Engleby. Part 3

'Keep your head down.' It was Ridgeway's hunted look more than his actual words that stayed with me.

Being the holder of the Romney Open meant that I was placed in cla.s.ses with boys a year or two older. They responded to my impertinence by not talking to me ever. Not in all the time I was at that school.

The lessons were given by masters who all looked alike. They wore black gowns over tweed jackets and baggy grey trousers; they had lace-up tan shoes with enormous welts, so they rolled along the cloisters as though on brown tyres. They all had flat grey hair and similar, one-word nicknames 'stalky' Read, 'Mug' Benson, 'Tubby' Lyneham, 'Bingo' Maxwell; it was hard to tell them apart, to feel anything for them or about them, and this indifference was reciprocated.

Stalky Read did have a particular phrase of his own, now I come to think of it: 'Take the first bus to the Prewett.' What the h.e.l.l did that mean? Park Prewett, it was eventually explained to me, was a famous loony bin, near Basingstoke. If you made an elementary mistake in geography, Stalky's advice never varied: 'First bus to the Prewett. Leaves at two.'

When I was returning to my cubicle after lessons on perhaps my third day at Chatfield, I found that two-thirds of the way down the corridor, barring my path, stood a large boy, about seventeen, with his hands stuck in his belt. He glared at me as I got close, his face set in a sneer. I couldn't take cover in any of the rooms en route because I didn't know any of the boys in them. When eventually I reached him, he sidestepped to prevent me pa.s.sing. I tried the other side, but he moved across to block the way. I looked up at him to see what he wanted. He was about two feet taller than me and had the features I'd already noticed were common at Chatfield: a mask of erupting spots and damp-looking hair. He didn't really seem to have have hair, in fact, but something more like a pint of oil poured over his scalp and divided into shiny hanks; his complexion looked as though a carton of raspberry yoghurt had exploded in his face. Eventually he let me pa.s.s, kicking me in the coccyx as I went. His name, I was told, was Baynes, J.T. hair, in fact, but something more like a pint of oil poured over his scalp and divided into shiny hanks; his complexion looked as though a carton of raspberry yoghurt had exploded in his face. Eventually he let me pa.s.s, kicking me in the coccyx as I went. His name, I was told, was Baynes, J.T.

He had two friends called Wingate and Hood. They told me they'd 'noticed' me. I was 'nervy', that was my trouble, wasn't it?

When I got back that afternoon after football, my sheets were soaking wet and all my clothes had been strewn round the room. I slept on the mattress that night, but the next day it, too, was soaked in water, so I lay down on the springs.

In the main corridor of Collingham there was a table where bread and margarine was sent up twice a day in plastic dustbins. The margarine was wholesale grade, stamped on the wrapper 'not for retail distribution', and often got smeared over the wall and floor, where it mixed with Marmite and golden syrup. A paper bag full of crystals was sent up in the dustbin with it; the idea was that if you mixed them with water, they made some sort of fizzy drink, though I never saw anyone try it. One of my jobs was to clean this area, and for this I was given a cloth that had been used to soak up milk. It was difficult to do more than smear the slick into new positions, while trying not to gag from the smell of the cloth.

My efforts were watched by a tall, pale prefect called Marlow, who looked as though the tightness of his starched collar was preventing the blood from reaching his face. It was to be done again, then again not for the sake of cleanliness, but for some other, vaguer, reason. And then, said Marlow, looking at the floor, I could do it again.

Eventually, I was told to go and see the head of house, an unsmiling young man called Keys, with the grey face of someone who had eaten a hundredweight of bread and margarine in his five years, but had come to understand Chatfield. He told me that my 'att.i.tude' was wrong and that he was going to beat me with the cane. I wasn't aware that I had an att.i.tude, right or wrong. Alternatively, I could write out the whole school rules about eight sides of single-s.p.a.ced small print three times by ten o'clock the next evening. Keys was short (he played scrum half ), but he looked strong, and unstable; there was a deadness in his eyes. I opted for the rules. This meant writing by torchlight beneath the bedclothes and beneath the desk throughout lessons all the following day. Part of the punishment was the risk of being caught by the teacher and beaten anyway. Keys didn't seem gratified when I handed him the encyclopaedia-thick stack of curling sheets; he looked disappointed, and sent me off with a warning that next time it would be beating without the option.

