I hate to think that once I might have been a bully: if I committed crimes against anybody on account of my ability to punch harder than they could, I apologise profusely. But I will claim that my days as a threatening, antagonistic ruffian ended in about April 1977. I loathe bullies of all kinds, be they workplace bullies, people who gang up on others, racist bullies, political bullies, queue jumpers. I might so easily have continued to be a bully if something, someone, whatever or whoever it was, hadn’t diverted my undoubted capacity for aggression and violence onto the side of the victim. And I think my zeal is born of the fact that I do indeed understand the emotional poverty that drives a bully to do what he or she does. Of course, back at Woolverstone, I would still tease and assert my authority of sorts because I could never be expected to relinquish that in an environment like that one – Lord of the Flies was horribly accurate. Later, as a teenager, my propensity to meet fire with fire was unbounded, as a pair of skinheads following me in a Fulham street discovered late one evening. Their merry abuse of me, encouraged by their superior numbers no doubt, led to an explosion of violence that found its target on the first of them I could lay hands upon. I was enraged not by their abuse, but by their cowardice. At school, as a reformed bully, I felt sympathy for those who before had been my ‘victims’, and my righteous hostility spelled trouble for any middle-ranking tormentor looking to cut some teeth.
It wasn’t as if there were scores of helpless, pitiful boys wandering around the school like starving, abused refugees, but it didn’t take much for a boy to fall prey to more than just a bit of teasing. In most cases, the worst kind of bullying came from boys who were in the middle of the natural hierarchy, not at the top. They seemed to be motivated by bitterness and resentment that they themselves were from time to time bullied, and it provoked some viciously sustained cruelty. One victim in particular was crippled by an affliction that could not have been worse in such a place – he had trouble controlling his bowels, which meant from time to time he would have about him a pungent smell. At first, we all joined in, unfeeling and callous in our torturing of this unfortunate child. But at some point during the year, probably after witnessing another spiteful and heartbreaking example of his misery, we started to line up on his side. I could no longer take his wobbling chin as he fought back his tears, his bowed head and the look in his eyes that cried out for his mother’s protective arms. He was weak and vulnerable, but I have never been called upon in my entire life to muster the kind of courage this child had to summon up every day. We should all feel shame at how we treated that boy and eventually, after a year and a half, he left the school. What troubles me is that such boys may remember me for the times I taunted them rather than for those when I protected them, which feels hollow since I had been very good at the taunting. At eleven, who knows these things? We were thrown into the pot and stirred, and few of us could resist the power among peers that suddenly became available to us.
* * *
Woolverstone sits to the east of Ipswich on the river Orwell. A visit today does nothing to diminish the beauty of the place, which the memory can often embellish over the years. It is an exquisite part of the country. The climate in winter was harsh and damp, with easterly winds blowing off the North Sea, but in summer – and my memory may well be embroidering here – it was full of golden light and morning mists. Woolverstone in that first summer was a paradise for us urban boys. The evenings seemed to go on forever, and at dusk, swallows would swoop and sway across the playing field in front of the main house. I could spend hours watching them and when, years later, I heard Vaughan Williams’ ‘The Lark Ascending’, it conjured the image of Woolverstone’s swallows. As a piece of music, it perfectly encapsulates the English countryside, but it positively produces a living, breathing hologram of Woolverstone for me. The chorus of birdsong on a warm summer evening was intoxicating, with wood pigeon, cuckoo, house martins, blackbirds and so many others I could never identify. The sun seemed to take an eternity to sink behind the hills flanking the Orwell, and when it finally dipped, ushering in the half-light, the bats would come out to feed, chittering and flapping around us as we smoked in the ferns. At eleven, boys rarely appreciate what they have, but from time to time it did dawn on us that we had been blessed with a gift. It might have been expressed in the vernacular, but the sentiment was straight and true.
