A Postillion Struck by Lightning

by Dirk Bogarde

  Coming back from Tennis, in the after glow of the evening, if I stayed that long, which I often did, the conversations never really varied. They were always, more or less like this:

  “Have you got the key, Walter?”

  “No. It’s McWhirter’s turn this week to lock up. He’s got it.”

  “He wasn’t playing very well today, I thought?”

  “No. Not well at all. Sun in his eyes.”

  “But you tossed for places surely?”

  “Of course we did. He lost. Kept hitting the net.”

  “Aha. Getting on, I’m afraid.”

  “Aye, that’s a fact.”

  “Agnes’s service was poor, erratic….”

  “Both getting on a wee bittie.”

  “Oh aye….”

  “Ah michtie-me.”

  “The Brandy Snaps went down very well. They always do. Gratifying. The cream makes it look more. Next week I’ll try Molly’s recipe for Soda Bread. …” Their voices would drift harmlessly over me, vapour trails of cloud above the Downs, to be smudged, faded, and eventually to evaporate in the gentle business of preparing the cocoa for supper.

  School went ahead slowly. There appeared to be no marked improvement in my reports, and the little notes appended to the end of my letters home by my uncle, which I was not allowed to see—they were written confidentially after I had signed my name and sent love and kisses—grew steadily more pessimistic. He was doing his best to be helpful and generous, but really … the Boy didn’t seem to be settling down, after all it was now more than a whole year. There should have been some improvement. There, apparently, was none. Except that I was doing, I thought, pretty well. I was, at least, trying. I wanted to get back to the South, and I knew that without some form of improvement in my scholastic world this would be delayed and delayed. I was there to learn, at a good Scottish School, and the sooner I learned the better. So naturally I went as hard as I could; I battered away at Metalwork making copper ash-trays and serviette-rings; I made bookends and unacceptable work boxes in woodwork; I threw cups and bowls on the potter’s wheel, and I did French Translation and Essay like no one else in the school. My English was filled with long poems and stories which were often read out to the whole, agonised, sniggering, class. My Geography was noted for the amount of space I covered, products I knew, populations I recorded, deciduous, coniferous, rain and dry belts I had assembled. I was even congratulated by teachers who smiled and were polite, and my exercise books, for these lessons, were marked well into the eighties. What was wrong?

  Apparendy, I was failing all the time. The fact that Maths was still incomprehensible to me, that Physics and Chemistry and Engineering were far, far beyond my meagre comprehension, seemed not to matter to me, at any rate, against the glowing reports from the few classes in which I excelled. Albeit without much competition.

  An angry, hurt, letter from my father sent me off to my Altar. I had found a small burn, or brook, some miles from the Estate, deep in a beech thicket away from sight or people. When I exercised the neighbours’ dogs, the neighbours from the Old Town I hasten to add—the people on the Estate didn’t keep dogs, only greyhounds—I used to tramp off across the sodden fields and corrugated plough to my sanctuary. I had, one day, idly started to dam the little burn with stones and boulders, and within a short time created a splendid pool and waterfall. Then, to embellish, as I am prone to do, something which was already attractive, I started work on a small Altar which I made from shards of slate and flat stone which I collected in a bag from the shale tips round the edges of the Bingies. As I spent a great deal of my spare time by the Pool and the waterfall praying to an unheeding God for swift release back to the life I once had known, it occurred to me that He might listen better, or listen at all, if I built a bit of the appropriate furnishings. I had been taught, in my mild flirtation with Catholicism, that God could Hear You Wherever You Prayed. Just so long as you did. Well I did. Furiously and piously. However, He seemed to pass me over on zephyr wings as I lay nightly moaning in the yellow oak bed: even more so in the Put-U-Up. So I assumed that perhaps an Altar to His Glory would be more appropriate, and more obvious, to His clearly busy Eye. Also the labour which it would cost, the lugging of the slate and shards of stone, the mud and slush of the construction would surely not go unseen? With this in mind, I built a reasonable Temple to Him. Decorated with a couple of empty aspirin bottles, to hold assorted wild flowers, a tin cross made from old bottle tops and a bit of wood, and swamped with a monotony of desperate prayer, it stood, beside my burn, a model of piety and trust.

