The Rotters' Club (25 page)

An even worse disappointment was in store with Jennifer Hawkins’ Bianca. This supposedly tough-as-nails strumpet managed to radiate, in Ms Hawkins’ version, all the erotic allure and raw sexual energy of a comatose mullet.

Tim Newsome got what he could out of these players and the rest of his sterling crew, but we were left at the end of the evening with an ‘Othello’ which carried absolutely no tragic weight. Given the success the senior Drama Soc enjoyed with ‘Kiss Me Kate’ a couple of years ago, I was left wondering whether an upbeat musical version mightn’t have better suited the lightweight talents involved. I’ll even suggest the title myself, free of charge: ‘OTHELLO, or “The Moor the Merrier”’. How about it, Mr Newsome?

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

From Arthur Pusey-Hamilton, MBE

Dear Sir,

I much enjoyed the school’s recent production of ‘Othello’. I was not previously familiar with the work, but it seemed to me aptly chosen in the present political climate. I found that the climax illustrated, most powerfully, Mr Powell’s chilling vision of ‘rivers of blood’, and provided an ample demonstration of the perils of unrestricted immigration, as experienced in 16th-century Venice. Bravo Mr Newsome!

I am writing, however, to complain about the shocking display of moral degeneracy which met my astonished eyes at the so-called ‘cast party’ following the final performance.

My young nipper Arthur Pusey-Hamilton Jnr is a healthy enough lad in his third year at K.W. He was employed on this production in the capacity of scene-shifter and it was a source of some pleasure, both to myself and to Gladys, my good lady wife, to reflect that he was involved in some robust extra-curricular activity which might ‘bring him out of his shell’ (to use the vernacular phrase employed by his child psychologist). Although neither I myself, nor Gladys, my good lady wife, could see that there was much awry with his regular leisure activities (Pusey-Hamilton Jnr likes to sit on his bed, sometimes for hours at a time, rocking backwards and forwards while gazing fixedly at the walls of his bedroom, which he has painted matt black), it was deemed desirable, both by the aforementioned psychologist and by the team of social workers from the City Council who have recently been, to use their own lingo, ‘looking into his case’, that he should perhaps socialize a little more with his young schoolchums.

In the light of this, it was with some enthusiasm that we agreed to his attending the small and – we fondly imagined – civilized celebration which was to take place at the home of one of the cast members after the final performance. Of course, this meant that Pusey-Hamilton Jnr would be staying up long past his usual bedtime (5.30 p.m., unless a particularly instructive edition of ‘Horizon’ or ‘Panorama’ happens to be showing), but neither I myself, nor Gladys, my good lady wife, have ever seen any reason to be ‘stick-in-the-muds’, and we firmly believe that there are some rules which are meant to be broken! (Though not, of course, the rule which dictates that his hands must be firmly cuffed behind his back whenever he is in bed or taking a shower. Oh no.)

Accordingly, it was well after 10 p.m. and the party had been in full swing for at least fifteen minutes when I arrived at No. 43, Pickworth Road, B31 on the night in question. I had no difficulty in finding the house, because the primeval, incessant beat of so-called ‘reggae’ music was thumping down the street, for all the world as if Satan’s own timpani were pounding a tattoo at the jaws of Hades. I was immediately concerned about the effect that this infernal cacophony might have on the delicate sensibilities of Pusey-Hamilton Jnr, who of course is not allowed to listen to so-called ‘pop’ music at home, it being the belief both of myself and Gladys, my good lady wife, that a regular diet of such fine old English classics as Delius’ ‘First Cuckoo in Spring’ makes far more wholesome listening for a lad his age; although we are not averse, occasionally, to his ‘letting his hair down’ with something lighter along the lines of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance Marches.

When I rang the doorbell of No. 43, therefore, I was already expecting the worst. And yet the reality was far more appalling than anything my wildest imagination could have conjured up.

I shall not dwell, in any detail, on the scenes of decadence which I found awaiting me behind the innocent-looking door of No. 43, Pickworth Road. Suffice it to say that I witnessed acts of depravity which would have brought a blush to the libertines of Caligula’s Rome. So this, I thought, is how aspiring members of the theatrical profession ‘celebrate’ their dramatic triumphs! My heart pounding, my palms sweating, my eyes darting this way and, quite frankly, that, I stepped my way gingerly through a sea of writhing bodies in search of poor Pusey-Hamilton Jnr, whose vulnerable temperament would, I knew, already have been done irreparable damage by his exposure to this degenerate behaviour. Finally I found him, sitting halfway up the staircase, sipping on a can of ginger beer (how quickly corruption sets in! – for at home he is allowed to drink nothing but natural spring water and the occasional tumbler of unsweetened prune juice), while behind him on the stairs, not three feet away, two members of the supporting cast were engaged in an act which I had not seen performed since one regrettable occasion during the last war, when, as a doughty footsoldier in the campaign against Rommel, I awoke one evening, bound, gagged, naked and indubitably drugged (as I explained to my senior officer during the subsequent court-martial) in the precincts of an Egyptian bordello insalubrious even by the standards of that fetid country.

