Innocence Read online

  ‘I can’t possibly go about in those!’ I cried. ‘Nobody wears things like that!’

  ‘Are you sure you haven’t made a mistake?’ my mother said to the shop assistant.

  ‘If he’s going to Repton, madam, he must wear these clothes,’ the assistant said firmly.

  And now this amazing fancy-dress was all laid out on my bed waiting to be put on. ‘Put it on,’ my mother said. ‘Hurry up or you’ll miss the train.’

  ‘I’ll look like a complete idiot,’ I said. My mother went out of the room and left me to it. With immense reluctance, I began to dress myself.

  First there was a white shirt with a detachable white collar. This collar was unlike any other collar I had seen. It was as stiff as a piece of perspex. At the front, the stiff points of the collar were bent over to make a pair of wings, and the whole thing was so tall that the points of the wings, as I discovered later, rubbed against the underneath of my chin. It was known as a butterfly collar.

  To attach the butterfly collar to the shirt you needed a back stud and a front stud. I had never been through this rigmarole before. I must do this properly, I told myself. So first I put the back stud into the back of the collar-band of the shirt. Then I tried to attach the back of the collar to the back stud, but the collar was so stiff I couldn’t get the stud through the slit. I decided to soften it with spit. I put the edge of the collar into my mouth and sucked the starch away. It worked. The stud went through the slit and the back of the collar was now attached to the back of the shirt.

  I inserted the front stud into one side of the front of the shirt and slipped the shirt over my head. With the help of a mirror, I now set about pushing the top of the front stud through the first of the two slits in the front of the collar. It wouldn’t go. The slit was so small and stiff and starchy that nothing would go through it. I took the shirt off and put both the front slits of the collar into my mouth and chewed them until they were soft. The starch didn’t taste of anything. I put the shirt back on again and at last I was able to get the front stud through the collar-slits.

  Around the collar but underneath the butterfly wings, I tied a black tie, using an ordinary tie-knot.

  Then came the trousers and the braces. The trousers were black with thin pinstriped grey lines running down them. I buttoned the braces on to the trousers, six buttons in all, then I put on the trousers and adjusted the braces to the correct length by sliding two brass clips up and down.

  I put on a brand new pair of black shoes and laced them up.

  Now for the waistcoat. This was also black and it had twelve buttons down the front and two little waistcoat pockets on either side, one above the other. I put it on and did up the buttons, starting at the top and working down. I was glad I didn’t have to chew each of those buttonholes to get the buttons through them.

  All this was bad enough for a boy who had never before worn anything more elaborate than a pair of shorts and a blazer. But the jacket put the lid on it. It wasn’t actually a jacket, it was a sort of tail-coat, and it was without a doubt the most ridiculous garment I had ever seen. Like the waistcoat, it was jet black and made of a heavy serge-like material. In the front it was cut away so that the two sides met only at one point, about halfway down the waistcoat. Here there was a single button and this had to be done up. From the button downwards, the lines of the coat sep arated and curved away behind the legs of the wearer and came together again at the backs of the knees, forming a pair of ‘tails’. These tails were separated by a slit and when you walked about they flapped against your legs. I put the thing on and did up the front button. Feeling like an undertaker’s apprentice in a funeral parlour, I crept downstairs.

  My sisters shrieked with laughter when I appeared. ‘He can’t go out in those!’ they cried. ‘He’ll be arrested by the police!’

  ‘Put your hat on,’ my mother said, handing me a stiff wide-brimmed straw-hat with a blue and black band around it. I put it on and did my best to look dignified. The sisters fell all over the room laughing.

  My mother got me out of the house before I lost my nerve completely and together we walked through the village to Bexley station. My mother was going to accompany me to London and see me on to the Derby train, but she had been told that on no account should she travel farther than that. I had only a small suitcase to carry. My trunk had been sent on ahead labelled ‘Luggage in Advance’.

  ‘Nobody’s taking the slightest notice of you,’ my mother said as we walked through Bexley High Street.

  And curiously enough nobody was.

  ‘I have learnt one thing about England,’ my mother went on. ‘It is a country where men love to wear uniforms and eccentric clothes. Two hundred years ago their clothes were even more eccentric then they are today. You can consider yourself lucky you don’t have to wear a wig on your head and ruffles on your sleeves.’

  ‘I still feel an ass,’ I said.

  ‘Everyone who looks at you’, my mother said, ‘knows that you are going away to a Public School. All English Public Schools have their own different crazy uniforms. People will be thinking how lucky you are to be going to one of those famous places.’

  We took the train from Bexley to Charing Cross and then went by taxi to Euston Station. At Euston, I was put on the train for Derby with a lot of other boys who all wore the same ridiculous clothes as me, and away I went.

  Boazers

  At Repton, prefects were never called prefects. They were called Boazers, and they had the power of life and death over us junior boys. They could summon us down in our pyjamas at night-time and thrash us for leaving just one football sock on the floor of the changing-room when it should have been hung up on a peg. A Boazer could thrash us for a hundred and one other piddling little misdemeanours – for burning his toast at tea-time, for failing to dust his study properly, for failing to get his study fire burning in spite of spending half your pocket money on firelighters, for being late at roll-call, for talking in evening Prep, for forgetting to change into house-shoes at six o’clock. The list was endless.

  ‘Four with the dressing-gown on or three with it off?’ the Boazer would say to you in the changing-room late at night.

  Others in the dormitory had told you what to answer to this question. ‘Four with it on,’ you mumbled, trembling.

  This Boazer was famous for the speed of his strokes. Most of them paused between each stroke to prolong the operation, but Williamson, the great footballer, cricketer and athlete, always delivered his strokes in a series of swift back and forth movements without any pause between them at all. Four strokes would rain down upon your bottom so fast that it was all over in four seconds.

  A ritual took place in the dormitory after each beating. The victim was required to stand in the middle of the room and lower his pyjama trousers so that the damage could be inspected. Half a dozen experts would crowd round you and express their opinions in highly professional language.

  ‘What a super job.’

  ‘He’s got every single one in the same place!’

  ‘Crikey! Nobody could tell you had more than one, except for the mess!’

  ‘Boy, that Williamson’s got a terrific eye!’

  ‘Of course he’s got a terrific eye! Why d’you think he’s a Cricket Teamer?’

  ‘There’s no wet blood though! If you had had just one more he’d have got some blood out!’

  ‘Through a dressing-gown, too! It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it!’

  ‘Most Boazers couldn’t get a result like that without a dressing-gown!’

  ‘You must have tremendously thin skin! Even Williamson couldn’t have done that to ordinary skin!’

  ‘Did he use the long one or the short one?’

  ‘Hang on! Don’t pull them up yet! I’ve got to see this again!’

  And I would stand there, slightly bemused by this cool clinical approach. Once, I was still standing in the middle of the dormitory with my pyjama trousers around my knees when Williamson came through the door. ‘