Gloucester Crescent

by William Miller

  Mum, Kate, Tom and me at the Old Manse, August 1975

  Feeling very pleased with himself, Dad headed back home, put the new bird in the cage and waited for us all to return from Scotland. The next morning we arrived very early on the overnight sleeper. Kate went straight up to her room to see Chippie and Mum went to talk to Dad, who was still in bed. Suddenly a scream came from the top of the house. Kate ran down the stairs to Mum and Dad’s bedroom crying out, ‘Chippie, where’s Chippie?’ By now Dad was hiding under the bedcovers, having already confessed to Mum what had happened, but he was leaving it to Mum to break the news. By the time the house settled down to just another day in the Crescent, Kate had decided the new bird wasn’t all that bad, and after much discussion she called him George and soon started a game of playing her recorder to him. He always sang back, which, along with Jeanie’s piano-playing and Dad’s typing, became just one of the many familiar noises that filled our house.

  PART TWO

  August 1980 (Age 16)

  Dad and me in the Cotswolds, 1978

  16

  PIMLICO SCHOOL – SEPTEMBER 1975

  What I thought was going to be my very first day at Pimlico actually turned out to be the night before. Having gone to bed as early as I could, I woke up in the middle of the night and sat bolt upright. Although it was still dark outside, I grabbed my uniform, got dressed and ran downstairs for breakfast. Sitting around the kitchen table with Mum and Dad were Alan and a couple of other friends.

  Holding my spotless new briefcase, I suggested we skip breakfast and get going straight away. Dad, trying not to laugh, said, ‘I think you’re about nine hours too early.’ At that point everyone else started laughing and Mum got out of her chair and led me back upstairs to bed.

  The next time I woke up the sun was streaming through the narrow gap between my bedroom curtains and it really was the start of the first day at my new school. The night before I’d carefully laid out my uniform on the chair at the end of my bed, ready to put on as soon as I woke up. I couldn’t remember waking up and putting it on in the middle of the night, but now I stood and inspected myself in front of the mirror, taking in every detail: the crease down the legs of the grey flannel trousers, the crispness of the white shirt, the smart school tie and the embroidered logo on the breast pocket of the black blazer. I was so glad to have ditched the scruffy hand-me-downs I’d worn to Primrose Hill Primary.

  Pimlico School, London

  This uniform would be part of the new me – an older, wiser and more experienced me. I would be a person who got homework to do every night and had a briefcase with books and a pencil case in it. I would be coming home having learned real subjects like geography, biology and chemistry, along with something called humanities. This was the school that would get me ready for life. It would take me right up to being an adult who would be able to make his own choices in the real world.

  When we pulled up outside the gates that September morning in 1975, I realised I’d forgotten how big Pimlico School was. I’d been before when I did my interview, and with Mum and Conrad to look around, but it now seemed so much bigger. The school sits on Lupus Street like a huge concrete and glass battleship waiting to set sail with all sixteen hundred pupils on board. At each end of the school are the entrances, which are connected through the inside of the building by a long and busy concourse. Staircases go up and down from the concourse which lead to all the classrooms, workshops and sports halls. At the far corner is a modern swimming pool that I couldn’t wait to try out. Between the low concrete walls on the street and the school building are tarmac-covered playgrounds and football pitches.

  Conrad and I were driven all the way to Pimlico by his mum. My mum came too, and they dropped us off at one of the main gates. Smiling and waving, they drove away, leaving us standing on the pavement. I had never felt so proud and so terrified at the same time. As hundreds of boys and girls of every size and age, dressed in the same uniform as Conrad and me, streamed past us, I felt a sense of real belonging. Everything about Pimlico was huge and so unlike my primary school, and it was going to be my world for the next seven years. Once inside, we were guided along the concourse and up to a big hall at the top of the school, where all three hundred of the First-Year students were to be welcomed by the headmistress. There were almost as many pupils in a single year at Pimlico as there were in the whole of Primrose Hill Primary.

  Mrs Mitchell, the headmistress, walked onto the stage. The hall fell silent, and she started a long speech about the importance of youth, doing something with our potential and our responsibilities to each other and to our parents. Next to me and Conrad, and looking as nervous as us, were the other two boys from Primrose Hill, Simon Elms and Neal Halling. The whole year had been divided into ten forms, with the fifteen music scholars in our year spread across two of these.

  As our forms were called out, we were led out of the hall by our new form teachers to classrooms scattered all over the building. The two forms with the music scholars were based in the music department. My new form teacher, a Welsh woman called Mrs Roberts, was the deputy head of music. Since my form had so many music scholars, it didn’t feel that different from the forms we had at Primrose Hill, which was why we all settled in quite quickly and got on together. It was when you stepped outside the form room and the music department and moved around the school to other lessons that you realised just how different the rest of the school was. For the headmistress, Mrs Mitchell, the music school was everything. Even though only a handful of the pupils were involved in it, she felt the musicians gave the school its reputation. We were her pride and joy, and she thought we walked on water. But it also meant the rest of the school didn’t and wished we’d walk on water and die from drowning.

