have to risk getting Girton calves bicycling out to their remote and defended buildings of no architectural interest.
I’ll be there then for the warm quiche and oniony salad on paper plates and a glass of Hirondelle or maybe just white coffee. Something about milky coffee with food turns my stomach. The old Jews were on to something.
What do I think about co-res? I think the seven Puritan divines who founded my college would be appalled at the thought of Goody Arkland and other witches in the rooms of New Court. Build your own colleges, you denimed jezebels, they’d be thinking. And it’s true you can’t bend with each fashionable wind – you can’t be like the Church of England, constantly updating its eternal verities. Either Christ was God, in which case He knew what He was doing when He chose male apostles only; or, he was a hapless Galilean sexist now ripe for a rethink. Not both. That’s what I think about co-res: a truth is either good for all time or it isn’t true at all. (On the other hand, it would mean better bathrooms.)
Baths remind me of Chatfield. Now I’ll tell you what happened next.
Yes. I can manage it. I’m not reliving it, I’m only describing it. I can deal with all my past experiences, I think. Here we go:
What I found trying was that Baynes, Hood and Wingate never seemed to take a day off. I felt that one day a week they might have games or work or something more important to do, but nothing, it seemed, took precedence over Engleby, T. (Even I thought of myself with this initial now.)
Hood sometimes paused when he saw me, as though for an hour or so his mind had been on something else; but the sight of me was enough to bring him back to earth. I studied their timetables and tried to make sure they never saw me. In the break between lessons, I didn’t go back into Collingham. I stored my books in some open shelves at the foot of the staircase leading to another house. I wandered round the quads, reading the notices, but I grew very hungry and sometimes had to make a grab-and-run raid on the bread and margarine table.
Anyway, I was always visible at mealtimes and then, at six-thirty, there was a roll call, after which you had to go to your room to do prep – and from then on I was a tethered prey.
There was a break between preps of half an hour in which you could make cocoa or eat the bread and marge before prayers. Usually, Mr Talbot came up for this and read something improving by Albert Schweitzer or C.S. Lewis. Other times it was left to the head of house, dead-eyed Keys, to send us off to bed uplifted.
Second prep led into lights out and was strictly private. I was doing maths at this time one night, almost ready to call it a day, when Wingate came into my room. I was in pyjamas and dressing gown; he was in day clothes. He had hollow cheeks, floppy brown hair and never showed emotion. Unlike Baynes with his simmering violence and his explosive pustules, Wingate was neutral, as though everything was happening in a calm deep pool. His pointed Adam’s apple dragged in his tight throat as he spoke.
‘Time for a bath, Toilet.’
‘No, my bath nights are Tuesday and Friday.’
‘You heard me.’
He held the door open and I followed him slowly out into the Collingham corridor. He led me down to the bathroom, on the floor below the Halfway House. There were two baths, a shower, a row of basins and some benches made of duckboards. On these were sitting Baynes, Hood and others – Marlow, I think, ‘Plank’ Robinson (said to be the dimmest boy at Chatfield, a title not easily won), ‘Leper’ Curran, Bograt Duncan and one or two more.
‘Get in,’ said Hood.
‘Take your clothes off,’ said Wingate.
I did what they said and climbed into the bath, which was cold.
‘Get your head under,’ said Baynes. And he held it under. He had huge hands. He was as strong as a man, stronger than my father had been. Eventually I got out from under his grasp.
He was laughing. Usually
I’ll be there then for the warm quiche and oniony salad on paper plates and a glass of Hirondelle or maybe just white coffee. Something about milky coffee with food turns my stomach. The old Jews were on to something.
What do I think about co-res? I think the seven Puritan divines who founded my college would be appalled at the thought of Goody Arkland and other witches in the rooms of New Court. Build your own colleges, you denimed jezebels, they’d be thinking. And it’s true you can’t bend with each fashionable wind – you can’t be like the Church of England, constantly updating its eternal verities. Either Christ was God, in which case He knew what He was doing when He chose male apostles only; or, he was a hapless Galilean sexist now ripe for a rethink. Not both. That’s what I think about co-res: a truth is either good for all time or it isn’t true at all. (On the other hand, it would mean better bathrooms.)
Baths remind me of Chatfield. Now I’ll tell you what happened next.
Yes. I can manage it. I’m not reliving it, I’m only describing it. I can deal with all my past experiences, I think. Here we go:
What I found trying was that Baynes, Hood and Wingate never seemed to take a day off. I felt that one day a week they might have games or work or something more important to do, but nothing, it seemed, took precedence over Engleby, T. (Even I thought of myself with this initial now.)
Hood sometimes paused when he saw me, as though for an hour or so his mind had been on something else; but the sight of me was enough to bring him back to earth. I studied their timetables and tried to make sure they never saw me. In the break between lessons, I didn’t go back into Collingham. I stored my books in some open shelves at the foot of the staircase leading to another house. I wandered round the quads, reading the notices, but I grew very hungry and sometimes had to make a grab-and-run raid on the bread and margarine table.
Anyway, I was always visible at mealtimes and then, at six-thirty, there was a roll call, after which you had to go to your room to do prep – and from then on I was a tethered prey.
There was a break between preps of half an hour in which you could make cocoa or eat the bread and marge before prayers. Usually, Mr Talbot came up for this and read something improving by Albert Schweitzer or C.S. Lewis. Other times it was left to the head of house, dead-eyed Keys, to send us off to bed uplifted.
Second prep led into lights out and was strictly private. I was doing maths at this time one night, almost ready to call it a day, when Wingate came into my room. I was in pyjamas and dressing gown; he was in day clothes. He had hollow cheeks, floppy brown hair and never showed emotion. Unlike Baynes with his simmering violence and his explosive pustules, Wingate was neutral, as though everything was happening in a calm deep pool. His pointed Adam’s apple dragged in his tight throat as he spoke.
‘Time for a bath, Toilet.’
‘No, my bath nights are Tuesday and Friday.’
‘You heard me.’
He held the door open and I followed him slowly out into the Collingham corridor. He led me down to the bathroom, on the floor below the Halfway House. There were two baths, a shower, a row of basins and some benches made of duckboards. On these were sitting Baynes, Hood and others – Marlow, I think, ‘Plank’ Robinson (said to be the dimmest boy at Chatfield, a title not easily won), ‘Leper’ Curran, Bograt Duncan and one or two more.
‘Get in,’ said Hood.
‘Take your clothes off,’ said Wingate.
I did what they said and climbed into the bath, which was cold.
‘Get your head under,’ said Baynes. And he held it under. He had huge hands. He was as strong as a man, stronger than my father had been. Eventually I got out from under his grasp.
He was laughing. Usually
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