could return to her office any time I wanted seeing to, I knew she was only being nice to a new boy. Undoubtedly she did the same for all new boys. Abandoned, I could do nothing about it. I could do nothing about anything, apparently. School demanded passivity; I must do as instructed. Therefore, I went wherever whichever master pointed whenever he pointed, and performed whatever tasks were asked of me.
In the course of daily bullying, I taught myself the trick of how to hurt without crying. The trick involves teaching yourself to see the world in a special way. You teach yourself how to see it that way by constantly looking at it that way. To hurt without crying, you must constantly look at the world as if everything in it is in it to hurt. The world exists to hurt you. Therefore, hurting is natural. If, one day, the world stops hurting you, then something’s wrong. The pay-off is that hurting makes you strong and wise, wiser than those who hurt you.
Another way to stop yourself from crying is by thinking of the funniest thing imaginable – for example, your tormentor naked but for women’s bloomers. This short-term solution has no guarantee of success. It worked best for me, for a while, when the bloomers in question were Granny Hazel’s.
If no teachers were awake enough to take assembly, Mr Mulholland did the bible reading. Afterwards, he made announcements about forthcoming events, and drew our attention to old problems and new rules designed to overcome them. Mr Mulholland called the playground the quadrangle. A major quadrangle problem involved balls and broken windows.
‘You may spend morning break and the greater part of lunch hour outdoors, getting fresh air and exercise in the quadrangle. However, ball games in the quadrangle are no longer permitted. Off the playing field, boys and balls, when combined, are a recipe for disaster. Off the playing field, no boy should be seen in possession of a ball.’ I noticed several teachers trying to contain laughter, but did not know why. ‘The ball’s size is irrelevant. Large balls, medium balls, tiny balls : they’re all banned. Only on the playing field may you play with your balls. I trust I’ve made myself clear.’
Boys groaned. But not me. I would have been even more pleased if running, shouting and fighting were forbidden also.
While other new boys made friends and formed cliques, I remained alone, doing homework and reading books from the library. I would have welcomed a friend or two, but I did not give out the kind of aura that attracted others to me.
I hoped life at Whitehead House would improve. No such luck! The classroom had a broken window and radiators made of ice. Wind and spits of rain blew through the window. I was used to cold, having lived in the Manse, but other boys were not. I warmed my pyjamas under the pillow and retrieved them at bedtime frosty. My popularity increased slightly, and only for a couple of days, when I introduced the trend of wearing my pullover over my pyjama top in bed. Most nights, I sat in bed shivering with my socks on, the sheets up to my ears and my knees clutched to my chin.
Breakfast was not the wallpaper paste gruel Gregory warned me about; it was wallpaper paste porridge – a totally different thing. Much lumpier. Having survived breakfast, we gathered in the assembly hall to sing a hymn, say a prayer, and have a half-sleeping teacher drone to us from the bible. We sang ‘Jesus Loves the Little Children’. But if Jesus really loved the little children – and I qualified as one of those – why did he allow adults to treat us so poorly? And what about the prying, tumbling, rough and tough, loud and foul boys? Many of them – maybe most of them – reserved no space in their brains for thoughts of God and His foibles. Though Godless, they shivered no more or less than I did, and seemed to accumulate more vivacity from and for life in a single day than I had in my lifetime.
The truth soon dawned on me: God
In the course of daily bullying, I taught myself the trick of how to hurt without crying. The trick involves teaching yourself to see the world in a special way. You teach yourself how to see it that way by constantly looking at it that way. To hurt without crying, you must constantly look at the world as if everything in it is in it to hurt. The world exists to hurt you. Therefore, hurting is natural. If, one day, the world stops hurting you, then something’s wrong. The pay-off is that hurting makes you strong and wise, wiser than those who hurt you.
Another way to stop yourself from crying is by thinking of the funniest thing imaginable – for example, your tormentor naked but for women’s bloomers. This short-term solution has no guarantee of success. It worked best for me, for a while, when the bloomers in question were Granny Hazel’s.
If no teachers were awake enough to take assembly, Mr Mulholland did the bible reading. Afterwards, he made announcements about forthcoming events, and drew our attention to old problems and new rules designed to overcome them. Mr Mulholland called the playground the quadrangle. A major quadrangle problem involved balls and broken windows.
‘You may spend morning break and the greater part of lunch hour outdoors, getting fresh air and exercise in the quadrangle. However, ball games in the quadrangle are no longer permitted. Off the playing field, boys and balls, when combined, are a recipe for disaster. Off the playing field, no boy should be seen in possession of a ball.’ I noticed several teachers trying to contain laughter, but did not know why. ‘The ball’s size is irrelevant. Large balls, medium balls, tiny balls : they’re all banned. Only on the playing field may you play with your balls. I trust I’ve made myself clear.’
Boys groaned. But not me. I would have been even more pleased if running, shouting and fighting were forbidden also.
While other new boys made friends and formed cliques, I remained alone, doing homework and reading books from the library. I would have welcomed a friend or two, but I did not give out the kind of aura that attracted others to me.
I hoped life at Whitehead House would improve. No such luck! The classroom had a broken window and radiators made of ice. Wind and spits of rain blew through the window. I was used to cold, having lived in the Manse, but other boys were not. I warmed my pyjamas under the pillow and retrieved them at bedtime frosty. My popularity increased slightly, and only for a couple of days, when I introduced the trend of wearing my pullover over my pyjama top in bed. Most nights, I sat in bed shivering with my socks on, the sheets up to my ears and my knees clutched to my chin.
Breakfast was not the wallpaper paste gruel Gregory warned me about; it was wallpaper paste porridge – a totally different thing. Much lumpier. Having survived breakfast, we gathered in the assembly hall to sing a hymn, say a prayer, and have a half-sleeping teacher drone to us from the bible. We sang ‘Jesus Loves the Little Children’. But if Jesus really loved the little children – and I qualified as one of those – why did he allow adults to treat us so poorly? And what about the prying, tumbling, rough and tough, loud and foul boys? Many of them – maybe most of them – reserved no space in their brains for thoughts of God and His foibles. Though Godless, they shivered no more or less than I did, and seemed to accumulate more vivacity from and for life in a single day than I had in my lifetime.
The truth soon dawned on me: God
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