THE DREADFUL FATE OF SMETHWICK TWO

Colin Welch recalls the richly

idiosyncratic chaos of his appalling prep school

He drove with fero-

cious panache a bull-nosed Morris tourer with many essential parts missing. Through gaps in the scanty floor boards you could see the road whizzing past and exposed cogs whirring. Into these, his seat collaps- ing, Mr Whatfield at last fell backwards, his legs waving impotently in the air like those of an overturned beetle. The seat of his light grey, sharply-pressed flannels was remorselessly chewed up in the machinery till the speeding, driverless motor was arrested by a tree. Mr Whatfield's curses on this occasion spectacularly supported the cashiering tale: they would have asto- nished the broadest minded RSM. His mishap, I'm afraid, gave widespread plea- sure. Had Childline existed 55 years ago,

we'd have denounced him at once, inno- cent as he was of anything normally called molestation. Have Miss Rantzen and her friends, irresponsibly soliciting delation by telephone, forgotten how mischievous, vengeful or even ruthlessly wicked children can be?

At eight we were incapable of judging our school, its good points or its bad. We knew no other and wrongly thought that all schools were like this. We were blind to the beauties of the house, a noble neo-Grecian edifice a la Smirke or Dobson, and its rolling beech and rhododendron infested park. I came across it recently, pictured in a book about stately homes now de- molished. I realised with a pang that I too had dwelt in Arcadia and never knew it.

As for the school, hindsight places it unhesitatingly in the last of the four grades established by Church and Gargoyle, the scholastic agents in Evelyn Waugh's De- cline and Fall: 'Leading School, First-rate School, Good School and School.' With Llanabba Castle, Strutley Hall was 'School' tout court, though with pathetic traces remaining of better days as 'Good School' or even 'First-rate'. The scho- larship boards were impressive, though less was added to them every year. Classics were taught, in an accent which even Porson might have thought old-fashioned, by a distinguished scholar, himself fallen on evil times. Tall, grey, old and vague, he was found by us exquisitely witty. 'Smith', he would enquire with pain of a boy fooling about in prep, 'do you really like yourself?' And we would squirm with delight.

To adapt Tolstoy's remark about fami- lies, all good and happy schools resemble each other, while bad and un- happy schools are all bad and unhappy in their own way. Strutley Hall was richly idiosyn- cratic.

My informant about Whatters's sacking was always called the Sabre Tooth Tiger. This did him an injustice. His teeth, though prominent and ill restrained by a complex plate, were as perfectly regular as tombstones in a military cemetery, more like those of an amiable horse than of any carni- vore. Indeed, it was as a starch-eater that he won fame, if you assume sago to be a starch rather than proteinous frogs' eggs as we then supposed. At a price of one peardrop per plate, he would rapidly eat 30 or 40 plates of sago pudding for those who couldn't stomach the obliga- tory slime. He was an indomitably cheer- ful, clever, inventive and resourceful boy, an expert civil engineer — a McAlpine or Manzoni of his day — who built deep in the rhododendrons a network of cambered cement roads for Dinky Toys, complete with drains, pavements, bridges, cuttings, roundabouts and garages. The STT was also a prodigious source of wizard japes and wheezes, always first, too, with 'the latest', as often with verses appropriate to the occasion. In this joyous figure were

embodied aspects of the later constructive Faust, the Last Minstrel and Blowitz.

As in prisons and Fleet Street pubs of Yore, rumours abounded at Strutley Hall, fantastic seeming yet often hardly more so than whatever truth lay behind and might have prompted them. 'I say, Squelchy, heard the latest? It's awful! Smethwick Two's dead. "What, dead?' 'Yes, of starva- tion!' Of starvation!"Yes. Keep it dark.'

