When I returned to Eton after Thomas' funeral, I discovered that during my brief absence, Jaques had already informed the assembled company at m'tutor's that I was now to be known by a different name - stressing of course that this should make no difference whatsoever to the way that I should be treated by anyone. Nor did it really. I was by no means the only person with a title at Eton. There were Viscounts Lumley and Emlyn within my own particular Classics division, for example; and there were earls, marquesses and the odd duke to be found elsewhere. But it was still odd to find that I had somehow come to join their ranks.

Jumped up to a label for unmerited distinction,
I picture frontal images of him others -
mother, father, household - might expect
reflected or imposed on what I used to be.
The sleazy sycophantic deference, in easy
greeting from those who pose as socially dependent,
makes me a mendicant target for specious praise,
brazenly distorting my assessment of self-worth.
A dearth of candid communication to sort
out the oughts and oughtn'ts weighs heavy,
together with the blatant change in name: an identity
sent in a side swipe from a dead Grandad.
Know this I say, when all the talking's done,
the Me that was, and will be, still is one.

I was not slow to pick up however, on words of advice which I had picked up from Henry. A letter home stands in evidence of this.

After savouring the initial novelty of such escapades however, it became a matter too mundane for further comment.

Back at home, there may have been much more note taken of this upgrading of my social status. It somehow stressed the fact that I was the anticipated order of being next in line to succeed to the marquisate. And strictly within the local community, this did of course amount to something significant, in that I would become eventually their employer, if not also the centre of their social world.

There had been little concern hitherto to get those who were employed upon the estate to become acquainted with my personality. I was accustomed to mingling with the gamekeepers, and with those foresters who came out as beaters for the shooting parties which still featured prominently within our social lives. But such acquaintance was selective and I was seldom truly at ease within their company. The subject of class distinction had so often been raised within my upbringing that, even though I deplored the concept of snobbery in itself, it would have been very difficult developing my ideas without falling into pitfalls. I felt ill at ease in the company of any social stratum than my own - unless the form of the relationship was clearly understood on both sides for whatever distinction might be required.

Despite the fact that this snobbery stemmed directly from the values which my parents themselves had implanted, I daresay that my own grasp of such ideas lacked their moderating display of social ease and grace. I can now accept that I was a snob, and required to develop an understanding of humanity which was more broadly based. I think that Henry may have had some such thought in mind when he decided that I should spend some portion of my holidays, working alongside the woodsmen that he employed - although his stated reason was that it would do me good to get to know something of the family business from the inside: also that it was bad for my character to have so much free time on my hands, when I never made good use of it. He had been complaining for some while that I just mooched around the place, with my hands in my pockets. I lacked gumption, according to his judgement.

I was by no means happy about this idea that I should be sent to work in the woods during my precious holidays at home, which amounted to rather less than three months annually. And here was my father dictating that I should spend a complete month each year as an employed labourer. When I told my school friends about this, they found the whole idea monstrous. Why didn't I protest more vigorously against such treatment? A point which needs answering perhaps.

Henry's decisions did get implemented, unchallenged within the household. Daphne might fight for her own required degree of independence, but she had never been one to attempt to lay down the law on our own behalf. She accepted as part of the natural order that we follow whatever pattern that my father might require of us. Nor had I yet mastered the mechanism of any more personal revolt. And besides, it was all quite usual within the kind of background to be found in those who went to school at Eton that an authoritarian paternal streak prevailed. It was perhaps most unusual that a father should decide to send his sons to work during the holidays, but the paternal bias was prevalent within the social culture as a whole. It did not really cross my mind to protest too vigorously. And in retrospect, I am inclined to feel that I was obtaining valuable experience, if harshly, to broaden the confines beyond the limitations of my previous education.

I did find the conditions slightly difficult at the start. There was no question of me receiving privileged treatment, allowed to arrive late to work, or even to nourish myself from something other than the sandwiches and cold tea that were traditional on the job. I had to be waiting with the others beside the main road, at the crack of dawn, for the estate lorry which ferried all the gangs to their place of work, and the instruction was that I should be treated just as anyone else who was starting to work upon the Longleat estate.

