by Carl Muller
Those tender years were not so tender any more. Life twisted, turned and sometimes the pace was giddy. Carloboy discovered the charms of Big Match days. Royal College always played St Thomas’ College—arch rivals, and at these annual cricket encounters there was, to borrow a common phrase, hell to pay. Girls’ schools and convents declared a state of emergency. Some even closed on a Big Match Day. Mother Gonzaga of Holy Family Convent, Bambalapitiya would do no such thing. Riotous boys, waving flags, whirring infernal wooden clappers and blowing whistles were not going to intimidate her. It all began with the waves of bicycles, naturally, and parents were even advised to send their boys to the Oval—the Wanathamulla cricket grounds—by car or bus and not allow them to roam the streets on their bicycles. Easier said, of course, than done.
Jowl always gave a very threatening talk at morning assembly. The school listened with great respect and rushed out to plan the Big Match mayhem. The need was for about 200 boys on sixty bicycles. Also everything necessary for a blanket disturbing of the peace, flags, cloaks, mummy’s kimonos, sisters’ straw hats, father’s waistcoats, false faces, rattles, bells, trails of empty tins and bits of shrubbery to be tied behind each bike . . . and so, on a mad March morning, 1950, a wave of bicycles left Dehiwela. Other tributaries poured out of each lane, from every junction. Traffic snarled, knotted and lay palpitating. Policemen, purple-faced, blew whistles. The tide rolled on. St Clare’s College was ignored. Chapel Lane was narrow and presented too much of a bottleneck. First port of call was the Milhargiriya—St Paul’s Girls School and then Convent—ho!
Mother Gonzaga was fit to be tied. She had closed the big grey gates but hundreds of lunatic boys had climbed the walls, leapt into the grounds and were rushing around singing the most peculiar songs and roaring lustily. Convent girls went into storms of giggles, but they were beyond sight and reach of the demons who had breached defences, opened the big gates and poured through, bicycle bells going bing-a-bing. Mother Gonzaga’s rickshawman wrung his hands, gave a wail and bolted. The ruckus was unreal. These weren’t boys? Or were they? And what were these uncouth songs and battle cries that threatened to crack the walls, blow the tiles off the roof?
Hurrah! for the Mary!
Hurrah! for the lamb!
Hurrah! for the Royal boys
Who do not care a damn!
Oh! everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go,
Shouting the battlecry of freedom!
and then one demon with bulging neck veins would scream: ‘Arr! O! Why! Ai! Ell!’ and two hundred others would howl ‘Ro-yal!’ and run into each other waving flags, hats, leap the Convent box hedge and tumble the palm pots. Nobody could fathom what it all meant. Words seemed to have been stung together for the sake of bad rhyme and tolerable meter. Mother Gonzaga was outraged. Desecration of her school was one thing. Who ever said ‘the Mary’? And when do lambs shout battlecries, for St Patrick’s sake! She stormed out, umbrella in hand, determined to drive every boy out of her gates. She was surrounded, set upon with great shouts of glee, carried to her rickshaw and many hands raised the shafts. Her bearers took off at a sharp trot and behind and beside ran a horde of dishevelled boys . . . onto the Galle Road, down Retreat Road, whooping past the side gate where they laid down their burden, did a war dance of sorts and raced up the road to collect their bicycles, pile up passengers on bar, carrier and handlebars and shoot away, full of jolly good cheer.
Scenes at the Oval, too, grew frantic, billowing, ebbing, as Thomians surged into Royalists, and flag snatching was the name of the game and fights along the boundary commonplace.
Mr Angus of Royal was most peeved when, in 1951, he was duty master in the boarder section and missed the morning session of the Big Match. It was just as well, for by eleven he was rushing to the Cinnamon Gardens police station where an entire mob of hoarse-voiced boys stood amid piles of bicycles and an angry inspector said that all he wished to have was a horsewhip.
