At the school it was the habit of certain senior boys to ‘take an interest in’ juniors. This varied from glances and smiles across the dining-hall to written invitations to meet in some secluded spot at a stated time. Friendships, taking a variety of forms, were then initiated. It was flattering, and very often a temporary antidote for homesickness, when a new boy received the agreeable but bewildering attentions of an important fifth-former. A meeting behind Chapel led to the negotiating of a barbed-wire fence on a slope of gorse bushes, the older boy solicitous and knowledgeable. There were well-trodden paths and nooks among the gorse where smoking could take place with comparative safety. Farther afield, in the hills, there were crude shelters composed of stones and corrugated iron. Here, too, the emphasis was on smoking and romance.
New boys very soon became aware of the nature of older boys’ interest in them. The flattery changed its shape, an adjustment was made – or the new boys retreated in panic from this area of school life. Andrews and Butler, Webb and Mace-Hamilton, Dillon and Pratt, Tothill and Goldfish Stewart, Good and Wiltshire, Sainsbury Major and Arrowsmith, Brewitt and Whyte: the liaisons were renowned, the combinations of names sometimes seeming like a music-hall turn, a soft-shoe shuffle of entangled hearts. There was faithlessness, too: the Honourable Anthony Swain made the rounds of the senior boys, a fickle and tartish bijou, desired and yet despised.
Torridge’s puddingy appearance did not suggest that he had bijou qualities, and glances did not readily come his way in the dining-hall. This was often the fate, or good fortune, of new boys and was not regarded as a sign of qualities lacking. Yet quite regularly an ill-endowed child would mysteriously become the object of fifth- and sixth-form desire. This remained a puzzle to the juniors until they themselves became fifth –or sixth-formers and desire was seen to have to do with something deeper than superficial good looks.
It was the apparent evidence of this truth that caused Torridge, first of all, to be aware of the world of bijou and protector. He received a note from a boy in the Upper Fifth who had previously eschewed the sexual life offered by the school. He was a big, black-haired youth with glasses and a protruding forehead, called Fisher.
‘Hey, what’s this mean?’ Torridge inquired, finding the note under his pillow, tucked into his pyjamas. ‘Here’s a bloke wants to go for a walk.’
He read the invitation out: ‘If you would like to come for a walk meet me by the electricity plant behind Chapel. Half past four Tuesday afternoon. R.A.J. Fisher.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ said Armstrong.
‘You’ve got an admirer, Porridge,’ Mace-Hamilton said.
‘Admirer?’
‘He wants you to be his bijou,’ Wiltshire explained.
‘What’s it mean, bijou?’
‘Tart, it means, Porridge.’
‘Tart?’
‘Friend. He wants to be your protector.’
‘What’s it mean, protector?’
‘He loves you, Porridge.’
‘I don’t even know the bloke.’
‘He’s the one with the big forehead. He’s a half-wit actually.’
‘Half-wit?’
‘His mother let him drop on his head. Like yours did, Porridge.’
‘My mum never.’
Everyone was crowding around Torridge’s bed. The note was passed from hand to hand. ‘What’s your dad do, Porridge?’ Wiltshire suddenly asked, and Torridge automatically replied that he was in the button business.
‘You’ve got to write a note back to Fisher, you know,’ Mace-Hamilton pointed out.
‘Dear Fisher,’ Wiltshire prompted, ‘I love you.’
‘But I don’t even –’
‘It doesn’t matter not knowing him. You’ve got to write a letter and put it in his pyjamas.’
Torridge didn’t say anything. He placed the note in the top pocket of his jacket and slowly began to undress. The other boys drifted back to their own beds, still amused by the development. In the wash-room the next morning Torridge said:
‘I think he’s quite nice, that Fisher.’
‘Had a dream about him, did you, Porridge?’ Mace-Hamilton inquired. ‘Got up to tricks, did he?’
‘No harm in going for a walk.’
‘No harm at all, Porridge.’
In fact, a mistake had been made. Fisher, in his haste or his excitement, had placed the note under the wrong pillow. It was Arrowsmith, still allied with Sainsbury Major, whom he wished to attract.
That this error had occurred was borne in on Torridge when he turned up at the electricity plant on the following Tuesday. He had not considered it necessary to reply to Fisher’s note, but he had, across the dining-hall, essayed a smile or two in the older boy’s direction: it had surprised him to meet, with no response. It surprised him rather more to meet with no response by the electricity plant. Fisher just looked at him and then turned his back, pretending to whistle.
‘Hullo, Fisher,’ Torridge said.
‘Hop it, look. I’m waiting for someone.’
‘I’m Torridge, Fisher.’
‘I don’t care who you are.’
‘You wrote me that letter.’ Torridge was still smiling. ‘About a walk, Fisher.’
‘Walk? What walk?’
‘You put the letter under my pillow, Fisher.’
‘Jesus!’ said Fisher.
The encounter was observed by Arrowsmith, Mace-Hamilton and Wiltshire, who had earlier taken up crouched positions behind one of the chapel buttresses. Torridge heard the familiar hoots of laughter, and because it was his way he joined in. Fisher, white-faced, strode away.
‘Poor old Porridge,’ Arrowsmith commiserated, gasping and pretending to be contorted with mirth. Mace-Hamilton and Wiltshire were leaning against the buttress, issuing shrill noises.
‘Gosh,’ Torridge said, ‘I don’t care.’
He went away, still laughing a bit, and there the matter of Fisher’s attempt at communication might have ended. In fact it didn’t, because Fisher wrote a second time and this time he made certain that the right boy received his missive. But Arrowsmith, still firmly the property of Sainsbury Major, wished to have nothing to do with R.A.J. Fisher.
When he was told the details of Fisher’s error, Torridge said he’d guessed it had been something like that. But Wiltshire, Mace-Hamilton and Arrowsmith claimed that a new sadness had overcome Torridge. Something beautiful had been going to happen to him, Wiltshire said: just as the petals of friendship were opening the flower had been crudely snatched away. Arrowsmith said Torridge reminded him of one of Picasso’s sorrowful harlequins. One way or the other, it was agreed that the experience would be beneficial to Torridge’s sensitivity. It was seen as his reason for turning to religion, which recently he had done, joining a band of similarly inclined boys who were inspired by the word of the chaplain, a figure known as God Harvey. God Harvey was ascetic, seeming dangerously thin, his face all edge and as pale as milk, his cassock odorous with incense. He conducted readings in his room, offering coffee and biscuits afterwards, though not himself partaking of these refreshments. ‘God Harvey’s linnets’ his acolytes were called, for often a hymn was sung to round things off. Welcomed into this fold, Torridge regained his happiness.