by John Bingham
I tried it once or twice at school, but soon gave up.
There were three of us who did everything together at school: John Prosset, David Trevelyan, and myself. When our schooldays were finished, Trevelyan went and buried himself on his father’s farm in Cornwall; he rarely answered letters. But somehow, over the years, Prosset and I kept in touch. It was due to no wish of mine.
It was through David that I got to know Prosset. At our particular school the boarders lived in half a dozen Houses, widely scattered around the main college buildings. There were about fifty or sixty boys in each House. But sometimes, if a House was full, they would lodge a boy out in what they called a “waiting house,” which was little more than a large private house run by one of the masters, where six or seven boys, or more, would spend anything from one term to a year until they could transfer to the regular House for which their names had been put down.
David Trevelyan and I were in Bailey’s Waiting House; in fact, David had been there one term already when I arrived as a new boy. Unlike Prosset, who was perfectly proportioned, David Trevelyan was a comfortably chubby, medium-sized boy; he, too, had very black hair; and big lustrous brown eyes, rather thick red lips, and fine white teeth. I can see him now, practising with his flute, his eyes fixed on the horizon as he went up and down the scale, his thick lips moulded over the instrument. Nobody ever knew why he learnt to play the flute. When asked, he simply said, well, because he liked it; which is a good enough reason.
I deliberately cultivated David’s friendship. Firstly, because apart from myself he was the most junior boy in the House, so that I naturally went to him for advice about the incredibly numerous complications which beset the life of every new boy at a public school; and secondly, because I liked the look of him. I think the attraction was at first somewhat one-sided. I was not very much to look at; I was very ordinary indeed, and still am, if it comes to that. I had mouse-coloured hair, wore spectacles, and had a rather pasty complexion. But I was of medium build, and although not outstandingly strong I was certainly no weakling in a tussle.
David was on what they called the Languages and Maths side of the school, and I was on the Classical. Prosset was in David’s form, and that was how they became friendly. They used to eat their buns together in the morning break, and help each other with last-minute adjustments to their “prep.” We were all three destined for Buckley’s House, but Prosset had already gone there direct.
Thus the position was that both Prosset and I were friendly with David, but beyond a casual meeting here and there we did not yet know each other. Later, when David and I went to Buckley’s, we three linked up.
Long after, when we had become thoroughly familiar, they both told me how Prosset used to ask David Trevelyan why he walked to and from college with “that awful tick, Sibley.” It was regarded as a good joke, which I was supposed to find very amusing. I was always one to laugh when people were expected to laugh, so I would join in the mirth then.
So there we were, John Prosset, David Trevelyan, and I.
That is how it began, and that is how it stayed for nearly four long years: Prosset, Trevelyan, and Sibley. We were not so much individuals, at first, as a unit. We walked up to college together, and we walked back together. We went up to the tuck shop together, and ate poached eggs on toast together. We lent each other sixpences and shillings, shared the contents of our tuck boxes, schemed to avoid the little troubles which lie in store for small boys at public schools. If one got into a fight, the other two would come to the rescue. As term followed term, and we came to be regarded by other boys as identities rather than as just three small nondescript boys, our unity remained and indeed became famous.
We were secretly rather envied. Many people would have liked to have been in my shoes, bound by the ties of friendship to Trevelyan and Prosset, for Prosset, with his rather pronounced nose and chin and his challenging eyes, was well liked and respected, not only by other boys, but by masters, especially games masters. At first he was tried out for the Colts Fifteen, and played for them and did well; and in the end he played for the college side, not brilliantly, but boldly and with intelligence and tenacity. David Trevelyan and I basked in reflected limelight.
Life was good, on the whole. We had made a niche, and we were not lonely as other boys were sometimes lonely who had no close friends. We were a small, compact gang, and if Prosset was the acknowledged leader, we fell in with his plans readily enough. We had security in the jungle of school life, and that is a very important thing indeed.
Even in the light of what later happened, I must confess that looking back on the first year or two of the Prosset–Trevelyan–Sibley combine we had many good times together.
Whitsun was the great time of the year for us, for on the Tuesday after Whitsun the school was virtually set free to do exactly what it liked. It was started as a bold experiment, and it worked. All bounds were abolished. We could roam over the whole county, on foot, on bicycles, even by train if we wished. So long as we did nothing illegal and were back by 9 p.m., we could regard ourselves as adults.
We three used to hire bicycles and cycle through the countryside, exploring, turning off where we wished, stopping by the Avon for a bathe, going into pubs for a glass of cider, for as yet we disliked the taste of beer, and eating stupendously. It is inevitable that all those Whitsun outings are in retrospect bathed in sunshine.
Once, in a lonely country lane, we passed a beautiful girl cycling in the opposite direction. She was coolly dressed, and blonde and serene; she made our day for us. We goggled openly as she went by, a girl of about twenty-two who to this day does not know that three young fellows aged sixteen, in grey flannels and blazers, fell deeply in love with her after only seeing her for about ten seconds.
