New Beacon School
(Motto: Dare Ex fumo Lucem)
November 1961
There he lay, Cecil L. Norman (M.A. Oxon), fallen Standard-Bearer, right cheek to the ground; always somehow both fearsome and frail, then in his 70's I imagine.
It seemed only I was witness to this, staring dully from the lower pane of the sash window; the path on which he lay, head towards me, gently sloping away downhill.
I speculated idly: had he slithered a little to this position? nails raking the impacted ice?
His left leg was jammed awkwardly into the stand (in Atco green) for the hockey sticks, foot entangled in their blades; right arm crooked towards the black drainpipe outside the 'front lavatories', a designation I thought -until years later- geographical rather than anatomical.
I could go and kick him.
Just below me, worn broad stone steps down to the caves (changing rooms). A peg for one's coat in the mornings, another peg and a locker for games clothes.
I recall the distinctive smell of rugby shirts, dank, mud spattered, red or blue; and the boots, Pococks, all leather, studs, nails; occasionally someone had a daringly modern low-cut pair.
That morning two boys had set up an adversarial chant 'Kruschev', 'Kennedy', 'Kruschev', 'Kennedy'...
My attention had been on safely carrying my drawing of a robot to the art room. Astonishingly, the art master had both beard and smock.
To my right was the 'gym' where morning assembly and much else was held: on the brick wall behind the Master's dais, a floor-to-ceiling tapestry depicting the glorious land, Kent, The Garden of England.
We sat, crossed-legged before the Wealden montage, part Rowland Hilder, Oasts, balk and furrow, + formal representation of orchards, the pliant gaze of animals looking up from their cropping.
...We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts...
Less explainable perhaps, there in the tapestry, the baleful stare of serried pikemen in receding overlap, cuirasses the colour of dulled pewter.
...We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us...
To come, would be my own Magical strip of Kent: Shoreham, by the Darent.
There, an early love; and afterwards, a longing for that place.
The gym was also used for the school G & S productions; the previous term it had been H M S Pinafore. Singularly miscast, a peaky youth, Cash's name tag hanging out over floral culottes...
"For I'm called Little Buttercup - dear Little Buttercup..."
I had been a sailor of some sort, undistinguished, striped trousers, headscarf.
It served as the room for the annual House 'parades', a distinctly peculiar mix of quasi-military tattoo, House Vs House team games, and, at the end (and all rather 'Riefenstahl') various tableaux vivants.
It was where the school orchestra rehearsed, where I, at the back, counted the bars before entry of triangle or drum.
...and on rainy afternoons, when perhaps there seemed little else to do, this was where the boxing ring was erected; swift, bloody encounters.
The songs closing assembly were invariably 'The British Grenadier', followed by the dreadful 'Keel Row', its vulgar repetitions seized upon with barked emphases:
"As I came through Sandgate, through Sandgate, through Sandgate..."
-after which we filed up the steep wooden stairs to the corridor, along which lay the window where my attention had been arrested that morning by the figure in the snow.
Earlier, in 'short break', after mucking about behind St George's Chapel, there had been the mandatory 'Squads': right-dress, arms length, eyes front; in the adjacent 'squad', S and H, the beautiful brothers, eyes like frozen lakes.
(I was in Wellington House, our colours a dreary maroon; they were in Nelson, cornflower blue)
Then I had set off for English, with Commander A. A. C. Ouvry, D.S.C., R.N (ret).
Passed the rifle range where, twice a week, 303 tucked into shoulder, bullets thudded pleasingly into target and surrounding earth. This was before Lindsay Anderson's 'IF' set out some possibilities in this area; probably just as well.
I remember the feel of the rifle's green canvas sling, this now reminding me of times a few years on: after a cross-country run around Headcorn or Chart Sutton, fagging duties done (making much toast featured), then early evenings before prep, attending to belts and buckles, the smell of Duraglit and Blanco.
Passed the playing fields. Some golden moments in the First XI; coming in at number three and making a spirited 78; seven fours and an elegant, gloriously fine, leg glance.
(There were less heroic times in the 2nd XV: at wing three-quarter, mostly running for my life)
Then came the realisation: I'd forgotten my blotting paper.
Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways;
Re-clothe us in our rightful mind...
Dread, hopelessness, suffused my Being.
If one had forgotten anything, pen, protractor, textbook, there were three connected classrooms to negotiate (gingerly knocking on each door, asking permission to enter and traverse) so to reach the cubby holes of rough-hewn oak where each boy kept such things.
