The Boy Who Was Afraid of Butterflies - Chapter 15

Chapter 15 An Independent Little Fellow

There are sixteen silver cups that stand on display above the bank of lockers at one end of the Main House assembly hall. Each night after ‘adsum’ they are carried, one by one, through the milky fat-smelling scullery, through a little passageway at the far end of which is a cupboard where the trophies are locked away for the night. And in the morning, after breakfast, I and two of my fellow fags have the task of fetching, polishing and replacing these cups back on their pinnacles. I look after the five biggest that are arranged in the centre. The school football trophy, bulbous and heavy, occupies pride of place. As I stagger with it each morning, arms clasped around it as if protecting a particularly awkward squalling baby, I withstand the good-natured childish banter of the pantry boys, ex inmates of the local asylum, released for menial work under the care of the head butler, a veteran of the first world war. This ex Sergeant Major, whose waxed moustache bristles as he dementedly strives to keep his wayward charges in an orderly fashion that approximates to his standards, is an institution whom no-one can remember never being there.

The cleaning of the silverware is straightforward, tedious and time consuming; it means I have to prepare my lesson books the night before, because even as we complete our task, we three fags have to chase after the other boys to take our places in chapel for the daily morning assembly. The hardest part for me is balancing each morning on one of the breakfast benches and lifting the polished bowls and cups into their prescribed places without one of the objects toppling back onto me. One of the others is Meller, a strapping thirteen year old who already has the body and stature of a fully grown adult, who pops each of his responsibilities onto the shelf with one extended arm, with a grace and ease that mocks his hefty physique. Having put all his cups in place, he stands back, arms folded, a smile on his lips, while I struggle with the football cup which is threatening to avalanche taking me with it. A last heave and it will rock into position. I step down, red in the face, shaking, dizzy.

If I had asked, Meller, I’m sure, would have put my cups up for me. However, it does not occur to me to ask him. Each day I struggle and in the end, achieve my objective, with great risk, but no disaster. Each day Meller watches me with amusement, entirely without malice. He grows protective, friendly. He never interferes. In months to come, our friendship becomes a source of comment; the six foot three giant and the four foot ten ‘weed’ with the large head and even larger eyes.

The authorities do their best to fatten me up. The school doctor, at the routine medical for all new entrants, diagnoses me as underweight and prescribes an extra ration of milk to be consumed each night. Just before bedtime, we all line up to gulp down our ‘third of a pint’. I, who loathe the stuff at the best of times, am obliged to put the empty bottle back into the clanging crate and then drain a second, eyes tightly shut, trying to prevent the gagging in my throat that threatens to disgrace me in front of the milling throng. During the winter I manage to endure this nightly routine. Come the summer, I will find the medicine repulsive, as the milkcrate stands in the open throughout the long hot days. One night after a particularly sultry day, I confide to a sympathetic matron who hugs me embarrassingly in front of the other boys and promises that, if I strive to drink one bottle, she will convert the other offending quantity into a steaming mug of cocoa.

It’s a late November afternoon, damp and chill, and I’m shivering on the touchline of the first eleven pitch, caught up in the tension of a particularly close and fluctuating match against one of the school’s traditional rivals. It’s a cup match, a knock-out competition and extra time is being played. Despite my numb ears and fingers, I’m involved in the excitement and it’s only when the final whistle blows that I look at my watch and realise with mounting panic that I have completely forgotten my rostered bath. My first instinct is to run full-tilt towards the washroom and scramble somehow through the routine. But before I make a fool of myself, I see that it is already too late. Only five minutes remain of the allotted half-hour. Another group of boys will even now be collecting their towels and tramping down towards the cubicles. I veer away from my House towards the library trying to think frantically of any excuse that will mitigate the automatic penalty for this particular offence. I can think of nothing that will have the remotest chance of mollifying the god-like prefects that strut the corridors of Gownboys. I mentally prepare to play my only defence - a retreat into confusion and sickness that will be nearly accurate if the necessity arises out of a mixture of fear and panic. I use defencelessness as my protection, provoking compassion or contempt.

