supplicium post mortem

© Casey Morgan 2010

The Baron poured out the brandy for himself and his visitor, drawing his own chair closer to the fire against the winter evening.

“I suppose,” the visitor said after tasting the brandy, “this is when we ought to discuss what we have so assiduously avoided discussing.”

A tension left the Baron, one only palpable in its departure. Delahay had not changed after all. “You’ve always been ruthless in the face of delicacy,” the Baron said.

“And you’ve always appreciated it,” Delahay replied. “Well, almost always.”

They shared a smile over the memory of their encounters, many years before, at school. The Baron (then known simply as Merlingham, or Basil to his intimates) had first encountered Paul Delahay at their Public School in Hampshire. Delahay was some five years the junior, and their relationship had its roots in that of prefect and “difficult” junior. Many years had passed since then, many experiences on both sides. Delahay’s physique displayed those years less plainly than the Baron’s. His ash-blond hair showed no signs of the gray which streaked through the Baron’s. Both men were fit, but Delahay’s figure cut the sportsman. While fate had been kinder to Delahay in looks, it had smiled more warmly on the Baron in fortune. Delahay’s ascendancy at university had not been followed by material success. He now found himself nearly forty, childless, widowed, and between appointments as a tutor. It had taken little to persuade him to accept an invitation to the Baron’s chateau in Switzerland to offer consultation on what the Baron termed “an awkward project,” no further explanation forthcoming.

“You remember my sister, Miranda?” the Baron essayed.

“How could I forget the delicious harpy?” Delahay revealed a smirk at the reference to one summer holiday spent at Merlingham Hall. The Baron had only been present for a week of it, but he was fairly confident Delahay had seduced Miranda (a year Delahay’s senior) as well as their brother, Tom (two years Delahay’s junior and his close associate at school).

Over three brandies, the Baron recounted Tom’s death on the autobahn; Miranda’s marriage, estrangement from the family, and disappearance at the hands of South American dictators; and, finally, the existence of a niece, whose sole relation the Baron had proved to be. This niece was in fact the awkward project. Orphaned for all intents and purposes, mis-educated, difficult, thirteen years of age.

Delahay’s eyes betrayed curiosity . “Mis-educated how?”

The Baron summarized the month since his niece had arrived. She was the product of ludicrous parents. They had carted her around the globe on a feverish career of Jellybyism, educating her (if indeed their methods merited the term, which he doubted) in a way that made the Baron want to fall upon them with fisticuffs, if they had been within thrashing distance. She spouted a disconnected jumble of history, politics, and folklore; she read voraciously and uncritically; she knew little of mathematics, something of modern languages, nothing of Latin or Greek, and while she cut a figure in verbal debate, her skills with pen and paper could most generously be described as primitive.

“She can’t write?”

“Not that one can decipher.”

Delahay’s face assumed the expression of a professional who knew his work: “In short, she is intelligent but undisciplined.”

“Quite.”

Delahay’s gaze drifted to the fire. “It does sound a desperate case,” he said. “Unfortunately, I am a tutor of boys.”

“Exclusively?”

Delahay hesitated. “She’s thirteen, you say?” The Baron nodded. “Girls that age belong with other girls, with schoolmistresses, or at least governesses. Not with tutors who specialize in preparing boys for Public School.”

“That’s the thing of it,” the Baron said. “The child has had a most unconventional upbringing. Conventional strategies are, I fear, useless.”

“Nevertheless,” Delahay began, but the Baron interrupted him in the blunt manner he once employed in the face of Delahay’s thirteen-year-old cheek:

“Do you imagine I haven’t tried all that?” the Baron demanded. He went on to narrate the disaster of his niece’s two-day attendance at the nearby school for young ladies, as well as the rapid departures of the governesses he had subsequently engaged. In the Baron’s untutored opinion, his niece was yet too uncivilized for female society. It was as much as he could do to keep her in a frock. He had come to the conclusion that nature ought not to be fought as much as engaged. And it was his fervent hope—his only hope—that Delahay might accept that engagement.

Delahay finished his brandy in silence, contemplating the Baron’s account. “My methods,” he said at last.

