More About Boy

by Roald Dahl

  * * *

  A cane was usually made of bamboo or rattan. It was very bendy, to ensure maximum sting.

  * * *

  ‘Bend over.’

  I was frightened of that cane. There is no small boy in the world who wouldn’t be. It wasn’t simply an instrument for beating you. It was a weapon for wounding. It lacerated the skin. It caused severe black and scarlet bruising that took three weeks to disappear, and all the time during those three weeks, you could feel your heart beating along the wounds.

  I tried once more, my voice slightly hysterical now. ‘I didn’t do it, sir! I swear I’m telling the truth!’

  ‘Be quiet and bend over! Over there! And touch your toes!’

  Very slowly, I bent over. Then I shut my eyes and braced myself for the first stroke.

  Crack! It was like a rifle shot! With a very hard stroke of the cane on one’s buttocks, the time-lag before you feel any pain is about four seconds. Thus, the experienced caner will always pause between strokes to allow the agony to reach its peak.

  So for a few seconds after the first crack I felt virtually nothing. Then suddenly came the frightful searing agonizing unbearable burning across the buttocks, and as it reached its highest and most excruciating point, the second crack came down. I clutched hold of my ankles as tight as I could and I bit into my lower lip. I was determined not to make a sound, for that would only give the executioner greater satisfaction.

  Crack! … Five seconds pause.

  Crack! … Another pause.

  Crack! … And another pause.

  I was counting the strokes, and as the sixth one hit me, I knew I was going to survive in silence.

  ‘That will do,’ the voice behind me said.

  I straightened up and clutched my backside as hard as I possibly could with both hands. This is always the instinctive and automatic reaction. The pain is so frightful you try to grab hold of it and tear it away, and the tighter you squeeze, the more it helps.

  I did not look at the Headmaster as I hopped across the thick red carpet towards the door. The door was closed and nobody was about to open it for me, so for a couple of seconds I had to let go of my bottom with one hand to turn the doorknob. Then I was out and hopping around in the hallway of the private sanctum.

  Directly across the hall from the Headmaster’s study was the assistant masters’ Common Room. They were all in there now waiting to spread out to their respective classrooms, but what I couldn’t help noticing, even in my agony, was that this door was open.

  Why was it open?

  Had it been left that way on purpose so that they could all hear more clearly the sound of the cane from across the hall?

  Of course it had. And I felt quite sure that it was Captain Hardcastle who had opened it. I pictured him standing in there among his colleagues snorting with satisfaction at every stinging stroke.

  * * *

  Corporal punishment (beating or hitting a child) as a form of discipline continued in British state schools until 1986. It was banned in all other schools in 1998, although by that time most schools had stopped using it anyway.

  * * *

  Small boys can be very comradely when a member of their community has got into trouble, and even more so when they feel an injustice has been done. When I returned to the classroom, I was surrounded on all sides by sympathetic faces and voices, but one particular incident has always stayed with me. A boy of my own age called Highton was so violently incensed by the whole affair that he said to me before lunch that day, ‘You don’t have a father. I do. I am going to write to my father and tell him what has happened and he’ll do something about it.’

  ‘He couldn’t do anything,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes he could,’ Highton said. ‘And what’s more he will. My father won’t let them get away with this.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He’s in Greece,’ Highton said. ‘In Athens. But that won’t make any difference.’

  * * *

  Douglas Highton was great friends with Roald Dahl at St Peter’s. He was slightly older than Roald Dahl, but was in the same section. They went out on trips together, along with Highton’s younger brother and mother. When Highton earned a scholarship to Oakham School, all the boys at St Peter’s were given half a day’s holiday to celebrate!

  * * *

  Then and there, little Highton sat down and wrote to the father he admired so much, but of course nothing came of it. It was nevertheless a touching and generous gesture from one small boy to another and I have never forgotten it.

  * * *

  This is Roald Dahl’s class.

  * * *

  * * *

  How I Became a Writer

  I have still got all my school reports from those days more than fifty years ago, and I’ve gone through them one by one, trying to discover a hint of promise for a future fiction writer. The subject to look at was obviously English Composition. But all my prep-school reports under this heading were flat and non-committal, excepting one. The one that took my eye was dated Christmas Term, 1928. I was then twelve, and my English teacher was Mr Victor Corrado, I remember him vividly, a tall, handsome athlete with black wavy hair and a Roman nose (who one night later on eloped with the matron, Miss Davis, and we never saw either of them again). Anyway, it so happened that Mr Corrado took us in boxing as well as in English Compositon, and in this particular report it said under English, ‘See his report on boxing. Precisely the same marks apply.’ So we look under Boxing, and there it says, ‘Too slow and ponderous. His punches are not well-timed and are easily seen coming.’

  But just once a week at this school, every Saturday morning, every beautiful and blessed Saturday morning, all the shivering horrors would disappear and for two glorious hours I would experience something that came very close to ecstasy.

