Trials of the Monkey

by Matthew Chapman

  But the long hair was not at first grown to piss anyone off. It was simply plumage, one weapon in a magical array of magnets. I never came in contact with girls and so I thought ‘If they can see this fine hair, perhaps they’ll look at my face, and if I arrange my features like this and hold my shoulders like that—if I can just make myself a fraction more attractive—I will become irresistible. She—whoever she is destined to be—she will see me and be forced by an uncontrollable urge to approach me on the bus, to write me a note, to break into the house at midnight and slide into my bed and say, “I love you, I can’t help myself.” ’

  In this magical effort, my vanity became demented. I spent hours staring at myself in the mirror, practising expressions. One time, I decided in the middle of a school day to adopt one of the younger master’s smiles. He was a lean man with a long sharp jaw that hooked out beyond his nose. When he smiled his cold blue eyes disappeared into an array of radiant crinkles and his mouth widened and turned down at the corners. It was a roguish smile, wickedly flirtatious, and the female teachers giggled and looked away whenever he applied it.

  I borrowed it and used it all day. I said hello with it and I said goodbye. I used it on the bus home and on a woman coming up the lane. Charm? Devilish! It was the new me. I presented it to my mother and then I took it upstairs to the mirror.

  I stood there, staring at myself. Then I raised an eyebrow and began to crinkle up the eyes at the corners.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, and smiled.

  To my horror, I saw a leering, retarded trout-like boy grimacing back at me. It wasn’t even a smile. It was an absurdity, grotesque and bizarre. Why had no one said anything? Had they all thought I was unwell, that I had some facial tic, a nerve problem? From that time on, all new personalities had a test run in the mirror before release.

  As for my hair, I was obsessed with the parting. I moved it half an inch up, half an inch down, I combed it straight, then slightly crooked. I had it go all the way to the back of the head and then stopped it three-quarters of the way there and swept it around the curve. I angled it up at the front and down at the back, and down at the front and up at the back. I combed it, combed it again, and then recombed it. I combed it so relentlessly I eventually tore out a half-inch gully. It was like a firebreak in a forest and looked so bad, I had to move the parting to the other side of my head and comb the hair over to cover it until it grew back.

  And, for all this effort, not a single girl came forward.

  My charms, however, were not entirely overlooked.

  There are teachers who have gone from school to college and then right back to school again and, knowing nothing else, remain essentially schoolchildren. ‘Bunter’ was one of these. A rotund and gentle bachelor with a nose like the tip of an overcooked sausage, he often wore khaki shorts and knee-high socks. In these, he looked like the mischievous comic-book character Billy Bunter, grown perversely old. Bunter was the only teacher who was ever kind to me at this school and I remember him with affection; but his motives, though undoubtedly benevolent, were not entirely pure.

  One weekend, having got permission from my parents, he took me and a friend to stay with his mother at the seaside. I don’t know how old I was but I couldn’t have been more than ten because I left the school by eleven. Bunter drove an old, very solid, very round British car and he drove it very slowly. When we asked him to drive faster, he said, ‘Better to arrive too late in this world than too early in the next,’ a phrase I still sometimes say to myself while hurtling across town to avoid being late. (I had a job once where if you didn’t arrive on time you got punched in the stomach, and since then I’ve always been obsessively punctual.)

  It was winter at the seashore, but Bunter took us down to the sea to go fishing. The beach had no sand, only large, round pebbles which rolled around beneath your feet as you walked. Bunter, knot expert and general all-round outdoorsman, was also an accomplished fisherman. With much hands-on instruction, he taught us how to cast the line far out by turning your back on the sea, then whipping up the rod to fling the lead-weighted line over your head. Zzzzzzzzzzzz went the reel and you could turn and see the weights splash into the water what seemed to be hundreds of feet out. Pretty symbolic, all this rod stuff, now I come to think of it.

