Innocence Page 14

  My father, who was a small, courteous, dignified person, turned round with surprising speed and seized the culprit by the wrist.

  ‘Don’t they teach you better manners than that at this school, young man?’ he said.

  The boy, at least a head taller than my father, looked down at him with a cold, arrogant-laughing glare, and said nothing.

  ‘It seems to me,’ my father said, staring back at him, ‘that an apology would be in order.’

  But the boy just kept on looking down his nose at my father with this funny little arrogant smile at the corners of his mouth, and his chin kept coming farther and farther out.

  ‘You strike me as being an impudent and ill-mannered boy,’ my father went on. ‘And I can only pray that you are an exception in your school. I would not wish for any son of mine to pick up such habits.’

  At this point, the big boy inclined his head slightly in my direction, and a pair of small, cold, rather close-together eyes looked down into mine. I was not particularly frightened at the time; I knew nothing about the power of senior boys over junior boys at public schools; and I can remember that I looked straight back at him in support of my father, whom I adored and respected.

  When my father started to say something more, the boy simply turned away and sauntered slowly down the platform into the crowd.

  Bruce Foxley never forgot this episode; and of course the really unlucky thing about it for me was that when I arrived at school I found myself in the same ‘house’ as him. Even worse than that – I was in his study. He was doing his last year, and he was a prefect – a ‘boazer’, we called it – and as such he was officially permitted to beat any of the fags in the house. But being in his study, I automatically became his own particular, personal slave. I was his valet and cook and maid and errand-boy, and it was my duty to see that he never lifted a finger for himself unless absolutely necessary. In no society that I know of in the world is a servant imposed upon to the extent that we wretched little fags were imposed upon by the boazers at school. In frosty or snowy weather I even had to sit on the seat of the lavatory (which was in an unheated outhouse) every morning after breakfast to warm it before Foxley came along.

  I could remember how he used to saunter across the room in his loose-jointed, elegant way, and if a chair were in his path he would knock it aside and I would have to run over and pick it up. He wore silk shirts and always had a silk handkerchief tucked up his sleeve, and his shoes were made by someone called Lobb (who also had a Royal crest). They were pointed shoes, and it was my duty to rub the leather with a bone for fifteen minutes each day to make it shine.

  But the worst memories of all had to do with the changing-room.

  I could see myself now, a small pale shrimp of a boy standing just inside the door of this huge room in my pyjamas and bedroom slippers and brown camel-hair dressing-gown. A single bright electric bulb was hanging on a flex from the ceiling, and all around the walls the black and yellow football shirts with their sweaty smell filling the room, and the voice, the clipped, pip-spitting voice, was saying, ‘So which is it to be this time? Six with the dressing-gown on – or four with it off?’

  I never could bring myself to answer this question. I would simply stand there staring down at the dirty floor-planks, dizzy with fear and unable to think of anything except that this other larger boy would soon start smashing away at me with his long, thin, white stick, slowly, scientifically, skilfully, legally and with apparent relish, and I would bleed. Five hours earlier, I had failed to get the fire to light in his study. I had spent my pocket money on a box of special firelighters and I had held a newspaper across the chimney opening to make a draught and I had knelt down in front of it and blown my guts out into the bottom of the grate; but the coals would not burn.

  ‘If you’re too obstinate to answer,’ the voice was saying, ‘then I’ll have to decide for you.’

  I wanted desperately to answer because I knew which one I had to choose. It’s the first thing you learn when you arrive. Always keep the dressing-gown on and take the extra strokes. Otherwise you’re almost certain to get cut. Even three with it on is better than one with it off.

  ‘Take it off then and get into the far corner and touch your toes. I’m going to give you four.’

  Slowly I would take it off and lay it on the ledge above the boot-lockers. And slowly I would walk over to the far corner, cold and naked now in my cotton pyjamas, treading softly and seeing everything around me suddenly very bright and flat and far away, like a magic-lantern picture, and very big, and very unreal, and sort of swimming through the water in my eyes.

