VII
Marlborough

Luxuriating backwards in the bath,

I swish the warmer water round my legs

Towards my shoulders, and the waves of heat

Bring those five years of Marlborough through to me,

In comfortable retrospect: ‘Thank God

I’ll never have to go through them again.’

As with my toes I reach towards the tap

And turn it to a trickle, stealing warm

About my tender person, comes a voice,

An inner voice that calls, ‘Be fair! be fair!

It was not quite as awful as you think.’

In steam like this the changing-room was bathed;

Pink bodies splashed hot water on themselves

After the wonderful release from games,

When Atherton would lead the songs we sang.

I see the tall Memorial Reading Room,

Which smelt of boots and socks and water-pipes,

Its deaf invigilator on his throne—

“Do you tickle your arse with a feather, Mr. Purdick?”

“What?”

“Particularly nasty weather, Mr. Purdick!”

“Oh.”

    And, as the water cools, the Marlborough terms

Form into seasons. Winter starts us off,

Lasting two years, for we were new boys twice—

Once in a junior, then a senior house.

Spring has its love and summer has its art:

It is the winter that remains with me,

Black as our college suits, as cold and thin.

    Doom! Shivering doom! Clutching a leather grip

Containing things for the first night of term—

House-slippers, sponge-bag, pyjams, Common Prayer,

My health certificate, photographs of home

(Where were my bike, my playbox and my trunk?)—

I walked with strangers down the hill to school.

The town’s first gaslights twinkled in the cold.

Deserted by the coaches, poorly served

By railway, Marlborough was a lonely place;

The old Bath Road, in chalky whiteness, raised

Occasional clouds of dust as motors passed.

    Those few who read Dean Farrar’s Eric now

Read merely for a laugh; yet still for me

That mawkish and oh-so-melodious book

Holds one great truth—through every page there runs

The schoolboy sense of an impending doom

Which goes with rows of desks and clanging bells.

It filters down from God, to Master’s Lodge,

Through housemasters and prefects to the fags.

    Doom! Shivering doom! Inexorable bells

To early school, to chapel, school again:

Compulsory constipation, hurried meals

Bulked out with Whipped Cream Walnuts from the town.

At first there was the dread of breaking rules—

“Betjeman, you know that new boys mustn’t show

Their hair below the peak of college caps:

Stand still and have your face slapped.” “Sorry, Jones.”

The dread of beatings! Dread of being late!

And, greatest dread of all, the dread of games!

    “The centre and the mainspring of your lives,

The inspiration for your work and sport,

The corporate life of this great public school

Spring from its glorious chapel. Day by day

You come to worship in its noble walls,

Hallowed by half a century of prayer.”

The Old Marlburian bishop thundered on

When all I worshipped were the athletes, ranged

In the pews opposite. “Be pure,” he cried,

And, for a moment, stilled the sea of coughs.

“Do nothing that would make your mother blush

If she could see you. When the Tempter comes

Spurn him and God will lift you from the mire.”

Oh, who is God? O tell me, who is God?

Perhaps He hides behind the reredos …

Give me a God whom I can touch and see.

The bishop was more right than he could know,

For safe in G. F. Bodley’s greens and browns,

Safe in the surge of undogmatic hymns,

The Chapel was the centre of my life—

The only place where I could be alone.

    There was a building known as Upper School

(Abolished now, thank God, and all its ways),

An eighteen-fifty warehouse smelling strong

Of bat-oil, biscuits, sweat and rotten fruit.

The corporate life of which the bishop spoke,

At any rate among the junior boys,

Went on within its echoing whitewashed walls.

    Great were the ranks and privileges there:

Four captains ruled, selected for their brawn

And skill at games; and how we reverenced them!

Twelve friends they chose as brawny as themselves.

‘Big Fire’ we called them; lording it they sat

In huge armchairs beside the warming flames

Or played at indoor hockey in the space

Reserved for them. The rest of us would sit

Crowded on benches round another grate.