  His mother’s home reeked: a pungent, respectable odour of polish, gas of all kinds, and the damp fifty-year-memoir of English cooking which had sunk into the carpets and the old green armchairs with their lace doilies, this fusty stench wired through at the top with lavender-scented widowhood and just below that, with the faint medicinal bouquet of old age itself, all this trapped inside a red-brick Victorian semi-detached house with its windows closed against the endless cold grey wind off the cold North Sea.

  When we had had our ‘high tea’ (an early dinner which usually consisted of some combination of eggs, baked beans, sausages and bacon dumped on a slice of white bread and washed down with hot tea and milk) it was time for bed. Bunter lurked helpfully nearby. My friend and I scrambled into our pyjamas, brushed our teeth, and hurried beneath the sheets and blankets.

  Bunter settled himself into a chair next to the bed.

  ‘Would you like me to read for you?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, yes please, sir,’ we replied.

  ‘Would you like me to read this adventure story here about a Boy Scout named Nigel or …’ He smiled roguishly. ‘ … or would you rather I read a chapter of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence?’

  ‘I think we’d rather have the D. H. Lawrence book, sir, if that’s all right with you,’ I replied swiftly, in case my friend opted for reef knots and tents and marlinspikes.

  The book was very much in the news at the time. It was still against the law to sell it in England and America, and two highly publicised legal cases were under way to change this, one in New York and one in London. The book’s scandalous details were being euphemistically discussed by everyone. Not only, therefore, was the book sexual, it was also fabulously illicit. How brave was Bunter?

  Bunter settled his glasses on the end of his misshapen snoz and started to read. He had obviously been through the book before because we only got those passages which dealt with the lusty comings and goings of ‘John Thomas,’ the name given the hero’s penis. This was an excellent book, I remember thinking, well written, a fantastic glimpse into adulthood which made it seem extremely desirable.

  After about ten minutes, Bunter closed the book.

  ‘Well, there you are. Did you find that exciting?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘Somewhat,’ said my friend.

  ‘Are you touching your John Thomases down there?’ He smiled.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. My friend was silent.

  ‘Would you like some help?’ asked Bunter, looking at me.

  ‘No, thank you, sir,’ I replied. ‘I can manage, but thanks all the same.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’ve done it before. I’ll be fine, thank you.’

  ‘All right,’ said Bunter in a tone which suggested I was missing something pretty special. And left.

  The next morning, my friend woke up with a huge lump in his cheek and my ears hurt. We had mumps. Bunter took us home.

  Alfred Kinsey, the first scientist to study human sexual behaviour in the twentieth century, believed the incidence of paedophilia and incest remain fairly constant. What changes is the amount of attention they get. This goes in cycles, often provoked by a single gruesome event, or simply because a religion or a newspaper needs a campaign or story. The more intense the interest and the more hysterical the condemnation, the worse it is for the victim. Responding as much to the outrage as the incident, they feel outrageously violated, and suffer accordingly. During periods when these things are viewed as pathetic rather than monstrous, the abused suffer less and recover faster.

  In my youth, the world was full of ‘dirty old men’ and ‘flashers,’ old geezers lurking in the public toilets, men in
raincoats, and types like Bunter. To me Bunter was just a dirty old man—a rather sweet dirty old man—and I was neither shocked nor damaged by his masturbation-proffer. In fact, had I been alone, curious as I always was to experience a new sensation, I would probably have accepted it, and I’m sure that would not have done me much harm either.

