I really didn’t mind the fact that his school uniform was so much smarter than mine, and that his shoes were handmade escaped me altogether. However, I was aware that he was taller and better-looking than me, and clearly brighter, because he was offered a place at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (pronounced Keys – something else I didn’t know at the time), to read modern languages.
I actually spoke to Bairstow for the first time when I entered the lower sixth, and he had been appointed school captain, but then only because I was a library monitor and had to report to him once a month. And indeed, if we hadn’t gone on holiday together – well, I shouldn’t exaggerate …
Fred Costello, the senior history master, was organizing one of his annual school excursions to the Continent, as it was known before it became the Common Market, or the EEC, and as I was studying history and hoping to go to university, my parents thought it might be wise for me to sign up for the trip to Germany.
When we all clambered on board the train at Leeds Central to set out on the journey, I was surprised to see Mark Bairstow was among our party. Well, not quite, because he sat in a first-class carriage with Clive Dangerfield, who was also going up to Cambridge, so we didn’t see them again until we all pitched up at our little hotel in Berlin. I shared a room with my best friend Ben Levy, while Bairstow and Dangerfield occupied a suite on the top floor.
There were fifteen of us in the party, and I spent most of my time with Ben who, like me, supported Leeds United, Yorkshire and England, in that order. It was our first trip abroad and therefore one we weren’t likely to forget.
Mr Costello was an enlightened schoolmaster who had served as a lieutenant in the Second World War and seen action at El Alamein, but believed passionately that Britain should join the Common Market, if for no other reason than it would ensure there wouldn’t be a third world war.
My abiding memory of Berlin was not the Opera House, or even the Brandenburg Gate, but a concrete monstrosity that stretched like a poisonous snake across the centre of a once united city.
‘I want you to imagine,’ said Mr Costello, as we stared up at the Wall, ‘a twelve-foot barrier being built from the Mersey to the Humber, and you never being able to visit any of your family or friends who live on the other side.’
The thought had never crossed my mind.
After a few days in Berlin, we boarded a charabanc for Dresden, but never once left the coach as we stared out of the windows in disbelief to see what was left of that once historic city. It made me feel that perhaps at times the British had also behaved like barbarians. I was pleased when the coach turned round and headed back to Berlin.
The following day was a schoolboy’s dream. After driving to Regensburg, we spent the morning on a coal barge trudging sedately up the Danube, billowing black smoke as we made our way to Passau. After lunch, we took a train to Munich, where we spent three days in a youth hostel with young women actually sleeping in dorms on the floor below us. The next morning we explored the capital of Bavaria, and there wasn’t much sign that this had once been the birthplace of the Nazi party. I much admired the Residenz, the vast palace of the Wittelsbachs, where Mark Bairstow looked so relaxed he might have been visiting an old friend at home.
In the evening, we went to the Cuvilliés-Theater to see La Bohème, my first introduction to opera, which was to become a lifelong passion. It would be years before I appreciated how much I owed to Mr Costello, a teacher whose lessons stretched far beyond the classroom.
The following day, we visited the Alte Pinakothek, and I can’t pretend I was able to fully appreciate Dürer or Cranach, as I couldn’t take my eyes off a group of girls who were being shown around the gallery by the same guide. One in particular caught my attention.
My extra-curricular activities in Bavaria included my first experience of beer, frankfurters, attending the opera, and being kissed goodnight by a girl, although I don’t think she was overwhelmed. I just wished we’d had another week as she was clearly in the class above me.
On our final day, Mr Costello brought us all back down to earth when we boarded a bus that didn’t announce its destination on the front. We must have travelled some fourteen miles north of Munich before we reached a small town called Dachau. Of course, I knew my closest friend was Jewish, but I only thought of him as a classmate, and we never quarrelled about anything except who should open the batting for Yorkshire. And when Ben once told me that his grandmother kept a packed suitcase by the front door, I had no idea what he was talking about.
When the bus came to a halt outside the entrance of the concentration camp, we all got off in an uneasy silence and stared up at the uninviting rusty gates. I didn’t want to go in, but as everyone else trooped after Mr Costello, I meekly followed. Our first stop was at a vast black wall, where a thousand names had been chiselled into the marble to remind us who had been there only a few years before, and not during a holiday excursion with a tour guide. I saw Ben weeping quietly as he stared at the thirty-seven Levys, three of whom hadn’t lived as long as he had. I looked across to see Mark Bairstow looking thoughtful, but apparently unmoved, while the rest of the group remained unusually silent.
The young German guide then took us through the huts that had remained untouched since their occupants were liberated by the Americans. Row upon row of four-tiered bunks, with inch-thick mattresses and no pillows. At one end of the hut, a half-filled bucket of water that had been the lavatory for the fifty-six occupants, emptied once a day. But worse was to come, because Mr Costello had no intention of sparing us.
