The Legend of the Doctor
Part the Third
Chapter 5
Grade 8 – Rugby
The Unwell Child.
I was a physically unhealthy young child. My human form travelled its early earthly existence filled with a dense fog of phlegm and secretions. My wheezing bronchospastic lungs, watering eyes, streaming nostrils, and recurrent ear infections left me in permanently in a sort of damp and mouldy state.
Striving to keep my various tubes and orifices at least partly patent, several earnest and well-meaning doctors, arrived at a variety of medical diagnoses, and prescribed an eclectic range of corresponding medicines. In an ever changing variety, anything that could be swallowed, sniffed, aspirated, inhaled, rubbed on, misted, or steamed, was given a fair trial.
The passing years seemed to dilute the symptoms. I spent less and less time in bed and more and more time begrudgingly attending school, though the excess mucosal secretions, and chronic obstruction of my airways remained a hindrance to the performance of any activities requiring even moderate physical exertion. Indeed, the merest little trot over a short distance would see me breathless, hands on hips, leaning forward from the waist, gulping air like a stranded guppy, and emitting repetitive rasping wheezes.
A couple of desperate sucks on an inhaler, a recently invented, seemingly miraculous medical treatment for asthmatics, would provide a degree of instant relief and stave off impending death, for a bit. Thus came I to regard physical exertion, of any sort, as unpleasant in the extreme, and to be avoided if at all possible.
Unfortunately for me, sports practices and physical training were a regular hazard of school life. Fortunately, however, our enthusiastic coaches would often not notice the loss of one inept pupil during exercise routines. This allowed me to perform my resuscitation manoeuvres and enjoy my near-death experiences in relative peace.
By the time I took leave of Primary School, I had, to a greater or lesser degree, ‘grown out’ of many of my various afflictions. The asthma never left me, and I did continue to emit copious nasal secretions of varying viscosity and hue, but the symptoms were now no longer severe enough to keep me frequently confined to bed.
Fit For Rugby.
And so it came to be that one blazing midsummer subtropical morning, attired in long woollen trousers, long sleeved shirt and tie, and navy blue, brass-buttoned blazer, I was delivered to a new world: a colonial-style government high school, packed with nigh on a thousand boys.
It was here that I was to come face to face, literally, with a brand new concept, Rugby Football. At primary school we had had soccer and cricket. I, of course, had had a natural flair for being pathetic at both. But Rugby, I came quickly to understand, was an impending fail on an entirely different order of magnitude.
Towards the end of summer, with Rugby Season almost upon us, all of us new boys underwent physical health screening to assess our fitness for Rugby. This was a brief process, and appeared to be based on the broadest possible definition of the concept of ‘physically fit’.
We were lined up against the side wall of the school gymnasium, clad in white shorts and bright vests of various colours, each colour reflecting our allegiance to our allotted school house. In marched, The Head Rugby Coach, Mr Joubert, brandishing an significant-looking brown leather case, and an enormous moustache.
Having set the case carefully down on a smallish wooden table and popped its chrome catches, Mr Joubert tilted the lid slowly back until it rested on the tabletop. From inside the case a silver-grey complex looking machine protruded upwards into the open air. For a moment, Mr Joubert gazed lovingly down at the device, reverentially stroking parts of its surface. Then he elevated from the innards of the case, a vertical black drum, around the side of which he placed what appeared to be a piece of graph paper, marked in red with a grid and some small numbers. He attached to the machine a flexible corrugated plastic tube, which ended in a dilated mouth-piece.
Mr Joubert then turned to us and said, in respectful hushed tones, as he gestured toward the machine, “This, gentlemen, is a Spirometer. It is a very delicate and very expensive device. Please treat it with the utmost care and attention.”
We lined up before the machine. One by one we took it in turn to inflate our lungs as dramatically as possible, seal our lips around the mouth-piece and expel air forcibly outwards as quickly as we could, and for as long as possible. While thus engaged, the drum would rotate slowly, while an ink stylus rose up the side of the rotating drum in keeping with our respiratory effort, drawing a black wavy line on the graph paper, . Having been elevated by the air pressure provided by an out-breath, the stylus would then settle back as we began to run out of puff, causing the jagged line on the drum to descend from its mountain like peak to a series of foothills and finally, as our breath died, to flat-line at the lower edge of the graph paper.
We were then instructed to blow into a second, smaller, handheld tubular machine which had a plastic indicator needle set in a groove along its side, adjacent to a line of incremental markings. This Peak Flow Meter served to measure the airspeed produced by one short explosive outbreath.
These two machines, Mr Joubert informed us, measured the ‘Forced Vital Capacity (FVC)’, or volume, and the ‘Peak Flow Rate (PFR)’, or power, of our lungs. I apparently had larger than normal lungs (although they were not commensurately powerful, as evidenced by the reluctance of the needle to move along the side of its small cylinder when I blew into the tubular Peak Flow Meter). I felt reassured, compensated almost, by the excessive volume of my lungs, which the spirometer had so impressively demonstrated. This reading had also please Mr Joubert. He too reassured me that I must be very fit to possess such fine voluminous breathing organs.
I found out later, much later, that the opposite was in fact true: that my lung functions - large lung volume and poor peak flow – reflected ‘air-trapping’ as a result of underlying bronchospasm, and that this was, in fact, an indication of the severity of my asthma. The expensive machine had successfully recorded an accurate picture of my poor lung function. Mr Joubert, however, perceiving the results through the lens of that popular philosophy that ‘more is always better’, had misinterpreted the results, allowing his mind to conjure up a direct reversal of reality.
It made little difference as it turned out. Unlike the outcome of many academic tests, no one would fail the Rugby screening tests. It rapidly became apparent that Rugby was compulsory for all, unless one had suffered an actual loss of life or limb, or perhaps had a proven paraplegia. For those few unfortunates who were possessed of such gross physical handicaps, hockey was available as an alternative, provided that a medical certificate confirming the disability was supplied.
Rugby Season.
The Team.
With the arrival of Rugby season, an all-embracing ‘atmosphere’ pervaded the school. We were placed in teams for trials, practice schedules were placed on notice boards, and game booklets were published listing the fixtures for the entire season. At the beginning of the school year we had all been graded by academic testing, being stratified according to the results of some simple Mathematics and English tests into eight classes, from A to H. After the trial Rugby matches we were now similarly stratified into multiple Rugby teams.
Thankfully those of us who had never previously played Rugby were matched against each other. As we had very limited knowledge of Rugby, the trial games of the lower orders were as short-lived as they were chaotic. The resulting Rugby teams were labeled in descending order of prowess: Under 13-A, Under 13-B, Under 13-C, etc, all the way down to Under 13-F. This last was, of course, my team, the Under 13-Fs.