  I didn’t tell my parents about the incident for a while, only because I figured it was meant to be secret. I was not afraid. When I did tell them, they looked slightly appalled and asked if I thought they should do something about it. I said no. Bunter went on being my teacher and remained my favourite. Perhaps if the other teachers had not been so implacably cold and cruel, I might have seen him in a more malevolent light. Believing as I do in original innocence, not sin, I think any violation of the sanctity of childhood is the worst of all crimes and an instant addition to the future miseries of human relations; however, the salacious obsession with sexual crime draws so much light to one particular and obvious area of abuse that the far more damaging institutional offences against children sneak by unnoticed and arouse almost no outrage at all. In America, the most callous and brutal violation of youth is collectively tolerated by the whole nation. Visit an inner city school—if you dare—and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

  It is, I suppose, an amusing comment on the English prep school that by far the nicest teacher was a predatory homosexual, but that was the case. Bunter’s suggestion of digital assistance had at least the virtue of intending pleasure. ‘Scratchy,’ who was by some weird ethical quirk only allowed to beat boys with a sneaker—the honour of the cane was the sole privilege of the headmaster—intended both pain and pleasure: you got one, he got the other. He was a vast man whose bald pate was compensated for by wildly hairy ears and nostrils and eyebrows. Everything about him was fibrous and scratchy. Before administering the punishment, he’d pull me against his tweed jacket in a fatherly embrace. (When I took my first beating from him, my face was only inches above his prominent erection, which I could feel against my chin. As I grew older it was against my sternum, then finally at my lungs. Before it could turn into a dick-to-dick situation, I was gone.) Having impressed himself upon me with his embrace, he’d now lean down, stroke my buttocks with one of his massive hands and, with deep emotion, growl the time-honored chestnut (and I swear this is true): ‘This is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you.’

  Perhaps it was already a joke, this line, among the masters, something they tittered about in the staff room, but, pathetically, I believed him, and in the beginning, felt sorry for him and was moved by his affection. Here at least was someone other than my mother who would take my scabby little body and hold it. Having tenderised my flesh with his gentle hands, he’d reach for the famous flail, a long, stained tennis shoe without laces whose springy rubber sole he’d now whip expertly against my buttocks three to six times, rarely more. This over, he’d minister once more to my stinging cheeks, sometimes slipping a cool, dry hand down inside the back of my pants to ease the pain, and then, with tears in his eyes, he’d let me waddle out, sobbing with a mixture of pain and—how droll—gratitude for it not having been worse.

  I hated the masters who sent me to be punished by this man more than I hated the man himself. At least there was a certain intimacy in being beaten, while he who sent you simply expressed hatred. Beneath the artificial, fear-engendered politeness, the antipathy which existed between the boys and the teachers was intense and pervasive. When a master cut off his finger in the carpentry shop and left it on the floor as he stumbled off to call an ambulance, a boy kicked it into some sawdust beneath a cabinet so if he returned in hopes of getting it sewn back on, he’d be out of luck. I would have done the same.

  I was good at nothing except sport and drawing. My drawings were not appreciated and, though I would win in solitary sports such as the high jump and the hundred yards, team sports brought out the worst in me. I made no effort in ‘Crafts,’ where other educationally subnormal kids would often excel, and when the year ended and all the other losers presented their mothers with teapots or bird-feeders made of plywood, I had nothing to offer. My mother would walk around with me on the last day of term and look at all the silver cups I had not won and at all the clay and wood that other boys had fashioned into gifts for their mothers, and she was visibly saddened. One year, her disappointment was so palpable, I took pity on her. As we passed a carpentry display, she admired a small wooden tugboat, painted grey and red.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you like that,’ I said, ‘because I made it for you.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Yes. Here it is,’ I told her, snatching it from the display and handing it to her. ‘Now put it in your bag and let’s go.’

  She kept the boat on her dresser almost to the end of her life, a modest and solitary symbol of her son’s artistic potential and filial love. When I eventually told her it was stolen, she still kept it. Touchingly, I would later find out, she had kept other mementoes of my wickedness.

  As I endured my third unhappy and confused year there, I began to run out of excuses for why I was not doing my homework or randomly beating up other boys and was forced to tell ever more extraordinary lies. One excuse for not doing homework began with the statement that my mother was never home in the evenings.

  ‘I’m so worried about her I can’t concentrate.’

