Cobra in the Bath

by Miles Morland

  Women were unlikely to play much of a part in your life when you were at the age when you most fancied them; fancying other chaps was fine as long as it was done in a manly way without nancying about. Above all you needed the self-confidence that came from knowing you were part of a superior race and that belonging to that race made you, a twenty-four-year-old Englishman, superior to every darkie in your domain, be he mahout or maharajah. The Spartans had had a similar system 2,500 years earlier.

  The Stubbington Tug o’ War

  Radley and the other Victorian foundations were brilliant at turning out people who met these requirements, but by the time I went there in 1957, after five years of beatings and boredom at Stubbington, England was casting off its empire as quickly as it could. No one had told the public schools. They went on training people to go out and govern the darkies for years after there were no darkies left to govern. This training was not well suited to a late-twentieth-century life working for, say, ICI or British Leyland, which may be why ICI and British Leyland went bust when they were exposed to competition from German, American and Japanese companies whose managers had not had the benefit of an English public-school education.

  However, the older schools – Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Harrow – did admit the importance of things beyond getting your cricket colours. Poets and pianists and even aesthetes could flourish at these schools. George Orwell, the reluctant Etonian, wrote in Burmese Days, ‘The chief virtue of the great public schools, with their traditions of High Anglicanism, cricket and Latin verses, is their atmosphere of literary scholarship and masters from whom one absorbs wisdom unawares.’ Radley aped the High Anglicanism, the cricket and the Latin verses (we also put on a Greek play every year) but lacked the atmosphere of literary scholarship and, for the most part, lacked teachers from whom we might absorb wisdom unawares.

  At Radley poets, pianists and aesthetes, although no one really knew what an aesthete was, were given a binning. A filthy metal dustbin was procured from under a sink and the victim pushed into it bum first, preferably wearing the suit he wore to matins on Sundays. Sour milk would be poured over him (sour milk was always available as every boy had a seldom-drunk third of a pint provided daily by the government until Mrs Thatcher stopped the practice), and then the bin would be rolled down a flight of stairs with the victim doubled up inside with only his head and feet sticking out. Injuries could and did result, following which the victim would stumble off to the infirmary to have his limbs bandaged and to explain how he had tripped and fallen down the stairs into a milk crate.

  The poets and the pianists got the most bullying, but bullying was an equal-opportunity activity at Radley, certainly in E Social. Radley, which aped Eton in many ways – we wore academic gowns and were ‘wet bobs’ or ‘dry bobs’ according to whether we rowed or played cricket – did not refer to its houses as houses. They were called socials, and our housemasters were social tutors. Everyone got bullied in their first year. For your first two years you lived in Social Hall, a communal room where some twenty boys had their lockers and did their prep. After that you graduated to a tiny study, which you shared with one other boy.

  Most of the serious bullying was done by second-year boys on first-year boys in Social Hall. In addition to binning – common to most socials – each social had its own specific methods of bullying dictated by its topography and equipment. In E Social, or Llewellyn-Jones’s, each social also being known by its tutor’s name, we had tabling, pushing a boy under the central table and assaulting him with billiard cues and broomsticks from all angles while he lay in a ball trying to protect his tenderer parts; piping, whereby boys would be made to hang from the burning-hot pipe that ran along the top of one side of Social Hall till their hands blistered; and a number of esoteric activities such as forcing a new boy to climb up the fire-escape ladder to the sub-tutor’s study and peer in. Mr Goldsmith, the sub-tutor, would look up from doing the football pools, rush to the window as the boy scampered down and lean out. ‘Boy, how dare you, you impertinent boy? Go and find Mr Llewellyn-Jones this instant and ask him to beat you.’ ‘Yes, sir.’

  Apart from bullying, beating and buggery were the two other things that distinguished Victorian public schools. Many of my tougher companions got beaten frequently and shrugged it off as a minor irritation. I got beaten frequently and hated it – both the pain, which could be acute, and the humiliation, which was absolute, of being forced to remain bent over an armchair while someone methodically and deliberately hit you with a cane.