‘Ward Place!’ he thundered. ‘Ward Place! All these buggers and their bicycles! Round Lipton’s Circus. Riding in the roundabout also. Bus also went on the pavement. Some riding this way, some going other way and hooting. Whole Ward Place they blocked. Next to the hospital, no? Ambulances also stuck. Your school don’t know to control?’
Angus sweated. He had, true, quite a graphic description but imagination failed beyond that. He seized Carloboy’s ear. ‘You are also here!’ and turned to glare at pint-sized Thavan. ‘And you! Playing for under-sixteen also! Rioting on the road!’
The inspector said, ‘Take all and go. But no bicycles. If they want let come with their parents to take the bikes.’
A groan coloured the air. ‘But how to go for the match?’ Carloboy protested.
‘Go by bus! No bicycles! What match? Match started long ago. What are you doing in Ward Place?’
‘So we were going. Borella and then Oval.’
‘Oh yes? So long you were taking. Got reports here. Went to Ladies College and Bishops College and playing pondu3 in all the girls schools . . . No bikes!’
Angus, muttering some sort of Chinese incantation, led his boys out. On Reid Avenue he turned on the mob. Those who are going by bus, go! Oh, and by the way, how did you all come to the station?’
‘Police said to come,’ Brendon Kurups said.
‘So you came?’
‘Yes, sir.’
It would never do to tell Angus how the police, waving batons and with some actually carrying wicker shields, had routed the bicycle flotilla, threatened to crack heads, smash the bikes, made them dismount and wheel their machines to the station. Shrewdly, they noted that Angus was ready to erupt. But erupt he did, and a punishment, rare and undreamed of awaited them. They were gated for a week, labelled ‘undesirable’, not allowed to enter the college and confined like lepers of sorts, in a shed where the sternest of the staff set them interminable hours of Maths and cast aspersions on their leprous states, which, if one had a mind to, could have been argued in court on grounds of libel, slander and general defamation.
Just as this master faced his outcasts in the hot, corrugated roof shed, 1950 saw the two Koreas facing each other across the 38th parallel and Carloboy was priming for his Senior School Certificate when America got embroiled in the Korean War. China swarmed in to oppose General MacArthur and the Burghers, who always followed war news diligently, were most annoyed with President Truman who dismissed MacArthur for wanting to take on the Chinese as well. ‘MacArthur, men, MacArthur, no? If can just go and land atom bombs in Japan, what’s the harm to put one in China also?’
‘Yes, men,’ George de Mello would say, ‘but United Nations scared. How if MacArthur attacks China? Russia will get angry.’
‘So let get,’ Sonnaboy would snort.
‘Yes, easy to say, but Russia also got atom bombs, no?’
‘Then must put in China and Russia also. Damn nonsense. Where will they get another fellow like MacArthur? That’s what I want to know.’
‘That’s true,’ George nodded, ‘damn shame, no?’
Carloboy conned over his British and World History. It did not satisfy him, not when history was being made all the time. Why, his history book came up to the First World War and that was all. But ‘Penda’ had warned that World War Two would also figure and urged his boys to read every note he had given. Rapid development of technical weaponry was yet another thing to be familiar with. Five subjects—that’s all he needed to pass, and Sinhala, English and Maths were compulsories. He added Art and History, and just to increase his chances, English Literature, General Science and Civics. It meant longer hours in the examination hall, but he would get his five, at least.
In 1952, posted results told him that he had his Senior School Certificate. Masters shook their heads wonderingly. Sonnaboy was pleased and more pleased to know that Mr Dias’ son had failed miserably. ‘Somehow my bugger passed, men. I told Beryl also, with all the nonsense he’s doing, still when have to learn, will learn. Six s
ubjects, men, and credits also.’
Dias grimaced. ‘My bugger failed men. Saying can’t study again. What nonsense? Put him a bloody slap. Go and learn and sit again. If haven’t SSC even what he’s going to do. Even that new postman who’s coming said he also passed SSC. How? And became a postman. Couldn’t get a better job it seems. Nowadays even this SSC useless men. Have to go higher, I’m thinking. But where? Will have to send to join the army or something if he cannot pass.’
