by David Nobbs
‘They’ve earned it,’ said Bullock.
‘Not always,’ said Henry. ‘They get left it.’
‘Their people earned it,’ said Gerald Lush. ‘You Labour chaps want to take everything away. That’s what my father says anyway.’
‘Don’t you think there are working-class people capable of earning it?’ said Henry.
‘Of course I do,’ said Price-Ansty. ‘My father said that some of the working-class chaps in his regiment were jolly intelligent. He was quite surprised.’
‘We’re not getting at you, Oiky,’ said Gerald Lush. ‘You’re pretty clever.’
‘For an oik,’ said Bullock, and everybody laughed.
Henry grinned too. Not as much inside as outside, perhaps, but if you grinned externally at a thing often enough, you did find that the internal pain began to ease.
By the end of his life at Brasenose, it was really quite tolerable. Nobody really seemed to hate him any more, except Tubman-Edwards, and he hated everybody.
Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris were as brown as berries when he got home. He went to see Yorkshire play cricket twice and saw the first home games of Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United. They took Cousin Hilda to Bakewell for tea, and Henry discovered that the greatest author in the world wasn’t Captain W. E. Johns after all. It was a woman! Her name was Agatha Christie. He went to the pictures twice a week. You could forget all your worries there. You could even forget that before long you were going to Dalton College, and the whole painful business of beginning again was going to begin all over again.
8 It Rears Its Ugly Head
THERE WERE SIXTEEN wash-basins round the walls and eight more in the middle of the room. On the floor there were slatted wooden boards. Beyond the wash-basins there were four large, heavily stained baths. The showers were downstairs, beyond the changing rooms. Such were the washing arrangements in Orange House, in Dalton College, in Somerset, and washing was still very important to Henry in the autumn of 1948. So diligently, with what thoroughness and vigour, did he ablute himself that he suddenly realised that he was all alone in a deserted wash-room.
A prefect poked his head round the door and said, ‘Get to bed, you. It’s past lights-out.’
He went out into the long, bare corridor. It was very dimly lit by a night-light at the far end.
He entered the dormitory. It was pitch dark. He knew that his bed was the third on the left. He felt his way round the walls. He edged past the first bed, walking very slowly, his left hand stretched out in front of him, his right hand clutching his towel and washing bag. His left hand connected with the second bed.
‘Is that you, Badger?’ whispered a voice from the second bed.
‘No. I’m Pratt,’ whispered Henry.
‘Are you good-looking? If so, hop in,’ whispered the voice from the second bed.
Henry moved on as fast as he dared in the impenetrable dark.
‘Shut up, you blokes up that end,’ shouted Hertford-Jones, the dorm prefect. ‘Some of us want to get some crud.’
Henry edged his way round the third bed, and got in as quietly as he could.
‘Get out,’ yelled the bed’s occupant, as Henry snuggled up against him.
‘Shut up, Perkins,’ shouted Hertford-Jones.
‘No, honestly, Hertford-Jones,’ said the one who must be Perkins. ‘A raging homo’s just got into bed with me.’
‘Send him over here,’ said another voice, and there was laughter.
The dormitory was flooded with light. Henry was edging away from Perkins’s bed, crimson with shame.
‘I thought that was my bed,’ he said, looking round desperately. Every bed appeared to be full, except the end one, and that must be Hertford-Jones’s.
‘I know moral standards are declining, but honestly,’ said Perkins.
‘Which dorm are you in?’ said Hertford-Jones.
‘South Africa,’ said Henry.
‘This is New Zealand,’ said Hertford-Jones. ‘You’re in the wrong bloody dorm, you cretin.’
Henry edged his way out.
‘See you later,’ whispered the boy in the bed next to Perkins.
Henry closed the door of New Zealand carefully and groped his way down the corridor, away from the night-light, towards South Africa.
It was pitch black in South Africa. He felt his way carefully past the first two beds, still clutching his towel and washing bag. He was sweating freely. He might as well not have bothered to wash at all.
He found the third bed. This time he explored it with his hands before getting in.
It seemed empty.
He clambered into bed.
His feet touched something soft.
He screamed.