I was told to get up half an hour early and take a cup of tea in bed to the boy in charge of our run of cubicles, who, it turned out, was Baynes. I had to shake him vigorously by the shoulder to rouse him, and when he had cursed me for a time and drunk some tea, he came to inspect my cubicle, running his finger along the glazing bars of the window to look for dust.

My days had a sort of rhythm. Breakfast, silent lessons, back to check on havoc in my room; clear up; more silent lessons, rugby; ch.o.r.es; bed... I had a tiny transistor radio, about the size of half a paperback, with an earpiece. I could sometimes manage to escape beneath the bedclothes.

G.o.d, I don't know.

The latrine block was some way from our house and no one had told me when we were allowed to go. One morning we were about ten minutes into Physics, when I put up my hand and said, 'Please, sir, can I go to the toilet?'

The teacher said No, I couldn't, I must wait. All the other boys started muttering 'toilet'. I thought I'd picked the wrong time to go, but no one had told me any better. Gradually, I began to see that it wasn't my choice of time but of word. Toilet was considered an outlaw word. I'd never heard the thing called by any other name at home, St B's or the grammar school, so what was I meant to call it? It took me a long time to establish. The big block was called the Jackson Rears; the urinal halfway up the stairs, the one we shared with the house above, was called the Halfway House. The cubicle beneath the stairs was the Dump. There was no generic.

By the end of the day there was no one in Collingham who didn't refer to me as 'Toilet'. Toilet Engleby, that was my name. I had to suppress a flinch of recognition when someone called out 'Toilet!' in the corridor.

Baynes and Hood and Wingate weren't going to let me get away with that. 'Come here when I call you, Toilet. Don't you know your own name?' They took me to the Dump and held my head in the bowl, then flushed it.

'What's your name?'

'Engleby.'

They went on and on until finally when I came spluttering up, I answered, 'Toilet.' I thought that would satisfy them, but they seemed disappointed when they let me go.

It was surprising how quickly I got used to this. Every day I woke up with a feeling of low panic in my gut. My defences were on full alert by the time I went down to the bathroom to clean my teeth at seven-fifteen.

The other boys in my term, Francis, McCain and Batley, talked quietly amongst themselves. None of the boys in the year above would chance talking to me, especially the ones I went to lessons with. There was one boy called 'spaso' Topley, who looked like a fish in specs the house joke, beneath even bullying who occasionally gave me a sort of girlish simper but didn't risk speech.

I couldn't blame them. Batley was in some cla.s.s so elementary that it didn't have even a year number attached to it, so I never saw him, except once, coming back from the rugby field, when he happened to walk past. He said, 'Bad luck, Toilet.' Batley was probably all right in a way.

I had surprisingly been picked for the second team rugby in my year. I played hooker, where the main job was, as Ridgeway might have put it, to 'keep your head down'. Then the First XV hooker got mumps and I was promoted. I didn't know any of the others, because although they were my age they were in different houses and a junior academic year. By some telepathy they'd picked up that it was dangerous to talk to me, though one or two did call me by my proper name, and one said 'Well played.' So I grew keen on rugby and stayed late practising so much so that when the First XV hooker recovered he couldn't get back into the side. I became a tackler as well as a scrummager; I enjoyed driving my shoulder into someone's solar plexus to hear him gasp. I liked to run behind a pimpled little s.h.i.t who'd 'toileted' me and throw myself at his ankles, risking the mouthful of studs for the pleasure of hearing him hit the ground; and then he might accidentally get trampled at the bottom of the ruck that followed. I swapped boots with McCain, who hated rugby but had metal studs; sometimes there was blood on my laces.

Afterwards, most people went to the small food shop and bought chips or sweets to supplement the swill doled out from metal troughs at mealtimes. For some reason being broke, probably my mother hadn't thought to give me any pocket money so I relied on the bread and margarine sent up to Collingham. One day, though, she sent a cake. When the post came, a young boy called out the name of anyone who had a letter. 'Parcel for Toilet!' called his unbroken voice, and a number of doors opened.

'I think we'd better have a look and see what's in there,' said Baynes, grabbing the parcel. It didn't take him long to tear off the brown paper. 'A cake! Who said you could have a cake, Toilet?'

'Look,' said Hood, 'it's home-made by Mrs Toilet. Can't she afford to go to a shop?'