Classroom 1
Despite all the years I sat before him, stiff with terror, focussed on heavy black eyebrows and heavy black spectacles, the actual subject Dennis Pratten taught is unavailable to me; merciful repression intervenes, permitting only slivers of his dreadful purplish mien: cadaverous cheeks, line-mouth, a gauntness further
distorted by a seeming permanent rage.
I mostly perched awkwardly, a vigilant vacuity, hoping that nothing about me invited that hellish stare and ferocious displeasure. Here was nascent distrait before awfulness, attentive absence.
Pratten glared (a fleck of foam at the corner of his mouth) but little else, his attention returned to terrorising some luckless fellow.
2
Mr Davies, earnest, bottle green corduroy jacket; often, or so it seemed, describing the Hell of the trenches, wearily, meticulously. As on this occasion, he would usually wave absentmindedly, motioning one through.
3
The prize for uncommon sadism went to Mr Stannard (perhaps matched only by the delight Mr Maddock, Chaplain, took in kicking boys on the backside with his heavy brogues).
In Stannard's classroom, the cubby holes being along the farthest wall, the forgetful boy would be 'invited' to 'run the gauntlet'.
He egging them on, his boys would line up and -armed with a ruler, a removed shoe, or just fists- they would hit out at the unfortunate on his way there and back.
Stannard's gifts were evidently appreciated; he went on to become Head of a most prestigious school.
Surviving these trials, returning, I reached the relative gloom at the back of Pratten's long classroom. I imagine this place may have been one of wonder and reverence for some, of fear and sinking hearts for others.
Lining the walls were ranks of varnished oaken panels, tabulating -in gold lettering- the names of those boys who had secured scholarships, had passed their Common Entrance Exam and, entered below, the Public Schools to which they had ascended.
(Among the names, S. Sassoon, A [Anthony] Powell)
On the panels were names often familiar to us boys for having distinguished themselves in war (many being the fathers of one's contemporaries): Group Captains, Wing Commanders, and so on.
Being likely destined for The Services (or The Church, Foreign Office, Diplomatic Corps) we had the day before been addressed in this sanctum by a be-whiskered military sort, a brigadier I think (sometimes we had an Archdeacon) entreating us to serve, do our duty, grow to be honourable men.
He had worn a mustard-coloured waistcoat, Plus Fours, a monocle.
In, perhaps, two or three years, much of this would, to most, be unfathomable.
I gained the safety of the corridor, part polished wood, part white-flecked pale green linoleum.
Walking past the window, I saw The Beak.
From the classroom across the corridor, Mr Goodman, Maths, cast the algebraic runes.
It came to me that perhaps I should ring the school bells; but which? Little bell or Big bell? The first sat on a table outside the refectory, the second was housed in its own tower in the grounds, thick knotted rope dangling nearly to the ground.
Before I moved either way, a group of boys rounded the corner and came upon the still figure. They shouted, ran, raised the alarm.
They turned The Beak over; bulky, lumpen. Some aspect to that scene now brings me to Waterhouse's St. Eulalia (where was a barrel of knives when one needed it?): a disposition of limbs, the snow perhaps; but here was no martyrdom, no rising dove.
I moved away, indifferent.
...Don't Care was made to care, Don't Care was hung;
Don't Care was put in a pot and boiled till he was done...
After that, in 'long break', over games of L'Attaque or 'Dover Patrol':
"The Beak fell over"
"Is he dead?"
"Good Riddance!"
"Oh, he wasn't such a bad old stick"
"What? he's a swine!"
Even the ragging of Smith '4' ceased (boys bearing common surnames were so differentiated). He was often mercilessly taunted; poor chap probably had what today would be called 'learning difficulties'.
A day or so later the Beak returned, characteristically brandishing an outstretched, admonishing right forefinger (for some unknown reason he addressed all boys as "Tommy").
At assembly, centre of unsmiling phalanx, he delivered a diatribe on the regrettable manners of the young.
He reminded us that our quartered red and blue caps, bearing the school insignia, were the very lamp of hope in a darkening, declining world.
They should unfailingly be raised to all women, of whatever age or 'rank', on every occasion, and on no account were they to be thrown for sport over the bus shelter in the lane.
London
December 2013
* At our Prep School -and probably many others- The 'Beak' was the term used for the Headmaster.
