The Loom of Youth

by Alec Waugh

  * * * * *

  “I say, you fellows, have you heard the latest? ‘The Bull’ has kicked me out of the Colts.”

  Lovelace came into the changing-room, fuming with rage. There had been a Colts’ trial that afternoon. Buller had cursed furiously and finally booted Lovelace off the field, with some murmured remarks about “typical School House slackness.”

  “It’s damned rot,” said Bradford. “Because Simonds has made rather an ass of himself in the last two matches, Bull thinks the whole House is slack. He gave Turner six today just because he hadn’t looked up one word. I hope he doesn’t intend to judge the whole House by Simonds.”

  The House was getting fed up with Simonds. It was all very well working in moderation for scholarships, but when it came to allowing games to suffer, things were getting serious. Private inclination cannot stand in the way of the real business of life. And no one would hesitate to own that he had come to Fernhurst mainly to play footer.

  “But, you know, I don’t think ‘the Bull’s’ that sort,” Gordon protested; “he may lose his temper and all that, but I think he’s fair.”

  “Do you?” said Hunter drily.

  There was a laugh. As a whole, the House was certain that “the Bull” was against them.

  In a week’s time Lovelace was back again in the Colts, and Gordon was telling his friends what fools they were not to trust “the Bull.”

  * * * * *

  Gordon was confirmed this term. He was rather young; but it was obviously the thing to do, and, as Mansell said: “It’s best to take the oath when you are more or less ‘pi,’ and there is still some chance of remaining so. You can’t tell what you will be like in a year or so.”

  As is the case with most boys, Confirmation had very little effect on Gordon. He was not an atheist; he accepted Christianity in much the same way that he accepted the Conservative party. All the best people believed in it, so it was bound to be all right; but at the same time it had not the slightest influence over his actions. If he had any religion at this time it was House football; but for the most part, he lived merely to enjoy himself, and his pleasures were, on the whole, innocuous. They very rarely went much beyond ragging Rudd.

  “Do you think,” said Gordon, the evening after his first confirmation address, “that the masters really believe confirmation has any effect on us? Because you know it doesn’t.”

  “I don’t think it matters very much what masters think,” said Hunter; “most of them here have got into a groove. They believe the things they ought to believe; they are all copies of the same type. They’ve clean forgotten what it was like at school. Hardly any of them really know boys. They go on happily believing them ‘perhaps a little excitable, but on the whole, perfectly straight and honest.’ Then a row comes. They are horrified. They don’t realise all of us are the same. They’ve made themselves believe what they want to believe.”

  “Yes, and when they are told the truth, they won’t believe it,” said Betteridge. “You know, I was reading an article in some paper the other day, by an assistant master at Winchborough, called Ferrers. He was cursing the whole system. I showed it to Claremont, just for a rag; told him I thought it was rather good. The old fool looked at it for some time, and then said: ‘Well, Betteridge, don’t form your style on this. It is very perfervid stuff. Not always grammatical.’ All the ass thinks of is whether plurals agree with singulars; he does not care a damn whether the material is good.”

  “That’s it,” said Gordon. “Masters try to make you imitate, and not think for yourself. ‘Mould your Latin verses on Vergil, your Greek prose on Thucydides, your English on Matthew Arnold, but don’t think for yourself. Don’t be original.’ If anyone big began to think he’d see what a farce it all is; and then where would all these fossils be? It’s all sham; look at the reports. Bradford gets told he’s a good moral influence. Mansell works hard and deserves his prize. It is hoped that confirmation will be a help to me. Rot, it all is!”

  “Oh, I’m not so certain confirmation is a farce,” broke in Bradford. “If you don’t believe in it, you won’t get to heaven.”

  “But who the hell wants to get there,” said Mansell. “Sing hymns all day long. I can imagine it. Fancy having Caruthers singing out of tune in your ear for ever. It’s bad enough in chapel once a day. But for ever—!”

  “My good lads, you don’t know what heaven’s like,” whispered Bradford confidentially. “Claremont was gassing away about Browning the other day, and said that he believed that in heaven you could do all the things you wanted to do on earth! And by Jove I would have a hot time—some place, heaven!”

