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3.1: Career: adjusting to a school environment

The idea of being packed off to a boarding school when I was just nine years old was never a prospect that I regarded with too much apprehension. There was always the new status of becoming a schoolboy to consider, which was definitely one up on being taught privately at home. Miss Vigers herself was the first to encourage me to think of things that way, and she was partially responsible for the choice of Ludgrove as the preparatory school to which I should be sent, for she was well versed in such matters. One of her previous charges was already at Ludgrove, which had recently emerged as the most fashionable place for the sons of the aristocracy and their entourage to be educated. It specialised in the idea of preparing boys for getting into Eton. Run by Mr Barber, who had captained the Yorkshire cricket team prior to becoming a headmaster, the emphasis was upon leadership qualities and sporting excellence, rather than upon anything quite so mundane as scholastic ability.

I had the misfortune of being in quarantine for mumps at the beginning of May 1941, when all the other new boys were settling in. So I was very much the newest boy, when Daphne finally drove over to Ludgrove (using up some portion of her precious petrol ration) to deliver me safely into Mr Alan Barber's hands: known as Ali by nickname of course. I remember the moment of separation, with both of them expecting imminently that I was going to burst into tears. I think that Daphne would have felt flattered if I had, but then the essential conditioning from Henry had always been much against such behaviour. That first instance of total isolation from the rest of the family is indeed quite a psychological trauma for any little boy, and I certainly felt a lump in my throat. But I didn't let go of my emotions, and as soon as Mummy and the car were out of sight, Mr Barber led me gently indoors to come and meet some of the other new boys, of whom there were eight.

It wasn't until about a year later that Mr Barber made any comment upon this moment of separation, and then it was only indirectly. He was talking to a whole group of us, although I knew he wanted me to appreciate that he was referring to myself. He told us that he always knew if a boy was going to settle in well at Ludgrove, from the moment of watching him say goodbye to his mother. If he didn't burst into tears, he knew that everything would be fine. I think it's true to say that Mr Barber and myself had attained a good working relationship from that very instant.

Ludgrove was a large Victorian building with long corridors and spacious classrooms, and amongst other delights the extensive grounds contained playing fields and avenues of rhododendrons. There were both farmland and woods in the vicinity, fairly reminiscent of the countryside at home - although it all seemed flatter in this Berkshire landscape, near Wokingham. The town itself was a good mile away, and few other houses before one reached it. It furnished a sense of peace and seclusion, much in contrast to the fact of us all being at war.

There were others at Ludgrove whom I had met previously - like the Morrison brothers, James and Charlie, with whom we had shared a house in Norwich for a while, during the weeks of final training for the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry, just prior to their embarkation for Palestine. Morrison minor was almost exactly the same age, and I had developed an unhealthy respect for him in that he had floored me in a friendly wrestling contest while we were still at Norwich. Then there was Peter Munster, some two years older than myself, who was the son of Peggy, who had been Daphne's best friend at one of those schools from which she had been expelled. Munster had obviously been instructed to keep a watch over my interests, to see that I found my feet all right. So I regarded him in some manner as an elder brother.

But the crucial task at the outset of my school career was to find out how well I got on with my peer group of contemporaries, and I experienced my due share of problems. Most of the `new kids' were housed by tradition in Dormitory 27, whereas the eldest of the `early-bedders' were in Dorm 8. There was an atmosphere of mild bullying in their way of asserting their dominance over our group, hitting us with bath towels, or flicking us with their neck ties whenever we passed the open door of their dormitory in our pyjamas, after taking the compulsory evening bath - making us run for it, or take the treatment which they handed out to us.

We were quite scared of them in that they were both senior to, and slightly bigger than ourselves. But we wanted to get even with the whole bunch of them. Getting even was a matter of reflating our own egos after such continual deflation at the hands of these louts. So I came up with an idea (which I thought bright at the time) of drawing ugly faces on separate pieces of paper, and labelling each with the name of one member from their gang - printed in capital letters to retain anonymity, and then posted beneath the lid of each of their particular classroom desks.

So far so good, but I hadn't been counting on them organising a systematic testing of our handwriting in capital letters, with the requirement to make a copy of one of the ugly faces I had drawn, plus an oath on the holy bible that we were not ourselves responsible for the outrage. Exposure seemed imminent when someone who wasn't even in our dormitory declined to take his oath on the holy bible on the grounds that it would be against his religious scruples. So their suspicion was pointed in his direction, with him fiercely protesting his innocence all the while. Doubts set in, and the gang finally lost interest in their investigation. My sense of relief was enormous, since I realised how close I had been to exposure and the punishment that might have been inflicted by the thugs of Dorm 8.

Images are fluid at the outset of school life. Everyone awaits that you do something that they begin to regard as `in character', so that expectations may thus be formed that you will continue to act in the same way. My own such achievement was on the cricket field, towards the end of this, my first summer term.

This is not a tale of sporting prowess, for it took me several more years before I reached double figures as a batsman, or even to bowl with any artifice. Being slow to react however to the approach of cricket balls struck with velocity in my direction, there were quite a number of occasions when I held my ground, permitting the missile to strike me on the body, rather than managing to take effective evasive action.