The inmates of the Under 13-F team were anything but fit. This became apparent at our first practice session when we attempted to follow the first (and in our minds, quite ridiculous) instruction from our unsuspecting coach to ‘warm up’ by running once round the perimeter of the field. Most of us found that we were unable to complete such a monumental challenge. In fact, few of us were able to sustain this rapid progress for more than a couple of dozen paces without falling over in a dead faint, a few, like mine, authentic, but many merely a ruse to have a rest.
Another characteristic of the Under 13-F team players was a remarkable dearth of ball skills. Our response to any rapidly approaching Rugby ball was to regard it as dangerous, and to duck determinedly out of its way.
Fortune favoured me by having me positioned at Tight Head Prop. This had the benefit, that, as a Prop, I was required to do less running about and fumbling with the ball. The Tight Head Prop is one member of an assembly of three players who make up the front row of a Rugby Scrum. We, the Props could rely on the process of Scrumming to provide blessed intervals of relief from the otherwise near constant running around characteristic of a Rugby Match.
The Scrum
The Rugby Scrum is an intriguing affair. A total of eight boys, bent double, join up in a three row formation, all facing in the same direction. Three boys occupy the Front Row: The Tight Head Prop (that was me) on the right; the endearingly named Hooker in the middle, and the Loose Head Prop on the left. The three Front Row members stand side by side, arms draped about each other in a most affectionate fashion.
The Front Row are joined from the rear by four boys who make up the Second Row. The two boys in the centre of the Second Row are the Locks. The Locks poke their heads between the adjacent buttocks of their corresponding Prop and the Hooker in the front row. Each Lock then places one arm between the thighs of his Prop, taking as he does so, a grip on his hapless Prop’s Rugby shorts, just above the crotch. It’s all rather intimate and no doubt designed to allow pubescent boys to steam off excess testosterone.
The Flanks, as the two outlying boys of the second row are prosaically termed, place a shoulder against the remaining exposed lateral buttock of each of their Props, who are now bent double in the front row, with a shoulder of a Lock forced up against one buttock-cheek, and a shoulder of a Flank against the other.
The third row is made up of a single player, called, for want of something more erudite, The Eighth Man. The Eighth Man has the pleasure of inserting his head between the buttocks of the two second row Locks, who are in turn, bent double in front of him.
The entire Scrum, so formed, confronts the replica but mirror image formation of the Enemy Scrum facing them, head to head, in order to partake in a melee of pushing and shoving. Before the pushing starts, the Props and Hooker of the opposing front rows face each other, and bending low, slot together head to shoulder.
Adjacent to the Scrum stands a boy with the ball. He is known as The Scrum-Half, so called, as he is sometimes positioned halfway between the Scrum (made up of the larger ‘Forwards’) and the rest of the team (the more athletic ‘Back-line’ or ‘Backs’). The Scrum-Half is usually a nimble, relatively petite player. The Scrum-Half remains sensibly outside the scrum, which, once engaged, becomes a seething hummock of humanity . At a command from the Referee, the Scrum-Half inserts the ball into the tunnel formed beneath the interlocking heads and necks of the two opposing front rows of the Scrum.
The Rugby Ball is an odd, rather inaccurately named object. It is a leather bound thing, plump and round in the middle, with ends tapering to a point on each side. It is pumped up hard with air, which is contained in an internal bladder. It is clearly designed to be a very thing difficult to catch, kick or throw. Once the ball has entered the Scrum, all sixteen boys begin to push in earnest, each group of eight trying to push the opposition off the ball, while the Hookers attempt to ‘hook’ the ball with their feet, scraping it back towards their own half of the Scrum, where it would then, in theory, be available for collection by the quick-footed Scrum-Half.
The Under 13-F team were not adept at scrumming. What occurred on our field of play during a scrum was frequently both startling to behold and rather alarming, leaving our poor coach repeatedly shaking his head, and groaning in disbelief.
Under 13-F scrumming appeared to be an attempt to disprove Newton's laws of motion. Withing the Scrum, the opposing forces forces were created, which peaked on the buttocks and heads of the Props and Hookers, now trapped in the very centre of the scrum. However Newton always prevailed and thus there were only three possible outcomes:
- We in the front row would be slowly compressed, our heads forced through our torsos, and out between our buttocks.
- The Scrum would collapse and we would be trapped, asphyxiated, and crushed under a heap of writhing, struggling bodies (this did nothing to improve my rapidly maturing sense of claustrophobia).
- The front row would be pushed upwards by the locks. If this occurred, it would cause my neck to be flexed forcibly downwards by the opposing Prop and Hooker, so that my chin was ground firmly into my chest, while the elevation of my entire body would leave my legs dangling uselessly below me like a pair of pathetic pendulums.
Whichever outcome prevailed, the discomfort of each near-death experience was extreme. An initial panicky period of immense compression would be followed by much wriggling and kicking, after which the ball would pass out of the squirming, moving pile of compacted humanity.
The receiver of the ball - usually the Scrumhalf - would fling the ball at the nearest of his team-mates – usually the Fly-half (as the next player in the line was known). If it was our team that had, by some miracle, secured possession of the ball, our Fly-half would be instantly felled by an enormous enemy ogre. Our man would drop the ball and the Referee would blow his whistle at the resulting infringement, which was known as a ‘knock on’. The punishment for this crime was to begin once again the tedious cycle of the Scrum.
I spent many a Rugby Match wheezing my way from one Scrum, Ruck (a kind of spontaneous Scrum on the ground, usually following a tackle), or Maul (similar to a ruck, but with a more elevated, vertical stance which keeps the ball off the ground) to the next; and being recurrently crushed, elevated, kicked, and trampled, leaving me wondering what the purpose could be of this bizarre ritual known as Rugby Football
.
The Technique.
To assist in the preservation of life and limb in the face of the insuperable odds against us, we, of the Lower Orders, employed certain clandestine methodologies, known to us as The Technique. The Technique was a bit of schoolboy lore which had been handed down from one generation of Under 13-F Front-Row players to the next. The Technique was a means of restraining the often larger and far more capable opposing Forwards, whom we were forced to face in each new match.
The first part of The Technique was to apply liberally to one’s neck, an ointment containing Oil Of Wintergreen. This substance was widely utilized as an unguent, massaged over sore muscles and painful joints. A proprietary ointment containing Oil Of Wintergreen was sold in tubes under the trade name ‘Deep Heat’. Deep Heat generated a sensation of soothing heat in the massaged area but, more importantly to us, it caused severe irritation of any eyes with which it, inadvertently, came into contact.
Saturday mornings, before matches, would see the Under 13-F Forwards in the changing rooms, applying liberal quantities of Deep Heat ointment to our necks and shoulders, both on the skin and, maliciously, onto the corresponding outer surfaces of our Rugby jerseys.
