'PHYSICAL GRAFITTI'
by Mark Williamson
Contemplating the prospect of the school stretched out across a large chunk
of Constable country in the early morning sun, Kidd, the chief naval
instructor, stopped to think that if there was a God then at that moment he was
definitely in his heaven.
From the terrace that ran in front of the huge neo-Georgian classroom block
there was a clear view across several acres of playing fields to the estuary on
which the fleet of dinghies that he and his men maintained for the boys' use
bobbed gently.
Below the block every inch of the parade ground on which some 800 pupils
would arrange themselves that day was polished by bright Suffolk light,
interrupted only by the shadow of the clock tower, so tall it could be seen from
Ipswich, ten miles distant.
"Not a cloud," murmured Shnit, as the boys called him in a corruption of the
acronym for his post, which he was pleased to feel reflected the naval sense
of humour that provided the ballast for any ship.
Besides a perfectly healthy degree of nervousness about the big day and
perennial concerns about how his lawn would cope with the weather, Shnit's
internal barometer read calm, as it had done for weeks.
The sight of an overweight toilet cleaner lumbering into view with his hands
sunk in his pockets in a clear breach of school regulations was only a minor
irritant. Nothing was going to spoil the day was what he had promised his wife
when she helped him into his freshly pressed number one rig earlier that
morning; certainly not yet another act of minor insubordination on the part of a
simpleton. He had wasted enough time over the years trying to understand the
motivation of a man about whom all anybody really knew was that he needed to go
on a diet and that he cleaned toilets.
On any ship there were always one or two who liked to try to buck the system;
took a pleasure in trying to make life difficult; malcontents. You had to
jump on them whenever you could.
But with no reason to suspect that the man might be plotting mutinies of any
consequence that day, as he turned to wander back into his quarters, Shnit
contented himself with the thought that although they were the same age the
contrast between himself and Dave the Boggy, as the boys called the cleaner,
could hardly have been more marked.
Despite the many pressures that would have wearied a lesser man occupying
such an important position in the boarding school hierarchy, Shnit was in good
shape both mentally and physically. Whenever he checked his appearance in the
mirror he was satisfied to note that he had more or less retained the physique
of a much younger man. His wife used to say the grey hair made him look
distinguished.
By contrast, although his menial job entailed no responsibilities worth the
name that he could claim had aged him, Dave looked dreadful. He was almost
totally bald with jowls that hung down below his jaw bones on either side of a
face that hours spent wandering around the school in the sun had left looking
like a ruddy blancmange; so well supplied with flab that many including Shnit
had never registered the piercing blue eyes that it obscured.
These made the matrons, who spent more time dealing with the ancillary staff
at close enough quarters to get to know them, wonder what he had been like
before he put on the beef.
One, who had seen the pictures of Dave as a young matelot, said he had been
quite a looker. He was a stoker in those days doing eight-hour shifts in engine
rooms where everything had to be done in a hurry and any excess fell off
people in the heat.
"That's what I could do with," Esther from Raleigh house used to laugh.
"Cheaper than weight-watchers," although she was happy that she had much less to
worry about than colleagues like Drake House's Sue on that front.
When Dave left the forces and started at the school, however, even though it
was a naval establishment, he started to slow down and that's when he put on.
Sue said evenings in the pub and not enough exercise were the problem, but he
said he spent all day on his feet and earned a drink.
As well as the classroom block there were eleven boarding houses each with 20
cubicles. That meant in the average month he cleaned more than a thousand
toilets, not including the ones in the infirmary and at the bottom of the games
fields that didn't need done as often. With the sewage plant to manage too you
had your hands full.
So come the evening he had earned a beer. Having some food in The Boot at the
same time made sense with him being single and it was a chance to catch up
with people as well. Not being in a gang he didn't see much of folk to talk to
during the day. The masters always seemed to hurry past pretending they were
busy.
With his body clock slowing down as he approached 50, within a few years he
became quite a sight. His belly hung down over his belt, creating a sense of a
mass that was so big it could only just be constrained by the tough denim
boiler suit he always wore.
The boys called him "Jabba the Hut", for the likeness they saw in him to an
amorphous blob of a space villain from one of the films they loved in the
Saturday evening assembly hall sessions.
