by Roald Dahl
Suddenly there was an explosion up on the dais. Captain Hardcastle had leapt to his feet and was pointing at me and shouting, ‘You’re talking! I saw you talking! Don’t try to deny it! I distinctly saw you talking behind your hand!’
I sat there frozen with terror.
Every boy stopped working and looked up.
Captain Hardcastle’s face had gone from red to deep purple and he was twitching violently.
‘Do you deny you were talking?’ he shouted.
‘No, sir, no, b-but…’
‘And do you deny you were trying to cheat? Do you deny you were asking Dobson for help with your work?’
‘N-no, sir, I wasn’t. I wasn’t cheating.’
‘Of course you were cheating! Why else, may I ask, would you be speaking to Dobson? I take it you were not inquiring after his health?’
It is worth reminding the reader once again of my age. I was not a self-possessed lad of fourteen. Nor was I twelve or even ten years old. I was nine and a half, and at that age one is ill equipped to tackle a grown-up man with flaming orange hair and a violent temper. One can do little else but stutter.
‘I… I have broken my nib, sir,’ I whispered. ‘I… I was asking Dobson if he c-could lend me one, sir.’
‘You are lying!’ cried Captain Hardcastle, and there was triumph in his voice. ‘I always knew you were a liar! And a cheat as well!’
‘All I w-wanted was a nib, sir.’
‘I’d shut up if I were you!’ thundered the voice on the dais. ‘You’ll only get yourself into deeper trouble! I am giving you a Stripe!’
These were words of doom. A Stripe! I am giving you a Stripe! All around, I could feel a kind of sympathy reaching out to me from every boy in the school, but nobody moved or made a sound.
Here I must explain the system of Stars and Stripes that we had at St Peter’s. For exceptionally good work, you could be awarded a Quarter-Star, and a red dot was made with crayon beside your name on the notice-board. If you got four Quarter-Stars, a red line was drawn through the four dots indicating that you had completed your Star.
For exceptionally poor work or bad behaviour, you were given a Stripe, and that automatically meant a thrashing from the Headmaster.
Every master had a book of Quarter-Stars and a book of Stripes, and these had to be filled in and signed and torn out exactly like cheques from a cheque book. The Quarter-Stars were pink, the Stripes were a fiendish, blue-green colour. The boy who received a Star or a Stripe would pocket it until the following morning after prayers, when the Headmaster would call upon anyone who had been given one or the other to come forward in front of the whole school and hand it in. Stripes were considered so dreadful that they were not given very often. In any one week it was unusual for more than two or three boys to receive Stripes.
And now Captain Hardcastle was giving one to me. ‘Come here,’ he ordered.
I got up from my desk and walked to the dais. He already had his book of Stripes on the desk and was filling one out. He was using red ink, and along the line where it said Reason, he wrote, Talking in Prep, trying to cheat and lying. He signed it and tore it out of the book. Then, taking plenty of time, he filled in the counterfoil. He picked up the terrible piece of green-blue paper and waved it in my direction but he didn’t look up. I took it out of his hand and walked back to my desk. The eyes of the whole school followed my progress.
For the remainder of Prep I sat at my desk and did nothing. Having no nib, I was unable to write another word about ‘The Life Story of a Penny’, but I was made to finish it the next afternoon instead of playing games.
The following morning, as soon as prayers were over, the Headmaster called for Quarter-Stars and Stripes. I was the only boy to go up. The assistant masters were sitting on very upright chairs on either side of the Headmaster, and I caught a glimpse of Captain Hardcastle, arms folded across his chest, head twitching, the milky-blue eyes watching me intently, the look of triumph still glimmering on his face. I handed in my Stripe. The Headmaster took it and read the writing. ‘Come and see me in my study’, he said, ‘as soon as this is over.’
Five minutes later, walking on my toes and trembling terribly, I passed through the green baize door and entered the sacred precincts where the Headmaster lived. I knocked on his study door.
‘Enter!’
