by Simon Raven
Copyright & Information
Shadows On the Grass
First published in 1982
© Estate of Simon Raven; House of Stratus 1982-2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The right of Simon Raven to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
This edition published in 2011 by House of Stratus, an imprint of
Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,
Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.
Typeset by House of Stratus.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
EAN ISBN Edition
1842322109 9781842322109 Print
0755129873 9780755129874 Kindle
0755130030 9780755130030 Epub
0755153987 9780755153985 Epdf
This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.
www.houseofstratus.com
About the Author
Born in 1927 into a middle class household, Simon Raven became both an outrageous figure and an acclaimed writer and novelist. His father inherited a hosiery business and did not have to work, his mother was an internationally successful athlete. The young Simon, however, viewed the household as ‘respectable, prying, puritanical, penny-pinching, and joyless’.
Initial education was through attending Cordwalles Preparatory School, near Camberley, Surrey, where he later claimed to have been ‘deftly and very agreeably’ seduced by the games master. From there he went on to Charterhouse, but was eventually expelled in 1945 for serial homosexuality. Nonetheless, he still managed to wangle his way into King’s College, Cambridge, to read classics, after a two year gap to complete his national service in the Parachute Regiment.
Raven had loved classics from an early age and read daily in the original, often translating from Latin to Greek to English, or any combination thereof.
At Cambridge, he probably felt completely at home for the first time in his life. In his own words, ‘nobody minded what you did in bed, or what you said about God’. This was civilised to his mind and he was also later to write, in a somewhat fatalistic manner: ‘we aren’t here for long, and when we do go, that’s that. Finish. So, for God’s sake, enjoy yourself now - and sod anyone who tries to stop you.’ Despite revelling in Cambridge life, or perhaps because of it, Raven fell heavily into debt for the first time whilst there and also faced his first real responsibility. Susan Kilner, a fellow undergraduate was expecting his child and in 1951 they married. He took little interest in the marriage, however, and they were divorced some six years later.
He also failed to submit a thesis needed to support an offered fellowship, so fled both Cambridge and his marriage for the army, where he was commissioned into the King’s Own Shropshire Light Infantry. After service in Germany and Kenya, during which time he set up a brothel for his men to use, he was posted to regimental headquarters in Shropshire. It was here that debt once again forced a change in direction after he lost considerable sums at the local racetrack.
Resigning his commission so as to avoid being court-martialled, he turned to writing having won over a publisher who agreed to pay him weekly in cash, and also pick up bills for sustenance and drink. Moving to Deal in Kent he embarked upon producing a prodigious array of works which over the years included novels, essays, reviews; film scripts, radio and television plays and the scripts for television series, notably The Pallisers and Edward and Mrs Simpson. He lived in modest surroundings within rented accommodation and confined many of his excesses to London visits where his earning were dissipated quickly on food, drink and gambling – not forgetting sex which continued to feature as a major indulgence. He once wrote that the major advantage of belonging to the Reform Club in London was the presence opposite of a first class massage parlour.
In all, Simon Raven produced over twenty five novels and hundreds of other pieces, his finest achievements being reckoned to be a ten volume saga of English upper-class life, entitled Alms for Oblivion, from 1959-76 and the First Born of Egypt Series from 1984-92.
He was a conundrum; being both sophisticated and reckless; talented in the extreme yet regarding himself as not being particularly creative; but not applying this modesty (if that’s what it was) to his general behaviour, which was sometimes immodest beyond all reasonable bounds. He was exceedingly generous towards his friends; yet didn’t think twice about the position of creditors when getting into debt; was jovial, loyal and good company, but was unable to sustain a family life. He would drink like an advanced alcoholic in the evenings, but was ready to resume work promptly the following morning. He was sexually indiscriminate, but generally preferred the company of men. As a youth he possessed good looks, but a general abuse of his body in adulthood soon saw that wain.
Simon Raven died in 2001, his legacy being his writing which during his lifetime received high praise from critics and readers alike. He was a ‘one-off’, whose works will continue to delight readers for generations to come.
CONTENTS
I A Shropshire Lad
II Charterhouse Pink I
III The Green Years
IV Charterhouse Pink II
V Red Beret
VI Mummy’s Boy
VII Raven Sahib
VIII Pieces of Ordnance
IX Light Blue
X Royal Purple
XI Full Circle
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Everything in this memoir is essentially true. However, since I am tender about many of the dead and disposed to be civil to those yet living, I have occasionally made minor alterations in times, dates, names and places, in a word, in circumstance. Furthermore, some of the facts, in too readily memorable cases of treachery, cruelty or dishonesty, have been disguised, though not softened, by moral metaphor. This said, pray believe that what follows is what occurred.
