We had our supper and prayers came. Then we went up to bed.
I lay awake after the lights were out, wondering if Geoffrey was very unhappy. I could just see his bed in the corner, but there was no sign from it. The cold air swept round the floor and the iron beds creaked.
I fell asleep after the last person had stopped talking, and did not wake till several hours later. It was still dark; nothing could be heard but the trains shunting, two miles away. Suddenly I thought I heard deep intakes of breath from the corner where Geoffrey’s bed was. He must be snoring, I thought. Then I imagined that he was crying under the bed-clothes. I listened for some time, trying to decide.
The big dormitory was the grimmest part of the House. It was so lofty and cold that it seemed to make people heartless.
Two lips had been painted on one of the beams and all new boys had to pull themselves up by their arms, to kiss them. I remember straining up, and at last reaching the yellow pitch pine and the two crimson lips. They looked indecent, for some reason; as if they were the drawing of another part of the body.
When I kissed them, the taste of varnish and dust came as a shock. I imagined that they would somehow be scented.
I thought of this now as I watched other people trying to kiss them. If they were not quick or could not reach them, they were flicked with wet towels as an encouragement.
I had been told that you could lift the skin off someone’s back in this way. I always waited, half in horror, to see a ribbon of flesh come off.
All the handles had been broken off the chambers so that we could play bowls. Being hollow, they looked like white skulls as they spun towards you across the dark linoleum.
The head of the dormitory this term was Woods. He was tall and heavy, and he sometimes wore a pair of black pyjamas which had, at first, created a sensation. He would lie in bed, looking frowsty, the black pyjamas open so that you saw the little black hairs sprouting on his chest.
He used to tell loud stories about his aunt who wanted to be a débutante at forty-three, and insisted on being presented at Court.
Anyone who was going to be beaten had to stay downstairs after prayers. When they came up to the dormitory Woods would say, “Show us your marks.” Then we would all crowd round and look at the purple marks on the white behind.
If I hated the dormitory, the Gym. was one of the places I liked most. It always seemed fresh and strange. The sergeant was extraordinary; everyone said he was muscle-bound. I did not know what this meant, but afterwards whenever I looked at his thick chest and swelling arms, under the white jersey, I thought of them as “muscle-bound”.
We did not see him when we first came in. He lurked in his little office until we had finished changing, then he came out, dignified and ceremonious, like a penguin.
He marched us round, intoning to himself, “Up down, up down,” as if we were horses and he were teaching imaginary people to ride on our backs.
Suddenly he would break the rhythm of his drone with an order and we would be thrown into confusion, not understanding a word of it. Then he would pick on the slowest person and shout, “Eintz peintz, I’d like to slash your bum with a sabre!” or “Sissy Boy, you’ve got no more sense than when your mother dropped you!”
Once when I was squatting down, doing a knee-bending exercise, he yelled out:
“Get up, Welch, else I’ll take a piece of paper to you!”
These remarks excited us. We were more unruly in the changing-room after Gym. than anywhere else.
I split a seam in my trousers one day as I jumped over the horse. Geoffrey heard it go, and laughed. When the class was over he dashed at me and tore at the place, making a gaping hole where the trouser legs should join.
Other people helped him, and I was soon struggling on the floor with each seam split open from top to bottom.
At last I stood up again in the flapping, divided skirt they had made for me. The laughter was wild and I was very excited myself.
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