But for most the grotesqueness of Dave's person and his work earned him only
the briefest of spells of their attention and a lesser share of their imagination, as their under-formed curiosities moved back to what detained them most of the time. That meant balls, home and girls, who were excluded from the school guaranteeing them an even more fabulous quality than that which they could usually claim in the minds of teenage boys.
As Dave was not a master he need not be acknowledged while his grunting about
the state in which he said they left the heads, as he called them, could safely be forgotten once they were out of earshot.
They had no reason to know that his uneasy relationship with the agents of
authority who made their lives miserable meant they had more in common with him
than might be imagined. If any had been in his house that morning they would
probably have been happily surprised to hear the variety of expletives he
devoted to the subject of Shnit as he prepared his breakfast.
"Cunt, arsehole, wanker" figured large in a monologue in which the ease with
obscenity that Dave acquired in the empire's engine rooms would have been the
envy of many younger boys who were still struggling to handle the tough guy
lingo of their bigger peers convincingly.
He even kept it up through a half hour session at work with spanners on the
ancient bike, when riding which he was altogether harder to ignore. For the
breadth and weight of Dave meant that each time he mounted the rusting cycle he
challenged the laws of aerodynamics and gravity simultaneously. The abundance
of stomach gave the wind plenty to oppose while his buttocks spilled over the
sides of the saddle, forcing him to incline slightly one way then the other,
with each rotation of the pedals becoming a fresh challenge in opposition to the
pull of the earth.
So slow and precarious was his progress as a result that most who watched
wondered why he bothered to maintain the pretence that the exercise could
generate productivity gains or aid any ineffectual inch war he might have been
waging.
The boys used to take bets on how far he could go without falling off. But
Shnit, who was always unhappy that, as a domestic, Dave did not technically come
under the naval hierarchy, was particularly displeased by such displays.
All staff knew that they had an example to set whenever the boys could see
them. By leaving himself potentially open to ridicule Dave was failing to
discharge that responsibility.
As someone who had only ever been a ranker, Dave was well aware that the
chief naval instructor should be listened to. But whenever Snit had suggested to
the man, who had a decent stipend as well as a house on site, that he might try
to smarten himself up a bit Dave just smiled that he would do his best only
to carry on behaving exactly as before.
The problem was that Shnit's role did not formally extend to supervision of
the support staff, who were meant to report to Stilwell. He, however, was a
spineless twit who had no idea of how, still less the guts required, to take on
the shop stewards who seemed to have the real power below decks.
And the masters, who obviously liked to think their degrees made them a
little more important than the naval staff, did not take his complaints
seriously either. Even the head only seemed to worry about how many boys got into
university and showed no inclination to intervene, leaving Shnit in a very
tricky position. In the period leading up to that day's ceremonies to commemorate the
foundation of the school, particularly, time to deal with awkwardness with the
domestics was time he did not have.
Sometimes it felt that only Mrs Kidd understood the seriousness of such an
event. That year, with both the Duke and the First Sea Lord scheduled to
complete the inspection of the guard, even more attention to detail than usual
in the planning and rehearsal of the parade had been required.
Twenty-two squads of 30 boys each with the full school band as well as the
guard had all to be prepared thoroughly enough to ensure that noone would put a
foot wrong. He had done it gladly as he had done for ten years running but it
would have been nice for once to have had some help and, perish the thought,
some recognition.
As he walked past the headmaster's mock-Edwardian mansion on his way to the
parade ground he muttered that, if they wanted to keep priding themselves on
the increasingly good reputation they claimed the school had, masters would do
well to remember sometimes that the disciplines instilled in the boys by his
men were what made the difference. None of them ever appeared to be in a hurry
to move to one of the local comprehensives, compared with whose pupils theirs
were a model of good behaviour.
On parade days, though, they all loved to swagger in their gowns on the
terrace to enjoy the display, which Mrs Kidd always said was a magnificent
sight.
And later that morning with the unusually warm autumn sun still washing the
tarmac as the squads converged on the parade ground the scene was particularly
impressive. Inspecting the honour guard while the band played his favourite
march, Shnit was pleased to feel that all of the boys should pass muster when
the members of the royal party completed their inspection. Old Bedford really
had the band firing on all cylinders.