The climax of the cricket season arrived when the school was divided up into teams which played one another, obtaining points for any win, and prizes for the ultimate victors. `Cabbage' Reed (so named because of his flat, as opposed to cauliflower ears) was one of the masters who regularly umpired these games, and he was evidently much impressed by my `guts' as a fielder. He drew the team captain's attention to this quality which he thought he perceived in me, and in spite of the fact that I was only a mere new kid, I found thereafter to my intense discomfort that I was regularly placed at Mid-on, where the school's hardest sloggers slammed the cricket ball through the vain defences of my outstretched arms, to strike whatever portion of my body might happen to be in their line of fire. I didn't enjoy this introduction to the game of cricket, but I did manage to acquire this reputation for guts within the school, that was spread around by the comments of Cabbage Reed.

As far as scholastic work was concerned, I didn't do as well at the start as Miss Vigers had been predicting for me. Or let us call it an average performance. Although there were few mistakes in what I did, I was excruciatingly slow, so lost marks on the quantity of unfinished work. Too much attention had gone previously into the neat presentation of all that I did, which was performed in a spirit of methodical thoroughness, rather than in any competitive race against the clock: a skill that needs to be acquired by those who succeed in our contemporary world.

It is also true to say that I didn't take kindly to the personality of the teacher in whose hands we had been placed. He delighted in taking an offending pupil by the ear, and twisting it sadistically while he delivered his corrective comments. I have always been sensitive to the attainment of personal sympathy with the person who had been appointed to instruct me, and this kind of treatment didn't encourage such a thing to happen.

Over subsequent terms, I got the hang of working faster - at the expense of tidiness, and my competitive edge improved. But the tenor of the praise which I thus merited was directed more towards my enthusiasm, than towards any special scholastic ability. And it always depended upon who was teaching me to obtain the best results. I felt an undoubted rapport with Cabbage Reed, and always did well under his tuition. But Ludgrove was undergoing the traumatic experience of losing most of its best (younger) teachers over this period, as they were called up for war service - to be replaced on some occasions, and for the very first time in the school's history, by women. None of us were quite sure what to think about that.

One of the new arrivals was Mr Durnford, who was enthusiastic about introducing new ideas into the school. (He survived for less than a year within this highly conventional environment.) I was somewhere near the bottom of his French class, and felt no great urge to do much better. But one day he walked in and started firing IQ tests at us, verbally, although it was only afterwards that he explained what he had been up to. He would ask the question, and then pause to see how many hands were raised before singling out one of us to reveal the answer we had in mind. In that my hand was frequently raised, I was pleased to have the question tossed in my direction many times. And his verdict to the class, on reaching the end of his experiment, was that a teacher invariably discovers that there is someone sitting near the bottom of the class who does far better than those sitting near the top. And in my school report of that term, he was the first teacher to suggest that I was considerably more intelligent than my performance at school revealed.

Mr Barber who was himself pedantically slow and painstaking in his methods of tuition, never agreed with this verdict, and delivered his own less flattering assessment next term - informing my parents that hard as I tried, I wasn't the brightest of pupils. Nonetheless, I was always one of his favourites, for it needs to be admitted that he displayed an unwavering admiration for the British aristocracy. We somehow exemplified the qualities that he wanted to instil into others, and wherever we might fall short of those standards, he was inclined to accept our personal excuses.

When Mr Barber spoke to the assembled school on the subject of the character development which he regarded as important for us to acquire at Ludgrove, the emphasis was upon gentlemanly conduct, plus a warning that we must learn to pull our own weight. The days when the fruits of life were all handed to us on a silver platter were now past. We had the privilege to come from well-to-do families, and to be receiving our education "in the best school in England". Elitism was definitely preached to us, even if that word was never used.

Although I displayed little genuine talent at either cricket or football, (sporting activities in which Ludgrove's reputation ranked supreme amongst the local preparatory schools,) I did make my mark in various other such fields. Small ones in swimming and gymnastics, where I displayed an ability to compete on better than level terms and, a more significant one, at boxing, where that early training in Macpherson's gym on how to deliver "one to the point, and one to the mark" finally gave me an edge over those who were matched against me. I developed a neat little left jab, and my reputation for guts served me well in deterring any of the school thugs from premeditated aggression.

Tuition in both music and art at Ludgrove was uninspired, and my ability in each of those fields stagnated over the next few years. But I was discovered to have a beautiful treble, when singing, and solo parts were thrust upon me at the school concerts: performances which gave me many butterflies in the stomach before I had to go on stage.

I was however making a small reputation for myself as a storyteller. Although it was forbidden to talk after the lights had been switched out, depending upon whom the dormitory monitor might be, there was quite a lot of whispered conversation during the early hours of the night. It was often the case that a dormitory would produce its professional storyteller, designated by popular acclaim. And the ghost stories about Longleat opened up into other fanciful ditties with a savour of Edgar Alan Poe. I displayed some talent in this field, and I benefited from the popularity which derived therefrom.

Indeed, I was not an unpopular young schoolboy. During my very first term I had heard myself being described by those just a little older than myself as "the most decent of the new kids". Decency at Ludgrove was a much esteemed quality. I lacked the sporting prowess to emerge instantly at the forefront of school attention, but my school reports all indicated that I had settled in well, which could be regarded as an encouraging start to my career.