South Africa dorm was filled with blinding light, and alive with protestation.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ said Nattrass, the dorm prefect.
‘There’s something in my bed,’ said Henry, pulling back his bedclothes, to reveal a dead thrush.
Nattrass came over and examined it.
‘It’s a dead thrush,’ he said. ‘Who did this? Bloody little savages. I suppose nobody will have the guts to own up.’
Nobody spoke.
‘What’s your name?’ Nattrass asked Henry.
‘Pratt,’ said Henry, knowing that laughter would follow as surely as birth follows womb.
‘Chuck it out of the window,’ said Nattrass, and Henry picked up the horrible, lifeless bird, trying not to show his revulsion, trying not to catch its dead eye. The dead thrush at Brasenose College had been a song thrush (Turdus philomelos). This was the substantially larger mistle thrush (Turdus viscivorus). He hurled it far into the mellow Somerset night.
‘Sleep on top of your sheets, Pratt,’ said Nattrass. ‘I’ll get matron to change them tomorrow. Right, lights out. The fun’s over, you bloody savages. Let’s get some crud.’
The room was plunged into darkness, and Henry was glad of it, for he was on the verge of tears.
He lay on top of his sheets, reflecting on his somewhat unfortunate first day at Dalton College. Seeing that he was getting nervous about arriving at yet another new school, Auntie Doris had decided that he should be driven there. Uncle Teddy being too busy, she had driven him herself. On both his trunk and tuck box she had put sticky labels, which said ‘H. E. Pratt. Orange House. Dalton College. Dalton. Somerset.’ Henry had objected, on the grounds that the luggage was unlikely to go astray in transit while in the boot of their own car.
It had been a long drive to Somerset, and Auntie Doris had got lost twice. Eventually they had reached an attractive little stone-built town, and there, unmistakably, was the school. Auntie Doris had driven up to the gates. Henry hadn’t been able to lift his trunk out of the boot. Auntie Doris had asked a passing seventeen-year-old to help them, and Henry had felt mortified about the labels, which would surely strike the seventeen-year-old as ridiculously fussy.
‘Dalton College?’ the seventeen-year-old had said.
‘Yes,’ Henry had said.
‘This is King’s School, Bruton,’ the seventeen-year-old had said, not without a hint of amusement.
Henry had put his tuck box back in the boot, and they had driven on. Auntie Doris had said, ‘You see. It was lucky I labelled them. I might have dropped you at the wrong school and driven off.’ He had got into a lather because they were going to be late. And when they had at last found Dalton College, it had been to learn that Orange House was not actually on the premises. It was a large, rambling, three-storied, purpose-built, late-Victorian mansion on the edge of the town. By the time they had found it, it had been seventeen minutes past seven. Forty-seven minutes late! He had found the greatest difficulty in restraining himself from bursting into tears.
The porter, Gorringe, had tottered out, gasping for breath, his arms long, his legs bent, deformed by long years of carrying the trunks of the young gentry. Gorringe had grasped one end of the trunk and Henry the other. It had been extremely heavy, containing as it di
d the large number of clothes demanded by the school. Cousin Hilda had insisted that she sewed on the Cash’s name-tapes, announcing that each item was the property of 287 H. Pratt. She had sniffed as she sewed one onto his jockstrap.
Henry had returned for his tuck box, which was also quite heavy, containing, among other delights, twelve jars of Gentleman’s Relish, one for each week of term.
Aunti Doris had clasped him in a perfumed embrace, and smacked a great kiss onto his cheek, and she had cried. He had waved as she drove off half-blinded by tears, and he had felt empty of emotion. Then he had picked up his tuck box and struggled into the bowels of Orange House, a plump, nervous boy with a south Yorkshire accent, who smelt like a perfume factory and had a large smear of lipstick on his right cheek.
Henry had found his junior study, which he would share with seven other boys, each having a partition which he could decorate as he wished, within the confines of decorum. Senior boys had a study between two. Junior boys fagged for senior boys for two years. The roster informed Henry that he was to fag for Davey and Pilkington-Brick.
‘You’d better go straight along,’ the fair-haired boy in the next partition had advised him.
And so he had presented himself, nervously, at the second study from the end on the left upstairs.