  Perhaps it was the sheer boredom, the waves of self-pity, which put Him off—for whatever else happened, my mumbled pleadings and sighs fell on totally sterile ground in Heaven.

  Until one day.

  A shaft of thin hopeful light slit across the dullness of my existence. One Sunday, after the long effort of the Letter Home, my uncle said, with a heavy clearing of his throat and lowered eyes, that he had been, very reluctantly, forced, in his weekly note to my parents, to say that, everything being considered very carefully, it was probably better that I should be removed from School since it was costing everyone a great deal of money and worry, and that there seemed to be no positive signs, after so long, that any good was coming from it all. He said, very politely and gently, that I had to see things that way for myself. Even my own reports were saddening; I seemed incapable of joining a team, of playing games, of making friends, or even of applying myself to the work which was set out for me to do.

  In short, I was wasting everyone’s time, money and patience.

  The fact that I never, at any time ever, saw my school reports—they were always addressed to him, correctly, as my Guardian and he sent them on to my parents—nor ever had any discussions with anyone about them didn’t seem to occur to either of us at the time. I was simply struck dumb with shock. As far as I was aware, I had worked as hard as possible and had tried my best.

  The next morning, after an anguished night watching the patterns flicker on the ceiling from the Valor Perfection Stove, my uncle and I parted company as usual at Queen Street Station. At the bookstall I bought a stamp and a picture postcard on which, leaning against a pile of magazines, I wrote in pencil, “I am very unhappy here. Please, please let me come home.” A swift Burberry’d arm shot over my shoulder and lifted it up.

  My uncle’s face was expressionless, a nicotined finger brushed his little moustache.

  “Well now, Sonny,” he said kindly, “why not post it?” He flipped it on to the magazines and walked away.

  Dismay and guilt gave way to rising desperation. I did exactly as he said and went on to school.

  It was an uncomfortable week.

  Fearful of the results when this fatal correspondence would reach my unsuspecting parents I spent a lot of time walking other people’s blasted dogs over to my sanctuary. Many a “Rags” or “Boy” or “Bobbie” passed a bewildered hour or two while I droned away at the Altar asking for Help and some form of Direction. The latter came in a sudden surging determination which shook me like ague. If this is where really trying hard got you, then it was very simple. I would just not bother any longer and let the whole damned thing slide. They could all do as they liked. And so would I. I ceased praying, wrecked the Altar, opened the dam, and played truant from school as often, and as pleasurably, as I could.

  It was easy. At lunch-time, instead of eating my sodden meat pie with Tom or whoever else was sitting on the dustbin wall, I just stuck my cap in my pocket, pinned a handkerchief in my Blazer pocket so that it flopped over the give-away crest on the badge, opened my collar, stuffed my tie somewhere else, and, hands in pockets, one and sixpence and a few odd coppers saved from here and there, I strolled happily down the hill from the school into the busy crowds of George Square and let Glasgow and its allure swallow me up. It was as easy as that, and no one bothered to check. At first, naturally, I was terrified. I was sure that I would be spotted and carted back to the am
iable but fearsome Dr Steel. However, with no badges or colours showing, I passed for any other boy wandering about the city. I found deceit very refreshing.

  Woolworths was my usual haven. Because it was warm and bright, and filled with people. Here was Life. Pushing and shoving, smiling and laughing, talking and living. Music played all day. The record counter had a constant supply of melody. To the lingering refrains of “When The Poppies Bloom Again” I would sit on a high stool eating a Chocolate Fudge Ice Cream and beam happily at the world about me. Guiltless. It was all heady stuff.

