PETER QUARTERMAIN

Whack! Whack! That first day Matron ushered us down to breakfast in the big echoey Dining Hall, other kids tearing down the stairs to get past us, shouting to each other, stumbling along sleepily behind us, clatter of boots shuffle of feet, long empty tables big enough so everyone in the School could sit and eat all at once, all 160 of them, not many kids, all of us ranged along both sides of one table, a small table for the Masters at the end of the room where the kitchen was and when the other new kids arrived that afternoon we all felt better, they were the ones feeling lost and shy while we all knew each other and had got lockers already even if we did have to share them, we got one shelf each, in the Billiard Room downstairs, a big room with a fireplace at one end, a couple of sofas and a battered armchair, the lockers all along one wall wooden cupboards really stacked on top of each other, and a few chairs and forms round the walls and an enormous billiard table with a big green lampshade hanging over a huge expanse of fading dark green cloth cues in a couple of racks on the wall by the window and a wooden scoreboard with sliding brass pointers above the fireplace, and we knew that the Billiard Room was what the Headmaster meant when he talked about the Boys’ Common Room. And we already had our names on hooks in the entryway and knew where to go to clean our shoes and where the classrooms were and what times meals were, we all knew you couldn’t sit down at the table until grace’d been said, and we all waited to see if one of the new kids’d sit down before grace and get scolded, it’ d serve ’em right, yesterday we’d been warned not to sit down until grace’d been said, but they should ’ve been here yesterday shouldn’t they. And Matron knew our names and we knew each other’s names, Matron at the head of the Junior table, we’d seen the Headmaster at his table at breakfast, sitting with Mrs Bailey and the HouseMaster; they had toast and it was in a proper toast-rack, and marmalade from a proper marmalade-pot, they had a tablecloth and serviettes, and a china teapot with a teacosy, and a jug of hot water, every now and again one of the kitchen maids with a rack of toast or another jug of hot water popping in through the door behind High Table to give them seconds. We knew how to find the Croft and where the football fields were and the Changing Rooms. But that was the day nearly all of the boarders came back, and now there’d be nearly forty boys, some of them as old as sixteen, where yesterday there had been about ten, and tomorrow would be the first day of term and all the dayboys would be here as well, School would start, they’d all be in here for lunch. And it can’t have been more than two or at most three weeks later, we’d all settled down after Lights Out, some of the kids were already asleep, that somebody, I think it was Ron Malpas because it was him had the bed under the window across from the door, said “Listen! They’re going to raid us tonight, get your pillow ready!” and Martin or somebody said “Who is? What d’you mean?” just as a scuffling noise drifted through the ventilator above my head, and ssssh! and a quiet giggle and ssssh! again, the door burst open flung back so it hit the bed behind it with a muffled bang it woke Alan up he’d just dropped off and a kid from the Second Dorm I’ve no ideawho it was slammed his pillow into Alan’s face, tried to anyway but the door was in the way and a whole pack of kids from the Second Dorm boiled into the room flailing their pillows about, Morris West leapt out of bed and shouted “Get ’em!” and charged at a bunch of them, pillow flailing, and some of the kids on the other side of the dorm ganged up together and charged with him and drove the kids out, “Chase ’em! Come on, get after them!” but as you got out of the door there was a whole clump of them ominously staring back down the corridor at us, larger kids, we stood there hesitating and Alan Franks said “Don’t be daft! It’s just pillows!” and he charged at them, the rest of us crowding behind him some of us laughing, all of us breathless, feet sclabbering away on the floor you didn’t want to get trodden on, and slam! went the second-dorm door, one of us trapped behind it, it was Tom Fearnley, in there with them, a prisoner, bangs and thumps and shouts and laughing, we couldn’t open the door there were too many jammed up against it on the other side, you’d push and it’d open an inch or two and then slam shut Don’t get your fingers caught! and then the door opened a bit Tom scrambling as they pushed him out his face bright red he didn’t have his pillow any more he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and we all piled up against the door but we couldn’t budge it, we didn’t know what to do it was no good hanging