grin
on my face. Some small boys were hanging about in the
p~age
outside the door of the ante-room.
"D'you get the cane?"
"It didn't hurt," I said proudly.
