The Day Gone By (21 page)

Next came the British Legion, all in their medals and with two comrades detailed to present to the Rector their colour, to be laid on the altar. Several were disabled - blind or on crutches. After these followed a representative contingent, all in uniform, of every civic service; the police, the post office, the firemen carrying their shining brass helmets. A leash of nurses from the hospital would be there, conspicuous in white and blue. When everyone was seated Mr Majendie, the rector, would speak a few words of welcome and Christmas greeting and then we would launch into ‘O come all ye faithful'.

I recall someone else who deserves record - the barrel-organ man. The barrel-organ man didn't come very often; perhaps once in eighteen months, or even more rarely. The barrel-organ itself I remember as a stout, solid affair - at least as big as a bath – mounted on two wheels like a gig, with its own shafts and covered all over in stout, grey canvas, so that all you could see of the works were the pointer to change the tune and the brass handle you turned to play it. It was pulled by a donkey.

The barrel-organ man would simply come to the front door and start up. To hear him, wherever you were in house or garden, was to drop whatever you were doing and come running out. He talked little - perhaps he was Italian - but he always smiled amiably; and he would allow you to try to turn the handle yourself. I say ‘try' because I never could master the knack of turning it evenly and regularly. The tune came out in jerks: but not when he played. It was a beautiful, unique quality of sound, a metallic vibrato. I wish I could hear it again. I wonder what it would be worth now.

The proper thing to give a donkey, of course, is a carrot; and much scurry there would be to produce some; from the garden if it was summer, and from the loft if it was winter. The donkey ate them with relish. Its lips were pleasantly flexible, warm and soft. The barrel-organ man didn't stay long. He took his hand-out and departed. I never liked seeing him leave. He was a rare treat.

I remember Mrs Griffin, the charwoman. Mrs Griffin looked poor as no one looks now. Her thick, black hair, which had certainly never seen a hairdresser, was fastened with hairpins in a bun at the back. She had no teeth and no false teeth. Her cheeks had a shiny, rosy colour - there was something a little gipsyish in her appearance - and she smiled a lot, to ingratiate herself, I dare say. She lived down in the town and used to come all the way up the hill on foot to scrub our floors. She scrubbed floors and she drank cocoa with her dinner and at the end of the day was paid half-a-crown. The job of taking it to her was usually delegated to my sister, who not long ago told me that she had never forgotten, in fifty years or more, Mrs Griffin's mumbling, effusive delight over her half-crown.

I remember, and I am not likely to forget, Marian Hayter. Colonel Hayter and his family were patients of my father, and lived out at Burghclere, not far from Colonel Elkington. There were two girls, Elsie and Marian, and two boys, Anthony and David. Anthony and David were the younger, about my own age, while Elsie and Marian were some eight or nine years older - about the same age as my brother and sister. Later, in the ‘thirties, Elsie became an Oxford Grouper: and what happened to her after that I don't know. Marian Hayter was, by common agreement, the most beautiful girl for miles around. She did teach the torches to burn bright. Since then I have had the luck to meet some very beautiful women (including Virginia McKenna, Julie Christie and Raquel Welch) but I have never seen anyone - anyone at all - more beautiful than Marian Hayter. She fairly knocked you flat (even at the age of eight or nine); a perfect English blonde, golden-haired, blue-eyed, smiling, graceful in movement, softly rosy, with a kind of unselfconscious vivacity and poise which made you want to go on looking at her for ever. She later married the chairman of the Rootes Group. Good luck to him!

Anthony Hayter was one of the R.A.F. officers who escaped from Stalag Luft III in the famous and desperate wooden horse break-out. As is well-known, Hitler, in flagrant breach of the Geneva Convention, personally ordered that all escapers caught should be put to death. Anthony succeeded in travelling across Germany as far as Strasbourg. Here he was arrested by the Gestapo, who drove him out into a nearby wood and shot him.