SR
I
A SHROPSHIRE LAD
For several years, from 1966 to 1975, I used to play cricket for a small village called Worth on the Saxon shore. On the first Sunday of October we would play a match against Sandwich, the last match of the season. Although we had kind autumn weather, as often as not, warm enough yet agreeably brisk, the occasion was always melancholy. So many of us would not be there, for one reason or another, when the wicket was measured next April.
As one stood on the grass meditating on such matters, there would come a rumbling along the road which skirted our ground, a rumbling, a chugging and a clunking, from the direction of Deal. And soon, from behind the trees which stood on the Southern boundary, appeared huge lorries and traction engines, processing along the road to Sandwich, towing away the Fair. There went the swings and the roundabouts, the lions and the unicorns, the bumping cars, the high slide; there went the children’s ponies and the lovers’ boats: there, in a word, went the cortège of summer, one more summer going to its long home, as the wind over the salt marshes brought the first of the evening chill.
Then and for many hours afterwards I would think of other summers that had come and gone.
At much the same time of year in 1957 the last match of the season was drawing to a close on the ground of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry, with which Regiment I was then serving, at Copthorne Barracks, Shrewsbu
ry. Our Regimental Depot was playing a team from somewhere out on the Marches. I was batting with a Sergeant Instructor in a fading light; we needed 21 runs in ten minutes, with two wickets still to fall. In those days there was no law shadoWs on the grass to enforce twenty overs in the last hour, and the marcher men were walking back and changing over as slowly as they could without actually marking time. Nevertheless, a few lucky hits from the Sergeant and myself brought us to a stage at which we required seven runs only to win, and would have one more over to play – if the over now in progress ended before 6.30. Since there was only one ball left of this and the time was 6.27, the next and vitally important over was virtually guaranteed.
Or so it seemed. But as the bowler started his run a telegram boy parked his bicycle against the pavilion and came strutting out on to the field, despite shouts from our supporters that he was to wait till the end of the over. The bowler took this as excuse to postpone the ball; the fieldsmen, delighted at this interruption, stood gazing at the wretched urchin as if he had been a messenger from heaven.
‘Name of RAVEN?’ said the boy.
‘Captain Raven,’ corrected the Sergeant.
‘All it says is Raven,’ said the boy.
I held out my hand. The boy gave me the yellow envelope and stood waiting.
‘Right you are,’ I called out to the bowler, stuffing the envelope into my pocket and waving the boy off the pitch. There was still just time to get the next ball bowled before 6.30 and so make sure of another over. But the boy stood his ground.
‘Might be a reply,’ he said.
‘No reply.’
‘How do you know if you haven’t read it?’
‘Please wait by the pavilion.’
‘Haven’t got all night to hang about.’
He stood there as firm as ever. If, as he well knew by now, he wasn’t going to get a tip, he was getting full value from creating annoyance.
‘Very well,’ I said desperately.
I dragged the telegram from my pocket, took off one batting glove and tore the thing jaggedly open.
PLEASE PAY ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY OWING MONDAY
LATEST OR COMPELLED TO INFORM COMMANDANT
BEST RESPECTS
THEWS JAMESON TURF ACCNT
A gust of wind took the red-hot missive from my hand and whirled it towards the pavilion. I gave chase. The clock struck the half-hour. The bowler a shroPshire lad waited patiently to bowl what must now be the last ball of the match. My telegram was fielded on the boundary by the friendly Commandant, who waved me back to the wicket. The Sergeant hit the last ball for six, but we were one short of victory, and I had lost £25 to the Adjutant, having laid him an even pony against a draw (draws being very rare on West Salopian wickets). My only consolation was that the Commandant had been too much of a gentleman to read my telegram before giving it back to me.
The shadows were crowding in on my military career that autumn, and close of play was imminent. Yet there were still a few laughs to be had before the game was absolutely up.
On the day after the match which I have just been describing, our cricket pavilion was converted into a ‘Liaison Centre’ for a theoretical operation in Emergency Civic Control. The premise was that Birmingham had been laid flat by a nuclear bomb and that such of the population as survived was ramping through Wolverhampton and towards Shrewsbury in an orgy of looting and rapine which had been inspired by the mob’s apprehension that most of it would be dead of gamma ray poisoning (or whatever) within a very few days. The exercise comprised the Army (Regular and Territorial), the Royal Air Force, the Constabulary, the Civil Defence Force, the Fire Brigade, St John’s Ambulance, representatives of the Churches and Unions, and also a number of Army Cadets, Boy Scouts and Girl Guides (Messengers). This combination was entrusted with the task of halting the rush of nuclear-crazed humanity, confining it, feeding it, going through the motions of trying to cure it, and finally burning it.
The affair started with a meeting of the Commanders and Seconds in Command of the various services in the Pavilion or Liaison Centre. I was present as Aide to my Commandant. He himself was present as Chief Umpire under the local General, who now treated the meeting to a description, distinguished by evident personal relish, of the situation which I have outlined above. Very well; what were we to do about it? We were, of course, to follow the official plan, which had been drawn up against such contingency by the Civil Defence authorities in Whitehall many years before. The plan was a prototype: all we had to do was to work out a version applicable in our immediate terrain.
