can’t speak, I’m too engrossed in what I’m witnessing.
We are looking down into a plain, cell-like basement room. The exposed brickwork is painted white and bare of decoration. A bank of four old-fashioned school desks take up the central space, while facing us at the end is a chalkboard with some Latin verb conjugations written on it. The verb of the day appears to be Flagello – to flagellate. Very apposite, given that the stern-looking middle-aged man standing beside the board is wielding a crook-handled cane of the type that was banned in schools when I was a wee girl.
At three of the four desks, their backs to us, sit two overgrown schoolboys and an overgrown schoolgirl. I had no idea you could get school uniforms in adult sizes but obviously there’s a niche market out there.
At the front, beside the ‘teacher’, a woman of about thirty, pigtailed and mini-kilted, stands on a chair with her hands on her head. She is trembling a little, her face is flushed, but it’s unclear whether fear or excitement predominates in her emotions. I suppose it must be excitement, given that the sight of her in her humiliating predicament is making my stomach squirm a little and my knickers dampen. I try to attune myself to what might be going through her mind and find myself surprisingly keen to experience it at firsthand.
I hold my breath, then let it out when the teacher lifts the hem of her skirt with the tip of his cane, revealing the kind of navy-blue gym knickers that went out in about 1975. She is made to hold the skirt up and turn around, giving the class an eyeful of her full, rounded bum.
The teacher says something, swishing his cane through the air, and she steps off the chair, carefully, hands still on head, then she bends and places her palms flat on the seat, sticking out that arse so that the gym knickers stretch and outline it in pitiless detail.
The teacher addresses his pupils, punctuating his words by smacking the hand that isn’t holding the cane down on the disgraced girl’s bottom repeatedly. Her flesh quivers but she keeps her position. How painful is it? I wish I could hear through the heavy glazing. I want to know what that sounds like.
He stops and says something to the girl, who stands and then peels down her knickers to her knees. My breathing is ragged as the freshly spanked pink globes are revealed to shameful view. God, what must she be thinking and feeling? If she’s anything like me, she’ll be soaking wet around the crotch. I’ve had this kind of fantasy for years, but never expected to see it in action.
She reassumes the position, sticking her arse out at the teacher’s injunction and spreading her legs wide enough for me to be able to see, even at this distance, that she is aroused. Doesn’t it bother her that everyone can see?
I want to put my hand down my skirt, but the inconvenient presence of tourist guy thwarts me. For his part, his eyes are on stalks, his long nose almost butting the bars in his eagerness to get the best view. What a voyeur. Yes, I’m a hypocrite.
The teacher flexes his cane then positions himself at a suitable distance from his victim’s well-presented derrière and draws back his weapon.
He holds it there for so long that my chest begins to ache with expectant tension. Then he flicks his wrist, the cane blurs through the air and makes contact with her bottom. I flinch, and so does she.
‘Ouch,’ says tourist guy.
A line of white appears on her skin, then it turns redder and redder until she has a magnificent scarlet welt across the broad centre of her arse. It looks wildly painful. I want to know how wildly painful it is. And I want tourist guy to fuck off so I can masturbate whilst contemplating this. But that’s going to have to wait until I’m in my bed, I suppose.
The teacher lays six strokes in total, and the girl somehow miraculously stays in position, though she flexes her feet and bobs up and down after each cruel blow. She is made to kiss the rod while I admire the gorgeous pattern of red stripes she bears on her bum for all to see.
Teacher tucks her skirt into her waistband so she can’t hide her punished condition and makes her stand back on the chair, while he turns back to the board and the conjugation of Latin verbs.
Then, disastrously, he looks up, directly at us, and freezes in horror before opening a door and bellowing something out of it.
‘Shit!’
In my haste to back away, I fall on my behind on the pavement. The massive black door is opening, the security staff on their way out.
Tourist guy yanks me up by the elbow. ‘Come on,’ he urges, taking to his heels and running with me to the end of the street and into the council estate beyond, dodging around the blocks at breakneck speed. He has long legs and apparently superhuman stamina, and my heart is banging fit to explode from my chest by the time we hit the nearest pub and take refuge inside, me wheezing, him laughing.
‘What’s funny?’ I pant, sinking on to a banquette, staring at him.
He has a crazy laugh. He looks crazy all round. What the hell I’m doing in a pub with him after watching a live sex show I just don’t know.
‘This is funny! I am in London three hours and I love it already. Is it like this always?’
‘Not really.’ I regain some rhythm to my breathing. ‘Well, a bit, maybe. Shit, do you think they saw our faces? I work in the building opposite. I don’t want to be recognised.’
‘Don’t worry. What do you drink?’
‘I could murder a stiff vodka and tonic.’
‘Ah, vodka. I like you. Right, stay there, I buy.’
I watch him go to the bar. He has this swagger about him, and he obviously charms the pants off the barmaid, who giggles and blushes her way through the transaction. At one point he leans forwards to let her touch his moustache. What a tart. Why am I even in this pub with him? I should just go home, but I feel the need to deconstruct what just happened, and nobody else would understand, so I stay.
He comes back with two tumblers of vodka and one bottle of tonic, setting them down with a flourish. He seats himself opposite me and flashes me a crooked smile.
‘This is great,’ he says. ‘This morning I am in shitty apartment in Moscow and now I am in London pub with a nice girl. Thank you to my good luck.’
‘You’re Russian,’ I say, finding it a little odd that I’m making small talk with a man I just watched a kinky schoolroom scene alongside. Should we not maybe mention it?
He thrusts out an arm. ‘Dimitri,’ he says. He offers a hand to shake, or so I think. When I put mine in his, he raises it to his lips and kisses it. I am so undone by this that I forget to tell him my name until he prompts me.
‘Rosie,’ I tell him, somewhat reluctantly.
‘English Rosie,’ he says with a charming smile. When you look at him properly, he’s actually quite cute even if his style suggests his life is one long Glastonbury Festival. His eyes are an amazing steely blue and the moustache deflects attention away from cheekbones you could cut yourself on. Plus there’s something endearing about his enthusiasm and confidence. He has the air of a man who loves life and is determined to live it. That’s not so common in a city full of achingly self-conscious hipsters. It’s attractive.
I eye him over the rim of my vodka glass, wondering where the evening will go. It slipped out of my grasp long ago and now I feel that all I can do is let it take its own course.
‘So,’ I say, unable to avoid the topic any longer, ‘this is turning out to be quite an, er, interesting evening.’
‘Interesting, yes. I have questions. Many questions. First – what happens next?’
‘Next?’ I don’t quite understand what he means. ‘We drink our vodka?’
‘No, with those people. That man beats that girl. What are they doing now?’
‘I’ve no idea! I guess he repeats the experience with the other three.’
‘You