  ‘Go on and touch your toes. Tighter – much tighter than that.’

  Then he would walk down to the far end of the changing-room and I would be watching him upside down between my legs, and he would disappear through a doorway that led down two steps into what we called ‘the basin-passage’. This was a stone-floored corridor with wash-basins along one wall, and beyond it was the bathroom. When Foxley disappeared I knew he was walking down to the far end of the basin-passage. Foxley always did that. Then, in the distance, but echoing loud among the basins and the tiles, I would hear the noise of his shoes on the stone floor as he started galloping forward, and through my legs I would see him leaping up the two steps into the changing-room and come bounding towards me with his face thrust forward and the cane held high in the air. This was the moment when I shut my eyes and waited for the crack and told myself that whatever happened I must not straighten up.

  Anyone who has been properly beaten will tell you that the real pain does not come until about eight or ten seconds after the stroke. The stroke itself is merely a loud crack and a sort of blunt thud against your backside, numbing you completely. (I’m told a bullet wound does the same.) But later on, oh my heavens, it feels like someone is laying a red-hot poker right across your naked buttocks and it is absolutely impossible to prevent yourself from reaching back and clutching it with your fingers.

  Foxley knew all about this time lag, and the slow walk back over a distance that must altogether have been fifteen yards gave each stroke plenty of time to reach the peak of its pain before the next one was delivered.

  On the fourth stroke I would invariably straighten up. I couldn’t help it. It was an automatic defence reaction from a body that had had as much as it could stand.

  ‘You flinched,’ Foxley would say. ‘That one doesn’t count. Go on – down you get.’

  The next time I would remember to grip my ankles.

  Afterwards, he would watch me as I walked over – very stiff now and holding my backside – to put on my dressing-gown, but I would always try to keep turned away from him so he couldn’t see my face. And when I went out, it would be, ‘Hey you! Come back!’

  I was in the passage then, and I would stop and turn and stand in the doorway, waiting.

  ‘Come here. Come on, come back here. Now – haven’t you forgotten something?’

  All I could think of at that moment was the excruciating burning pain in my behind.

  ‘You strike me as being an impudent and ill-mannered boy,’ he would say, imitating my father’s voice. ‘Don’t they teach you better manners than that at this school?’

  ‘Thank … you,’ I would stammer. ‘Thank … you … for the beating.’

  And then back up the dark stairs to the dormitory and it became much better then because it was all over and the pain was going and the others were clustering round and treating me with a certain rough sympathy born of having gone through the same thing themselves, many times.

  ‘Hey Perkins, let’s have a look.’

  ‘How many d’you get?’

  ‘Five, wasn’t it? We heard them easily from here.’

  ‘Come on, man. Let’s see the marks.’

  I would take down my pyjamas and stand there while this group of experts solemnly examined the damage.

  ‘Rather far apart, aren’t they? Not quite up to Foxley’s usual standard.’

&n
bsp; ‘Two of them are close. Actually touching. Look – these two are beauties!’

  ‘That low one was a rotten shot.’

  ‘Did he go right down the basin-passage to start his run?’

  ‘You got an extra one for flinching, didn’t you?’

  ‘By golly, old Foxley’s really got it in for you, Perkins.’

  ‘Bleeding a bit too. Better wash it, you know.’

  Then the door would open and Foxley would be there, and everyone would scatter and pretend to be doing his teeth or saying his prayers while I was left standing in the centre of the room with my pants down.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Foxley would say, taking a quick look at his own handiwork. ‘You – Perkins! Put your pyjamas on properly and get into bed.’

  And that was the end of a day.

  Through the week, I never had a moment of time to myself. If Foxley saw me in the study taking up a novel or perhaps opening my stamp album, he would immediately find something for me to do. One of his favourites, especially when it was raining outside, was, ‘Oh Perkins, I think a bunch of wild irises would look rather nice on my desk, don’t you?’