We climbed back on the bus and took the journey to Hartheim, where our young guide led us into a large soulless building, where we entered a cold eerie room where time had stood still. He pointed to the holes in the ceiling where, he explained, the gas was released into the chamber, but only after the prisoners had been stripped and the doors locked. I felt sick, and didn’t have the courage to enter the final room to view the vast ovens that our guard told us had been built in 1933 soon after Hitler had come into power, and where the bodies of his innocent victims were finally turned into dust.
When Ben eventually emerged, he fell to his knees and was violently sick. I thought of his grandmother, and for the first time understood the ‘packed suitcase’. I rushed across to join my friend, surprised to find Mark Bairstow already kneeling beside him with an arm around his shoulders, trying to comfort a boy he’d never spoken to before.
* * *
I was delighted to follow Mark Bairstow as school captain, even if I couldn’t hope to emulate his style and panache. I worked diligently during my final year and, with the conscientious help of Mr Costello, was offered a place at Manchester University to read history. I accepted the offer, even though for a Yorkshireman to cross the Pennines into Lancashire in order to further his education was tantamount to high treason.
By the time I graduated, I didn’t need Mr Costello to tell me the profession I was best suited for. And if this tale had been about a schoolmaster, and the years of fulfilment he gained from being a teacher … but it isn’t.
I was teaching at a grammar school in Norfolk when my wife became pregnant, and I had to explain to her why she would have to travel up to Yorkshire to give birth to our son; otherwise the lad couldn’t play for the county. Not that she had any interest in the game of cricket. It turned out to be a girl, so the subject was never mentioned again. However, I took advantage of being back in Leeds to look up my old friend Ben Levy, now a local solicitor, to suggest we spend a day at Headingley and watch the Roses Match.
Being Yorkshiremen, we were in our seats long before the first ball was bowled, and by the morning break the county were at 77 for two. ‘A spot of lunch?’ I suggested as I rose from my place in the Hutton stand and glanced up at the President’s box to see a face I could have sworn I recognized, despite the passing of time. But he was wearing a dog collar and purple shirt, which threw me for a moment.
I touched Ben on the elbow and, pointing
to the box, said, ‘Is that who I think it is?’
‘Yes, it’s Mark Bairstow, the new Bishop of Ripon. Still loves his cricket.’
‘But I always assumed he was destined to be the next chairman of Bairstow’s, the finest iron forgers in the county.’
‘And therefore the world,’ laughed Ben. ‘But when he went up to Cambridge, he changed courses in his first term and read theology. So no one was surprised he ended up as a bishop.’
* * *
Like Mr Costello, I too organized an annual trip to Europe, and after excursions to Rome, Paris and Madrid, I felt the time had come to return to Berlin and see how much the German capital had changed, since the Wall had finally come down.
I found the city was transformed. Only one small graffiti-covered section of the Wall still stood firmly in place, an ugly monument to remind the next generation what their parents and grandparents had endured, which they were now studying as history.
Dresden turned out to be a modern city of steel and glass, and you would have had to search Munich to believe the Germans had ever been involved in a war. And when we visited the Cuvilliés-Theater, two of the boys showed the same excitement that I had felt when I saw my first opera.
When the final day came, I considered, like Mr Costello, it was my duty to visit Dachau, as anti-Semitism was once again rearing its ugly head in my country. I was just as apprehensive as I had been the first time, although I tried not to let the boys and girls know how I felt. When the bus came to a halt outside the main entrance, I silently led the children through the even rustier gates and into the camp, and as far as I could see nothing had changed. My young wards spent some time staring at the names on the memorial wall, and when I saw the thirty-seven Levys, I thought of Ben. The huts remained untouched, and I could see the look of disbelief in the children’s eyes when they saw the water bucket at the end of the room. They would never complain again about their cramped dormitories.
Our guide then took us into the museum, where we studied the photographs of prisoners whose black-and-white striped pyjamas hung on their skeletal frames, and of the bodies of lifeless men and women being dragged from the gas chambers to the ovens. There was even a photograph of Himmler to remind us who had carried out Hitler’s orders.
I felt sorry for our German guide, not much older than myself, whose sad eyes suggested that the Nazi era couldn’t be that easily cast aside, although like myself, he would have been born after the war.
And then the final stage of the tour, which I had been dreading. I still felt sick when I entered the gas chamber, but at least this time I had the courage to follow my wards into the building where the ovens were situated. I stared at the temperature gauges and switches on the wall and bowed my head. When I raised it again, my eyes settled on the large oven door, and I understood for the first time the journey one young man had taken before he became the Bishop of Ripon.
BAIRSTOW & SON
IRON FORGERS
FOUNDED 1866
Old Love
SOME PEOPLE, it is said, fall in love at first sight, but that was not what happened to William Hatchard and Philippa Jameson. They hated each other from the moment they met. This mutual loathing commenced at the first tutorial of their freshmen terms. Both had come up in the early thirties with major scholarships to read English language and literature, William to Merton, Philippa to Somerville. Each had been reliably assured by their school-teachers that they would be the star pupil of their year.
