The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More(71)

        The important thing was never to flinch upwards or straighten up when you were hit. If you did that, you got an extra one.

        Slowly, deliberately, taking plenty of time, the headmaster delivered three more strokes, making six in all.

        ‘You may go.’ The voice came from a cavern miles away, and you straightened up slowly, agonizingly, and grabbed hold of your burning buttocks with both hands and held them as tight as you could and hopped out of the room on the very tips of your toes.

        That cruel cane ruled our lives. We were caned for talking in the dormitory after lights out, for talking in class, for bad work, for carving our initials on the desk, for climbing over walls, for slovenly appearance, for flicking paper-clips, for forgetting to change into house-shoes in the evenings, for not hanging up our games clothes, and above all for giving the slightest offence to any master. (They weren’t called teachers in those days.) In other words, we were caned for doing everything that it was natural for small boys to do.

        So we watched our words. And we watched our steps. My goodness, how we watched our steps. We became incredibly alert. Wherever we went, we walked carefully, with ears pricked for danger, like wild animals stepping softly through the woods.

        Apart from the masters, there was another man in the school who frightened us considerably. This was Mr Pople. Mr Pople was a paunchy, crimson-faced individual who acted as school-porter, boiler superintendent and general handyman. His power stemmed from the fact that he could (and he most certainly did) report us to the headmaster upon the slightest provocation. Mr Pople’s moment of glory came each morning at seven-thirty precisely, when he would stand at the end of the long main corridor and ‘ring the bell’. The bell was huge and made of brass, with a thick wooden handle, and Mr Pople would swing it back and forth at arm’s length in a special way of his own, so that it went clangetty-clang-clang, clangetty-clang-clang, clangetty-clang-clang. At the sound of the bell, all the boys in the school, one hundred and eighty of us, would move smartly to our positions in the corridor. We             lined up against the walls on both sides and stood stiffly to attention, awaiting the headmaster’s inspection.

        But at least ten minutes would elapse before the headmaster arrived on the scene, and during this time, Mr Pople would conduct a ceremony so extraordinary that to this day I find it hard to believe it ever took place. There were six lavatories in the school, numbered on their doors from one to six. Mr Pople, standing at the end of the long corridor, would have in the palm of his hand six small brass discs, each with a number on it, one to six. There was absolute silence as he allowed his eye to travel down the two lines of stiffly-standing boys. Then he would bark out a name, ‘Arkle!’

        Arkle would fall out and step briskly down the corridor to where Mr Pople stood. Mr Pople would hand him a brass disc. Arkle would then march away towards the lavatories, and to reach them he would have to walk the entire length of the corridor, past all the stationary boys, and then turn left. As soon as he was out of sight, he was allowed to look at his disc and see which lavatory number he had been given.

        ‘Highton!’ barked Mr Pople, and now Highton would fall out to receive his disc and march away.

        ‘Angel!’ …

        ‘Williamson!’ …

        ‘Gaunt!’ …

        ‘Price!’ …

        In this manner, six boys selected at Mr Pople’s whim were dispatched to the lavatories to do their duty. Nobody asked them if they might or might not be ready to move their bowels at seven-thirty in the morning before breakfast. They were simply ordered to do so. But we considered it a great privilege to be chosen because it meant that during the headmaster’s inspection we would be sitting safely out of reach in blessed privacy.

        In due course, the headmaster would emerge from his private quarters and take over from Mr Pople. He walked slowly down one side of the corridor, inspecting each boy with the utmost care, strapping his wristwatch on to his wrist as he went along. The morning inspection was an unnerving experience. Every one of us was terrified of the two sharp brown eyes under their bushy eyebrows as they travelled slowly up and down the length of one’s body.