As the intimate process of the Scrum involved prolonged physical contact between our necks and shoulders, and the heads and faces of our enemy front rankers, the covert effect achieved was an inevitable transfer of this invaluable ointment onto the eyelids of our unfortunate victims, causing their eyes to smart and run with tears as the irritation became unbearable. This would divert their attention, rendering them less focused on the job in hand, thereby sustantially reducing the forces arrayed against us.
The next step in The Technique, which took place during the Scrumming process, involved the Loose-Head Prop grasping a generous gobbet of Rugby field: grass, soil, mud, small twigs, sand, grit … whatever made up the surface over which were we were playing. During the chaos of the scrum, this handful of debris was tossed surreptitiously upwards into the already smarting eyes of the opposing Forwards, sticking there, owing to the greasy properties of the previously transferred ointment. The combined effect of Deep Heat and dirt adhering to the eyeballs was debilitating indeed.
The third, and final, step described by the Technique was to modify one’s grasp on the opposing Prop. A Prop, scrumming in the usual fashion, would, for support, place his free hand on the exposed lateral aspect of his opposing number, a process know as 'binding'. Inclined towards indolence, Props were often well padded, facilitating a good grasp on a roll of tender loin flesh. During the compression phase of the Scrum, one was at liberty to subject this handful of sensitive skin to an almighty clenching twist and squeeze, quite unnoticed by the Referee. The pain thus inflicted would further debilitate the already partially-blinded enemy ogre.
Our opposition were not immobilised by these methods, but they were rendered a little less formidable. In mitigation of our ethically unforgivable tactics, we did earnestly require a defence against bodily damage. As we, in the under 13-F team, existed at the extreme inferior end of the schoolboy Rugby spectrum, so were our opponents always much larger and more talented than ourselves. We grasped at every advantage we could muster, fair or unfair, in our attempt to come out of Rugby Football matches alive.
Practices & Tactics.
In order to improve our standing in the Rugby world, twice-weekly Rugby practice was compulsory. While other teams practiced out on the Rugby field, most of the Under 13-F practices were conducted in our school classroom. It seemed far more sensible to us to spend time seated in comfort on our desks, planning tactics and drawing diagrams of ambitious manoeuvres on the blackboard, rather than running around on the sports field, sweating under the tropical sun. During these virtual Rugby practice sessions, we dreamed up many magnificent manoeuvres to assist in further swinging the odds a little in our favour, against our inexorable enemies. Many of the tricks were designed to allow us to catch our breath during a match (most of us viewing fitness training with a jaundiced eye).
Smith.
One of the more popular moves was known as ‘Smith’, simply because there was no one by that name in our team. Smith was an emergency sequence used to force a pause in the game, and was usually unfurled about ten minutes after play had commenced. The Team Captain would holler ‘Smith’, in a carrying tone. A minute or so later, a designated player would fall down, roll onto his back and clutch at his chest, apparently is severe distress. The captain would approach rapidly in a concerned manner, lean over the writhing form, and enquire loudly, “Is it your ribs again, Smith?”
In a near-death sounding rattle, ‘Smith’ would gasp out an affirmative reply and accompany this with heart-rending groans, rolling his eyes up until the whites showed in a melodramatic fashion. The captain would then run over to the Referee, pointing to Smith, who appeared to be demising on the ground, and say politely, “Excuse me Sir, it’s Smith, it’s his ribs again”. The Referee would blow his whistle, which would summon our travelling pack of enthusiastic first-aiders. There followed a blessed pause in play during which we could all catch our breath and obtain a merciful sip of water.
Smith would happily receive the tender ministrations of the first-aiders, who would rub soothing liniments (often the aforementioned Deep Heat) on his sore spots, and dribble water into his open, gasping mouth. After a few minutes of recuperation, Smith’s unfocused, glazed look would clear, and the game wound recommence with his team-mates complimenting Smith on his stamina and determination in the face of adversity.
Peppermint Crisp…
Peppermint Crisp saw us ceasing all the silly flinging about of the ball, with its associated liabilities. Peppermint Crisp could be employed only on the rare occasion that the Referee had blown his whistle and awarded a penalty, and hence possession of the ball, to us.
With the enemy now banished to a reasonable distance (the rules required that the opposing team retreat ten metres distant while we considered our options), we would, at the given signal, all retreat very briefly into a quiet and civilized huddle around the team-mate who was in possession of the ball.
Immediately on obscuring the ball inside our huddle (not a particularly legal thing to do, I believe), we would all, including the ball bearer, place both forearms up under our Rugby jerseys, in a fashion that suggested that each of us was cradling the ball, concealed against our chests.
Thereafter the huddle would break up explosively, with each of us running in a different direction, several creative individuals even hiving off at a great pace towards our own try line.
The stellate pattern described by this outburst resulted in considerable confusion. With the exception of the genuine ball bearer, no-one on the field at this point, including the somewhat bemused Referee himself, would be able to discern which player was in actual possession of the ball.
In the brief state of mystification which ensued, the man with the ball, provided he had remembered to run in the correct direction, would manage to fall over the enemy line, and lie panting, one hand clutching the ball to the ground. Once the confusion had cleared, our team would be rewarded for this by having four points added to our score. (These four points were, rather strangely, referred to as a Try, from the Latin root for three, three points having been the original value of a Try. In the years to follow, a Try was awarded the deservedly higher value of five points, thus rendering the term increasingly inaccurate.) In our case it was an appropriately named award, as we always had to try really hard to score any points at all.
Goal Kicking.
The Try was regarded as Converted (and worth an extra two points), if one of our players could subsequently kick the ball over the horizontal crossbar between the upright poles of the H-shaped goal posts. We never scored these extra points as none of us had even a faint hope of delivering a powerful enough kick to elevate the ball to this rarefied altitude.
However, the attempt at goal-kicking did provide another much appreciated moment of respite. One of the team players was designated kicker for the match, usually against his will as it was somewhat embarrassing to have a total inability to kick a Rugby ball so publicly exposed. To prolong the duration of the breather, the kicker would, in a most professional manner, mess around with the ball for as long as possible, employing several time consuming procedures before attempting the kick at goal: he would set about balancing the ball just so on a small heap of sand, making several minute adjustments to the angle the ball made with the ground; he would then lie on his chest behind the now perfectly placed ball and squint up at the goal posts to ‘get a line of sight’, somewhat akin to the actions performed by a professional golfer before attempting an ambitious putt; and finally, the kicker would spend time throwing a bit of sand up into the air while standing on various sides of the ball in order to ascertain the direction and speed of the prevailing breeze. This ‘evaluation’ by the kicker would baffle the Referee, and the enemy; however as long as the kicker didn’t drag it on for too long, no-one seemed to mind, and it all served to wonderfully increase the duration of the rest-period.
The Rugby Bully.
