A Young Man's Passage (7 page)

The next morning at assembly there was a tangible atmosphere of excitement. Father G stormed in, face like a bag of spanners. No prayers, no announcements, he got straight to the point.

‘Some boy in this school has stolen the strap. Unless it is returned to me by three o’clock this afternoon, or unless someone tells me the boy responsible, I shall beat the entire school.’ Then he left.

We were all aghast. A mass public execution had never been known!

A few cowardly boys (notably all from the ‘a’ stream) pleaded with Heinz to do the decent thing and save us all, but not many. We were brave and resolute.

So at five minutes past three that afternoon, the entire middle school of St Benedict’s was told to line up in the playground. Almost two hundred boys waited in silence until Father G marched out brandishing a cricket bat.

‘Who’s first?’ he barked.

And then he beat us all. One whack each. Just a token really, a symbolic mini sting which only succeeded in uniting us all in adversity. I made sure I was towards the back of the queue so he’d rather run out of puff by the time he had his second bash at me.

MY RELIGIOUS FERVOUR
waned a bit after that, although when Hildebrand died following a nasty bout of cystitis she was given a full Catholic requiem mass. I placed her in a shoebox full of cotton wool, buried her tearfully among the rose bushes and marked the spot with a home-made crucifix. Afterwards I stood there having a good cry and my father told me not to be such a sissy. (A bit late for that advice.) I kept a lock of her hair in a matchbox and carried it around in my blazer pocket until well into the sixth form.

With Hildebrand gone, I felt the need for my own pet and rather fancied a kitten this time. My parents said no to this as we had two cats already.

‘Robinson can be your cat from now on,’ my mother offered, but I wasn’t having that.

There was a pet shop next to Richmond station that I frequently popped into on my way home from school. One day I saw they had some kittens in the window. I stood there watching them for half an hour until the shop was about to close, then rushed in and bought a little black and white male I called Pao, after the main character in a book I was reading at the time about a Chinese boy. He cost 52½ pence. I tucked him inside my blazer and caught the train home, thrilled but full of trepidation as to what my parents’ reaction would be.

As I turned the corner into St Mark’s Road, I saw my father standing in the driveway waiting for me, as I was late home. He didn’t spot the kitten until I was a yard or so away.

‘You can take that straight back!’ he said, really rather cross at my defiant purchase.

‘They’re closed now,’ I said.

‘First thing tomorrow, then. We are not having another cat! You’ve been told that already.’

That night Pao slept in my bed, under the bedclothes, down by my feet, purring loudly. The next morning his return to the pet shop was deferred to Saturday, as I couldn’t possibly be late for school. Over the next few days Pao charmed everyone, as kittens do, but my father stuck to his guns.

‘He’s going back to the shop. I will not be defied.’

Saturday morning arrived. Just before I left the house my mother took me aside.

‘If for any reason they won’t take him back then I suppose you’ll just have to bring him home again,’ she said with a knowing look.

I took Pao all the way to Richmond and back to the pet shop. They would take him, they said, but there would be no refund of my 52½ pence. That was all the excuse I needed and Pao and I hopped back on the train to Teddington. My father looked secretly pleased; he’d stood his ground but the kitten could now stay.

Pao grew into a lovely cat who knew I was his master; he slept down at the bottom of my bed and would sit on the garden wall waiting for me to come home from school. In the mornings he would follow me down the road when I left, running ahead and blocking my path for a final stroke until I told him to go back home.

There was only one drawback. Being a male cat, as he grew older he took to marking his territory by spraying his pungent, acrid urine. Unfortunately one chosen spot was on the kitchen counter, up against the display of kitchen utensils. We were greeted most mornings with a soup tureen full of cat’s piss.

I HAD HAPPY
times outside school. Barry Jones’s elder brother, Gary, had been a coxswain for Kingston Rowing Club but had grown too big for the job, so Barry and I went along one Saturday for a try-out.

The job of a coxswain is rather exciting and important, especially when you’re only twelve. Apart from the coach, who is cycling along the towpath shouting handy hints through a megaphone, the cox is in complete control, not only of the steering, controlling the rudder with two toggles either side of the seat, but the speed and pace. During a race you also need to bully the oarsmen into giving their all with every stroke, even when they are completely exhausted. For a prepubescent boy this is quite a power trip.

