Cobra in the Bath

by Miles Morland

  But the problem was not the bullying, the beating or the buggery; it was what an English boarding-school education did to your mind. Before I went off to Stubbington I had been hungry to learn. I didn’t mind what. My mind soaked it all up. Books, poetry, encyclopedias, dictionaries, long multiplication: I loved it all. Even at Stubbington energy and the habit of learning carried me through the first year or so. I was exposed to the excitement of Latin for the first time. For years I had yearned to learn Latin. But somewhere, probably in my second or third year there, learning stopped being fun. The teachers taught in a routine and unimaginative way. We were there to learn what we needed to get us into public school, the brighter of us with a scholarship. The idea that learning might be fun or involve feeding our curiosity would have been treated with incomprehension.

  I wouldn’t have minded the absurd rules, the bullying, the discomfort and the disgusting food if my mind had been fed, if there had been something of Orwell’s atmosphere of literary scholarship, if there had been teachers from whom I could have acquired wisdom unawares. But lessons which at the age of eight I had relished had become drudgery and boredom by the age of ten. That went on for the whole of my school career. I did not recapture the joy of learning until after I left university.

  A couple of years ago I saw the Alan Bennett play The History Boys, about a group of sixth-formers at a northern grammar school and their form master, who despised the prescribed syllabus and encouraged the boys to explore every byway and cranny of learning into which their curiosity led them. As a result they loved learning; they revelled in it. I watched with envy. If only Radley had been like that. There the worship of team games and the dreariness of the teaching may have been appropriate for turning out district commissioners, but it also turned us into philistines. England is the only European country where being called an intellectual is an insult.

  Today, I am told, the public schools have changed into caring, nurturing institutions that devote themselves to preparing their pupils to lead relevant lives in twenty-first-century England. My first reaction to that is they would say that, wouldn’t they? But I sometimes meet friends’ children who have been at Radley, Wellington or Marlborough, and most have good things to say about the experience. Beating went years ago, as did fagging. Bullying, they say, has gone too, and as for buggery, most schools are now co-educational, although Radley is one of the few that is still single-sex. As for literary scholarship and wisdom unawares . . .

  A strange thing happened during my last two years at school. Radley is one of the great rowing schools of England, and in 1961 Ronnie Howard arrived as the new head rowing coach. Ronnie was a remarkable man who had been president of the Oxford University Boat Club and put together a crew which won the Boat Race in 1959 by an easy margin despite the fact that a number of American squad members staged a mutiny during training. English rowing at that time was done the way it had always been; new training methods were viewed with suspicion. Ronnie wanted none of this. He had seen Karl Adam’s German Ratzeburg club win every gold medal available, leaving English crews far in their wake. Ratzeburg had adopted interval training, a method introduced to rowing from long-distance running. Their crews were, as a direct result, superhumanly fit.

  When Ronnie arrived at Radley my rowing career was a miserable thing. When I was not being beaten for offences on the river I was sneaking off to play tennis, which I loved. I even got selected for the school tennis team and played at Schools’ Wimbledon. However, tennis, not being a team game, was sneered at, and to play it as your main sport you needed to be a dry bob. I asked Mr Goldsmith if I could change.

  ‘Sir, I’m no good at rowing. Could I please have your permission to change to a dry bob so I’ll be able to have the time to play tennis seriously?’

  ‘Nonsense, boy. Just because you’re not good at something doesn’t mean you should stop doing it. You certainly can’t change. You must stick to it.’

  That was the only thing Mr Goldsmith did for me that had a happy outcome.

  I’m not sure how it happened, but in my second-last year Ronnie Howard spotted some well-hidden kernel of rowing talent in me. I was given a trial for one of the top eights, and a year after being beaten for trashing a fenny I found myself rowing number six in the Radley 1st VIII at Henley Royal Regatta. The 1st VIII were the greatest of all the Radley sporting gods, and overnight I found myself transmuted from heckling on the sidelines of school life as a bolshie intellectual to being a rowing deity. The following year, 1961–2, even more remarkably, I found myself Captain of Boats.

  I had never excelled at a sport before. I was a reasonable tennis player and my large size and thuggishness had resulted in my being put in the second row of the scrum for the Radley 1st XV, but rowing in an eight coached by Ronnie Howard was in a different universe.

  Ronnie had imported the Ratzeburg method wholesale. Interval training involved rowing 500 metres flat out, then coasting for 500 metres before doing another 500 flat out and so on. Sometimes the intervals would be 500 metres and sometimes 1,000. The idea behind interval training is that because you row shorter distances you can do it absolutely flat out, then recover your breath before doing another interval at 100 per cent. It is brutal. The traditional method, whereby you do long stretches of rowing or running without a break, means that for most of the time your body operates below maximum because you are tired. The proof that interval training worked could be seen in every gold-medal-winning distance runner in the 1960s and in the all-conquering German crews.