Boarding schools thrive on tradition, but they thrive best on routine, and Woolverstone was no different. Routine at home didn’t exist for me, and neither did normal things like eating at a table or being tied to a schedule. School life therefore had a structure, but our twenty-four hour presence there created opportunities that London life simply couldn’t. Of course, these structures might appear mundane to any outsider, and they certainly weren’t always popular with us, but the life of the school was busy and provided endless activities for boys to pursue. The clubs were endless and included pet clubs, fencing, sailing, debating, orienteering, cross-country, nature, gymnastics – and even go-karting for a period, when a metalwork teacher named Mr Farley-Pettman taught a group how to build a real, engine-powered go-kart. They used to drive it through the woods; although it frequently broke down, I always thought it a very cool club indeed. Farley-Pettman is famed for setting himself alight when, during another of his mechanics-related clubs, he accidentally punched through the petrol tank of an old banger with his welding torch. Fortunately the metalwork shops were close to the swimming pool, and he extinguished himself in that, suffering no more than lost eyebrows and burns to his arm.
I find it ridiculous to recall, but I took a lot of pleasure from the Cadets, which was run by a couple of seniors who came from military families. Dressing in fatigues and wearing calf-high, steel-toed army boots as we charged through the countryside smeared with camouflage cream never ignited a desire to join the army, but it was great fun. We even got to shoot a pair of old .303 rifles at targets down in the cellar of the main house, and once we acquired some cheap cigars from Chelmondiston and spent the evening chewing on them like Rutger Hauer.
Woolverstone also had a very fine library in the elegant downstairs rooms of the main house that contained over 8,000 books, most of which went unexplored in favour of the pile of Asterix manuals it also featured. There were a couple of macabre photo books of the First World War, and we would pore over the extremely graphic and gory pictures they contained – some unimaginably grotesque – but I spent quite a lot of time in the library and from time to time would choose something enriching to read from the walls of shelves stuffed with exceptional collections of poetry and literature. I once saw a sixth former reading a red bound book with a Latin title, and I sought out something similar: I sat reading page after page of Latin text phonetically, understanding only one or two obvious words, hoping one of my friends would come in and see me. Because I had found The Canterbury Tales so engrossing, I even once pulled Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women from a shelf, mainly because I imagined it might contain more smut, but I didn’t have the application to get beyond the first few pages. There were more modern novels that could be scanned for passages of sex, and we scoured many in search of such.
Extra-curricular activity was consequently where one often found most joy at Woolverstone, but routine life in the house was rigidly observed and frequently bemoaned. Laundry days and bed-changing days were tiresome, though it was always nice to get fresh, crisp sheets and a new pair of clean underpants. This story was repeated throughout the six houses with little variation to the routine; it had a rhythm, and it is not too trite to say that we eventually found a sort of security in it.
* * *
Cricket became the sport for the last term and I took to that with the same gusto and attack that had characterised my first, albeit truncated, rugby season. I would be a fast bowler. There was no other choice.
Deciding that guile was for pansies, every ball I chucked down the wicket was intended to scare my opponent, rather than just get him out. A mile-long run-up was a prereq
uisite because I’d seen that Aussies Denis Lillee and the wonderfully quirky but devastatingly fluid Jeff Thompson had one. The school’s head of cricket, Pete Sadler, had taken us on a visit to Chelmsford to see Essex play the touring Australians, and on the bus had made a point of telling us never to try to copy the bizarre action of Thompson, but a long-run up was common to all great fast bowlers, so I simply had to have one. I did not grasp that the run-up was about generating speed, which I was supposed to transfer smoothly into the action and thus the ball. My run-up was well measured and long, but when I arrived panting at the crease, I performed a shimmy, executed a little leap and slammed my front foot into the crease, heaving the ball from my shoulders. Any impetus developed in the run-up was lost on arrival at the wicket. Other than the last couple of strides, the tactic was completely worthless. I’d have had more luck if I’d whipped out a pair of maracas and forced the batsman to drop his guard through laughing. Later in my school career, that action would give me a bad knee, but I had powerful enough shoulders and eventually I developed a ripsnorting delivery that could take wickets. It was a bit wild at times, but I learned how to swing the ball by the midway point of the season. Any decent batsmen on the other side worked out that my bark was worse than my bite and would cane me to boundaries short and long, but enough were intimidated by the aggression. I approached the bowling crease in very much the same way that I charged over the try-line from ten yards out, grunts, grimaces, growls and all. In fact, with that mighty approach, I think I ran further in a cricket match than I ever did in rugby.
