The Radio Tower

1963 - 1964

At four we changed into dark green, our evening uniform, from our daytime light blue and grey check.

An S-bend in the A24 straightening, the River Mole beyond:
Kurt Hahn's seventh school.

We sometimes cycled, J and I,
beside that dual carriageway, where the motorcycles roared (as they still do)
up towards Burford Bridge and the Stepping Stones, to gather at the foot of Box Hill.

Then, the machines were Triumph, Norton, Matchless.

I rode behind her, occasionally seeing stocking tops / suspenders as she pushed down on the pedals.
I was 13, she 12, much brighter than I, already in the sixth form.
She spoke of the Byzantine Empire (of which I knew nothing), I of Zuleika Dobson, which she had not read. 
She was a decent pianist. We talked of one day hosting gatherings at her home in London, off the Prince Albert Road.



The village of Mickleham: church, shop, the 'Running Horses' public house; and Box Hill 'Outward Bound' school.

Something of an experiment, my being sent there,
arising from parental exasperation, rather than any embrace of its 'Round-Square' ethos.

A boyfriend of my mother secured me a place.
When telling of this school, my parents had described (with uncertain smiles)
seeing pupils running with abandon, ripping wallpaper off the corridors; I smiled back, it sounded awful.

It did prove to be different, radical even, after a traditional prep school.

For one thing: no compulsory games in the afternoons; instead, we had the ill-defined 'activities'.
I hit a few golf balls in the lower field, or, with other boys, would gaze at, sometimes tinker with a
car engine squatting on the floor of a shed in the grounds.
-Dinginess, the smell of oil, damp, dirty rags.



Otherwise, I mooched around the 'Italian Gardens' for a while.

Here, amongst the crumbling statuary, we were allowed to camp out on a Saturday night,
after a meal that could bring surprises: an apple, crisps, black coffee...

(In the mornings we had 'Swiss Porridge', a then-unfamiliar concoction, later known to all as Muesli)
And, there was no detention, or writing 'lines' for misbehaviour; pupils were awarded 'circuits'
-running round the school perimeter- as a penance for wrongdoing.

Of my fellows?

Lowest: us 'Training Diary Holders'; then, ascending, 'Reeves', 'Syndics', 'Guardians'.
There were sons / daughters of diplomats, writers, actors, of a meso-American president or two, of Asian politicians, African chiefs. 
We had rugby-playing bullies, some older girls of apparent poise and sureness (one, improbably, the lover of a wizened master), 
and boys from rougher estates, with language and gesture unknown to me.



One term, first morning, a breeze had wafted AF's skirt aloft as she walked from the village shop.

Someone said "She's the fastest sprinter in the junior girls"
I watched for her during our mandatory pre-breakfast morning runs.

Early notoriety: "Did you hear?.....Jennings punched Campbell!" To his surprise, no less mine, my
flailing hands landed a blow to my tormentor's face; he staggered, bemused, smearing blood along
the green and brown of the passageway. Briefly, I basked in the reputation of being one not to trifle with.

Another occasion, same passage, seeking refuge, I found myself in the girl's laundry room. 

Once, I was again in that room; J, sitting carelessly astride a bench, tracing out for me (a little unsure
of the details) a sketch of some female anatomy. We had by then spent a pleasant afternoon or two at the 'Old Cottage', 
a house / dormitory for boys in the village. We listened to an LP of Stravinsky's Firebird that I had brought from home.
I remember the feel of the amaranth coarse-haired blanket, our reddened cheeks, drowsiness, warmth.




We did have a compulsory cold shower after our morning runs.

Unwilling boys were poked back under by the vigilant Miss Seymour, boy's Matron....a full 10 seconds
having to be completed. (She also inspected the underside of our shoes, to check this area was polished)

Sometimes, instead, our run was followed by a length in the outside pool.
Then back to dormitories: Norbury, Juniper, Ranmore, Headley.
The girl's dormitories were on the floor below ours, Miss Ruegg presided, equally formidable.

A little fascination: there were girls from Persia, Finland, Korea, Cheadle Hulme...

One Saturday, GL and I played tennis on the court on the front lawn, conscious of some girls
looking down at us from their dormitory window. On the day of the Summer Term Fete 1964, similarly observed, 
I arranged trestle tables, back lawn this time. Music blared out from the girl's window...'Johnny Remember Me', 'Runaway'. 
That day I was dreading having to conduct a children's 'Jazz Oratorio'.



Periodically we were driven off in the school bus, some distance, then set down in the countryside.

We were to find our way back to school before nightfall, or hysteria, descended.
Once, four of us trudged all day in the cold, across field, woodland, feeling bleaker by the mile.

Fractious, we stumbled upon Westcott village, there took a bus to Dorking (where, now, at the town's entrance, 
in this area of 'Outstanding Natural Beauty' I see a giant blue metal cockerel has been erected).
That evening, aggrieved, unreconciled to my lot, I puffed on cigarettes with GL as we strolled by the river.