  As the training went on we knew we were becoming fitter than any Radley crew had ever been before. In a boat, when things are going well, eight supremely fit athletes drop their oars simultaneously into the water at the moment of the catch and in a fraction of a second transfer their energy and strength to a drive with the legs, a spring with the back and a pull with the arms, eight people in absolute unison. After a time, in a good eight you can do this with your eyes closed; you just follow the rhythm and eight oars will cleave the water at exactly the same time. You feel as if the boat is sitting up out of the water and flying. The boat is singing, oarsmen say. There are times too, when the wind blows from ahead, the water is choppy, you are tired and the rhythm has gone, when rowing turns from magic to ill-tempered drudgery. But the moments of magic are unique. They are moments when you glory in your own physicality.

  Before Henley the 1st VIII traditionally entered one or two preparatory regattas. At Wallingford, as a special test, Ronnie entered us for both of the two top events, the Grand and the Senior Eights. We would be rowing against adult crews from some of the top rowing clubs and from Oxford and Cambridge colleges. We won both events with ease. For Henley we were entered for the Princess Elizabeth Cup, the schools’ championship. A week before the regatta there was despondency at Radley when the draw was announced. We had been drawn in the very first round against Shrewsbury, another great rowing school, which had won the event the previous year. This year’s crew was unbeaten and reputed to be even faster than its predecessor. They were hot favourites to win the event.

  Henley racing is two abreast. You start at Temple Island, a mile and a half downstream, and race for 2,112 metres to finish in front of the Stewards’ Enclosure, where the grandees sit in their brightly coloured blazers. Times are taken at three points: the Barrier, after almost two minutes, Fawley, the halfway point, and at the Finish.

  We rowed down to Temple Island for the start very conscious of the loud cries of ‘Good luck, Radley’ from the five hundred-odd Radley boys on the bank. The whole school always came over by train for the first day of Henley. When we got to the stake boat for the start we looked over at the Shrewsbury crew. We knew they were heavier than us but now they looked like giants. ‘Are you ready? GO!’ came from the umpire.

  Shrewsbury shot off at astonishing speed, and after only twenty strokes as I looked across from my number-six seat, I was already opposite a fast-disappearing Shrewsbury rudder. They were streaking further away on ev
ery stroke. We, however, had settled into a good rhythm at about thirty-four strokes a minute, while Shrewsbury were rating almost forty, an unsustainable pace. We knew we were fitter, but would they get so far ahead we wouldn’t be able to catch them over the second half? By now they were out of sight from my seat. When we passed the Barrier they were almost a length and a half ahead of us. Their time to the Barrier broke the schools’ record by three seconds.

  Iain Brooksby, our cox, who was later to cox Cambridge, kept us calm. ‘Keep the rhythm. They’re tiring. We’re starting to move on them.’

  And so we were. As we approached halfway I could see their rudder starting to appear in the corner of my eye. There is nothing more morale-sapping in rowing than being ahead in a two-boat race and then seeing the other boat starting to move up on you. Shrewsbury were exceptionally strong physically and knew that they only had to hold on to win. Normally over the Henley course crews will wind the rating up for their final sprint as they come to the enclosures for the last minute of the race, but as we came up to Fawley, only halfway along the course, Richard Syme, our wild Irish stroke, began our sprint. This verged on madness. By starting so early, there was a real risk that one of us might collapse.

  We passed Fawley. Shrewsbury were still ahead but only by half a length. As we approached the enclosures there must have been a tumult of noise from the Radley contingent but none of us heard it. Our concentration was fixed utterly on the boat and keeping going, running on the reserves Ronnie had trained into us on those interminable afternoons doing intervals. Richard had by now taken the rating up to forty, a rate that is impossible to maintain for long, and we still had a minute to go.

  Suddenly we were moving very fast on Shrewsbury. They had nothing left. We had broken them. I saw their rudder alongside me, and shortly after that their cox and then their stroke. It felt as if we were taking a yard on every stroke. As we stormed past the enclosures they dropped further behind. Nothing was going to stop us. We finished a length ahead. Our time for the course broke the record for the event by five seconds. It was many years before another school crew did it faster. Still, sometimes, when I am lying in bed today unable to sleep, I relive that race.

  The rest of the Regatta was an anticlimax. I don’t remember the other races in detail. We came up against some excellent school crews – Pangbourne, St Paul’s, King’s Canterbury – but after Shrewsbury we knew they were not going to challenge us and that the cup was ours.

  My father, whom I seldom saw, had come to Henley with my stepmother Alice. Their plan was to watch the first day’s racing and then return to Scotland, where they lived. My father, who worshipped sports, was so carried away by the excitement of our Wednesday victory over Shrewsbury that he decided to stay on to watch us on Thursday. Alice didn’t stay. As it happened, my mother and Tom, my stepfather, were coming to watch that day.

  As we put our boat away after the race I saw Ma and Tom standing in the crowd clapping. So was my father, who was on the other side of the boat as we carried it into the tent. When I came out my mother and father were standing about six feet apart, and it suddenly hit me that they hadn’t recognised each other. I drew them together.

  ‘Good heavens, Susan. I didn’t know you were going to be here.’

  ‘Well, Bunny, how nice to see you. Didn’t Miles row well? This is Tom, my husband.’

  And we all went off together for tea and scones.

