Innocence Read online

  ‘I didn’t lie, sir,’ I said. ‘I promise I didn’t. And I wasn’t trying to cheat.’

  ‘Captain Hardcastle says you were doing both,’ the Headmaster said. ‘Are you calling Captain Hardcastle a liar?’

  ‘No, sir. Oh no, sir.’

  ‘I wouldn’t if I were you.’

  ‘I had broken my nib, sir, and I was asking Dobson if he could lend me another.’

  ‘That is not what Captain Hardcastle says. He says you were asking for help with your essay.’

  ‘Oh no, sir, I wasn’t. I was a long way away from Captain Hardcastle and I was only whispering. I don’t think he could have heard what I said, sir.’

  ‘So you are calling him a liar.’

  ‘Oh no, sir! No, sir! I would never do that!’

  It was impossible for me to win against the Headmaster. What I would like to have said was, ‘Yes, sir, if you really want to know, sir, I am calling Captain Hardcastle a liar because that’s what he is!’, but it was out of the question. I did, however, have one trump card left to play, or I thought I did.

  ‘You could ask Dobson, sir,’ I whispered.

  ‘Ask Dobson?’ he cried. ‘Why should I ask Dobson?’ ‘He would tell you what I said, sir.’

  ‘Captain Hardcastle is an officer and a gentleman,’ the Headmaster said. ‘He has told me what happened. I hardly think I want to go round asking some silly little boy if Captain Hardcastle is speaking the truth.’

  I kept silent.

  ‘For talking in Prep,’ the Headmaster went on, ‘for trying to cheat and for lying, I am going to give you six strokes of the cane.’

  He rose from his desk and crossed over to the corner-cupboard on the opposite side of the study. He reached up and took from the top of it three very thin yellow canes, each with the bent-over handle at one end. For a few seconds, he held them in his hands, examining them with some care, then he selected one and replaced the other two on top of the cupboard.

  ‘Bend over.’

  I was frightened of that cane. There is no small boy in the world who wouldn’t be. It wasn’t simply an instrument for beating you. It was a weapon for wounding. It lacerated the skin. It caused severe black and scarlet bruising that took three weeks to disappear, and all the time during those three weeks, you could feel your heart beating along the wounds.

  I tried once more, my voice slightly hysterical now. ‘I didn’t do it, sir! I swear I’m telling the truth!’

  ‘Be quiet and bend over! Over there! And touch your toes!’

  Very slowly, I bent over. Then I shut my eyes and braced myself for the first stroke.

  Crack! It was like a rifle shot! With a very hard stroke of the cane on one’s buttocks, the time-lag before you feel any pain is about four seconds. Thus, the experienced caner will always pause between strokes to allow the agony to reach its peak.

  So for a few seconds after the first crack I felt virtually nothing. Then suddenly came the frightful searing agonizing unbearable burning across the buttocks, and as it reached its highest and most excruciating point, the second crack came down. I clutched hold of my ankles as tight as I could and I bit into my lower lip. I was determined not to make a sound, for that would only give the executioner greater satisfaction.

  Crack! … Five seconds pause.

  Crack! … Another pause.

  Crack! … And another pause.

  I was counting the strokes, and as the sixth one hit me, I knew I was going to survive in silence.

  ‘That will do,’ the voice behind me said.

  I straightened up and clutched my backside as hard as I possibly could with both hands. This is always the instinctive and automatic reaction. The pain is so frightful you try to grab hold of it and tear it away, and the tighter you squeeze, the more it helps.

  I did not look at the Headmaster as I hopped across the thick red carpet towards the door. The door was closed and nobody was about to open it for me, so for a couple of seconds I had to let go of my bottom with one hand to turn the door-knob. Then I was out and hopping around in the hallway of the private sanctum.

  Directly across the hall from the Headmaster’s study was the assistant masters’ Common Room. They were all in there now waiting to spread out to their respective classrooms, but what I couldn’t help noticing, even in my agony, was that this door was open.

  Why was it open?

  Had it been left that way on purpose so that they could all hear more clearly the sound of the cane from across the hall?

  Of course it had. And I felt quite sure that it was Captain Hardcastle who had opened it. I pictured him standing in there among his colleagues snorting with satisfaction at every stinging stroke.

  Small boys can be very comradely when a member of their community has got into trouble, and even more so when they feel an injustice has been done. When I returned to the classroom, I was surrounded on all sides by sympathetic faces and voices, but one particular incident has always stayed with me. A boy of my own age called Highton was so violently incensed by the whole affair that he said to me before lunch that day, ‘You don’t have a father. I do. I am going to write to my father and tell him what has happened and he’ll do something about it.’

  ‘He couldn’t do anything,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes he could,’ Highton said. ‘And what’s more he will. My father won’t let them get away with this.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He’s in Greece,’ Highton said. ‘In Athens. But that won’t make any difference.’

  Then and there, little Highton sat down and wrote to the father he admired so much, but of course nothing came of it. It was nevertheless a touching and generous gesture from one small boy to another and I have never forgotten it.

  Little Ellis and the Boil

  During my third term at St Peter’s, I got flu and was put to bed in the Sick Room, where the dreaded Matron reigned supreme. In the next bed to mine was a seven-year-old boy called Ellis, whom I liked a lot. Ellis was there because he had an immense and angry-looking boil on the inside of his thigh. I saw it. It was as big as a plum and about the same colour.

  One morning, in came the doctor to examine us, and sailing along beside him was the Matron. Her mountainous bosom was enclosed in a starched white envelope, and because of this she somehow reminded me of a painting I had once seen of a four-masted schooner in full canvas running before the wind.

  ‘What’s his temperature today?’ the doctor asked, pointing at me.

  ‘Just over a hundred, doctor,’ the Matron told him.

  ‘He’s been up here long enough,’ the doctor said. ‘Send him back to school tomorrow.’ Then he turned to Ellis. ‘Take off your pyjama trousers,’ he said. He was a very small doctor, with steel-rimmed spectacles and a bald head. He frightened the life out of me.

  Ellis removed his pyjama trousers. The doctor bent forward and looked at the boil. ‘Hmmm,’ he said. ‘That’s a nasty one, isn’t it? We’re going to have to do something about that, aren’t we, Ellis?’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Ellis asked, trembling.

  ‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ the doctor said. ‘Just lie back and take no notice of me.’

  Little Ellis lay back with his head on the pillow. The doctor had put his bag on the floor at the end of Ellis’s bed, and now he knelt down on the floor and opened the bag. Ellis, even when he lifted his head from the pillow, couldn’t see what the doctor was doing there. He was hidden by the end of the bed. But I saw everything. I saw him take out a sort of scalpel which had a long steel handle and a small pointed blade. He crouched below the end of Ellis’s bed, holding the scalpel in his right hand.

  ‘Give me a large towel, Matron,’ he said.

  The Matron handed him a towel.

  Still crouching low and hidden from little Ellis’s view by the end of the bed, the doctor unfolded the towel and spread it over the palm of his left hand. In his right hand he held the scalpel.

  Ellis was frightened and suspici