The following year I was promoted, for some unknown reason to the under 14-E team and, a year thereafter, in a state of bewilderment, to the under 15-D team. This could only have been owing to a dearth of able-bodied, four limbed props in the land, no doubt as a result of deaths and serious injuries sustained by inmates of the higher teams. My promotion proved to be problematic in many ways, not least because the D team engaged in ‘proper Rugby’ and had less interest in intellectual exercises and tricky techniques, which we had been wont to use in the lower orders.
Further, the under 15-D team had combined Rugby practices with the under 15-C team. The Under 15-Cs were large and their style of Rugby was aggressively professional, using the Under-15Ds as canon-fodder, so to speak.
The under 15-C team were possessed of a prop by the name of Macbane. Macbane represented my second and final contact with a school bully. He was a thuggish, mentally slow, overweight, bristle haired, troll of a child. I had succeeded in befriending my first school bully, in preschool, but befriending Macbane had proved to impossible task.
Macbane attempted to shield his insecurities with an abrasive, aggressive, mean attitude, turning him into a caricature of a school bully. Macbane snarled a lot, and made stupid derisive remarks about his opposite numbers and even about his own team-mates. He had accumulated a small gang of sycophantic supporters, who attempted to make their own lives more interesting by making those of the smaller people around them a misery. They chose only the smaller people, of course. This went on for some time, with the cowards among us, myself included, doing our best to avoid them and pretending not to notice.
Then, one day, Macbane picked on Peter. Peter was one of my closest friends at school, and he was a team-mate, being the Hooker in the under 15-D team. When Macbane picked Peter as his next victim, we all noticed. Peter was physically tiny, but never seemed to see himself that way. What he lacked in tallness and broadness, Peter made up for with a massive intellect and a sharp-as-lightning tongue that knew not how to back off from any confrontation, regardless of the physical size of the opponent, and especially, it seemed, not one with a psychopathic school bully.
“Hey Hoyle” sneered Macbane one day, as we were about to Scrum. As Macbane was the loose head Prop of the under 15-C team, he was facing the two of us as we bent forwards to commence scrumming. “Why are you such an arsehole, Hoyle?” continued Macbane, as we locked heads.
“It’s because everything looks like an arsehole to your flea-sized brain, Macbane,” retorted Peter without delay.
There was an ominous silence before Macbane replied menacingly from the interior of the Scrum, “I wouldn’t say that again Hoyle, if you value your life”.
“Ooh, threats, threats,” replied Peter mockingly, in an imitative nasal twang, clearly designed to enrage Macbane as much as possible. This was a fairly easy thing to achieve. Peter couldn’t help himself and, as the Scrum broke up, he followed up his remark with, “Macbane, just face it. Your brain has about as much intellectual capability as a guava pip, so you can’t help thinking we’re all arseholes, but that’s only because you’re such an arsehole yourself.”
Macbane reared up from the remains of the Scrum, red in the face, right opposite Peter. His fist flashed out of nowhere and connected hard with Peter’s head, knocking him onto his back. Peter leaned on one arm and pushed himself unsteadily up onto his knees, somewhat dazed. Macbane, redder in the face than usual, lambasted Peter’s head with several more vicious blows. One punch struck Peter on the nose causing blood to squirt grandly from his nostrils. Peter wobbled unsteadily on his knees and once again toppled over backwards.
My own reaction was entirely reflexive. I was standing right there after all, and couldn’t allow this ridiculous situation to continue – Macbane seemed to be intent on exterminating Peter. Forced reluctantly into action, I placed a hand on Macbane’s shoulder and pulled him back, away from his wounded target.
“Don't do that,” I heard myself say out loud, as Macbane turned to see who this was, this impertinent person who had dared to foul up his afternoon interlude.
“You!” blurted Macbane, disbelief in his tone.
Like everyone present, Macbane knew I was a completely non-confrontational pacifist (in other words, a coward). In any, even potentially, physical confrontation, I would always have been worse than useless.
“And what do you think you’re going to do about it?” Macbane continued, once he had recovered from his surprise.
I couldn’t answer that, so, at first, I didn’t. A surge of adrenalin helped dilute my fear and enabled me to stare, for a second or two, deeply into Macbane’s small brown eyes.
“Just don’t touch him again, Macbane,” I said eventually, for lack of anything more erudite, my voice a monotone.
Macbane appeared dumbstruck. “I can’t believe this,” he spluttered. “Hoyle, your boyfriend is coming to your rescue. Isn’t that sweet?” To me he turned and said, with a disdainful shake of his head, “you, you are so dead. “I’ll see you outside the change-room after practice.”
‘After practice’ seemed to arrive with unwarranted rapidity.
“Thabaks,” said Peter through his rapidly swelling facial features once Macbane had departed the scene. “But, what are we gobig to do bow?” he asked, as blood dribbled dramatically from his nose.
All the others, who made up the non-Macbane group expressed concern.
“You can’t go and face Macbane,” they said.
“He’ll tear you into mincemeat”, they said.
“Well,” I replied dubiously, “I don’t seem to have any choice.”
“You don’t have to go on being the hero, you know,” someone insisted. This sounded admirably convincing, I thought.
“I know. I know.” I replied. “I have no intention of purposefully engaging in fisticuffs with Macbane. But, I can’t see a way out. My clothes are in the change room. I can’t go in there without coming across him waiting outside.”
“I’ll get your stuff and bring it out,” someone volunteered.
“Yes, sure,” I replied, “and he’s going to offer you nice safe passage to and from the change-room to fetch my clothes. I doubt that, somehow.”
The others offered helpful suggestions, such as purchasing a firearm, adopting a disguise, changing schools, or simply abandoning my kit in the change-room.
In the end we realised that we would just have to approach the change-room and see what ensued. At least there was a group of us, even if we were all non-pugilistic types. As we approached the school buildings, I was increasingly perturbed by a growing sense of anxiety. We seemed a pathetic little group, reticent weaklings against the mighty Macbane. Entering the change-room, we found Macbane already half-dressed.
“You’re so dead, you are toast,” Macbane repeated when he saw me. He finished donning his school uniform and departed, leaving me to dress in fear.
Astonishingly, on exiting the change room myself, all showered and dressed and terrified, it was to discover that Macbane was nowhere to be seen.
I felt relief and surprise in equal amounts. I stood, looking around, for a minute or so, no doubt with my mouth hanging open slightly. Macbane was definitely nowhere to be seen.
“Bethibiks he got cold feet,” contributed Peter gleefully. “It’s always like that with a bully – stabad up to hib, add he disappears like a puff of sboke,” he added, snapping his fingers as if to indicate how regularly and rapidly bullies transmogrified into smoke.
I wasn’t so sure about this theory, but I was immeasurably relived that Macbane had vanished. Macbane chose to ignore us at all future encounters. This, needless to say, was regarded by all as an improvement.
