by Roald Dahl
Still we waited. We could hardly bear the suspense. The sister who was seven couldn’t bear it at all. ‘What sort of tobacco do you put in that thing?’ she asked with superb innocence.
‘Navy Cut,’ the male lover answered. ‘Player’s Navy Cut. It’s the best there is. These Norwegians use all sorts of disgusting scented tobaccos, but I wouldn’t touch them.’
‘I didn’t know they had different tastes,’ the small sister went on.
‘Of course they do,’ the manly lover said. ‘All tobaccos are different to the discriminating pipe-smoker. Navy Cut is clean and unadulterated. It’s a man’s smoke.’ The man seemed to go out of his way to use long words like discriminating and unadulterated. We hadn’t the foggiest what they meant.
The ancient half-sister, fresh from her swim and now clothed in a towel bathrobe, came and sat herself close to her manly lover. Then the two of them started giving each other those silly little glances and soppy smiles that made us all feel sick. They were far too occupied with one another to notice the awful tension that had settled over our group. They didn’t even notice that every face in the crowd was turned towards them. They had sunk once again into their lovers’ world where little children did not exist.
The sea was calm, the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day.
Then all of a sudden, the manly lover let out a piercing scream and his whole body shot four feet into the air. His pipe flew out of his mouth and went clattering over the rocks, and the second scream he gave was so shrill and loud that all the seagulls on the island rose up in alarm. His features were twisted like those of a person undergoing severe torture, and his skin had turned the colour of snow. He began spluttering and choking and spewing and hawking and acting generally like a man with some serious internal injury. He was completely speechless.
We stared at him, enthralled.
The ancient half-sister, who must have thought she was about to lose her future husband for ever, was pawing at him and thumping him on the back and crying, ‘Darling! Darling! What’s happening to you? Where does it hurt? Get the boat! Start the engine! We must rush him to a hospital quickly!’ She seemed to have forgotten that there wasn’t a hospital within fifty miles.
‘I’ve been poisoned!’ spluttered the manly lover. ‘It’s got into my lungs! It’s in my chest! My chest is on fire! My stomach’s going up in flames!’
‘Help me get him into the boat! Quick!’ cried the ancient half-sister, gripping him under the armpits. ‘Don’t just sit there staring! Come and help!’
‘No, no, no!’ cried the now not-so-manly lover. ‘Leave me alone! I need air! Give me air!’ He lay back and breathed in deep draughts of splendid Norwegian ocean air, and in another minute or so, he was sitting up again and was on the way to recovery.
‘What in the world came over you?’ asked the ancient half-sister, clasping his hands tenderly in hers.
‘I can’t imagine,’ he murmured. ‘I simply can’t imagine.’ His face was as still and white as virgin snow and his hands were trembling. ‘There must be a reason for it,’ he added. ‘There’s got to be a reason.’
‘I know the reason!’ shouted the seven-year-old sister, screaming with laughter. ‘I know what it was!’
‘What was it?’ snapped the ancient one. ‘What have you been up to? Tell me at once!’
‘It’s his pipe!’ shouted the small sister, still convulsed with laughter.
‘What’s wrong with my pipe?’ said the manly lover.
‘You’ve been smoking goat’s tobacco!’ cried the small sister.
It took a few moments for the full meaning of these words to dawn upon the two lovers, but when it did, and when the terrible anger began to show itself on the manly lover’s face, and when he started to rise slowly and menacingly to his feet, we all sprang up and ran for our lives and jumped off the rocks into the deep water.
Repton and Shell, 1929–36 (age 13–20)
Getting dressed for the big school
When I was twelve, my mother said to me, ‘I’ve entered you for Marlborough and Repton. Which would you like to go to?’
Both were famous Public Schools, but that was all I knew about them. ‘Repton,’ I said. ‘I’ll go to Repton.’ It was an easier word to say than Marlborough.
‘Very well,’ my mother said. ‘You shall go to Repton.’
We were living in Kent then, in a place called Bexley. Repton was up in the Midlands, near Derby, and some 140 miles away to the north. That was of no consequence. There were plenty of trains. Nobody was taken to school by car in those days. We were put on the train.
Alfhild, me, Asta, Else and dogs. Tenby.
I was exactly thirteen in September 1929 when the time came for me to go to Repton. On the day of my departure, I had first of all to get dressed for the part. I had been to London with my mother the week before to buy the school clothes, and I remember how shocked I was when I saw the outfit I was expected to wear.
‘I can’t possibly go about in those!’ I cried. ‘Nobody wears things like that!’
‘Are you sure you haven’t made a mistake?’ my mother said to the shop assistant.
‘If he’s going to Repton, madam, he must wear these clothes,’ the assistant said firmly.
And now this amazing fancy-dress was all laid out on my bed waiting to be put on. ‘Put it on,’ my mother said. ‘Hurry up or you’ll miss the train.’
‘I’ll look like a complete idiot,’ I said. My mother went out of the room and left me to it. With immense reluctance, I began to dress myself.
