Noisy at the Wrong Times

by Michael Volpe

  Our dorm looked out across Berners’ field towards the old pavilion, so when a nervous first former was ordered to run to there, we could see the events unfold in front of our eyes. The boy had to get out of the house first, usually at a time when the house was in full functional flow, so his furtive escape into the night was laced with danger. He could be caught by anyone walking through the house, or by a senior watching TV in the dining room. Worse was to get caught by a master on duty. A frisson of excitement would ripple through the dorm as we saw the boy appear on the lawn in front of the house, creeping, hiding behind pillars, crouching below windows. Once convinced that the coast was clear, the boy would set off sprinting across the open ground with his striped pyjamas flapping in the breeze. Pyjamas were almost universally striped and too large for the boy. If they did not flap, it was because it was pouring with rain and the fabric was clamped against his skin: meteorological considerations were thin on the ground between empowered second formers. Other dares were more epic and involved bringing back evidence such as a sign or piece of wood. When they got really elaborate, boys doing the dare could be out for half of the night, returning to a silent, sleeping dormitory.

  Sex, or the prospect of it, was never far from our minds, and usually the general discussion in the dorm would turn to it. Opinion polls would be held on the various wives of masters, pop singers or newsreaders, and we rued the fact that matrons were never attractive (probably a deliberate decision on the part of the school). After long talks about the virtues of various girls of our acquaintance, many of them inventions, the unmistakable sound of twenty boys wanking (impossible to describe) would fill the air.

  So the dormitory became the centre of our worlds in the first few weeks at Woolverstone. It is where you would retire to if weary, to lie on your bed and read or wonder about home; and I suppose, despite occasional dangers, it was a place of safety. The small, two square metres of bed was your sanctuary, and nobody was permitted to cross its threshold; nothing provoked ire as fiercely as seeing somebody lying on your bed. But your bed didn’t protect you from everything, as Rob Smith soon discovered.

  The dorm was in three sections, with panelled walls dividing each of them. The middle section had the toilets, and at each end were the doors onto the landing outside. I was in an end section on a bottom bunk, and Rob was in the middle section. We were all busy telling various lies about ourselves, excitedly talking about the rugby careers we were soon to embark upon, when John Morris, the housemaster, quietly opened the dormitory door and stood listening.

  John “Musher” Morris, as he was known, was a calm, religious man. He had a young family and, in fact, looked a little like Bobby Charlton with glasses. He was a man who commanded respect by virtue of his quiet moderation, reason and was a fully paid up member of the hierarchy and played us well in this respect. In order to stop someone like me from bullying, he knew immediately to send me on an errand to stop somebody else doing it. Morris epitomised confidence of a more modest and self-contained kind, and although I never thought to emulate him in this respect, I was sufficiently aware of it to moderate my more strident side whenever he was around. He taught history and was a very fine rugby player and coach, so I spent lots of time outside of the house in his company, but I wish more of his manner had rubbed off on me. I thought him a brilliant man. And I quickly came to know where his line in the sand was; as it was described to us, he hated many things, but he hated swearing and rule breaking more than anything else. Rules were there for a reason, they brought order and discipline, and it was no surprise that he held such a view. Nor was it a shock to learn that profanity offended him more gravely than if you had run him through with a scaffold pole. Swearing was a crime beyond almost anything else we could commit; to swear was an offence to oneself, to others around you, to God too, I suspect. It was not something we ever philosophised with him about, we just did not do it when he was around. Oddly, I suspect my memory of Morris as a trenchant, God-fearing man is probably as a result of school embellishment, but when we arrived, this was the caricature painted by our contemporaries, and it took hold.

  Rob Smith, being in the middle section of the dorm did not see him come into the room and as we all fell silent, Smith continued his pursuit of an answer to a question he had asked me.

  “Volpe? Volpe? Answer me Volpe!”

  The silhouetted housemaster stood still, listening. And then he spoke evenly and in a menacing monotone.

  “Smith. Go and stand outside my study”.