Their tutor, Simon Jakes of New College, was both bemused and amused by the ferocious competition that so quickly developed between his two brightest pupils, and he used their enmity skilfully to bring out the best in both of them without ever allowing either to indulge in outright abuse. Philippa, an attractive, slim red-head with a rather high-pitched voice, was the same height as William so she conducted as many of her arguments as possible standing in newly acquired high-heeled shoes, while William, whose deep voice had an air of authority, would always try to expound his opinions from a sitting position. The more intense their rivalry became the harder the one tried to outdo the other. By the end of their first year they were far ahead of their contemporaries while remaining neck and neck with each other. Simon Jakes told the Merton Professor of Anglo-Saxon Studies that he had never had a brighter pair up in the same year and that it wouldn’t be long before they were holding their own with him.
During the long vacation both worked to a gruelling timetable, always imagining the other would be doing a little more. They stripped bare Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, and only went to bed with Keats. When they returned for the second year, they found that absence had made the heart grow even more hostile; and when they were both awarded alpha plus for their essays on Beowulf, it didn’t help. Simon Jakes remarked at New College high table one night that if Philippa Jameson had been born a boy some of his tutorials would undoubtedly have ended in blows.
‘Why don’t you separate them?’ asked the Dean, sleepily.
‘What, and double my work-load?’ said Jakes. ‘They teach each other most of the time: I merely act as referee.’
Occasionally the adversaries would seek his adjudication as to who was ahead of whom, and so confident was each of being the favoured pupil that one would always ask in the other’s hearing. Jakes was far too canny to be drawn; instead he would remind them that the examiners would be the final arbiters. So they began their own subterfuge by referring to each other, just in earshot, as ‘that silly woman’, and ‘that arrogant man’. By the end of their second year they were almost unable to remain in the same room together.
In the long vacation William took a passing interest in Al Jolson and a girl called Ruby while Philippa flirted with the Charleston and a young naval lieutenant from Dartmouth. But when term started in earnest these interludes were never admitted and soon forgotten.
At the beginning of their third year they both, on Simon Jakes’ advice, entered for the Charles Oldham Shakespeare prize along with every other student in the year who was considered likely to gain a First. The Charles Oldham was awarded for an essay on a set aspect of Shakespeare’s work, and Philippa and William both realized that this would be the only time in their academic lives that they would be tested against each other in closed competition. Surreptitiously, they worked their separate ways through the entire Shakespearian canon, from Henry VI to Henry VIII, and kept Jakes well over his appointed tutorial hours, demanding more and more refined discussion of more and more obscure points.
The chosen theme for the prize essay that year was ‘Satire in Shakespeare’. Troilus and Cressida clearly called for the most attention but both found there were nuances in virtually every one of the bard’s thirty-seven plays. ‘Not to mention a gross of sonnets,’ wrote Philippa home to her father in a rare moment of self-doubt. As the year drew to a close it became obvious to all concerned that either William or Philippa had to win the prize while the other would undoubtedly come second. Nevertheless no one was willing to venture an opinion as to who the victor would be. The New College porter, an expert in these matters, opening his usual book for the Charles Oldham, made them both evens, ten to one the rest of the field.
Before the prize essay submission date was due, they both had to sit their final degree examinations. Philippa and William confronted the examination papers every morning and afternoon for two weeks with an appetite that bordered on the vulgar. It came as no surprise to anyone that they both achieved first class degrees in the final honours school. Rumour spread around the university that the two rivals had been awarded alphas in every one of their nine papers.
‘I would be willing to believe that is the case,’ Philippa told William. ‘But I feel I must point out to you that there is a considerable difference between an alpha plus and an alpha minus.’
‘I couldn’t agree with you more,‘ said William. ‘And when you discover who has won the Charles Oldham, you will know who was awarded less.‘
With only thre
e weeks left before the prize essay had to be handed in they both worked twelve hours a day, falling asleep over open text books, dreaming that the other was still beavering away. When the appointed hour came they met in the marble-floored entrance hall of the Examination Schools, sombre in subfusc.
‘Good morning, William, I do hope your efforts will manage to secure a place in the first six.’
‘Thank you, Philippa. If they don’t I shall look for the names C. S. Lewis, Nichol Smith, Nevill Coghill, Edmund Blunden, R. W. Chambers and H. W. Garrard ahead of me. There’s certainly no one else in the field to worry about.’
‘I am only pleased,’ said Philippa, as if she had not heard his reply, ‘that you were not seated next to me when I wrote my essay, thus ensuring for the first time in three years that you weren’t able to crib from my notes.’
‘The only item I have ever cribbed from you, Philippa, was the Oxford to London timetable, and that I discovered later to be out-of-date, which was in keeping with the rest of your efforts.’
They both handed in their twenty-five-thousand-word essays to the collector’s office in the Examination Schools and left without a further word, returning to their respective colleges impatiently to await the result.
William tried to relax the weekend after submitting his essay, and for the first time in three years he played some tennis, against a girl from St Anne’s, failing to win a game, let alone a set. He nearly sank when he went swimming, and actually did so when punting. He was only relieved that Philippa had not been witness to any of his feeble physical efforts.
The Short, the Long and the Tall Page 21