by Stephen Fry
DOMINIC goes up to the blackboard and writes up the following. He speaks as he writes.
Magister amat puerum Puer amat magistrum
Puerum amat magister Magistrum amat puer
The master likes the boy The boy likes the master
Now, if I write Magister amat puerum, it’s perfectly obvious what it means, isn’t it … Elwyn-Jones? Yes, I think ‘like’ is a perfectly adequate translation, thank you, Elwyn-Jones. The master likes the boy. But if I write Puerum amat magister it means …? Precisely the same thing, The master likes the boy.’ ‘The boy likes the master’ would be puer amat magistrum, or magistrum amat puer or any combination of those words. The English rely on word order to change the meaning of a sentence; the only way to change meaning in Latin is to change the word itself, which is why Latin is a better and truer language. So, when in twenty years’ time you’re all plump executives, whose only contact with Nature is the walk to the Squash Club, don’t think you’re successful just because you’ve got a fast wife and a beautiful car. Remember, there was a race who spoke a language that you could never master and who invented the word civilisation. And from their Greek cousins they inherited a word to define the English and all red-necked balding tribes for whom Converse With The Infinite means a chat with the company chairman, and that word is Barbarian, gentlemen, and it describes you all: ab ovo, ad sepulcrum, Barbarian. (He holds a pause, then resumes in a very rapid and business-like manner) For prep learn the principal parts of all the deponent and semi-deponent verbs on your sheets for a test during double period on Friday. Smethwick, don’t forget to wash your hands before having your break, Potter, help Figgis find his contact lens, and Cartwright … see me in here after break Cartwright, would you? Very well. Go and suckle.
Exit DOMINIC.
Stage lights BLACKOUT.
INTERVAL, during which milk and Chelsea buns are served.
End of Act One
Act Two
Enter DOMINIC. The houselights remain up.
DOMINIC. Right, settle down 6B, I’ve got some important news for you, so be quiet and listen. Turn round, Hughes, and you, Spragg. Your CE results arrived today. Yes, I thought that might shut you up. I’m going to give you your Latin results first and your overall results after that, that way you’ll keep quiet longer. So, Common Entrance Latin, Form Six B. Barton-Mills, 48 per cent; that’s 3 per cent off the Rugby pass-mark, Barton-Mills, cretin. Cartwright, 97 per cent. That’s a brilliant result, Rupert, well done. I had a look at your paper before it was sent on, actually, and I thought then that you’d done pretty well. Congratulations, Cartwright, and be quiet the rest of you, envious mob. Now, Catchpole 39, yes well. Elwyn-Jones 52, surprisingly adequate. Figgis? They sent your script back as illegible, Figgis, and gave you an average mark instead, which is just as well, since you had your paper upside down throughout the exam. Silly Figgis. Harvey-Williams 72 per cent, good work. Hoskins, ah yes, poor Hoskins. Hughes 42. As I expected, Hughes, the work of a chimpanzee. Kinnock 71 per cent. (Smiling with pleasure) Good, Kinnock, but not brilliant. Madison 4 per cent, better than I had dared hope Madison, but still 2 per cent short of the Eton pass-mark I’m afraid. Potter 69, good for you Potter, tike though you are. Smethwick? After they had cleaned and sterilised your script, Smethwick, they gave you 78 per cent, that’s excellent. (But cannot resist a shudder and an ‘ugh!’) Spragg 51 per cent, stunningly mediocre, Spragg. Standfast 38 per cent, I’m not excited about that mark, Standfast, and I don’t think you should be, put the fire-bucket down and face the front. Newt. And Whitwell, 22 per cent, yes well, you’re a bumpkin, aren’t you, Whitwell? What are you, boy? ‘Bumpkin, sir.’ Precisely. Now, as to your overall results, I’m glad to be able to report that by some extraordinary miracle of misjudgment, folly and misdirected generosity, every single one of you has been passed overall by your respective public schools and will be able to start there next term. Your parents have been informed and are naturally delighted and staggered at the staff’s skill. You’re all going to good schools, except Madison, of course, and I wish you well. So, it would seem that I have nothing left to teach you, you all know as much Latin as you need and my job is over. So what shall we do to fill in this great gap of time between now and break? Any ideas? Something to do? No, Smethwick, not nice. Anyone else? Yes, Spragg? Sir’s Patent Latin Football, eh? Good idea. Right, we’ll have two teams.