If he had any concerns it was only that the decision to have the boys wear
full naval uniform rather than summer rig might increase the risk of feinting
among the sickly types. But there were always one or two who went down whatever
the weather and prefects knew the drill so that shouldn't be a big worry.
Smith, the senior boy, was briefed to be particularly alert.
Marching up to the headmaster on the dais to confirm that the school was
ready for inspection he felt satisfied that even the admiral, whom he knew of
old could be a very difficult man, would struggle to be able to find much, if
anything, to complain about.
He made a point of catching the eye of Walker, one of the sneering masters
who liked to look down his nose at the team of naval instructors, as he handed
over with the customary confirmation: "School ready for inspection sir."
Maybe as a mathematician even Walker would have to accept that the sight of
the squads arranged in apparently perfect series running down to the bottom of
the huge marching ground, with the guard and the band in line below the dais,
was an impressive one.
Walker, however, was on duty in Drake House that day and had other things on
his mind. Not least among these was the fear of a feint on the part of the
habitually sickly Williams A, who had been known to take a fall of sufficiently
chaotic inelegance to set his fellow rankers tumbling like ninepins on even the
balmiest of spring days.
That sort of thing could ensure the breakdown of the discipline that was
required to ensure a performance by the junior boys sufficiently polished to
mean Drake at least escaped the notice of the head. Anything less and Bevens'
unlikely attempt to turn the habitually under-achieving house into a banner
contender that term would be potentially fatally undermined, meaning he in turn
could wave goodbye to his own hopes of an easier life at the hands of the
chieftain, however helpful further embarrassment for the older man might be to
his own career ambitions.
So he fixed his eyes on the waxen features of the junior Williams boy, whose
posture made him easy to pick out even over the two hundred yards that
separated the squad from the masters. "Come on Williams for once show a bit of
spirit," Walker murmured noticing with some satisfaction that there was no sign
of incipient wobbling anywhere in the ranks so far.
But what, he realised seconds later, was in evidence aplenty was pointing and
the sort of shoulder shaking that could only result from giggle suppression.
"What the hell is so funny," he snapped through gritted teeth before the
awareness that all the fingers were directed to a point obviously some way
distant from the squad and even the parade ground prompted him to turn in the
direction of the houses on the east side of the school, where whatever was
causing such mirth must have been located.
And what he saw was Dave whose appearance, however caricature-like, was not
sufficient in itself to trigger so much amusement at most times. But Dave the
Boggy on a day of rest was a more unlikely sight, especially on a bicycle that
was following a course that, however erratic his progress might seem, appeared
to lead in one direction only.
"The parade ground, no. Don't look now Smith but Dave the bloody Boggy is
riding his bike towards the playground," he said, beginning a series of Chinese
whispers that set the heads of the gaggle of younger master congregated on the
terrace turning eastwards in sync just as the Duke and the First Sea Lord
completed their progress to the dais on their western flank.
Down on the parade ground the Wimbledon head-wave effect was more pronounced
as first Drake juniors then the senior squad turned to take in the sight of
Dave's approach, their action provoking the Anson and Raleigh squads to the rear
to do the same.
But if Dave was disconcerted to find himself suddenly the centre of more
attention than he had excited in all his days at the school he did not let on.
He was too focused on pedalling for long enough to make it to his destination to
shift his gaze from the six feet in front of his mudguard that he could take
in without raising his head and jeopardising his balance.
That the destination appeared to be the other side of the parade ground meant
the incident could not be dismissed as a harmless eccentricity on the part of
a rustic Quixote, thought Walker. No, the course on which Dave appeared to be
set meant the dignified prospect that could be enjoyed from the dais would be
soiled for long minutes by the sight of a large man on a creaking bike, weaving between the squads, the two groups of which were divided by an expanse of empty ground on which Dave would be free to weave where he would without fear of collision with any other participant in the main event.
Shnit was too absorbed in shepherding the head, as he in turn chaperoned the
Duke and the Admiral along each of the guard's three ranks, to notice
initially the growing indications of an amusement among the boys elsewhere that
was not consistent with the gravity of a parade.
By the time the headmaster turned to issue a curtly whispered instruction to
investigate what was going on, the Drake boys were in virtual uproar. Dave had
made it up to a matter of yards from the leader of the junior squad, well
within the almost sacred quarter mile square without any sign his journey's end
might be in prospect.