Many summer nights were spent in the cricket nets at the far end of Berners’ field, practising the run-up and perfecting my salsa at the crease. It also meant getting to hit a few balls too. Typically, when I batted, my aim was not just to work on strokes, perfect my timing or learn how to send a ball skimming along the ground to square leg; inevitably I always tried to slam the ball out of the net and as far away as possible. There was an aesthetic quality to a cricket ball arching high into the air that I enjoyed immensely. More specifically, when the ball is travelling away from you, there is a beauty to it, but when it is sailing back over your head, it is deeply demoralising for the bowler who has to retrieve it.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Volpe!” the bowler would whine as he trudged off to collect the ball that might come to a stop a good 150 metres away.
Pete Sadler lived in the main house and would spot anybody using the nets. He was very possessive of them and would march the couple of hundred yards across the field to remonstrate with anybody who was using them without his permission. “Get out of my bloody nets Volpe” was a common refrain. We considered it a privilege to be admonished by a master in such a way. When we were not being chased out of the nets, we discovered the slips cradle, which looked like the bottom of a small rowing boat. One person stood at each end and threw a ball at the cradle, off which it would fly at all angles, and the fun of diving about catching it was endless. When I say we did this for hours, I mean it. And whilst we were having fun, we developed very sharp slip fielding skills. It was like that for most things at Woolverstone and, by accident or design, most of what we did turned out to have a purpose for cricket, rugby or something else. With the training, practice, access to equipment and facilities almost twenty-four hours a day, we were becoming fine athletes and sportsmen. There is certainly a lesson there for modern education.
As a cricket team, we were good but not spectacular. We had fine players and some of them shone more brightly with willow or leather in their hands than they could with mud on their boots in rugby. Every character trait I had was expressed in cricket. My impatience meant I slogged my way through an innings, forever on the edge of letting a ball slip by my guard or falling victim to a catch. My propensity to whack the ball as far as I could in the nets meant I never spent enough time working on my ground shots, so more often than not I was getting caught on the boundary. I can assure you there is no more irritating way to get out, and I would storm back to the pavilion, swearing and groaning under my breath. My urge to show off made me a decent slip fielder, always playing to the cameras had there been any, diving hither and yon to intercept a fizzing ball. Flinging howitzers down the wicket at people sated my aggression. We lost about as many matches as we won, but I always had a good game in my mind.
Pete “Fart”, as he was known was passionate about cricket and taught history. I think the nickname came from a one-off release of gas during a lesson on the Tudors, but I can’t be sure. That was just what we called him, and it was in use long before I arrived. Like many of the masters at Woolverstone, he never seemed to get angry although irritation was easily discerned. He also had three daughters, two of whom were of sufficient age to be the subject of much lecherous pursuit. I liked Pete. He, on the other hand, loathed me with a passion, I think. This was becoming a theme among masters. They were roughly divided along a very clear line: either they had a soft spot for me or thought I was the devil incarnate. Confusingly, I believe a couple of them had a soft spot because I was the Devil incarnate, but I would hate to speculate as to how many were on either side of the line. Perversely – although for me, maybe not – I quite enjoyed irritating the masters who disliked me. It meant I was making an impression, and I always sought to make an impression, whether metaphoric or physical.
