You Have Not a Leg to Stand On (8 page)

While sitting there in front of the house surrounded by papers and boxes, a young, smartly dressed black man, in a well cut three-piece suit, came up to me. He said, in a real cockney accent, ‘Would I be right in thinking you might be interested in selling this house?' I said I would be, but there might be a few problems to overcome first. He said he quite understood but could we discuss if we were in the same ballpark first and then take it from there. In no time at all we'd come to an agreement, so we shook on it, and he said, ‘Deep joy.' We swapped addresses and solicitors and he said, ‘I can't pay for it all now, but I'll put down fifty grand. I'll sell it before starting the building work and with the buyers deposit pay the remainder.'

It would not be possible to imagine something good coming out of someone as awful as my Aunt Sheila. But it did. No will was ever found and Mr Johnson had gone off to meet his maker, so, ironically, everything she owned went to the two people she hated the most, her two sisters. The sale of the house to ‘Deep Joy', worked out to the letter. The social services were paid back all the money Sheila had fraudulently stolen and the people who bought the new house ‘Deep Joy' had built, were delighted, over the moon. We went to see them later. We did not tell them about Sheila.

English Channel

Now, back to my first boarding school in England. While at this ridiculously expensive school where the classes were purposefully small, so each pupil could have the greatest chance of learning, at least something. I, as explained earlier, had perfected the art of not listening, so learnt nothing. But I did make a very good friend. His name was Christopher Whittaker. Chris was an incredibly talented young man, something I lacked in abundance. He couldn't remember when he couldn't play the piano. He could play anything, classical or show tunes. He could sing the lyrics of shows having heard them only once. He wrote his own, caustic lyrics about all the tutors and performed them in front of the whole school at the end of term. He was a star in the classroom, all his A levels he passed with graceful ease. He could have gone to any University he chose. He chose the University of California to study geology. But his passion, his deep abiding passion, was the sea; Aqualung diving, and the sea. His hero was Jacque Cousteau and the whole purpose of his education was designed around being accepted as part of Jacques Cousteau's team. He wanted to be on his ship Calypso, sailing the oceans of the world studying them in all their aspects, and the effect their changes would have on mankind. Had Chris lived, I have no doubt he would have achieved his aim. He died saving someone else's life. For him, it was doing his duty, but for all of us it was a terrible tragedy.

To this day I have no idea why Chris took me up as a friend but there's no point in wondering, I just have to be grateful he did, because he was responsible for the only two things I achieved at that school, aqualung diving and potholing. More of that later. It may seem odd, but those two activities go together. He made me keep a log of all the dives I did. My first dive was in the freezing cold, muddy, smelly, six-foot deep pond, at the bottom of the field our schoolhouse looked out on. I still have that logbook, it could well have been the only exercise book, I ever wrote in, during the four years I was at that school. He had all the equipment, the tanks, the pressure valves, the wetsuit. Actually, the wetsuit didn't fit me as I was so small. So he bought enough double-sided rubber foam and a pattern and told me to build it myself. As it happens, practically the only talent I have or had is, I'm quite dextrous. So I set my mind to it. In a few days, I not only surprised myself but everyone in my dormitory. I made it on my bed, and the result astonished Chris. Unfortunately, depending on the way you look at it, that wetsuit only lasted me one term, because quite suddenly, my voice broke and I started to grow, I grew five inches in one year. I was in a lot of pain all the time. I kept on going to the sanatorium and saying, ‘I ache all over,' it was as though I'd strained my muscles and joints. ‘You've done too much training, go away.' You would have thought they could have told me, it must happen a lot at a boarding school, suddenly bursting out all over at that age, it was growing pains.

An attractive blonde American woman called Jane Baldasare, made an announcement in the Daily Mail, she and her husband were coming to England for her to attempt to be the first person to swim the English Channel underwater. When Chris first found the article about Jane and her other record-breaking achievements, he was so excited he could hardly contain himself. There was no question in his mind, ‘he' was going to be part of her team on that swim.