    Before the master came for evening prep

The captains entered at official pace

And, walking down the alley-way of desks,

Beat on their level lids with supple canes.

This was the sign for new boys to arise,

To pick up paper, apple-cores and darts

And fill huge baskets with the muck they found;

Then, wiping hands upon grey handkerchiefs

And trousers, settle down to Latin prose.

    Upper School captains had the power to beat:

Maximum six strokes, usually three.

My frequent crime was far too many books,

So that my desk lid would not shut at all:

“Come to Big Fire then, Betjeman, after prep.”

I tried to concentrate on delicate points—

Ut, whether final or consecutive?

(Oh happy private-school days when I knew!)—

While all the time I thought of pain to come.

Swift after prep all raced towards ‘Big Fire’,

Giving the captain space to swing his cane:

“One,” they would shout and downward came the blow;

“Two” (rather louder); then, exultant, “Three!”

And some in ecstasy would bellow “Four.”

These casual beatings brought us no disgrace,

Rather a kind of glory. In the dorm,

Comparing bruises, other boys could show

Far worse ones that the beaks and prefects made.

    No, Upper School’s most terrible disgrace

Involved a very different sort of pain.

Our discontents and enmities arose

Somewhere about the seventh week of term:

The holidays too far off to count the days

Till our release, the weeks behind, a blank.

“Haven’t you heard?” said D. C. Wilkinson.

“Angus is to be basketed tonight.”

Why Angus…? Never mind. The victim’s found.

Perhaps he sported coloured socks too soon,

Perhaps he smarmed his hair with scented oil,

Perhaps he was ‘immoral’ or a thief.

We did not mind the cause: for Angus now

The game was up. His friends deserted him,

And after his disgrace they’d stay away

For fear of being basketed themselves.

“By the boys, for the boys. The boys know best.

Leave it to them to pick the rotters out

With that rough justice decent schoolboys know.”

And at the end of term the victim left—

Never to wear an old Marlburian tie.

    In quieter tones we asked in Hall that night

Neighbours to pass the marge; the piles of bread

Lay in uneaten slices with the jam.

Too thrilled to eat we raced across the court

Under the frosty stars to Upper School.

Elaborately easy at his desk

Sat Angus, glancing through The Autocar.

Fellows walked past him trying to make it look

As if they didn’t know his coming fate,

Though the boy’s body called “Unclean! Unclean!”

And all of us felt goody-goody-good,

Nice wholesome boys who never sinned at all.

At ten to seven ‘Big Fire’ came marching in

Unsmiling, while the captains stayed outside

(For this was ‘unofficial’). Twelve to one:

What chance had Angus? They surrounded him,

Pulled off his coat and trousers, socks and shoes

And, wretched in his shirt, they hoisted him

Into the huge waste-paper basket; then

Poured ink and treacle on his head. With ropes

They strung the basket up among the beams,

And as he soared I only saw his eyes

Look through the slats at us who watched below.

Seven. “It’s prep.” They let the basket down

And Angus struggled out. “Left! Right! Left! Right!”

We stamped and called as, stained and pale, he strode

Down the long alley-way between the desks,

Holding his trousers, coat and pointed shoes.

“You’re for it next,” said H. J. Anderson.

“I’m not.” “You are. I’ve heard.” So all that term

And three terms afterwards I crept about,

Avoiding public gaze. I kept my books

Down in the basement where the boot-hole was

And by its fishtail gas-jet nursed my fear.

             The smell of trodden leaves beside the Kennet,

                 On Sunday walks, with Swinburne in my brain,

             November showers upon the chalk dust, when it

                 Would turn to streaming milk in Manton Lane

             And coming back to feel one’s footsteps drag

             At smells of burning toast and cries of “Fag!”.