To help in these endeavours I too had a megaphone, a mini tin one, fixed to my head with plastic straps.

Most of the year was spent training. The oarsmen ran and weight-lifted three times a week, then we would go out on the river in the boat at weekends, maybe the odd evening too if there was an important race looming. The regattas happened each Saturday in the summer months: Molesey, Wallingford, Marlow, Reading and so on, culminating, if you were good enough, in the splendour and glamour of Henley Royal Regatta.

In the winter you would train in the boat on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings. There were a few marathon events, such as the Tideway Head in March, where crews from all over the country raced in a mad free-for-all from Chiswick Bridge to Putney, a gruelling endurance test for oarsmen and coxswains alike, especially as we then had to row back to our headquarters in Kingston afterwards. On one occasion I was so frozen through after this event I had to be lifted out of the boat and carried into the kitchen where I was propped on a chair and my feet placed in the oven to defrost.

The clubhouse itself was (indeed, is still) situated in Canbury Gardens, just by Kingston Bridge, a short bicycle ride (on the pavement) from Teddington. The boats were all stored on the ground level in three big bays. At one end, giant clanking metal shutters could be winched open, then the boats carried out across the shingle to the river.

Upstairs were changing rooms, a kitchen (because oarsmen are always hungry), a bar (because oarsmen drink a lot of beer), a gymnasium and the clubroom itself, with its wooden floor and lots of black plastic leather-effect sofas and chairs. On the walls were wooden panels listing previous captains and presidents and winning crews, some of whom could be seen in the old sepia photographs sporting big baggy shorts and handlebar moustaches.

During my first year at KRC I didn’t take it very seriously. Barry and I would turn up on Saturday and hang around to see if any crews needed a cox. If not, we’d just lark about the clubhouse, maybe clean a boat if asked.

The club’s eccentric caretaker was a pipe-smoking Scottish man of about 60, called Jock. He was short and bald with a big moustache, like the men in the sepia photos, and gnarled seafaring hands. He seemed to more or less live on board his own flat-bottomed skiff boat, and it was his job to open up the clubhouse at weekends, serve behind the bar and generally boss everyone around. He was very moody and would shout and holler at anyone who crossed him. He seemed to be pretty much in charge of us boys, giving us chores to do, such as peeling potatoes or waxing a boat before a race.

He was also a bit of a dirty old man, and if he got you on your own in the kitchen he would come up close, his hands furiously scratching about in his pockets, and say things like: ‘I expect you boys like a bit of horseplay, do you, when you’re alone together, aye? Play with each other, eh?’

Then dissolve into a strange lusty giggle, all the while tugging away at his cock inside his trousers.

We obviously all knew about his peculiar ways and would avoid getting stuck on our own with him in the kitchen, but one or two of the boys went on dubious ‘overnights’ with him, sleeping in his leaky boat under a canvas contraption somewhere downriver. Nothing was ever said, but it’s hard to believe there wasn’t scratching and giggling involved.

Not me though.

‘Leave yourself alone!’ I said to him once, tired of the dirty talk and furtive wanking. ‘Or I shall tell my parents!’

Jock aside, the rowing-club crowd were jovial, sociable rugby types who loved rowing and sport in general but didn’t take it that seriously. They could drink for England in the bar once training was done, and in fact some of the set didn’t row at all, simply turned up every week to down lager and make merry. Most people had a nickname: Vampire, Groundhog, Lurch, Shirley, Skidmark and Birdshit, to name a few.

I was christened Fuck-Pig. This was laddish vulgarity: their label for me, a pretty blond girlish boy. In fact, they were kind and protective towards me. Eight drinking, swearing oarsmen were better role models than one strap-wielding monk.

Some of them had girlfriends who would come along to regattas to cheer on their burly boyfriends, or to the clubhouse after training where they’d sip white wine and mother us boys.

Word soon got round that I had a nubile older sister. Frances was now 16, a tall, glamorous blonde who had just started the dance and drama course at Arts Educational and wished, if you please, to be known henceforth as Frankie.

I took along a holiday snap of Frankie in a bikini and passed it round the bar one day. The reaction was most encouraging, so I offered to introduce her to anyone who would buy me a Mars Bar. First off the mark was Lurch, and I delivered her to him the next weekend.