'It's not a cake,' said Wingate. 'Feel how heavy it is. Catch.'

He threw it to to Hood, who caught it and tore a bit off. He put it in his mouth. 'Christ, it tastes of s.h.i.t,' he said. 'It tastes of toilet s.h.i.t.'

'Is that what you eat at home?' said Baynes. 'Toilet s.h.i.t?'

They began to throw the cake around, sometimes dropping it on purpose, all the time keeping up a commentary, things like, 'What's for lunch today, Mrs Toilet? Let's have s.h.i.t, shall we?'

I went to the table and picked up the wrapping from the floor and went back to my room, leaving them to do what they wanted with the cake. There was a note inside the brown paper saying, 'Mike, Me and Julie baked this. Hope you like it! Love, Mum.'

It probably wasn't up to much, because neither of them were very good cooks and Julie was only five anyway.

A couple of days later I was doing the evening prep in my room, when Wingate opened the door without knocking. He was a troubled-looking boy who hung around the showers a lot. He didn't say anything, just walked round the cubicle, picking things up, looking at them closely, then putting them down again. He had fewer spots than Baynes, a blue, stubbly chin and dead-fish eyes.

I didn't say anything, and neither did he. He stood by the bed and looked at me. 'Get on with your work, Toilet,' he said eventually.

I looked down to the pa.s.sage of Livy I was preparing for cla.s.s the next day. I didn't dare to look at Wingate, but I became aware that he was doing something to himself as he stood over my bed. The Latin sentences swelled and dissolved. I couldn't make much of them. Wingate let out a small grunt. 'Better wash those blankets, Toilet,' he said, b.u.t.toning up his trousers.

Chatfield was in a straggling village that clung to the perimeter of the school grounds. Upper and Lower Rookley were bisected by the enormous college and its playing fields, its cross-country runs, its rifle ranges, its evergreen woods and a.s.sault courses. On top of the hill in Upper Rookley was Longdale, a hospital for the criminally insane. The college and the hospital had been founded in the same year, 1855; the committee of the bin wanted the high ground for the views, the school governors wanted the flat playing fields below, so everyone was happy, if that's the word we're looking for.

Every Monday at nine-fifty, during our double Chemistry period, Longdale had an emergency escape practice, which meant sounding its siren. 'sir, sir,' said twenty boys at once, 'Bograt's escaped, sir.' Bograt Duncan rolled his eyes and sighed. I tried joining in the communal joke once, but only once.

A patient did escape once, as a matter of fact, and the headmaster called an emergency a.s.sembly of the entire school. He warned us not to talk to any strangers in the grounds. I went for a walk in the woods that afternoon, half hoping I might b.u.mp into him.

What was odd about Chatfield was that it enjoyed a high reputation. It was expensive. It played rugby against other famous schools, like Harrow, and while a lot of its pupils went off to the navy, plenty went to universities, some even to the best ones.

I never thought of complaining to old Talbot about what was going on because it would have sounded feeble. 'They won't talk to me...' Well, why should they? 'They wreck my room...' Don't tell tales. 'Wingate... He... You know on my bed.' Don't be disgusting.

Since the head of the house and the prefects were all in on the deal, it was in any event semi-official. Why would Mr Talbot take the word of a new boy who said 'toilet' against that of the boys he had himself nurtured and promoted?

His report at half-term proved me right. 'Michael seems to be uncomfortably aware of his own precocity and must be careful not to ruffle feathers in the house.' My mother said, 'What's precocity?'

Sometimes I hid in the bathroom, where Sidney, the disreputable cleaner, took his tea break. Sidney threw a pile of tea leaves into the corridor each morning and swept up the dust with a moulting broom. He was about sixty, with muscular, tattooed forearms, a former corporal in some supply regiment, though evasive about how much 'action' he'd seen.

The problem was that by being there one became a captive audience for his foul stories. One day I found myself in an audience of two (Batley was the other, though I don't know why) sitting on the duckboards at his feet.

'This bird,' Sidney began, 'when I was on leave and we was gettin' on pretty well, and I rolls on top of'er, see, and she says to me, "Ooh, Sid, you mustn't do that," and I says to'er, "I'll just put the end in, all right?" and she says, "All right, Sid," so I gives'er a thorough good seein'-to and when I'm done, she says to me, "Ooh, Sid, you said you'd only put the end in," and I says, "Yeah, I know, but I didn't say which which end."' end."'

