by Stephen Fry
BROOKSHAW. The Headmaster’s illness has advanced rather too far for that, I fear. It is difficult for him to keep numbers in his head any more. Naturally as Senior Master I was asked to take over this time.
DOMINIC. You lucky …
BROOKSHAW. It is a privilege I have earned by thirty years of patience here, Dominic. You’re still a new boy, you’d do well to remember that. In the same way, when the Old Man finally goes, it will be my turn to be head. That is why I cannot allow you to marry Jane. Still, if you wait around for twenty years, I might just let you do some merit-adding. If you’ve been good. You never know.
BROOKSHAW turns to address the audience.
For those of you ladies and gentlemen here tonight who do not know Chartham Park School, I suppose I ought to explain to you precisely the nature of merit-adding. What is it? How does it work? Is it efficient? Its origins lie deep in the soul of the Chartham Ethic, an ethic method not spun by some politico-educational theorist at the LSE, not gleaned mindlessly from some scholastic tract, but an ethic method learned from years of understanding the average English boy. The average English boy is, at bottom, open, generous and malleable. Mould that material at the right time and you’ve created a man who will serve his friends, his country and his God in the manner that they have always been served by Englishmen, with integrity, decency, respect, truth. How then do we at Chartham realise the potential of all this formless, but malleable, material that is sent to us? Well, the Chartham method is, not surprisingly, governed by the age-old principles of reward and punishment. The qualities that you recognise in the Chartham boy who goes on to stock the finest schools in the kingdom, are qualities achieved by means of the three basic incentives and three basic – um – disincentives, which form the backbone of the Chartham System.
BROOKSHAW goes to the board and writes as shown in Figure 1.
Firstly, we have the Merit.
He divides the blackboard neatly into two columns. He places a tick in the L/H column and a cross in the R/H. He writes ‘M Merit’ under the tick.
Then there is the Demerit. (He writes ‘DM Demerit’ under the ‘X’) The Merit is worth 5 points and the Demerit –5. (Writes ‘=5’ and ‘= –5’ respectively) The Merit is given for a helpful act, a good piece of work or an able performance on the games field. The Demerit is given for an unsocial act, a poor piece of work or a moronic performance on the games field. Three Demerits in one day disqualifies the boy concerned from tuck in that week.
In the right hand column BROOKSHAW writes ‘3DMs = tuck off for one week.’ The ‘t’ of tuck is lower case and ambivalent; it could easily be taken for an ‘f’.
A higher unit of currency is the Plus. This is worth ten points (writes in the L/H column: [See Fig. 1] ‘+ Plus = 10’) or, in the case of the Minus, minus ten points, (writes in the R/H column: ‘− Minus = −10’) The Plus is awarded for excellent behaviour, excellent work, or excellent games playing. Three Pluses in one day qualify the recipient for an extra ten pence worth of tuck on Tuck Day. I should add that for Otters, Tuck Day is Monday, for Coypus, Wednesday, for Kingfishers, Thursday and for Eelcatchers, Friday. (He writes ‘3+ = Free tuck’, again with an ambivalent ‘t’) Three Minuses, however, automatically mean either what is called Voluntary Detention for three hours or no tuck for the rest of term. It is the boy’s decision in either case. Voluntary Detention or No Tuck. (Writes: ‘3– = VD or no tuck’) Lastly we come to the top awards, Stars. A Star is awarded to a boy only for work of outstanding brilliance, gallantry and initiative beyond his years, or for a quite remarkable athletic achievement. It is worth 25 points and a £5.00 tuck shop token. (Writes: ‘* Star = 25 & £5.00 tuck voucher’) The miscreant’s counterpart, the Black Hole, is rarely bestowed. It is minus 25 points and is earned only by committing the grossest breaches of school rules such as armed robbery, genocide and masturbation. It also results in an immediate beating; the boy concerned is only allowed to eat scrap from the kitchens for the rest of term and he is publicly and ritually kicked out of assembly by the headmaster every morning. (Writes: ‘• Black Hole = –25 Boy to be caned, eats crap ritually licked out by HM’) Those are the points and that is how they operate. The member of staff who awards these marks signs them into the House Book, and every fortnight the headmaster or myself calculates the individual and house scores. If any boy should be found to have scored no points at all, he is also put off tuck. It is far from our aim to produce boring, middle-of-the-road boys at Chartham. (Writes underneath both columns: ‘No tuck if you fail to score’) The aggregate winning house at the end of term is called the Cock House and enjoys a House Outing, usually to the kinema or the sea-side. The losing house cleans out the school swimming pool, which gives them ample opportunity to contemplate their failure to contribute to the community. They are also banned from the end of term film, as a rule the very exciting Guns of Navarone. The system is fair, psychologically sound and simple to operate. If any of you would like to use it in your schools, or in college, office, factory or home, I would be most happy to talk to you about it after the show. Thank you for your attention.