* * *
It was the entire body of Timothy Creswell that made an impression on the stinging nettle bush he had fallen twenty feet into. His calamitous and entirely unintentional descent was a result of failing to hold on tightly enough as an enormous rope swing reached its optimum point before swooping back through its colossal arc. We found these rope swings all along the foreshore, tied to large trees near the steep banks. Climbing the bank to the top, we would survey the ride ahead, and it was often terrifying. I have no idea who tied the ropes in the first place, but the swings were like a free ride at Alton Towers. We soon developed games of “boarding”, in which as many boys as possible would launch themselves at the returning swing until a pack of up to eight or so clung for dear life to any inch of rope they could find.
Creswell was riding solo when he fell, and I think it was the sheer horror of reaching the zenith that did it. For no discernible reason, he just let go. He seemed to hang terrified for a moment in mid-air, like a squirrel monkey caught in the dappled light of the forest canopy, before somersaulting and plummeting to earth. I would be lying if I said there wasn’t a certain visual beauty to the fall. He landed flat on his back in a thick clump of the evil little plant, the impact sending clouds of dust into the air. We all choked the instinct to laugh as he hit the ground with a sound somewhere between a thud, a splat and that of an elephant charging through the bush. His sharp exhalation as the air was bashed out of him sounded like whooping cough. Silence descended as we waited for signs of life, but he lay still – until he slowly rose to his feet. That’s when we laughed, despite his appearance, which, with angry outbreaks of red bumps covering his arms and face, was similar to that of a smallpox victim. Not many falls matched that for aerial ballet, but scrapes, bumps and burns from the rope were the currency of bravery.
That is how the summer progressed: cricket, swallows and river swings. There was no inch of the grounds left unexplored, and we went at the country life with the feverish abandon that only children who get excited at seeing a cow in a field can go at it. The dark, threatening countryside of the winter had blossomed and expanded in our view. Whole new areas of Suffolk came within our range, and we roamed everywhere. In the foreshore verges, high with unfurling, pungent ferns, we would flatten small clearings and lay chatting and smoking, new tins of Old Holborn collected from Chelmondiston’s “Orwell Stores” cracked open along with bars of chocolate. It was the idyll that you only truly recognise in reminiscence; but I can smell those ferns and that chocolate and that ‘baccy’, I can feel the gentle crunch of the flattened leaf beneath my back as I lay squinting at the sun, musing on girls, football, masters and all the things th
at occupy the minds of eleven-year-olds. The contrast with our home milieu was profound, as was the miracle of our now immersive comfort with our surroundings. Coarse cockney cries that rang out across the landscape were merely a reminder that everyone and everything is adaptable.
There was a set time to be back at the house, and we frequently missed it. But we lived by the light – when it started to dim, it was time to go. Pushing our luck as the dusk drew in, we usually misjudged the distance we had travelled, leaving us significant hikes back to the house. Being late for tea was punished with extra duties, but worse, no tea at all. We would return filthy and stinking from mud, dirt, undergrowth and, for a short period, pig shit.
We had found an enormous mound of pig dung in the woods behind the marina hard. It was blended with straw, and it was hot and steamy from the composting process. Startled by the location, we nevertheless considered it of huge potential. I think it was Rob’s idea, but we decided to build a pig shit igloo. Then someone suggested building a tunnel to another igloo. Then another. We ordered ourselves into teams, relaying the movement of dung, passing it to other teams who were to build the walls or the tunnels. Soldier ants would have envied our precision and industriousness. Soon, there was a complex of pig shit igloos in the clearing covering many square metres. We reduced the huge pile to nothing as we developed our new compound. And then we would sit in them and smoke rollups. It was a terrifically creative enterprise that lasted days until one of the igloos collapsed, engulfing several boys in manure. Not being familiar with structural engineering, we failed to build supports, thinking the curvature of the walls would work along the lines of real igloos or the vaulted ceiling of the Duomo in Florence. However, pig shit has different properties to that of ice and fired brick, and the inevitable happened when the moisture had mostly evaporated from the sticky goo of the building material. When we had dug our friends out, we decided to find something else to occupy ourselves. All good things come to an end, even ones made of pig shit.
Noisy at the Wrong Times Page 14