Throughout the evening I wait in trepidation. The other boys know. Connolly gives me a knowing look. The raised eyebrow, the pursed lips reveal I was missed. But they ascribe to me a noble motive. My friends assume I’ve cut the bath period deliberately to see the finish of the school match; that I’d calculated the risk and found it worthwhile. I thus have earned admiration at my adoption of this risk, assuming me to be more foolhardy than in fact I’ll ever be. At least, my bath time peers will not tell on me.

Throughout the evening homework preparation period I seek to make myself inconspicuous in the eyes of the supervising prefect. I don’t want to provide any reminder of my existence to the gilded youth who may, for all I know, have been in charge of baths this afternoon. At ‘adsum’ I shrink and take my place avoiding eye contact with the row of prefects marshalled under the silver cups. Muttering ‘sum’ when I have to, barely audible. And then escape putting as much space between myself and the dispersing prefects before one can spot me and ask where I had been, earlier…..

As I lie in bed, waiting lights out, I am aware of my heart thumping, beyond control. When a prefect, on his last rounds, pokes his head around my cubicle door, will he remember, say the dreaded words calling me to take my place in the cloakroom to await my fate? I am fearful of a prefect’s beating, the unknown, the humiliation of failing in another’s eyes. Perhaps I am frightened of the pain, but in truth I never realised at the time how well I coped with physical discomfort. I was not, however, put to the test. No-one had noticed my absence, or if they did, had not cared.

I had been lucky, despite my self-inflicted turmoil. A week later, three fourteen year olds were convicted of some heinous pedantic irregularity and flogged so severely that one had to receive medical treatment, and amid much scandal and gloating satisfaction, the prefect concerned was stripped of his authority and did not reappear the following term. I look back on this period with embarrassment, a sense of guilt at my own escape from capricious fate lurks deep in my consciousness.

I find a solace, a safety valve, in the privacy of the open air. Whenever the opportunity arises, sometimes only half an hour in the gathering dusk, I slip away alone and unseen into the deciduous woodland that fringes the hill slopes on top of which Charterhouse lies. A well trodden path diverges from the school driveway just beyond the founder’s statue, ostensibly leading to one of the outlying playing fields where we run each morning to perform supervised compulsory exercises.

However, I penetrate beyond the point where the pathway breaks through the bracken up on to the lawn-like plateau populated by venerable elms basking in their last years of immunity to the doom disease. I plunge deeper into the undergrowth, brambles tearing at my clothes, as I force my way through a muddy patch onto a ridge where the treeline breaks sufficiently to grant extensive views of the meandering infant river Wey. I rarely stop to gaze, however. I am driven on, my inner eye fixed on the junction of footpaths ahead where I will turn and take the lower route back to school, ascending and descending the hillside like a big dipper, down which I run seemingly out of control to gain the momentum that will take me half-way up the following climb.

Sometimes, however, I pause at this aforesaid junction. If I am not constrained by the minute hand of my watch, forced to run back all the way to make the late afternoon classes punctually, I may stop and look. I am high on the corner of the hillside, the school grounds to my right on the higher ground, the river valley way down to my left disappearing through the spindly trees to a mauvish misty horizon. If I continue on the path beyond its junction point, I find a change in the character of the woodland. The undergrowth thins out here; from now on a carpet of brown beech leaves soften my tread and a single file pathway zigzags up the valley from the river, climbing steadily to join my path a few hundred yards ahead. In the summer, I’d see a mother and children returning from a picnic, the toddlers’ voices echoing shrilly around the surrounding slopes; or see a fisherman plodding upwards with his gear, regaining the village of Hurtmore which nestles in the sunny spot where the little valley reaches the plateau. “Happy Valley” the locals call it. The boys from Charterhouse rarely call it this, because, by and large, they never go there.

Once a year, around November, the cross-country race competitors snake through the village and a long trail of mud-bespattered boys churn up the path through dead stinging nettles down to the squelchy bridleway that follows the course of the Wey back to the outskirts of the town where the road to school branches off. Perhaps, therefore, in my solitary wanderings, I might sight a lone runner, keen, practising, seeing only the muddy footpath at his feet. Not today though. The race was last week. The sun is already setting, there is a chill in the air, I must turn back while I can still pick out my way in the fading light.

