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FIELD HOUSE

It was a fine autumn day in 1994.  The low sun had dried the dew damp grass except where the hedgerow shadowed the lawn.  A middle-aged man was standing looking admiringly at the facade of the large house.  It was forty years since he had last been there.  Then it was alive with the sounds of children’s voices.  Now it appeared to be offices for some faceless firm of solicitors or accountants.  A new road construction had consumed some of the grounds that he had once known and the noise of the traffic was a disturbing feature of the present time which was a slight irritatant to him.  No one disturbed him as he raised his head slightly and focused his line of sight onto the third floor.  A half smile disturbed his lips as he dug into his memory, bringing to the forefront of his mind, the night long ago when this building was the boarding house for the secondary school that he had attended.  He was fifteen years old then.  His attention settled on the second window from the extreme right hand end of the building as that which belonged to the dorm that he shared with three others; Burnhardt the shy German boy, conservative by nature, always polite and well mannered but a little dull; the diminutive Thai whose name he could not remember, and the consistently untidy know-all Knotley from somewhere near Northampton.

On the night that he recalled the plan, which had been hatched by some of the older boarders, prefects included, it had then seemed to him that it was tantamount to cowardice to turn down an invitation to join in, but in the event, I was the only one from my dormitory that went metaphorically over the top, when the signal was given. Knotley expressed great enthusiasm but chickened out at the last minute. He was all talk and no distinctive action. Thinking back, it was probably his loud mouth that had spilt the beans.  Given the plan too much publicity.  My best mates in the boarding house were Adrian and Leonard, accommodated in the dorm next door.  They were definitely up-for-it and I wasn’t going to let them go without me.  The pinnacle of the plan was for each pupil to sign his name on the copula that supported the weather vane that crowned the building.  How the company of boys had been selected to be a part of this raid was never questioned by me but subsequently I thought that some priority was probably given to the occupants of the dorms whose windows affected easy access to the vital ledge which ran along the side of the building at the boundary of the second and third floors. That ledge was the equivalent of a motorway running up the spine of England, although in nineteen fifty-four the M1 had not yet been constructed.  Standing there on the lawn on that autumn day I thought that perhaps a more apposite comparison would have been the ascent of Mount Everest conquered by Hilary and Tenzing in nineteen fifty two.  That was another glorious day in the history of the British Empire and I remembered how all the school had been taken to the local cinema to watch the film of the assent.  All that jingoism appropriate of its time, of course, but what clap trap it seems at this distance -  I don’t decry the climb itself, in fact my admiration for the hardship endured by those who took part in the adventure has increased over the years, but the way in which a genuine achievement can be turned to glorify the nation state is a little sickening. 

Some little time after lights-out the dormitory door opened and a beam of light insinuated its way into the room followed by Hawkins holding a torch and Denby and gaggle of other boys following close behind. Hawkins and Denby were both prefects and were the instigators and un-opposed expedition leaders.  Everyone was already awake when the door opened and slipped out of their beds to follow Hawkins and Denby to the window.  The sash window was slid upward, accompanied by the tortured noise of wood on wood and a lack of lubrication and a chorus of whispered shushes.  Hawkins poked his head out into the night air to have a look along the ledge and re-assured himself that there was no one in the garden.  He half turned and in a harsh whisper said okay boys follow me.  He climbed out of the open window and stood on the ledge, waited a short while and repeated okay, and we that were in the room saw has dark form disappear off to the right.  Denby went next, then some others and I was about number five, I think.  Once out of the window I had to side-step my way along the narrow ledge keeping my back flat against the wall and I resolved not to look down, though even if I had done there was little to see in the darkness.  I couldn’t let on to feeling scared; the others would have pilloried me.  Once out on the ledge there was no turning back I had to try to keep up with the leaders and not hold up those who came behind.  I briefly thought of my parents and how they would heartily disapprove of this crazy excursion. Safe progress was interrupted by a growth of ivy which, at one place, had grown up the wall and across the ledge and which had conspired, if ivy can conspire, to loop itself around my footwear and provide an excuse for a swift descent to the lawn below.  About 30 feet along, the ledge ended and we had to step up onto a valley – a junction between two roof constructions -  and make our way up it to where the ridge of another roof structure joined onto the part of the building that we were exploring.  Turning left we climbed up the ridge and so arrived at a large chimney stack.  By this time the ‘commandoes’ where bunching up on one another and around the chimney there was a bit of a traffic jam.  The two boys in front of me were clinging onto the chimney stack but Hawkins and Denby were already exultantly holding on to the copula, which was sited a little way to the right along another ridge.  I squeezed past the two holding on to the chimney and walked a short way along another ridge to join the summit party where I was handed a pencil and I wrote my name on the copula.

At that moment the House master switched on a light whose instant radiance shone up through a skylight over the stairwell and shortly thereafter his booming voice caught our attention from somewhere in the darkness from where I am standing just about now.  We all froze.  “Come down you boys.  I know who you are.  Come down immediately and report to me in the hall.”

Hawkins and Denby were convinced that there was a traitor.  “Someone has blabbed”, Hawkins said to Denby in his horse whisper.  “Yea, I’ll ring his bloody neck if I find him” Denby replied, but they didn’t give any indication that they might have known who it might be.

We slowly and dis-spiritedly made our way back along the route that we had taken.  The light and the booming voice of the House master from somewhere in the darkness below,  had dispelled all triumphalism from the party.

In the Hall the House master told us what fools we were.  Played a lot on the risks that we had taken and emphasized his duty of care, which, in truth, none of us were very interested in.  The prefects got the worst of it. They were supposed to be responsible; the first line of command, the equivalent of a corporals in an army.  He said that he would see us all again in the morning, which he did.  After breakfast he announced to the assembled pupils that the following boys (and here followed a short roll call) were foolish in the extreme and that the prefects would be ‘reduced to the ranks’ and for the following week all the miscreants would report at 6.00 a.m. in Gym kit and would undertake running and exercises with the P.T Master. 

In my mind’s eye I could see the nine or ten boys in single file following the P.T. master. It was summer and the early morning outings were refreshing and really of no hardship to the boys.  The punishment was really one for the unfortunate P.T. Master who, no doubt, would have rather been in his bed.