Davey, tall, slim, dark, with a long, sad face, only sixteen but looking immensely grown up to Henry, had said, ‘You’ve got lipstick on your cheek.’
Pilkington-Brick, even taller, and massive, with a large moon-shaped, cheerful face, also only sixteen, also looking immensely grown up to Henry, had said, ‘You smell like a Turkish brothel.’
Davey had said, ‘Have we a sex maniac for our fag, Tosser?’
Pilkington-Brick had said, ‘It could be an interesting couple of years, Lampo.’
Davey had said, ‘Henry Pratt. What a deliciously uncompromising name. How proudly banal.’
Pilkington-Brick had said, ‘Don’t you worry about a thing, young Pratt. You’ve got a plum position here.’
Davey had said, ‘It’s true. Tosser is good-natured to the point of terminal boredom, and I’m just a clapped-out old roué.’
Lampo Davey had smiled. His mouth was slightly twisted when he smiled. Henry had left the room clumsily, in total bewilderment, utterly out of his depth.
He had welcomed bedtime, not knowing what horrors it would bring. Now he lay on top of his sheets, taking stock. Dead birds, to date, three. Parrot. Song thrush. Mistle thrush. What more did life hold in store for him? A rotting blackbird in his desk? A headless cormorant stuffed down his trousers?
There was a symphony of deep breathing, grunting and near-snoring. The odd whistle of breath. An occasional roar from a lorry on the main road. Should he run away and hitch-hike back to Cap Ferrat? How thrilled Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris would be!
At last, shortly before the clock of St Peter’s Church struck four. Henry fell into a light, uneasy crud.
The next day, as he walked up the main road, away from the little stone-built market town, towards the school, Henry found himself beside Paul Hargreaves, the fair-haired boy from the next partition in his junior study. Paul Hargreaves told him that his father was a brain surgeon. Henry told Paul Hargreaves that his father was a test pilot.
The school was set in a valley, surrounded by lush, wooded hills. It was a real jumble, with the original stone Queen Anne mansion flanked on one side by a high-roofed Victorian chapel which cried out for a spire and on the other by a two-storey block in the Bauhaus style, designed by an old Daltonian who died when the avant-garde squash court that he had designed collapsed on him in 1934. Many people thought it just retribution for a man who had done more than anybody else to ruin the look of the school.
In the chapel the boys sat in long rows, facing each other across the central aisle. In the middle of the first prayer, fruitily intoned by the chaplain, the Reverend L. A. Carstairs (known to the boys as Holy C), Henry had a nasty shock. He caught sight of Tubman-Edwards, who winked at him.
Henry was in Form 1A, the form for the brightest of the new boys. So was Paul Hargreaves. Tubman-Edwards wasn’t.
And so there began again the process of finding classrooms and going through endless roll-calls, which made the first day a relatively undemanding exercise, a breather before the rigours to come. When lessons proper began, and his Maths teacher (Loopy L) picked up a text-book, Henry instinctively ducked. He found that he was backward at Maths, but a star performer at Latin, thanks to Mr Belling. And all the time he felt a sense of security that had come to him rarely in his school life. Friendship, which had so often proved so difficult, was suddenly easy here. Henry and Paul kept finding themselves next to each other. They were both sensitive and shy. Already, by Friday evening, Paul Hargreaves was his best friend ever.
That Friday evening, after tea (sausage and lumpy mash, served by the wheezing Gorringe), Henry and Paul were beginning the decoration of their partitions in the junior study. Paul was favouring a kind of collage of works of art which had a significance for him. There were postcards of works by people Henry had never heard of, like Salvador Dali and Braque. His own display promised to be slightly less sophisticated, consisting as it did entirely of cuttings from the Picturegoer. Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris had arranged for him to receive the Picturegoer every week, and his growing interest in films blossomed into an obsession at a time when it was impossible for him to go out and see any.
Suddenly a cry rent the air. ‘All new-bugs to the shower room.’
The sixteen new-bugs in Orange House assembled slightly uneasily in the bleak, stone-walled shower room, with its ten showers.
They were met by Hertford-Jones.
‘O.K., you blokes,’ said Hertford-Jones. ‘Line up against the wall.’