  There were four types of beating. For minor offences you were caned by the head prefect of your house while the other house prefects looked on and laughed. For more serious offences committed in your social or which brought your social into disrepute, you were beaten by your social tutor. After the Reverend Llewellyn-Jones retired, David Goldsmith took over E Social. I have seldom disliked a man more. He was a small-minded sadist who would sit interviewing you for whatever sin you were alleged to have committed with two canes on his desk, a thick one, the Big Boy, and a more slender unnamed version.

  I was once summoned after evening chapel to his study after a house rugby match in which Goldsmith’s had played King’s. I had been conscripted as a second-row forward in Goldsmith’s under-fifteen XV.

  ‘Morland.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You know why you’re here, don’t you?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, boy.’

  Goldsmith had both canes on his desk and was fondling the Big Boy with his right hand while he twisted the forelock of his cropped head with his left. He always twisted his forelock when he got excited.

  ‘Do you remember what you shouted out on the rugger pitch today?’

  I had no idea what he was talking about but a feeling of dread began to creep over me. This was not going to have a happy ending for anyone other than David Goldsmith.

  ‘No, sir,’ I said with perfect honesty.

  ‘Bugger.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir? What?’

  ‘You shouted, “Bugger,” after you lost the ball and caused a scrum.’

  ‘No, sir, that can’t have been me. I never use that kind of language.’

  ‘Don’t argue with me, boy, or I shall have to use the Big Boy on you.’

  Goldsmith picked up the thick cane and twisted his forelock even more energetically.

  ‘No, sir, really, sir. I’m sure it can’t have been me. I mean there were a lot of people on the field, and everyone was shouting for the ball all the time. It must have been someone else.’

  ‘It was you. It was you. Don’t lie to me, boy. What would your parents say if they heard you use language like that? Huh?’

  ‘Well actually, sir, they frequently use language like that themselves. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Ha! There! And you say you never use words like that, but yet your parents do the whole time.’

  I had dug a trap for myself and fallen in.

  ‘No, sir. Believe me, I’d remember if I’d sworn on the rugby pitch, and I’m absolutely sure I didn’t.’

  ‘You leave me no option,’ said Goldsmith, leaning forward, eyes a-gleam. ‘I am forced to use the Big Boy. You have brought this on yourself. Go and bend over that chair in the corner.’

  The worst beating was from the Warden, as the headmaster was called. It was called a ‘flogging’ and usually administered on a bare bum. This was for capital offences such as drinking, smoking, or being caught in flagrante with another boy.

  For offences against school rather than house discipline you would be beaten by the senior prefect. That meant being summoned to Pups’ Study, the common room where the pups, the school prefects, lounged around waited on by fags. Each gradation of beating, head of social, social tutor and then Pups’ Study, was meant to be harder than the level below it, although Goldsmith took such pleasure in laying it on that any of his social would happily have chosen the worst Pups’ Study could hand ou
t over the Big Boy.

  Despite the numerous canings I had in my Radley career I was only once summoned to Pups’ Study. That was for an ‘offence on the river’, a serious matter at Radley, where rowing was next to godliness. In the winter term everyone played rugby, but in the Easter and summer terms the wet bobs were required to go out on the river for at least an hour every day. If you were hopeless at rowing, which I was, you went out by yourself in a little wooden clinker-built sculling boat called a fenny after a Major Fenwick, who had invented them.

  One freezing March day when the river was in spate from melting snow I sculled all the way upstream to Sandford Lock, a distance of almost two miles. Just below the lock a fork of the river branched left into the weir stream. A bridge crossed this stream. I thought it would be fun to nose the boat into it and up closer to the thundering waterfall and white water of the weir itself. As I edged the boat past the central pier supporting the bridge the current swept the fenny sideways and trapped it against the pier with half sticking out one side and half the other. The weight of the rushing water held the boat firm. The fenny had gone over on to its side when it hit the pier, and I had been tipped into the water. It was icy cold, but I was so busy trying to save myself and the fenny that I hardly noticed the temperature. Luckily I’m a strong swimmer so I had no fear of drowning, but I knew that if I let go I would be swept away, and that if I returned to the boathouse without the fenny I would be in serious trouble.