For an eight-year-old the prospect of leaving home for boarding-school was a daunting one. I have always felt that the idea was not put across to me in a properly positive way. I had known for years - ever since infancy - that one day I was going, but I had also known since about 1928 that the time fixed was the Michaelmas term of 1929. However, this was changed, at almost no notice, to the earlier summer term. I don't know why, but I dare say it may have been a full quota of new boys already accepted, or something like that, which made my father agree to the earlier term. However this was not the reason given to me. The reason given to me by my mother was that I had become too naughty and uncontrollable. If I were the parent of an eight-year-old boy, I certainly would not give him such a negative and dispiriting reason for so big and important a step in his life, even if it were true. I would contrive somehow to put the thing across to him in a positive way and do my best to persuade him to accept it willingly. However, if my dear mother had a fault, it was a moody inconsistency of temper. There were times when one could do nothing right. I can't remember what I'd done wrong when one day, round about the end of March 1929, she said ‘As you're so naughty, I've decided to send you to boarding-school
this
term.' Of course, it had all been fixed well before that: my trunk had been bought and lettered, and clothes, socks and handkerchiefs put up together in conformity with the school list.

I tried pleading and promises to reform. But the sight of the trunk and other things brought home to me that this was a
fait accompli.
I remember, during that April, a feeling of mounting apprehension as the days went by, but not much else to mark the end of childhood.

On the afternoon of the day on which I was to leave, I slipped out alone into the garden and made a kind of ceremonial peregrination round the whole place, saying good-bye to the stables and the loft, the ruined pigsty, the herbaceous border, the hundred-yard-long hornbeam hedge; and to Bull Banks. The coming term was to last three months, and I would never have been away from home for anything like so long before.

I remember actually handling the grasses in the paddock and murmuring some sort of farewell to them. It was appropriate enough. For the next ten summers I was not to see the tall grasses changing their burnish under the midsummer wind; nor to take part in hay-making.

Horris Hill was, and is today, an illustrious prep. school of high standing, a worthy peer of its old sports-field rivals the Dragons at Oxford. In situation it is not a true hill, the buildings, grounds and playing-fields covering a slightly raised, rather bare upland a mile and a half south of Newbury, which I imagine must once have formed part of the brackeny, birchy wasteland adjacent to the west.

The school was built and founded in 1888 by a certain Evans - the first headmaster. His son, Johnny Evans, was, in his day, something of a national figure; first as an England cricketer and then, during the Great War, as an intrepid escaper from German prisoner-of-war camps. Later, in collaboration with one Major Harrison, he wrote a book about his exploits, entitled
The Escaping Club.
He made, I believe, three or four escapes, of which only the last, of course, was entirely successful; that is, he got back to England. For one of his escapes he used a file which was sent to him in a cake baked in Horris Hill kitchen.

During the Second World War, Evans formed part of an army organization in London whose job was encouraging and helping British prisoners-of-war to escape. In the course of his work he came in for criticism which need not be recounted here. Also I have seen the argument expressed that, during Hitler's war, encouraging prisoners to escape was not altogether a good idea, since it brought about Nazi reprisals (such as the murder of Anthony Hayter and his friends).

Anyway, the foregoing makes clear that Johnny Evans (whom I sometimes saw on his visits to Horris Hill but, although his son Michael was an exact contemporary of mine, never actually met) was a courageous, games-playing, extrovert sort of man - a typical Victorian gentleman and Christian.

The headmaster of my day was Mr J. L. Stow, generally agreed to have been an outstanding prep. school headmaster. He was chairman of the Prep. School Headmasters' Association, to whom he was known as ‘Daddy' Stow. At Horris Hill, however, he bore the homelier nickname of ‘Stidge' (or sometimes ‘Stygo').

Mr Stow was in every respect a strong personality. Even his gentleness and kindness were in some way powerful, like those of a lioness with her cubs. He possessed in a high degree the two essential qualities for a schoolmaster, warmth and humour; and he had a strong but pleasant voice. He taught well: in fact he was fascinating; it was positively enjoyable to be a member of any class he took. He was the form-master of the top form, of course, but he also taught maths, to the one-from-bottom form - no doubt as a means of getting to know the younger boys and size them up, for he was very keen on that. He knew every boy in the school - there were, in my day, ninety-four — by his Christian name.

Though neither tall nor particularly stout, he was a well-built, heavy, imposing man. (I never saw him run.) In my mind's eye he is always wearing a double-breasted, grey flannel suit and looking alertly about him from his brown eyes. (His manner was never abstracted or reflective.) He was continually among the boys and could converse with them good-humouredly and amusingly. He knew everybody's character and he knew everything that was going on.