  ‘She’s not home. Where is she then? Does she work?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Is someone in the family ill? Is she looking after someone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, what is it then?’

  ‘I’d rather not say, sir.’

  ‘I’m afraid you have to.’

  ‘My father works all the time and my mother goes out dancing in jazz clubs and gets drunk,’ I finally admitted with a trembling lower lip.

  I don’t know if there were such things as jazz clubs in Cambridge then. If there were, she certainly didn’t go to them. Whatever she was up to at the time—and this must have been during the promiscuous phase which followed Francis’ birth—I never consciously doubted that she loved me and never stopped loving her. Furthermore, the mechanics of motherhood continued. No matter how drunk she was, dinner was always on the table at the same time each night—and not just dinner, but a rich, inventive, fresh dinner such as one might be served in a first-rate provincial restaurant in France; and the next morning, no matter how hung over she was, she was always first up, down in the kitchen, smoking a cigarette with her coffee as she cooked breakfast and made a packed lunch for whichever child still required it. Even these lunches seemed to me to convey her love. They were better than anyone else’s packed lunches, a Penguin biscuit, or fat cherries accompanying the sandwich with its crust carefully cut off.

  This is what was so tragic and so English about the whole thing. Everything continued normally. She never gave up, never collapsed as her mother had, never cried out, ‘Help me! For God’s sake, someone help me!’ even though, somewhere, she must have wanted to. Perhaps seeing her mother in asylums when she was ten or eleven had terrified her. Perhaps she thought if she confessed her symptoms that’s where she’d end up. Or perhaps her concern was for us: if she collapsed, we would be abandoned as she had been.

  Whatever her motives for not seeking help, I believe my motive for inventing the story about her wild nightlife was a hope that it would force her to take action of some kind. I remember a feeling of gratification at the scandal, as if I had struck a blow.

  Clare and Cecil were called in by the headmaster and my story was repeated. They managed to laugh it off. That Matthew, strange boy, what a character! But I’m also sure that behind my lie lay enough truth—my mother’s drinking undoubtedly expressed her desire to be out of the house—to make the encounter with the humourless Mr. White both distressing and humiliating. The idea of moving me to another school became increasingly attractive.

  A boarding school perhaps …

  If I had gone to St. Anne’
s still vulnerable to educational seduction, by the time I left I was impenetrable. In my last year, I sent two boys to the hospital. One got his leg snapped during a football game when I deliberately kicked his shin against a goal post. I was naturally strong and agile and was good at sport but not considered sportsmanlike. It was hard, however, in this instance, to prove malicious intent. It could, conceivably, have been, as I claimed, an accident.

  The incident with the other boy was not so easy to explain. I hit him over the head with a cactus during a nature study class, and everyone saw me do it. I picked the thing up—and brought it down. I was sent to Mr. White for a beating. I lied with all the conviction fear could muster. I didn’t do it. Whoever said I did was lying and if it was the whole class then they were all lying. Mr. White hesitated. First of all, the crime was so bizarre. Secondly, he couldn’t quite believe a young gentleman would lie so blatantly. He toyed with me a while, relishing my apprehension. He draped me over the cracked leather arm of his big armchair. I heard the ping as he removed one of his canes, arrayed in clips of varying sizes depending on the stick’s girth, but eventually let me go without satisfying his disciplinary urges. A week or so later, however, he concluded that in fact I was guilty. The evidence was overwhelming. A cactusing had occurred, I was the culprit, and I had lied. My time was up.

  I had served three years there, the only girl in my life being my sister whom I hated and longed for simultaneously. Nothing in my life would ever be as bad again. I spent a night in jail once and was immediately reminded of that school, the atmosphere of fear and helplessness, the relentless tension of impending violence. The difference was that while some of the men in jail were larger than me, none were twice my size and none had the legal right to beat me.

  I went to tutors to complete the year and was then sent to the same school my mother went to when she was a child, St. Christopher’s. It was a boarding school and it was co-educational.