  I struggled for maybe twenty minutes to free the boat. This was made more awkward by the fact that the sculls were still in the rowlocks. I knew that if I freed them they would be lost downstream in the current. Suddenly there was a cracking noise; the boat broke in half and both bits shot off downstream. I was holding on to one and somehow managed to keep hold of that and kick myself over to the other half as we surfed down. I would not be able to keep hold of them for long. The water was raging; I was frozen to the core and exhausted after the battle to free the boat.

  By hard kicking I managed to get the two boat halves to a standing depth on the Radley side of the river and dragged them ashore. What to do now? I knew that leaving the pieces there would get me in trouble so I grabbed hold of the riggers of both halves and began slowly wading back to the boathouse. No one could blame me for getting caught in such a strong current and being thrown against the bridge. At least I would be congratulated for getting the pieces back. It was not beyond the skill of the school boatyard to put the boat back together.

  An hour or more later, as it was getting dark, I reached the boathouse. My teeth were chattering so hard I felt they could be heard in Abingdon and I was all but dead on my feet. I found Ron, the only boatman still on duty, and explained what had happened. He was not pleased. He asked my name but did not seem worried about the state I was in. We put on our rowing clothes every day at the school itself and then biked ‘in change’ the three miles or so down to the boathouse. Ron did not offer me a towel or ask if I’d like to get warm. I left him with the pieces of fenny and climbed on to my bike for three ice-cold uphill miles back to Radley.

  That evening as I left chapel I was accosted by Donald Legget, the captain of boats and a pup. I was told to present myself at Pups’ Study that evening after supper. I knocked on the door.

  ‘Enter.’

  I did. The senior prefect and the seven other pups were standing in a semicircle. Legget spoke. ‘Morland, you have been reported for returning Boat Club equipment in a different state to the way you took it out in.’

  ‘Yes, Legget. I’m very sorry. The current caught me unawares by Sandford Lock, and there was nothing I could do. It was too strong for me. I tried to save the boat but I couldn’t free it in that current. But I did manage to salvage the two pieces and bring them back for repair. I had to wade for two miles pulling them.’

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ said the senior prefect. ‘School equipment has been damaged thanks to your thoughtlessness, and you must now take your punishment. I’m going to give you eight strokes. Bend over that armchair.’

  I don’t know when beating stopped at Radley. Probably about the time that they realised that they were meant to be preparing pupils for the twentieth, not the nineteenth, century. The old clichés ‘It never did me any harm’ or ‘The little bleeders are the better for it’ did not resonate with me.

  The dons, as the masters at Radley were called, were a rum lot. None rummer than Cecil Gilbert. Cecil had been an outstanding cricketer and won his blue keeping wicket for Oxford. After Oxford he had gone to teach at Bradfield, where he coached the cricket first XI and soon became a housemaster. Bradfield, like Radley, was a place where housemasters were allowed to beat misbehaving boys. One day screams were heard from Cecil’s study. Some boys broke in, thinking someone might be in trouble, and indeed someone was. Cecil was beating one of the younger members of his house and had lost control of himself. Stroke after stroke was slashing down on the small boy, who was trying to defend himself against the onslaught. The boys pulled Cecil off and took away his cane.

  After this Bradfield asked Cecil to leave but no other action was taken. He was promptly snapped up by Radley to teach as head cricket coach. He was told that he would never be a housemaster or put in a position where he could beat boys. He was given a small eighteenth-century half-timbered house in the grounds of the school known as The Cottage, where he lived by himself.

  Two or three evenings a week he would ask the boys he favoured to dinner at The Cottage, usually by themselves. As a wet bob I was not one of his favourites, but he did ask me to dinner once. I must have been fifteen or sixteen at the time.

  Cecil greeted me: ‘Hello, Morland. Do come in. May I give you a glass of beer or maybe a sherry?’

  Alcohol was forbidden at Radley, and to be found drinking resulted in a certain trip to the warden and possible expulsion, but a blind eye was turned to supper with Cecil.