DOMINIC starts to draw as shown in Fig. 2, talking as he does so. The game is self-explanatory. Each time a member of team A or B answers a question corrrectly, a cross is put on a spot in the opposing team’s half. Thus, the state of the game when BROOKSHAW enters is as shown in Fig. 2. FIGGIS, in team B, is about to take a shot at A’s goal, the cross having moved to a spot nearer the goal-mouth each time CARTWRIGHT and FIGGIS answer correctly.
DOMINIC. Barton-Mills, Elwyn-Jones, Spragg, Whitwell, Smethwick, Catchpole and Potter can be team A: Urbs Roma, and Cartwright, Figgis, Standfast, Harvey-Williams, Hughes, Madison and Kinnock can be Team B: Oppidum Londinium. You all know the rules by now, right answer keeps possession, wrong answer gives it over to the other side and the right answer takes the ball towards the opponent’s goal. So Urbs Roma and Barton-Mills to kick off. (Speeds up voice throughout the game) Right Barton-Mills, give me the Latin please for a kettle. A kettle or cauldron. Have to hurry you … no? And possession goes over to Oppidum Londinium and Cartwright. Cartwright, a kettle or cauldron? Is the right answer! Wonderful tackle, Cartwright, simply great tackle. Cortina, cortinae, feminine, kettle or cauldron, should have remembered that, Barton-Mills, Book One stuff. So, Cartwright, still in possession, give me the English for relinquo ludum, or ludum relinquo. Yes? ‘I am leaving school’ is the right answer! So Cartwright still battling forward towards the goal in brave possession, give me the Latin for despair. To despair? No? You don’t know despair? And possession goes over to Urbs Roma and Whitwell. To despair, Whitwell? No? Bumpkin. Back then to London Town and Figgis. To despair, Figgis, is …? Desperare, good boy. Figgis in possession then with a shot at goal − calm down, you lot (He himself is wildly out of control) Now, Figgis, give me the Latin, and this has to be a hundred per cent right for a goal shot, give me the Latin for …
There is a knock at the door.
DOMINIC. Come in!
Enter BROOKSHAW.
No, not intrate, Figgis, you silly boy, I was talking to … oh, Mr Brookshaw.
BROOKSHAW. Sorry to disturb your lesson, Mr Clarke. Sit down, boys, but I wonder if I might have a word with you, it’s rather urgent.
DOMINIC. Certainly. Um, all right boys, I’ll let you go now, we’ll call the game a draw. Well life never is fair, is it, Figgis? Free time until break then, but don’t play around indoors, remember there are still other lessons going on.
DOMINIC watches them leave, houselights slowly down as the last stragglers supposedly quit the form-room.
Might as well let them go now, nothing left to teach them any more.
Pause. Houselights now fully down.
Well, what can I do for you?
BROOKSHAW. Which do you want first, the bad news or the bad news?
DOMINIC. Oh dear.
BROOKSHAW. I think I’ll give you the better bad news first. Jane went up to tell the Old Man about the CE results this morning.
DOMINIC. Was he pleased?
BROOKSHAW. Delighted. Sat up in bed for the first time in months.
DOMINIC. That’s the spirit.
BROOKSHAW. Then Jane went too far. She told him about your engagement.
DOMINIC. God. What did he say?
BROOKSHAW. Nothing really. He just died.
DOMINIC. DIED?
BROOKSHAW. I’m afraid so.
DOMINIC. But why?
BROOKSHAW. Heart attack. The shock was too much for him, I suppose.
DOMINIC. Oh dear. (Slight pause) Is Jane upset?
BROOKSHAW. Relieved really. At least he went quickly.
DOMINIC. Yes, that’s true. Well, well, so the
Old Man’s gone.