  14

  Let Out in Oxford

  Balliol was my chosen college at Oxford. Ma’s father and brother had both been there, and although I knew little about it I had heard it was a place where brains and a contrary spirit were valued. It was also thought to have the highest proportion of Indians and Africans of any college. With my Indian background that appealed to me.

  I sat for a scholarship in English to Balliol. At the beginning of December I caught the bus from Radley to Oxford for two days of written exams. Term had ended at Oxford and I was housed in an undergraduate’s room. I breezed through the first day of exams, doing particularly well in the Shakespeare paper, or so I thought. I have always thought that Henry IV Part 1 is Shakespeare’s best play and was delighted that the exam questions allowed me to write at length about it.

  That night I went out to the White Horse pub in Broad Street and sat drinking beer in one of its tiny rooms with photographs of boat crews and cricket teams on the walls. The pub was crowded with undergraduates who had stayed up after the end of term; they were laughing, joking and arguing. I was intoxicated by the atmosphere and pictured myself sitting there in a year’s time as a Balliol scholar. I left to get back to Balliol in time for dinner in the college hall. On the way I bought a bottle of gin.

  Next day’s papers were likely to be easier. They were general English, and there would be a wide variety of questions about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poets and writers. As you only had to choose three or four of the topics to write about and you had a wide choice, I was confident that there would be questions I could handle well. None the less I had brought exercise books full of notes and quotes with me, and I sat up till well after midnight, memorising quotes, taking a swig of gin mixed with a little tap water and revising some more. And then taking another swig of gin. At half past one or so I stumbled off to bed, feeling mellow and confident. The gin bottle had no more than a quarter left in it.

  I had not drunk spirits since the summer holidays. Other people have described hangovers better than I could ever do. Mine, the next morning, was bad. On a scale of one to ten it must have been close to nine. Somehow I fumbled my way through six hours of exams. The questions were ones I could have well handled in a sober state, but my brain was in poor condition for framing responses. I swore never to drink gin again.

  A week later I was home for the Christmas holidays. On 18 December, my birthday, a telegram from Oxford arrived. I tore open the envelope. There had been a mistake. ‘We regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you a Scholarship at Balliol. Since you had not previously requested a place we have no vacancies left for the 1962/1963 year but would be pleased to offer you a place for the 1963/1964 year. The Senior Tutor, Balliol College.’

  I checked the address. Yes, it was addressed to me. I literally could not believe it. I had been so confident and arrogant it had never occurred to me that I would not get a scholarship. Why I was so confident is difficult to say. I had spent much of my last year at Radley enjoying my new-found and unfamiliar status as captain of boats and school god. I was now head of house and even Mr Goldsmith was nice to me. But I did very little work. I coasted along confident that natural ability would get me through. The telegram told me that my natural ability fell well short of the Balliol scholarship level.

  For the next few days I went about in a daze. I’m sure that anyone who knew me well at the time would say that the setback was good for me and helped to replant my feet on the ground, but I have seldom enjoyed things that are good for me. I cursed the gin bottle. If I had not been so stupid as to get myself epically drunk in the middle of the exams I would have been right now getting myself measured for a scholar’s gown. It must have been the General English papers, written under a fog of gin, that had let me down.

  In early January I was able to arrange to talk on the phone to the English tutor at Balliol who had marked the papers. I asked how mine had been and said how disappointed I was. ‘Mr Morland, your papers were not bad, and if there had not been such an exceptionally promising group of scholarship candidates I am sure you would have been up for consideration. Your work, I’m afraid, was patchy. Your essays on general subjects were admirable, and the work you gave up for the General English papers was more than adequate. Your Shakespeare let you down. You seemed to skate over the subject.’

  Once more I came down to earth with a heavy bump. So it was not the gin, it was me. The thing I thought I was best at had let me down. I had sailed through the General English papers while the clear and sober answers I had given to my best subject had been d
eemed inadequate. There were certainly lessons to be learned from the debacle, but I am still trying to work out what they were. I did, however, make one change in my habits as a result: I never drink gin.

  At that time the Oxford colleges were divided into groups of three or four for entry purposes. You applied to a group and nominated your favoured college within it. If that one did not want you you could then take your exam papers off to one of the other colleges in the group. Balliol had said they would take me but nor for another year and I didn’t want to delay. In 1962 gap years were unheard of. It never occurred to me to go off to Thailand and spend a year getting stoned as a precursor to university. If I had thought of it I might well have done, although if I had people would have thought it very odd.

  The other two possible colleges in the Balliol group were Lincoln and Wadham, about which I knew nothing, so I trotted off to seek the advice of Cecil, the careers master.

  ‘Wadham??’ he thundered. ‘Oh dear me, no. No, no. No. I don’t think we’ve ever sent a Wadley boy there. A most unsuitable college. Bowra, the warden, has a vewy unsavouwy weputation.’

  This was Sir Maurice Bowra, the famous wit, intellectual and friend of Evelyn Waugh. Wadham, I later learned, had a reputation for being both left-wing and tolerant of homosexuality in an era when others were not. Cecil was a faithful Tory and, like so many queers – as they were then called – of his generation, intolerant of public displays of queerdom by others. Wadham, in his eyes, was doubly damned by its politics and sexuality.