Afterthoughts

It rocked the school.

Little of the scandal was known outside of course.  I know some of the parents heard something.  Perhaps when I marry and have children, if I send my sons there (and I probably will), then I’ll be initiated into the secrets of the Old Boys.  When it happened, though, I was merely a Sixth Former and a prefect, both of which put me somewhere in the stratosphere as far as the hierarchy of boys is concerned, but are pretty irrelevant once you’ve left.  (The mere fact that I know the term “stratosphere” will probably tell you that I was a bit of a swot, and read books outside the usual literature, though I was not formally on the Modern side.)

When I got home at end of term, my mother clearly knew nothing at all of any of it.  Nor did I enlighten her.  I was, however, taken aside by my father and discreetly grilled.  I told him that I really didn’t know much beyond rumour.  And how had he heard of it?  I was immensely curious about this; but he didn’t tell me.  There is a grapevine.  That is obvious now; but I still don’t know who it was who told him.  It’s highly unlikely that it was anyone on staff:  it would have been as much as their jobs were worth to gossip about it with the parents, even (or maybe especially) an Old Boy.  Our housemaster was new to the school.  He’d taken over from Stuart, whom we all liked; and the boys rather resented the change, being very much creatures of habit.  Jepson certainly had the sort of prurient mind that finds filth in the cleanest House; but, although that probably is not unconnected with Ralph’s expulsion, it militates against his talking to anyone outside the school.  He would not want to sully its reputation.  As for the Head himself, his school and his reputation were irrevocably entwined.  The most I can imagine is his having to make some kind of report to the Board of Governors; but why they would start gossip is beyond me.

I’m left to think that it had to be one or more of the boys, probably several to their various parents (or rather, to their fathers).  Probably boys in the Lower School, since they would be least likely to appreciate the significance of Ralph’s misconduct.  “Oh, Dad, you’ll never imagine what happened last term.  There was the most horrible scandal, and the Head of School was expelled.”  Yes, I can see some silly twerp of twelve or thirteen blurting some such out, especially if his father and uncles—and grandfather, like as not—had all gone to our school too.  And then Dad talks to Uncle Peter or Uncle Stephen, or asks his old pal Snotty if he’s heard about it.  And so it goes.

At any rate, my father had already heard a vague outline of it all even before I got off the train.  He asked the culprit’s name.  I could hardly say I didn’t know.  I mean, it was all around the school; and it’s not such a small place that one wouldn’t know the name of a fellow prefect, let alone the Head of School.  As soon as I said “Lanyon,” he immediately replied, “That’s the chap you were great friends with, right?”  I said, “Not now he’s left.”  And he said, “Quite right, too.  This is the sort of thing that will follow him round for the rest of his life.  Sooner or later, someone from the Old School will turn up, wherever he goes.  He’ll always be persona non grata.”

Well, there’s no answer to that sort of comment, especially not from one’s own father.  I felt like saying that Ralph’s real sin was getting caught; but my father would undoubtedly have agreed with me without ever getting my real point.  Not that he’d be wrong, either:  what no one knows no one will get crimed for.  You can get away with anything if you fly under the radar, as our pilots learned during the war.  If Ralph had been literally caught with his trousers down, the outcome would be the same whoever he’d been with.  Expulsion is pretty well a compulsory penalty.  (Though mind you, if he’d been a year or so younger, he’d have got a flogging to boot.  One privilege of being Sixth Form, I suppose.)  In a way, the astonishing thing is that only Ralph got expelled and not Hazell too.  It’s not as though he were a fag.  He was in the Fifth Form, quite old enough to know what he was doing.

Actually, knowing the people involved, I would say that Ralph’s primary blame is for picking Hazell.  Of all the people to bugger, why pick the most neurotic boy in the school?  I don’t doubt that Hazell knew exactly what he was doing.  By going to Jeepers, he not only pitched Ralph down the boghole, he also turned the crime from simple buggery to outright perversion by dragging in the thrashing he’d received.  (Deservedly received, in my opinion.)  Thereby covering his own arse, figuratively at least.