about here and anyway it was too cold for that, someone said “I dunno about you lot but I’m going back to bed” and we all trooped back puffing and panting, full of beans, it was no good there was no way we’d just go back to sleep, and there was Fearnley and Franks and West going out by the door to see if they could raid the Second Dorm back and we all watched and wondered, sitting up in bed all on edge except Gravette, he’d rolled his blankets round him pulled his pillow over his head “Come off it, “he said, “I want to go to sleep!” We couldn’t hear anything at all from the corridor, not a sound, then the soft scrape of a pillow or a pyjama jacket dragging along the wooden corridor wall, a light footfall and then a shout and a bang, Fearnley and Franks and West going at it like mad and Hart shouted “Come on!Up the First Dorm! Let’s steal a mattress! Take their clothes!” and we were off, even Gravette’s lanky soft body galumphing along behind us and suddenly there’s Alan flailing back towards us, Morris and Tom scrambling along, all of us in full retreat Watch out! they’ve put shoes in their pillowcases! to the safety of the dorm, I thought of a pillowcase swung round the head and then BLAM! a shoe in it, that’d knock you flying, the noise was terrific, and what about your teeth, oh no! so I climbed under the bed Alan somehow closed the door I clung to my mattress nobody was going to steal that, other kids flailing around me in their pyjamas so close together they couldn’t really get a hefty whack in and I just hid all out of breath thinking about shoes and the door swung open, the sound of shoeleather on lino the light clicked on, I saw along under the beds a pair of pressed grey trousers just above ankle level and a pair of leather shoes as they stopped just inside the door. “What’s going on here? You! Stop that!” as Fearnley swung a pillow he’d somehow stolen from the Second Dorm, he couldn’t stop the swing his face blank as sudden silence, complete and motionless, breathless, a consternation, one quick loud panting breath a gasp a muffled furtive clump as was it Malpas lowered his pillowcase had he put a shoe in his? behind him, beds tangled and messed, clothes scattered everywhere, one pair of bare feet scampering down to the Second Dorm and I peered out, I slowly stood up hoping not to be seen, my bed a shambles. An appalled silence. Mr Bailey. There were only supposed to be nine of us, and all in bed, all fast asleep, but there were over a dozen, tousle-haired and sweaty-red, panting and shocked, everyone crestfallen looking guilty, not daring even to lift their feet, their pillowcases clumping on the floor, but there was nothing you could say. A panic-stricken” Nicks!” from down the corridor, “It’s Mr Bailey!” the sound of climbing into bed in Second Dorm, creaks, cautious whispers, light clicking out. You couldn’t say “Nothing Sir” you couldn’t say you’d come to find something or to ask about your Prep, that would be daftly idiotic even if you could think of it. There was no possible excuse, how could you say you were going to the lavatory, that was the only way to be out of bed; no one had an excuse, and into that awful silence he said “Gravette! Go to my Study. Hanging on the wall behind the door you’ll find my cane. Bring it!” “Oh no uncle,” Gravette said, and we all looked at him. Uncle? “Please,” he said, “please, uncle.” “Fetch it! At Once!” He didn’t even put his slippers on. “You other boys go back to your own dormitory. I’ll be along when I’m finished here.” And there we all were. “Line up in order of beds,” he said, “Smaller ones first.” And then, “No. Smithe, you first: ” – pointing to Martin. “Put your hands on this chest of drawers,” he said, “and bend over.” I was third, and Martin walked up as we shuffled into position, a whole line of kids in front of the chest of drawers “Stand back to give room, boy!” Mr Bailey said, “Mind my back-swing!” and Martin bent over as Mr Bailey flexed his cane, it looked just like the ones in the comics, thin and whippy and pale yellow the colour of straw with a curved hook of a handle nestling firmly round his hand, and he said “Straighten your legs child, don’t slouch!” and Martin straightened an abrupt tight little upward hump and a sharp thin Whack! you could hear the cane singing in the air and Whack! and Martin flinched and grimaced and as he recovered the cane came down again and then again. We all got four of the best, and in the Second Dorm they got six, and we watched Martin as he straightened up his face as red as red could be, blinking like mad his hands at his sides, “Get into bed, boy. Next!” Waiting was a sickish trembling sweat, standing there in line in your pyjamas, but Martin had stood up straight, like in the Army, and so did the others, so I did too, you had to be