I turned the knob and went into this large square room with bookshelves and easy chairs and the gigantic desk topped in red leather straddling the far corner. The Headmaster was sitting behind the desk holding my Stripe in his fingers. ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’ he asked me, and the white shark’s teeth flashed dangerously between his lips.
‘I didn’t lie, sir,’ I said. ‘I promise I didn’t. And I wasn’t trying to cheat.’
‘Captain Hardcastle says you were doing both,’ the Headmaster said. ‘Are you calling Captain Hardcastle a liar?’
‘No, sir. Oh no, sir.’
‘I wouldn’t if I were you.’
‘I had broken my nib, sir, and I was asking Dobson if he could lend me another.’
‘That is not what Captain Hardcastle says. He says you were asking for help with your essay.’
‘Oh no, sir, I wasn’t. I was a long way away from Captain Hardcastle and I was only whispering. I don’t think he could have heard what I said, sir.’
‘So you are calling him a liar.’
‘Oh no, sir! No, sir! I would never do that!’
It was impossible for me to win against the Headmaster. What I would like to have said was, ‘Yes, sir, if you really want to know, sir, I am calling Captain Hardcastle a liar because that’s what he is!’, but it was out of the question. I did, however, have one trump card left to play, or I thought I did.
‘You could ask Dobson, sir,’ I whispered.
‘Ask Dobson?’ he cried. ‘Why should I ask Dobson?’
‘He would tell you what I said, sir.’
‘Captain Hardcastle is an officer and a gentleman,’ the Headmaster said. ‘He has told me what happened. I hardly think I want to go round asking some silly little boy if Captain Hardcastle is speaking the truth.’
I kept silent.
‘For talking in Prep,’ the Headmaster went on, ‘for trying to cheat and for lying, I am going to give you six strokes of the cane.’
He rose from his desk and crossed over to the corner-cupboard on the opposite side of the study. He reached up and took from the top of it three very thin yellow canes, each with the bent-over handle at one end. For a few seconds, he held them in his hands examining them with some care, then he selected one and replaced the other two on top of the cupboard.
‘Bend over.’
The cane again
I was frightened of that cane. There is no small boy in the world who wouldn’t be. It wasn’t simply an instrument for beating you. It was a weapon for wounding. It lacerated the skin. It caused severe black and scarlet bruising that took three weeks to disappear, and all the time during those three weeks, you could feel your heart beating along the wounds.
I tried once more, my voice slightly hysterical now. ‘I didn’t do it, sir! I swear I’m telling the truth!’
‘Be quiet and bend over! Over there! And touch your toes!’
Very slowly, I bent over. Then I shut my eyes and braced myself for the first stroke.
Crack! It was like a rifle shot! With a very hard stroke of the cane on one’s buttocks, the time-lag before you feel any pain is about four seconds. Thus, the experienced caner will always pause between strokes to allow the agony to reach its peak.
So for a few seconds after the first crack I felt virtually nothing. Then suddenly came the frightful searing agonizing unbearable burning across the buttocks, and as it reached its highest and most excruciating point, the second crack came down. I clutched hold of my ankles as tight as I could and I bit into my lower lip. I was determined not to make a sound, for that would only give the executioner greater satisfaction.
Crack!…
Five seconds pause.
Crack!… Another pause.
Crack!… And another pause.
I was counting the strokes, and as the sixth one hit me, I knew I was going to survive in silence.
‘That will do,’ the voice behind me said.
I straightened up and clutched my backside as hard as I possibly could with both hands. This is always the instinctive and automatic reaction. The pain is so frightful you try to grab hold of it and tear it away, and the tighter you squeeze, the more it helps.
I did not look at the Headmaster as I hopped across the thick red carpet towards the door. The door was closed and nobody was about to open it for me, so for a couple of seconds I had to let go of my bottom with one hand to turn the door-knob. Then I was out and hopping around in the hallway of the private sanctum.