I am pounding down the lower path, jumping over tree roots and puddles in my headlong flight. I am spurned on by a twinge of panic, I have delayed turning back until the last moment; I cannot afford to slow down, check the underfoot conditions. Anyway, I know the path by heart, I could do it blindfold. It is a familiar track, reassuring, as reliable as the steel bed of the railway that glints below catching the last reflections of the setting sun. The rails copy the curves of the river which they follow for a mile or so, before disappearing into a short tunnel beneath the hill opposite. Breathless, I snort up the long climb back towards the school, clouds of condensation billowing from my rasping throat.

Nearly every day I find an opportunity to escape for a few minutes onto this circuit. Some free afternoons I take my time and go right up into the village. Usually I turn back when I reach Happy Valley. I am always alone. I do not make my intentions known and apparently no-one ever notices me slip away, or asks me why. I am not a nature lover. I can tell you little about the woodland, I do not know the names of the many trees and plants; I will not stop to search out for the rarer wild flowers which grow unseen on the slopes or down by the river. I see the celandines growing near the footpath in the shady patches and take them for granted. Sometimes my mind is a vacuum, I am content to let the pressure ease, just watching my feet kick through the brambles. Sometimes I treat the footpath as my own private railroad, timetabling my movements to the second in some inner impenetrable ritual.

The wood is still there; the celandines still bloom; the elms have gone, perhaps those pylons in the valley have spoiled the view, perhaps they were always there, unnoticed. What was I thinking as I pounded round those paths, day in, day out? Did I think or was I numb? I never told anyone, I kept it all to my inscrutable self.

I found other ways to fill the time that my peers spent on the playing fields or frittering away in gregarious foolishness. In the third week of my sojourn at the school, one Wednesday afternoon, poking aimlessly around, I chanced upon the school’s studio complex and climbed the dank stone stairway out of curiosity. I was mildly puzzled that drawing and painting seemed to be an optional pastime to be pursued in one’s spare time - I searched in vain for ‘art’ to appear in my neatly written class timetable. And now here was the proof - a door swung open to reveal a veritable treasure trove of opportunities; canvases, half-finished, palettes of congealed oil paints, two potters’ wheels, a chamber of water colours exhibited on the wall; and nobody, nobody at all.

I tiptoed through the studio rooms, fearful of the silence, embarrassed by my own footsteps, convinced that I was trespassing. I wanted to try something, but I was less and less certain that it was allowed. Surely you needed someone’s permission, a signature, a handing over of equipment, some direction?

I stood around for five minutes, and finding no-one, was about to turn away in confusion when I heard a door shut at the far end of the studio. I steeled myself to walk in the direction of the noise and saw a thickset figure move into a tiny office there. I could just make the man out through the frosted window. He seemed to be staring in the opposite direction, whilst patiently lighting his pipe. As if he had suddenly sensed my presence, he swung round, and seeing my hesitation, said, before I could merge into the background:

“You new here?” The voice boomed out unthreateningly.

“Yes sir.”

“Good. Have a go at something. Take anything you like.”

“What, do you mean….?” I began, but before I can finish the sentence, the man has turned again and was leafing through some papers on his desk.

There were half a dozen canvases of different shapes and sizes stacked against the wall. I tentatively picked one out and placed it experimentally on an empty easel. I secured it with the wooden blocks provided, picked up a palette and began to poke around the tubes of oil paints scattered across a table in the corner. I took a thick tube, unscrewed the cap and squeezed out a satisfying blob of oily white paint on one end of my empty palette. Emboldened, I selected a few other tubes at random and smaller squiggles and swirls of colour - burnt umber, ultramarine, emerald green, scarlet, coal black - grew like wormcasts on the graffitied wood. I selected a pale-haired brush from a jam jar and flattened the oozing white until it covered nearly a quarter of the palette. Then I added a dab of ultramarine and mixed it until I was satisfied.