The then famous Billy Butlin, of Butlin's holiday camps, had agreed to be her sponsor. He was a excellent choice with his outgoing, entertaining character and advertising skills. He'd also agreed to put up Jane and her husband Fred, in one of his hotels in Folkestone while setting up the whole, very complicated, ‘event'.

Chris somehow engineered a meeting. It was a foregone conclusion, with his determination and genuine knowledge of all it would entail to approach such a swim, he was not only accepted, but paid to be a member of the team. However, what she hadn't bargained for, I was part of Chris's own team. She said ‘but he's so small.' He said, ‘It doesn't matter how small he is, in fact, the smaller, the better.' She had no choice but to agree.

It took quite a long time to set the whole attempt up, as you can imagine. So when she saw me again some time later, having sprouted like a well-watered plant, she stared at me in disbelief and said, ‘but how can you be the same person?'

The English Channel is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Very tough training and teamwork was essential. She had to train for the possibility she might be swimming for thirty hours non-stop. The energy she'd be using, against the cold alone, would be a thousand calories every half-hour. For the attempt to be registered as an underwater feat by the Guinness book of Records, the swimmer could not break surface. It was much more efficient for the swimmer to stay at the same depth all the time, and be given the food to feed herself while on the move. A formula of baby food and chocolate Milo, the highest calorie intake with a volume of water to quench thirst, was mixed and poured into a rugby football bladder and given to her every half-hour.

She did very well and became incredibly strong. Unfortunately, she made two attempts and failed twice. It wasn't her fault in any way. The first failure was caused by a stupid muddle on the boat, and an empty air cylinder was taken down to replace hers. Can you believe it? On the second attempt, Chris was put in charge, but the weather got so bad the divers could no longer get in and out of the boat with the food and air cylinders. It was quite calm down at twenty feet, it was very difficult to persuade her to come up. She was so disheartened she couldn't try again. I don't blame her. Her husband got so fit training her, later he made an attempt himself and did it. It took him over thirty-two hours. So he, Fred Baldasare, was the first person to swim the English Channel underwater. There wasn't much coverage in the press, possibly because he'd left his wife now that she'd decided not to continue a record-breaking career. Or maybe because she'd left him for one of the pressmen aboard from the Daily Mail.

The school I attended was one of the most expensive in England, so most of the boys had a reasonable amount of spending money. I was the exception. So Chris persuaded a boy, called Simon Paterson, to set a record for swimming the English Channel underwater, in the shortest possible time. To do so would be even better than doing it for the first time. So we set about training. And my god did we train. All Simon was allowed to do was eat, sleep, and train. Simon wasn't a big person, but he was very wiry. He got leaner and wirier, stronger and stronger. You could see his strength growing in the bounce of his step and the way he flew upstairs. I rather envied him. But the envy soon waned while watching him being forced to swim faster and faster, up and down that bloody village pool for hour upon hour. He begged Chris to let him get out, ‘No, just a few more.' ‘You said that an hour ago.' ‘Just a few more.' He outgrew the pool, now he had to endure the cold, up and down that awful beach at Folkestone. Chris shouting at him from those pebbles, ‘No, you can't get out, faster, faster.' We were working to a deadline. The Channel shipping authorities couldn't allow too many swimmers to attempt a crossing, it's quite dangerous as it is. The time was soon upon us. We'd had a frame of a cage built out of two-inch steel tubing. It was twenty feet long by twenty feet deep and five feet wide. It was kept afloat by two forty-four gallon drums tied to each end. The frame served a number of purposes. He could follow the boat and tell the boat, by means of a bell, to go faster or slower. He knew what depth to keep and one of the team of six divers would also be with him at all times without having to swim to keep up. Finally, and most importantly, he could be observed by a member of the Guinness Book of Records.