What then was the Whitehall plan, on the basis of which our own must now be formulated?
1) A Defensive Line must be set up (in our case North-South, guarding the Eastern approaches to Shrewsbury).
2) Ambulance men in special anti-radiation suits (imaginary, for the purposes of this exercise) would detain all ‘arrivals’ from the bombed area and shadoWs on the grass take them to decontamination centres. Any reluctance on the part of any ‘arrival’ would result in his arrest by units of Police or Army who would be deployed (also wearing theoretical anti-radiation suits) in support of the ambulance men. Any person who resisted arrest was to be shot instanter –
– Uproar from the representatives of the Churches and the Unions. Did the General mean that these poor human creatures (Churches) or deprived fellow-workers (Unions) were to be denied the compassionate welcome and succour of their brethren in Shrewsbury (Churches), were to be murdered in cold blood to spare inconvenience to the bourgeois householders of the suburbs (Unions)?
The General retorted that the exercise was about control and decontamination. If people refused to submit, then they were endangering their lives – But why, interrupted the senior representative of the Unions, had not all citizens of Birmingham been issued with anti-radiation suits before the war began, instead of being abandoned to hideous suffering by a cruel and ruthless capitalist regime – It might be, pointed out the Chief Fire Officer, that a distribution of such suits would be somewhat too complicated and expensive. As it was, there were, so far as he knew, no actual anti-radiation suits in the entire area. The ones to be worn by troops, police and ambulance men for the operation were, let us remember, imaginary. Very well, said the Unionist: as a matter of equality let all the refugees from Birmingham be equipped with imaginary suits too.
But if everyone had anti-radiation suits, said the Chief Constable, it would make rubbish of the exercise. Nonsense, said the Bishop: it would merely rule out the need for decontamination centres and the brutal methods attendant; there would still be all the problems of feeding, accommodating and tending the refugees. Furthermore, said his Chaplain, since they would all be in anti-radiation suits there would be no need, he was happy to say, to posit any rape in transit from Birmingham, as it would clearly be next to impossible to – er – Not in the least, said the Chief Constable: anti-radiation suits were equipped with zippers through which – er – masculinity might be asserted, and in any case the probability of looting still remained.
The Head of the Civil Defence Force, who had so far said nothing, enquired whether the refugees as well as their suits were to be imaginary. No, he was told by the Unionist; a token force of refugees had been assembled from the local leather works at double time and a half, payable by the War Office; each leather worker would represent a hundred fugitives.
While the Chief of the St John’s Ambulance was enquiring whether segregation of sexes was desirable, and if so whether each leather worker represented a hundred of one sex or fifty of both, my Commandant opened a haversack and took out a plate, a cold roast partridge stuffed with chestnut, and a bottle of Claret.
‘Lunchtime, General,’ he announced, ‘I’ve got a bird for you too.’
It was now my job to see everyone else fed. The rank and file of the various services were being entertained in the Men’s Cookhouse, while those of approximately ‘commissioned’ status would accompany me to the Officers’ Mess. The Bishop and his Chapl
ain insisted on humbling themselves and going to the Cookhouse (whither they were reluctantly accompanied by our own Padre); the Trade Unionists rancorously declined an offer of refreshment in the Sergeants’ Mess (‘more congenial’) and insisted on accompanying the Officers; and the Girl Guide, our ‘Messenger’, was so heavily engaged in masturbation with a bat handle in the Visitors’ Changing Room that I judged it unkind and possibly unwise to interrupt her. My Commandant and the General, who had carried their partridges away from envious and disapproving glances and into the Scoring Box, remained there together until I joined them half an hour later.
‘After luncheon,’ said the General glumly, ‘we’ve actually got to get off our bottoms and do it.’
‘Do what?’
‘Deal with these refugees at double time and a half. And those Trade Union Johnnies will be watching us like hawks. Any sign of anyone’s getting pushed around on the one hand, or getting a bit of privilege on the other, and they’ll go squealing to the War House. And the War House will have to take action whether it wants to or not.’
‘But surely, sir,’ I said, ‘this is a preliminary and largely theoretical manoeuvre. No one can take it too seriously. Besides, it is actually War Office policy that people should be pushed around in these circumstances – if they make a nuisance of themselves.’
‘Try telling that to the War Office if those bastards complain.’
Even as early as 1957 the Unions’ special brand of sanctimonious malice had somehow endowed them with a moral authority which no one dared to resist.
‘And another thing,’ the General said, ‘those clergymen will make trouble if given half a chance. If I put a foot wrong about God – set up one too many tin tabernacles in the Reception Area, or one too few – then the Churches are going to come crashing down on my neck.’