BROOKSHAW rubs out the blackboard.
Which brings me to my point, Dominic. I was merit-adding last night, when I stumbled upon a most curious and suggestive discovery.
DOMINIC. Well?
BROOKSHAW. It was Cartwright’s fortnightly score.
DOMINIC. Oh ah.
BROOKSHAW. Because of that boy’s total, Kingfishers are certain of the House Outing this term.
DOMINIC. He’s done well, has he, this Cartwright?
BROOKSHAW. In two weeks, Clarke, he has managed to accrue eight hundred Merits, seventy Pluses and twenty-four Stars! Shattering the school record into a million pieces.
DOMINIC. Ah.
BROOKSHAW. With the exception of two Merits, all those awards were signed in by you, Dominic. That is 5,266 points, boy! More than Coypus and Eelcatchers put together. Well? What have you got to say for yourself?
DOMINIC. Look here, Brookshaw, I hope you’re not suggesting that I fiddled the books so that Kingfishers win the Cock House Cup, because I can assure you …
BROOKSHAW. (Chuckling) Good heavens, Clarke, I’m not suggesting that!
DOMINIC. Oh. Well, that’s all right then.
BROOKSHAW. No, my accusation is far graver.
DOMINIC. Oh.
BROOKSHAW. Yes. My first thought, you see, was that Cartwright himself had forged the signature against his name in the House Book. So I went along to see the boy myself. He’s a nice lad, this Cartwright; open, frank features and a good set of teeth, I trusted him. I’ve done enough schoolmastering to know when a boy is trustworthy or not, and I was soon convinced that he knew nothing of this colossal score. So I enquired more deeply into the matter. In short, I asked him how he thought he had earned all these Stars and Pluses. At this point, Dominic, the boy simpered. I do not lie, the boy actually simpered!
DOMINIC. Look, I’m not …
BROOKSHAW. And what he told me was the most bizarre and horrifying story I have ever heard in thirty years’ school-mastering. Thirty years which I thought had immunised me from …
DOMINIC. Well, what did he say?
BROOKSHAW. Mr Clarke, I will tell you. With tears brimming in his large, curiously blue eyes, he confessed all.
DOMINIC. Oh.
BROOKSHAW. ‘Oh’ indeed.
DOMINIC. All?
BROOKSHAW. All.
DOMINIC. My God. Er, what exactly was all?
BROOKSHAW. That for two terms you have been giving him extra Latin periods in your rooms late at night and that during those periods you have carnally violated that boy in ways too vile, too diverse, for the sane mind to grasp. Cartwright informed me, at first with pride and later, when the seriousness of these events’ possible repercussions had been impressed upon him, with shame, that there is no part of that boy’s body, and indeed your own, that has not been employed in these riotous acts. Acts that have included, Clarke, and here
I am still frankly incredulous, that have included the rape and laceration of … of … the back of the knees. Well, what have you to say?
DOMINIC. (Quietly) Yes. It’s true. It is true. We have used the back of the knees. More than once actually.
BROOKSHAW. Is that all?
DOMINIC. With some success I’m glad to report. Though we did have to use a little …
BROOKSHAW. Now you listen to me, Clarke −
DOMINIC. No. You listen to me −
BROOKSHAW. I baggsed first.
DOMINIC. Don’t care. Just you hear me out. As you know, Brookshaw, I’m a young man with little chance in life and little to lose. At school I was always bullied, you probably didn’t know that. I tried, you see, to stand up against the Philistines there. It was my plan to represent the aesthetic against the athletic. But one of the advantages of being athletic has always been physical strength, and so I suffered, rather badly in fact. As well as being a physical coward I am in many respects rather weak and uncoordinated and it seemed to give the Barbarians pleasure to padlock roller-skates onto me and then retire to a safe distance to watch the havoc. On one horrible occasion involving a fire-extinguisher they neatly contrived to fracture my pelvic girdle. I forgave them that, but I never forgave them for fracturing my spirit. I vowed revenge on the whole pack of them. Revenge by indoctrination and propaganda directed at their very source. I decided to become a schoolmaster.