  To begin with I really enjoyed being at Pimlico. I got up early every day, stopped by the Roebers to collect James and Conrad and got on the 24 bus with them. For the first few months I looked forward to walking into the school and feeling part of it, and I still liked my uniform, even though my shoes quite quickly lost their shine and my white shirts went a bit grey. I was in the school orchestra and choir, and because my voice was still a long way from breaking I got to sing solo parts in productions like Dido and Aeneas. Mrs Mitchell’s best friend was the composer Benjamin Britten, so we were invited to perform Noah’s Flood at the Aldeburgh Festival with Peter Pears. He played God, which he did by standing in a cupboard at the back of the church with a microphone. Every time God spoke to Noah this big voice boomed out over the church, like the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz.

  I already knew from James Roeber that there were gangs at the school who wanted to kill you, or at least make your life as miserable as they could. They seemed to leave me alone in the first term, but as I started to settle in I somehow came to their attention, and when that happened, everything started to change. It turned out the people they were most interested in bullying were what they called the ‘posh musicians’, who they hated more than anyone else. If only we could have been more invisible, but because we were usually carrying a case with a musical instrument in it we stood out wherever we went, and the gangs picked us off whenever they wanted to. We were known as the ‘Melons’ and their favourite sport was ‘Melon-bashing’. They named us this because, having turned our noses up at the school meals, we went out to an Italian shop on Lupus Street that sold spaghetti bolognese and watermelons. It was often the case that you’d never make it to the Italian shop without your money being taken off you by one of the gangs, so you’d end up going hungry.

  I soon discovered that there were two types of gangs at Pimlico, and they had their own particular methods. The first were the white gangs. They’d never hit you or hurt you physically – they knew that threatening you and leaving you in fear of what might happen was so much worse. They’d push you into a dark corner, stand within an inch of your face and tell you that they knew where you lived and how you got to school. They wanted you to know that at any point, when you
were least expecting it, something terrible would happen to you, either on the bus or outside your own home. They planted the fear right there in your head and it stayed there, day and night, eating away at you. Quite early on, one of these boys told me he was going to spend years ‘fucking with my head’. He wasn’t joking and did it as often as he could. The worst part was knowing that they might get me at home. They said they would be outside my house waiting in the street, and I lived in fear of this for the rest of my time at Pimlico.

  The black gangs were somehow better than the white ones. They only wanted one thing, and that was an instant moment of entertainment so they could prove to us and to each other who was boss. This often happened on the concourse, where they would surround you and beat and kick you to the floor. I don’t think they even knew who they were beating up – anyone would do as long as they looked weak and weren’t going to fight back. Once they’d finished, they would laugh with each other and walk off. It also happened a lot in the changing rooms of the swimming pool, where, standing shivering in your swimming trunks or underwear, they would turn their towels into a ‘rat’s tail’ and whip your feet as they shouted, ‘Dance you honky bitch, dance.’

  I was really happy to have Simon Elms in my class. He was a trumpeter on the music course and lived in a flat around the corner from Gloucester Crescent. We’d known each other a bit at primary school but hadn’t really been friends, and this changed as we settled into Pimlico. At the age of 11 he had the luck of looking like he was 16. He also happened to be good-looking, which meant all the girls, from our year up to the sixth form, wanted to know him.

  Break times were always frantic and noisy. As no one was allowed back into the classrooms, the different groups in the school made a claim to an area or corner of the school where they could hang out. There’s a big common room at the top of the school for the sixth-formers, and another in the basement for the fifths, with pool tables and a small canteen. Everyone else claimed a bit of the concourse where there were radiators and a long window ledge to sit on, while others headed to the playgrounds. That’s where I hung out with the other music scholars, and a few friends from our form. The gangs preferred to roam around the school and intimidate whoever looked vulnerable. As a group we felt safer together and would spend all our breaks talking about who was going out with who, what we’d seen on telly (Space: 1999 or The Sweeney) or which pop groups we liked (Queen, Earth, Wind & Fire and Hot Chocolate) and didn’t like (ABBA and the Bay City Rollers).

  Simon always held court in our group, with the girls hanging on to his every word. There was Sally, whose dad played the clarinet in the Royal Opera House orchestra, Abigail, whose sister Susannah had been in the film of Swallows and Amazons, and Philippa. Her dad was a composer called Wilfred Josephs, and they lived in a big house in Hampstead. Then there was Lena, whose dad was a union official at the Post Office. It was always good to have Simon around at break times, as he would step in at the first sign of trouble between anyone in our group and the gangs. He knew how to throw a punch in a way that would knock anyone straight to the floor, and he frequently put this to good use if someone so much as threatened us. I think some of Simon’s confidence also came from having an amazing wingman called Jimi Keyede, who was in our form but not a music scholar. Jimi’s family were from Nigeria, and he was as tall and fearless as Simon. Although he was the kindest and most gentle person you could meet, the gangs knew not to get on his bad side.

