For the Duration - Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten
BUSTER SLUDGE on MONDAYS

OUR DAY-ROOM AT BANCROFT’S was the length of three classrooms. A corridor ran alongside it to the locker-room, from which stairs went up to the dormitories and down to the cellars, and various doors and passageways led to the masters’ common room, the dining-hall and kitchens, the sick-bay, and the mysterious haunts of Matron, Nurse and live-in domestics. Junior and middle school boarders spent a lot of time in the day-room, especially during winter.
We gathered there (or tumbled sleepily, tousle-haired and out of breath), for the five minutes to eight roll-call just before breakfast each school morning — half an hour later on Sundays — and we were generally sufficiently hungry to be there in time for the five to six roll-call before tea. Each evening, we sat there relatively silently during prep: willing or reluctant, successful or struggling, according to inclination and ability. At any other free time, particularly in cold or wet weather, the day-room was occupied.
Towards the end of my first term, “lick-and-stick night” was a joyous change from doing prep. We sat at our tables with umpteen packets of brightly coloured strips of paper, and produced mountains of paper-chains for Christmas decorations. The tallest boys then festooned the day-room, transforming its appearance handsomely.
A few evenings later, we held a Christmas concert there, at which each year group was persuaded to perform. The monitors built a stage out of tables, and the audience included Mr. Wells and his family, masters and their wives, Matron, Nurse, Cook and what seemed like a host of maids. So many females! Everyone was dressed up and animated, and the mood was friendly and jolly.
The concert was lively and well received. Matron had lent our year some ladies’ hats, dresses, and high-heeled shoes as props. We were becoming obsessed with notions of love and romance, and our offering was a short and clumsily presented one-act play, set in a genteel drawing-room. The dialogue was almost exclusively concerned with courting, kissing and cuddling, and at the end the eleven-year-old hero piped clearly and proudly: “But I believe in true love”, with strong emphasis on the “true”. Squeals of laughter from the young ladies in the front, and spontaneous good-humoured applause all round.
Concert over, the festive atmosphere continued, with everyone mingling in the dining-hall for supper: cocoa, cordial and, for a Christmas treat, hot mince pies. Altogether, this was a red-letter day, for we had already been served our Christmas dinner. We had all had a hand in the making of the Christmas pudding (literally), queuing up in the kitchen weeks before to stir with large wooden spoons the cauldron of thick, sticky mixture.
Food rationing had become much stricter during 1941, and managing the points and coupons for one hundred boys, locating supplies — for shortages were constant — and keeping the school reasonably well nourished, satisfying both boys and their parents, must have produced many grey hairs. We boys gave no real thought to such difficulties, just grumbling and grimacing when meals seemed particularly dreary, and tucking in appreciatively on the rare days such as the one just described.
Food was a primary concern. Goofy Reed, a highly intelligent boarder in my year, despite his nickname, drew up a comprehensive chart one term on which he recorded each breakfast, dinner and tea. A clear pattern soon emerged and, after the duty monitor had recited grace, Goofy could predict quite confidently the coming repast.

“For that which we are about to receive,
May the Lord make us truly thankful.”

We knew that there would be a piece of slab fruitcake (dry, and with its own musty flavour), at teatime on Sundays and Thursdays, and that breakfast on Sundays and Wednesdays would see marmalade on the tables. (It was on Sunday mornings at Bancroft’s that I developed the taste for marmalade with sausage). Buster Sludge was our gourmet dessert on Mondays (bread and butter pudding, hideously orange in colour), and every morning Skilly (porridge, grey and glutinous, with hidden and unidentifiable gobs), appeared before us.

“For these and all His mercies,
May God’s holy name be blessed and praised.”

“Amen,” we responded, without thinking.