This rumour was at least half true. Smethwick Two, alas, was dead all right, though perhaps not of starvation. We were all known only by surnames, with numbers added if necessary. Christian names were rigorously repressed, used only if unusual for choral ridicule: 'Dear little Egbert- wah, wah, wah'. Family ties were also suppressed so far as possible. Dehumanise as 'mops', 'pops' and 'sops', relations turned up rarely and furtively, to be Subjected to hostile scrutiny and often to bring shame on their loved ones. 'Barber's sop's a skivvy!' Fowler's mop gets her false teeth at Woollies.' Goldsmith's pop's an oiky Jew.'

The full reality of life at Strutley Hall eluded not only us inmates but also my mother, who assumed control of my des- tiny after my father's early death when I was eight. This was partly because I told her little. Our letters were censored, and sneaking was a fearful crime, condignly Punished by various irregular but powerful courts of honour, as terrifying as any Freikorps Ferngericht. In her innocent ignorance my mother must have found the week's howling which preceded my third term almost inexplicable, as well as deeply distressing to such a kind parent.

No one fully in the picture would have sent me back in dark grey cord shorts with So much 'room for growth' (room almost for two to grow) or in a jersey of the wrong colour with a turned over collar and buttons(!) at the neck, like a little boy's. She thought the jersey 'nice': other boys would envy it. Nice! As if anything could be nice which differed in the slightest from the Harrod's regulation kit! Any variation led only to a vicious hue and cry, to Persecution and pogroms, to 'rumbles' or lammings', as brutal bullying was locally known. Tolerated or even admired were only the grey Lederhosen permitted to a boy of German extraction, who, however, was soundly lammed for having sunk the Lusitania and murdered Nurse Cavell. What history we knew we turned, as in Ire- land and Germany itself, to dark pur- poses.

Admittedly, growth did take place, gra- dually reducing my shorts to normal prop- ortions; but the penalties of unorthodoxy are most feared by the smallest. The most favoured shorts were old, short, fairly tight and washed out to a near white. They were, of course, a mark of seniority, of successful survival. Did they also make oblique refer- ences, unrecognised at the time, to sex? In retrospect one can see that all-mastering instinct already slyly at work on us, even at nine years old, rattling and snuffling under doors still tight closed, trying to force an entry, assuming in the process, like Pro- teus, all sorts of weird, vague and tentative forms, some of them perverse and shame- ful, to be kept private.

Even the steel-rimmed spectacles I was supposed to wear always, but didn't, must have had furtive sexual connotations for me. They were necessary all right. The cheery history master used to write notes on the blackboard. Prominently figuring in these, especially during the Reformation period, were mysterious zealots he briskly called the RCs. Unable to see the black- board, I transcribed these as Arsees. My long held impression was thus that our country was entirely dominated till the 16th century by an exotic sect like the Parsees (familiar to me from seafaring forebears) who, then expelled, continued to give much trouble, especially in the reign of James II, himself an Arsee.

Iloathed my specs and was fascinated by them. Did I discern in th 2111 elements of the mask, so often a potent erotic acces- sory? Were they also a mark of depend- ence, of inferiority and humiliation, of weakness and vulnerability, of imperfect manhood (my father had had perfect sight), appealing thus to undreamt-of masochistic tendencies? Even the velvet lined case they came in smelt of some interesting organic glue. Men, we know, seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses. I was an exception, for reasons perhaps buried in that distant past.

More obviously sexual was the manifest relish with which 55 years ago a senior boy, a 'pre' no less and with a distinguished career ahead, buried his face in his own used bed clothes, sniffing greedily. More obviously sexual still was the rude and precocious boy who, in the sickroom of which we two were the sole occupants, masturbated publicly, presumably for my edification as well his own. Aged nine, I witnessed this 'explicit' or 'adult' entertain- ment with total and genuine bafflement, as if at a Pinter play: don't call us, we'll call you.. Yet it sticks in the memory, while manifestations which made more sense at the time do not.