We started at Cape Gris Nez on the French coast, at midnight, the moment the tide turned to run away from the shore. As the bottom of the frame was twenty feet down the boat obviously had to be quite far offshore. The rules stated the swimmer had to be beneath the surface as soon as it was deep enough to be so, only a couple of feet. So he had to be lead with a cord pulled by a swimmer on the surface. That swimmer had to be very strong to stay ahead of Simon at the peak of his fitness and the impatience of starting. We set a cracking pace. We feared it might be too fast. After six or seven hours, you would have thought he might slow down a bit. On one of my shifts, I could only just make it back to the boat, he was swimming so fast. We were also lucky in having a superb Captain of our little fishing boat. He knew, like the back of his hand, the complexity and position of all the different currents that flow back and forth across that twenty-two miles of water. He would turn the boat slightly into each current, therefore keeping us in as straight a line as possible, without slowing Simon down by turning the boat too directly into the current. He was doing so well we arrived off Dover beach too early. He was swimming towards the beach as fast as the tide was coming out. He asked, on the slate tied to the frame, where he was. We wrote, just a couple of miles off Dover. An hour later he asked again, we told him what was happening, he began to flag. Chris had a little pep-up speech prepared, ‘New record, it'll never be broken, poor old Fred,' along those lines. His spirits lifted enough to hang on. We came to the point where the boat could only pull the cage so far, he had to be lead to shore the same way he had to be lead to the cage. I was given that job. It was extraordinary how much strength Simon still had. With all my strength, I was only just strong enough to keep the cord taught. When I walked out of the water first, all the awaiting cameras started to flash me. It was all I could do to stop myself from helping Simon by pulling the cord as hard as I could. He had to make it himself to above the high tidemark. He couldn't stand. He crawled. He crawled so slowly, it was agony to watch. He told me later, he felt as though a ton of lead had been loaded on his back. I think that was the only detail, of all the dedication to gruelling training by Simon and Chris and everyone on the boat, to culminate in this incredible feat, Chris hadn't considered. Simon reached the high tidemark on the Dover Beach, from the high tidemark on the shore of Cap Gris Nez in France, in thirteen hours and forty-seven minutes. I think it's a record set in stone.

The Tutor

Looking back on my life, from where I am at this moment, sitting on a luxurious balcony, in a five-star hotel, looking out through countless coconut palms to the Indian Ocean, with white foam waves crashing on to a golden beach in Kerala, Southern India. At the age of seventy, it's very difficult to analyse how events have come about to enable this to happen.

I've explained earlier how I was suddenly released from having to return to my so-called ‘educational establishment', with such ease, with a throw-away line to my mother. I was left dumbfounded. The sense of elation didn't hit me till much later. I can remember that feeling of excitement welling up from the pit of my stomach and bursting into my solar plexus, to this very day. It doesn't happen very often and, unfortunately, is quickly dulled by the reality of oncoming events. What I really wanted most of all was to stay at home, live at home, work at home, work with my father, work on the ranch. If only I could have vocalised that wish then. I didn't, I let events take control of me, rather than the other way round. Chances present themselves, to most people, regularly, but it's only the entrepreneurial spirit that recognises them. I let myself be swept along by events I no longer wanted to be part of. I couldn't say I didn't need any further education because on paper I plainly did, but I wanted to get on living a life I knew I loved and understood. Instead, I was sent away, again, for further education.

There followed an extraordinarily strange, surreal year of being taught by a man who was so ‘different' from anyone I've ever met before or since, I can't really categorise him. There were only four of us who lived with him and his wife, in his home, an old vicarage, for that year, but he took it upon himself to teach us everything. When I say ‘everything', I really do mean ‘everything'. Not just to pass exams, in all subjects, but even how to dress in different situations. Every evening we ‘dressed' for supper and we had to make interesting conversation. We weren't allowed to ask for the pepper or salt, we had to be offered it, and we had to know which wine to drink with which food. He gave the two of us, as we were slightly older than the other two, a glass of wine he and his wife were drinking. He talked about it, in ‘wine speak', where it came from, the type of wine it was, everything you should know about wine if you like to drink it. He would test us the following evening. We then had to compare it to the present evening's bottle. After supper, we'd troop through the cold hall, to his library to be given an ‘English spelling' test. We then chose a book to read quietly before being sent to bed. We slept and did our schoolwork in the same room. Every morning before getting dressed, however cold it was, only wearing pyjama bottoms, we'd shiver our way downstairs to the hall, through the kitchen, to the scullery. There, next to the door leading to the yard, was an old, even for then, long-handled water pump. This drew, after frantic priming and pumping, freezing cold clear water, from the well below, half filling a square butler's sink. The enormously fat gardener-cum-general-factotum was ordered to watch over us having this agonising, thorough wash. Watching us wail in agony, always made his revolting, swollen, close to bursting belly, wobble with mirth.