  Wild irises grew only around Orange Ponds. Orange Ponds was two miles down the road and half a mile across the fields. I would get up from my chair, put on my raincoat and my straw hat, take my umbrella – my brolly – and set off on this long and lonely trek. The straw hat had to be worn at all times outdoors, but it was easily destroyed by rain; therefore the brolly was necessary to protect the hat. On the other hand, you can’t keep a brolly over your head while scrambling about on a woody bank looking for irises, so to save my hat from ruin I would put it on the ground under my brolly while I searched for the flowers. In this way, I caught many colds.

  But the most dreaded day was Sunday. Sunday was for cleaning the study, and how well I can remember the terror of those mornings, the frantic dusting and scrubbing, and then the waiting for Foxley to come in to inspect.

  ‘Finished?’ he would ask.

  ‘I … I think so.’

  Then he would stroll over to the drawer of his desk and take out a single white glove, fitting it slowly on to his right hand, pushing each finger well home, and I would stand there watching and trembling as he moved around the room running his white-gloved forefinger along the picture tops, the skirting, the shelves, the window sills, the lampshades. I never took my eyes off that finger. For me it was an instrument of doom. Nearly always, it managed to discover some tiny crack that I had overlooked or perhaps hadn’t even thought about; and when this happened Foxley would turn slowly around, smiling that dangerous little smile that wasn’t a smile, holding up the white finger so that I should see for myself the thin smudge of dust that lay along the side of it.

  ‘Well,’ he would say. ‘So you’re a lazy little boy. Aren’t you?’

  No answer.

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘I thought I dusted it all.’

  ‘Are you or are you not a nasty, lazy little boy?’

  ‘Y-yes.’

  ‘But your father wouldn’t want you to grow up like that, would he? Your father is very particular about manners, is he not?’

  No answer.

  ‘I asked you, is your father particular about manners?’

  ‘Perhaps – yes.’

  ‘Therefore I will be doing him a favour if I punish you, won’t I?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Won’t I?’

  ‘Y-yes.’

  ‘We will meet later then, after prayers, in the changing-room.’

  The rest of the day would be spent in an agony of waiting for the evening to come.

  Oh my goodness, how it was all coming back to me now. Sunday was also letter-writing time.

  Dear Mummy and Daddy – thank you very much for your letter. I hope you are both well. I am, except I have got a cold because I got caught in the rain but it will soon be over. Yesterday we played Shrewsbury and beat them 4–2. I watched and Foxley who you know is the head of our house scored one of our goals. Thank you very much for the cake. With love from William.

  I usually went to the lavatory to write my letter, or to the boot-hole, or the bathroom – any place out of Foxley’s way. But I had to watch the time. Tea was at four thirty and Foxley’s toast had to be ready. Every day I had to make toast for Foxley, and on weekdays there were no fires allowed in the studies so all the fags, each making toast for his own study-holder, would have to crowd round the one small fire in the library, jockeying for position with his toasting-fork. Under these conditions, I still had to see that Foxley’s toast was (1) very crisp (2) not burned at all (3) hot and ready exactly on time. To fail in any one of these requirements was a ‘beatable offence’.

  ‘Hey you! What’s this?’

  ‘It’s toast.’

  ‘Is this really your idea of toast?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘You’re too idle to make it right, aren’t you?’

  ‘I try to make it.’

  ‘You know what they do to an idle horse, Perkins?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you a horse?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well – anyway you’re an ass – ha, ha – so I think you qualify. I’ll be seeing you later.’

  Oh, the agony of those days. To burn Foxley’s toast was a ‘beatable offence’. So was forgetting to take the mud off Foxley’s football boots. So was failing to hang up Foxley’s football clothes. So was rolling up Foxley’s brolly the wrong way round. So was banging the study door when Foxley was working. So was filling Foxley’s bath too hot for him. So was not cleaning the buttons properly on Foxley’s OTC uniform. So was making those blue metal-polish smudges on the uniform itself. So was failing to shine the soles of Foxley’s shoes. So was leaving Foxley’s study untidy at any time. In fact, so far as Foxley was concerned, I was practically a beatable offence myself.