Secretly however, I had felt a little inkling of something else. To this day I’ve never been entirely sure what that was, that mild disquiet, that slightly empty let-down sort of sensation provoked by the absence of Macbane. I think it may have been a touch of disappointment.
Chapter 6
Them Bones
Grade 10
“What the fuck were you thinking Dwyer?” hissed Spinge, his nose two inches in front of my face.
I was trapped, accosted by Spinge in the stairwell. In my peripheral vision I could see boys trudging rapidly up and down the stairs, heads down, all studiously avoiding glancing at us. The bell was about to ring to start the day’s next lesson.
Spinge (a nickname) was the head biology master, usually good-hearted, though stern he could be. Spinge possessed a formidable nose which protruded forth from his face like a skeg or a keel, inclined, as it was,at an arresting angle. Spinge’s nose was currently occupying a large portion of my visual field. My eyes were no doubt wide with astonishment, while Spinge’s orbs were narrow with menace. Neither of us was breathing: Spinge seemingly on account of unaccountable anger, and I because Spinge had pulled my tie so tightly that my air supply had been cut off, and death by strangulation was imminent.
“Uhhhhhhhh?!” I replied, my intellect slowness accentuated by cerebral hypoxia.
“Why on earth did you do it?" snapped Spinge.
I stared at him some more, not knowing what he was talking about, and, in any case, unable to speak.
"You must have been out of your head. What sort of person would do such a thing?” Spinge spluttered.
I stared on in panic, a rabbit caught in the glare of Spinge’s oncoming headlights.
“Perhaps, you wanted a moment of fame and glory? Or maybe you purposely set out to destroy the good name of your school, and your teachers?”
As I had never entertained either of these objectives, I was no further enlightened by Spinge’s continued tirade. I concluded that this was a case of mistaken identity: Spinge must be addressing the wrong person. That was it, he was under a misapprehension that I had done something terrible, while whatever it was must have been done by somebody else. That was it - whatever had happened, it couldn't have been me, could it?
My blank, and no doubt mildly cyanosed features, caused Spinge to hesitate as though he too had become momentarily confused. He briefly reduced the tension on my tie. I wheezed in a grateful lungful of air, and felt the heat rising in my face, the colour probably changing from a purple to blotchy red, my normal colour when in a state of self-conscious embarrassment.
“Uhhhhhh?” I stammered, in, what I thought, was a helpful, but tentative tone, not wanting Spinge to pull on my tie again. He was still clasping tightly it in his fisted left hand. The tip of his long nose was still mere inches from my own nose. Although terrified by this outburst, I was, at the same, time curious to find out what Spinge was talking about.
“Uh, what did I do, Sir” I added.
“Your bloody skeleton,” erupted Spinge, his voice a staccato as he jerked my tie again with each explosive syllable.
“Oh, that”, I squeaked in bewilderment, with what felt like the last puff of air in my lungs.
“Yes, that,” barked Spinge, emphasising his words with two good strong pulls on my tie.
As I felt the ligature tightening further around my neck, I began to see tiny silver stars floating around in front of my eyes. In his rage, Spinge now let go of my tie and, placing a hand on my chest, pushed me forcefully backwards. The brick wall behind me stopped my head with a painful thud. I gasped and stared, wide-eyed at Spinge, who was wild-eyed with rage. I tried to consider why my skeleton should have made him so angry.
The construction of an animal skeleton had been the requirement of the grade 10 biology project. Mine, I thought, had been a reasonable skeleton, put together from the insides of a baby rabbit. True, it had by no means been a perfect piece of handiwork, but I had been awarded a passable 65%, a ‘C’.
Considering that only three of us in the biology class had achieved a pass mark at all [one genius had received an ‘A’, one a ‘B’, and my skeleton had received the only ‘C’], it appeared that Spinge’s rage was disproportionate to the project assessments.
“Uh, that bad was it, Sir?” I enquired.
“Not your skeleton Dwyer, you idiot”, exploded Spinge confusingly. I seized my tie defensively.
‘What is he going on about?’ I wondered.
“This!” screamed Spinge, as though he were reading my mind. He was brandishing a rolled up newspaper at me. He whacked my head with it and then unfurled it in front of my face. The bold black letters of the headline glared out at me: ‘SCHOOL BOYS IN ANIMAL MASSACRE’.
I stared, blinking at the headline, not sure what to make of it. It was true that I had sacrificed a baby rabbit for its skeleton, but I had performed the grisly task in a as humane a manner as possible. I had carried out the euthanasia by placing the rabbit inside a sturdy plastic bag containing cotton wool balls soaked in ether and chloroform. True, the rabbit had squealed and kicked for a time. No doubt being trapped in this makeshift, claustrophobic anaesthetic machine, without the benefit of a premed, was a little startling for the poor thing.
I had experienced deep disquiet over actively snuffing out the innocent, fluffy bundle; a disquiet which had eaten its way, permanently, into the very depths of my soul; but, after all, boys will be boys, and I had needed those precious bones. It was all in the interests of scientific endeavor I had told myself, repeatedly, though I still feel to this day that my soul was fractured, and left partly diminished, by the rabbit-killing.
At the outset of the project we had been given a set of written instructions which advised that each of us should source an animal. The list of possible suppliers included veterinary practices, wild life parks, and butcheries. We were to remove the skin, boil the carcass, and extract the skeleton. The skeleton was to be mounted on a wooded board, labelled, and presented to our class biology teacher. We were given three months to complete the project.
Having decided that a rabbit would make a fine skeleton, I had discovered that nowhere could I find a dead rabbit with its head still attached. All the butchers supplied headless carcasses. I then discovered that baby rabbits were available at very low prices at the local pet store. This had solved the supply problem, but had meant buying a live beast instead of a carcass. Feeling a twinge of conscience when purchasing my specimen, I had even requested a bag of rabbit food to disguise the fact that my new ‘pet’ was not long for this world. It is worth noting that the project’s instructions had failed to mention pet shops as a reasonable source of supply, but, in mitigation, there were no instructions forbidding the use of live specimens.
After the grim execution, conducted in the makeshift gas chamber, I had skinned and then boiled the deceased rabbit, much to the chagrin of Mother-Dear, who had grown quite fond of the young rabbit during the few days in which it had hopped unwittingly about the house. She had even taken to chatting to it over her morning coffee, and enhancing its meals by adding lettuce leaves and carrot sticks.
The task of constructing the rabbit skeleton had not worked out quite as planned. I had performed the necessary rendering processes in the garden, on a portable gas cooker, as Mother-Dear had felt squeamish at the thought of seeing her recent breakfast buddy bubbling away on the kitchen stove. I had allowed the thing to simmer in the pot for the period which had been advised in the project instructions, but this had turned out to be a mite long.
