by Jonathan Coe
In one respect, however, Anderton and his fellow-Trotskyist scribblers have got it right: the office of prefect is quite worthless, from most points of view. A prefect is really nothing more than the Chief Master’s lackey. You must remember that you hold a far more important position as Secretary of The Closed Circle.
I know from our previous conversations on the subject that we are in agreement about the future of this society. Instead of remaining a sterile forum for debating esoteric academic issues, it can be built into something far more exciting: an alternative power-base for carefully chosen, like-minded individuals. The sort of people who care far more deeply about the future of King William’s, and understand far better how to safeguard it, than those who nominally stand at its head.
To give you an example: I have it on the personal authority of my brother that Mr. Nuttall is a supporter of the Callaghan government. Just think of it! Was ever an administration more mired in the past, more hopelessly adrift, more feebly in thrall to the whims and demands of a selfish, militant faction? (I mean the unions, of course.) And yet this is our Deputy Chief Master’s notion of good leadership! No wonder King William’s itself has slipped into smugness and inertia over the last few years.
The tasks facing the school, it now seems to me, are as follows:
MODERNIZE. We need better science labs, better sports facilities, a better music school. (All of this costs money and money, of course, means FEES from parents—not more handouts from the govt.)
RATIONALIZE. There are simply too many pupils at the moment, and some of them are frankly not up to scratch. The entrance requirements must become more rigorous.
AGGRANDIZE. The national perception of King William’s is of a school in decline. This must be reversed. Oxbridge must be made to sit up and take notice of us again. It is a disadvantage being located in Birmingham, which the rest of the country loathes, and with good reason. More effort must therefore be devoted to not just maintaining but PUBLICIZING our sporting and academic excellence.
Let me spell out, in addition, why I think that The Closed Circle, out of all the school’s institutions, is the best placed to make a difference in these crucial areas.
SECRECY. The Circle is accountable to no one but itself. Consequently it can develop its views with absolute freedom, under the influence of no lobby or pressure group. (An analogy might be drawn with the National Association For Freedom, in my view the most important of the many unofficial right-wing alliances now coming into being, drawing together a range of intellectuals who alone seem to understand how grave the situation is in this country—John Braine, Peregrine Worsthorne, Winston Churchill Jnr, etc.)
PATRONAGE. The Circle’s other great trump card is that it can choose its members not only from the sixth form but also FROM THE MASTERS’ COMMON ROOM AS WELL. Thus the flabby thinkers (Nuttall, Serkis etc.) can be excluded and the kindred spirits (Pyle, Daintry, Spraggon) co-opted into our cause.
ELITISM. The Circle does not have to listen to the voice of the rabble. It is not a bearpit like the Senior or Junior Debating Societies. There is no time wasted listening to peabrains or crackpots. In essence it is anti-democratic, and that is its strength. Ideas and policies can germinate much more quickly and efficiently in this atmosphere.
In conclusion, it has been an honour to be chosen as the Circle’s youngest-ever member and a privilege to watch the society begin to transform itself under your guidance. My plea to you is this: do not lose momentum, merely as a result of this temporary and insignificant set-back. The Closed Circle, and by implication the whole of King William’s, still looks to you for leadership.
With sincere good wishes,
Paul.
Fascinating words, there, from Trotter Jnr. Seems we were right to warn our readers, more than a year ago (see BB, 18 November, 1976) about the loopy philosophy behind this secretive outfit. After that, it’s almost a relief to welcome back one of the Board’s most regular and lucid correspondents.
THOUGHTS ON THE PREFECT QUESTION
From Arthur Pusey-Hamilton, MBE.
Sirs,
I was very struck by your recent editorial, entitled “Disband the Praetorian Guard”; struck not so much by its argument (which I whole-heartedly deplore) but by your reference to the fact that the prefects at King William’s do not carry truncheons about their person; or at least—as you yourselves put it in a suggestive parenthesis—“not yet.”