BROOKSHAW. It seems he left all his property, including the school, to Jane. Which must make you, as her fiance, the new headmaster, Dominic.
DOMINIC. Yes, I suppose it must. Ha, just as well the school’s not a trust, eh? No governors to go through.
BROOKSHAW. (Drily) Quite.
DOMINIC. Though I’d like you to take over until the end of term, Brookshaw. Do that, would you? I’m going to use the summer holidays to have a good look at the place, where it’s going, that sort of thing. There are going to be some changes around here, I can tell you that.
BROOKSHAW. As you wish. (Rubbing his hands) Now we come to the less palatable bad news.
DOMINIC. Oh yes? (Miles away)
BROOKSHAW. Ampleforth telephoned a few moments ago. The Classics master there has been re-checking the scripts to decide on streaming for next year’s new boys.
DOMINIC. (Back to earth with a jolt) Oh yes?
BROOKSHAW. He was mystified to notice, he tells me, that Cartwright’s script appears to have been written in two, slightly different coloured, blue inks.
DOMINIC. Oh God.
BROOKSHAW. What is even more astonishing is that all the mistakes, and only a very few of the correct answers, were written in one ink, and all the crossings-out and corrections, which were originally taken to be end-of-exam revisions, were written in the other. Now isn’t that extraordinary?
DOMINIC. (Between clenched teeth) Shit.
BROOKSHAW. Brother Aloysius was summoned from the Abbey. He is manuscript illuminator and a renowned handwriting expert.
DOMINIC. He would be!
BROOKSHAW. And he pronounced, indeed swore by St Dominic …
DOMINIC. Ha!
BROOKSHAW … that there were two entirely different hands at work on the paper. Before disqualifying Cartwright entirely and instituting an official IAPS enquiry, they telephoned me to see if we could proffer any explanation. I said that I would tell you to ring back. (Slight pause) Well? Is there any explanation?
DOMINIC. Well, that’s that, I suppose, isn’t it? God, how ridiculous of me. I just couldn’t resist altering one or two silly mistakes … well, you know how it is Herbert, and then I went a bit potty and just corrected and corrected. Oh, coitus! This is the end, Herbert. There’ll be a scandal. I can’t possibly be Headmaster after this, the parents would complain, IAPS wouldn’t allow it … and anyway, Jane’ll break off the engagement now, so it doesn’t really matter. Oh God. This is it, Herbert, I’m done for.
BROOKSHAW. (Tenderly) Will Cartwright’s parents sue, do you think?
DOMINIC. Didn’t you know? He’s an orphan.
BROOKSHAW. Really? Well, how could he afford to come here, then?
DOMINIC. (Distracted) Oh, there’s some trust for him, it’s all very odd. Rupert … er, Cartwright himself controls it … (Voice changes) … he controls it himself!
BROOKSHAW. Dominic, are you all right? What’s the matter?
DOMINIC. (Pulling himself up) What? Nothing! Nothing at all. I was just trying to work out what to do for the best, that’s all.
BROOKSHAW. Do you want my frank view?
DOMINIC. I should value it greatly.
BROOKSHAW. Then I’m afraid I think it would be best for all concerned if you were to leave Chartham immediately.
DOMINIC. Yes. I think you’re right, I think that would be ‘best’.
BROOKSHAW. I can deal with Ampleforth, if you can break the news to Jane, and Cartwright himself … I’m afraid we’re going to have to find him a new school. Pity really, he would have gone down rather well at Ampleforth. Well, the sooner this is over the better, we don’t want Chartham to start a new era with a scandal. This way we should be able to avoid one. After all, we still have some term left to run.
DOMINIC. Yes. I’d prefer it if you could handle Jane as well, honestly Brookshaw. I’m really not very good with women. When I try and talk to them they either cry or bare their breasts at me. Jane does both and I really don’t think I could cope with that at the moment. All right?
BROOKSHAW. As you wish. I must say, Dominic, you seem to be taking this very well …
DOMINIC. I don’t know what kind of a headmaster you will make. A bit of a drip I should have thought. You’re very good at controlling boys, but what about the staff? You’d rather be told what to do really, wouldn’t you?
