Reg and I couldn’t go to the Redfern, as the neighbours would see us, or to any of the popular pubs in the centre of the town near the grammar school, so what we did, during our learning-to-drink period, was go to a pub almost out in the country, where we knew nobody. Our favourite was the Near Boot, which had a bowling green. We would sit outside and the biggest, oldest-looking among us, such as Mike, would go in and order three halves, bring them out and we would sit on a bench watching the bowling, and sup. Or pretend to.
I instantly hated the taste of beer. It was so bitter. You could get bitter or mild, but the mild seemed just as bitter. I used to force it down, hoping a taste for it would eventually come. Why? Slavishly following the others, feeling it was what men did, and surely I would be a man soon. Also the notion of being drunk was something, like having sex with a woman, to which we all aspired without knowing what it was like or whether it would be any good or worth doing.
I usually stuck to cider, though even then half a pint was enough for me. Now and again, if we were flush, we ordered a half and half, which meant half a beer and a small whisky. The State Management’s whisky, Border Blend, was excellent, so all real men said. Whisky did seem to make the beer go down better. But I never had enough beer or whisky to make me feel the slightest bit drunk. Whatever drunk was.
But I always did seem to have a girlfriend, from about the age of sixteen onwards, someone I could boast I was going out with, someone I had once taken home from a dance, or danced with twice, or exchanged meaningful glances with, even though she might not have been aware that she was now my girlfriend.
There was a Girl Guide I caught sight of at some church parade, Jenny Hogg, and I thought she was stunning. I thought the name Jenny was wonderful, my favourite girl’s name, and used to say it to myself. I didn’t worry about the Hogg bit. It was a common local surname anyway, so I didn’t think of a pig. I walked her home from the next church parade and that was all that happened. No hand-holding, never mind any kissing. I don’t think she said a word, almost as if she was unaware I was walking her home, but for weeks my little heart gave an extra beat whenever I saw her across a crowded bus queue at the town hall.
Reg did not like dancing, being big and clumsy and not well coordinated, so I used to go to most dances on my own, fancying myself as a dancer, or at least having no inhibitions about embarrassing myself. There were local hops on the new Belah estate beside us, or church dances across town at the Wigton Road Methodist Hall. At local or church hops you danced to records, with some awful creep in a bow tie announcing the next dance, such as a valeta or Dinky two-step. If it was a Dashing White Sergeant, he would take us through the movements.
In the excuse-me dances, you would make a dash for the girl you fancied, who in theory was not supposed to reject you. But they could turn away, pretend not to see you, or suddenly have to go the lavvy.
In the waltzes and slow foxtrots, you would try to get as close as possible, especially if the lights were being dimmed. You would attempt to insert your knee between her legs, which was harder than it sounds when there was a stiffened petticoat under her skirt. The girls used to steep their petticoats in the bath in some sort of salts to make them stiff and stick out when they twirled around, but if they used too much it felt as if they were wearing armour. You would push harder, only to be told, ‘Gerroff!’
The old joke that goes ‘Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?’ was based on the truth. There were young girls, totally innocent in every sense, who would be genuinely surprised by your erection. They simply did not know what it was, suspecting a pencil or a ruler left over from doing your homework.
Now and again you would convince yourself you were on to a winner, when a girl you really liked the look of agreed to the last dance, and, yes, she said you could take her home. You would wait outside the girls’ cloakroom, already on heat, but when she reappeared she was with a friend, always uglier and boring. All three of you would walk home, with often the two girls linking arms, making you feel a right wally. And of course they always lived on a council estate at the far end of town.
What you were hoping for was to get a girl on her own, then kiss her up against a hedge near her house, hoping to get your hand somewhere on the region of her upper body, perhaps even undo the upper button on her school winter coat.
Once I was in the upper sixth, I upgraded to some of the better dance halls, such as the County Ballroom or eventually the really posh one, when I got a bit older, the Crown and Mitre. They had proper, live orchestras. But the problem was that you were competing with farmers’ sons who had come into town for the night, or boys who were at St Bees, the local public school. They would stand at the side and jangle their keys, indicating they had a car, so naturally they got all the talent.
I did try the tougher dance halls, like the Cameo, full of working-class, council-house girls, from the same background. Aged fifteen or sixteen, they would already be out working, in a shop or packing crackers at Carr’s. But I began to find I had lost contact with such girls, unable to relate to them or them to me. I think they thought I was a grammar cad, which of course I had become.
At school we talked constantly about sex, about girls we fancied – but I never for one moment imagined that girls might be much the same. If only I had known. They seemed a different species, interested in different things, and we were programmed to pursue them and doomed to fantasise about what we might do to them.
There were boys who boasted they had bought a johnny, were really going to get it this time, she was up for it. Did we say up for it? Perhaps not. That sounds modern. A goer – I think we were all hoping to meet a goer. From whom we would probably have run a mile.
There were endless stories, mostly lifted from cartoons and jokes on the radio, about going into a chemist’s and feeling so embarrassed about asking in a whisper for a johnny – and finding your mum was standing beside you. Vinny, that rather advanced boy at the Creighton, used to carry a condom in his wallet, unused by the look of it, keeping it ready for his next conquest, so he boasted. We all knew it had not been used and never would be. I think the sell-by date was about 1944.