Nor, I might add, were these lewdnesses confined to the minor players in that night’s drama. While watching the play I had already been struck by what I believe is called the ‘chemistry’ between the two leading performers, naively believing that this was the product of skilful acting on their part. Not so, I was soon to discover! For, on accompanying Pusey-Hamilton Jnr upstairs to the improvised ‘cloakroom’ in search of his cagoule and ear-warmers, we came upon none other than the two principals – Othello and Desdemona themselves, to conceal their identities no longer – occupied on one of the beds in a procedure which could hardly fail, were it to proceed to its seemingly inevitable conclusion, to result in miscegenation.

This, to be sure, was more than could be borne by man, beast or indeed Pusey-Hamilton Jnr, whose feelings on being caught up in these scenes were now clearly discernible from his whines of distress, his pitiful tugging at my hand, and his repeated cries (obviously directed at the other partygoers) of ‘Go home, go home, I hate you, you’re ruining my life.’ There was no time to be lost in extricating him from that sink of iniquity, and sure enough, within thirty minutes he was safely at home, had been (firmly) tucked up in bed by Gladys, my good lady wife, and was enjoying the kind of sleep for which the only prerequisites are youthful innocence, an untroubled conscience and, of course, a powerful dose of barbiturates.

How soon my son will recover from this dreadful ordeal remains to be seen.

Through your columns, I address myself to the Chief Master of King William’s School. And I demand of you, Sir: are you to allow this kind of carry-on from your pupils? Is the name of this once-great institution to be dragged through the mud, thrown in the gutter and flushed down the toilet? This is no hysterical over-reaction from someone ‘out of touch’ with our modern, ‘swinging’ era. I am no fogey, ‘square’ or fuddy-duddy. Good grief, Sir, I can tolerate a little friendly buggery between schoolpals, now and again: but congress-physical congress – with the opposite sex? At so tender and impressionable an age? And between the races, for pity’s sake? This will not do. It will not do at all. I call upon you to act now, to stamp out all trace of this rancorous canker, to purge the surge of this verminous scourge, which threatens, in my view (and that of Gladys, my good lady wife), the very honour and lifeblood of this school.

Be decisive on this issue, I beg of you! As we used to say in my army days, ‘Come on, Sir – play the white man!’

Yours faithfully, Arthur Pusey-Hamilton, MBE.

SEALED with the ancient and noble Seal of the Pusey-Hamiltons.

‘HIC HAEC HOC’

9

Mr Serkis came back to school in the second week of term. He had recovered from his appendicitis, but he wasn’t a happy man.

‘I’m very, very disappointed,’ he told the editorial committee.

It was another grey, rainswept Friday afternoon, and the radiator in the meeting room was not working. This was perhaps the coldest room in the entire school, at the very end of the Carlton corridor, which was reached by a narrow and somehow mysterious flight of stairs beside the entrance to the prefects’ locker room. Only sixth-formers were allowed to penetrate this remote spot, and even then there were severe restrictions. Membership of the Club itself, which gave access to its desirable, oak-panelled clubroom, was by election only, and every year more than half of the applicants were turned away, weeded out by some time-honoured vetting procedure whose intractable criteria were never explained. Benjamin himself would not be eligible for membership until next year. Meanwhile, even to be allowed to sit once a week in this icy and inaccessible garret, with its cracked plaster and antique plumbing, had seemed, a few months ago, an unimaginable privilege. But the editorial meetings had never quite lived up to his filmy, undefined expectations. An air of anticlimax always seemed to settle in, even after the first few minutes.

‘You were left to produce two issues by yourselves, and look what happens.’ Mr Serkis indicated a wad of paper on the table in front of him. ‘Seventeen letters of complaint. Including one from the Chief.’ He skimmed through them, while Doug, Claire and Philip looked on, abashed. ‘Most of them,’ he said, ‘were about the letter.’ He looked up. ‘Does anybody know who wrote it?’