He was aghast at a particular soft toy his mother had bought him to give to H, his girlfriend at school.

He was for burying it.
His mother was an actress. I'd seen her swanning into school a couple of times.
I counselled against the interment; he gave it to H, it was received well enough.
On holiday, in Cannes, I bought both J and H soft toys. These were never given, I have them still.



The Junior Common Room: smell of cedar tuck-boxes, oranges.

Here I kept my ten-shilling notes from home, and with TC (later the drummer in a scandalous if rather short-lived band)  
I thumped out primitive rhythms on the sides of empty floor polish cans.

At half-terms, those boys without family were sent to spend the time with other boys. TC had spent one
weekend at my home. We had combed back our hair, put on heeled boots, suede coats, and visited my prep school at dusk. 
When carving our initials into the brickwork, we were discovered and dispatched.

Weekend gatherings and dances were held in the Common Room.

-The dreadful bleating of Roy Orbison, pointless asymmetry.
I held J to the Beatle's 'And I love her' (set to summon moist eyes for a while to come).
And, primed by J's accounts of her delicious rebelliousness, I awaited the arrival of FB, in her black leather jacket. 
Alas, Matron (and cocoa) intervened: a girl from Teheran threw a jagged-edged tin can at me. I have the scar. 



Near the end of one term, a concert:

I accompanied a particularly bumptious master (he played the clarinet) in Pensylvannia 6500.
I then gave a long drum solo. The hall rose chanting my name. 

J performed in a short play during that same concert; she wore a blue towelling dressing gown.
She lived quite near to Primrose Hill. At her home there was a door opening onto the street, a winding staircase, 
a breakfast bar with stools, a cellar with a couch, such modern things.

Twenty years later, she a journalist and theatre critic, we met in a restaurant off Covent Garden.

I spent my last Box Hill half-term with J. Her father had been a General in the Russian army (or was this a story?). 
She and I went to a recording studio to hear the harmonica player Larry Adler, a family friend. 
The next day we went to the Tate Gallery; on leaving, the belt of her coat fell to the ground, she didn't notice and walked on. I retrieved it. 
That evening I washed her hair over the bath.



The 'Radio Tower':

A staircase, between the boy's and girl's landings. A door, behind which a jumbled pile of travelling chests and trunks stretched for some yards, then, narrow, rickety stairs up to a first level, with a wooden bench.

Another steep narrow staircase led to a tiny room. If one stood on a chair, pushed up at the hatch on the ceiling, as on a conning tower of a submarine......then slid this to one side, we were able to look out over the roof. 
There was one walnut roll-top desk with many compartments. There was room for two to sit.

TC and I discovered this place, we kept it secret; apart from us only J came there.

Peering over the flashing round the ornate chimneys: we bemoaned regulation haircuts; I complained at having run out of people to bribe to play instead of me at morning assembly; TC spoke of 'The Ghost of White Hart Lane'...who I later found to have been a player for Tottenham football club; we planned visits to the ruined lodge near the school's front gate. 
We drank nescafe there, amongst the brambles.



Autumn Term, one afternoon, J and I had agreed to meet in the Tower that evening.

Someone came into our classroom, whispered to the mistress in charge, who then told us that President Kennedy had been assassinated. Lessons were suspended.

My thoughts were elsewhere (this now reminding me of Auden's observations in 'Musée des Beaux Arts') 
-wondering whether J and I would, undetected, from our respective landings, reach the door to our secret place. 
'Twixt Ruegg and Seymour, Scylla and Charybdis. We made it.
We sat on the bench, then climbed to the upper room, opened the hatch, looked down over the school.

J once stayed a weekend at my home in Sevenoaks.

My father ran us to Tunbridge Wells, where we saw the group the 'Applejacks', or was it 'The Big 3'?
There was a fight in the dance hall, many young men with close-cropped hair. Not long before this, at the cafe on top of Box Hill, 
I had seen a similar-looking crowd marching along. I thought they were Americans, I was told they were 'Mods'. 
They wrecked the cafe. Us pupils were shepherded to safety.



On the last day of the Summer Term 1964 J and I were expelled.

We had wandered out of bounds, on the way to Juniper Hall.
Following representations from J's mother, our sentence was commuted to 'Asked to Leave'.

Of the rest that year -the subjects taught, whoever taught them, my other contemporaries- I remember little.  
For me, there was mostly J, and the 'Radio Tower'; occasionally I would improvise at the piano.
There were frequent beatings certainly, one quite severe, 12 energetic strokes from a Housemaster.

I recall, I liked, the Victorian-Gothic architecture of the main building, the panelling, the stained glass.

I remember us all being allowed -goodness knows why- to stay up to watch a Cassius Clay / Sonny Liston fight.
And, of course, J and I winning the school dancing competition.
On the Alumni page of the school's website I recently saw a photograph of J and I, at 13 and 14.
We do not look uneasy in one another's company. I imagine a fondness to have been there.





Peter Jennings : London : October 2015