The Boy Who Was Afraid of Butterflies - Chapter 14

Chapter 14 The Gownboy Totalitarian State

When I heard that I’d been awarded the County assisted place at Charterhouse public school, despite my goatish scribal indiscretions and my shyly stilted interview, I was filled with nervousness, elation, relief. The latter was instantaneous, a way out, a new beginning. Pride in my achievement was gradually eroded by anxiety as the fateful September day drew nearer. I basked unashamedly in the scholarship and the pleasure of my parents, still at root disbelieving the change that was about to take place in my life.

Despite my confusion amid the welter of experiences in the first few weeks, I learned to be cautious; to watch and not commit myself. The new regime transformed my daily routine, but left my core untouched. I listened to the other boys, exuberant, boastful, worldly-wise, plain silly. I noted subconsciously what behaviour drew criticism, teasing, ostracism. I avoided conflict; I hovered on the edge of the circle of boys who had most charisma.

Seated in the barber’s chair, at Tomassi’s, only a stone’s throw from my home, I listened with scepticism to the blond Pietro’s advice.

“Don’t go on about trains to your new classmates; take up a new hobby - cars or aeroplanes, they’re much more acceptable. Trains, no; no street cred; trainspotting is kid’s stuff.”

So I keep trains to myself. I don’t change. I order “Trains Illustrated” from the school bookshop and enquire hopefully days before monthly publication, my one and sixpence at the ready should the precious magazine have arrived. And on the joyous day of its appearance, I slip it in between the pages of one of my textbooks, as others do with dirty magazines, to pore over in the school library while others have football practice or are down at the tuckshop.

I am homesick, of course I am. I am the only new boy who has not been at a boarding school previously. But I won’t let the others see it. Squat Halse from Newport gets upset when the boys call him ‘Taffy’, so the nickname sticks and he is teased unmercifully. I am glad; I side silently with the tormentors, just relieved that another is the scapegoat.

One of the new boys has brought ‘Monopoly’ with him and Saturday and Wednesday afternoons, when obligatory sports are finished, a small coterie of regulars are to be found hunched over the board. To my surprise, by being around when the first game was mooted, I found myself included. Thereafter my place is assured. I watch the others closely. They don’t play as my family does at home. It is naked capitalism, market forces untrammelled, nature red in tooth and claw. My competitiveness is aroused. I learn fast, and can bargain tenaciously with the rest of them. I take no part in the general banter. I never miss a rent. I am so avid to win that they call me ‘Grasper’. I take it as a compliment. And the others seem tolerant, mildly amused; no-one appears to hold it against me. When I applied the same tactics at home everyone complained and said I was spoiling the game.

Other parts of my new existence appal me but I learn to stifle my surprise and abhorrence. All around me there is perpetual raucous yelling - schoolboy NCOs dragooning cadet force recruits, prefects yodelling blood-curdling hunting cries for fags, hearty back-slapping seventeen year old voices on the touchlines urging on the house team in chauvinistic chorus. I shut my ears, ignore the cacophony and quietly go my own sweet way. My initiation among a fairly large intake of new boys helped, because my class position helped me achieve a seniority from the start that enables me to escape the slavery that besets the most junior fags. I watch the house games when I cannot avoid it, stamping my frozen feet on the wet turf, emitting a shrill supportive noise when the chorus of cheering reaches its crescendo.

The lack of privacy I find more problematical. The washroom has some twenty basins packed tightly round two walls and each morning before breakfast it will be overflowing with sweaty muscular bodies, stripped to the waist, water sloshing, towels pummelling. I have always worn a vest under my pyjamas, I am a cold child. October frosts and barren dormitories do not encourage any change of practice. After a few tentative surreptitious skimpy ablutions, pyjama jacket firmly buttoned - and neat cuffs - I find that cutting the ritual altogether is perfectly acceptable. The changing rooms are smelly places anyway and I do not sweat easily, except when I am nervous. An occasional hand-washing and the twice weekly bath suffice. The bath, of course, cannot be so easily avoided. Rosters are published and displayed. Penalties for missing are draconian. The bathing areas are partitioned, but have no doors. Prefects pace up and down at regular intervals to maintain decorum. I let the water run as high as I dare, keep my back towards the gap, and hop out of the bath like a thief judging when the watchman’s footsteps are at the far end of the compound.

Doorless, too, are the toilet cubicles. Fearing what boys might do, given such privacy, opportunity for mischief is denied. Older boys hang around to watch the sport until chased out by some puritanical or hypocritical prefect. At first I waited for the corner cubicle to be vacated, then necessity forced me to relax my guard. Anyway, no-one seems really interested in me, I am overly skinny, there are others who draw comment, flushed looks, which I do not really fathom. I cherish my anonymity.

