4.6: Identity: a colourful hothouse plant

The time has come to review the nature of this boy, who was so eager to persuade himself that he had climbed already to the top of the slippery pole, in terms of success at his preparatory school, in readiness for his next phase of education at the illustrious Eton College. And I must admit that in retrospect, I have mixed feelings as to what he was really like.

If my recent school reports were to be lumped together as a whole, they would not portray the image of a specially gifted pupil. "Always tries hard.... painstakingly slow, and it takes him time to grasp new ideas.... full of enthusiasm which is sometimes misplaced.... apt to take himself too seriously, and he is inclined to become agitated under pressure.... has a plentiful store of good sense.... has been a valuable influence in the school, and we like his open friendly nature." My school reports for art had been consistently good incidentally, even though the importance attached to it at Ludgrove was minimal. The one I received after my final term reads: "Both he and his brother are quite outstanding for natural genius in this subject, and should go far."

I had enjoyed a considerable amount of popularity in the school at large, which had managed to survive the initial notoriety of my reign as captain of the school. On the other hand it would be a mistake for me to gloss over those events as being matters of little significance. There is quite a strain of bullying behaviour discernible, as I endeavoured to emerge as the personification of true leadership values, such as Henry preached them to be: all of this in my efforts to secure myself in a position of authority during my final year at Ludgrove. In the dormitory I had often relied on the penalty of swishing (beating) with a slipper those who had transgressed my rules.

The worst case that I can remember consisted of me instructing the others in my dormitory, during my final term, to tie [M] to his bed. He was then my second-in-command in Dorm 10, and someone that I counted as a friend. But he was always insubordinate and generally difficult to handle, so I must have judged that he merited such discipline. The assembled company then threw slippers at his spread-eagle form, until his tears revealed that he was suitably contrite. Indeed, such treatment of offenders was then quite commonplace at Ludgrove.

All of this needs to be judged against the contrasting vein of public school decency, which also prevailed: by which I mean values such as are extolled in Rudyard Kipling's, or in Hugh Walpole's tales about school life. Indeed I have my own memory of admonishing with silent frown the new kid suffering from home sickness whom I saw weeping silently in his bed - thus saving him from the jeering ridicule of the rest of the dormitory, who would have been quick to persecute such an evident display of emotional vulnerability. Despite all that bullying streak within my recent development, the thoroughly decent good sort of chap was still there, firmly ingrained. Essentially, I was a really nice guy - but a trifle confused about the directions for development which were expected of me.

Something for which I feel more critical in retrospect was the element of falsity in the presentation of my affections. For example, Miss Vigers came down to see me at Ludgrove during my final term, and I reverted instantly to the attitude of affectionate regard which she expected of me. My arm slid all too easily into hers, and I was calling her `Vigey', at her request - in mendacious affirmation of a closeness in spirit which she erroneously recalled.

Henry had indeed preached such tactics as desirable. I can remember him smiling with full charm and admitting at the most to a cynicism towards all those "soft soap" values which we put up front to obtain what we need to obtain from life. But to get "sucked in" by such values was to be taken as a sign of weakness: something for women, and strictly not for men - unless they were effeminate.

It wasn't just with Miss Vigers that I found myself behaving thus. During the latter stage of the war, Mrs Corrigan (my American godmother) had returned to the London scene. She had been sending me cheques for £10 regularly at birthday and Christmas ever since I could truly remember. And the need to keep in good favour with her had always been stressed by both of my parents. It had after all, been the basis of their own good relationship with her. Now that she was back in London, she had rented an entire suite of rooms at Claridges Hotel, to which we were all sometimes invited for a meal.

Her attitude towards myself was somewhat embarrassing. I was invariably seated next to her at the luncheon table and, putting her arms round my neck, she would say things like: "Now tell me which is your favourite auntie?" I had never even regarded her as one of my aunts, prior to that moment, but the reply was instantly on my lips. "It's Aunt Laura!" Such cupboard-love was expected of me by all parties concerned. And the requirement to seem all-embracingly affectionate was carried to the point of eating the occasional cooked oyster extended in my direction, skewered upon a fork which had already been used to feed herself. This conflicted grossly with my conditioning against having the traces of any other person's saliva touching my own tongue. But a hasty examination of the expressions on my parents' faces dictated where my priorities in conditioning should lie.