‘Harding,’ everybody (except Benjamin) chanted in unison.

Mr Serkis sighed. ‘That figures.’ He contemplated the authentic waxen seal at the bottom of the offending typescript. ‘It bears his mark of perfectionism.’

‘He did that with his own signet ring,’ Philip said. ‘He picked one up somewhere – an antiques market, or something – and now it’s never off his finger.’

‘You should never, ever have published this,’ said Mr Serkis, glancing through the letter again and tutting over its worst excesses. ‘At the very least, you should have edited it. You should never print somebody’s home address. And this bit about Steve and Cicely – it practically suggests they were having sex in public. That line about “miscegenation” is horrible. Horrible. You’ll have to print an apology.’

‘OK,’ said Doug, resigned, scribbling a memo. ‘Apology.’

‘Now, I don’t know who wrote that gag about the wanking option, but the Chief went ballistic. It wasn’t just the word, it was… Well, as he says here –’ (picking up the Chief Master’s lengthy, ornately handwritten note) ‘– “I would have hoped that, in the spirit of editors past, the present team might occasionally be able to rise above the level of cheap undergraduate humour.”’

‘We’re still at school, aren’t we?’ Philip pointed out. ‘So I would have thought undergraduate humour was pretty good going.’

‘Print an apology,’ said Mr Serkis, unmoved by this argument, and Doug scribbled another memo. ‘Now –’ he turned to Claire ‘– your profile of Cicely’s come in for a lot of stick. And I have to admit, it’s one of the bitchiest things I ever read in my life.’

‘She deserved it,’ Claire answered; but the defensive edge to her voice was very noticeable. ‘She’s a prima donna of the first order. Everybody knows that.’

‘You didn’t give her a fair hearing. And the stuff about her flirting in class was completely out of order.’

‘But it’s
true.’

There was a short silence; the sound of deadlock.

‘This is going to be some bloody apology,’ said Doug, scribbling. ‘There’ll be no room left for anything else, at this rate. Who’s going to write it?’

When it was obvious that there would be no volunteers, Mr Serkis chose Benjamin.

‘Why me?’

‘Because you’re the best writer on the magazine.’ Assuming (correctly) from Benjamin’s dumbstruck response that this compliment was both unexpected and overwhelming, he qualified it by adding: ‘Also, you’re the only one whose stuff doesn’t seem to bring in a deluge of complaints these days.’

Unwittingly, here, Mr Serkis had touched a nerve.

‘Well why doesn’t it?’ Benjamin wanted to know. ‘I was incredibly rude about that play. Why haven’t
I
caused a bit of controversy?’

Nobody seemed to know the answer to that one, and Benjamin was promptly despatched to the adjacent office to compose a fulsome yet subtly unrepentant apology.

He sat at the typewriter and looked out at the rooftops, glistening silver with rainwater. Above them, the two tall oak trees which flanked the South Drive swung feverishly in the wind. He stared at the trees for a few moments, then allowed his eyes to glaze over until the objects before him lunged out of focus. A blur of slate grey and chocolate brown and pastel green. His fingers rested on the keys of the typewriter, passive, stupefied. The question that had been nagging at him –
Why was it? Why was it that nothing he did seemed to… bother anybody, get under their skin?
– withdrew to some inaccessible corner, was absorbed, swallowed up. A kind of numbness took its place. Dimly, Benjamin remained aware that the life of the school was proceeding, winding down, in the many rooms and corridors that lay beneath his feet. The Friday afternoon Options would be coming to an end: the chess players packing away their pieces, the War Games fetishists abandoning their maps and charts, the artists washing their brushes under Mr Plumb’s distracted supervision, the Combined Cadet Force swapping their prickly green uniforms for civvies, the musicians and radio hams and bridge players and fives enthusiasts all preparing to go home. How the world strained to keep itself busy! Already Benjamin felt so distant from all of that, so far removed. He continued merely to sit at the typewriter, in a swoon of heaviness and incuriosity. Claire entered the room, at one point, retrieved a couple of box files filled with back issues of the magazine; she may have spoken to him. Philip, certainly, looked in on his way downstairs, a raincoat slung over his shoulder, and said, ‘How’s it going, maestro?’, or ‘Don’t be too long’, or ‘See you Monday, then,’ or something along those lines. And one by one, Benjamin supposed, the others must have left as well. He would have to go too, in a minute. Couldn’t very well sit here all weekend. And yet there was something strangely comfortable about this listlessness, this solitude. The silence of the corridor outside agreed with him.