Of course, there are those who insist that Ralph was innocent of all charges.  And they also point to Hazell.  As I said:  of all the people to bugger, why pick the most neurotic boy in the school?  I’d love to believe they’re right, that all the accusations were the product of Hazell’s overactive imagination.  After all, it’s not hard to believe that a type like that had a pash on Ralph:  our disgraced Head of School was fit, bright, able, athletic, and—though I shouldn’t notice such things—more than a bit good-looking.  I say that with a purely aesthetic appreciation, you understand.  I never was much good at art per se, but I can see what’s in front of me and copy it.  So, if Hazell fancied Ralph and got turned down (and I’d hope that Ralph would turn him down, Hazell being Hazell), then he might go to Jeepers out of spurned spite.  It’s plausible.  I wish it were true.

The trouble is this:  when Ralph was confined to the sicker, I broke the spoken and unspoken restrictions on contact and sneaked in to see him.  He was surprised to see me—not just because I was a prefect, but also because of the nature of his offence.  I suppose I was risking being tarred with the same brush (and I assure you I’ve never had the least inclination towards buggery).  Still, I’d been friends with Ralph since the day we met, and that was years ago.  The fact that I use his Christian name, and he mine, should tell you that.  So, for the sake of our friendship, I wanted the truth.

And he told me.  I was blushing like a maid by the time he was through; but I couldn’t argue that I hadn’t asked him.  I’m not suggesting he told me every detail.  Let’s just say they were “intimate” and leave out the anatomy.  It had been going on for months.  As Ralph told me the tale, Hazell tried to leverage their relationship for favours, specifically getting off games, and eventually took it so far that Ralph had to warn him that punishment was imminent—and then Hazell was idiot enough to ignore the warning and Ralph had to give him what he was asking for.  Maybe literally (or at least implicitly) asking for, given the result.

Yes, Ralph told me that bit, too.  It can take boys that way sometimes.  I’ve once or twice given a lad a bit of stick and had him react like that.  The best thing is to ignore it.  They’re usually more embarrassed than you are.

So Hazell was like that.  Quite believable given all his other oddities.

Ralph was not.

He described the scene with a look on his face as if he smelt something foul.  I know him well enough not to think him to be acting.  Frankly, having been in the school play with him when we were both in Middle School, I don’t rate him all that good an actor.  So I think, when Hazell turned round, he saw that look of disgust on Ralph’s face; and, with that between them, neither could pretend that nothing more had happened but a dose of the cane.

Hazell came off best in the encounter, no matter how much his striped arse must have stung.  He kept his head and his place at the school by heading straight for Jeepers and getting his version of the tale in first.  After that, Ralph didn’t have a wax cat’s chance in hell.  Jeepers being Jeepers, he was primed to believe everything Hazell said.  Maybe (but only maybe) if Ralph had flatly denied everything and accused Hazell of trying to get revenge for the flogging, then he might have … what’s that phrase in American crime novels? … “beat the rap”, that’s it.  Yes, he might have beaten the rap.  Maybe.

But of course he went all stiff upper lip.

Honesty is really not always the best policy.  I’m not saying that Ralph should have flat-out lied, of course.  But there are ways, and then again there are ways.  A bit of judicious silence would have served him well.  You don’t actually have to confess!

Come to that, I’m not sure he actually did precisely confess to Hazell’s accusations.  However, if Jeepers asked him in plain English if he’d had relations with Hazell (or however he wrapped it up, Jeepers being the mealy-mouthed type he is), then Ralph certainly didn’t deny it.  He has this damned quixotic puritan streak in him, and it comes out in the damnedest ways at the most idiotic of times.  He doesn’t tell lies.  It would be dishonourable.

God help the man, if he’d only learn how to talk circles round the truth then he wouldn’t need to tell actual lies.  He could obfuscate the issue till the other chap thought he knew what Ralph was saying when he’d actually said nothing at all.

As my father said, “That’s the chap you were great friends with, right?” and I said, “Not now he’s left.”  I don’t doubt he thought I meant, “Not now I know he’s queer as a coot.”  But suppose instead you take my words literally:  Ralph left, that’s what I said.  He left the school.  His mother, poor puzzled woman, says her husband showed him the door when he got home; and he then went God knows where.  Certainly I don’t know where!  It’s rather hard to remain friends with someone who might as well have vanished off the face of the earth.

But truth be told, if I ran into Ralph some time in some odd corner of the world, I think I’d say “Hello” and shake his hand, just as I would anyone else.  Yes, and stand him a drink, too, for auld lang’s syne.