*

I spent my first Christmas holidays from boarding-school at Lew, where the cottage was even tinier and cosier than my memory pictured it, after Bancroft’s. My father came up from London, making the family — for a few days — complete. I was, as every year, under the spell of Christmas. The larger than usual congregation attending the service in Lew’s little church on Christmas morning, rugged up against the cold, listened anew to the Nativity story, and sang again the familiar carols.
Outside the church, the service over, I stood with my sisters, Rene and Lorna, looking across a bare, dank field to the row of cottages, with their backdrop of gaunt elms. Only a couple of weeks earlier, Japan had mauled America’s fleet at Pearl Harbour, catapulting the U.S.A. into the war. Great Britain, too, had declared war on Japan. A few days after this, two mighty battleships, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, were sunk off Malaya, a damaging blow to every English person’s pride and, more importantly then, morale. We were talking together, my sisters and I, that Christmas morning after church: but we did not mention these events of world moment.
We had not seen each other since I had left Bampton to prepare for Bancroft’s, and they wanted to know about my new life there. My uniform impressed them, even if it were a term the worse for wear, and they were proud of my achievement in gaining admission to such a school as Bancroft’s. The last week of term had been relaxed and relatively happy, with the Christmas festivities, and our buoyant mood of excited anticipation as we counted down to break-up.
For these sympathetic sisterly ears, however, I tried to convey something of the impact which boarding-school life had had on us new boys: the shared hurts and confusion, the frustrations and loneliness. I talked of restrictions, and of the whimsical, arbitrary way in which regulations were interpreted.
In particular, it was the power of the monitors which made them indignant, and they were dismayed when I told them of beatings; of how we had to line up outside the C.R. — tense with fear, but feigning bravado — counting the thwacks from within, and awaiting our turn. They shuddered to hear how, the next day, we displayed with a sort of pride the weals and bruises on our buttocks, comparing the range and intensity of colouring thereon.
I soaked up my sisters’ sympathy. With perverse ambivalence, however, I was less critical than they were of the system that condoned the way these young men utilised the power given them. After all, was it not these same figures that we cheered for their skills and bravery at rugby? Were they not our heroes, their names already slipping into the school’s mythology?

*

Back at school in the New Year, we prepared charts of the term ahead, crossing off the days, ever looking forward. Weekends, birthdays, important sporting fixtures, end of term: these were key times. The daily classroom grind could not be avoided —we had to accept it.
An unexpected respite from the norm came after we were summoned to an unscheduled assembly. The whole school met each morning in the hall, an airy, well-appointed structure, built shortly before the war, and equipped with the latest trappings for stage productions, so we had already sat through our daily ration of prayers, announcements and harangues.
Now, with due deference and ceremony, Mr. Wells introduced to us a tall, immaculately groomed gentleman who explained that he was one of the school’s governors, a member of the city-based Drapers’ Company. It seemed that everything in the Bancroftian garden was truly lovely. He praised the school’s overall appearance and working atmosphere, the dedicated staff, the latest academic results, the calibre of the sixth form — especially the monitors: everything and everyone pleased him immeasurably. “Floreat Bancroftia!” All of this was delivered in beautifully modulated tones, without fuss. He made a favourable impression on his audience. He endeared himself to us even more with his closing words when, bowing slightly to Mr. Wells, he graciously asked the headmaster if he minded our being granted a “Drapers’ Half”.
Joy of joys! He was giving us a half-day’s holiday, that very afternoon! Three or four times during my years at Bancroft’s, the blissful release of a Drapers’ Half was bestowed on us. And each time I was taken by surprise. Once the weather was very warm, and a large group from School House spent a glorious afternoon at Whipps Cross open-air swimming-pool. Another time, to universal amazement, Mr. Houston actually recommended a film; and on both occasions, the four o’clock roll-call was waived. The Picture of Dorian Gray was the film, and never to be forgotten was the shock use of colour when the reprobate’s horrible portrait flashed upon the screen.
Excursions such as these entailed bus travel, and we could ride openly, with the school’s blessing. Normally, a couple of stops along the route, and we would have passed the boundaries laid down for us. Clandestine travel was a challenge, cloak-and-dagger stuff, watching warily at every stop for a master or, perhaps worse, a monitor.
The gauze covering all but a small rectangle of each window meant minimal visibility on London’s buses. Consequently, pieces of governmental advice and information, designed to smooth civilian life and assuage some of the frustration of wartime, were read and re-read, ad infinitum.
It seemed silly, to me, to continually ask the travelling public: “Is Your Journey Really Necessary?” Why else would anyone voluntarily suffer the delays, over-crowding and queuing, or the irritable staff and fellow passengers likely to be met?
I did enjoy, though, the rhymes attributed to Billy Brown of London Town, a dapper little, bowler-hatted city gent. On one poster, he was leaning across to admonish gently a thoughtless Londoner who was ripping back the gauze to obtain a better view.

“I trust you’ll pardon my correction:
That stuff is there for your protection.”

Another rhyme appeared on bus-stops, at which Londoners had ample opportunity during the war to master the technique of standing patiently in line. (Queuing was, in fact, made compulsory). Billy was pictured demonstrating the advice given to stop a bus at a Request Stop.

“Face the driver, raise your hand:
You’ll find that he will understand.”

