Anonymous - Dara

I was miserable and unhappy most of the time. That is, until a sixteen-year-old prefect, Nicholas Dawney, took me under his care and protection. To a boy of my age he had the power and status of a god. A god who could give you six vicious cuts across your bared buttocks with his cane for infringements of the rules of the house, or magnanimously grant you small favours if he was in a good mood. In lower school life, floggings and bullying were accepted by everyone as normal and I went in daily fear of both. Running blindly along a corridor one afternoon, pursued by a group of boys who had been tormenting me, I collided with Nicholas Dawney and knocked him off balance. His fury was frightening to behold. Grabbing me by the ear, he pulled me into his study declaring in a voice icy cold with suppressed anger that he was going to give me six cuts with his cane. Crazed with terror, I fumbled with my buttons when he ordered me to remove my trousers. I turned almost faint and nearly fell on my face as I bent over to expose my bare bum.

'Prepare to take your punishment like a man,' he barked as he raised his cane in readiness for the first cut. I gritted my teeth, hoping I would not cry out in agony when the cane cut into my tender flesh. Nothing happened; the suspense was unbearable and I looked up trembling with abject fear to see Dawney, trouserless, with a lump of butter in his hand, gazing at my buttocks as if transfixed. Pushing the greasy butter into the hole between my cheeks, he fondled the soft flesh of my bum with his other hand.

I had heard vague hints of immoralities going on in the school, but had seen nothing of what the boys might be referring to and, in my innocence, submitted to the butter treatment and the loving caresses only too thankful that my person wasn't being inflicted with the cutting cane. When he pushed his rod into my bum I gasped and fell to my knees. It wasn't too painful and much more preferable as a punishment than the cane. Getting his fingers around my dicky he jockeyed me with forceful thrusts of his rod. To begin with he rode me at a rather gentle canter, but in a short while the pace increased to a furious gallop that finished with him flopping over me panting for breath.

Being Nicholas Dawney's fag brought about a change in my daily routine. I had to rise at six every morning and, by the light of a tallow candle, prepare him a breakfast consisting of tea or coffee, boiled eggs, buttered toast and grilled chicken, leaving me with little time for my own breakfast of bread and butter. Apart from a small piece of beef or mutton with potatoes at midday, bread and butter for us younger boys was our main source of sustenance. If it had not been for the food parcels sent by my father who had been through the same experience in his youth, I would undoubtedly have starved to death. It was costing my father two-hundred-and-fifty pounds a year in school fees for this deprivation and the privilege of wearing a uniform of a black jacket, waistcoat and a white shirt with a black tie, whilst being bullied by masters and prefects alike.

This miserable existence was only relieved when my fagmaster, Nicholas Dawney, took me on his knee and showered me with loving kisses. He had a predilection for kissing me on the neck near my ladybird birthmark. Sitting on his lap always made him horny and it wasn't long before he was loosening my lower garments to indulge his taste for buggery. I became very fond of Nicholas and in time came to look forward, each day, with joyful anticipation to our sessions of passionate intimacy. Within months I became his adoring slave, living only for his kisses and prepared to do anything to please him.

I cried myself to sleep every night for over a week when he left school to become a freshman at Oxford University. When, in turn, I became an undergraduate at the same university I discovered that he had finished his studies the year previously and had gone on to become a commissioned officer with the Grenadier Guards.

At Oxford I became an enthusiastic member of the University Theatre Club, helping out as a stage hand to begin with and taking small parts in performances staged by the club. Neglecting my studies I became more and more enmeshed in Oxford's theatrical activities and spent a lot of my time at the theatre in London. Obsessed with the stage, I was determined to make the theatre my career. Reading plays and writing reviews of performances I had seen in London occupied my time most evenings. Very little of my work was published but I got an enormous thrill whenever an article of mine appeared in print.

Life went along reasonably smoothly in this fashion until my last year at the university. It was the summer vacation and I was mooching around at home in a very apathetic way when I came across a groom in the stables who had the facial features and build of a Grecian god. Neither of us spoke, but looks sometimes express what volumes of words cannot. I hadn't felt such excitement in my being since last I saw Nicholas Dawney. After Nicholas and I had parted I had kept myself to myself, veering away from close friendship with anyone however tempted I might be to further an acquaintanceship. Trembling before the lust in this young man's eyes, I turned and strode quickly back to the house determined to avoid the vicinity of the stables in the future.

Possibly because of the agitation I felt that day, I brought the discussion at dinner around to my wish for a career in the theatre. It took a great deal of courage to raise this matter because my father considered: 'The theatre is an ancillary to the brothels, and those who tread its boards are on a par with gipsies and fornicating trollops pandering to the worst tastes in society.'

On hearing my theatrical ambitions, his face went purple and swelled with shocked anger. Some food caught in his throat and he coughed and spluttered as he repeatedly smote the table with his clenched fist. Fearing the wrath that was about to fall about my ears I beat a hasty retreat to my bedroom and locked the door.

The next morning I waited until he had left the house before coming down for breakfast. After my meal I strolled outdoors to enjoy the bright sunshine. It was a heavenly morning when nature's creations show themselves in all their glory. There was poetry in the sun's warm rays as I wandered about hither and thither as if in a dream. I swear that I was not conscious of where my steps were leading me until I found myself in the stables alone with the handsome groom.

He held me spellbound with a long steady stare, his eyes never leaving my face. Moving very slowly he came up alongside me; his hands stroked me everywhere as he gently manoeuvred me into one of the stalls. Buttons were undone and, when my trousers slid around my ankles, he pushed me on to a bale of straw and removed his trousers. As he came down on me an almighty roar thundered through my head and I heard the man above me cry out in pain as my father's riding crop whiplashed his rear.

It is too painful to relate the uproar of my father's anger at finding me in such a shameful position with one of his grooms. Suffice to say that I ill never be able to erase from my memory the humiliation and mortification I felt pulling up my trousers with my father viewing me with the most loathing.

The next morning, after a sleepless night, I stood before my father's desk in the library, dejected and weary, without hope and not caring whether I lived or died. Such was his disgust that he was unable to look at me when speaking.

'You are beyond redemption and have brought shame to a family name that has always been held in high esteem in society,' he said coldly. 'Nevertheless it is my duty, however hopeless the task may be, to do all in my power to make a man of you. I have been living for the time when you would marry and produce an heir to carry on the family name. You are my only child, the last of the line of the Kennets. Much depends on you.'