The Rotters' Club (37 page)

‘How about a drink down at The Grapevine?’

So a drink down at The Grapevine it was.

21

THE BILL BOARD

Thursday, 19 January, 1978

LETTERS NOT TO THE EDITOR

The following missive – intended, apparently, only for the eyes of R. J. Culpepper – has made its way by circuitous means to the offices of
The Bill Board.
We publish it unedited and without comment, as a fascinating insight into the thought processes of some of KW’s better-known pupils. Many thanks to the anonymous mole who passed it on.

10 January, 1978

Dear Ronald,

I hope you have recovered by now from the shock of learning that you have not been made a prefect. It is indeed an appalling condemnation of the buffoons who make these decisions, and to tell the truth it confirms my worst suspicions about them. To promote a mediocrity like Richards, simply as a liberal gesture because of the colour of his skin, is little short of pathetic. You could even argue that to be snubbed by such cretins is really a compliment, but I know it must be hard for you to see it that way. Your overwhelming feeling must be that you have suffered a terrible insult.

In one respect, however, Anderton and his fellow-Trotskyist scribblers have got it right: the office of prefect is quite worthless, from most points of view. A prefect is really nothing more than the Chief Master’s lackey. You must remember that you hold a far more important position as Secretary of The Closed Circle.

I know from our previous conversations on the subject that we are in agreement about the future of this society. Instead of remaining a sterile forum for debating esoteric academic issues, it can be built into something far more exciting: an alternative power-base for carefully chosen, like-minded individuals. The sort of people who care far more deeply about the future of King William’s, and understand far better how to safeguard it, than those who nominally stand at its head.

To give you an example: I have it on the personal authority of my brother that Mr Nuttall is a supporter of the Callaghan government. Just think of it! Was ever an administration more mired in the past, more hopelessly adrift, more feebly in thrall to the whims and demands of a selfish, militant faction? (I mean the unions, of course.) And yet this is our Deputy Chief Master’s notion of good leadership! No wonder King William’s itself has slipped into smugness and inertia over the last few years.

The tasks facing the school, it now seems to me, are as follows:

1. MODERNIZE.
We need better science labs, better sports facilities, a better music school. (All of this costs money and money, of course, means FEES from parents – not more handouts from the govt.)

2. RATIONALIZE.
There are simply too many pupils at the moment, and some of them are frankly not up to scratch. The entrance requirements must become more rigorous.

3. AGGRANDIZE.
The national perception of King William’s is of a school in decline. This must be reversed. Oxbridge must be made to sit up and take notice of us again. It is a disadvantage being located in Birmingham, which the rest of the country loathes, and with good reason. More effort must therefore be devoted to not just maintaining but PUBLICIZING our sporting and academic excellence.

Let me spell out, in addition, why I think that The Closed Circle, out of all the school’s institutions, is the best placed to make a difference in these crucial areas.

1. SECRECY.
The Circle is accountable to no one but itself. Consequently it can develop its views with absolute freedom, under the influence of no lobby or pressure group. (An analogy might be drawn with the National Association For Freedom, in my view the most important of the many unofficial right-wing alliances now coming into being, drawing together a range of intellectuals who alone seem to understand how grave the situation is in this country – John Braine, Peregrine Worsthorne, Winston Churchill Jnr, etc.)

2. PATRONAGE.
The Circle’s other great trump card is that it can choose its members not only from the sixth form but also FROM THE MASTERS’ COMMON ROOM AS WELL. Thus the flabby thinkers (Nuttall, Serkis etc.) can be excluded and the kindred spirits (Pyle, Daintry, Spraggon) co-opted into our cause.

3. ELITISM.
The Circle does not have to listen to the voice of the rabble. It is not a bearpit like the Senior or Junior Debating Societies. There is no time wasted listening to peabrains or crackpots. In essence it is anti-democratic, and that is its strength. Ideas and policies can germinate much more quickly and efficiently in this atmosphere.

In conclusion, it has been an honour to be chosen as the Circle’s youngest-ever member and a privilege to watch the society begin to transform itself under your guidance. My plea to you is this: do not lose momentum, merely as a result of this temporary and insignificant setback. The Closed Circle, and by implication the whole of King William’s, still looks to you for leadership.

With sincere good wishes,

Paul.

* * *

Fascinating words, there, from Trotter Jnr. Seems we were right to warn our readers, more than a year ago (see
BB,
18 November, 1976) about the loopy philosophy behind this secretive outfit. After that, it’s almost a relief to welcome back one of the Board’s most regular and lucid correspondents.

THOUGHTS ON THE PREFECT QUESTION

From Arthur Pusey-Hamilton, MBE.

Sirs,

I was very struck by your recent editorial, entitled ‘Disband the Praetorian Guard’; struck not so much by its argument (which I wholeheartedly deplore) but by your reference to the fact that the prefects at King William’s do not carry truncheons about their person; or at least – as you yourselves put it in a suggestive parenthesis –
‘not yet’.

Well, Sirs, let me ask the question straight out, in the plainest possible terms:
why the devil not?
If, as you say, the prefects are the school’s equivalent of a police force, then they should surely be equipped accordingly. Good God, have not these brave men got a dangerous and difficult job to do? You would send these men out on Litter Duty, to confront a vicious and unruly mob of eleven-year-olds, many of them armed with catapults and conkers, and yet you would not allow them this most basic means of protecting themselves? For shame, Sirs! For shame!

To take the argument further, it seems to me that not only should the prefects be allowed to carry weapons, but they should be encouraged to imitate our Great British Police Force in other respects as well.