  Unfortunately, this did not happen until one was ten years old. But no matter. Let me tell you what it was.

  At exactly ten-thirty on Saturday mornings, Mr Pople’s infernal bell would go clangetty-clang-clang. This was a signal for the following to take place:

  First, all boys of nine and under (about seventy all told) would proceed at once to the large outdoor asphalt playground behind the main building. Standing on the playground with legs apart and arms folded across her mountainous bosom was Miss Davis, the matron. If it was raining, the boys were expected to arrive in raincoats. If snowing or blowing a blizzard, then it was coats and scarves. And school caps, of course – grey with a red badge on the front – had always to be worn. But no Act of God, neither tornado nor hurricane nor volcanic eruption was ever allowed to stop those ghastly two-hour Saturday morning walks that the seven-, eight- and nine-year-old little boys had to take along the windy esplanades of Weston-super-Mare on Saturday mornings. They walked in crocodile formation, two by two, with Miss Davis striding alongside in tweed skirt and woollen stockings and a felt hat that must surely have been nibbled by rats.

  The other thing that happened when Mr Pople’s bell rang out on Saturday mornings was that the rest of the boys, all those of ten and over (about one hundred all told) would go immediately to the main Assembly Hall and sit down. A junior master called S. K. Jopp would then poke his head around the door and shout at us with such ferocity that specks of spit would fly from his mouth like bullets and splash against the window panes across the room. ‘All right!’ he shouted. ‘No talking! No moving! Eyes front and hands on desks!’ Then out he would pop again.

  We sat still and waited. We were waiting for the lovely time we knew would be coming soon. Outside in the driveway we heard the motor-cars being started up. All were ancient. All had to be cranked by hand. (The year, don’t forget, was around 1927/28.) This was a Saturday morning ritual. There were five cars in all, and into them would pile the entire staff of fourteen masters, including not only the Headmaster himself but also the purple-faced Mr Pople*. Then off they would roar in a cloud of blue smoke and come to rest outside a pub called, if I remember rightly, �
�The Bewhiskered Earl’. There they would remain until just before lunch, drinking pint after pint of strong brown ale. And two and a half hours later, at one o’clock, we would watch them coming back, walking very carefully into the dining-room for lunch, holding on to things as they went.

  So much for the masters. But what of us, the great mass of ten-, eleven- and twelve-year-olds left sitting in the Assembly Hall in a school that was suddenly without a single adult in the entire place? We knew, of course, exactly what was going to happen next. Within a minute of the departure of the masters, we would hear the front door opening, and footsteps outside, and then, with a flurry of loose clothes and jangling bracelets and flying hair, a woman would burst into the room shouting, ‘Hello, everybody! Cheer up! This isn’t a burial service!’ or words to that effect. And this was Mrs O’Connor.

  Blessed beautiful Mrs O’Connor with her whacky clothes and her grey hair flying in all directions. She was about fifty years, with a horsey face and long yellow teeth, but to us she was beautiful. She was not on the staff. She was hired from somewhere in the town to come up on Saturday mornings and be a sort of baby-sitter, to keep us quiet for two and a half hours while the masters went off boozing at the pub.

  But Mrs O’Connor was no baby–sitter. She was nothing less than great and gifted teacher, a scholar and a lover of English Literature. Each of us with her every Saturday morning for three years (from the age of ten until we left the school) and during that time we spanned the entire history of English Literature from A.D. 597 to the early nineteenth century.

  Newcomers to the class were given for keeps a slim blue book called simply The Chronological Table, and it contained only six pages. Those six pages were filled with a very long list in chronological order of all the great and not so great landmarks in English Literature, together with their dates. Exactly one hundred of these were chosen by Mrs O’Connor and we marked them in our books and learned them by heart. Here are a few that I still remember:

  A.D.

  597

  St Augustine lands in Thanet and brings Christianity to Britain

  731

  Bede’s Ecclesiastical History

  1215

  Signing of the Magna Carta

  1399

  Langland’s Vision of Piers Plowman

  1476

  Caxton sets up first printing press at Westminster

  1478

  Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

  1485

  Malory’s Morte d’Arthur

  1590

  Spenser’s Faërie Queene

  1623

  First Folio of Shakespeare

  1667

  Milton’s Paradise Lost

  1668

  Dryden’s Essays

  1678

  Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress

  1711

  Addison’s Spectator

  1719

  Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

  1726

  Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels

  1733

  Pope’s Essay on Man

  1755

  Johnson’s Dictionary

  1791

  Boswell’s Life of Johnson

  1833

  Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus

  1859

  Darwin’s Origin of Species

  Mrs O’Connor would then take each item in turn and spend one entire Saturday morning of two and a half hours talking to us about it. Thus, at the end of three years, with approximately thirty-six Saturdays in each school year, she would have covered the one hundred items.