  Later, I grew bolder and went, imagine the bravery!, to the cinema alone. For sixpence, in the middle stalls with a packet of pea-nuts or a Mars Bar, I sat in my element and got two movies, all the Advertising, the Newsreel, the Forthcoming Attractions plus a pink, green and amber lit Organ Recital.

  Life was never to be dull and drab again. I would always live like this, and the Hell with Effort, Loyalty, and “The Times”.

  It would be useful to say at this point that it was the moment when my whole future was laid before me. The great silver screen, the glamour, the glory, the guns and the chases. Camera angles, Lighting, Back Projection, Split Screen, Fade and Dissolve flew past my eyes twice a week and vanished like dreams. But I was the Original Audience for which these films were made. The refugee from worry, humdrum life, anxiety or despair. I only wanted to be bewitched, enthralled, be-glamoured. The rest of it washed away like silt in a tub. Nothing at all rubbed off at that time. My personal disillusion, even disappointment, was so great, my anger so deep, that I had fixed it clearly that I would try no more. They could come and get me and punish me in whatever way they all liked: I had given up. But until they did come to get me, or sent for me, I was going to have as pleasant a time as I possibly could. What on earth was the point in going on any longer? I had tried, and failed again. So be it.

  It was, I think, at the Paramount, one matinee, that I made my first friend out of school. Tom had become more and more immersed in his Bunsen burners and retort stands, and I hardly ever saw him even for meat-pie lunches. While Gregg, after the disaster of The Tea, never spoke to me again. So apart from the dogs I walked there was no one, and I was wonderfully free, if lacking the bonds of friendship which I strangely craved since it was no longer to be had.

  Even Tom was something.

  The Paramount was a new, glittering Picture Palace with a deadly reputation. I had heard it spoken of in muted voices in many of the parlours to which I was bidden, or sent, for those Bakings and Teas. It was the meeting place of all the Evil in Glasgow, the Crooks and Thieves and Bookies. Any young girl going there alone, it was said, invariably ended up with a hypodermic in her bottom and a bunk in a boat at the Broomilaw awaiting the next tide down the Clyde for Morocco. Indeed the people Upstairs knew of one girl who, missing her companions, had foolishly gone in alone to see Robert Taylor and was never heard of again apart from the fact that an usherette had seen a dark-skinned man helping a young lady to a taxi from the foyer saying that she had had a “fainting fit”. It made going to the Pictures much more interesting.

  In any case I felt secure because of two things: first I was a boy, secondly I always sat in the middle of the stalls where it was lighter, and never in the shadows where, of course, anything might happen. Armed, this day, with my logic, I went to see a special showing of Boris Karloff in “The Mummy”. I had seen it two or three times before, ages ago, but it was still my favourite next to “The Bride of Frankenstein”. I also saw Mr Dodd.

  Mr Dodd was almost entirely beige. A beige raincoat, beige face, beige hair and freckles. He sat two or three seats away from me and smiled pleasantly all through the Forthcoming Attractions. And still I didn’t know.

  During the interval, when the lights went pink and green and the organ rumbled through a selection from something or other, he smiled shyly across the empty seats and I smiled back, and he moved along and came and sat beside me. He asked if I would like an ice-cream, and I said yes, and we ate together in pleasant, companionable silence. He was very polite, quiet spoken and smiled a lot; and when he took my empty ice-cream tub away from me, plus the wooden spoon and stacked it neatly into his own and tidily placed it all under his seat, he patted my leg kindly and whispered with a secret wink that I was, in all probability, playing truant from school, wasn’t I? Shattered with surprise that he had so quickly found me out, I lied swiftly and said that I was “off school” with a sprained ankle. That seemed to content him and the programme started again so that there was no need for more conversation.

  It was very nice having someone to laugh at the film with, to share fear with, and to enjoy relief with all at the same time. He was very attentive and once, in a particularly creepy part he put his arm protectively round my shoulder, which I felt was very thoughtful of him indeed.