Directly across the hall from the Headmaster’s study was the assistant masters’ Common Room. They were all in there now waiting to spread out to their respective classrooms, but what I couldn’t help noticing, even in my agony, was that this door was open.
Why was it open?
Had it been left that way on purpose so that they could all hear more clearly the sound of the cane from across the hall?
Of course it had. And I felt quite sure that it was Captain Hardcastle who had opened it. I pictured him standing in there among his colleagues snorting with satisfaction at every stinging stroke.
Small boys can be very comradely when a member of their community has got into trouble, and even more so when they feel an injustice has been done. When I returned to the classroom, I was surrounded on all sides by sympathetic faces and voices, but one particular incident has always stayed with me. A boy of my own age called Highton was so violently incensed by the whole affair that he said to me before lunch that day, ‘You don’t have a father. I do. I am going to write to my father and tell him what has happened and he’ll do something about it.’
‘He couldn’t do anything,’ I said.
‘Oh yes he could,’ Highton said. ‘And what’s more he will. My father won’t let them get away with this.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘He’s in Greece,’ Highton said. ‘In Athens. But that won’t make any difference.’
Then and there, little Highton sat down and wrote to the father he admired so much, but of course nothing came of it. It was nevertheless a touching and generous gesture from one small boy to another and I have never forgotten it.
Little Ellis and the boil
During my third term at St Peter’s, I got flu and was put to bed in the Sick Room, where the dreaded Matron reigned supreme. In the next bed to mine was a seven-year-old boy called Ellis, whom I liked a lot. Ellis was there because he had an immense and angry-looking boil on the inside of his thigh. I saw it. It was as big as a plum and about the same colour.
One morning, in came the doctor to examine us, and sailing along beside him was the Matron. Her mountainous bosom was enclosed in a starched white envelope, and because of this she somehow reminded me of a painting I had once seen of a four-masted schooner in full canvas running before the wind.
‘What’s his temperature today?’ the doctor asked, pointing at me.
‘Just over a hundred, doctor,’ the Matron told him.
‘He’s been up here long enough,’ the doctor said. ‘Send him back to school tomorrow.’ Then he turned to Ellis.
‘Take off your pyjama trousers,’ he said. He was a very small doctor, with steel-rimmed spectacles and a bald head. He frightened the life out of me.
Ellis removed his pyjama trousers. The doctor bent forward and looked at the boil. ‘Hmmm,’ he said. ‘That’s a nasty one, isn’t it? We’re going to have to do something about that, aren’t we, Ellis?’
‘What are you going to do?’ Ellis asked, trembling.
‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ the doctor said. ‘Just lie back and take no notice of me.’
Little Ellis lay back with his head on the pillow. The doctor had put his bag on the floor at the end of Ellis’s bed, and now he knelt down on the floor and opened the bag. Ellis, even when he lifted his head from the pillow, couldn’t see what the doctor was doing there. He was hidden by the end of the bed. But I saw everything. I saw him take out a sort of scalpel which had a long steel handle and a small pointed blade. He crouched below the end of Ellis’s bed, holding the scalpel in his right hand.
‘Give me a large towel, Matron,’ he said.
The Matron handed him a towel.
Still crouching low and hidden from little Ellis’s view by the end of the bed, the doctor unfolded the towel and spread it over the palm of his left hand. In his right hand he held the scalpel.
Ellis was frightened and suspicious. He started raising himself up on his elbows to get a better look. ‘Lie down, Ellis,’ the doctor said, and even as he spoke, he bounced up from the end of the bed like a jack-in-the-box and flung the outspread towel straight into Ellis’s face. Almost in the same second, he thrust his right arm forward and plunged the point of the scalpel deep into the centre of the enormous boil. He gave the blade a quick twist and then withdrew it again before the wretched boy had had time to disentangle his head from the towel.
Ellis screamed. He never saw the scalpel going in and he never saw it coming out, but he felt it all right and he screamed like a stuck pig. I can see him now struggling to get the towel off his head, and when he emerged the tears were streaming down his cheeks and his huge brown eyes were staring at the doctor with a look of utter and total outrage.