Take prefects’ detention, for instance. It’s all very well getting miscreants to come into school on a Saturday morning, but wouldn’t the punishment carry slightly more force if a certain amount of discreet ‘roughing up’ took place beforehand? This tactic has worked wonders, I believe, for the West Midlands Police. Surely it would act as a powerful deterrent to any potential criminal if he knew that, on his way to detention in the company of two burly prefects, there was every chance he might meet with a small ‘accident’ while being escorted down the stairs?

And what of those inevitable unsolved mysteries that militate so strongly against the smooth running of school life? The mystery of Richards’s medal, for example, or Culpepper’s goat? Again, the prefects could take a leaf out of our local police force’s book. Why appoint someone of Miller’s imposing bulk, if not to beat the odd confession out of unco-operative suspects? Why appoint someone with the literary gifts of Trotter Snr, if not to forge those confessions in the most convincing manner? These methods have worked for the Birmingham pub bombers (or so I am told), so they can work for the school’s own smaller-scale but no less recalcitrant offenders.

In short, Sirs, let us not stop at truncheons. Riot shields! Helmets! Cattle-prods! Fully equipped interrogation chambers! If we are going to have a school police force, let us have one that we can be proud of!

These sentiments are fully endorsed, I need hardly add, by Gladys, my good lady wife, and it only remains for me to assure you that I am, until you receive full and unequivocal notice in writing to the contrary, your most loyal and obedient servant,

Arthur Pusey-Hamilton, MBE.

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

‘PILAE AD MUNDUM’

22

One Monday evening, the last Monday of that bitterly cold January, Philip left school a few minutes later than usual, after dealing with some business up in the editors’ room. Using the south doorway, for a change, he noticed a distant figure in the frozen dusk, picking up litter on the square of asphalt which at most schools would have been called the playground, although here it was known as ‘the Parade Ground’, in keeping with King William’s pretensions to military grandeur. Philip came a little closer and realized that the lonely figure was Benjamin.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘What on earth are
you
doing?’

‘Litter duty,’ answered Benjamin shortly. ‘Can you give me a hand?’

Philip started helping him to retrieve the chocolate wrappers and discarded bus tickets.

‘This may sound silly,’ he said, ‘but I thought the whole point of litter duty was that one of the younger forms came out here with you, and you supervised them picking up litter for ten minutes?’

‘That’s right,’ said Benjamin.

‘So why are you doing it all yourself?’

‘Well…’ Benjamin stood up straight, and wiped his brow. Despite the cold weather, he was hot and out of breath from his exertions. ‘This was my first litter duty, and I was supposed to be doing it with form 1B – you know, the eleven-year-olds – so I got them out here, and I lined them up, and I told them I wanted them to split up into groups of five, and spread out in a sort of big pentagon, and comb the Parade Ground anti-clockwise for five minutes, and clockwise for another five.’

‘What happened?’

‘They ran off down the Founders’ Drive and went to the bus stop. All twenty-six of them.’ He sighed despairingly. ‘I have no natural authority, Phil. None at all.’

‘Come on, Kojak. Let’s go home.’

‘Don’t
you
start calling me Kojak,’ said Benjamin, as they set off together. This was the new nickname Doug had coined for him. Doug had also developed an annoying habit, whenever he was talking to Benjamin and saw some younger boys misbehaving in the vicinity, of saying, ‘Book ’em, Danno,’ in homage to another American cop show. So far Benjamin had not followed this advice and after three weeks as a prefect he congratulated himself, privately, on having set no impositions and put no one in detention. It was his own form of passive resistance; an attempt to soothe his conscience for having slipped into a rôle which he knew, at heart, he should never have accepted.

‘You’re not the only one with problems, you know,’ said Philip, as they walked past the empty but brightly lit classrooms. ‘Things are terrible at home at the moment.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Oh, because of stupid old Sugar Plum Fairy.’

Benjamin was horrified. ‘That’s not
still
going on, is it? Him and your mother? I thought that was over years ago.’

‘My mother keeps breaking it off, and then seeing him again, and then breaking it off again…’

‘You should say something about it. How can you bear to go to his classes when you know what he’s up to?’

‘I don’t think he knows that I know. Anyway, Dad says he’s finally going to put a stop to it. He’s really furious this time.’

‘I’m sorry, Phil,’ said Benjamin. ‘I didn’t know.’ Now that he was no longer on the board of the magazine, and now that he used the prefects’ locker room, and now that he spent every lunch hour in the oak-panelled retreat of the Carlton Club, Benjamin felt that he was starting to lose touch with his friend. They hadn’t really spoken to each other all term. ‘Hey – did you know that I’ve got a girlfriend now?’

‘Yeah, I know. Jennifer Hawkins. Doug told me.’

‘Oh?’ Benjamin waited for something – congratulations, maybe, some sort of stamp of approval – but all Philip said was:

‘He said he was going to talk to you about it.’

This sounded ominous, and Benjamin was left to ponder its possible significance until lunchtime the next day, when Doug greeted him as he was leaving the dining hall.

‘Philip said you wanted to talk to me about something.’

‘Just a few words from the wise, that’s all. What are you doing after school?’

Benjamin grimaced. ‘It’s my week for litter duty. I’ll be finished by four-thirty or so.’

‘I’ll come and find you.’

‘You wouldn’t…’ (this was grotesquely embarrassing, but he asked it anyway) ‘… You wouldn’t like to come and help, would you? Only it’s with one of the fifth forms tonight, and some of them… well, some of them are bigger than me.’

Doug burst into laughter when he heard that, but he could see that Benjamin was genuinely nervous, and didn’t milk the joke for as long as he might have done. ‘Don’t worry, Kojak. The sight of a prefect’s badge can be a terrifying thing. They’ll be like putty in your hands.’