An innocent question from my sweet great-grandson Jimmy made me sweat at memories of multiple horrors in my childhood.
‘Gramps. What was your school like?’
My experience at school haunted my whole life: the hunger and the constant beatings.
This was Greyfriars, an expensive boarding school for the sons of the Upper Middle Class, in the 1930s. There was never enough food and we lived for parcels of cakes and jam sent by kindly aunts. But, bigger boys stole it: Billy Bunter, the Fat Owl of the Remove class, was the major culprit.
The beatings really left their mark (physically and emotionally). Quelch, our form master, was a sadist, his temper constantly on a knife edge. A cane was always nearby. He whipped us across the palms, and our hands would be bloated all day. Often, he beat several of us at once on our backsides, leaving us wriggling like eels. He thrashed us in front of our fellows as a warning.
The headmaster, Dr. Locke, wielded a birch rod – an awesome punishment for an adult criminal – but we were fourteen-year-old boys. Often, we were assembled to witness a boy flogged.
Boys who were prefects roamed the passageways of the school with their canes. Other older boys would thump us with cricket stumps.
All this was publicly documented at the time but still thousands of schoolboys dreamt of attending Greyfriars.
I smiled at my darling Jimmy and answered him, ‘We kept fluffy bunny rabbits and they loved us very much.’
Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 