BROOKSHAW. Well, I don’t know about that. I may not be very good at expressing myself, but …
DOMINIC. I would have been good, Brookshaw, I really would. Not like you. I’m not gross and deformed like you. I just … misbehave from time to time. I think basically you disgust me, Brookshaw. Failure always does. I’m sorry but there we are.
BROOKSHAW. Now, you look here, Clarke …
DOMINIC. Oh, shut up. What are you going to do, now that there isn’t anyone to beat you any more?
BROOKSHAW. I think you’d better go and pack, Dominic.
DOMINIC. Yes. (Taking a long look round at the audience) Keep those desks full, Brookshaw. There’s normally more tuck in there than text-books. (He empties his own desk of confiscated water-pistols, plastic animals, sweets etc.) And find something useful to do on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Which reminds me, you had better keep the peanut butter. I don’t think I could find a use for it, really. Scarcely edible any more.
BROOKSHAW. (Stiffly) Thank you. And you may keep the toasting-fork.1 (Pause) Well, I’ll go and ring Ampleforth then … er, goodbye and … you have my sympathy, Dominic, but I’m afraid …
DOMINIC. No, Brookshaw, you have mine. Now run along.
BROOKSHAW. Er, yes.
Exit BROOKSHAW, puzzled. Blackout. A spotlight opens out on DOMINIC behind his desk. There is a suitcase behind him and a small tuck-box, initialled ‘R.C.’
DOMINIC. When I was a boy, I behaved like a boy: thought, ate, slept and played like a boy. Then Nature began to drop hints about a change in status: a cracking voice, hairs about the buttocks, acne. But I continued to think, eat, sleep and play like a boy. This is where school moved in and took over, and soon they made sure that I was thinking, eating, sleeping and playing like a man. One of those painful steps towards manhood was my first smoke. It was behind the Fives courts of my house at school, with a boy called Prestwick-Agutter. I can remember it as if it were five minutes ago. Prestwick-Agutter opened his packet of Carlton Premium and drew out a short, thin, round cigarette. As my lips rounded about the tip I began to feel panic. I could hear my boyhood being strangled inside me and a new fire awakening. Prestwick-Agutter lit the end, and I sucked and inhaled. The ears buzzed, the blood caught fire and somewhere in the distance my boyhood moaned. But I ignored it and sucked again. But this time my body rejected it, and I coughed and expectorated. My boy’s lungs couldn’t take the filthy whirl of smuts I was so keen to introduce to them and so I coughed and kept on coughing. Despite my inner excitement and my great coughing fit, I managed to maintain a cool, unruffled exterior, with which to impress Prestwick-Agutter, who was amused by my coolness and pluck. British Phlegm and British Spunk flowed freely in me and out of me, and the Public School Spirit was born. After about an hour, it began to rain, so we dashed into the nearest Fives court and leant against the buttress. It was an afternoon of rare agony. It was later that evening, when a horde of uncouth Philistines was raiding my study, Prestwick-Agutter amongst them, that my voice broke. Really quite suddenly. I was nearly seventeen, rather embarrassing really. So after a few years of behaving like a man, while my boy’s body slowly creaked into a man’s shape, I actually became a man, am one now to the satisfaction of the world, but to my own resentment and annoyance. I never asked to be a man. I never wanted to be a man. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t want to be a woman, I’ve an idea that that would be even nastier, I could never think of being a woman. No, I am, you see, what doctors call a disgusting pervert. I want to be a boy. I never should have grown up in the first place. I want to be a boy. Sometimes I try on boy’s clothing, small and tight as it is, and it p
leases me. It would be delightful to be a boy, to find again that acute balance between soft passivity and complete idiocy. (Getting excited) If a boy could be stopped from thinking and behaving like a man, if, when Nature starts thrusting pimples and hairs through the skin, a boy could be kept from school and the world of men and just carry on behaving like a boy, then perhaps Nature would give up and the pimples and hairs would recede. The permanent boy would be found. It’s worth a try. Hh. (Pause) When I came here my aims were simple. I came on the one hand out of sheer pæderastic longing and on the other hand, as I told Brookshaw, to stop the Barbarian rot at source. But I also came to escape the responsibilities of manhood. Here, after all, I’m just a senior prefect. But I went too far, twice. Now I’ve nearly wrecked a perfectly respectable school, I’ve scotched a boy’s chances for Ampleforth and I’ve lost myself a headmastership: just by imitating a boy’s handwriting, an act which also, curiously enough, gave me a certain amount of sexual excitement. God knows what would happen if I stayed on here. Or if I went further. (Pause) But that’s just what I intend to do. I see only one way out of this sorry mess and I shall take it. Remember the old saying, ‘The boy across the river has got a bottom like a peach, but I can’t swim’? Well he can swim, it’s just another of those things that all boys can do. (Picks up tuck-box and suitcase) ‘He walks in beauty like the day, Of endless fields and summer hymns, And all that’s fresh in golden hay, Floats from the movement of his limbs.’