No-one was watching me. I stared at the empty canvas, sighed deeply, and made a quick dart near the top. It seemed to work. I slapped some more on. After a while I decided to try another colour. I selected a smaller brush and dipped it into the black paint. I outlined the silhouette of a railway locomotive and began to shape the roundness of its boiler with rough brush strokes. I worked on uninterrupted. The blank canvas began to fill up with harsh colour. Dun coloured platforms, black and purple and brown trackbed and sleepers only relieved by the green I applied to parts of the engine. I was beginning to enjoy the feel of the paint, saw I could vary the thickness with which I laid it on.

I squirted some more white onto the palette and let it encroach on the remains of the black, so that some was tinged grey. Then I took the bushiest brush I could find and ladled the mixture onto the canvas to form swathes of volcanic exhaust bursting from the locomotive’s chimney. The turgid sulphurous smoke drove the train into dramatic urgent life, so violent that it seemed to leap out of the canvas. I stood back and surveyed my work. I was a bit disappointed. It was so crude. It didn’t really look like the train I had wanted to paint. I took a finer brush and started to amend, fill in, refine.

At that moment I realised the adult form of the studio supervisor was hovering behind my back, staring over my shoulder.

“Stop a moment. Don’t do any more!”

I hesitated, my brush in the air.

“You’ve never painted in oils before, have you?”

“No, sir.”

“Don’t do any more for the moment. You’ll spoil it.”

“I just wanted to get the locomotive right. It should have a bigger splasher there and the cab doesn’t look quite straight.”

“It doesn’t matter, boy. What’s your name, by the way?”

I told him. He did not introduce himself.

“That’s a very fine first effort. I like it. It’s got raw energy. Leave it.”

I put my brush and palette down.

“Come back another day and try another painting. See me first though. I’ll give you a few tips. And one other thing, I’ll confiscate the black paint. You’ll have to make do without it.”

“But how can I paint trains without black? It wouldn’t look right.”

“You’ll be able to do it. Mix brown and purple together. Look around you in life. There is no such colour as black.”

I was going to argue, then thought better of it. I didn’t see how I’d get a proper black, but perhaps I’d try.

“Sign the picture then.”

I inscribed my initials thickly in the corner, so roughly they could hardly be deciphered. The man wandered away back into his cubby-hole. I dipped my brush into the purple paint, then swirled it with burnt umber. It looked black in the fading light. With some trepidation, I dabbed a bit of white with it. To my amazement, the resultant concoction resembled a light grey. Tentatively, I brushed a speck into the voluminous clouds of exhaust that I had previously applied with the mixture of coal black and flaky white. It did not look out of place. I left the studio feeling rather pleased with myself.

There was another event which increased my self-esteem. My form-tutor, Mr Wreford-Brown, was holding forth with IIIc in his accustomed discursive manner, showing that breadth of knowledge for which he was renowned. It happened to be a Religious Knowledge period, but it could with equal ease have occurred in Latin or English or History. Wreford-Brown was like that; he blurred the edges. There had been a reference in the text that the class was studying to Calvinism, and this had led to a rambling debate on free will, determinism, election and the omniscience of God.

Most of this had gone over my head; I was not used to debate and discussion in my church. I gradually became aware, however, that two opposing viewpoints were being expressed. Some were arguing that if God knew everything, then obviously one’s life was prescribed; others took the opposing view, maintaining support for freedom of action, but undermining God’s omniscience. Something struck me as false in the argument. For several minutes I could not believe that all were missing the obvious middle way; there was a trick, there must be some glaring obvious objection to the position that stuck in my own mind, but that I had never questioned before. I became quite excited, wanted to intervene, but kept losing my nerve at the last moment in case I was wrong, and others laughed at me.

My hand hovered, as if I wanted to ask a question, then withdrew hurriedly when Wreford-Brown cast his eyes around. I was too late though. My hesitant move had been spotted by the eagle-eyed master.

“Ah, Maidment. What do you think? Can you enlighten our blind alley?”

I became so nervous, I could hardly get the words out.

“Suppose, sir, God knew what you were going to do, but he didn’t make you do it? He just knew you too well, not to know what you would think and do. Then he’d still be omniscient and you would still have freewill.”

