Lost Lad (5 page)

            Simeon was alone, always alone.  As usual, for security, he made himself as small as possible, his back pressed hard up against the school wall.  Warily he watched Big Boy and his small Mafia of thugs stroll by.  Even in fear, he was unable to keep his eyes off the well proportioned Big Boy who so nicely filled out those raggy britches of which he was so very familiar.  But this was an unkind hour.  Having noticed the neat hair, three lads detached themselves from the group and confronted him.  Just for a moment Big Boy looked over and, just for a moment, Simeon hoped that he might intercede to prevent the coming atrocity.  But nothing was done to stop that vicious and total humiliation of ruffled hair, pokes, pushes, pig grunts, jeers and sadistic twisted leers from that cruel gathering congregation of amused faces. 

            A whistle stopped the show.  Blown by a schoolmaster, this was the command for all boys to freeze and be silent.  A second blow was the command for all boys to '
walk
, not run'
to their class lines.  A whistle stopped the entertainment - but not the intense shame and pain which would last all day and all night for one slow walker who had been brought very low. 

Five minutes later all the boys in the school were marched into the Hall for morning assembly where they faced the stage, strictly standing to attention in straight lines, hands by sides in stillness and silence.  No talking, no whispering, no shuffling - just waiting respectfully to receive the headmaster.  On dark winter mornings, in those few quiet seconds before the appearance of his Dread Lord, Simeon could hear the gentle hissing of gas lamps.  Boys at his side, boys to the front and rear, clean boys and dirty boys all created an unpleasant Dickensian crush of musty odour and stifling lack of ventilation.  He looked up at the high open window hoping that some fresh air might enter, and, less likely, that he might fly out to freedom and away from the pain of school, home and Heanor.

            All eyes focused on the strict headmaster, a stern theocrat, distant and detached, who reigned with absolute power over this culture of cruelty.  His baton, seen daily as an instrument of oppression, would be raised -

"To whom the lips of children

Made sweet hosannas ring."

One of the head's frequent favourites, but this dismal, doleful dirge will always be associated with humiliation, pain and suffering.  In later years it came as a surprise to Simeon that some people actually liked hymns!  He assumed that they were deliberately composed to be depressing and dreary to enable the suffering singer to atone for his sins.

After a sleepless night came a morning when his spirit was broken beyond repair.  He was afraid of the consequences of failure to attend school, but, could not find the courage to walk up that hill from his home at Red Lion Square, a first floor flat above a tobacconist.  Simeon was totally alone.  He had no friends to advise him.  There were no adults he could approach.  He was disliked by his parents.  They took the view that boys must learn to fight their own battles, consistent with a long held working class ethos.  Sink or swim, he sank.  A boy who could not mend a puncture, a boy who had no aptitude for football (in a macho culture where football was important) was a great disappointment.

            For the first time ever, Simeon feigned illness and stayed at home.  He was unable to think beyond the next 24 hours, but with both parents out at work, he was savouring a period of calm and respite until...  He heard ominous footsteps along the dark narrow entry.  Silence.  He waited.  He had half expected that this would happen, that the insidious tentacles of Mundy Street Boys School would reach out into the safety of his own home.  The door reverberated and filled the building with several loud bangs.  Cautiously and quietly he crept down the stairs and peered through a peep hole to see an alarmingly familiar face.  Big Boy was excited.  He was bobbing around, impatient and keen for an answer.  He had been sent by the schoolmaster to investigate.  He had been given a mission to bring Simeon Hogg back to school.  Such was the power of a classroom teacher back in 1957.

            Stealthily the truant withdrew, ascended the stairs and hoped that the unwelcome visitor would give up and return to the evil hell from whence he came.  But no: utter horror: the door handle moved: the unlocked door opened and the intruder entered.  Like a pursued animal in fear, Simeon, barefoot and still in his pyjamas, silently sprinted up two flights to conceal himself in a small box room on the second floor. 

            Big Boy had no fear at all.  Why should he?  He was the 'chosen one' who was expected to do a good job.  He was acting in the name of the schoolmaster who authorised this errand.  Had he encountered Mr or Mrs Hogg, he would have asserted his delegated authority and claimed it included permission to enter and search.  This was no trespass, 'the Hogg' had to be, if necessary, dragged back, had to be taught a lesson.  Mr X knew how to deal with 'the Hogg'.  If Big Boy succeeded, they would all be in for a good show that morning.

            From faint sounds heard inside the box room, the intruder appeared to be taking his sweet time to investigate the main front living room.  Family photographs would be studied providing information which could be useful in the playground at a later date.  The kitchen and bathroom were next.  Simeon, remaining very still, held on to the hope that the explorer would get bored and go away.  Matters could hardly get worse, but they did.  He heard Big Boy creaking up to the second floor coming to rest in front of the box room door - which was not quite closed.  Curiously, the snooper gave it a little push.  Clutter caused resistance and, just for a moment, a partial view of miscellaneous junk was now possible in poor light.  Just for a moment, but for the pathetic cringing child, deep in shadows only inches away, that moment was an eternity.  The man often looked back on this excruciating moment and angrily asked -

           
"Why?  How?  How did I let that happen?"
    

But he knew the answer to that question.  He knew that three years later, a re-invented Simeon, christened Dobba, the new confident confidant of Scott North would have challenged the rude brazen trespasser, would never have allowed that appalling situation to arise. 

A systematically bullied child, bereft of wise counsel from any adult, is imprisoned in his own private hell.  This child had been groomed as a victim and was, as usual, obediently behaving as a victim rather like the unfortunate captives who were brainwashed in Korea just a few years before.  Indeed, this child had already reached an advanced stage of humility and obedience to his class guards, to Big Boy and to the teacher whose sarcastic tongue he dreaded daily.  Simeon's usual body language in and around the area of Mundy Street Boys School said it all - head bowed and eyes downcast.  After the style of the concentration camp, Mundy Street Boys School, if not tattooed on his arm, was, and would be for the rest of his life - tattooed in his mind.