When five long seconds later he had completed another handful of tortuous
revolutions of the wheels the prow of his bike emerged from between the Drake
and Anson squads into the grey expanse dividing the two halves of the parade, for
the first time clearly into the sight lines of the eminent visitors and their
guides.
It was an affront the enormity of which Shnit initially could not comprehend.
"This can not be happening. What on earth is the man doing," he asked,
succeeding in provoking only increasingly obvious irritation on the part of the
head. "I don't bloody care, just do something and do it fast. This is meant to
be your bloody parade isn't it?" snapped the head, whose words contained a
formula that could not have been better calculated to exercise Shnit.
"This is my bloody parade. This is my day and I'm not going to have some
imbecile bog-cleaner trying to make me look stupid," he thought, reassuring
himself with the purposeful tone of his assertions.
If Dave could be unobtrusively shepherded off the tarmac he would have time
enough to invent an explanation that might satisfy any concerns on the part of
the visitors by the parade's end.
But fixing a look upon Dave that was intended to impress upon him both the
gravity of his offence and the seriousness of the likely repercussions appeared
to have no effect on the cleaner.
Dave pedalled on, sweat streaming down his face in the late morning sun,
without giving any indication that he might, if he had noticed the looks, be
minded to act on them and turn back.
Shnit, who could not risk shouting at the lumbering cyclist, calculating that
a direct confrontation would serve only to draw more attention to the
spectacle, tried glaring again, jerking his thumb in the direction of the houses
that Dave had travelled from for emphasis.
It was clear, it was emphatic but apparently for Dave it was still all too
easy to ignore.
The insubordination was so flagrant that despite the mist of outrage that
clouded his mind Shnit could see clearly the image of the moment when Jenkins
had tried to defy him in full view of the squad at Portsmouth.
Well, Jenkins was a bloody six-foot gunner with a head as thick as a
frigate's hull but a fat lot of good that had done him by the time Shnit had
finished with him. He was out of the force within a month of the warrant officers
hauling him off the square. And that would be what happened to Dave, Shnit was
happy to feel. There was time enough to save the situation and ensure that the
man finally got the proof he evidently needed that naval discipline was not
something that could be flouted indefinitely. Although it made more sense for him to delegate Smith to divert Dave discretely from his course than to have it out with the man himself, he knew he would get his moment later.
But, instead of leaping at the chance to show that he was worth the stripes
on his arms and the other privileges being head boy entailed, when briefed on
his additional duties Smith only wrung his hands, while over his shoulder Dave
could be seen head down and straining onwards.
Were it not for the fact that the exchange would have wasted more time, enough of which had already been squandered, Shnit would have disabused Smith of any doubts he may have had that he too would live to regret his part in the morning's events.
With the boggy obviously intent on continuing his journey, however, there was
only one thing for it: The three petty officers who reported to Shnit and
appeared to be showing no more mettle than Smith would have to deal with the
man.
It would mean a scene he knew, and one that he had tried so hard to avoid.
But the alternative was not to be contemplated. Better to be seen as a man who
could use a stick when carrots would not do the trick than to be made to look a
fool by a man who cleaned toilets, for God's sake.
Then Shnit saw that in a matter of seconds Dave would reach the mid-point
between the rows of houses. And in the same moment he realised that as soon as
he reached the halfway line Dave would be able to say it would be faster to
complete his journey than retrace his route.
There was a matter of moments between him and complete humiliation and he
wanted to kill Dave.
"If I was in the forces still the man would have been
finished already. This is my parade," he hissed through anxiety-locked teeth.
But Shnit wasn't in the navy any more; he was running towards a cleaner on a
battered bicycle who was ignoring him; no, who was smiling. Then Williams A
was feinting. Then Shnit was conscious that he could not see because his eyes
had filled with water.
Then he heard the singing start.
"What the hell," muttered Walker.
"Silence," roared the headmaster. "Silence."
But the boys sang out: "One Dave the Boggy, there's only one Dave the Boggy."
Dave pedalled on.
THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY
HEAVEN'S GATE
AMERICAN BEAUTY
LOCAL HERO
GENEVIEVE