“Are quite traditional,” the Baron rejoined, “as my correspondents attest.”

“Correspondents?”

“You don’t imagine I’d attempt to engage a tutor I hadn’t thoroughly researched?”

“Ah.”

“I’d have thought, Delahay, that you would recall my thoroughness, if nothing else.”

Delahay had the grace to blush at the memory.

“I grant you a free hand,” the Baron continued. “If you’ve any qualms dealing directly with my niece, perhaps you will feel freer addressing yourself to my nephew.”

Delahay blinked, and continued to blush. “There’s a nephew as well?”

The Baron rang for a servant, who quickly appeared. “Bring Georgie here, please.” The servant bobbed and departed. The Baron refreshed their drinks. He said nothing further, but shortly the library door banged open, admitting a child flushed from the outdoors. The child looked to Delahay in the neighborhood of eleven. It wore wool trousers, layers of wool jumper, wet boots, as well as muffler, cap, and mittens covered in snow.

“Gracious, child, what do you call—”

“Rose said you wanted me at once,” the child interrupted.

“Have you only just returned?” the Baron asked, concerned. “I thought I made it clear you weren’t to be skiing in the dark.”

“It’s only just got dark,” the child retorted.

This was not quite true, but the Baron declined to pursue the matter. Instead he drew the dripping child over to the fire. “Say good evening, please, to Mr. Delahay.”

The child removed a snow-caked mitten and extended a cold, pink hand. “How do you do?” it inquired, with almost repugnant self-confidence.

“Quite well—”

“Delahay,” the Baron interrupted, “please meet my niece, Georgiana.”

*     *     *

Miranda had been older when Delahay knew her, a fully-matured seventeen, but in aspect and demeanor, this Georgiana quite resembled her mother. The impudent daring in the eyes, the mirthful lips, the unconstrained (perhaps unconstrainable) exuberance. Miranda’s dark hair had been worn in luxuriant locks pulled back in coquettish schoolgirl style. Georgiana’s tresses appeared to be recovering from a butcher job some two or three months since, whether in response to foreign custom or infestation, Delahay couldn’t guess. He was gripped by her likeness to a prep-school boy in need of a hair cut. Niece and nephew in one. He accepted the post on a trial basis for a fortnight.

He lost no time ordering the overdue haircut, and after surveying her hodgepodge of a wardrobe, he ordered some additions. He maintained a formal distance until the schoolroom and the child itself were prepared, a matter of three days. On the morning of the fourth day, he summoned her an hour before breakfast.

When she clomped into the schoolroom, he caught his breath. No longer Miranda, but Tom as he’d first known him. She wore the requisite short gray trousers, gray knee-socks, lace-up shoes, and a woolen middy top.

“Stop tugging at those stockings,” he told her. The tone of his voice garnered her attention. She stood still. He beckoned her forward and proceeded with his inspection: shoes suitably shined, clothing correct, just-barbered hair neat, face clean, hands & fingernails satisfactory. He nodded in approval.

“What have you got to teach me?” the girl demanded pertly.

Delahay declined to answer, instead pointing to the bench and table which had been set up near with window.

“It’s cold in here,” she complained.

“Cold is good for children,” he replied. “It helps them concentrate.”

She launched into a monologue about her sojourns in warmer climes, how ill-accustomed she was to the cold, how she always concentrated better when warm, how she in fact learned best outdoors in the sunshine, experiencing things. She was, she informed him, an Experiential Learner. There had been a fascinating old man in—

“That will do,” Delahay interrupted. “Sit down.” By some miracle, she sat. “Now,” he continued more kindly, “Georgie, I have the impression you have had an extraordinary number and quality of experiences for one your age?” Apparently disarmed by what she took as a compliment, she nodded. He proceeded to explain that the next logical step would be to acquire the sorts of experiences she had not already enjoyed. “Do you agree, Georgie, that such a program would be of value?” Again, she nodded. A peculiar feeling of deja-vu came over him, as he irrationally recalled Tom’s first day at their Public School and the way he had taken Tom under his wing—for all that involved.