Nobody we ever knew had sex – yet it must have been happening, out there, if only once a year, tops. This was because around once a year there would be a girl from the high school who would suddenly disappear for a few months, not be seen locally, or at school, and rumours would spread that she had fallen, been caught, was in the family way, up the duff, had a bun in the oven, nudge nudge. The poor lass would have gone off to a mother and baby home, miles away, probably near Newcastle, had her baby, then handed it over to be adopted, never to see it again. Which is what had happened to young women for centuries, not able to bring up a child on their own, having no money, no support, feeling they had brought shame not just on themselves but their whole family, who could never of course admit publicly what had occurred. Now and again, the boy did marry the girl. For some it worked out. For others it did not.
Today, it is so different. Unmarried mothers get help, money, housing, support and there is no shame at all. In fact, young women often decide to have a baby as a personal choice, despite their age and economic position. I happen to think this is an advance. The system might get abused from time to time, the state taken advantage of, but it is so much better than the old days.
Although we heard now and again of a girl getting pregnant, we never heard about gays, lesbians, paedophiles. And in Carlisle, we never came across any Jews, blacks, anyone remotely foreign, apart from the odd cockney left over from the war. No real foreigner would ever come and live in Carlisle, unless they were Scottish. The UK was an insular island in the 1950s, but in Carlisle we seemed cut off from not just the mainstream but all the tributaries as well.
Going up street on a Saturday you would see all the little kids being dragged around by their mams – the girls and boys with incredibly blonde hair and blue eyes, though later, when grown-up, the blonde hair mostly
disappeared. The local lineage, with all that Anglo-Saxon plus Norse and Viking blood, carries on today, as Carlisle, unlike most English towns, has had little immigration.
There were Catholics in Carlisle, of course, for there was a Catholic secondary school, descendants of the Irish who had come to work on the railways or the coal mines on the west coast, but I didn’t actually know any.
The word ‘gay’ was not used in its modern sense, though we did by the time of the upper sixth form hear stories of men called homos, down south. It was during 1953 that they started prosecuting Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. He was accused of under-age sex with a fourteen-year-old Boy Scout. He pleaded innocence and was not convicted. Then in 1954 he was sentenced to twelve months in prison for a gross offence with an adult, an RAF serviceman, which took place on his own estate. The whole country was agog, the first such post-war incident that had entered national consciousness, but it was mainly whispered about, especially in front of the children.
What exactly did they do? That’s what we all wondered. A cock up your bum? Surely that was a joke, who would want to do that? In the showers, after PE, when we were all naked, someone would say, ‘Backs to the wall – here comes Monty.’ Then we would all pretend to be afraid that we were about to be buggered, still having little idea what it meant.
The Buggery Act had been in force since 1533, so it was probably a joke that sniggery schoolboys had been making for centuries. But one result of the Montagu case was that the Wolfenden committee was set up, though it was not for another ten years that consenting adults could do what they liked in private.
By the time of the upper sixth, there was a chance of a better class of girl, from our sister school, the high school, but I didn’t have a lot of luck. We didn’t mix for lessons, or take part in joint events, such as school plays, which is what I gather happened elsewhere if the local boys’ grammar school had a sister high school nearby. It delighted me to learn many years later that Diane Abbott, the black Labour MP, was at the sister school in Harrow to the boys’ grammar which Michael Portillo, later a Tory MP, attended; both were born in 1953. The two schools did plays and films, in which they performed together and became friends. So unlikely, but so sweet.
The nearest we got to, er, intercourse was playing the girls’ school at hockey. It was a scratch match, as we did not officially play hockey, just rugby, but of course everyone wanted to play against the girls. It took place on their pitch and there was a large turnout of cheering girls. We liked to think it was for us, but they were cheering on their own first XI hockey stars, on which the younger girls had mad crushes.
There was one high school girl, daughter of a solicitor, who suddenly arrived at our house one day. I saw her coming down the path, about to knock at the front door, so I hid behind the sofa and told my mother on no account to answer the door. She did, of course, pleased by all visitors, even total strangers. She gave a great smile. ‘No, Hunter is not in at the moment, but come in, come in, have a cup tea . . .’
Fortunately, the girl, Joan Atkinson, declined to come in, but she gave my mother a written invitation for me to come to a party at her house. I could not work out how she had got my address and tracked me down. When I went to the party I told her how sorry I was that I’d missed her when she’d called round.
There was a meeting place for sixth-formers, boys and girls, in the middle of the town, called the Garret Club. It was in a disused building in one of the old medieval lanes, now long since demolished to become a shopping precinct. I think the council owned it, or the education authorities. Grammar school and high school sixth-formers used it for meetings, debates, cultural events, table tennis and social evenings.
By the upper sixth form, you had met every member of the opposite sex you were ever likely to meet, ever, probably in your whole life, if you didn’t move away from Carlisle, which of course most people didn’t. Even though you might not know them, in the sense of going out with them, or even speaking to them, you still knew of them, had had them pointed out. The pool of talent, from which breeding might eventually come, had become pretty familiar, apart from those who hid themselves away and swotted, never coming into the light.