Well, Sirs, let me ask the question straight out, in the plainest possible terms: why the devil not? If, as you say, the prefects are the school’s equivalent of a police force, then they should surely be equipped accordingly. Good God, have not these brave men got a dangerous and difficult job to do? You would send these men out on Litter Duty, to confront a vicious and unruly mob of eleven-year-olds, many of them armed with catapults and conkers, and yet you would not allow them this most basic means of protecting themselves? For shame, Sirs! For shame!
To take the argument further, it seems to me that not only should the prefects be allowed to carry weapons, but they should be encouraged to imitate our Great British Police Force in other respects as well.
Take prefects’ detention, for instance. It’s all very well getting miscreants to come into school on a Saturday morning, but wouldn’t the punishment carry slightly more force if a certain amount of discreet “roughing up” took place beforehand? This tactic has worked wonders, I believe, for the West Midlands Police. Surely it would act as a powerful deterrent to any potential criminal if he knew that, on his way to detention in the company of two burly prefects, there was every chance he might meet with a small “accident” while being escorted down the stairs?
And what of those inevitable unsolved mysteries that militate so strongly against the smooth running of school life? The mystery of Richards’s medal, for example, or Culpepper’s goat? Again, the prefects could take a leaf out of our local police force’s book. Why appoint someone of Miller’s imposing bulk, if not to beat the odd confession out of unco-operative suspects? Why appoint someone with the literary gifts of Trotter Snr, if not to forge those confessions in the most convincing manner? These methods have worked for the Birmingham pub bombers (or so I am told), so they can work for the school’s own smaller-scale but no less recalcitrant offenders.
In short, Sirs, let us not stop at truncheons. Riot shields! Helmets! Cattle-prods! Fully equipped interrogation chambers! If we are going to have a school police force, let us have one that we can be proud of!
These sentiments are fully endorsed, I need hardly add, by Gladys, my good lady wife, and it only remains for me to assure you that I am, until you receive full and unequivocal notice in writing to the contrary, your most loyal and obedient servant,
Arthur Pusey-Hamilton, MBE.
SEALED with the ancient and noble Seal of the Pusey-Hamiltons.
22
One Monday evening, the last Monday of that bitterly cold January, Philip left school a few minutes later than usual, after dealing with some business up in the editors’ room. Using the south doorway, for a change, he noticed a distant figure in the frozen dusk, picking up litter on the square of asphalt which at most schools would have been called the playground, although here it was known as “the Parade Ground,” in keeping with King William’s pretensions to military grandeur. Philip came a little closer and realized that the lonely figure was Benjamin.
“Hello,” he said. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Litter duty,” answered Benjamin shortly. “Can you give me a hand?”
Philip started helping him to retrieve the chocolate wrappers and discarded bus tickets.
“This may sound silly,” he said, “but I thought the whole point of litter duty was that one of the younger forms came out here with you, and you supervised them picking up litter for ten minutes?”
“That’s right,” said Benjamin.
“So why are you doing it all yourself?”
“Well . . .” Benjamin stood up straight,
and wiped his brow. Despite the cold weather, he was hot and out of breath from his exertions. “This was my first litter duty, and I was supposed to be doing it with form 1B—you know, the eleven-year-olds—so I got them out here, and I lined them up, and I told them I wanted them to split up into groups of five, and spread out in a sort of big pentagon, and comb the Parade Ground anticlockwise for five minutes, and clockwise for another five.”
“What happened?”
“They ran off down the Founders’ Drive and went to the bus stop. All twenty-six of them.” He sighed despairingly. “I have no natural authority, Phil. None at all.”
“Come on, Kojak. Let’s go home.”