  “By Jove, yes; but you know, Bradford, there won’t be much left for you to do in heaven; at the rate you are going you will have done most things on earth.”

  “Oh, I am going to reform, and then I shall write to Claremont and tell him how I, a wandering sheep, was brought home by his interpretation of Andrew Dol Portio—I think that’s what the thing was called.”

  “Of course, that is an idea,” said Mansell, “but I am not so sure of what’s going to happen when we’re dead. I am going to have a jolly good time, and then take the risk. I never hedge my bets.”

  “Well, you may go on your way to the eternal bonfire,” said Bradford, “but I am for righteousness. Now, listen to this, it’s in the book we have to read for confirmagers, Daily Lies on the Daily Path: ‘. . . If you think that in your house things are being talked about that would shock your mother or sister, don’t merely shun it as something vile. It is your duty to fight against it; reason with the boys. They probably have some grain of decency left in them. If that fails, report the matter to your house master. He will take your side. The boys will probably be expelled, but you will have done your duty, as Solomon says in Proverbs . . . ‘ There now, Mansell. I am one of the children of light. So you know what to expect from me. Shall I reason with you, lad? Have you a grain of decency left in you, or must I—”

  At this point a well-aimed cushion put an end to the fervour of the new child of light. Betteridge sat on his head.

  “Look here, Bradford,” he began, “you may be a convert and all that, but don’t play John the Baptist in here. It does not pay. Very shortly I shall carry your head to the dustbin in a saucer. Let me tell you the story of one Stevenson in Mr Macdonald’s house. He was, like you, about to be confirmed, and was, like you, very full of himself. And being, as Lovelace, a lover of the race-course, he walked about in his study in hall, chanting us a dirge out of sheer religious fervour: ‘My name is down for the confirmation stakes.’ Macdonald passed the door and, on hearing him, entered and said: ‘Well you are scratched now at any rate! ‘Take that to heart, and be not as the seeds that are sown on stony ground, who spring up in the night and wither in the morning.”

  Betteridge intoned the whole lecture. The story was in a way true, but the Stevenson in question had shouted down the passage: “Hurrah, no prep, tonight; my name is down for the confirmation stakes.” With the result as above. Gordon burst out:

  “By the way, talking of Macdonald, he made a priceless remark today. Kennedy, that little cove in Christy’s, came in late and began stammering out that it was only a minute or two over time; Macdonald looked on him for a minute, and then said: ‘Your excuse is just about as good as the woman’s who, having had an illegitimate baby, protested that it was only a small one.’”

  “By Jove, he’s some fellow. Now he’s a man,” said Mansell. “He’s a boy still; he can see our side of the question, and he knows what footling idiots half of the common room are. If we had more like him.” . . .

  “And it would be a jolly good thing, too,” said Betteridge, “if we could get a really young master like that Winchborough man, Ferrers, I was telling you about. He’d stir things up a bit.”

  At that moment the Abbey sounded half-past eight.

  “Good Lord,” said Hunter, “only quarter of an hour more, and we’ve done nothing the whole of hall. Let’s rout out Lovel
ace and go and rag Rudd.”

  In three minutes Rudd was under the table, with Mansell seated on his chest.

  It was rather unfortunate that Gordon should have chosen Tester to have a study with. Tester was over sixteen, was in the Lower Sixth, and had got his Seconds at cricket. He was a House blood. Gordon did not care for him particularly. But he had a good study, No. 1, at the far end of the lower landing, and Gordon wanted a big study. It was so very fine to sit chatting to Foster or Collins in one of the small studies for a little time and then to say suddenly, in a lordly manner: “Oh, look here, there’s no room here at all. Come down to my study, there are several arm-chairs there!”