He was - in that world, anyway - something of a larger-than-life character, generous and magnanimous of mind. He could be both emotional and intimidating. If he saw occasion (such as a fumbled pass in a school soccer match) he would burst out in a roar: ‘Oh, no, no,
no
! Come
along,
now, for goodness sake!' which carried far across the field. I well remember how, playing in my first school match at home, I had the good luck to throw the wicket down from deep mid-off, running the batsman out. ‘Well played, Dicky!' called out Mr Stow loudly. As good as an M.B.E. any day!

I often reflect, nowadays, how lucky I was to get four years of Mr Stow - to say nothing of his friendship in later life. From the ancient Greeks onwards, a fine schoolmaster has always been recognized as one of the greatest blessings which anyone can have. I had three, of whom Mr Stow was the first. He may have been a man of strong, turbulent emotions and even somewhat prone to angry outbursts, but he put them to excellent use, and he was liked and respected by everyone: the right man to have on your side.

Horris Hill was a school for young gentlemen, and there was much emphasis on the vital importance of truth, honesty and correct behaviour. Perhaps four or five times a term, on Sunday evenings after hymn-singing (of which more anon), Mr Stow would deliver what was known as a ‘pi-jaw'. This might be concerned with all manner of matters - bullying, scatology (we knew nothing at all about sex, of course), behaviour towards the lower classes (kindly, polite, decided, firm and magnanimous), diligence, gratitude, how to show proper respect towards one's elders and betters and towards ladies, and so on. I recall how once he spoke to us about the wrongfulness of leading smaller boys into misdemeanor out of a desire to show off to them as being rather a devil. He showed how vulgar and unworthy of a gentleman this was, and then, with the most telling effect, quoted Matthew, Chapter XVIII, verse 6, ‘Whoso shall offend one of these little ones … it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.' I've never forgotten it.

At times he could deliver a cutting rebuke without roaring at all. I had a friend called Pawson II, who had a habit of biting the skin on the sides of his fingers - unconsciously, I'm sure. One day, when he was doing it in form, Mr Stow took a minute or two to castigate the nasty habit and point out how objectionable it was. A morning or two later, the wretched boy was doing it again, while Mr Stow was expounding Virgil. He finished the passage and then enquired conversationally, ‘Breakfast nearly over, Pawson?'

During my first term I was dreadfully homesick. Homesickness can be tantamount to a nervous breakdown - that is, you no longer care what anyone else thinks; you weep openly and so on. No one could have been gentler, kinder or more understanding than Mr Stow. He spent what seemed a long time in comforting me and talking to me privately. Later, one bit of this conversation came to be a standing joke between the two of us for years. Between sobs of misery I said ‘Sir, can I say anything I like to you?' ‘Yes, Dicky, you can say
anything
at all.' ‘Well, sir, that Dickens this morning; I didn't think you read it very well.' This made me feel enormously better. We were able to talk about something other than my unhappiness, and Mr Stow had shown himself benign and humane.

I remember another incident worth relating. One summer evening Mr Stow was strolling round our dormitory, and by way of making conversation was asking each boy in turn how many runs he had made that day. ‘Fourteen, sir,' said the dormitory captain. ‘Well done, Michael,' replied Stidge. ‘Ten, sir,' said the next lad. ‘You must get another nought on it next time.' As he came closer to me, I felt apprehensive and horribly embarrassed, for I had been undeservedly lucky. ‘And how many did
you
make, Dicky?' ‘Sir,' I replied in a low, ashamed voice, ‘twenty-eight not out.' Without a word Mr Stow extended his hand over the end of my bed. I crept forward and shook it.

Horris Hill was not a school of strong religious indoctrination, like an R.C. school or a Woodard. It was straight, unpretentious C. of E. in the manner of that time. There were school prayers morning and evening, consisting of a short reading from the Bible, the Lord's Prayer and the appropriate collects. On Sundays we walked both to matins and to evensong at one or other of the local churches, Newtown or Burghclere. Usually these were services for the school alone (we filled Newtown church, anyway) but on special occasions, such as Remembrance Sunday, we attended with the village people. We were disgustingly snobbish little boys, and I remember one of my companions imitating the Burghclere choir. ‘Ten thaousand times ten thaousand …' Finally, on Sunday evenings, after divinity prep., there would be communal hymn-singing from the English hymnal. This was a popular institution. Everyone knew the tunes, and it was almost the only community singing we got. Small boys of that class are - or were - unthinking believers and in many cases deeply sincere about religion. I don't think we reflected with any intensity or fervour on the words, but some of the verses which come back to me now I wouldn't want any nine-year-old of mine to have on his mind.