Forgotten Life by Brian Aldiss

Author:Brian Aldiss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 1988-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

The dreadful years passed. Mr Fletcher was sacked for drunkenness and some wept to see him leave through the school gates. The Rev. Winterbottom left us, to be replaced by a Roman Catholic priest with bad breath called Father Chitterling, also well informed on what the Israelites got up to and why. One of our number, a boy we called Old Boghound for reasons long forgotten, came back at the beginning of term with news – rather garbled news – of how children were made and born. His sister had told him. Eggs came into it and it all sounded pretty disgusting. We gave Old Boghound six with his own cricket bat.

Beatings meant little to us, at bottom. Until my last term. One of our number, a large lad called Crouch, who looked like a neatly shaven dromedary, committed an Unforgivable Act. He was immediately expelled. Fangby locked him in a small attic room until his parents could collect him. His clothes were taken away.

We were lectured about this Act, which, we were told, would incur immediate beating and sacking if we perpetrated it. This was alarming and unenlightening, since the Act was never named. It was too terrible to be named. Had Crouch devised for himself the art of masturbation, only to be discovered when at the short sharp stroke stage? Had he been caught puffing at cigarettes? Had he seized on a once-in-a-lifetime chance to rape the Fangby Baby? Had he farted within ear-and nose-shot of Fangby Wife? We were never told, and I still keep hoping to come across old Crouch in some far Salvation Army shelter and get the truth from the horse’s mouth. The mystery of his Act increased the atmosphere of terror which prevailed.

Crouch was paraded before us the following day, in pyjamas, accompanied by a very grim and dropsical-looking Fangby holding a cricket stump. The classroom door was locked. Some of our number, sensing blood, asked immediately to Be Excused. Permission was not granted: we were to stay as assembled, to see that justice was done.

Fangby then proceeded to give Crouch twelve blows with the cricket stump on his bare bum. Everyone went deathly pale. Each whack brought a fall in the communal blood pressure. Two boys fainted, another we called the Mouse was sick on the floor. It showed there was good in us. Crouch never made a sound, but had to be helped from the room when the beating was over. It was little consolation to think that similar events had taken place in the Navy in Nelson’s day. The sinner left St Paul’s before sunset, and was presumably doomed from then on. Perhaps he died for England in the war then only three years away.

Whatever Crouch’s crime, Fangby’s was greater. Strange though it may be to admit such a thing, I had not until the flogging hated Fangby. There was something about his manner, a suspicion of fawning, a hangdog look which came over him, a droop in his shoulders,

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