They lined up against the wall, their uneasiness growing. Nothing pleasant in life is preceded by being lined up against a wall.
‘O.K. Drop your shonkers,’ said Hertford-Jones.
They stared at him blankly.
‘Shonkers are trousers,’ said Hertford-Jones impatiently, as if everybody knew that.
They dropped their shonkers.
‘Ready, doctor,’ sang out Hertford-Jones.
A cold autumn wind whistled through the shower room, lifting their shirts like cat-flaps.
A young doctor entered, in a white coat. He carried a small torch and a notebook. He examined their genitalia and surrounds with his torch and said either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to Hertford-Jones, who put either a tick or a cross against their names. Henry and Paul both got ticks. Feltstein, who was Jewish, got a cross.
‘Right,’ said the doctor. ‘The following thirteen boys – Keynes, Wellard, Curtis-Brown, Pratt, Hargreaves, Mallet, Needham, Renwick, Pellet, Forbes-Robinson, Bickerstaff, Tidewell and Willoughby – will be circumcised tomorrow. Be at the bottom of house drive at seven-thirty. Bring an overnight bag, just in case.’
‘Please, sir,’ said Paul Hargreaves, going red. ‘My father’s a doctor. I don’t think he’d like me to be circumcised without his permission.’
‘We have parental permission,’ said the doctor. ‘We wouldn’t dream of doing it without.’
The doctor and Hertford-Jones departed, and the new-bugs debated. Could it be a hoax?
‘It sounds like a hoax to me,’ said Paul. ‘I’m going to see Mr Satchel.’
Paul walked straight through the library and into the housemaster’s part of the building.
Quite soon he returned, a little abashed.
‘It’s genuine,’ he said.
That night, in South Africa, Nattrass tried to ease Henry’s worries.
‘I’ve had it,’ he said. ‘Nothing to it. Snip snip, thank you very much. They use a local anaesthetic and you don’t have to look.’
After lights-out, Fletcher whispered to Henry from the next bed.
‘Pratt?’
‘Yes?’
‘Good luck tomorrow. There’s nothing to worry about. Doctor Wallis at Taunton Gener
al is the second best circumcision man in England. Only old Thursby at Barts is better. He hasn’t had any cock-ups.’
‘Has Doctor Wallis had cock-ups, then?’
‘Only the one.’
‘What happened?’
‘Let’s just say it was a bit of a balls-up, and leave it at that.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t think you ought to know. It might spoil your crud.’
But Henry’s crud was already spoilt. So was Keynes’s, Wellard’s, Curtis-Brown’s, Hargreaves’s, Mallet’s, Needham’s, Renwick’s, Pellet’s. Forbes-Robinson’s, Bickerstaff’s, Tidewell’s and Willoughby’s.
In the morning, the tremulous thirteen set off down the drive with three bags each, one in their hands, and one under each eye.
Shortly after eight o’clock, they trudged back, sheepish and red-faced, but also relieved, to cheers from the faces at the dormitory windows. It turned out that the doctor was Hertford-Jones’s older brother.
That night, in South Africa, Nattrass explained that the ritual of the thirteen circumcisees of Orange House went back over a hundred years. It was mildly unpleasant when it happened to you, perhaps, but a real hoot in the years to come.
‘But even Mr Satchel pretended it was true,’ said Henry, puzzled.
‘It’s a tradition,’ explained Nattrass, but he wasn’t sure that Henry understood.
In the next weeks, a chain of events occurred concerning Henry’s parentage.
When Paul had said that his father was a brain surgeon, Henry had only half believed it. He had said that his father was a test pilot on impulse, half thinking that he was involved in a joke routine. But Paul’s father was a brain surgeon. Henry hoped that Paul had forgotten that his father was supposed to be a test pilot.
The first link in the chain was forged during a French lesson, given by Mr Wrigley (Sweaty W). His classroom was light and airy, in the Bauhaus block.
‘No, Mallender,’ said Sweaty W. ‘It’s a pris. The perfect of prendre takes avoir, as in “Le mecanicien a pris le livre tout de suite”.’ Sweaty W wrote the sentence on the blackboard. ‘What does that mean, Pratt?’ he said.