What stayed most clearly in the reader’s memory, however, was the reaction of one of the girls.
She became extremely interested in whether any of the boys had ever received the cane.
She asked them individually:
“Did you ever get the cane?”
As it happened, none of them had.
The reader has occasionally wondered why she was so curious.
Her own grammar school apparently did not use corporal punishment, according to both former pupils’ recollections and later historical discussions about the school.
Perhaps her curiosity dated from primary school in the late 1950s.
Primary schools in the area did use corporal punishment, although boys were apparently punished more frequently than girls. She may therefore have witnessed classmates being sent for punishment or heard plenty of playground conversation about the ruler, slipper or cane.
Or perhaps there was no deeper explanation at all.
Teenagers have always been curious about what happened at other schools, particularly when boys’ and girls’ schools had very different rules and traditions.
What we can say is that the conversation clearly made an impression: nearly sixty years later, that repeated question — “Did you ever get the cane?” — remains firmly lodged in one person’s memory.