             The after-light that hangs along the hedges,

                 On sunward sides of them when sun is down,

             The sprinkled lights about the borough’s edges,

                 The pale green gas-lamps winking in the town,

             The waiting elm-boughs black against the blue

             Which still to westward held a silver hue—

             Alone beside the fives-courts pacing, pacing,

                 Waiting for God knows what. O stars above!

             My clothes clung tight to me, my heart was racing:

                 Perhaps what I was waiting for was love!

             And what is love? And wherefore is its shape

             To do with legs and arms and waist and nape?

             First tremulous desires in Autumn stillness—

                 Grey eyes, lips laughing at another’s joke,

             A nose, a cowlick—a delightful illness

                 That put me off my food and off my stroke.

             Here, ’twixt the church tower and the chapel spire

             Rang sad and deep the bells of my desire.

Desire for what? I think I can explain.

The boys I worshipped did not notice me:

The boys who noticed me I did not like …

And life was easier in terms of jokes

And gossip, chattered with contemporaries—

And then there came my final summer term.

    “Coming down town?” I had not thought of him,

Though for four years we’d struggled up the school

In the same house. He was a noisy boy,

One of a gang so mad on motor-cars

That I, the aesthete, hardly noticed him.

Why should he want to go down town with me?

Perhaps because his friends had parents down,

Perhaps because we both were on our own—

But off we walked to Stratton, Sons & Mead

Down the hot High Street. “Can’t think why we pay

Threepence at Knapton’s for a water ice

When Ducks’ is tuppence. There’s a Frazer-Nash.

Gosh, what an engine! Did you hear her rev?”

Returning with sardines and sausages,

We found the College empty—free till six—

All Wiltshire winking in the summer sun.

    We changed and bicycled to Silbury

By burnt-up hawthorn edged again with white

From chalk dust whirled by Fords and Lancias

Scorching to Bath. Up Seven Barrows Hill

We overtook a six-ton Sentinel,

Our bike chains creaking with the strain. The heat

Cooled into green below the waiting elms

That rampart round sepulchral Avebury.

And gliding through the Winterbournes was peace:

Calm as canoeing were those winding lanes

Of meadowsweet and umbelliferae.

    He took the lead and raced for Hackpen Hill,

Up, up and up and waited at the top.

He sat among the harebells in his shorts,

Hugging his knees till I caught up with him.

A lock of hair kept falling on his face;

He pushed it back and, looking past me, said:

“Why do you always go about with Black?”

“I haven’t thought. I’m used to him, you know.”

“I never liked the fellow.” Here was love

Too deep for words or touch. The golden downs

Looked over elm tops islanded in mist,

And short grass twinkled with blue butterflies.

Henceforward Marlborough shone.

                                                      I used to sketch

Under the tutelage of Mr. Hughes,

Who taught us art and let us speak our minds—

And now how lovely seemed the light and shade

On cob and thatch of Wiltshire cottages.

When trout waved lazy in the clear chalk streams,

Glory was in me as I tried to paint

The stretch of meadow and the line of downs,

Putting in buttercups in bright gamboge,

Ultramarine and cobalt for the sky,

With blotting-paper, while the page was wet,

For cloud effects. The eighteenth-century front

Of Ramsbury Manor, solid on its slope,

With subtly curving drive towards the lake,

Calm and trout-plopping in surrounding trees,

Defied my brush. What matter?—poetry

Poured from my pen to keep the ecstasy.

Those were the days when Huxley’s Antic Hay

Shocked our conventions, when from month to month

I rushed to buy The London Mercury,

And moved from Austin Dobson on to Pope.

    What joy abounded when the shadows raced

From Rockley to Old Eagle over grass

Faster than I could run! I was released

Into Swinburnian stanzas with the wind.

I felt so strong that I could leap a brook,

So clever, I could master anything;

For Marlborough now was home and beautiful.

Then on the final morning of the term,

Wearing his going-away suit, which had lain

Pressed by his mattress all the previous night,

He came and handed me an envelope

And went without a word. Inside I found

The usual smiling farewell photograph.