Yes, Dias was so right. Even a Senior School Certificate was no guarantee of any sort of future in a rapidly changing country. Sonnaboy too, was finding the railway under a new regime quite bloody-minded. He retired, drew his commuted pension and decided to launch a small grocery store. He thought little of Carloboy who, flushed with his exam success, dutifully went into the Upper Fifth and raised eyebrows.
‘What?’ asked Pol Thel. ‘You’re going to do your Intermediate?’
‘Yes, sir. Can go to the University, no?’
‘Good help the University,’ Pol Thel said piously.
Carloboy, at sixteen, had begun to find himself. He felt, at last, that he belonged. He had played Royal foul—oh, many times over—but his school still held him, did him proud. He was broad, strong, a trouble-maker and a trouble seeker, but he had seen six merry years at Royal and had watched the college heave in horror and yet absorb the worst and best he manifested.
Why, dammit, he was hardly a boy anymore.
Time to put away boyish things.
Time to be a man!
Chapter Fifteen
1952.
The year of the Upper Fifth. A year to decide . . . the University Entrance, or what?
In Iran they sent the Shah into exile and in Malaya the British fought Communist guerillas. Arabs seethed over the independent State of Israel and masters in Royal College seethed over this bunch of SSC-passed terrors who, relaxing after the rigours of the examination were now apt to run amok at the press of a button . . . any button.
A bad year.
There was Pearlyn, dusky, beautiful, poised like a goddess. Sinhalese father, Burgher mother, and possessed of the best of both, her laughing eyes and rich lips in a perfectly heart-shaped face captured Carloboy. And she was twenty-two and wore an engagement ring and her fiancé, Gerry Waidya was big and sweated and always wore a tie and tight collar. Gerry called on Pearlyn in his car, Carloboy on his bicycle. She was intrigued. Soon they would meet outside the Dehiwela railway station and she would laugh and say, ‘But you’re still going to school, no? And see, I’m engaged to Gerry also.’
Carloboy was adamant. ‘So I’ll leave school and get a job.’
‘How? You are not even eighteen.’
But she looked on this game and its excitement and felt very satisfied with herself. ‘Don’t come at five. Gerry will be there. If you like, come after seven.’ And Carloboy would go to her little Kawdana home and hold her hand and feel quite breathless.
That, too, didn’t last. Gerry would say, ‘What is that bugger hanging around here for?’ and decided to marry before his girl got any silly ideas. Pearlyn whispered, ‘Even if we get married, you’ll come to see me, no?’
‘What for?’
‘Why, you said you love me, so come and see me.’
‘You think he will like?’
‘But you’ll come, no?’
Suddenly Carloboy was tired of it all. ‘Oh go and do what you want,’ he said crossly, ‘if you’re marrying him go and marry. Go to hell even! I’m going!’ and he went. But nothing ended and the scene shifted and life became a sort of revolving barrel of affairs that blossomed and died in quick succession.
Beryl’s brother, Charles, moved to Saranankara Road—a hip-pocket of a house with a doll’s house veranda and in which his three lovely daughters and his homosexual son adorned the rooms, positively electrifying the air. The youngest and most precocious was Rosie, who favoured the titillating art of the exhibitionist from an incredibly early age. As frequent family visitors, the da Breas turned many heads as they trooped down the road to Sonnaboy’s home. It was so easy to take Rosie to the back of the house, where she would lean against the lavatory wall and Carloboy would bend so that she could rub his cock against her clitoris and squeeze and squeeze until he ejaculated against her. He would go to Uncle Charles’ to sit in the little hall, looking through the half-drawn bedroom curtain. In the room Rosie would lie on the bed, open wide her long, white legs and rub and rub and twist her body and turn to show him her trim buttocks. It was a beautiful performance and Carloboy would sit, penis-stiff, and the wetness would mark his trousers. Opportunity took its time, however, until the day he was able to get her alone and he was seventeen and she was twelve and she gave a lip-biting gasp when he entered her and she was tight, so tight that he felt he had impaled her and the head of his penis was clenched inside by a small, urgent vice. And the blood. Oh, he knew, of course. All manner of sex books, surreptitiously circulated in class, told him that virginity demanded sacrifice, offered blood. But her blood was so red and she was so white. It lay in thin lines on his prepuce and around the curl of his foreskin. She said nothing, even when he withdrew, unfulfilled, afraid even of what he had done. The blood fell, a big drop, a crimson tear on the sheet. She rose and walked stiffly to the bathroom.