One area of privacy remains. Although we younger boys are crowded into large dormitories, each has a cubicle of cheap wood panelling, with a door that can be bolted. It is forbidden to use the bolt, of course, prefects and the housemaster have the right of access to check that rules are being obeyed at all times. But the door can be swung to; the world can be shut out, the meagre blankets drawn over the head and respite taken from the prevailing cold. The first clanging bell jangles loudly, ineffectually, at a quarter past seven. A whole half-hour of wallowing, snug and uninterrupted, listening to the creaking groaning stirrings of others, treasuring the time still remaining before the moment to jump out into the chill air can be postponed no longer. Without the nagging fear of scorn or dread of vicious ostracism, I can indulge myself in soupy daydreams. A time to be hoarded.

I lie on my side, my legs drawn up, my wrists thrust down between my knees until they are tightly clamped. The flannelette blue striped pyjamas are drawn carefully round me to ensure no cool air seeps into vacant crannies of flesh. I tuck my head at the base of the hollow pillow, neck twisted to plunge my face below the roughened blanket hem, until just the jutting hair from my wayward dark crown is visible. Murmured voices are dulled. Footsteps flip-flop lethargically along the floorboards, shuffling languid poses pause for effect. These form the boundaries scarcely penetrated by my unpractised mental games. At first I am not ambitious. I aspire to competency, to be good, but not so good that anyone notices. In short, I hone my aim to come a worthy second. Excellence means risk, exposure, setting yourself up as a target. I am the substitute captain of the colts’ second team, scoring a goal in extra time. I surprise my housemaster by running the November ‘Chase’ in under thirty two minutes, the first thirteen year old to do so, although of course I am unplaced against the eighteen year olds. I dream of Saturday week, hope my homely family will bring me some of my favourite cake and intend to secrete it where no-one else can claim a share. I relive the summer journey down to Torbay; hang out of the window, pretending the green monster backing down at Salisbury is ‘Sir Galahad’ or ‘Sir Bedivere’; not ‘Torrington’ again. Lomax and butterflies are banished from this world. No purple buddleia here, just dull green uniformly cut turf and banks of straggly stinging nettles where in high summer a tattered cabbage white might eke a precarious existence.

I savour these precious minutes, and extend them by analogy into the darkened moments before sleep, gently probing how far I can extend the structure. I promote myself, my exploits become bolder, though my fame is confined to my own House; no school-wide notoriety. And Topsy begins to drift into my thoughts, especially after ‘lights out’. Her face hovers under my eyelids, blurred, it is true, as my memory strains to recall the details etched there nearly a year ago. She smiles at me. She lets me kiss her in the darkened passageway; I seek in vain to bring this touch of lips to life but only the anticipation is real. I can allow myself to think of her once more because no-one here is aware of her existence. I shudder at the brazen Horsefield’s boasting that he’s ‘done it’ with his girlfriend. The callow boy has even passed her love-letter around the giggling youths; it does not prove his claim, of course, but puts him one step ahead of the others whose bragging about their own girlfriends is discounted as idle exaggeration. Topsy’s brown bobbed hair, her funny turned up nose, her big brown eyes materialise softly, there, under the scratchy dark blue blanket where I can keep her safe from prying boys. I don’t know what to do with her in my daydreams. She is just there, a snug presence, comfortable, warm, secret.

During the day I avoid trouble. It is easy during class time, I might not shine above my peers as I did at Surbiton, but I can hold my own by dint of hard work and tenacity. At other times I withdraw into myself and watch others, admiring their prowess or cheek, or being shocked at their indiscretions.

I see rebels get their just deserts with a hint of mild gloating, savouring my immunity from their retribution. I do not oversleep the bell, I do my homework without chattering to my neighbour, I am not insolent, I wear my uniform as prescribed. I become aware, however, of a steady stream of miscreants called to Hall after evening prayers. Lying in my bed, I can hear movement, murmured voices, strange muffled retorts that emanate from just below the floorboards. The rumours tumble around at breakfast. Three last night, one of them was Barclay Minor. How do you know? I heard him snivelling in his bed. What was it for? He was caught, cutting P.E.

I learn that my House is notorious for its brutal discipline. Various epithets are applied by the other boarders; the Gownboy Totalitarian State; the Spanish Inquisition. The fear I feel is academic rather than real. It is the general atmosphere, it is not aimed specifically at me as I had been singled out at Surbiton. I can keep night at bay, maintain the barrier.