“For this program to be a success, it is necessary that you consent to my authority as your tutor,” Delahay continued. He had never given such a speech to a pupil. Indeed, all of his previous pupils had submitted to his authority in preference to the authorities of their disgruntled fathers. But this pupil was in a sense terra incognita. Instinct, only, guided him.

“Before you can decide whether or not you consent to be my pupil,” Delahay told her, “you must have some idea of what you are getting into. Mustn’t you?”

She nodded a third time. Delahay cleared his throat and began his presentation: His pedagogy was of a perfectly traditional English character, he explained. Not only had he been at school with her uncles, but he had occupied the last fifteen years preparing boys for Public School. He explored her knowledge of the English Public School and was surprised to find it acceptable, for a girl, if garnered exclusively from the pages of literature. He spoke of the challenge and satisfaction of a classical eduction, of a systematic education, of a traditional education. He expected heavy resistance, but in less than a quarter of an hour, he had her in his thrall. This was the moment to conclude negotiations, he knew, but when he produced the contract he had drawn up, he felt himself losing confidence, nerve. Her appearance conjured so powerfully Tom as he’d been when Delahay first caught sight of him, and the daring curiosity in her mannerisms so entirely recalled her mother that Delahay found himself feeling as he had once felt toward each of them, in turn.

He bade her inspect the contract while he faced the windows to pull himself together. This pupil—Georgie, or George as she would be more properly addressed in her current wardrobe—was neither Tom nor Miranda, and more importantly, Delahay was not the rakish youth he had been when he had known them. This pupil was more than a quarter century his junior. The only attraction must be—and indeed was—that of master to student. He had felt this attraction  towards previous pupils, and he knew that it had nothing to do with other attractions. He, as all true teachers, felt toward his charges a chastely passionate, tenderly austere partiality for them, for the true selves he discerned in them and wished ardently to bring to the fore.

“What does correction mean? Exactly,” Georgiana demanded.

He did not turn from the window, but merely listed several titles she claimed to have read. “Do you recall how the boys in those stories were corrected?”

“Yes.” He heard her blush, though he did not see it.

“Well, then.”

He heard her hesitate, and then take up the document again. There was no need, he told himself, to have lost his nerve. Despite its peculiarities, this case was no different from any other. Always, he began as if upon tabula rasa, imagining he knew nothing, imagining he possessed no worthwhile experience or insight. And always the impulses arrived when required, from where he knew not. He had a reputation for establishing a quick and firm rapport with pupils. He had no idea where his instincts came from, but no matter how difficult the case, he always found-and was finding now-the child a pleasing puzzle once he got it in the schoolroom. This one, as he turned to face her, showed signs of being more nuanced than he predicted. The Baron had led him to expect a pert, precocious nightmare, as headstrong as she was ignorant. As she handed him the contract, her name scrawled in pencil at the bottom, he saw something else. Not so ignorant as all that, one ruled more by hunger than complacency, one who appeared to pay closer attention than he had been led to expect.

He extended his hand, and she took it. A firm handshake, looking him in the eye. “Right then,” he said meeting her gaze, “I think you had better call me Sir.”

*     *     *

She wasn’t sure what she had been imagining when she’d put her name to the contract. Probably she hadn’t been thinking straight, due to his sly–and unfair!–move tackling her before breakfast. In her unfed state, she had let herself be carried away by all kinds of nonsense, imagining the rapid digestion of Latin grammar and a leisurely study of the Aeneid in the original. Instead, she found herself oppressed nearly to the breaking point by her absolute least favorite topic of all time: handwriting. Or, as her tutor called it, Lettering. She had explained to him that she had a condition called Disc Raffia. It meant she would never be able to do joined-up writing. He had dismissed her explanations, even when she scoured her memory for the technical term–small motor breakdown–conjuring up images of their jeep with a puncture. She could and would learn joined-up writing, he declared, as well as joined-up thinking before he was a week older. Thus the morning had passed more slowly and more frustratingly than political rallies in languages she didn’t speak.

He had forced her to write with a dip pen, and had threatened her with Correction if she broke another nib (this after she decimated three). He forced her to hold it with an unnatural grip. He forced her to sit with a tiring posture, draw loop after loop on a paper without lines, and demanded that she fill an entire side without a single ink blot before being allowed to do anything more interesting. After the first half-hour her hands, sleeve, paper, and table top were awash in India ink, and she wanted nothing more than to kick things, or to run away and go skiing down the mountain.