I thought, God knows why, that at Cambridge things might be a little easier for me, that there might be a set which shared my aims and interests, which like me loved and understood Swinburne and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I was shattered to find, however, that the prevailing artistic wind blew from Paris, post-Modernism and the American Novel, and that things that I held dear were looked at in that same cold, hard, muscular light that had always frightened me. I was officially told that Swinburne, my beloved Algernon, was slushy and lacked concretion. Even in Cambridge, then, I was a sensitive in a world of literary rugby players. In the land of Rupert Brooke, watered by his river, tented by his Cambridge sky and shaded by his chestnuts and immemorial elms, but surrounded by people who sneered at what he found precious and pronounced Grantchester to rhyme with Manchester. I struggled through Cambridge and emerged a bruised and faded violet. Pleasure for me lies between the thighs of a young boy, under fifteen, blond and willing, or between the pages of a romantic poet, sighing in verse for lost love and lost beauty. Cambridge offered me neither of these: I understand that it does so now, but for me it is too late. And so I came here, partly to plant the seeds of those pleasures in the minds and thighs of the boys in my charge, partly to escape from a world that I could no longer understand. Instead I am given Common Entrance Latin to teach and cricket to umpire. It was bitter, bitter. But I came upon my Halcyon days though − I discovered Cartwright, the Kingfisher. He is delightful, Brookshaw, delightful. A shining sun, whose very smile ripens fruit and opens petals. I cannot begin to describe the outstanding hard work, initiative, flair, dedication and conspicuous gallantry he displayed in order to earn those House Points. I crept down into the staff room on Sunday night in my dressing-gown and slippers just to sign them in. I suppose I knew that I’d get caught, but I had to do something. (Breath) Jane was down there. Slightly drunk and smelling of Germolene. She’d just come off duty and still wore her matron’s white celluloid cap. She sat in an arm-chair, it was your arm-chair, I think, with a glass of gin and Gee’s linctus in her hand. She noticed that I was trembling − I was trying to work out how to sign all those points into the House Book in one go without attracting her attention − and then suddenly, quite without warning, she burst into tears and out it all came. She revealed that ever since my arrival at Chartham she has delighted in the idea of my body and craved intercourse with me. She is dark and lustrous, and she smothers, Brookshaw. I don’t know what it was that came over me, the heat or the fumes of Gee’s linctus or something, but I started quoting Byron at her. ‘She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meets in her aspect and her eyes.’ Well, it seemed a natural step from there to propose. If she turned me down I could always withhold my body from her on the grounds of religious principle, and if she accepted I could endure sexual congress in the knowledge that this was the price I had to pay for inheriting the headmastership when her father died. It seemed a neat way out. But now you know about my … indiscretion with Cartwright. It was stupid of me to sign those points in after all, I don’t know why I didn’t stop myself … and Cartwright is leaving at the end of term. Six weeks left, six weeks!
Look, it doesn’t seem to me that you’re in much of a position here. Hadn’t it occurred to you that if I don’t marry the girl somebody else will, somebody from outside. You’re an old man, Brookshaw, you’ll never be headmaster now. If the next headman isn’t me then it’ll be someone you don’t know, and that someone may just have a friend to replace you as Senior Master. Spare that a thought before you start getting too carried away with yourself. Well?
BROOKSHAW. You’re a cunning bastard, Dominic, but I still have the initiative, remember that. I can always ring the police at any time.
DOMINIC. Of course.
BROOKSHAW. (Sighing) But I’m afraid you’re right. I can never be headmaster now. It’s too late. I suppose I’ve known that for some time. (Ponders) This is what you will do, if you wish me to remain silent about your little adventures, Dominic.
DOMINIC. Blackmail is illegal, you know.
BROOKSHAW. (Temper rising slightly) Scant though my knowledge of the criminal law may be, I’ve a fairly good idea that it’s not exactly the done thing for a twenty-six-year-old schoolmaster to commit genital acts with a thirteen-year-old boy to whom he is in loco parentis. Yes, Dominic, in loco parentis.