For the rest of the day we discussed her off and on, and I for one wove stories around her. She was obviously the daughter of a retired Indian colonel, living a quiet life in some old-world manor, tending her fowls and pigeons and arranging flowers in the house. I imagined her getting into some sort of danger on a horse. Gallant Michael Sibley would leap at its head as it thundered by, bring it to a halt and catch the fainting angel in his arms; to be rewarded with a warm and lingering kiss, two soft arms around his neck, and vows of eternal gratitude. Later, of course, we would get married.
I was rather inclined to indulge in these romantic fantasies, and from the way we occasionally talked I see no reason to suppose that the others did not have similar dreams. These dreams were always delightfully pure, terminating in soft arms and kisses, and nothing more.
We graduated from the Junior Common Room to the Senior Common Room, and from the Senior Common, after agonies of waiting and calculating when it would be our turn, we were allotted each his own study. A crude enough affair, little bigger than a closet, but a place where you could have a table, a chair, a divan, usually made of wooden boxes covered with cushions and a bedcover, a bookshelf and cupboard, and a patch of carpet.
But it was your own place, where you could read or work by yourself, or play the gramophone, or brew hot drinks. When you had a study you felt you had arrived. You were treated with gravest respect by the members of the Junior and Senior Common Rooms; you were even treated in a dignified manner by the House prefects and, highly important, it was an unwritten rule that no study-holder should be beaten by the prefects.
You were a bit of a dog when you were a study-owner. If you were any good at all at games, life became even better. I wasn’t too bad. I had my House football colours, and was quite good at running, and was likely to end up rowing in the House boat.
I had bought the contents of my study lock, stock and barrel from the previous owner. Prosset, Trevelyan and I were always in and out of each other’s studies. The very first time I went into it, eager and filled with a delicious sense of anticipation, I stopped abruptly in the doorway.
Prosset was there, sitting in my chair, thumbing through a book. He immediately asked me why I had bought the con
tents from the previous owner. The curtains, he considered, were drab, the chair was inclined to sag, the cushions were worn; the whole place looked a bit cheap and tawdry. Why had I not brought stuff from home, like he had done?
Life normally became quite civilized when you had a study: the only trouble was that I had begun to hate Prosset.
Perhaps I should say more accurately that it was about this time that I first realized that I hated him. I suppose the feeling had been gradually growing in my subconscious mind for a long time, because normally you don’t suddenly hate somebody whom you have been friendly with for a considerable period; not deeply, as I hated Prosset. Doubtless I had refused to admit that the feeling was there, or had fought it back. After all, it seemed so unreasonable; we three had many good times together, and Prosset was not always dominating.
I think now that one of the incidents which played an important part occurred when on one occasion several of us—Prosset included—were travelling back to school in the same railway compartment. The others were chattering away about the holidays and what they had done and where they had been, the shows they had seen, and the parties and dances they had attended. I wasn’t joining in, because it so happened that during those particular holidays I had not done anything very interesting. Among the few virtues I possess—and in view of later events they must be counted few indeed—is an inability to elaborate incidents to show myself in a good light. If I relate some conversation in which I have taken part, I cannot even to this day alter the context to include smart replies I would have made had I thought of them in time.
So I sat and listened, and when I was not listening I gazed out of the window into the gathering dusk. Opposite me, Prosset was talking to Collet, the son of a rich Yorkshire mine owner. The train drew into a station, and a man came along the platform wheeling a trolley with newspapers, magazines, chocolates, sweets, and cigarettes on it, for this was only a few years after the First World War and such commodities were common. I let down the window and bought a couple of bars of nut milk chocolate; one or two others followed my example, and we settled back into our seats and waited for the train to start. Then it happened. Prosset and Collet were talking about their tailors.
“My man charged me six and a half for this,” said Collet, brushing some ash off his waistcoat, for we smoked like furnaces going back to school.
“I paid eight,” said Prosset, “but that included an extra pair of trousers.”
“What about dinner jackets?”
Prosset hesitated. I guessed he hadn’t got one.
“Ten,” he said briefly. Collet nodded. He looked at me. I could see him looking me up and down. Prosset followed suit. I knew what they were thinking. They had no need to tell me. I saw the words forming themselves in Prosset’s mind long before he spoke them, though I didn’t expect him to be so accurate.
He said, in the lull in the conversation, in the lazy, arrogant drawl he sometimes adopted:
“What about yours, Mike? Three guineas ready-made?”
I nodded. Somebody sniggered.
“Poor old Mike,” said Prosset.
There was an awkward silence. I blushed scarlet and stared out on to the platform. The palms of my hands were damp and I was pressing my nails into them. The rough, hard-wearing tweed was chafing my neck. I could feel the skimped trousers clinging to my legs. The train drew out of the station and gathered speed. I gazed out of the window, ashamed and filled with bitterness against Prosset.