I find it interesting in retrospect to remember how Henry was quite critical of Aunt Laura behind her back. There was the question of putting cooked oysters on the menu for example. This was evidence of dubious class origins, in his book, since people who really knew how to behave in high society would always offer oysters to be eaten raw, with a squeeze of lemon. I suspect personally that Laura ordered cooked oysters because there were children present; and I must admit to a secret craving for that delicacy, which I have never since had the good fortune to find on offer.

There was another incident at this same luncheon, when Henry was teasing Laura about her figure, to which she indignantly retorted: "I'll have you know that my figure was the pride of Paris. My breasts are as round and as rosy as apples." This remark gave rise later, to his comment that she really didn't know where to stop, when it came to blowing her own trumpet. There should be finesse in everything - if one was going to try to live by upper class standards.

But I should focus perhaps, upon the idea of perceiving my identity at this particular moment in time, in relation to all that had been going on around me. These were the final months of the war. The VE (Victory in Europe) celebrations took place during my final summer term at Ludgrove: all fairly subdued in that our school comprised a relatively isolated community. But we all joined in the festive spirit of national euphoria, building a large bonfire, round which we all sang songs late into the evening. And the VJ (Victory in Japan) celebrations fell during the summer holidays, when we were up in Anglesey staying with our Stanley cousins.

Henry had in fact rejoined the family on extended leave (virtually demobilised - because he wasn't by any means an essential member of General Pete Corlette's staff) several months prior to the cessation of hostilities. So we were all up in Anglesey at the time of these VJ celebrations. They were ardent yachtsmen, and we all went mackerel fishing. Then came the moment of someone having to degut the fish, and it was noted by Henry how it was myself, rather than Christopher, who performed the task without demur, and unsqueamishly - well trained by Tom Renyard of course. He said reprovingly to Chris: "I always thought you were the more manly of the two!"

My glory was short-lived. We all went down to the fair in Holyhead that evening, where I found myself sharing a swing-boat with my cousin Richard. Then I began to feel sick. But Henry was in the boat next to ours, swinging ever higher in the company of Chris, so I delayed my cry for help to the fairground attendant for just too long. The man then ran to raise the board which, when lifted, arrests the pendulum motion of these swing boats, but he suffered the penalty of arriving underneath just at the moment when I could no longer restrain my vomit.

It wasn't the most glorious of postures in which to remember myself at this the end of the second World War. There was even a certain lack of sympathy for my predicament, accentuated by an inner knowledge that I hadn't quite matched up to the expectations for me, and despite my recent manliness in drawing the guts from all those dead mackerel, Chris had now turned the tables on me, just once again, to earn Henry's esteem. It was an image of me which somehow epitomised my situation at this moment when global hostilities were finally concluded.

I was to understand in retrospect how the war years represented a complete gulf between two different eras - even if it took me a long time subsequently to work out my relationship with the new society that I was in the process of entering. The war itself had left me both physically, and psychologically intact. Friends of my parents, but no relatives, had actually been killed. The front line had always been far distant. But like everyone else, if individually in my own special way, I had learnt something about fascism and all that it stood for.

I had evolved quite rapidly through various stages in my relationship towards such ideas. I had perceived their attraction, even attempting to put them into practice. But I had also experienced the disgrace in such self-proclaimed elitism: more akin perhaps to an attitude to be found in nations which had suffered occupation by, and collaboration with, the Nazi regime.

This endowed some character to what was after all, a highly personal experience of the second World War. I might well feel that I had been disillusioned with fascism, but I still needed to ask myself what the alternative to their solution for the world might be. If people were left to themselves, to exercise democracy as they saw fit, they had shown us that they elect a Labour government. And these Socialists, according to Henry in any case, were the complete anathema to our own aristocratic style of living. If I had recently acquired an uncertainty with regard to fascism, I most certainly held doubts about the efficacy of democracy. This was the world in which I found myself however, and I vaguely realised that a choice in direction must sometime, finally be made.

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