  There was a collective lurching of stomachs. Even at that early stage, we knew what that meant. As Smith climbed out of bed and trudged out of the dormitory clad in nothing but his pyjamas, we suddenly all realised that henceforth, life was going to be different. As Morris left the dorm, he reminded us sternly of the no-talking directive and closed the door. The second formers were beside themselves with mirth and excitement at Smith’s imminent beating. We novices weren’t sure what to make of it, but it was certainly dramatic. I should think all of us had received a good hiding from a parent before, but formalised punishment has gravitas precisely because it is controlled and by design. We did not know what to expect from it all. Would we hear Smith’s screams echo through the house? Would he come back howling and crying? Would he need hospital treatment? Would he ever be the same again? How the world outside drifted further away at that moment, how our cockiness evaporated and melted into the thick, tense air of the dormitory.

  Pound to a penny, Rob would piss his pyjamas, I thought.

  * * *

  The first time I had received a whack from a teacher was when five years old at Addison Gardens. The headmaster had been called to the classroom because some boys were getting unruly. He came in, asked the main culprit – who was unmistakeable on account of his being half-buried in the beads and counters he had been chucking everywhere – for the names of his accomplices, and the bugger had named innocent, uninvolved and oblivious me. Almost before I could raise even a yelp in protest, I was pitched across the headmaster’s knee, right there in front of the whole class, and given a hand smacking. And I pissed in my pants. Some weeks later, the teacher called me to the front of the class and scolded me for something that, again, I hadn’t even done. She ordered me to put my hand out, which I did, not knowing why, and from behind her back she produced a thick wooden ruler and attempted to bring it down across my knuckles. I moved my hand. She grabbed my hand and rapped me across the knuckles anyway. I kicked her in the leg and ran out of the classroom. My Mum visited the school to speak to the headmaster about that one and told the teacher, “Iffa you touch mya son again, I fucky killa you.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes after leaving the dorm, Smith shuffled back in quietly. Nobody spoke to him and none of us asked what had happened. We all just went to sleep and if he had pissed his pants, he wasn’t telling.

  In the morning, we were eager to talk about the previous night’s drama. I don’t know what we expected, but Smith looked pretty normal; there were no bruises on his face, no tear-streaked cheeks, no plaster of Paris or blood or crutches. In fact, I think we were disappointed to see no signs of injury at all. Had he not just been slippered by the legendary Musher Morris? Why was he still breathing? Walking? Alive? But injury he did, indeed, suffer. Smith told us how Morris had wordlessly ushered him into the study, took him by the back of the neck with his right hand, encouraging him to bend at the waist and with the left delivered four thwacks with a rubber soled plimsoll. These being pre-Nike days, plimsolls were not the light athletic constructions of today, but canvas and rubber bludgeons. The shoe in question was a Dunlop Green Flash. The sole was at least one-inch thick rubber and into it were moulded hundreds of small lightning flashes. Smith reported that it was at least a size ten. It hurt, apparently. A great deal. Rob, as we had now taken to calling him out of sympathy, showed us his arse and in the middle of a sickeningly large contusion that covered his entire posterior, we could clearly discern the word “Dunlop” in re
verse, and scores of small lightning flashes bruised into the skin. Right there and then, we all vowed to avoid a ‘kippering’ from Morris. And there was no doubt that we admired Rob for taking the beating and not to be crying his eyes out twelve hours later. It was a badge of honour of sorts, he had broken his cherry and the knowledge of how it felt to receive a slippering was his to impart. It would never surprise him again.

  Astonishingly, I do not remember any of us complaining that the punishment had been disproportionate to the crime. At home few of us would tolerate such discipline, would never consider a bruised and wounded arse to be anything but an outrage. But there, then, we had bought almost completely into the regime that delivered said indignation. We did not examine or wonder what on earth would happen if he’d hit a boy or stolen some bread from the kitchen or disobeyed an instruction. The truth was that for all those things he would have received the same punishment, which was the point. Maybe a suspension would ensue if he burned the house down, but crimes both minor and major were punishable by the same thing. And we seemed to know it, even if it was subconsciously.