“Don’t you start calling me Kojak,” said Benjamin, as they set off together. This was the new nickname Doug had coined for him. Doug had also developed an annoying habit, whenever he was talking to Benjamin and saw some younger boys misbehaving in the vicinity, of saying, “Book ’em, Danno,” in homage to another American cop show. So far Benjamin had not followed this advice and after three weeks as a prefect he congratulated himself, privately, on having set no impositions and put no one in detention. It was his own form of passive resistance; an attempt to soothe his conscience for having slipped into a rôle which he knew, at heart, he should never have accepted.
“You’re not the only one with problems, you know,” said Philip, as they walked past the empty but brightly lit classrooms. “Things are terrible at home at the moment.”
“Why’s that?”
“Oh, because of stupid old Sugar Plum Fairy.”
Benjamin was horrified. “That’s not still going on, is it? Him and your mother? I thought that was over years ago.”
“My mother keeps breaking it off, and then seeing him again, and then breaking it off again . . .”
“You should say something about it. How can you bear to go to his classes when you know what he’s up to?”
“I don’t think he knows that I know. Anyway, Dad says he’s finally going to put a stop to it. He’s really furious this time.”
“I’m sorry, Phil,” said Benjamin. “I didn’t know.” Now that he was no longer on the board of the magazine, and now that he used the prefects’ locker room, and now that he spent every lunch hour in the oak-panelled retreat of the Carlton Club, Benjamin felt that he was starting to lose touch with his friend. They hadn’t really spoken to each other all term. “Hey—did you know that I’ve got a girlfriend now?”
“Yeah, I know. Jennifer Hawkins. Doug told me.”
“Oh?” Benjamin waited for something—congratulations, maybe, some sort of stamp of approval—but all Philip said was:
“He said he was going to talk to you about it.”
This sounded ominous, and Benjamin was left to ponder its possible significance until lunchtime the next day, when Doug greeted him as he was leaving the dining hall.
“Philip said you wanted to talk to me about something.”
“Just a few words from the wise, that’s all. What are you doing after school?”
Benjamin grimaced. “It’s my week for litter duty. I’ll be finished by four-thirty or so.”
“I’ll come and find you.”
“You wouldn’t . . .” (this was grotesquely embarrassing, but he asked it anyway) “. . . You wouldn’t like to come and help, would you? Only it’s with one of the fifth forms tonight, and some of them . . . well, some of them are bigger than me.”
Doug burst into laughter when he heard that, but he could see that Benjamin was genuinely nervous, and didn’t milk the joke for as long as he might have done. “Don’t worry, Kojak. The sight of a prefect’s badge can be a terrifying thing. They’ll be like putty in your hands.”
It took him a few minutes to locate Benjamin after school. Doug found him, eventually, with his bottom wedged into one of the litter bins, his legs akimbo and his hands tied behind his back with his prefect’s tie. “How did it go?” he asked.
Once he had pulled Benjamin out, undone the elaborate series of reef-knots and dusted him down, he said: “So, what’s it like, then, being a member of the ruling classes?”
“I can’t do this, Doug,” said Benjamin. “I’m going to have to resign.”
“You can’t resign, old son. It’s a job for life.” He chuckled. “You really are a prize prannet, Ben. Anyone could see you weren’t cut out to be a member of the Special Branch.”
“Yes, well I’m beginning to realize that, aren’t I?”
“How’s Steve coping?”
“Better than me,” said Benjamin, as they began to walk together down towards the Bristol Road. They could see the buses rumbling past in the distance, crammed full of schoolkids. In the foreground, the rugby fields stretched vast and ghostly in the dying light. “They seem to respect him a bit more. We had a nice long chat the other night, actually. Some parents came to look round the school and the two of us had to make seventy cups of coffee for them and then wash them all up. Gave us a chance to talk for a couple of hours.”
“So in between doing stints as a tea lady for the Chief Master, and having it off with Jennifer Hawkins, I don’t suppose you’re getting much work done, are you?”
“I’m not having it off with her.”
Doug snorted in disbelief. “Come off it, Ben. We all know what happened at the party. I’ll never feel the same way about my parents’ wardrobe again. Every time Dad goes to get himself a new pair of socks I get these incredible mental images.”