‘Don’t make such a fuss about nothing,’ the Matron said.
‘Put a dressing on it, Matron,’ the doctor said, ‘with plenty of mag sulph paste.’ And he marched out of the room.
I couldn’t really blame the doctor. I thought he handled things rather cleverly. Pain was something we were expected to endure. Anaesthetics and pain-killing injections were not much used in those days. Dentists, in particular, never bothered with them. But I doubt very much if you would entirely happy today if a doctor threw a towel in your face and jumped on you with a knife.
Goat’s tobacco
When I was about nine, the ancient half-sister got engaged to be married. The man of her choice was a young English doctor and that summer he came with us to Norway.
Manly lover and ancient half sister (in background)
Romance was floating in the air like moondust and the two lovers, for some reason we younger ones could never understand, did not seem to be very keen on us tagging along with them. They went out in the boat alone. They climbed the rocks alone. They even had breakfast alone. We resented this. As a family we had always done everything together and we didn’t see why the ancient half-sister
should suddenly decide to do things differently even if she had become engaged. We were inclined to blame the male lover for disrupting the calm of our family life, and it was inevitable that he would have to suffer for it sooner or later.
The male lover was a great pipe-smoker. The disgusting smelly pipe was never out of his mouth except when he was eating or swimming. We even began to wonder whether he removed it when he was kissing his betrothed. He gripped the stem of the pipe in the most manly fashion between his strong white teeth and kept it there while talking to you. This annoyed us. Surely it was more polite to take it out and speak properly.
One day, we all went in our little motor-boat to an island we had never been to before, and for once the ancient half-sister and the manly lover decided to come with us. We chose this particular island because we saw some goats on it. They were climbing about on the rocks and we thought it would be fun to go and visit them. But when we landed, we found that the goats were totally wild and we couldn’t get near them. So we gave up trying to make friends with them and simply sat around on the smooth rocks in our bathing costumes, enjoying the lovely sun.
The manly lover was filling his pipe. I happened to be watching him as he very carefully packed the tobacco into the bowl from a yellow oilskin
pouch. He had just finished doing this and was about to light up when the ancient half-sister called on him to come swimming. So he put down the pipe and off he went.
I stared at the pipe that was lying there on the rocks. About twelve inches away from it, I saw a little heap of dried goat’s droppings, each one small and round like a pale brown berry, and at that point, an interesting idea began to sprout in my mind. I picked up the pipe and knocked all the tobacco out of it. I then took the goat’s droppings and teased them with my fingers until they were nicely shredded. Very gently I poured these shredded droppings into the bowl of the pipe, packing them down with my thumb just as the manly lover always did it. When that was done, I placed a thin layer of real tobacco over the top. The entire family was watching me as I did this. Nobody said a word, but I could sense a glow of approval all round. I replaced the pipe on the rock, and all of us sat back to await the return of the victim. The whole lot of us were in this together now, even my mother. I had drawn them into the plot simply by letting them see what I was doing. It was a silent, rather dangerous family conspiracy.
Back came the manly lover, dripping wet from the sea, chest out, strong and virile, healthy and sunburnt. ‘Great swim!’ he announced to the world. ‘Splendid water! Terrific stuff!’ He towelled himself vigorously, making the muscles of his biceps ripple, then he sat down on the rocks and reached for his pipe.
Nine pairs of eyes watched him intently. Nobody giggled to give the game away. We were trembling with anticipation, and a good deal of the suspense was caused by the fact that none of us knew just what was going to happen.
The manly lover put the pipe between his strong white teeth and struck a match. He held the flame over the bowl and sucked. The tobacco ignited and glowed, and the lover’s head was enveloped in clouds of blue smoke. ‘Ah-h-h,’ he said, blowing smoke through his nostrils. ‘There’s nothing like a good pipe after a bracing swim.’