He laughed until he made himself cough for a minute or so before resuming. 'Another thing. I'll tell you what. The average length of a woman's t.w.a.t is nine'n' a half inches. The average length of a man's p.r.i.c.k is seven.'

'Really, Sid?'

'Yeah. That means that in Britain alone there's almost a hundred and fifty miles of spare layin' around, so-'

'Gosh, Sidney, that's an awful lot of spare t-'

'So make sure you gets your fair share.'

Batley and I were arranged like the figures in The Boyhood of Raleigh The Boyhood of Raleigh, but I don't suppose that this was quite what Millais's old salt was telling his boys. Though on second thoughts, I suppose with old sailors you never know.

In the holidays, I forgot about Chatfield. From the moment I got back into the house in Trafalgar Terrace, I put it from my mind. I've always been able to do that, to make as though things aren't really happening. When you look back at what you've been doing for the last half an hour, for how much of the time have you really been aware of it? When you drive a car, for instance, you're not aware of the functions that your brain and hand and eye are performing at eighty miles an hour, skilled movements that save you and others from death. You're thinking about something else altogether. The music on the radio. What you're doing next Tuesday. You're having an imaginary conversation with someone. We're not really conscious of what we're doing most of the time.

As we entered the final week of the holidays, though, a dry taste came into my mouth. I couldn't sleep.

When I went back to Collingham, I wrote a lot of letters to my mother and some to Julie. My mother wasn't much of a correspondent. She was busy at the hotel and it became clear that writing to me was just one more ch.o.r.e in her busy day.

So, 'Dear Julie,' I might write instead, 'How's things? I've been doing Latin, which is the story of what the Romans did. They were early Italians who conquered other countries. Know the waiter in the Oasis Cafe near the cinema? He's a Roman. I'm having fun here. I have this game in my room with some socks rolled up in a ball. I try to kick them against a spot on the brick wall of my room. I have different teams, like the Animals against the Birds. You get points for how close you get. I write down the scores on a piece of paper. Starling is very good but Zebra is no good at all no good at all. Write to me, Jules. Tell me anything. Tell me about your friends at school and what you've been doing. Love, Mike.'

It was strange to see my name written down like that. It was weeks since I'd heard it. 'Mike.'

After about eight letters of mine, I got three pencil lines. 'dear mike, me and jane plad with her cosens. We had wimpey for tee, love juliexox.' I didn't even know she could write.

And at least I read it before it was intercepted. I gave the letter f.a.g two shillings not to call out my name, so Baynes wouldn't be alerted. I stole the two shillings from a jacket in the changing room, but I didn't know whose it was so I didn't feel bad about it.

I began to steal quite a bit after that. It was useful, and it had a good effect on my morale. I was extremely careful and never took notes, just coins that would be hard to trace, and only small sums, never more than five bob at a time. Once, when I was on changing room sweeping-up duty, I saw Baynes's brown tweed jacket unattended on its hook. I was the last one there and I knew Baynes was doing extra rugby practice until it was dark. There was a pound note in the inside pocket. It was very, very tempting, but I put it back. The one thing I had over Baynes was that I was cleverer than he was. That was an advantage I couldn't afford to blow. For all I knew, it was a plant and he'd noted the serial number.

Of course, it might have given him a dilemma if I'd been caught because I would have been expelled and that would have been a disappointment to him and Hood and Wingate, having no one to torment. But I guessed he would have found a way of not reporting it and of making my punishment more 'informal'.

One of Baynes's favourite tricks was to send me to do a rubbing from a bra.s.s engraving in a church a couple of miles away. You were given 25 minutes to change into sports clothes and get there and back, which was impossible, but meant that he could send you again. He only sent me in the first place if it was raining, so the piece of paper was always wet and spoiled and he could question whether I'd even got there.

I used to peer into the raspberry yoghurt, watching to see if any light of kindness might emerge. But there was only ever anger in Baynes's boiling red face in his narrow, watery little eyes and p.u.s.s.y cheeks, which made him look like a crimson gargoyle.

'Do it again, Toilet. Go. Now.'