  By the time the show was over it was well after six, and I realised that I would have to leave my new friend quickly and “limp” to the station and Bishopbriggs where my aunt would be waiting to hear from me how well the rehearsals for the school play were going. My excuse, true as it happened, for the lateness of my arrival. Mr Dodd was sad, he told me his name and that I was to call him Alec, and made an appointment for us to see the film again at the end of the week before the Forthcoming Attraction took its place. I agreed with pleasure. It was to be his Treat, he said, and after we would go to Cranstons for tea but that I could still be home in time so as not to worry my aunt.

  I sailed down to Queen Street Station with winged feet, no limp now, heart high with happiness. Someone at the Altar had listened after all. I had a New Friend.

  Tea at Cranstons was an impressive affair at the worst of times, and this was the best. Quiet, calm, warm, sparkling with silver, white tablecloths, flowers in fluted vases, motherly waitresses in crisp aprons and little caps, and a silver stand of cakes. Mr Dodd knew his way about very well and was pleasant to everyone and anxious that I should eat as much as I could for, he said, he was a Medical Student and he knew just how much “fuel” the working lad’s mind had to have to keep it going.

  It was very pleasant indeed. Although I had been there often before with my aunt on shopping expeditions, this was far more companionable. We talked at length of the film and discussed all the Technical Effects and the actors and Acting, we discussed the Theatre and Plays, although I had not seen very many by that time, but the feeling of lazy companionship, of comfort and of laughter was delightful. It was as if we had known each other for years instead of hours. He told me how his mother had saved and scrimped to send him to School and then on to the Medical College where he was now studying. I asked him what kind of Doctor he was going to be and he said a Surgeon because he felt that is probably where he could do the most good. When I said that I was rather horrified at the idea of all the blood and cutting people up, he very reasonably said that I might very well feel that because I clearly had not heard the Call as he had done. I was very impressed. The conversation slid back, inevitably, to the film and he astonished me by saying that he knew exactly how mummies were bandaged and how they were embalmed; it was really very easy to do, he said cheerfully, and anyone could make a mummy if they knew how to bandage. I was overcome with curiosity and asked him more and more questions; he tried to demonstrate with his table napkin but it was too small and too thick, so he suggested that since he lived nearby and had all his books and bandages there we should go at once to his place and he could show me in a trice.

  I accepted immediately; already telling my aunt the lie about the play. And I still didn’t know.

  His flat was a rather poky room with a kitchenette in a high block over a tobacconist and sweet shop in Hope Street. It smelled of ether and stale cigarettes and was pretty untidy, for which he apologised, pulling hurriedly at the unmade bed and taking some dirty plates and a bottle into the sink. There were books everywhere, a typewriter, old shirts, and a gas fire which plopped when he lit it. On the wall there were pictures of Rothesay Castle and tw
o men wrestling. He opened a thick book filled with diagrams of bandaging; people were swathed in them, heads, hips, legs, wrists, arms and everything else. It was very comprehensive.

  Chattering happily, he pulled a large cardboard box from under the bed and spilled rolls and rolls of blue-wrapped bandages of every size all over the floor. These, he said, were just the trick to turn me into a splendid mummy and if I would just remove my jacket and shirt and vest and sit down in that chair there he would turn me into Boris Karloff in the flick of a fly’s eyelid.

  I dutifully, rather shyly, did as he suggested while he started to unroll yards and yards of filmy gauzes. It was not very long before I was straight-jacketed in strips of thin cotton bandage from the top of my head to my waist, arms securely folded, in the correct position of mummies, across my chest, a small slit left for each eye so that I could hazily see through a vague fringe of white blur, a small hole left for my nostrils so that I could breathe. Otherwise I was trussed like a fowl. Taking down the oval mirror from the mantelpiece he showed me the effect which I found impressive, uncomfortable, and very restricting. I could merely manage a vague motion with my head, which didn’t show, and roll my slitty eyes. I could neither see properly, nor even hear for that matter, and I was totally mute.