Boys' Own World

BOYS' OWN WORLD

When my neighbour whispered to me that a baby was born out of its
mummy's tummy button, I knew that I was in the wrong kind of school. He
might as well have said that babies are delivered by storks or found
under gooseberry bushes. I'm sure that some of the boys around us still
believed that was true. When I whispered the true facts to my
neighbour, he looked at me with mingled horror and disgust and edged
away from me as if I were a stranger offering him sweets.

My attempts at clarification were interrupted by a blow to my head, a
glancing blow, I admit, but it was a heavy book that left my right ear
stinging and singing. Tears started to my eyes, less from the pain than
from the shock of the blow. I had never been struck by an adult before.
I was used to having things explained to me, to living in a home and
attending a school where both sense and sensibility were respected. Now
I was in a world where brute force ruled, where the casual slap was
part of life and sarcasm substituted for genuine wit.

I looked up into a pair of hairy nostrils and beyond them to a pair of
piggy eyes filled with malice. I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder and a
rotten breath brush my cheek.

"Amo, amas, amat, boy. That's what we're interested in, not your
private tittle tattle. Construe for me, boy, construe for me. And bear
in mind the great Julius Caesar did not bequeath us his immortal prose
for you to abuse every Friday afternoon. On, boy, on." Yellow,
nicotine-stained fingers dug into my shoulder searching out some
particularly sensitive nerves to abuse. Tears filled my eyes, I wanted
to cry, but in this world of men and boys tears signified weakness and
weakness invited further punishment.

To be fair, our Latin master was not typical of those men to whom we
were entrusted. Most of them were honourable men, few were outright
sadists, but not one of them treated us as if we were human beings. To
them we were not human beings, we were boys, to be shaped, moulded,
trained, disciplined, regimented, fed, watered, cold-showered, marched
through mud, drilled through rain, snow, sleet and hail, woken at seven
and bedded at eight, taught to address each other by surname, scolded,
stood out, slippered, caned, robotised and lobotomised until we were
miniature men made in whatever image had produced them.

At least I was only a weekday boarder. Promptly at five every Friday
afternoon my mother would pull up in front of the House, my sister
would open a car door, and I would bundle my duffel bag and myself into
the escape pod, switch to warp drive, and get the hell out of that
place. I sat solemn-faced until School was well out of sight before
risking a smile and hugging my little sister to prove to myself that I
could still make physical contact with that most alien of all
creatures, a girl. That was the great school taboo.

As far as we were concerned, girls did not exist, and if they did, it
was always in terms that ranged from smut to sheer filth. We all
acknowledged that someday we would have to marry a woman, it was the
done thing, but those women would be shining reflections of our own
mothers and not the scary monsters that were girls.

Of course I was not aware of all this at eleven years old, but I did
know that this utterly masculine world was light years away from the
relaxed, easy-going, mixed junior school I had attended until Dad was
suddenly posted to Hong Kong for a year. I knew that it would be a
difficult year for Mum, and I did not want to add to her burden by
telling her what I really felt about my new school.

I hardly knew what I felt myself. But when I climbed into my bunk, I
wanted her there sometimes to tuck me in, or at least to have an
argument about staying up only ten minutes more, or to keep my lamp on
till I had finished the page.

What I wanted was affection, and if I wanted it so badly, how could the
eight year olds in the junior dorm survive night after night, and
weekends, too, without a kiss and a cuddle?

So I would serve my time, do my year, and survive to tell the tale, but
no son of mine would ever be exiled to a frozen planet of boys without
girls, men without women.