The instructions had probably been devised with larger, fully grown animals in mind, I reflected afterwards. My over-boiled baby bunny had more or less dissolved into little bits in the pot. I poured the remains of the rabbit through a sieve and had fished out the bits and pieces of retrievable skeleton. Unfortunately, the little bones were no longer held together by their ligaments, as the project's instructions had advised they would be at this point. As so much of any young mammal's skeleton is cartilage, much of the animal had dissolved and fragmented into a sort of rabbit soup. I was left with a residual handful of little bones which, in the end, made up considerably less than a complete skeleton. I rinsed off bones and placed them in the sun to dry. For some reason I was put in mind of the biblical comment: ‘not one stone shall be left upon another’.
The process of building the skeleton in vitro was complex. It was like building a small three dimensional jigsaw puzzle, but with a large portion of the pieces missing, and no picture of the completed work available for guidance. Nevertheless, I did what I could to complete the task. I obtained a small plankof wood, sawed it into a square shape, sanded it smooth, and varnished it.
A curved piece of coat hanger wire made a fine rigid spinal cord, on which to slide the few vertebrae I found in the collection of little bones. The standard mammalian proportions of seven cervical, twelve thoracic, and five lumbar vertebrae, were curtailed for this project on account of the abbreviated supply. Bunny vertebrae are very tiny and a number of them appeared to have passed through the sieve and down the drain. However, the skull was more or less intact [minus its mandible] and at least was recognisable, if a little large, when placed atop the shortened spinal column. Utilizing long-bones, bits of pelvic wing, and an occasional rib, all placed a little randomly here-and-there, and, it must be said, a quantity of superglue, a kind of squatting, somewhat prayerfully postured, grotesque impression of a rabbit skeleton began to take shape.
Watching the skeleton emerge from the dining room table had been a source of endless fascination for Josephine, our patient and long-suffering housekeeper. Josephine was a part-time sangoma [a traditional African healer, or ‘witch-doctor’] – a trade she plied when her day job of making beds and washing dishes was over. In keeping with her profession, Josephine had a strong interest in bones.
“I normally throw bones like this on the floor” Josephine informed me knowledgably. Despite their non-availability as divining media in this case, she seemed pleased to see these particular bones taking shape as a kind of reincarnated representation of an animal.
Once the skeleton was complete, a coat of clear varnish kept all the little bits more or less in place. It was now ready to be handed in. It was not perfect but it was adequate, which is why it had earned me a pass, but was awarded only a ‘C’ symbol.
Michael, my refined, intellectual, artistic friend, had undertaken the reconstruction of an Old English Sheepdog, a euthanized specimen of which he had obtained from the local vet. Michael, too, had been sensibly banished by his mother to the outdoor areas of his home for the dismembering of what was a relatively large dog. Michael chopped up the carcass into pieces small enough to fit into his cooking pot.
This process took Michael longer than anticipated. Add to this that Michael was a great procrastinator, and the Sheepdog was still in pieces two weeks after the handing in deadline. I spent several afternoons at Michael’s house, assisting him with the disassembly of the decaying dog, and retrieving bits from the boiling broth for reassembly.
Fortunately the various boiled partsof Michael’s dog hung together, more or less, owing to the largely bony nature of the skeleton and ligaments which weren’t boiled into fragments, as had occurred with the baby rabbit. Eventually, Michael did hand in a magnificent, fully formed skeleton of an Old English Sheepdog. He was penalized for tardiness, so received only a ‘B’ symbol. Another project, a little Blue Duiker skeleton, done by Willie, had earned the only ‘A’. It was so perfect, adorned even with a little brass plaque to indicate the species, that it was rumored that Willie had lifted the thing from the local natural history museum.
Everyone else in the biology class failed. Jonathan, another student with mildly misguided initiative, had attempted to construct the skeleton of a day old chick. Day old chicks, it turns out, do not really have skeletons - what little skeleton they possess is practically devoid of bone. I was intrigued to discover that Jonathan had also utilized ether for his execution process. Jonathan had, however, not made use of an improvised gas chamber. He had, by means of a wad of cotton wool soaked in ether, simply applied the stuff directly to the nostrils of his unfortunate baby chick. Whether this had caused anoxia by airway obstruction, drowning by liquid ether entering the airways, or anesthesia from ether gas hitting the tiny brain, remained undecided after our informal inquest.
Owing to its very small size and fluffy form, Jonathan was unable to skin his little limp specimen. He had therefore simply boiled the chick whole. After simmering it for the recommended number of hours, Jonathan was left with a pot of downy chick broth, and not much else. He had fished about hopefully in the depths of the soup, employing the services of a slotted spoon; but to no avail: the entire pullet seemed to have effectively liquidised itself. Jonathan had resorted to pouring the mildly viscous liquid through a muslin cloth, and had managed to retrieve three or four gritty bits that may, or may not, have been parts of the skeleton.
In order to construct them into something vaguely representing a bird, Jonathan had first constructed a framework on which to hang the ‘bones’. To this end he had rolled a tangle of copper wire into a ball like shape to which he attached two twisted copper wire legs, and a copper wire neck. He had added a small copper wire ball for a head, with a protruding bit on the front to represent the beak.
To this post-modernist, somewhat abstract sculpture of a day old chick, Jonathan had attached, by means of considerable quantities of superglue, in a seemingly random fashion, the several bits of grit he had retrieved from his boiling. The end result was a grotesque blend of copper and tiny bits, and visible quantities of glue. The artwork chick was possessed of an unpredictable habit of falling intermittently forward onto its face owing to the instability of its copper wire legs. Jonathan had received an ‘H’, the lowest possible symbol.
The skeletons produced a good quantity of raucous laughter when they were finally exhibited in the biology laboratory and scrutinized by the critical eyes of the rest of the school, Jonathan’s offering providing the most amusement.
* * *
As a considerable time had now passed since this interesting project had been laid to rest, I was taken aback to see mention of it blazing from newspaper headlines. Also, Jonathan terminating a day old chick, and I snuffing out an innocent young rabbit, however untimely their demise, could hardly be construed as a massacre. I was confused and I mentioned this to Spinge, who appeared to be on the brink of apoplexy.
“You were not supposed to kill any animals, you idiot” moaned Spinge through gritted teeth. “You were supposed to obtain dead specimens from the vet.”
I explained about the dearth of rabbit offerings with heads still attached.
“Yes, that’s all very well”, retorted Spinge, still ruffled, but seemingly somewhat mollified by my enthusiasm for obtaining a whole specimen.
“But why on earth did you tell the paper? What were you thinking, to admit to doing a thing like that?” he continued, appearing to be about to work up his rage again.
“But”, I stammered quickly. “I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t speak to the newspaper.”
Spinge slapped the headline a few times with the back of his fingers: “The woman who wrote this article says she got her information from you. How do you explain that?”
I couldn’t explain that, but I pleaded my innocence and that I had not given any information to the newspaper. I didn’t even know any journalists. It was a mystery as to how they had obtained their information, and why they had given my name as their source.