“Yes, well that was just a one-off. We haven’t done anything since.”
“But you’ve been seeing her, haven’t you?”
“Yes.” Irritated by Doug’s tone of continued puzzlement, Benjamin said: “What happened in that wardrobe—yes, I know, I know, so it’s funny—but what happened that night was important to me. To both of us. The circumstances may have been weird, but it wasn’t meaningless. It was the beginning of something very special.”
“Oh, grow up, Ben, for fuck’s sake. Just because you get drunk at a party with a girl and she pulls you off, it doesn’t mean you’re . . . betrothed to her, or anything. This isn’t some Jane Austen novel we’re talking about here.”
Benjamin looked at him crossly. “You must have been reading some different Jane Austen novels to me. I don’t remember any scenes like that.”
“You know what I mean. You and Jennifer don’t belong together.” He stopped walking and turned to Benjamin, with a new urgency in his voice. “Listen. I’m going to tell you two things. You remember that time I went down to London to see the NME people? The time I wanted you to come with me, and you wouldn’t do it? I met this girl down there. She was a typist or something, worked for Horse and Hound. We went and saw The Clash playing in Fulham and afterwards we went back to her place, and for the rest of that night, I’m telling you, Ben . . .” (he dropped to a whisper) “. . . We fucked each other’s brains out. We did it so many different ways, we did things you wouldn’t believe were possible. What we did makes your thirty seconds with Jennifer seem like nothing.”
“It was forty seconds, actually.”
“Whatever it was—the point is that I never saw this girl again. We didn’t bother to swap phone numbers or anything. It was just one night of fantastic sex and then goodbye.”
Benjamin thought about this for a second or two, and then walked on. “Well, that’s a beautiful story, Doug, that’s a very touching little anecdote. Real Romeo and Juliet stuff. A Troilus and Cressida for the nineteen-seventies. But some of us just have a different approach to these things.”
“All right, then,” said Doug, running to catch up, “I’ll tell you something else. And this really is important. You’re seventeen years old and you’re going to meet hundreds more women in the next few years. If you’re going to go all soppy over someone from this craphole of a city you might as well choose the right person: and there are only two girls round here who are worth anything at all.”
“Oh yes? And who might they be?”
“Claire a
nd Cicely, of course.”
Benjamin slowed down, then came to a halt. They were near the gates to the main road, now, outside the entrance to the sports hall. The upper-sixth common room was on the top floor (home to the fifty or so boys who had not been elected to the Carlton Club), and light from its windows spilled out on to the tarmac around them, throwing long distorted shadows. It suddenly seemed to Benjamin that this was another of those fateful moments he had recently learned to recognize: supernatural, charged. A moment when crucial choices were being offered to him.
“Claire and Cicely?”
“I know you’ve never had any time for Claire. I don’t know why, I think she’s fabulous. Always have done. But we tried going out and it didn’t work, so . . . there you are. It’s just not meant to happen. As for Cicely: she isn’t my type, to be honest, but . . .”
“Yes?”
“Well she’s your type, isn’t she? She’s perfect for you. You’re perfect for each other. God, Benjamin, you’re the only person who’s ever been able to talk any sense into that woman. She worships you, actually. She hangs on your every word. If there were ever two people who were made to be with each other it’s you and Cicely, and to see one of you being fucked over by a married man and the other one trying to pretend he’s in the middle of something deep and meaningful with Jennifer Hawkins . . . Well, it’s heartbreaking.”
Benjamin didn’t speak for a long time. He looked at the ground, tracing shadowy patterns with his foot, his Cyclops Records bag swinging gently in the air.
“It’s Jennifer’s birthday tomorrow,” he said at last. “I can’t break up with her on her birthday.”
“You can break up with her any time,” said Doug. But he knew, then, what he had always known: that Benjamin was a lost cause, and he had been wasting his breath. “What did you get her?”