After you, Cecil
AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS
My father, whose name I forget, was a fat, lazy man in a tweed pork-pie hat with a tobacco-stained moustache. Someone I once met somewhere told me that as a young man he was quite nice, and even capable of doing a decent's day's work. Thinking of him today I find it hard to reconcile such an image with that of the daft old dolt I recall seeing lying about the house under a crumpled copy of the family newspaper when I was a child. He was an irascible old buffoon, and he could not have been described by any stretch of the imagina- tion as young or nice: to have called him capable in any sense of the word would have been absurd. When I say he was irascible, I mean that during his few moments of confused wakefulness he was subject to violent fits of temper. On one occasion he was displeased with the consistency of a large Christmas pudding, and trampled it into the carpet with his stockinged feet.
On another occasion I was examining my reflection in the glass wall of the conservatory when he padded softly up behind me and kicked me straight through it. When I re- entered the conservatory, I asked - him: 'Why did you do that?' He told me it was because I was 'a narcissistic, opinionated little whipper- snapper.' It was such irrational and inexplic- able outbursts as this that led me early in life to form the opinion that he had inherited some family taint and was in fact mad. What I could- not understand was why he was so lazy. In the end I put it down to my mother's sexual aggressiveness.
She would frequently hurl herself on him dur- ing the afternoon when he was lying half-asleep on the chaise-longue, and these encounters left him listless and enfeebled. My mother was un- naturally highly sexed. She would also hurl herself, with increasing frequency as old age wore on, on Mr Johnson, the butler, on the second coachman, and on the man who came to deliver the nectarines. The gentlemen in question all fortunately took it in their stride —the man who came to deliver the nectarines wasn't interested in that sort of thing anyway. Nevertheless, despite her impulsive manner, I doubt' very much whether my mother was a nymphomaniac. I have suggested it publicly on several occasions, but my mother's lawyers, at least during her lifetime, always denied it.
About that time it was decided that I should take the entrance examination to the Chorley Wood Infants' School for Boys. The examina- tion was a very stiff one, particillarly in finger- painting and self-expression. I am not a good examinee, and I failed it. The same mistake was made by my parents in due course at Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and the Florence Digby Institute for Retarded Infantile Megalomaniacs. But it all added up to the im- pression ground into me by my parents, that I was no good at anything—that I should not only be a failure in life, but I would grow up to find myself inferior to the fantastically clever people I should encounter. This, I may say, has never proved to be the case. Indeed, the reverse has been true throughout.
• I was very unhappy at Chorley Wood. I wet the bed, and on one occasion had a heavy cold. As time went by I failed various entrance examinations, but fortunately on the strength of my mother's bank balance I was 'given' a place at Winchester. 1 was very unhappy-there. For one thing 1 was never alone. 1 have `always been happiest alone, if possible contemplating myself in a full-length looking-glass, and to be forced into the company of others has always been to me an intolerable deprivation.
Even in the school lavatories boys were constantly playing ukelele serenades outside the door of my cubicle, and climbing in and out on silken ladders. Walking up the aisle in chapel I was pursued by 'wolf-whistles,' and straying hands were for ever attempting to pinch my bottom. As there were no girls in the school, many of the boys who engaged in such activities would dress up in Edwardian evening dresses with elaborate picture hats, and would stroll over the playing fields at twilight puffing at long cigarette-holders with their carmine-daubed lips. They followed me every- where, and I was known as `Cheekiechops' or `Sailor.' Why I was called this I have no idea, unless there was a homosexual element in the school of which, if there was, 1 was unaware.
It was about this time that I became aware of my astonishingly well-developed powers of perception, and also of the almost uncanny sensitivity sensitivity to what is going on about me which has since enabled me to be such a successful administrator. At approximately the same time, give or take a few years, my seven brothers and three sisters were killed and our house in the country totally destroyed by a bomb dropped from a Zeppelin. For what reason I could never discover, my mother and father became increasingly sour from that time on- wards. My mother lingered on until quite recently, when she died with a fractured spine after I had inadvertently removed the chair she was about to sit on at dinner. I never liked her, and her death came as an enormous relief. My father, whom I at times found quite tolerable, particularly when he was asleep, died some time later. It was only recently that I thought about him again, and decided in retro- spect • that he must have been almost as appalling as my mother.
Al Oxford, where I went in- due.course.after failing the entrance examination, I found my- self among a set of unpleasant snobs -,who affected to dislike me. I could not understand why they behaved so strangely, at the time, but one of them explained to me later-1 think he was then a Prime Minister or something of the. sort—that it was because they had all been homosexuals. This was, however, very fortunate for me, as it gave me more time to be alone. I had by now, after years of painstaking study, formed a very high opinion of my own character. I was, as I have said,. immensely sensitive, intuitively perceptive to a degree, with a Napoleonic sense .of timing and Incredibly good judgment. 1 had also de- veloped the most dangerous weapon in my armoury—sarcasm—to such a point that after testing it in the Nevada Desert I resolved never to- use it again; appalled as I was by its awe-inspiring destructive power. I was twenty-one, seven foot three in height, and .poised to conquer the .world.
Next Week : The author, with his astonishing sensitivity and sense of timing, crowns a dazzling career by making a breathtakingly un- successful bid for the leadership of a National government.' and. brilliantly contrives to be sacked by the dull-eyed board of the Inter- national Publishing Corporation.
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