  I glanced out the window. My goodness, we were nearly there. I must have been dreaming away like this for quite a while, and I hadn’t even opened my Times. Foxley was still leaning back in the corner seat opposite me reading his Daily Mail, and through a cloud of blue smoke from his pipe I could see the top half of his face over the newspaper, the small bright eyes, the corrugated forehead, the wavy, slightly oily hair.

  Looking at him now, after all that time, was a peculiar and rather exciting experience. I knew he was no longer dangerous, but the old memories were still there and I didn’t feel altogether comfortable in his presence. It was something like being inside the cage with a tame tiger.

  What nonsense is this? I asked myself. Don’t be so stupid. My heavens, if you wanted to you could go ahead and tell him exactly what you thought of him and he couldn’t touch you. Hey – that was an idea!

  Except that – well – after all, was it worth it? I was too old for that sort of thing now, and I wasn’t sure that I really felt much anger towards him anyway.

  So what should I do? I couldn’t sit there staring at him like an idiot.

  At that point, a little impish fancy began to take a hold of me. What I would like to do, I told myself, would be to lean across and tap him lightly on the knee and tell him who I was. Then I would watch his face. After that, I would begin talking about our schooldays together, making it just loud enough for the other people in the carriage to hear. I would remind him playfully of some of the things he used to do to me, and perhaps even describe the changing-room beatings so as to embarrass him a trifle. A bit of teasing and discomfort wouldn’t do him any harm. And it would do me an awful lot of good.

  Suddenly he glanced up and caught me staring at him. It was the second time this had happened, and I noticed a flicker of irritation in his eyes.

  All right, I told myself. Here we go. But keep it pleasant and sociable and polite. It’ll be much more effective that way, more embarrassing for him.

  So I smiled at him and gave him a courteous little nod. Then, raising my voice, I said, ‘I do hope you’ll excuse me. I�
��d like to introduce myself.’ I was leaning forward, watching him closely so as not to miss the reaction. ‘My name is Perkins – William Perkins – and I was at Repton in 1907.’

  The others in the carriage were sitting very still, and I could sense that they were all listening and waiting to see what would happen next.

  ‘I’m glad to meet you,’ he said, lowering the paper to his lap. ‘Mine’s Fortescue – Jocelyn Fortescue, Eton, 1916.’

  THE LANDLADY

  * * *

  First published in the New Yorker,

  28 November 1959

  Billy Weaver had travelled down from London on the slow afternoon train, with a change at Reading on the way, and by the time he got to Bath it was about nine o’clock in the evening and the moon was coming up out of a clear starry sky over the houses opposite the station entrance. But the air was deadly cold and the wind was like a flat blade of ice on his cheeks.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but is there a fairly cheap hotel not too far away from here?’

  ‘Try the Bell and Dragon,’ the porter answered, pointing down the road. ‘They might take you in. It’s about a quarter of a mile along on the other side.’

  Billy thanked him and picked up his suitcase and set out to walk the quarter-mile to the Bell and Dragon. He had never been to Bath before. He didn’t know anyone who lived there. But Mr Greenslade at the Head Office in London had told him it was a splendid town. ‘Find your own lodgings,’ he had said, ‘and then go along and report to the Branch Manager as soon as you’ve got yourself settled.’

  Billy was seventeen years old. He was wearing a new navy-blue overcoat, a new brown trilby hat, and a new brown suit, and he was feeling fine. He walked briskly down the street. He was trying to do everything briskly these days. Briskness, he had decided, was the one common characteristic of all successful businessmen. The big shots up at Head Office were absolutely fantastically brisk all the time. They were amazing.