The next year – 1972 – Fuck-Pig struck it lucky. I was given my own ‘eight’ for the season, and as it turned out they were a brilliant crew. I’d learned the rudiments of coxing the previous year, but under the tutelage of our coach, Don Somner (Groundhog), I discovered which part of the river to aim for to find the fastest-flowing stream of water, how to push the opposing crew over without getting disqualified for clashing blades, and how to get the best performance from my men, a lesson that has been invaluable to me ever since.

That summer we won every week, moving through the ranks from novice to elite. We were invincible. After each win we would go out and celebrate, often ending up at Kingston’s Berni Inn, where my boys ordered steak and lager and I was given a shandy or two. I was their mascot, indulged and looked after.

I remember one celebratory evening at the clubhouse when I had too much to drink and was sick in the toilets and then taken home, still in a bit of a state. My mother slept on my bedroom floor that night, concerned I might choke on my own vomit. The next morning, hung over and in disgrace, I was sent back to KRC to clean up the mess I’d made and then grounded for two weeks.

But I was a useful cox: in a close contest, aggressive steering and pertinent instructions can win the race. The boats themselves were delicate and expensive, and even the oars were costly to repair, and as the ‘driver’ a cox had considerable responsibility. I only disgraced myself once, but in quite spectacular fashion. One year I was cox to a hopeful four at Henley Royal Regatta. The evening before our first race we went out on the river to train and try out the course. That done, we headed for the landing stage and, aware that other crews and coxswains were watching, I attempted a swish and speedy landing, but mistimed it. I could see Don Somner’s frantic signals to slow down but ignored them. I’d show the opposition what a daring, chic master of the Thames they were dealing with.

There were a few last-second shouts from coach and crew but it was too late: the bow hit the bank with a sickening crunch. I’d not only caused irreparable damage to one of KRC’s finest boats, but ruined our chances at the most prestigious regatta in the rowing calendar. We had to borrow an inferior vessel for our race and lost dismally. It was all my fault.

I was in deep disgrace. There was no jolly fun with the boys for Fuck-Pig at Henley that year, and my blonde locks were left untousled.

But to be fair, they didn’t bear a grudge, and my boat-smashing faux pas was soon just a club bar story that I rather enjoyed hearing repeated.

A bit like the bowl-of-soup incident.

KRC’s arch rivals were Molesey Rowing Club, and once a year the two clubs would compete for a day and then have a grand, if tense, dinner, which would take place at the clubhouse of the alternate hosts. Legend has it that I wasn’t happy with the soup at Molesey’s club one year, so I carried my bowl to the top table where their leader, Captain Croucher, sat resplendent in black jacket and club tie, and poured it over his head. Apparently it was piping hot and didn’t result in the hearty back-slapping from my fellow Kingstonians that I’d expected.

Although the rowing world was one of dedication, tough and exhausting, it had a unique social structure. No one lost sight of the fact that it was primarily a recreation for all involved. The homoeroticism of such an environment passed me by at the time, but who is to say that my subconscious wasn’t taking notes? Maybe fate was preparing me for the life that lay ahead. I certainly got a rush from being in charge. Eight men in peak physical condition jumping to my every command: to get that kind of thrill nowadays I’d have to go to some underground club in New York I suspect.

‘You were very assertive for a twelve-year-old,’ recalled Richard Nelson, my ‘stroke’ – the oarsman at the front of the boat who sat directly opposite me and generally set the pace.

He was 25 in 1972 and looked after me like I was a younger brother. It was his sweaty face in the forefront of my vision during a race, his agony I witnessed closest, his sweat I smelt and his sofa I would sleep on when we all staggered out of the Berni Inn and they were all too pissed to deliver me home to St Mark’s Road.

At the opposite end of the boat from Richard, in the bow position, was Grant Watkins, or Grantley, as he was known. Originally from Australia and only 18, he was the youngest member of the crew. Like most Aussies he was forever cheerful and adventurous, given to uttering meaningless phrases like ‘wacko-the-diddle-o’. For him a penny was a ‘brass ra-zoo’. Always being silly and jumping around or falling down to make people laugh, he was never without his camera. He had his own darkroom and would develop the pictures himself, sometimes superimposing someone’s head onto another body. One December he made a short comedy film starring me and him and showed it at the Christmas party. Indeed, he went on to become a talented TV and film editor.