After reading my childhood anecdotes over the last four weekends, some readers may feel that out of a delusional nostalgia I am inclined to romanticise the past. So here’s a tale which illustrates the other side of the story.
AT LAWRENCE Sheriff, my Rugby grammar school, in common with most schools, it was normal to have a different form-master each year. Unfortunately, I endured three consecutive years with the same one, a Welshman named Dai Davies.
I say ‘endured’ because over that time he developed an intense personal dislike for me which seemed to build into nothing short of personal hatred and this manifested itself with him picking on me with almost perpetual bullying.
Above is an extract from the 1962 school photograph highlighting Mr Davies and the author, aged 14.
By the 1960s, the headmaster was the only staff member who could administer the cane as a punishment and so Davies habitually sent me to the head for corporal punishment. In fact he did this so often that I learned from other masters that I was known in the staff room as ‘the most caned boy’ in the school. A distinction not sought willingly by anyone.
But if he was not allowed to use physical pain directly, he could certainly indulge his pleasure in hurting me with his relentless mental cruelty. He would make me stand up in front of the class, facing him with 30 classmates behind me, some of them sniggering nervously, as he assailed me with such clear and unambiguous insults as ‘You are the scum of the earth’ and other outrageous outbursts, designed to hurt and presumably eventually break me.
I was lucky that I had plenty of good friends in the class. I think he may have hoped that by singling me out and isolating me in the way that he did, he could perhaps influence them to reject me which, had that succeeded would have made life there unbearable. I’m glad to recall that this aspect of his punishment plan was a complete and utter failure and I retained plenty of good friends, who were sympathetic.
But Davies managed to concoct and embellish such a bad reputation for me with the school that when the fact that I played drums in a local rock group became an issue, I was given an ultimatum: ‘Do you want to remain a pupil at this school, or do you want to be a Rolling Stone?’
I refused to leave the band, since it occupied no more of my spare time than a good many other ‘approved’ extra-curricular activities, some of which were even organised by the school itself.
As a result I was chucked out of the school in my final year. Technically it was only ‘suspension’, but since it lasted until I was due to leave, ensuring that I never again sat in a class, the difference between that and expulsion is purely semantic.
As may be imagined, my father was both shocked and more than a little embarrassed at this, since he was himself still an active member of the Old Laurentians’ Society.
I tried to convey to him just how completely unhinged Davies had been about me, and whilst Dad was a loving and sympathetic father, at the same time it was also obvious that he couldn’t completely rid himself of the idea that I was trying to make excuses for myself by exaggerating the bullying.
Times were very different in 1965 and I think he simply couldn’t bring himself to believe that a master at his old school would behave so utterly outrageously.
I went to work in a village garage, followed by another year serving in a record shop, but I never lost my ambition to go to art college and have a career as a designer. And eventually, with the help of some evening classes, I managed to achieve this.
My father could not have been more proud when I came home with my Diploma in Art and Design. So proud in fact that he had it framed and it hung on the wall of their dining room. For him the success story was completed when my career as a designer saw me promoted to art director and studio manager.
By that time, I had not only a secure job that I loved, but also a beautiful wife and son and lived in glorious Devon, having left the industrial Midlands where I grew up. So life had become pretty good. My trials and tribulations at school were genuinely long, long forgotten.
Throughout my whole childhood and adolescence we had all attended our local village Parish Church every Sunday evening as a family, but by 1990, only my father was still a regular worshipper. By this time, my parents had moved into town and Dad became a churchwarden and sidesman at Rugby Parish Church.
There, he met none other than Dai Davies, himself now a sidesman at the same church. One Sunday, after Evensong, Davies asked Dad how I was doing these days. My father was able to paint him a very rosy picture of how I was now very happy living in Devon, with my beautiful wife, our delightful little boy, with a job I loved and generally observing that my life really could not be much better.
To Dad’s astonishment, instead of simply smiling and acknowledging this good news, Davies’s face became very troubled and my father noticed that he had certainly more than a trace of tears in his eyes.
‘I’m so pleased to hear that!’ he replied, with a heavy sigh, as he started to unburden himself.
‘In all the years that have passed since those days, I’ve agonised long and hard about how cruel I was to Brian. It was completely outrageous and I’ve never been able to forgive myself or to completely rid myself of the guilty fear that I may have destroyed his chances of a happy life with my relentlessly cruel treatment of him.’
Apparently this exercise in self-condemnation and flagellation went on for several more minutes, during which time Dad was himself wrestling with increasing emotion, since he could not deny that he hadn’t really understood at the time just how bad it had been and had taken the view that I must, at least to some extent, have deserved whatever punishment the school had felt it appropriate to administer.
Back in those days, people had so much more faith in institutions such as schools, which sadly, as this anecdote amply demonstrates, was not always justified.
On the next occasion of my then-regular weekend visits back to my parents’ home in Rugby, my father told me of this extraordinary encounter.
After his confession, Davies had apologised to my father for his past behaviour towards me, but Dad had dismissed it saying, ‘It’s not me you need to apologise to.’
Davies agreed and asked him, ‘Do you think he’d agree to see me?’
‘If what you’ve just told me is true, I doubt that he ever wants to set eyes on you again’ was my father’s curt reply.
And as so often, my dad was absolutely right. I did not want to see Davies.
I decided to let the old bugger stew in his own toxic juice. Sometimes, success is all the revenge you need.