  It is always pleasant to appear better than one’s equals. But Tester was a dangerous friend to have at a time when the mind is so open to impressions. For Tester had not risen to his position on his own merits alone. Lovelace major had always said he was not much good, and the year before had not given him his House cap. But Tester was a very great friend of Stewart’s, the captain of the Eleven. Stewart gave him his Seconds for making twenty against the town, so Meredith had to give him his House cap. It is a school rule that a “Seconds” must have his House cap. Tester was not improved by his friendship with Stewart, and the pity was that he was really clever. He could always argue his case.

  “I never asked to be brought into this world,” he said, “I am just suddenly put here, and told to make the best of things; and I intend to make the best of things. I am going to do what I like with my life. Wrong and right are merely relative terms. They change to fit their environment. Baudelaire would not have been tolerated in the Hampstead Garden Suburb; Catullus would not have been received in Sparta. But at Paris and Rome customs were different. We only frame philosophies to suit our wishes. And I prefer to follow my own inclinations to those of a sham twentieth-century civilisation.”

  Gordon did not like this; but if one lives daily in the company of a man who is clever and a personality, one is bound to look at life, at times, at any rate, through his spectacles. Gordon began to look on things which he once objected to as quite natural and ordinary.

  “I say, Caruthers, I hope you don’t mind clearing out of here for a bit,” Tester would say. “Stapleton is coming in for a few minutes. You quite understand, don’t you?”

  As soon as we begin to look on a thing as ordinary and natural, we also begin to think it is right. After a little Gordon ceased to worry whether such things were right or wrong. It was silly to quarrel with existing conditions, especially if they were rather pleasant ones. Gordon had a study with Tester till the end of the summer.

  One day, towards the end of the Easter term, Gordon asked Tester, rather shyly, if he would leave him alone a little. “I’ve often cleared out for you, you know.”

  “Of course, that’s quite all right, my dear fellow. Any time you like, I understand!” Tester smiled as he walked down the passage.

  But during the winter term Gordon worried about little except football; when he was not playing, he was ragging. Form he looked on as a glorious recreation. He was learning more than he ever learned afterwards without making much effort. Macdonald was a scholar; he did not teach people by making them work, he taught them by making it impossible for them to forget what he told them. No one who has ever been through the Upper Fifth at Fernhurst would have the slightest difficulty in writing a character sketch of any English king, even though he might never have read a chapter about him. Macdonald made every man in history a living character; not a sort of rack on which to hang dates and facts.

  Football, however, was not going quite so satisfactorily. Gordon was never tried for the Colts Fifteen, although he subsequently proved himself better than most of the other forwards in it, and had to play in House games every day. Once a week a House game is a thundering good game, but more often it is one-sided, and for a person who really cares for footer, such afternoons are very dull. On the Upper or Lower a good game was certain; the captain of the school always chose sides that would be fairly level. But House sides were different. Nothing depended on their results. Sometimes bloods would play, sometimes not; it was a toss up. And worst of all, Simonds was abominably slack. For a few weeks the House thought it rather funny, and the smaller members of the House secretly rejoiced; but the games-loving set waxed furious.

  “Damn it all,” said Mansell, “the man’s here to coach us, not to sit in his study swating up dates!”

  The result of it was that Mansell and his friends got filled with an enormous sense of their own importance; they considered themselves the only people in the House who were keen. And they let the rest of the House know it. They groused about “the great days of Lovelace,” and gave people like Rudd a most godless time. There is no more thoroughly self-satisfied person than the second-class athlete; and when he also imagines himself an Isaiah preaching repentance, he wants kicking badly. Unfortunately no one kicked Gordon or Lovelace; and they went on their way contented with themselves, though with no one else.

  * * * * *

  One of the easiest ways of discovering a person’s social status at school is by watching his behaviour in the tuck-shop. The tuck-shop or “Toe,” as it is generally called, is a long wooden building with corrugated iron roof, situated just opposite Buller’s house, not far from the new buildings. It is divided by a wooden partition into two shops; at each end of the outer shop run two counters. On the right-hand counter, which is connected with a small kitchen, cakes, muffins and sausages are sold; on the left-hand side there are sweets and fruit. The inner and larger room is filled with tables, and round the room are photographs of all the school teams. At the far end, in huge green frames, are hung photographs of the two great Fernhurst Fifteens who went through the season without losing a match. The “Toe” is the noisiest place in the whole school. It is superintended by five waitresses, and they have a very poor time of it.