Big Boy did not notice Simeon in the box room.  He passed on.  He prowled on to the principal front bedroom, neat and therefore not very interesting save for the long view from the north western facing window: an uninterrupted third of a mile, way down High Street to the very bottom of the hill.  Back on the landing, once again passing the box room, he found the back bedroom - his coup-de-grace.  On the door a child-like crayoned sign was incorrectly spelled 'PRIVET'.  Mortified, Simeon heard the click of entry into his own inner sanctum.  Leisurely, the prowler set out to examine all parts of the interior which included the contents of drawers, diagrams and pictures on the walls, clothes, books, comics, toys and all manner of personal effects.  All this took quite a span of time for one miserable shrinking child now cold and huddled nearby.  The agony of these minutes was not born of the fear of burglarious activity: the agony was born of the sadistic objective - the intent, to bring low one who has already suffered much.

            Descending steps announced the end of the ordeal.  The measured unhurried creaks seemed to enhance the cruel satisfaction of the exercise and the smug hint of a smile playing around Big Boy's lips could be imaged.  The door closed - he had gone.  

Arriving at school the next day confirmed Simeon Hogg's worst fears.  Hesitantly with stony expression, he approached the entrance and halted before a large group - gloating, smirking, sensing blood.  A raucous chorus quickly surrounded him to shout, stab and wound him with the news of the previous morning.  The schoolmaster had invited Big Boy to deliver his report publicly before the oversized class of 46 pupils and that class was allowed to break into a rapture of noisy merriment.  Included in the entertainment was a reference to the 'Privet' sign, drawings of space rockets on the wall, a painting of an American car, comics considered too young and any amount of embarrassing material which could be retained and used at will for future tortures.  Simeon's private world was laid bare.  Uproarious laughter, catcalls and continuing ridicule followed him throughout that terrible day, one of many bad days in the year of 1957.   

It had been going on and on, day after day, week after week, month after month.  Like the wording of a medieval torture -

'... as much as you can bear, and greater.
'

On that day after school it was too great.  A great relief came over him when he contemplated a drastic solution.  It was under a bleak mid-winter miserable sky, darkened by drizzle when Simeon opened the sash window and assessed the length of drop from that second floor bedroom onto the glistening pavement below.  It seemed like a high fall, but would it be enough?  Would it be quick?  It needed to be quick.  These contemplations were a relief for the unhappy little boy.  Despair had produced its own balm.  The resolution itself made things better, because, now, there was a way out.  The intolerable had now become just a fraction more tolerable.

During these cogitations he leaned out further and noted the views.  In the far distance, the hills of Derbyshire were shrouded with low grey cloud.  He noted industrial scars of mining and, in the near distance, the foot of that long straight road.  At the end of that road, just to the left there was another school - a better school. 

Simeon the man has often looked back at that moment.  He often stood on Red Lion Square and looked up to his old home which still had the date marked out in carved bricks - 1888.  And above the date, there was that depressing, now slowly rotting top window, the window of despair.  He was thankful that Simeon the boy did not jump, because Simeon the boy was only months away from attending that better school down the hill. 

Enough of this unhealthy brooding.  Heanor had better things to offer. The following autumn would see a bigger lad flying down that same hill to another regime and a much kinder campus.  A left turn took the cyclist into a cul-de-sac called Allandale Road where the sun was always shining.  This was the leafy glade of William Howitt Secondary Modern School.  At this nostalgic east gate, years later, an American tourist often stood where a boy had once stood.  Once again he admired the mottled effect cast by the same mighty lime tree and the equally splendid copper beech.  This was the site of that one magical brief moment in his life when he enjoyed being part of the realm of Queen Mary McLening as she ruled over her Camelot, a culture of kindness.  This school too had its rough powerful lads who were feared and respected, but to his delight, Simeon discovered that
these
guys where dressed differently - they wore the
white
hats.  These tough lads gave him back not only his self-respect and dignity - they gave him a more precious gift yet - they gave him friendship.        

Today on Thursday April 17th 2003 in his home near Detroit, he was thinking of this friendship now.  He wondered what had become of those good people after all these years.  Often he wondered about the friend who had simply disappeared one day: an event which had haunted him all his life.

In all the years of annual trips over the Atlantic, he had never once tried to reunite with his old school pals.  Why?  Was it fear?  Fear that the memory and idealised image was so precious, so fragile it could so easily be shattered? 

He had worshipped Scott North, the successful athlete who ruled the school and had generously bestowed a small portion of his prestige and kudos upon Simeon.  Rather like being knighted by a king.  It transformed his life.  Scott North was the distinctive dazzling blond hunk of popular memory who confidently swaggered his well proportioned body across the playground, flashing his good looks to admiring girls, some of whom had tried to pretend a lack of interest.  It was this same Scott who had reinvented and re-moulded the image of Simeon Hogg. 

Simeon?  It was not entirely a suitable name for a member of Scott's inner circle .....    

Chapter 4

Looks Good, Feels Good, Tastes Good

Just before 9.00am on the Monday of September 1st, 1958, a scruffy, introverted, nervous and academically weak new pupil with no self confidence was, as usual, standing with his back hard up against the school wall, as usual, trying to make himself small and inconspicuous.  Auspiciously it was a warm sunny day.  Auspiciously he saw a sea, a swirl of unfamiliar faces because his enemies - were gone!  They were safely removed to a different secondary modern school, thankfully a good mile away, on the other side of the hill at another place called Aldercar.  This was the west side of town, this was William Howitt Secondary Modern School.