All was made clear to me at lunch break. Peter came running over with a copy of the newspaper.
“Did you see what she’s done?” he blurted out. “Are they going to expel you, do you think?”
I was confused again, as usual, but Peter seemed to have new, more detailed information, so I let him proceed.
“Last weekend, when you slept over at my house, remember? You were telling me the story of how you did in your pet bunny, to get its skeleton for Jenny and Spinge.”
Jenny was our class biology teacher who was supervising the grade 10 biology projects. Jenny was very pretty, and her class of sixteen-year-old boys would do anything for her.
“I did not do in my pet bunny”, I protested. “I bought a bunny, a rabbit, and anaesthetized it in a humane manner.”
“Yeah, whatever” said Richard, “but Wendy was in the lounge, remember?”
“Who’s Wendy?” I demanded, suddenly horror struck.
“Wendy, our lodger; remember? She became all interested in your project and was plying you with questions.”
I did remember, now. Like the foolish young boy that I was, when someone, another pretty someone in this case, had taken an interest, I had been only too happy to describe, in gruesome detail, how I had obtained my skeleton.
“Well”, said Richard, “Wendy is a journalist, she works for the Mercury"
The Mercury was the local morning paper.
"Wendy wrote this article”, Peter continued, pointing at the dreaded front-page headline.
“Damn, damn, damn”, I panted running to Spinge’s office. I thought I better fill him in on my disaster, before Wendy claimed that I had granted her an interview.
Spinge was, to my intense relief, no longer in a terminal fury. He seemed interested in my story, and, though a little sympathetic even, he once again indicated what a supreme dolt I was. I didn’t get punished, but I could see he was unimpressed.
“Next time Dwyer, don’t go round killing things, and, if you must do so, aat least don’t tell anybody, especially not a journalist,” was his parting remark.
Chapter 7
Biology classes: grade 8
“This,” said Miss Gonn, is an earthworm.
She had drawn a circle in chalk on the blackboard, with a label which read proudly, ‘Earthworm’.
“An earthworm,” emphasized Miss Gonn. Miss Gonn was our firm (of nature and physique), pretty, grade 8 biology class teacher, who usually wore tantalisingly transparent tops. The filmy outlines of Miss Gonn’s lingerie had far more attraction for the boys in her class, than any offerings she cared to inscribe upon the blackboard (these days, referred to more appropriately as a chalkboard).
“Now copy down this diagram in your notes”, she instructed, pointing with a long stick at her earthworm. We each dutifully drew a circle in our exercise books, not as neatly as Miss Gonn’s obviously, and labeled it ‘Earthworm’.
Next Miss Gonn drew a concentric circle within the earthworm. She labeled this new addition ‘intestine’, and added a second label to the existing outer rim: ‘cuticle’. She tapped the board commandingly with her long pointing stick, and reluctantly we transferred our collective gaze to the circles on the board.
“The outer layer, the skin, is known as the cuticle and is the outermost part of the integumentary layer. The inner circle is the intestine. Are there any questions?” Ms Gonn’s voice had a rough, grating quality, quite out of keeping with the flowing curves of her physique.
There were no questions. What question could we have possibly asked? We, and probably she, knew that these two concentric circles were useless. We all knew what earthworms were of course - soft brown elongated forms one found in the garden. We knew that no part of an earthworm resembled concentric circles. We knew that, even if we had sliced one in half carefully, with a sharp blade, the cross section would not have appeared as two concentric circles.
This misrepresentation did not bother us. We had become already hardened, subconsciously perhaps, into schoolboy cynics. By now we had come to understand that school was not there to teach us anything authentic. School was there to process us, and in so doing maybe to offer us, at best, a flat diagrammatic outline of a minute part of reality. The diagram on the board was connected to the reality it was describing only by virtue of its label. All the ‘education’ we ever received, really, was a synthetic, artificial, construct. There was no reality in school, it was all, at best, a map.
“For homework,” said Miss Gonn, I want you to colour in your earthworms – dark green for the integumentary layer, and yellow for the intestine. The bell rang to signify the end of biology class. We got up from our lab tables and trudged off to maths.
Needless to say, my diagram went uncoloured. Colouring in circles with green and yellow pencils was not a sufficiently interesting activity to energise my brain out of its baseline inertia. I didn’t mind applying myself to the odd schol task or two, occasionally, if it was even vaguely interesting. But colouring in, no, that was not going to happen.
Grade 11
Several years and more than a few punishments [for unfinished work] later, and we were sitting in the Grade 11 biology classroom, in front of Spinge, the pedantic head biology master, who taught the Grade 11 and 12 classes. Spinge’s dress code tended toward tightly fitting, shiny polyester, lime-green trousers, which displayed proudly his skinny-framed physique.
The same concentric circles were on the blackboard with the same labels and lines.
“Right boys, settle down,” Spinge whined nasally at us, in his colourful, camp fashion. “This,” he added, “is an earthworm.”
His tone seemed to imply that we should be impressed by this special treat. Spinge’s concentric circles too were coloured, very neatly. Spinge was carefully colouring in a new concentric circular layer between his green and yellow layers, a brand new bright red layer which he labeled ‘nervous system’.
“Now you see boys, the outer green layer is the cuticle of the integument, the yellow layer is the intestine and the red layer in between is the nervous system. Copy these down please. We dutifully drew three concentric circles in our notes and applied the appropriate labels. “For homework,” instructed Spinge, pointing, with an extended middle finger and a drop of his wrist, at the board, “I wish you to colour in your diagrams.”
Needless to say, my circles were, as always, left uncoloured.
Fortunately there were no longer any punishments. Spinge felt we were now old enough to be ‘responsible’, so he didn’t take in our biology notebooks to check on our colouring in. This allowed me to raise the level of my slackness to an increasingly rarified altitude, and by year’s end I had a notebook replete with anaemic, colourless diagrams.
A few days before the final biology examination, Spinge made a horror announcement.
“Nearly exam time boys,” he explained, “so I'm going to check your notebooks to make sure they’re up to date and that you have all you need for the exams. Please leave them on my desk as you leave the classroom."
This was definitely not an instruction with which I could comply. My notebookfull of poorly-drawn pencil diagrams would have created a serious problem. Were Spinge to see my uncoloured work, he would have been furious. He might have had a stroke. He may have even complained about it to the Headmaster. They all would have been horribly red in the face with rage. I would have been punished, severely, caned, six of the best at least. Their anger would have been terrible to behold.
The mere thought was enough to induce a mortal terror in me. I couldn’t do it. At the end of the lesson, I stepped out surreptitiously, without being noticed by Spinge, and kept my inadequate notebook safely buried in the depths of my school bag.