Although I had secretly begun to hate Prosset, we still did everything together, Prosset, Trevelyan and I. We were still united, and therefore a force to be reckoned with in the House, though none of us was ever a prefect. I can see why Prosset was so popular and treated with respect. It was not only that he was well built and clean-looking, whereas I was bespectacled and pasty, it was also due to his high spirits; his energy and courage, too. Nobody ever challenged him in vain. Combat was the breath of life to him. Not merely physical combat, though when he was fighting or playing games he did it to the last ounce of his strength, but verbal tussles as well.
We were all three of about the same seniority in the school, so we always sat together at the long dining tables; and if Prosset could find an excuse for an argument he would. He loved it. He would take anybody up on anything, challenge any statement for the sheer pleasure of the fight; and if all else failed he would pick an argument with me. If I declined the challenge, he would taunt me until I was stung to reply. Although he was not a bully physically, he was certainly one verbally. He was not content to get his man down; he had to trample in his face as well. Sometimes he would insist on an apology.
“So you were wrong, weren’t you?” he would say.
“Oh, all right, all right, I was wrong, then, if you like.”
“Well, apologize, then.”
“Why should I?”
“Because you were wrong. Go on, apologize.”
“I don’t see why I should.”
“You made a wrong statement. I have proved it wrong. Well, apologize for making it, go on.”
“I’m damned if I will. Bread, please.”
“Why should I pass the bread?”
“Why shouldn’t you?”
“Why shouldn’t you apologize and admit you were wrong?”
“I’ve admitted I was wrong.”
“Well, go on—apologize.”
“Oh, all right, all right, I apologize. Bread, please.”
He was gay and had humour of a sort, and I think he often domineered, not out of malice, but for the fun of the game. But it made it no easier to bear. He seemed so heartless.
On one occasion only, Prosset and I were united on an emotional issue. It was before we got our studies. Ackersley, the assistant housemaster, was the cause of it, a man clearly destined to be one of the world’s failures; he was a gentle, middle-aged man with a passion for fly-fishing which he could not afford to indulge, and he would listen avidly to the accounts boys told of the fine fishing they had had, and sigh, and say such fishing was not meant for poor schoolmasters.
In appearance, he was of medium height and slim. He had a lean face and a long nose, and was afflicted with one of those blue-black jowls and the very red lips which sometimes go with them. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles, and his voice had that soft, bottled-up quality which you sometimes come across. He had neither a voice nor an appearance to inspire respect in boys, and he got none. It was all rather painful, really, and some of us even pitied him, but not many.
When he took “prep” in the evenings, instead of the deep hush normally required on such occasions, the Common Room buzzed and hummed like the stalls on the first night of a new play; until at least even Ackersley felt he had to do something. He would try to raise his voice above the din to still it, and all would be quiet for about five minutes. Then the murmuring, gradually increasing in volume, would begin all over again. It was hopeless.
When he supervised supper last thing at night the air would be filled with pellets of bread as the boys at the three long tables happily pelted each other. Now and again, for a lark, a group of boys by a combined effort would raise their long table almost above their heads. Ackersley would usually pretend not to see. He would keep his eyes glued to the Bible, as though he were reading the text which preceded the evening prayers. It seemed to me that the House mocked and oppressed him in some such way as Prosset did me; I felt that in a measure we were fellow sufferers; I understood how he felt in the face of such mockery: ineffectual, almost tearfully ineffectual. I guessed from the way he occasionally mentioned Mrs. Ackersley, that when he returned home to his lodgings and his wife he found in her a refuge and a balm which he could find nowhere else.
One evening the Head House Prefect was taking “prep,” which meant that there was a very deep hush indeed, and no nonsense at all. It was a beautiful summer’s evening, very light and still, so that you could hear the birds twittering outside. I was in one of the back rows of desks, drowsing over a geometry p
roblem, and apart from the birds there was no sound except the occasional noise of a desk being quietly opened and shut, or of the leaves of a book being turned, or of a hand brushing paper clean after rubbing something out.
Suddenly one of the other prefects came into the room and whispered something to the Head Prefect. He got up quickly and left the dais and went out of the room for a minute or two. Whereupon, starting at the front row of desks and working back to me, increasing in volume as it approached, came a swift sound like the hiss of the sea on shingle. Each boy as he received the news turned round and passed it eagerly to the row behind; sometimes their eyes were shining with delight which boys have when they can impart staggering news; sometimes their faces were flushed and startled: “Ackers is dead! Ackers has shot himself! Ackers’s wife died! Ackers has committed suicide!”
Then the Head Prefect came back and called for silence. He said nothing. Possibly some of us remembered how Ackersley’s life had been made a misery. I can’t help thinking now that if we had not tortured him so much, if his school hours had not been such a misery, he might have found strength to carry on. As it was, he had not the strength. He did not know where he could find safety from his thoughts at night. His refuge was gone. Only the cruelties, the frustration, the desperate feeling of being ineffectual, unwanted, a comic-looking failure, remained. There was nothing else, I suppose. I think we killed Ackers, taking a broad view of it all, as surely as if we had ourselves pressed the trigger of the revolver he used, only we were not so humane.