  ‘And how is that charming bwother of yours – Michael? Such an outstanding boy, a vewy fine cwicketer. In the navy now, I believe?’ Cecil had never mastered his ‘r’s.

  Michael, a brilliant cricketer, had been a special favourite of Cecil and a frequent diner at The Cottage.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Dinner was mushrooms on toast, followed by steak and then ice cream with chocolate sauce, all this cooked by Cecil, who had after years of eating his own cooking become bigger round the middle than he was up and down. He had centrally parted black hair which glistened with Jermyn Street brilliantine. He looked like Humpty Dumpty. Between courses he waddled into the tiny kitchen next door, still talking over his shoulder. Cecil made idle conversation about school events until the steak was on the table. Then he leaned over, placed one pudgy hand on my thigh and fixed me with his beady black eyes.

  ‘You’re in Goldsmith’s, yes?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I hear that Mr Goldsmith likes beating the boys in his house.’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t really say, sir.’

  ‘Oh, weally? And how many times have you been beaten?’

  ‘Gosh, sir, I really don’t know. Far too many.’

  ‘Oh, weally?’

  Cecil kneaded my thigh. He was starting to pant.

  ‘Huh-huh, and when were you last beaten?’

  ‘Well, sir, about two weeks ago.’

  ‘Oh weally? And how many stwokes did you take?’

  ‘Six, sir.’

  None of this was coming as a surprise. When I had told friends that I was going for dinner in The Cottage I had been warned what to expect.

  ‘Only six? Have you ever had eight?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, yes, sir.’

  ‘Ah, ah, and were they eight vewy hard stwokes?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I thought so. Very hard. It was a Pups’ Study beating.’

  ‘Oh weally? You must have been a vewy, vewy bad boy. Vewy hard was it? Eight stwokes. Well . . .’

  Sweat, or it could have been melting brilliantine, was now coursing down Cecil’s panting
face.

  ‘Morland?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘How many do you think you could take fwom me?’

  ‘Sorry, sir. How many what?’

  ‘Huh-huh, silly boy. How many stwokes of course? How many stwokes do you think you could take fwom me?’

  ‘Oh gosh, sir, I really wouldn’t like to think.’

  ‘Shall we have a little game then? A contest?’

  ‘Sir, it is getting late. I think I should be going.’

  ‘No, no. Stay. Let’s have a beating contest. I have some canes. They’re behind the piano. You choose one, I choose one. Then you bend over and I give you a good stwoke and then I bend over and you give me a good stwoke, and we see who can take the most stwokes.’

  ‘Sir, sir, I’m sure I couldn’t take many from you but I must be going.’

  Others who stayed longer than I told of Cecil chasing them around the table, cane in hand, trying to catch them a good stwoke. He was so fat that he was easy to evade.

  In addition to teaching and being head cricket coach, Cecil was head of the Old Radleian Society. He was also the careers master. So when he was not chasing fifteen-year-olds around his table waving a cane over his head and asking them how many they thought they could take from him, he was thought by the school to be the man best placed to give you advice on what you should do with the rest of your life.

  As for buggery, it was difficult to know how much of this went on. If you lock 600 males up together in their most hormonal years for nine months of the year without sight of a girl things are bound to happen. From time to time at Stubbington I would go off with four or five other boys to the loos or to hideouts in the bushes, and we would pull our pants down and inspect each other, but few of us had reached puberty by then and the inspections were driven more by curiosity than anything overtly sexual.

  When I went to Radley and reached puberty I started to fancy other boys both older and younger than me. This didn’t stop me fancying girls in the holidays, and offered the choice I would have taken the girls over the boys. However, my term-time desires went unsatisfied. No one ever propositioned me and I never quite knew how to proposition other boys. Everyone else appeared to be at it like hamsters. Two or three times a term rings of boys would be caught in flagrante. They would be flogged by the warden, their parents told, and life went on. Whenever one of these groups was uncovered I asked myself, ‘Why did no one ask me to join in? I would have been up for it.’ But they never did.