Sometimes at night, as I lay in the sopping sheets, I dreamed of killing him. I would show no compa.s.sion. Or I would show the same degree of compa.s.sion that he had shown to me. It would come to the same thing. Good night, Baynes, I'd say, looking hard into his watery, hating eyes. Good night, Baynes, you, you... I knew all the bad words, but none of them was strong enough for my hatred of Baynes. The f-word, the c-word, a lot of b-words... The c-word is probably the one I'd have picked. It had a good sound, but it referred to something else, which wasn't relevant; it was feeble, really: for power, it wasn't even close.

I never for a moment considered killing myself, because it wouldn't have achieved anything. Sometimes I had a fantasy of my body being found in the morning and the shock it would cause how Baynes and Wingate and Hood would be chastened and remorseful; how it would be the making of them as men. They would become fine and philanthropic in their lives; they would spread so much happiness among men that the loss of unmourned Toilet Engleby long ago would in fact be a price worth paying.

But I knew it wouldn't really be like that. What would actually happen would be that Mr Talbot would ask if anyone knew what the matter was. Keys, the head of house, would officially say I'd been 'nervy', but since he'd dosed me with the rules I'd appeared to be 'settling down'. Ridgeway, my little f.a.g teacher, had got me through the exam and that was all he had to do, so he'd be in the clear. McCain and Francis would say, 'He seemed fine, sir.' Batley would scarcely understand the question. Hood and Wingate and Baynes would feel uneasy, but no more. 'Toilet couldn't handle it, then,' one of them would say, later, when Talbot had gone. 'Yeah, must've been trouble at home or something.' 'He seemed all right in the house.' The thing about those three was that they believed or at least had convinced themselves that what they were doing to me was part of the traditional experience that Collingham offered; on behalf of the school, themselves and even me, they were performing some semi-official service.

Mr Talbot himself wouldn't want to prolong the inquiry. Perhaps he'd ask the doctor if I'd been to see him.

The doctor was a nasty little man called Benbow, who specialised in looking at your groin. The first week at school, he had squeezed our genitals in the 'new boys' inspection'. At the start of each subsequent term he required us all to strip except for a dressing gown whose flaps we parted when we reached the chair where he sat, shining a torch to see if we had a fungal growth called TC, a sort of athlete's foot of the crotch. If so, the area was painted purple.

He'd be the last person I'd think of going to see.

Then Mr Talbot might ask the chaplain if I'd consulted him. The answer there would also be No. 's.p.u.n.ky' Rollason was not consulted about anything, even by the under-chaplain.

My mother wouldn't make a fuss. She didn't understand how the world, let alone such an inst.i.tution, worked. The headmaster could probably keep it from the newspapers. Within a few days it would be forgotten.

In the end, Baynes, Hood and Wingate would feel nothing, because in the end that's how everything that happens to you feels: it feels like nothing at all, really.

But I don't want to think any more about Chatfield now or about Baynes, J.T. It's long over.

It's now 6.30 on Monday 19 November, 1973 and I'm sitting in my room in Clock Court at my ancient university.