The lammings were directed specially at boys with some sad weakness, boys inclined to `blub', boys who stam- mered or, worse, wetted their beds or dirtied their knickers. Unsurprisingly in the circumstances, there were many of these. Their shame was the mark, the cause and effect, of their utter misery. The cruel retribution it brought on them ex- acerbated their condition. Unkind sobri- quets were pinned to them, like tin cans to a dog's tail, and jeeringly repeated by circles of dancing persecutors in rhythmic chorus — 'Fishy' for a boy whose knickers smelt of stale urine, 'Cowpat' for a boy whose lapses were all too solid: 'Oh dear, oh dear, Nannie's forgotten Cowpat's nap- pies — goo, goo, goo, Baby Cowpat!' Blushing stammerers were surrounded by mobs derisively intoning d-d-d- or p-p-p- or mocking the tongue-tied apopletic hum which Patrick Campbell made famous.

Yet the most rewarding target for lam- mings was always a boy called the Maniac, or the Animal, who more or less literally went mad under pressures applied with malign skill. He would dance about; his hands would wave wildly and claw at the air, striving to scratch his tormentors; he would aim vicious kicks, only to have his foot seized and to be tipped back violently onto his head. Hoarse, meaningless screams, real foam, would issue from his mouth, distorted like a Greek mask into an agonised square. Never did the lenses of his battered steel spectacles fully coincide with his eyes: one lens was always too low, the other too high. During these con- tretemps, the specs would usually fly off altogether, fantastically bent, striking with a tinkle some distant radiator or hurtling clean through the window, leaving the Maniac blind as well as mad, a fearsome embodiment of impotent rage.

And what did I do during these disgrace- ful proceedings? The question might be put to me as to various 'good Germans' emerg- ing shamefaced from the Nazi time, and might be answered in the same shabby and evasive way I was not myself a prime target for lammings. I got my share, no more. For the rest, like good Germans appalled by the excesses of the Kristall- nacht, I stood aside and kept my distance, not knowing or wishing to know too much, too small, apprehensive and apparently solitary — though others were in fact shocked too — to court danger by protest.

The terror was in fact roughly organised in two rival gangs, fighting for street supremacy much as communists and Nazis had fought in pre-Hitler Germany. They were both led by big, superannuated boys, too wild and irresponsible to be made pre's and too thick to pass common entrance into even the dimmest public school, staying on therefore till aged 15 or more. One warlord was a brutally benevolent despot, humorous, unscrupulous, popular and lazy, a sort of Danton, ferocious but by no means without attractive characteris- tics. His father was rumoured to be in prison for fraud, though presumably his fees were paid. The other seemed coldly vicious, a real turd. In the centrifugal strife which preceded Hitler, many Germans took refuge in Nazism or Communism who were not strongly attracted to either. At Strutley Hall, too, you had to join or be associated with one mob or the other and put yourself within its sphere of influence. You couldn't survive on your own. Only innate wickedness or abject terror could lead you into the turd's mob, though it lack recruits. I established friendly feudal relations with Danton, acknowledged his suzerainty, enjoyed his rough protection and inevitably shared some of his guilt.

Danton's problem was to get rid of the turd, to `rub him out'. His plan was simple and effective. He stole a rifle from the school armoury, wrapped it in a scarf and other clothes marked with the turd's name- tapes and hid it under the stage. Even sneaking being permitted to a warlord, he reported the turd as having been seen leaving the armoury with the rifle and hiding it where it would be found. The turd was expelled, leaving Danton supreme, perhaps even till called up or till the school foundered. The turd, I think, came to a sticky end, and I can't help wondering still what part was played in his downfall by the early injustice done to him by a Night of the Long Knives which I knew about but had neither exactly abetted nor deplored nor denounced. Not much, I hope: he seemed damned already. Sinful so to judge him, true, but sinful too to harbour exces- sive guilt, so they say. Ho hum.

There are no bad soldiers, so they also say, only bad officers. By the same token, a school as dreadful as Strutley Hall looked at from below must have postulated a truly dreadful staff. This was not altogether so. Inadequate it must have been, but in a. negative rather than a positive sense, negligent and frivolous rather than evil, more Pennyfeather than Squeers.