One of the ones I had never spoken to was called Margaret Forster. Her best friend was also called Margaret, Margaret Crosthwaite, both with short dark hair, both said to be clever. I had seen them after school a few times, standing around outside Thurnham’s bookshop. I’d heard that Margaret Crosthwaite supposedly had a boyfriend from our school, but nothing about the other Margaret. Her reputation suggested she was something of a bluestocking, very studious, said to be fierce and forthright, not known for appearing at social events.
One evening she was at the Garret Club, the first time I had seen her there. Someone wound up the gramophone, put on some records, and couples were starting to dance. I went across and asked her if she would honour me with the next foxtrot. Or it could have been a Dinky two-step.
‘Certainly not,’ she said. ‘I don’t dance.’ So that was it. Given the bum’s rush before I had even managed a second sentence. Oh well. So I asked someone else to dance with me, who did agree. Very soon after that, she left. Back to her books, I shouldn’t wonder.
During that first term in the upper sixth, I did in fact manage an academic achievement. At Christmas that year, December 1953, I passed my O-level Latin, along with Brian and Alistair, also from the Creighton. Not bad, getting Latin from scratch in just eighteen months, while studying so many other things. I can scarcely believe it, even now.
Apart from my three A-levels, I was still doing general science, though this was a farce really. We knew it would not count, either way, towards university entrance. And the poor old master was a bit of a farce as well – Mr Done, known as Flash Done, supposedly a brilliant Cambridge scholar in his day, excellent scientist, but he just could not control our class. I was taken aback and rather appalled by how cruel and unkind our class could be to him. Throughout my five years at the Creighton, we had never terrorised or given cheek to any teachers – we were terrified of them, if anything, even the ones we considered pretty hopeless.
Flash Done took us in the school library, gathered round a large circular table. We all sat with our knees under the table, then at agreed moments, when his back was turned, we all lifted up the table with our knees and moved it a few feet. Then another few feet. He would eventually turn round to find we had moved right across the room.
‘Not me, sir, I haven’t moved the table, sir – look, sir, my knees have not moved.’
‘Nor me, sir, you say it’s moved, not us, sir.’
‘Must be a poltergeist, sir. Perhaps Mrs Dunstan is holding a séance next door.’
‘I did see her floating down the corridor, sir . . .’
Mrs Dunstan was the headmaster’s wife and was reputed to be rather dopey and off with the fairies.
‘Stop this nonsense!’ said Mr Done. ‘Come on, I know who it was. Own up.’
Then he would bend down to see whose knees were propping up the table, and therefore responsible for moving it.
The moment he bent down, we all, as one, moved the table back again – this time over him. He would end up right under the table, being kicked and pushed by twenty legs – all, of course, accidentally.
‘Sorry, sir, didn’t see you there, sir, are you all right, sir?’
He was supposed to be teaching us the history of science, when he eventually restored any order, but even then we would give silly answers, mispronouncing names, but keeping a straight face, just to amuse everyone else.
‘Copper Knickers, sir! He said Copper Knickers. It’s not Copper Knickers, is it?’
‘No, it’s Copernicus. Now sit down, boy.’
We did a bit on the history of geology as well and everyone insisted on pronouncing coomb, meaning a hollow on a hill or valley, as quim, which means something different, another sort of hollow. Everyone would roar and laugh, mock the person who had got it wrong.
Mr Done
was small and thin with a bald dome, specs and a worried countenance. I went along with the ragging, yet felt guilty for joining in, making his life miserable. Yet we were supposed to be grammar school sixth-formers, the cream of the school.
There was one teacher we would never play up – Mr Banks, the deputy headmaster. His job was to deliver whacks. He was the heavy you were sent to for disciplinary purposes who beat you with a strap. Mr Banks was huge and thickset and said to have been at one time Carlisle United’s goalkeeper. He also happened to be our geography teacher – and the only teacher at the grammar I thought was useless. He didn’t give lessons, didn’t explain, didn’t ask for any questions; all he did was dictate to us and we had to write it down. He had a supply of exercise books in which he had written out class notes, probably decades ago when he had first started teaching A-level geography. It must have been as boring for him as it was for us, year after year, ploughing through the same old dreary notes.
At the end of my last term at the grammar, the spring term of 1954, I got an AB for English, an A for history and an A for geography. I was a bit disappointed by the English mark. Adrian Barnes had written in the margin: ‘Creditable industry but his standard of attainment was not high.’ Cheeky sod.
During that term I did get one A for an English essay, but this was from the other English teacher, Gerry Lightfoot. I was helped on that essay by my dear mother, but of course never revealed it to anyone. I had been stuck and asked her for an idea, an example of something. Can’t remember what of. All those years reading Dickens must have paid off.
A few weeks before I sat my A-levels, I found myself on a charabanc going across to Durham. I might have made up the charabanc, it could have been the train, but the school had arranged for around a dozen of us to go together, all at the same time, for interviews at various colleges of Durham University.
The Co-Op's Got Bananas Page 15