  The real blood is easily recognised. He strolls in as if he had taken a mortgage on the place, swaggers into the inner room, puts down his books on the top table in the right-hand corner—only the bloods sit here—and demands a cup of tea and a macaroon. A special counter has been made by the bloods’ table, so that the great men can order what they want without going back into the outer shop. No real blood ever makes a noise in the outer shop. When he is once inside the inner shop, however, he immediately lets everyone know it. If he sees anyone he knows, he bawls out:

  “I say, have you prepared this stuff for Christy?”

  The person asked never has.

  “Nor have I. Rot, I call it.”

  No blood is ever known to have prepared anything.

  The big man then sits down. If a friend of his is anywhere about, he flings a lump of sugar at him. When he gets up he knocks over at least one chair. He then strolls out, observing the same magnificent dignity in the outer shop. No one can mistake him.

  But the only other person who makes no row in the outer shop is the small boy, who creeps in, and creeps out, unnoticed. Everyone with any claim to greatness asserts his presence loudly. The chief figures at this time were the junior members of Buller’s, and especially the two Hazlitts. Their elder brother was the school winger, and an important person; but they had done nothing but make a noise during their two years at Fernhurst. Athleticism had had a disastrous effect on them. Because their house had won the Thirds, Two Cock and Three Cock, they thought themselves gods. In the tuck-shop they acted as avenging angels sent to punish a wicked world. Their chief amusement was to see a person leaning over a counter, kick his backside when he was not looking, and then run away. It was their class that were the real nuisance in the “Toe.” They persecuted the girls in charge most damnably. Very often only one girl was in charge. The younger Hazlitt would at once seat himself on the other counter and shriek out:

  “Nellie, when are you coming over here? I shall bag these sweets if you don’t buck up.” He would then seize a huge glass jar of peppermints, and roll it along the zinc counter.

&
nbsp; “Oh, Mr Hazlitt, do leave that alone,” the wretched Nellie would implore. But it was no use. When there was a big crowd waiting to be served, the Hazlitt brethren would take knives and beat on the zinc counter, shouting out: “Nellie, come here!” They were a thoroughly objectionable pair. Whenever Mansell saw them, he kicked them hard, and they got rather frightened of the School House after a bit.

  It is not to be thought, however, that the behaviour of the School House was exemplary. Mansell usually kicked up an almighty row, but he left “Nellie” alone. He was not going to lower himself to the Hazlitt level.

  It is an amazing thing that the half-blood very rarely gets into a row; and yet he always talks as if expulsion hung over his head. Probably he thinks it draws attention to himself. Mansell would always enter the shop in exactly the same way; he banged his books on the counter and, sighting Hunter, fired off at once.

  “I say, look here, give me a con. I am in the hell of a hole. I prepared the wrong stuff for old Claremont, and the man’s getting awfully sick with me; he may report me to the Chief. Do help me out!”

  “Sorry, old cock,” said Hunter, “but I specialise in stinks!”

  “Oh, do you! Well, I suppose I shall have to chance it; that’s all. He may not shove me on.”

  The small boys thought Mansell’s daring very fine. But strangely enough, although he was always in a state of fearful agitation, he had so far singularly managed to avoid getting reported. But still it kept up appearances to talk a lot.

  Gordon, of course, had to be fairly quiet in the tuck-shop. He was not yet known among the school in general; and it was only in Buller’s that small boys gave tongue in the tuck-shop. But then Buller’s were, in their own opinion, to the rest of the School as Rome was to Italy. Fernhurst was merely a province of Buller’s. They kept this view to themselves, however. “The Bull” would have dealt very summarily with such assumptions.

  And so, when Lovelace and Tester and Mansell were there Gordon was generally to be found contributing his share to the general disorder, but when alone, he sat quite quietly with Collins and Foster. He rather longed for the day when he could start a row all on his own. A strange ambition for any candidate for immortality!