‘It hurt,’ she said. ‘I tied a cloth but have some blood on it. If wet a cloth and rub will it come out?’
Carloboy stared.
‘You go and wash then. I’ll clean quickly before anybody comes. Wash and go from the back, round the house.’
He felt shame, shyness, what? He couldn’t say. She still came home, chattered her small girl talk, made eyes at him, groped for him, quick, darting, nobody-must-see movements. Even in company. It was all so natural. She would bring a newspaper, squat beside him, spread it open half way across his lap. ‘See this, what is this word? Mummy said you’re good in English,’ and the adults would smile and all the while, under the newspaper, her fingers would press and press and circle around his cock and he would say the first thing in his head and she would lean closer to query and Sonnaboy would tell Hazel, ‘If like, men, send in the evenings to learn. Carloboy can teach her a little, no?’
And at his sister Marie’s birthday party, while the revels were in progress he put her on his bicycle and they went to her home where he hurriedly entered her, just as hurriedly spent himself and she smiled and said, ‘Now we did it properly, no? Other girls in school will be mad when they know.’
‘What? You’re going to tell your schoolfriends?’
‘So what’s the harm? All talking only but only that Cora Ohlmus said how her uncle did to her. She also blood came like last time we did. She cried, it seems and uncle held the mouth and said don’t make a noise. We’ll go, no? Might ask where we are.’
Can one fuck a first cousin? Apparently, in the case of a Lolita, one could? But Carloboy couldn’t really contend. The child was so positively nymphomaniacal. And she chattered away so unselfconsciously. ‘You must see the size of Geordie’s. Huge. Bigger than yours. Bigger than anybody’s, I think. Yesterday he tried to put it in. I nearly screamed. My goodness, the size. I said don’t and had to shake until like you suddenly that white thing came.’
Carloboy glared. ‘What! He’s your brother!’
‘So?’
‘So with your brother also you’re going? No shame?’
‘So you can also do. There Diana and Marie and even Heather also not small. What’s the harm?’
‘Brothers and sisters cannot do. It’s bad.’
She pouted.
‘You’re going to be like this I won’t come again.’
‘So don’t then. Who cares? Enough girls I can get!’
And that, thankfully, was the end of that.
Beryl sacked Soma. Soma, she said, had a big mouth. The woman had spread the word among other garden domestics that the mistress was being fervently serviced by the dapper man next door. Beryl had borne Beverley Annette and lost two
babies thereafter and with her 1952 abortion the home became a shambles. Carloboy was outraged. It was all over the neigbourhood.
Trevor Dias said, ‘What men, should have heard my daddy and mummy talking last night. About your mummy men. My daddy saying damn hore. What’s a hore, men? And next door also they’re coming to the fence and saying sin for your father and shame for the children and what, your father is blind, he couldn’t see what was going on?’
Carloboy nodded morosely. ‘Not only that, men, you must see how my sisters are saying. Very good for daddy, only drinking and shouting. Feel like going and kicking all out of the house.’
‘What is your daddy saying?’
‘What to say. He’s keeping quiet. I told him everything. How used to send me long time ago to Bambalapitiya with notes to give someone. I don’t know who that man is. Coming and saying here go to that place and give this letter. Will give a reply, bring and come. One day I opened the envelope to see. Had fifty rupees. Just people will give fifty rupees? Must be going there quietly when going marketing.’