Exit DOMINIC. Blackout. The Stage and Houselights go up as BROOKSHAW enters, begowned and dog-collared, puffing at his pipe. He has an air-mail envelope in his hand. He motions downwards for the form to sit. He clears his throat, pacing up and down a little at the beginning of his speech.
BROOKSHAW. Sit down, boys. Now. It is my custom, as you know, to address the leaving form at the end of the summer term, usually on the subject of Religion, Sex and Public School Life. I shall keep to those themes today … POTTER, whatever it is, SWALLOW it! … but through the medium of another topic. This term, as you are well aware, has been an unusual one. Two deaths, those of the headmaster and young Hoskins, have acted as acute reminders that God may choose any one of us, at any time, young or old, to join Him and His Heavenly Host. I have been acting as a kind of makeshift Headmaster for this term, and Miss Puttenham has asked me to stay on in the capacity for as long as I wish. I have consented, readily and gratefully. It will not affect you much, as you scatter to your fresh woods and pastures new, but I feel that you should know that Chartham is in old hands and will not change so long as I am at the helm, with God and His Host of Cherubim and Seraphim at my side. (He nods genially to his left) Another development this term was the startling disappearance of Mr Clarke and your form-mate Rupert Cartwright, both on the same day. The police have been unable to trace either of them and we were all at a loss as to their whereabouts (Dramatic pause) until yesterday morning, when I received this letter from Mr Clarke. A letter that I am going later on to read to you gentlemen. Otherwise this summer term, all things being equal, has been like many another. We’ve had our fair share of disappointments on the cricket-field but we’ve had our fair share of victories, too. Potter’s hat-trick against the Old Charthamians is worthy of mention, as is Kinnock’s diligent fifty against Gauntstone Manor. Cricket does not quite approximate to Art or the Infinite, boys, but for most of us it is as close a glimpse of either as we are ever likely to be permitted, so I mention these achievements as honourable accomplishments of which Chartham is proud. Well done all. Academically, the year has been a resounding success. 6A-ites have collected between them four exhibitions, two bursaries and a remarkable three scholarships, as our recent crop of half-holidays has testified. All praise to 6A, and of course to the Angelic Hordes and Ministers of the Almighty who so generously supervised their efforts. And nor have you, 6B, been neglected by the Celestial Multitude. I have not a single failure to report. This means that for every one of you, this is your last week at Chartham, and next September will see you strewn by the four winds all over the Kingdom, as far flung as Sherborne and Fettes, King’s Canterbury and King William’s, Isle of Man. You will emerge from these seats of learning as men and … with the exception of Madison! … the sort of men of whom Chartham will be proud. The England into which you will step is one about which I freely admit I have no more knowledge than you, but you will, as generations of Charthamians before you, emerge as firm and solid members of it, and you could ask for no higher privilege nor no finer fortune than that. And remember that as an Englishman you have a perfect right to treat God as a social equal and the Devil as an inferior, that way lies Salvation. To that I would add my usual advice to leavers. Under no circumstances strike a woman who is wearing spectacles, don’t call writing-paper ‘note-paper’ and always keep your handkerchief in your sleeve, never in your pocket. I don’t think I can offer you any more than that: remember it, obey it, and your lives will be infinitely the easier for it. Now, as to the business of the letter I have received from Mr Clarke. After a good deal of heart-searching I have decided that you ought to hear it. It is not the kind of letter frankly suitable for