Then there was the headmaster's French wife. Rumour of course had it that he had married her for economic reasons, to have at his disposal free of charge someone to teach French, which she did, gracefully, to the little ones. Her gentle melancholy supported the economic theory. Her `frag- rant' beauty and mysterious, shadowy ele- gance hinted at more romantic possibili- ties. My first sight of a picture by Helleu reminded me of her. When my father died during term time, I was entrusted to her charge. Together we cut flowers and walked slowly, hand in hand, through the park. In her presence you could talk quietly, remain silent, weep, hug and be hugged — all activities otherwise pros- cribed in a world probably as alien and incomprehensible to her as to us. To the bereaved she dispensed French chocolate — exotic to me, to her, perhaps, a comfort- ing reminder of home. Were we both exiles, consoling each other?

There was the headmaster himself whose murderous smile made us clench our but- tocks and walk self-consciously. Did it portend a beating? It often did. There was his son, too, by a previous marriage: a vast, indistinctly spoken, loose lipped hulk, like his father an amateur heavyweight boxer. What he taught I can't remember, but his methods remain in the mind. Roaring with incoherent 'rage, he would violently throw whatever lay to hand: chalk, metal waste paper bin, most usually the blackboard duster which was not a mere cloth but a heavy bit of wood faced with felt. It would hit the skull of some luckless victim, usually the wrong one, with a crack like a mallet on a croquet ball, often sailing there- after upwards, right through the window, leaving behind clouds of chalk in the astonished air. These frequent outbursts were in fact more comic than tragic, to be eagerly anticipated rather than deplored. They could be heard and enjoyed three or four classrooms away — 'Listen, the Bruis- er's gone off again!'

The rest of the staff seem in retrospect amiable if remote. A green baize door separated their quarters from us. Through it seeped distant laughter, the occasional tinkle of a glass, jazz from a wind-up gramophone. This was prudently stuffed with socks (note for the young: origin of the expression 'put a sock in it') to avoid paining the classics master or infuriating the head. Sometimes the socks would be drawn inexorably into the clockwork. The jazz would slow to a profound, Bruckne- rian adagio and Jessie Matthews would sound like Chaliapin.

Two of the masters were actually famous — or seemed so to us — though not for any academic attainment. One batted graceful- ly for a minor county. Another played the piano in night clubs and composed with equal facility pieces for Hutch and rousing sub-Elgarian hymn-tunes, one of which I can hum to this day. To pin any vast burden of guilt onto such harmless inno- cents would be plainly absurd. One thing at least they did teach me: that as much misery, or more, can spring from tolerated disorder as from the harshest discipline. This last, indeed, was present too, but only intermittently and capriciously, not to sup- press anarchy but savagely to mark its borders. The old Ottoman empire was, I fancy, governed rather similarly: the pre- valent laissez faire punctuated by rare but memorably effective atrocities.

Strutley Hall was, I suppose, in its way character-building, a preparation for life — for life at its worst. Kindness and justice were not wholly absent. But they were rare luxuries, treats like jam and butter on your bread. We were not to expect them, or to blub at their absence.

Finally my mother cottoned on — I think it was the death of Smethwick Two that alerted her — and transferred me to a prep school of a very different sort. Here I was greeted by a mild, plump, blinking boy, who explained to me some of the prevail- ing mores. 'You see, Colin — it is Colin, isn't it? — we're all specially kind to Charles Blewett, because he's — it's hard to know how to put it—because he's, well, a bit weak in the head.'

I blinked in my turn, as might the reluctant SS man who wakes up suddenly to find he's been transferred to a Quaker ambulance unit. I did not then know the prisoners' chorus from Fidelio. A pity. No other music could suffice. My eyes filled with tears as I thought of the poor Maniac left behind. His lot may have improved under Danton. I hope so.