But the assumption amongst many of the younger lads, who were just marginally older than myself, was that here I was pitched in on terms of equality with themselves, with social manners and vocabulary which might seem to distinguish me, so they were concerned (for their own sense of identity) to subject me to a barrage of the foulest possible language - to shock me as they imagined into an acceptance of themselves and into some measure of conformity. This was embarrassing to me, not for the reason that their words were foul upon my ear, but because it reinforced the idea that they, as much as myself, were conscious of the degree of separateness between their background and my own.

With those in the same gang as myself, the experience gradually became amicable. For the first year of my occasional work in the woods, I was assigned to the nursery plantations - to work alongside Victor Trollope for the most part, as someone of my own age who would show me the ropes. He was a likeable boy, although I found it difficult to keep up with his perpetual reliance upon quips that were currently in vogue on the radio, or upon standard jokes which I was still slow to comprehend. But I endeavoured to follow the suggestions he made, even to the point of working contrary to the interests of our employer, Lord Bath - to an extent that we were once found by Bernie Carpenter, our foreman, dozing beneath a hedge during a work-break which was not authorised. This tale has haunted me ever since in its constant repetition throughout the village of Horningsham. Bernie's own comment at the official work-break was to say how he'd always heard that one boy be worth half a man, and that two boys be worth no bugger use at all!

It was extremely rare that I had a bad experience, but there is one in particular which comes to mind. We were out on the task of clipping the hedgerows in the proximity of the Lodge Gates. It was after the lunch/dinner hour, and one of our tractor drivers drew up beside the road. He had been drinking as I imagine, but he began jeering at me from a distance. The gist of his comment amounted to something like: "So what does it feel like to be doing your first bit of hard work?...." I behaved correctly I think, in pretending that I supposed his query had been posed to someone else. But it did serve to remind me that I was not really accepted as one of their own kind.

One of the best insights into the kind of boy I was at this time (or at any rate the kind of problems which I then regarded as being necessary for me sometime to tackle), is furnished within my very first novel which I began to write over this period - without ever finishing. It concerns the activities of a twelve year old boy called David, with whom no doubt I closely identified. I would appear to be putting him through life's paces, so to speak - perhaps just for my own interest, to see how he fares. And there is another curious aspect of the story, in its presentation of what appears to be a specific ideal for womanhood, which is revealed as a witch- like siren who exercises powers of life and death over David's strangely masochistic mentality.

I start by describing the boy's home life, which appears to be a romanticised version of my own, but with inversions concerning the gender of the principal characters to be found therein. The bully in the family is not the father, but the mother, and both Christopher and Valentine make brief appearances in the guise of irritating younger sisters. The general aspirations of young David are to get away from home and to explore the world of the flesh and the devil; but he relies upon the forces of evil seeking him out, and obliging him to have such experiences, rather than going out to discover them upon his own initiative.

There is to be a display of conjuring in the village where he lives: symbolic representation of the exciting mystery of life, as I'm now inclined to suggest. David asks permission to see this spectacle, but his mother refuses to let him go. So he takes five shillings from her purse, which will enable him to buy himself a ticket. (A guilt-begetting act; he deserves to be punished.) She discovers the theft and becomes furious, but the anger is out of proportion with the pettiness of the crime.

He goes to bed.

The significance of this last image eludes me. But however it should be interpreted, young David goes on to remember that the five shillings he stole are still in his possession. So he creeps out of the house and goes to the show. The star-performer is the Gypsy Queen, who is described as being fascinating, green-eyed, long-haired and witch-like.

Enter the forces of evil, with the power to engineer his extraction from the home environment. She hypnotises him, and leads him off to the gypsy encampment. He is locked in a caravan, where she comes to visit him.

She introduces him to Rollo, the boy who is to teach him how to live like one of the gypsies. But David dislikes him - because of his careless, but superior look. There is a hint of Donald in Rollo, just perhaps! But he also represents the qualities which I am telling myself are all a part of the survival game; and part of the mantle which I am almost urging myself to assume, if I am ever going to acquire this status of independence in life. Later, the Gypsy Queen asks Rollo what he thinks of his pupil-to-be.

But David eventually makes his escape while Rollo is teaching him how to poach trout from the local river. The novel then comes to a standstill. It would seem that my inspiration had ground to a halt, just as soon as my hero was required to begin making his own way in life. And I think it may be true to say that the author himself, at this age of fourteen, would have been similarly inept.

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