First there was a white shirt with a detachable white collar. This collar was unlike any other collar I had seen. It was as stiff as a piece of perspex. At the front, the stiff points of the collar were bent over to make a pair of wings, and the whole thing was so tall that the points of the wings, as I discovered later, rubbed against the underneath of my chin. It was known as a butterfly collar.
To attach the butterfly collar to the shirt you needed a back stud and a front stud. I had never been through this rigmarole before. I must do this properly, I told myself. So first I put the back stud into the back of the collar-band of the shirt. Then I tried to attach the back of the collar to the back stud, but the collar was so stiff I couldn’t get the stud through the slit. I decided to soften it with spit. I put the edge of the collar into my mouth and sucked the starch away. It worked. The stud went through the slit and the back of the collar was now attached to the back of the shirt.
I inserted the front stud into one side of the front of the shirt and slipped the shirt over my head. With the help of a mirror, I now set about pushing the top of the front stud through the first of the two slits in the front of the collar. It wouldn’t go. The slit was so small and stiff and starchy that nothing would go through it. I took the shirt off and put both the front slits of the collar into my mouth and chewed them until they were soft. The starch didn’t taste of anything. I put the shirt back on again and at last I was able to get the front stud through the collar-slits.
Around the collar but underneath the butterfly wings, I tied a black tie, using an ordinary tie-knot.
Then came the trousers and the braces. The trousers were black with thin pinstriped grey lines running down them. I buttoned the braces on to the trousers, six buttons in all, then I put on the trousers and adjusted the braces to the correct length by sliding two brass clips up and down.
I put on a brand new pair of black shoes and laced them up.
Now for the waistcoat. This was also black and it had twelve buttons down the front and two little waistcoat pockets on either side, one above the other. I put it on and did up the buttons, starting at the top and working down. I was glad I didn’t have to chew each of those button–holes to get the buttons through them.
All this was bad enough for a boy who had never before worn anything more elaborate than a pair of shorts and a blazer. But the jacket put the lid on it. It wasn’t actually a jacket, it was a sort of tail-coat, and it was withou
t a doubt the most ridiculous garment I had ever seen. Like the waistcoat, it was jet black and made of a heavy serge-like material. In the front it was cut away so that the two sides met only at one point, about halfway down the waistcoat. Here there was a single button and this had to be done up.
From the button downwards, the lines of the coat separated and curved away behind the legs of the wearer and came together again at the backs of the knees, forming a pair of ‘tails’. These tails were separated by a slit and when you walked about they flapped against your legs. I put the thing
on and did up the front button. Feeling like an undertaker’s apprentice in a funeral parlour, I crept downstairs.
My sisters shrieked with laughter when I appeared. ‘He can’t go out in those!’ they cried. ‘He’ll be arrested by the police!’
‘Put your hat on,’ my mother said, handing me a stiff wide-brimmed straw-hat with a blue and black band around it. I put it on and did my best to look dignified. The sisters fell all over the room laughing.
My mother got me out of the house before I lost my nerve completely and together we walked through the village to Bexley station. My mother was going to accompany me to London and see me on to the Derby train, but she had been told that on no account should she travel farther than that. I had only a small suitcase to carry. My trunk had been sent on ahead labelled ‘Luggage in Advance’.
‘Nobody’s taking the slightest notice of you,’ my mother said as we walked through Bexley High Street.
And curiously enough nobody was.
‘I have learnt one thing about England,’ my mother went on. ‘It is a country where men love to wear uniforms and eccentric clothes. Two hundred years ago their clothes were even more eccentric then they are today. You can consider yourself lucky you don’t have to wear a wig on your head and ruffles on your sleeves.’
‘I still feel an ass,’ I said.
‘Everyone who looks at you’, my mother said, ‘knows that you are going away to a Public School. All English Public Schools have their own different crazy uniforms. People will be thinking how lucky you are to be going to one of those famous places.’
We took the train from Bexley to Charing Cross and then went by taxi to Euston Station. At Euston, I was put on the train for Derby with a lot of other boys who all wore the same ridiculous clothes as me, and away I went.
Beagling, Repton 1930.
Boazers
At Repton, prefects were never called prefects. They were called Boazers, and they had the power of life and death over us junior boys. They could summon us down in our pyjamas at night-time and thrash us for leaving just one football sock on the floor of the changing-room when it should have been hung up on a peg. A Boazer could thrash us for a hundred and one other piddling little misdemeanours – for burning his toast at tea-time, for failing to dust his study properly, for failing to get his study fire burning in spite of spending half your pocket money on firelighters, for being late at roll-call, for talking in evening Prep, for forgetting to change into house-shoes at six o’clock. The list was endless.
‘Four with the dressing-gown on or three with it off?’ the Boazer would say to you in the changing-room late at night.
Others in the dormitory had told you what to answer to this question. ‘Four with it on,’ you mumbled, trembling.
This Boazer was famous for the speed of his strokes. Most of them paused between each stroke to prolong the operation, but Williamson, the great footballer, cricketer and athlete, always delivered his strokes in a series of swift back and forth movements without any pause between them at all. Four strokes would rain down upon your bottom so fast that it was all over in four seconds.