“George,” her tutor said sharply, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to do better than this. Much better.”

“I can’t!” she protested. “It’s so stupid!”

He took the pen from her hand and set it aside. He closed the hateful ink-pot. He removed her paper, leaving the table clear. “Stand up,” he said sternly. She slammed her elbows on the table and buried her head in her arms. She wanted to be back in bed, under the covers where it was warm, where she could think her thoughts, where her hand wasn’t cramping from the stupidest of stupid things.

Fingers grasped her ear and pulled her to her feet. “I do expect obedience,” he said gravely. “Now come here.”

Mercifully, he released her ear, but then shifted his grip to the back of her neck, clutching her more firmly than she had ever been touched there and conducting her around the table to the open space near the window. Letting go of her neck, he instead grasped her wrist and, sitting down in a straight-backed chair, pulled her to his side.

“Children who do not pay attention must expect to be corrected,” he scolded.

She wanted to tell him she wasn’t a child, but instead she protested that she had been concentrating. The trouble was the small motors and their hopeless breakdowns, the–

“The only breakdown I see is the general breakdown of discipline which as far as I can tell has been a constant feature in the landscape of your education.” She was still sifting through that sentence when she felt herself tipped off balance and quite suddenly falling forward, to land across his knees.

“Hey!”

“Do you know what discipline means, Georgie?” He adjusted her as he spoke, holding her firmly across the waist with one arm.

“Grown-ups getting their own way all the time!”

He did not reply, but before she could elaborate, his other hand had fallen across her bottom, delivering a sharp, unexpected smack.

“Hey!”

His only response was a flurry of smacks, surprising in their force and sting, even through the woolen fabric of her shorts.

“Ow! That’s–”

“Hold still,” he murmured, grasping her more tightly and continuing his assault until she found herself gasping for breath. Only then did he cease, though he didn’t release her. “Having self-discipline means having at your command the tools necessary to do what you want and need to do.”

She stayed still, and contemplated.

“If you are ill-disciplined, you will not have the wherewithal to bring your projects to fruition.”

“It isn’t my project to make loops with a stupid piece of metal!” He replied with a renewed barrage, eliciting yelps and fruitless wriggling, until she again gasped for breath.

“It is presumably your project to explore and communicate your thoughts in writing, and to do that your lettering must be legible. Furthermore, the practice of copper plate will improve your discipline in other areas. When you are able to letter satisfactorily, perhaps you will be ready to learn, properly.”

“I can learn properly!”

“You have yet to learn anything today, despite instruction,” he declared, resuming his correction. “You haven’t learned how to address me despite being told. You haven’t learned how to sit at the table.”

“I did sit—ow!”

“You haven’t learned to control that tongue of yours.”

“Ow!!”

“And you haven’t learned how to use a pen without blotting the page.”

“Ow! All right! Sorry!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Sorry!”

“Pardon?”

“I said sorry!” she bellowed, wriggling uselessly.

“Perhaps I’ll be able to hear you once you demonstrate proficiency with our first lesson,” he said, concentrating now on the tops of her thighs. She struggled—with his arm and with her pride. It carried on painfully, until she lost to the former and defeated the latter.

“Sorry, sir!”

And it stopped. She was gasping again, more than she liked. He lay his hand across her back.

“Right.” He did not elaborate, but merely held her there, his hand warming her shoulder blades, as she caught her breath. She felt herself lifted and stood beside him, her wrist held again by his hand. Her face felt hot. Her bottom felt odd. She felt odd. He turned her to face him, now holding both of her wrists.

“Discipline isn’t grownups getting their own way all the time,” he said. “Discipline is you getting your own way over your passions and vices.”

She felt a pang of hunger, somewhere not quite in her stomach. “I don’t have vices,” she protested.

