जगन्नाथ Chapter Two - Fall from Grace

Playgrounds contain many of the ingredients of the society in which they exist. The popular myth that they are full of running, skipping and happily screaming children, enjoying the best years of their lives, disguised a number of less wholesome truths. They were the domain of the school bully and the church school’s parade ground history seemed somehow to have given rise to the mentality of previous sergeant-majors who had asserted the tyranny of military discipline without mercy.
Gerry and Glenn, as new boys were obvious targets to be exploited within such a culture, though as children they had yet to figure out its cause or many unpleasant effects. Certainly the aggressive dominance of ‘big-kids’ was not a new phenomenon to them. Having been reared in a council estate environment, living as they had opposite the home of the local sergeant-major, they had had enough run-ins with what they later came to realise were his psychotically affected children they had learned to stick-together. Gerry rather idolised his elder brother Glenn who had, on occasion, performed heroics in defence of his kid brother. They stood slightly apart, but conspicuously together waiting to see what their status as new-kids might bring in terms of hostility but apart from an unexpectedly friendly greeting from two Irish boys, brothers themselves, their first few days passed without incident.
Assembly, which unsurprisingly in a school named All Saints was compulsory and frequent, took place in the dining hall which was simply the largest of the classrooms into which were crammed the two-hundred or so pupils. Facing them were the head and the five or six teachers whose duty it was to civilise the students. Hymns were sung and prayers said in awed silence, whilst the head teacher, Mr. Richards scanned his flock for signs of un-christian longings and institutional resistance.
Mr. Richards, a taciturn man in his early sixties, bald but for a grey strip of hair above and behind his ears, was thick-set and had a contralto voice with a lilting accent that may have been Welsh in its origin. He was neither voluble or apparently as savage as the ladies who enforced his will and law. He wore a dowdy green suit with an indistinct Prince-of-Wales check, and brown brogue shoes which audibly creaked when he walked. The impression he created was of a benign dictator which actually belied his true intent and purpose. He was another petty tyrant, but Gerry and Glenn had yet to encounter his wrath and so guilelessly respected his position and the illusion of kindness upon which his position relied.
After the assembly, which fell short of the boys’ previous expectations from their former actually kindly headmistress, the children were dismissed to their lessons, silently and in a previously understoodbut as yet secret to the unitiated brothersmanner, row by row, from the slightly overheated room. Before their turn came the brothers were summoned, in a clear voice by the man himself, to accompany Mr. Richards to his office, immediately.
Having never spoken with the head teacher, both boys were surprised by the invitation, but nevertheless remained unsuspecting of the purpose for the summons, so followed him innocently across the playground into his cramped but neat quarters. He closed the door behind them and they remained standing in front of the leather-topped beech desk where he walked, as if to sit but stood, arms straightened and resting upon his fists whilst looking first down at the desk top before inclining his worn and serious gaze toward them.
“There has been a report of stealing apples from the gardener’s orchard. What have you got to say for yourselves?” he enquired with absolute severity.
There was a pause as the boys looked first at each other and then back at their inquisitor. Gerry noted that Mr. Richards’ face was red with fury and that the considerable number of hairs that protruded both from his nose and ears appeared to be bristling with impatient fury. His brother spoke first.
“We took an apple each, but we didn’t steal them.” he calmly replied.
“So you admit it then!” shouted the head teacher at tremendous volume that shocked both the boys.
“We didn’t steal anything.” rejoined Glenn but was silenced as Mr. Richards slammed down a large, dark-brown wooden cane that he suddenly produced from the corner of his room upon his desktop. The boys were instantly terrified. Having never seen such an object used in such a threatening way before it relieved them both of the power of speech, instantly.
“I will not have thieves in this school!” he thundered, “and if there is one thing worse than a thief it is a liar!” bellowed Mr. Richards, his face contorted into a mask of rage.
Gerry could feel the mounting fear all the more because of his brother’s silence. How could this be happening? They’d done nothing wrong and here they were being threatened by this now hideous man with a stick! They’d read about this kind of thing of course and their own father had recounted many tales of such threats and actual punishments when himself a pupil at the village school in the late nineteen-thirties, a threat he’d himself removed by breaking into the teacher’s desk and burning her supply of rods used for the purpose. (This had of course made him something of a hero with his classmates and with his own children who regarded corporal punishment as a thing of the unenlightened past, banished by their own father’s bravery and now consigned to stories they had read such as Tom Brown’s Schooldays)
“I will not have children in this school defying me in my own classroom!”
There was a dreadful pause during which the boys awaited the next awful phase in this grim drama, wondering who was to be punished first, and with how many strokes of the weapon which Mr. Richards now brandished waveringly at them both.
“If ever I hear another bad word about either of you two boys I will thrash you so thoroughly that you never again even think of getting out of line. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?” his voice reached a crescendo of fury and the boys cowered before the force of his words and intent.
“Yes sir!” they replied in unison.
Now go and don’t let me see you in here again!”
The boys fled his office and presence and after exchanging cowed but silent glances returned, with an odd sense of relief to their respective lessons.

Over the following days the boys confessed to their father their misgivings about their new school. A hardworking man with troubles of his own, he hoped that these reports would soon abate as the boys settled into their new routine and made new friends, instead of which the reports became ever more disturbing.
There was the incident when Mrs. Ironmonger, a woman perhaps even more dangerous and ill-suited to teaching children than even Miss Grinter, had thrown one of the cast-metal chairs at a child with such force its sharp legs had embedded themselves into the partition wall imprisoning the child at whom it was aimed. Another of this particular evil-minded woman’s preferred teaching methods was to place one of the young Irish boys in a dolly tub, which was then rolled around the playground whilst his classmates beat the outside of it with shinty-sticks all the time chanting “You’re stupid, you’re stupid!”. This callous act was confirmed to Gerry many years later when the hapless victim was celebrating finally having become literatethe ‘crime‘ for which he was being humiliatedat the age of forty!
The boys pleaded with their parents to be allowed to change school, and thankfully their request was soon heeded and they were transferred to a more modern and ostensibly benign environment, much to the bemused Mr. Richards’ chagrin.
In time the church school was rebuilt on another site but the original buildings remained, unused and unloved for many years to come. Who can say for sure what abuses were perpetrated on the minds and bodies of the poor souls who had to pass through there, but Gerry and Glenn never met anyone who spoke of having any fond memories, save for its ultimate demolition, and Gerry only finally mastered long division in his mid-forties.
The boys also discovered the source of the report about their apple scrumping. It was admitted to their father that Eric Wetherill, a teacher at the adjacent secondary-modern school, had observed them taking the apples and felt it his duty to inform on them. Mr Wetherill lived in the largest house other than the one the boys’ father had subsequently built at the end of the same road. Neither of the boys ever spoke with him or his family again and made a mental note that they would prefer not to be students at this particular school in the future. When he passed away, early into his self-satisfied retirement, no condolences were sent from their end of the Avenue.