I like these details of time. 6.31 on Monday 19 November 1973 is the front edge of time. I live on the forward atoms of the wave of time. It's now 6.32. This is the present, yet it's turning to the past as I sit here. What was future when I started (6.31) is now already past. What is this present, then? It's an illusion; it's not reality if it can't be held. What therefore is there to fear in it? (I'm starting to sound like T.S. Eliot.) Don't patronise me if you read this thirty years on, will you? Don't think of me as old-fashioned, wearing silly clothes or some nonsense like that. Don't talk c.r.a.p about 'the seventies', will you, as we now do about 'the forties'. I breathe air like you. I feel food in my bowel and a lingering taste of tea in my mouth. I'm alive, as you are. I'm as modern as you are, in my way I couldn't be couldn't be more modern. My reality is as complex as yours; the atoms making me and this world in their random movement are as terrible and strange and beautiful as those that make your world. Yours are in fact my atoms, reused. And you too, on your front edge of breaking time, Mr 2003, will be the object of condescending curiosity to the future to Ms 2033. So don't patronise me. (Unless of course you have completely overturned and improved my world, bringing peace and plenty, and a cure for cancer and schizophrenia, and a unified scientific explanation of the universe comprehensible to all, and a satisfactory answer to the philosophical and religious questions of our time. In which case you would be permitted to patronise primitive little 1973. Well, have you done those things? Got a cure for the common cold yet? Have you? Thought not. How's your 2003 world, then? A few wars? Some genocide? Some terrorism? Drugs? Abuse of children? High crime rate? Materialistic obsessions? More cars? Blah-blah pop music? Vulgar newspapers? p.o.r.n? Still wearing jeans? Thought so. Yet you've had an extra thirty years to sort it out!) more modern. My reality is as complex as yours; the atoms making me and this world in their random movement are as terrible and strange and beautiful as those that make your world. Yours are in fact my atoms, reused. And you too, on your front edge of breaking time, Mr 2003, will be the object of condescending curiosity to the future to Ms 2033. So don't patronise me. (Unless of course you have completely overturned and improved my world, bringing peace and plenty, and a cure for cancer and schizophrenia, and a unified scientific explanation of the universe comprehensible to all, and a satisfactory answer to the philosophical and religious questions of our time. In which case you would be permitted to patronise primitive little 1973. Well, have you done those things? Got a cure for the common cold yet? Have you? Thought not. How's your 2003 world, then? A few wars? Some genocide? Some terrorism? Drugs? Abuse of children? High crime rate? Materialistic obsessions? More cars? Blah-blah pop music? Vulgar newspapers? p.o.r.n? Still wearing jeans? Thought so. Yet you've had an extra thirty years to sort it out!) The important thing is that this is now: 6.38, 19 November, 1973. It's dark on Clock Court with its low box hedges and cobbled triangles. The lights are on in the dining hall where dinner will shortly be served.

Nothing in the future has yet happened. I find that a good thought.

As well as the Quicksilver Messenger Service poster, there is one for Procol Harum live at the Rainbow, Finsbury Park. I have on my cork board a picture of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips, taken from a magazine; one of David Bowie with Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, a rare monochrome poster showing them with their arms round one another's shoulders in some New York disco; one of Marc Bolan, because he reminds me of Julie; and one of Julie in her school straw hat with her sticking-out teeth.

I took a train to London from Reading to see Procol Harum when they premiered their new alb.u.m, Grand Hotel Grand Hotel, with an orchestra and choir. It was good, but I wasn't sure Mick Grabham was up to it as Robin Trower's replacement on guitar, particularly on 'Whaling Stories', a song of which I need only to hear the opening note to find my stomach tense and my saliva fill with the re-experienced taste of Glynn Powers's A-grade hashish. There's something essential in Trower's tone that Grabham didn't catch.

This being the case, I bought Trower's solo alb.u.m whose first track, 'I Can't Wait Much Longer', bears a weight of melancholy that is unendurable in my ears anyway. (Though I still quite like it. In the doom there's pa.s.sion and booze and things to do with living. For a distillation of despair with no no redeeming qualities, for a tincture of suicide in A minor, try 'Facelift' or 'slightly All the Time' from Soft Machine's redeeming qualities, for a tincture of suicide in A minor, try 'Facelift' or 'slightly All the Time' from Soft Machine's Third Third.) I go to the corner cupboard and take out the white vermouth. It's that time of day: time for the small blue ten-milligram pill and Sainsbury's Chambery with ice. I feel all right, within my limits. I've known much worse. Down the hatch.

I often think good music is too much to take. Think of Sibelius Five, when the earth's weight seems to shift on its axis in the closing moments. It's well made, as it recapitulates the main theme and finally lets it out; but it describes a place I don't want to look at, let alone inhabit.

I listened to Beethoven's late quartets yesterday. They're quite wintry, aren't they? But they have the feeling of a man thinking about death. And he can't keep out a slight sense of pleasure of smugness. I'm old; I've won the right to fear no more the heat of the sun. Feel sorry for me and admire me. Indulge me. I've deserved it.

'Late work'. It's just another way of saying feeble work. I hate it. Monet's messy last water lilies, for instance though I suppose his eyesight was shot. The Tempest The Tempest only has about twelve good lines in it. Think about it. only has about twelve good lines in it. Think about it. The Mystery of Edwin Drood The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Hardly Great Expectations Great Expectations, is it? Or Matisse's paper cut-outs, like something from the craft room at St B's. Donne's sermons sermons. Pica.s.so's ceramics ceramics. Give me strength.