During the next class, Latin, we were abandoned temporarily by our teacher and left alone in the classroom to complete a translation of Caesar’s unintelligible writings. This created an opportunity for me to discuss my plight with my close friend Michael who sat one desk in front of me: what to do about the uncoloured biology notebook that Spinge wished to check, but which would surely be the death of him, and maybe me too, if he caught so much as a glimpse of my scant offerings.
“You could just not hand it in,” suggested Michael.
“He’ll notice,” I muttered. “He knows each of us, and me especially. He’ll be on the lookout for my book.”
“Hmmm,” mused Michael, his chin resting in one hand, as his blue eyes twinkled through his wire framed spectacles. He turned away and stared into space for a bit, seemingly far away.
“Tell you what,” he said, turning back suddenly, “give me your book.”
“To you?” I replied.
“Yes,” commanded Michael firmly, beckoning with one hand, “come on, hand it over.”
I rummaged in my school bag and extricated my biology notebook. It was a large hard covered notebook. I had covered it in a durable grey plastic contact paper, to stop it from falling apart. Michael opened it and turned the pages briefly, glancing at some of my pencilled diagrams.
“I’ll do it,” he announced simply, and slipped my book into his rather neat and tidy briefcase.
“But, that would be a mammoth undertaking,” I protested. “There’s a whole year’s work in there, and none of it has ever seen a coloured pencil.”
But Michael was ignoring me. He had turned to the doings of Caesar, a book of words which described the Roman Army, and often confused us amateur Latin scholars with passive past-participles and pluperfect-subjunctives. Schoolboy Latin translations often came out a little back-to-front owing to these complexities of mood and tense.
Although Caesar would move inexorably, page by page, across Europe, towards England, he would have been unimpressed by the vast number of his achievements which came unstuck amid clumsy schoolboy translations. Poor Caesar was often left the victim of such odd circumstances as: ‘Caesar, having been attacked by a trench, ought to have been climbed upon by a rampart, which were being a galley.’ Or: ‘Caesar, having dug his soldiers into a mound, would have been crossed the sea by his captain.’
The next morning Michael handed my biology notebook to me.
“There you are,” he announced simply, but with a quiet pride. “Take that down right now and put it on Spinge’s desk.”
I opened the book to discover that all the diagrams, in the entire book, were now beautifully and correctly coloured. Michael must have spent all of the previous evening colouring in my biology notebook. I was speechless. I had a lump in my throat at the thought of the unrepayable debt I owed Michael.
“Thank you,” I whispered hoarsely, feeling overwhelmed with gratitude.
“Get a move on then,” commanded Michael, flicking me off with the back of his hand. “Be off with you, before it be too late.”
He wafted his hands some more, shooing me away. I ran down to the biology classroom which was situated in the basement. There, on Spinge’s desk, was the neatly stacked pile of notebooks. Had he marked them? Were they sitting there waiting to be returned to the class? Spinge was nowhere to be seen. I looked through one or two of the notebooks and was gratified to see therein a few scattered uncoloured works of biological art. Also, I was very pleased to see, no red ink markings were visible. Spinge hadn’t yet marked our work.
With relief I inserted my book into the pile and turned to leave. Unfortunately, in doing so, my school bag, which was hanging from my right shoulder, swung around and, to my horror, knocked the books off the desk onto the floor. I bent over to pick up the fallen books, and rebuilt the stack as best as possible.
I was just placing the last book on the top of the stack, when I heard Spinge’s rhythmic footsteps squeaking along the corridor outside the classroom. We met up in the doorway, just as I was making good my escape.
“Oh, you?” he said in surprise.
I stared at him a little wide-eyed, and speechless.
“And to what do I owe the pleasure of this little surprise visit?” he enquired.
It was a quite reasonable question – Spinge had every right to know what I was doing sneaking around in his classroom, when clearly I had no business there.
“Uh, pen,” I mumbled. “I thought I, uh, left my pen here, during the lesson yesterday. I just came back, um, to look for it.”
I could feel the blood rushing inevitably to my face. I blush easily, especially when conveying untruths. The consequent erythematous changes and burning sensation which occur on my face at these uncomfortable moments are quite uncontrollable.
“Oh,” said Spinge. “I see,” he said, in a doubtful tone. He obviously didn’t believe what he was hearing, but fortunately didn’t enquire further.
Later that day during the biology lesson, Spinge walked around the class, handing back our notebooks.
“You!” he exclaimed, hitting me on the head, quite hard, with my notebook and then plonking it down on the table next to me. He grabbed my left earlobe, twisting it upwards, in a most excruciating manner.
“You clearly did not colour in those diagrams yourself,” Spinge hissed into my ear, jerking my earlobe forcibly.
“Uh,” I replied apprehensively, my earlobe on fire. I was wandering desperately if Spinge had worked out what I had been doing in his classroom earlier.
Spinge tapped the cover of the book.
“This work is, far, too, neat.” he said loudly and slowly, emphasizing his words with continued jerks of my earlobe. “All the colours are inside the lines. It’s the one of the neatest books in the class, and we all know that you, even with your best efforts, could not have produced work of this calibre. Who did this for you?”
I couldn’t help it – before I could stop myself, I had glanced guiltily at Michael sitting next to me. Michael, slightly wide-eyed behind his specs, shook his head, almost imperceptibly.
Spinge must have noticed this surreptitious exchange, for he continued drily,
“Ah, Roberts,” he whined, “you would do well to attend to your own work, instead of wasting time colouring the work of your colleagues.”
“And you, why can’t you colour in your own diagrams?” demanded Spinge turning to me. “What’s the matter with you? Are you an imbecile?”
At this point I certainly felt like one.
“That’s just it, Sir,” interjected Michael. “He is quite incapable.”
Michael was of a deep and serious disposition, an intellectual, who thought long and hard about things, and would considered carefully the few words he spoke, before saying anything.
“What do you mean ‘incapable’, Roberts?” Spinge demanded. “He’s always top of the biology class.”
“Exactly, Sir,” retorted Michael, “He gets the highest marks, but he is incapable of wielding a coloured pencil without appearing to be, as you so aptly put it Sir, an imbecile. He suffers from dysgraphia. He is unable to write legibly, and he is unable to colour in a diagram and keep the colours inside the lines. In short, Sir, when it comes to applying pen to paper, or pencil to page, he is indeed, an imbecile.”
“Yes, well,” stammered Spinge, “but Roberts, we can’t have you wasting, uh spending, all your time doing the work of others.” Spinge seemed desperate to regain some kind of control over the situation. “And you,” he blustered at me, “in future, you are to, um, well, just leave your diagrams uncoloured.”
This news was a balm to my ears. As Spinge was due to teach us the following year, it would be an entire year during which I would be entitled to legally leave all my diagrams uncoloured. No further need to colour in, ever.
I could have hugged Michael; and Spinge for that matter.
Part four awaits, if you possess the stamina:
send a request to [email protected] and a link to part 4 will be emailed to you