DOMINIC. You can’t get me for incest as well.
BROOKSHAW. !
DOMINIC. I’m sorry. All right then, how much?
BROOKSHAW. Excuse me?
DOMINIC. How much do you want?
BROOKSHAW. It’s not a question of money, you silly boy.
DOMINIC. Well, what do you want, then?
BROOKSHAW. I shall tell you what I want. Now, listen carefully, Dominic. You will do exactly as I tell you. (Consults a notebook or diary) As you know, only the Old Man or myself, as Senior Master, are allowed to beat boys for bad behaviour. You have an infuriating habit, if I may say so, Dominic, of sending your miscreants to the Headman and not to me. This nuisance must now cease. In future, you will do your level best to ensure that all bad boys are sent to my study, where I shall beat them. The administration of the cane is one of the few pleasures in life left to me, and you will not deny me it.
DOMINIC. W … w …
BROOKSHAW. Now the second thing you will do for me is visit my bedroom twice a week − Tuesdays and Thursdays will do very nicely I think, at midnight. There you will beat me for half an hour with a clothes hanger or a wet towel and afterwards run up and down on my bottom in cricket boots. I should like that. Quite clear there?
DOMINIC. Y … y …
BROOKSHAW. If you are a good boy and follow my instructions, I will allow you to marry the headmaster’s daughter. I think you are right, if you don’t marry the wretched girl, a worse may well come in your place. You will probably be made headmaster. I hope that you will be a good one. I rather think you will. You have all the right qualities.
DOMINIC. A wet towel? You’re absolutely sick.
BROOKSHAW. Now, I really must ask you to make up your mind, Dominic. It’s first period any minute, and I see that you haven’t finished marking yet. So. Do I telephone the police, or will you perform those little odd jobs I mentioned?
DOMINIC. (Hastily) No, no! don’t ring the police. I’ll … I’ll do as you say.
BROOKSHAW. Splendid! I knew you would. Well that’s capital. Now I must rush, Sixth Form Confirmation class.
DOMINIC. But Tuesdays and Thursdays are my extra Latin nights w
ith Cartwright!
BROOKSHAW. Well, I’m afraid you’ll just have to rearrange them … there’s six weeks left after all. I shall expect you tomorrow night then, for the first session. Until then … (Stops at the door) … oh, and bring some peanut butter with you, would you? Crunchy. Bye!
Exit BROOKSHAW. The moment he goes, the Houselights come up and we are back in the lesson, which is nearing completion. DOMINIC is writing up the Latin for the last sentence. So it is important that, during the last exchange with BROOKSHAW, he puts himself in the best position to start writing immediately, discreetly getting chalk in hand etc. to make the change as rapid as possible.
DOMINIC. (Writing and calling out simultaneously) Ne desperarent neve … progredi nollent … Hannibal militibus … quietem … dedit. Very well, who hasn’t had a turn? Hands down. Figgis, the blackboard’s over here. Fingers out of noses, Spragg. Well, if Elwyn-Jones wants to pick it, he can pick it himself, can’t he? But not during the lesson, Elwyn-Jones, tiresome individual! Now, Barton-Mills, read out what you put for this would you please? ‘Aren’t you willing to despair or go forward Hannibal asked his quiet soldiers.’ Yes, well, we seem to have made a bit of a bish of that, don’t we, Barton-Mills? Kinnock, I think you got this right, give us the answer please. Yes, very clever, Kinnock, the prose version will do splendidly, thank you.
DOMINIC rubs out BARTON-MILLS’s answer and replaces it with: ‘Lest they should lose hope or be unwilling to go forward, Hannibal gave his soldiers a rest.’
Ne, Barton-Mills, means what ut non would mean if you could use ut non in final clauses, but you can’t so you use ne, clear? (Rising) One thing I want you all to notice is that the English has twice as many words in it as the Latin, which − as the mathematicians amongst you, Madison, will realise − will mean that the Latin has in it half as many words as the English, showing …
Bill rings off.
… the beautifully compact nature of − yes thank you, Potter, I heard it. I may be stupid, but I’m not deaf. Just close your desk and belt up, you can go when I say and not before. Now, where were we? Oh yes. Latin is a beautiful language, intense, compact and poetic. None of you seems to have grasped the idea of it yet, which is why you seem to have so much trouble with the execution. Look.