  And what marvellous exciting fun it was! She had the great teacher’s knack of making everything she spoke about come alive to us in that room. In two and a half hours, we grew to love Langland and his Piers Plowman. The next Saturday, it was Chaucer, and we loved him, too. Even rather difficult fellows like Milton and Dryden and Pope all became thrilling when Mrs O’Connor told us about their lives and read parts of their work to us aloud. And the result of all this, for me at any rate, was that by the age of thirteen I had become intensely aware of the vast heritage of literature that had been built up in England over the centuries. I also became an avid and insatiable reader of good writing.

  Dear lovely Mrs O’Connor! Perhaps it was worth going to that awful school simply to experience the joy of her Saturday mornings.

  * * *

  * * *

  ‘Ellis and the Boil’ was once part of a very early draft of The Witches, in which the hero is sent away to boarding school. But Roald Dahl decided to include the chapter in Boy instead.

  * * *

  Little Ellis and the boil

  During my third term at St Peter’s, I got flu and was put to bed in the Sick Room, where the dreaded Matron reigned supreme. In the next bed to mine was a seven-year-old boy called Ellis, whom I liked a lot. Ellis was there because he had an immense and angry-looking boil on the inside of his thigh. I saw it. It was as big as a plum and about the same colour.

  One morning, in came the doctor to examine us, and sailing along beside him was the Matron. Her mountainous bosom was enclosed in a starched white envelope, and because of this she somehow reminded me of a painting I had once seen of a four-masted schooner in full canvas running before the wind.

  ‘What’s his temperature today?’ the doctor asked, pointing at me.

  ‘Just over a hundred, doctor,’ the Matron told him.

  ‘He’s been up here long enough,’ the doctor said. ‘Send him back to school tomorrow.’ Then he turned to Ellis. ‘Take off your pyjama trousers,’ he said. He was a very small doctor, with steel-rimmed spectacles and a bald head. He frightened the life out of me.

  Ellis removed his pyjama trousers. The doctor bent forward and looked at the boil. ‘Hmmm,’ he said. ‘That’s a nasty one, isn’t it? We’re going to have to do something about that, aren’t we, Ellis?’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Ellis asked, trembling.

  ‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ the doctor said. ‘Just lie back and take no notice of me.’

  Little Ellis lay back with his head on the pillow. The doctor had put his bag on the floor at the end of Ellis’s bed, and now he knelt down on the floor and opened the bag. Ellis, even when he lifted his head from the pillow, couldn’t see what the doctor was doing there. He was hidden by the end of the bed. But I saw everything. I saw him take out a sort of scalpel which had a long steel handle and a small pointed blade. He crouched below the end of Ellis’s bed, holding the scalpel in his right hand.

  ‘Give me a large towel, Matron,’ he said.

  The Matron handed him a towel.

  Still crouching low and hidden from little Ellis’s view by the end of the bed, the doctor unfolded the towel and spread it over the palm of his left hand. In his right hand he held the scalpel.

  Ellis was frightened and suspicious. He started raising himself up on his elbows to get a better look. ‘Lie down, Ellis,’ the doctor said, and even as he spoke, he bounced up from the end of the bed like a jack-in-the-box and flung the outspread towel straight into Ellis’s face. Almost in the same second, he thrust his right arm forward and plunged the point of the scalpel deep into the centre of the enormous boil. He gave the blade a quick twist and then withdrew it again before the wretched boy had had time to disentangle his head from the towel.

  Ellis screamed. He never saw the scalpel going in and he never saw it coming out, but he felt it all right and he screamed like a stuck pig. I can see him now struggling to get the towel off his head, and when he emerged the tears were streaming down his cheeks and his huge brown eyes were staring at the doctor with a look of utter and total outrage.

  ‘Don’t make such a fuss about nothing,’ the Matron said.

  ‘Put a dressing on it, Matron,’ the doctor said, ‘with plenty of mag sulph paste.’ And he marched out of the room.

  * * *

  Magnesium sulphate paste draws out nasty impurities and poisons from the body. It can be used on boils – like with poor li
ttle Ellis – and carbuncles.

  * * *

  I couldn’t really blame the doctor. I thought he handled things rather cleverly. Pain was something we were expected to endure. Anaesthetics and pain-killing injections were not much used in those days. Dentists, in particular, never bothered with them. But I doubt very much if you would be entirely happy today if a doctor threw a towel in your face and jumped on you with a knife.

  * * *

  It must have been pretty grim being ill at boarding school. Roald Dahl often told his mother all about it in letters home.

  The wart that Roald Dahl describes here was nothing compared to some of the other dreadful illnesses and operations that he and his family went through in later life.

  * * *

  * * *

  Roald Dahl was particularly concerned about an outbreak of measles, a disease that children are now usually vaccinated against.

  * * *

  Goat’s tobacco

  When I was about nine, the ancient half-sister got engaged to be married. The man of her choice was a young English doctor and that summer he came with us to Norway.

  * * *