You would have thought our Tutor, with the rigid attention to detail he'd taken upon himself to distil education into us, would have liked us, or at least had some regard for us. Actually, I think he half hated us. He would, quite suddenly, fly into ferocious, bellowing tempers at any one of us. His face would swell purple with rage, his wide staring eyes, one of which was glass, looked as though they were about to pop out of his head. He'd bellow, at any one of us, ‘go to bed', in the middle of any class; obviously we hadn't had enough sleep to be so stupid. He'd get so angry he'd have to storm from the room.

At the weekends, we weren't allowed to stay in our room and footle about being bored, as most teenagers. We had to do something with a purpose. It could be anything, but there had to be a purpose. The local landowner, had a large area of woodland nearby, with a picture-perfect river wending its way through the middle. It would form smallish pools then continue to squeeze its way through large boulders and rocks and waterfalls to the next pool. We were allowed to fish the pools, and we were allowed to make small fires to grill our fish. Catching fish couldn't be relied upon, so we were given small loaves of bread and cheese, or pieces of steak to cook over our fires, or other titbits his wife had over in the pantry. In the telling, it all sounds rather ideal, but somehow it wasn't. Everything was a test, and we had to pass the test, with his unnamed rules, in exactly the same way as if it were a written exam. So a failure might well provoke a torrent of derision which could work itself into a full-blown explosion of purple-faced fury. His expectations were far beyond everyday reality. He wanted us to be his ‘Famous Five', all day, every day, it was very wearying. I now can understand how disappointed he must have been, but he was working with the wrong people, we were there because we'd failed elsewhere.

***

The day we were waiting for, the day we were working towards, the primary reason we were there, finally arrived. The local vicar was booked to invigilate. We were taking Maths, English, History and Geography. Early that morning, before six, he burst into our room, shouting, ‘Get up, get up, wake those stupid, inert brains of yours,' then stormed out. No sooner than we were struggling to wake, he burst in again, ‘Come on, come on, what do you think you're doing.' he was winding himself up into a shouting fury, ‘Don't you know what day this is, get washed, have breakfast, come on, come on.' We were sitting waiting at our table in the middle of the room, ages before the vicar was due to arrive. ‘Don't just sit there, do something.' He was so nervous, he couldn't stay still. Maths was first, it wasn't too difficult. The Vicar quietly sat there reading, so unlike our ‘tutor'. I don't know what to call him really, ‘our keeper', ‘our headmaster'. He could be heard pacing about down stairs, around the sitting room, through the hall, into his study, in and out of the library, into the garden, slamming the patio doors, he was a caged tiger. At the end of the allocated time the vicar quietly said, ‘Please stop writing', and collected our work. This was the cue for our caged tiger to burst in, grab one of the papers and immediately go through the whole thing question by question. ‘Oh no, you didn't, you brainless idiot.' No praise for correct answers, just a grunt, ‘About time too.' This whole routine was replicated for every subject. He must have been exhausted, but as I said when I started to relate this episode in my life, he was a very ‘different' man.

Anyway, the year, eventually, wound its expensive way to a satisfactory conclusion. With all exams passed, maybe not with flying colours, but acceptable enough to allow me back to where I always wanted to be in the first place, In my beautiful home in the Kedong Valley, on the cattle ranch, working for my father.

I'd started my schooling at the age of six and I'd now finished at the age of nineteen. Thirteen years. Thirteen long, long years. Did I really learn anything of any use for ‘this'? This is where my heart was, my being, my soul. I was complete here. Even though I knew this is where I should be, I never expressed it in those terms. I knew my father would have done anything I asked of him, but I never put it to him like that. I also knew he didn't really believe farming was a viable way of life. He wasn't ‘a farmer', he was a businessman who farmed. It would never have occurred to him he was building something for the future, something to ‘hand on' to his sons. If he could have sold everything for an enormous profit, he would have done so.