  Despite Rob’s slippering and the resultant collective determination to avoid the same fate, it was inevitable that I would soon suffer something similar. In truth, perhaps I was hoping to earn some spurs myself, but the way in which I did so was entirely unintentional and wholly unexpected. It was barely a week before I too was ordered to the study, and it was Rob who caused it.

  Our friendship had continued to grow along well-marshalled lines; conservatively offered an olive branch to each other whilst remaining aware that at any time, there might have to be a summit to decide who would become top dog. Since we had decided we liked each other, we thus spent a lot of time hanging out. It also meant certain facets of our personalities were becoming more evident and Rob’s most manifest personality trait on the fateful day was thinking it was hilarious to see how people reacted to pain. Walking across the concrete paving outside of the master’s dining room, he was waving a large, flexible branch in the way that young boys do, for no reason. We like to hit things with big sticks, but we don’t like being hit with them.

  Well I don’t.

  Inevitably, he waved his big stick at me. This is no euphemism; he really did have a big, wooden branch from which he had stripped all twigs and leaves. Even more inevitably – and fate intervened here, I am sure – it connected with the back of my leg. The sting brought white light and tears to my eyes, and from deep within, a boiling eruption of invective issued forth into the Suffolk countryside. In an instant, several ‘fucks’ and at least one pair of ‘c**ts’ had rung like a klaxon through the crisp autumn air. Unfortunately, at that moment, Morris happened to be breathing the same air. Indeed, so close was he, he could probably smell the foul language. Halfway through my third ‘you utter fucking bastard Smith”, I noticed him staring at me, his eyes livid with rage, and I can’t swear to it but I am sure he was trembling too.

  Gulp.

  “Volpe, go and stand outside my study,” he growled.

  I mean it, he really did growl and I was almost sick on the spot. As Morris turned on his heels, no doubt eager to get back to his study for a quick warm-up, I wobbled, stunned and shaken, numb with fear. I thought of how hugely offensive Morris would have found my outburst.

  I knew.

  I thought of Rob’s bruised, mangled buttocks and contemplated how much more angry Morris must now be, having been assaulted by my broadcast of almost the entire lexicon of Anglo-Saxon profanity. Perhaps I would need hospital treatment? Maybe, this time, there surely would be blood? I walked towards the inevitable agony and considered my options. Refuse to bend over? No, he’d make me. Get a book and shove it down my trousers? No, someone had once tried that and been given twice as many whacks as a result. Run away, hide and never come back! I could live off the land forever, eating bugs, squirrels and fish for my supper. Anything seemed possible as I thought of what was to come.

  In truth, I had no choice, but it was not for want of considering every outlandish route of escape. As I approached the open door of Morris’s office, I did so in what felt like slow motion. I had been used to getting a good hiding from Mum, but this was entirely unlike anything I had felt before and I kept thinking – hoping – that maybe he wouldn’t slipper me, that I would get a good talking to instead, but as I passed the dining room and saw a dinner lady, I wanted to run to her and hide behind her. If there was going to be a saviour, then it had better arrive soon because I was just feet away from the threshold of Morris’s study. My legs were turning to jelly as I reached the room, and Morris was waiting for me, standing by the side of his desk, the files he had been carrying placed roughly on the otherwise neatly stacked papers. I saw this as a sign of his anger. Anger, or any form of outward emotional dynamism, was uncommon to John Morris, so when it appeared, you bloody noticed it, I can tell you.

  * * *

  It was a warm summer day, and Morris was taking a history lesson in the classroom that had once been a large drawing room of the old Berners House. There was an authentic Adam fireplace behind protective glass and elegant cornices framing the room. Large curved windows faced out onto Orwell side, with views across the river to the north. Suddenly, a boy motioned to the window and asked, “What’s that, sir?”

  Morris strolled to the window and so strange was the sight, we all rushed to the windows for a closer look too. Over the hills across the Orwell was a large black cloud, and it was moving towards us very quickly. Morris scrunched up his face in thought as he gazed at it. We all hung from the open windows trying to work it out too.

  “Close the windows please, boys,” Morris said without a shred of dramatic inflection.