There's a lot of political activity at the moment to do with 'co-residence', which means boys and girls living in the same college, or not. At the moment there's only one, King's, which has both, and on Wednesday there's a torchlight march on (not to) St Cat's, whose Master is thought to be responsible for not letting girls, or women as we call them in this context, into men's colleges. I see I'm down for something called a 'co-residency lunch' in Trinity Parlour next week, too. I'll go because I think Jennifer's going to be there. She's not very political, Jen, though I think she'd like to be; she hasn't really got enough time, what with all those concerts and films and theatres and parties in those tiny cold terraces and writing for Broadsheet Broadsheet, the student mag, and studying for a first-cla.s.s degree, and Jen Soc (which is a bit political admittedly) and cleaning the house for the others and dutifully writing home and volleyball and s.e.x.

But she's keen on co-res, I think, on the grounds that girls should have what boys have viz., the best colleges, and not have to risk getting Girton calves bicycling out to their remote and defended buildings of no architectural interest.

I'll be there then for the warm quiche and oniony salad on paper plates and a gla.s.s of Hirondelle or maybe just white coffee. Something about milky coffee with food turns my stomach. The old Jews were on to something.

What do I think about co-res? I think the seven Puritan divines who founded my college would be appalled at the thought of Goody Arkland and other witches in the rooms of New Court. Build your own colleges, you denimed jezebels, they'd be thinking. And it's true you can't bend with each fashionable wind you can't be like the Church of England, constantly updating its eternal verities. Either Christ was G.o.d, in which case He knew what He was doing when He chose male apostles only; or, he was a hapless Galilean s.e.xist now ripe for a rethink. Not both. That's what I think about co-res: a truth is either good for all time or it isn't true at all. (On the other hand, it would mean better bathrooms.) Baths remind me of Chatfield. Now I'll tell you what happened next.

Yes. I can manage it. I'm not reliving it, I'm only describing it. I can deal with all my past experiences, I think. Here we go: What I found trying was that Baynes, Hood and Wingate never seemed to take a day off. I felt that one day a week they might have games or work or something more important to do, but nothing, it seemed, took precedence over Engleby, T. (Even I thought of myself with this initial now.) Hood sometimes paused when he saw me, as though for an hour or so his mind had been on something else; but the sight of me was enough to bring him back to earth. I studied their timetables and tried to make sure they never saw me. In the break between lessons, I didn't go back into Collingham. I stored my books in some open shelves at the foot of the staircase leading to another house. I wandered round the quads, reading the notices, but I grew very hungry and sometimes had to make a grab-and-run raid on the bread and margarine table.

Anyway, I was always visible at mealtimes and then, at six-thirty, there was a roll call, after which you had to go to your room to do prep and from then on I was a tethered prey.

There was a break between preps of half an hour in which you could make cocoa or eat the bread and marge before prayers. Usually, Mr Talbot came up for this and read something improving by Albert Schweitzer or C.S. Lewis. Other times it was left to the head of house, dead-eyed Keys, to send us off to bed uplifted.

Second prep led into lights out and was strictly private. I was doing maths at this time one night, almost ready to call it a day, when Wingate came into my room. I was in pyjamas and dressing gown; he was in day clothes. He had hollow cheeks, floppy brown hair and never showed emotion. Unlike Baynes with his simmering violence and his explosive pustules, Wingate was neutral, as though everything was happening in a calm deep pool. His pointed Adam's apple dragged in his tight throat as he spoke.

'Time for a bath, Toilet.'

'No, my bath nights are Tuesday and Friday.'

'You heard me.'

He held the door open and I followed him slowly out into the Collingham corridor. He led me down to the bathroom, on the floor below the Halfway House. There were two baths, a shower, a row of basins and some benches made of duckboards. On these were sitting Baynes, Hood and others Marlow, I think, 'Plank' Robinson (said to be the dimmest boy at Chatfield, a t.i.tle not easily won), 'Leper' Curran, Bograt Duncan and one or two more.

'Get in,' said Hood.

'Take your clothes off,' said Wingate.

I did what they said and climbed into the bath, which was cold.

'Get your head under,' said Baynes. And he held it under. He had huge hands. He was as strong as a man, stronger than my father had been. Eventually I got out from under his grasp.

He was laughing. Usually when they beat me up, I didn't resist enough for it to be fun for them like when I undressed, I suppose I should have refused or struggled. But this time I fought back because you couldn't just let someone drown you.