He squeezed her wrists. She stiffened, expecting to be scolded again, if not tipped back across his knee. Instead he allowed a smile to play on his lips. “I can see we have a lot of work ahead of us. But,” he looked across the room as the breakfast bell rang, “not, I think, on an empty stomach.” He released her and stood, straightening his clothing. “Pull up those stockings,” he said, “and tidy your shirt.” He waited while she did so, and then placed his hand—the hand which had so confidently administered the correction—on the back of her neck again. He led her thus to the breakfast room, where her uncle was waiting.

*     *     *

The Baron had enjoyed Delahay’s company the last three days. The younger man was impeccably educated, wryly witty, and still to the Baron’s delight rather naughty beneath it all. The Baron appreciated intelligent conversation and companionship taking exercise outdoors. As Delahay made his entrance into the breakfast room, his hand guiding a startlingly subdued Georgiana, the Baron was flooded with memories, and emotions.

“Made a beginning already, have you?” he asked casually.

His niece surprised him by blushing, while Delahay, whose ears were so prone to turning red with embarrassment, remained serene. “Yes,” he said, no further explanation forthcoming. Finding himself unexpectedly tight with curiosity, the Baron sat at the breakfast table and poured two and a quarter cups of coffee. The quarter cup he topped with milk and handed to his niece. He had been appalled, when she arrived, by her gustatory habits, which included regular breakfasts of black coffee. He had formed a hypthosis that the child’s small stature was a result of poor nutrition. Apparently, she and her parents had practiced an extreme form of vegetarianism which apparently forbade not only fish, but also milk, eggs, butter, cheeses, and probably every other decent foodstuff. The Baron had been able to wean the girl off of full black coffee and onto most dairy products (fresh fruit and vegetables being unplentiful  in Switzerland in March), but he had not yet succeeded in converting her to meat or eggs. Accordingly, she breakfasted on muesli and yogurt, while the Baron and Delahay ate eggs, bacon, and toast.

This morning, however, her appetite appeared disturbed. She picked at her cereal and fidgeted in her seat. More astoundingly, she offered no unsolicited opinions as they discussed the previous evening’s chamber concert. The Baron was about to ask if she was feeling quite all right when Delahay addressed her:

“Do you plan to eat that, George, or merely prod it?” The girl blushed again and declared that she wasn’t hungry. “In that case,” Delahay continued, “finish your milk and return to the schoolroom. I expect to find at least one unblemished row when I join you in a quarter hour.”

Blushing even more deeply—an unprecedented and charming development—his niece emptied her cup, wiped her mouth, and made for the door. As the latch turned, Delahay’s mild voice arrested her.

“Say good morning to your uncle.”

A pause. She held onto the doorknob. “See you later,” she said.

Then Delahay was on his feet, his hands gripping her shoulders and conducting her to the Baron’s side. “Let’s try that again, shall we?”

She gaped. “Good morning, Uncle,” Delahay prompted.

“Have a good morning… Uncle Basil,” she managed.

Delahay conducted her to the door and, opening it with one hand, he used his other to deliver a firm swat to the seat of her short trousers. “Off you go, then,” he said cheerfully. She fled.

*     *     *

Delahay resumed his place at the table, heart pounding a bit quicker in the aftermath of his public improvisation. He’d never before found it troublesome to correct pupils in front of their guardians, but the unexpected atmosphere of… performance before royal audience? endowed the task with a certain charge.

The Baron grinned at him. “Successful morning so far, then?”

Delahay buttered his toast coolly. The Baron tactfully returned to discussion of the chamber concert. Eventually, the clock chimed nine and Delahay excused himself.  “Incidentally,” he said, folding his napkin, “that birch grove across the way, yours?”

“Of course.”

“When’s it leaf?”

The Baron suppressed a smile. “Another four weeks. When’s the best time, for your purposes?”

Delahay paused at the door. “Buds are a benefit, leaves a nuisance. So… another fortnight.”

“You’re formidable when you speak as an expert.”

Delahay looked up, surprised. The Baron’s mouth twitched in a way Delahay found he recognized. “In the meantime,” the Baron continued, “will those willow switches do?”

Delahay nodded with, he hoped, an austere agreement. He’d made arrangements directly with the groundskeeper for the willow switches, but he realized then that nothing occurred in the chateau without the Baron’s knowledge. Feeling distinctly well-fed, Delahay returned to the schoolroom….