boys, but I think I can now do you the honour of treating you as men, not boys. I know you all loved Mr Clarke and respected him, and will find his tragedy a severe moral lesson. The letter was post-marked a week and a half ago in Tangier. That, for the sake of you who, despite my efforts, managed to fail Common Entrance Geography, is in Morocco, which, for the benefit of Madison, is in North Africa. The big bit below the Mediterranean, Madison! Now, let me read it to you: ‘Tangier, 6th July. Dear Herb … hem! … Dear Mr Brookshaw, I am writing this overlooking the casbah. Rupert is by my side drinking a rather snazzy cocktail through a straw. Well, we have settled at last, here in Morocco. We managed by some careful baksheesh …’ That means bribery in plain English, boys. ‘ … to obtain Moroccan nationality in a hurry, which meant becoming Muslims as well, which is rather decent fun. My new Islamic name is Ghanim Ibn Mahmud and Rupert, whom I have now officially adopted, is Abu Hassan Basim: whizzo, eh? His money is very useful out here, we have bought a decentish villa by the sea, just outside Tangier, and we spend most of the day making love–’ (turns over the page hurriedly) ‘–ly sandcastles on the beach and swimming. The air is amazing out here, I hardly have to shave any more and my voice is cracking into a treble. It must be all those ice-creams. We’re becoming quite well-known locally: they call Rupert “Young Hassan of the Blue Eyes and Million Gold Pieces” and I am known as “Ghanim whom Allah has blessed with a Son and No Wives”. Well I must go now. Lots of luck in your headmastership, buckets of love to Chartham and do come and visit us in the hols. Meanwhile, Praise be to Allah, the Beneficent King, the Creator of the Universe, Lord of the Three Worlds, Who stretched out the Earth even as a Bed. Blessings be upon our Lord Mohammed, Lord of all Men, and upon his Companion-Train. Prayer and Blessings enduring and Grace which unto the Day of Doom shall remain, in the Name of Allah, the Compassionating, the Compassionate, Amen!’ The letter is signed: ‘Ghanim Ibn Mahmud and Abu Hassan Basim, with much love and kisses.’ (Folding up the letter) Well, boys, that is a sad letter. Between the lines even you could probably detect the loneliness, despair and anguished misery of an Englishman who has lost his nationality and his religion, in other words his actual and his spiritual identities. The tone is unmistakeable; they have lost the only things that made them remarkable and pity is all one can feel for them. In a little while I’m going to ask you to join me in a prayer to God and his mystic Host of Angels and Archangels, Ministers and Servants, Saints and Martyrs, and we shall together beg the Sacred Company to return our lost friends to the faith. To have been born British, it has rightly been said, is to have drawn first prize in the Lottery of Life. To have been baptised Christian, I might add, is to have drawn first prize in the Lottery of Life After Death, a remarkable investment. These two unfortunates have thrown both their tickets away and are now lost. They think, boys, that they have found freedom and happiness, but as we al
l know, as they must know in their heart of hearts, they have found only dissipation and ruin. Money, sun and sensual pleasure, that is all they have, and these are hollow things, boys, hollow. Cartwright, or Hassan, or whatever he now is, has even been permanently deprived of the best education a Catholic is permitted in this country. Let the example of this unlucky pair be a lesson to you all … yes, Elwyn-Jones, what is it? Well, how can I possibly know the price of a child air-fare to Morocco? Cartwright could afford it as you know, to the detriment of his immortal soul … stop whispering over there … and so, when you start at your new school next term, spare a … where do you think you’re going, Potter? I haven’t finished yet. Figgis? Elwyn-Jones? What are you …? Kinnock? Whitwell? All of you! Where are you going? Come back! I haven’t finished yet. Come … back …