Theoretically sound. It did not work, however, in rush hour when the bus was bursting at the seams, or if the driver, well behind schedule, was hell-bent on reaching his depot.
The authorities were acutely security-conscious. Spies, saboteurs and secret-agents could be almost literally anywhere, it seemed, and cartoonists depicted Hitler, Goering and Mussolini caricatures lurking in public washrooms, and snooping from luggage-racks. “Be like Dad, Keep Mum!” is a dated philosophy, hardly politically correct, but this neat little pun appealed at the time. Similar reminders were “Careless Talk Costs Lives”, and “Walls have Ears”, both widely and often amusingly illustrated on hoardings and public transport.
The Ministry of Food, with slogans and posters of clean, fresh-air activity, constantly coaxed and cajoled the public into playing its part in the War Effort. “Dig for Victory” went straight to the point, and “Lend a Hand on the Land” was catchy.
My father, so proud of his small garden, and vehemently opposed to desecrating it with an Anderson air raid shelter, even he was persuaded to dig up a piece of lawn and convert it into a vegetable plot. At Bampton school, older boys had regular sessions on a newly-worked allotment, but my only clear memory of that is of a lad’s being carried back in wounded triumph to school. He had incapacitated himself by driving a garden fork through one of his wellingtons, and the unfortunate foot therein.

*

In celebratory mood, we shifted one Sunday morning from the cellars to the dormitories. Heartened by nine months or so of peaceful nights since the Blitz, the school decided that the time was right, and so we lugged our bedding up to the top floor. The neat piles with which we started deteriorated with each flight of stairs, the result of one part strain, three parts horseplay. We eventually arrived in the dormitory, and dragged our blankets and pillows with feigned exhaustion to our year’s allocated beds.
In place of the cellar’s cramped and stuffy gloom was an expanse of airy brightness. Every blackened window that would open was pushed out to its limit, sending streams of sunlight across the polished floor. A locker stood beside each bed, which we identified by the suitcases lying beneath them. Nurse instructed us precisely on “the only proper way” to make a bed — “the way they do it in hospitals” — with corners flipped neatly under the mattress, and aesthetically displeasing creases smoothed out.
While the experience was new, we would race each other up the stairs after prep, to get ready for bed. Lights would be on (with all windows securely closed, for the blackout), and we would scurry to the washrooms and back. This gained a little more time before lights out: time to lie back in real beds, instead of the poky, confined bunks; time to read or gossip or exchange jokes; time to fool around — with someone “keeping cave” for the approach of a duty monitor. As soon as the lights were switched off, each boy directly beneath a window could open it, and then the nightly tussle between us and authority (the aim being to socialise without detection), continued until sleep overtook us.
There were stairs at each end of the dormitory, but the school decided to supplement these routes with an escape chute. Soon after this was installed, we all tried it out. Several firemen supervised the practice, and their calm counter-balanced our excitability. A large rolled-up canvas contraption was detached from the wall, and allowed to unfurl as it was dropped out of a window. It hung like some fantastically elongated Christmas stocking with a hole in the toe, until two men dragged the foot some way out into the quadrangle, flattening the angle of the drop.
A fireman eased himself across the windowsill, high above the quad, and sat over the sock’s opening. His manner was matter-of-fact, and his words reassuring.
“Safe as ’ouses! You’ll enjoy it — it’s just like a big slide. You sit like I am now, and when you get the word, you just push off. Like this!” And he was gone.
The fireman was correct, for I did enjoy the experience. It seemed unnatural, to be launching myself down a canvas shaft out of a top-floor window, but I had grown to like heights, and clambering around in precarious places, and here we had authority’s approval. When it was my turn, I needed no urging. The journey was brief: a rapid slither into and out of obscurity. There was no time to savour the slide, nor for the nervous to be fearful, once the descent had begun. There was a fleeting swish through the gloom, and then a bulky fireman was heaving us from sock to turf — the normally forbidden grass of the quadrangle.

*

In my early months there, the insulating existence at Bancroft’s kept the war at a distance; appreciably more removed than it had been in Bampton. I heard no wireless news. A copy of the Daily Express was left in the day-room most mornings, but I did not seek it out.
Much of England’s population had exchanged civvies for uniform, yet few of my close family were directly involved in this way. There was Bert, of course; and Mary’s younger brother had also joined the army. Uncle George, my father’s brother, was a soldier, but Woolwich was about the limit of his wartime journeying. Then there was Uncle Jack, my mother’s brother, in the R.A.F. and training for aircrew in Canada when I was first at Bancroft’s. I learned little of their experiences from any of them, during the war.
Singapore fell, and Japanese teemed throughout the Pacific. Hitler’s U-Boats harassed convoys in the Atlantic, and sank a grimly escalating tonnage of merchant shipping. I, meanwhile, battled on with my own petty problems, largely unaware of and unaffected by such gloomy war news, and the consequent depths to which British morale had fallen. Cocooned as I was, the sort of thing that did affect me was an adjustment to the sweet ration, or the decree that no one should run more than five inches of water on bath-night.

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