brave, Bend over! and then Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! left ridges across the bum, great welts, one just at the top of the leg, the tip of the cane whipped round you, flicked like a bite, unnngh, hard into the skin, sharp needle’s slap and you waited for the next, that really hurt, slap!, slap!, much harder than the whacking on your buttocks and you bit back tears and blinked and didn’t rub your bum until you got into bed you didn’t dare, what would the others think, your rear end wide awake, tingling and near and you were proud you didn’t cry. But when it got to his turn Gravette started to cry and said “No, uncle, no!” before he’d even got there and cried aloud, bawled and snivelled his way back to bed rubbing his bum and crying out again his snotty face and we all turned our backs on him, such a baby. What had being his uncle got to do with anything. “Gravette cried!” we said next day to everyone as they stood around wanting to hear all about it, and we sneered at him. But Shag Callahan or one of the other Prefects said, when he heard, that he wasn’t surprised Gravette’d cried. “Pussy hit him harder than the rest of you, didn’t he? Bound to ’ve done, he can’t show favouritism, and Pussy is his uncle.” And that rankled too, what a twerp for not telling us that! But Shag hadn’t known that either, till we told him. “No,” Shag said, “don’t be so silly. What would you think of some kid if he came up and said to you Pussy was his uncle? Putting on side like that?” But what a sissy for crying. “Oh stop it,” he said, “you kids are hopeless! Think what it’d be like if you were in his shoes! You’d do the same. Leave it be.” But we didn’t, of course, and as I look back now, thinking of him as I write this, his perhaps astonished cry No, Uncle!, I wonder that I never felt ashamed of the way we treated him, paying him no attention, refusing to be friends. We never learned anything about him, where he lived or what his dad did, he might have been in the Army or something, not that we ever talked about private things like home and family; he might even have been killed in the War, and after that term we never saw him again, he went to some other school and none of us asked where he’d gone. But of course next day he must have hurt just as much as the rest of us, and most of us spent a lot of the next day standing up. I know I did, rubbing myself tenderly, on a radiator if I could, the wooden chairs and desks were so hard, and one of the dayboys smirked a bit and said the best thing to do if you’re going to get whacked is stuff a few sheets of blotting paper down inside your trousers, “You can hear ordinary paper,” he said, “it echoes, and he makes you take it out and then he whacks you again, only harder. And a book’s no good you can see it.” I only ever got caned again once, it must have been five years later, under Broggie, I didn’t have the chance to pad my behind then, either, and I haven’t the foggiest notion now what it was for. I do remember it was me and Ken Hatton and Taffy Evans, Broggie announced after Prayers that we’d to come to his Study immediately. When we got there he told us he was going to cane us, and I remember standing outside the door while Ken went in, the sound of Broggie’s voice and then listening to the Whack! Whack! Whack! as Broggie administered six of the best, a brief silence, the murmur of voices, and then the door opening, and a red-faced Ken coming out we didn’t look at each other, and it was my turn. Broggie was standing there with his cane in his hand, it wasn’t like Pussy Bailey’s it was heavier, dark brown, but just as whippy, and he said “Bend over that chair. Lift the tail of your jacket clear,” and after he’d given me six, all evenly spaced, well aimed as well as timed, I didn’t make a sound and nor had Ken, he said “Stand up” in an indifferent sort of neutral voice and reached across his desk, picked up a box of chocolates and said “Well taken! You deserve a chocolate,” and he smiled. Cadbury’s Dairy Box brand new, one chocolate gone, I didn’t notice which I chose I just took one I was so astonished, and said thank you in a strangled sort of voice, and “Yes, Sir,” he opened the door and I left. I didn’t look at Taffy but just left. There wasn’t much caning, it was hard to tell what you would get caned for really, it had to be for something important, some terrible misdemeanour, and with only the Headmaster or if necessary the Assistant Headmaster allowed to do it it existed more as deterrence than as punishment, and at the same time it invested Mr Bailey with great Authority, you didn’t want to be drawn to his attention, and you certainly didn’t want to invite his disapproval. But getting whacked for that dormitory raid in the first term didn’t stop us from having a Midnight Feast in the second.