  As we did so, the cloud grew angrier and larger and seemed to cover the entire playing field outside. Soon it was upon us, and the windows were covered with thousands of bees. They buzzed furiously at the glass for a few moments, and then this swarm of biblical proportions moved away as one, no doubt following their Queen. Within a miraculously short space of time, they formed a huge teardrop of teeming, squirming, vibrant life hanging from the lower branch of the great Cedar of Lebanon tree that sat below the building.

  “Back to your seats, please. Right, where were we? Ah yes, The Somme...”

  * * *

  “I will not tolerate the kind of language I just heard, young man. It was disgraceful,” Morris said, his voice steel-edged with indignation. The usually laconic Morris had also become comparatively verbose.

  “But Sir, Smith hit me with a stick and it hurt and I couldn’t help it...”

  I trailed off pathetically. I had nothing more to say since what I had already said sounded hollow, and I could see in his face that it was worthless trying to explain what had been a torrent of adolescent, potty-mouthed petulance. I was also starting to hyperventilate, and even if words had been ready to come out, they would have perished on the arid carpet that was my tongue. To Morris’s right hand, I could see a basket of sports clothes, bits of equipment and, lying threateningly on top, the upturned sole of a Dunlop Green Flash plimsoll. I stared at it, my executioner, my nemesis and the most famous plimsoll in all of Suffolk. If inanimate objects can take on a personality, the Green Flash was the Daddy of them all. It had character, reputation and a degree in torture to its name.

  Morris said something about teaching me a lesson, but by now, I wasn’t listening. He slowly picked up the Green Flash and came towards me. I remembered what Rob had said about the hand that forced him to bend. My fear had clearly not totally dispossessed me of my belligerence, and I bent, as nonchalantly as my growing terror would allow, offering Morris my behind in defiant invitation. Unfortunately, I had bent down facing the wrong way – Morris was left-handed. He told me to stand up and then took hold of the back of my neck anyway.

  I will always place John Morris above Nuns, but to him swearing sat at the top table in the Hall of Beëlzebub. There was no place for it and argument to the contrary was never brooked or tol
erated. It was hard to contend that earthy colloquialisms were common in religious practice, but at primary school we gloried in the rhyme “Bloody in the Bible, Bloody in the book, if you don’t believe me, have a Bloody look!” However, fuck, shit, tosspot, wanker, cocksucker and all the other words I had shouted at Smith that day are not in there. Look for them yourself, I promise you won’t find them; neither a tit nor an arse will you encounter in the Old or New Testament. Not even Happy Clappy churches indulge in cathartic, satisfyingly mouth-filling imprecation. I find that a shame but bent double at the waist, waiting for the Dunlop hammer to fall, I just thought it was deeply inconvenient.

  I got five whacks, each of them feeling harder than the one before. On the first, the shock propelled me forward, and I hit my head on the piano in the corner of the study. Such was my convulsion, Morris had lost his grip on the back of my neck and as my cranium connected with the corner of the keyboard, the guts of the piano gave a sharp note, like a sleeping dog being trodden on. Morris was quick with the strokes, and there was no sense that he was enjoying it. I was to learn later that some masters most certainly did enjoy it, but Morris displayed a rhythm and technique that managed to maintain whatever sense of propriety such an event could muster. It was formal, controlled and painful. It was shocking, too, since there was an inherent violence in the act, but I never held that against him, essentially because I was in no position to do so with my arse prone, a strong hand holding me down and half a pound of rubber giving my school trousers a polishing.

  By the fifth strike, the sting had become a blunt pain that radiated into my legs and up my lower back, but the relief of being able to stand, knowing it was over, was colossal. Morris seemed calm and composed, which is somewhat different to how I felt. The sweat that had broken out on my skin was being burnt off by the energy the beating had transferred into me – I was in danger of generating cumulonimbus in the study. Morris allowed me a moment before telling me to leave, and as I limped out of the office, doing everything in my power not to ‘crack’ (a cardinal sin) I heard the kerfuffle of laughter from the shower drying room that was next door to the study. I went in to find several of my housemates, quickly gathered together by a gleeful Rob, sniggering hard, clutching the glasses they had used to listen through the wall.