A ritual took place in the dormitory after each beating. The victim was required to stand in the middle of the room and lower his pyjama trousers so that the damage could be inspected. Half a dozen experts would crowd round you and express their opinions in highly professional language.
‘What a super job.’
‘He’s got every single one in the same place!’
‘Crikey! Nobody could tell you had more than one, except for the mess!’
‘Boy, that Williamson’s got a terrific eye!’
‘Of course he’s got a terrific eye! Why d’you think he’s a Cricket Teamer?’
‘There’s no wet blood though! If you had had just one more he’d have got some blood out!’
‘Through a dressing-gown, too! It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it!’
‘Most Boazers couldn’t get a result like that without a dressing-gown!’
‘You must have tremendously thin skin! Even Williamson couldn’t have done that to ordinary skin!’
Did he use the long one or the short one?
‘Hang on! Don’t pull them up yet! I’ve got to see this again!’
And I would stand there, slightly bemused by this cool clinical approach. Once, I was still standing in the middle of the dormitory with my pyjama trousers around my knees when Williamson came through the door. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ he said, knowing very well exactly what I was doing.
‘N-nothing,’ I stammered. ‘N-nothing at all.’
‘Pull those pyjamas up and get into bed immediately!’ he ordered, but I noticed that as he turned away to go out of the door, he craned his head ever so slightly to one side to catch a glimpse of my bare bottom and his own handiwork. I was certain I detected a little glimmer of pride around the edges of his mouth before he closed the door behind him.
The Headmaster
And again!
The Headmaster, while I was at Repton, struck me as being a rather shoddy bandy-legged little fellow with a big bald head and lots of energy but not much charm. Mind you, I never did know him well because in all those months and years I was at the school, I doubt whether he addressed more than six sentences to me altogether. So perhaps it was wrong of me to form a judgement like that.
What is so interesting about this Headmaster is that he became a famous person later on. At the end of my third year, he was suddenly appointed Bishop of Chester and off he went to live in a palace by the River Dee. I remember at the time trying to puzzle out how on earth a person could suddenly leap from being a schoolmaster to becoming a Bishop all in one jump, but there were bigger puzzles to come.
From Chester, he was soon promoted again to become Bishop of London, and from there, after not all that many years, he bounced up the ladder once more to get the top job of them all, Archbishop of Canterbury! And not long after that it was he himself who had the task of crowning our present Queen in Westminster Abbey with half the world watching him on television. Well, well, well! And this was the man who used to deliver the most vicious beatings to the boys under his care!
By now I am sure you will be wondering why I lay so much emphasis upon school beatings in these pages. The answer is that I cannot help it. All through my school life I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed literally to wound other boys, and sometimes quite severely. I couldn’t get over it. I never have got over it. It would, of course, be unfair to suggest that all masters were constantly beating the daylights out of all the boys in those days. They weren’t. Only a few did so, but that was quite enough to leave a lasting impression of horror upon me. It left another more physical impression upon me as well. Even today, whenever I have to sit for any length of time on a hard bench or chair, I begin to feel my heart beating along the old lines that the cane made on my bottom some fifty-five years ago.
There is nothing wrong with a few quick sharp tickles on the rump. They probably do a naughty boy a lot of good. But this Headmaster we were talking about wasn’t just tickling you when he took out his cane to deliver a flogging. He never flogged me, thank goodness, but I was given a vivid description of one of these ceremonies by my best friend at Repton, whose name was Michael. Michael was ordered to take down his trousers and kneel on the Headmaster’s sofa with the top half of his body hanging over one end of the sofa
. The great man then gave him one terrific crack. After that, there was a pause. The cane was put down and the Headmaster began filling his pipe from a tin of tobacco. He also started to lecture the kneeling boy about sin and wrongdoing. Soon, the cane was picked up again and a second tremendous crack was administered upon the trembling buttocks. Then the pipe-filling business and the lecture went on for maybe another thirty seconds. Then came the third crack of the cane. Then the instrument of torture was put once more upon the table and a box of matches was produced. A match was struck and applied to the pipe. The pipe failed to light properly. A fourth stroke was delivered, with the lecture continuing. This slow and fearsome process went on until ten terrible strokes had been delivered, and all the time, over the pipe-lighting and the match-striking, the lecture on evil and wrongdoing and sinning and misdeeds and malpractice went on without a stop. It even went on as the strokes were being administered. At the end of it all, a basin, a sponge and a small clean towel were produced by the Headmaster, and the victim was told to wash away the blood before pulling up his trousers.
Do you wonder then that this man’s behaviour used to puzzle me tremendously? He was an ordinary clergyman at that time as well as being Headmaster, and I would sit in the dim light of the school chapel and listen to him preaching about the Lamb of God and about Mercy and Forgiveness and all the rest of it and my young mind would become totally confused. I knew very well that only the night before this preacher had shown neither Forgiveness nor Mercy in flogging some small boy who had broken the rules.
So what was it all about? I used to ask myself.
Did they preach one thing and practise another, these men of God?
And if someone had told me at the time that this flogging clergyman was one day to become the Archbishop of Canterbury, I would never have believed it.