Someone else shot a hand in the air.

“Like Dr Gerstenberg, sir. Every time he gets excited in class, he takes his spectacles on and off. We know he will do that, but we don’t make him!”

Amid laughter, a voice called out:

“Yes, you do. You goad him on and work him up on purpose.”

Wreford-Brown held up a hand to regain control of the class, when the bell for the end of the lesson rang out, and there was a slamming of desk tops and a scramble for the door. Above the hubbub, he caught my eye and bade me remain at my desk. When the last shrieks had disappeared down the corridor, the form-master sat himself on the edge of my form and asked me to elaborate on what I’d said.

“Well, sir, if there’s no such thing as time for God, then he can know the outcome of something without influencing it himself. All the other arguments are beside the point.”

Wreford-Brown remained in animated conversation for over a quarter of an hour. To my surprise he asked many questions and seemed to treat my answers as worthy of serious consideration. At first I thought I was being tested. Then I began to realise that my tutor was genuinely interested in my opinions. No-one had ever demonstrated this degree of interest in my views before. It was flattering.

“Did you work all that out for yourself or did someone tell you?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure that I’ve ever really thought about it before; I can’t remember anyone telling me. It just came to me as the class was arguing.

“Very interesting, boy. Keep thinking for yourself, and be confident in expressing your opinions. Don’t let the others squash you. Even if you’re wrong - and you will be sometimes - it’s always worth having a go. That’s the only way you’ll learn.”

Wreford-Brown beamed at me and slapped my knee in mock vexation.

“Now get along with you; you’ll be late for the next class and I’ve missed my coffee in the Common Room.

There is perhaps one other ritual of that first term at Charterhouse that I ought to mention. It was the custom of the staff of the House - Housemaster, his wife, House Tutor and Matron - to eat their midday and weekday evening meals with us boys. The Housemaster or his wife would normally grace the ‘top table’ with the House prefects and at Sunday lunch, all the staff would sit there. At other meals, however, each adult would rotate around the other tables and we would take it in turns, day by day, to sit next to them and act as host.

I found this custom excruciating. It was not that I objected to bringing the House Tutor or Matron their dishes, cutlery or condiments. On the contrary, those actions were welcomed by me, as they relieved the stress I bore for the rest of the meal. The problem was that, sitting next to one of the adults, you were expected to engage in polite conversation; tabletalk. And I found this chore totally impossible to fulfil. Whenever it was my turn to sit one side of one of the adults, I spent the mealtime in purgatory and the preparation time beforehand, little better. To make it worse, the other boys seemed to find it so easy. I hoped that my lack of contribution would be unnoticed, overlooked. But this was not the case.

The Matron made a genuine effort to include me in her conversation. She talked, between courses, of her student days, and the previous appointment she held in Durban. Sometimes she would ask me something and I would answer with a straight ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and blush beetroot red. The House Tutor and the Housemaster’s wife, however, were awful. They sat and waited for me to speak, and the pregnant silence drew the attention of the rest of the table, until one of the other boys would chip in with some remark.

I became tongue-tied only during these wretched meals. Perhaps I was embarrassed by my fussiness with the food; there was seldom a meal when I ate everything on my plate. More likely, it was because there was no obvious topic of conversation. When I played Monopoly with the others, I could be quite outspoken in my demands and excited comments. I increasingly held my own in class. Only when the subject matter was not predetermined did my brain fail me, rendering me to speechless petrifaction. As a result, I became known as the “Trappist”, a cause of some merriment to my peers.

At the end of the first term I take home a satisfactory first report. I did not excel; after all, I had been placed in the class of other scholarship boys where competition was intense. But I had been placed fourth out of twenty four, and had gained ‘B’s or ‘B+’s in most subjects, together with complimentary remarks on my powers of concentration and application.

My Housemaster has written a summary on the fly leaf:

“All in all, a highly satisfactory first report. He has settled down remarkably quickly and has shown little stress in coping with so much that is new to him. He is an independent little fellow, and we hope he will join in more of the activities with the other boys. And we all want to fatten him up, he seems to eat so little. “