  We bonded early on over him accidently setting my hair on fire in the middle of a maths lesson. While the teacher was busily writing something on the blackboard, Jimi thought he would see how close he could get the naked flame of a lighter to the back of my neck before I felt the heat. To his surprise, my hair caught fire before I felt anything. The first I knew about it was when Jimi started smacking my head with his huge hands as he desperately tried to put out my burning hair. He was put straight into detention but, knowing he had been stupid rather than deliberately trying to set me on fire, I chose not to take it further. From that day on we became close friends, and with him and Simon I had two much-needed bodyguards. By my fifth year it felt like the school had lost control of the more violent kids. They even put security guards on the school gates. This wasn’t to keep us in but to stop boys who’d been expelled from coming back into the school to attack anyone they had a grudge against.

  The worst thing about the threats from the white gangs was the absolute fear that Gloucester Crescent might no longer be the safe and secure place I’d grown up believing it to be. This wasn’t helped by the fact that no one at home, except for Tom, understood what it was like to be threatened with so much physical and psychological violence. At first I thought they would get bored with it and go away. But as each year became another it carried on, and my constant state of fear started to wear me down. It left me exhausted to the point that when they threatened me, I wanted to say, ‘Just do it and let’s be done with it.’ For the first few years there had been lots of good days at Pimlico, and it seemed like I could get past the bullying with the support of my friends. There were even lessons that were stimulating and I felt like I was being taught interesting and important things that would make a difference. But those days became fewer and the ones where I was truly miserable started to take over my life. Everything seemed hopeless, and I’d stopped learning anything as I was spending more time worrying how to get through each day, get home safely and wonder what the future held.

  One morning, as if out of nowhere, when I was 14, I broke down in a way that I’d never done before. I think it started with my telling Mum and Dad that I wasn’t sure how much more I could take and Dad nervously laughing it off saying he was sure I would be fine. As he tried to reassure me with one of his ‘it’ll be all right’ smiles, I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. Then when Mum reminded me that I needed to set off or I’d be late I snapped and told them this time they had to take me seriously. The next thing I knew it I was curled up in the corner of the kitchen crying uncontrollably and begging them not to send me back to school. To begin with they didn’t seem to know how to respond – they stood there looking at each other and then back at this sobbing mass on the floor. It was Mum who finally knelt down and tried to console me, but I could tell she was as upset and confused as Dad. I can’t really blame them as they didn’t know how to protect me from what was going on or have any concept of what it was like. All they could do was promise to make some phone calls and start looking at a way out. By the end of the day they’d called several schools, but they all said the same thing – I was too old to change schools now, but could try again for the sixth form when I was 16. Knowing that there would be a way out in the end helped, but that would be two years away.

  Stanage Park: Stella, Deborah, me and Kate

  With its distance from London, as well as the warmth and love from everyone there, Stanage had started to replace Gloucester Crescent as the one place where I could feel safe again. I went there whenever I could at weekends or half-terms. Nothing ever changed at Stanage, and I never stopped loving that moment when the house slowly appeared as I came up the drive. Stella was always there to greet me with the dogs, and the smell of wood fires and azaleas filled my mind as I entered the front hall. These were now more than just nice things to remember – they were what I connected with the new sense of security that Stanage gave me. Whenever I was pushed up against a wall and threatened, I just closed my eyes and thought of Stanage and walking into the hall and it would get me through it. I counted the weeks and days between each visit, knowing that, once I was there, I would be safe and no one could touch me.

  Deborah and me

  As time went by, Stella became even more of an influence on me. Everyone assumed I was her grandson, but couldn’t figure out how our families were related. She eventually decided it was easier to tell anyone who asked that she was my godmother. Without further discussion, even with Mum and Dad, that was what she became. On each visit I got closer to Stella, but
at the same time I noticed Guy’s health getting worse. He was no longer sitting on the big sofa in the library or cracking jokes at lunch. He had pretty much retired to his bedroom, where he would watch the races on television with an oxygen mask over his mouth. I would sit with him as he strained to breathe. Every now and then he would pull it off his face so he could shout at a fallen jockey or when his favourite horse had won a race.

  Then, one Sunday morning when I was at home playing in the garden, Dad came out and told me that Sue had called from Stanage to let me know that Guy had died in his sleep. It was a call I’d been expecting for some time, but it didn’t make it any easier. Other than Grandad, who I didn’t know that well, Guy was the first person I was close to who had died. I don’t think Mum or Dad knew how close we had become, so it was a surprise to them when I ran upstairs and hid in my bedroom. I sat on the floor and cried for hours, too embarrassed to show them how much I loved him.