“Do as you’re told!”

This is what I heard all the time.  It stood to reason.  I was eleven years old and it was what grown-ups said to children.  Our Mam said it when we were out playing in the street and didn’t hear her when she called.  If we answered her back, she would cuff us round the ear.  And, if I had ever heard our kid giving our Mam lip, I would beat him round the earhole.

Miss Pearce, our teacher, said that we had to mind our olders and betters.  I made the mistake of repeating this to our Dad, a miner, who had taken part in the General Strike of 1926, and had no time for what he termed “nobs”.  He retorted, “Hang on!  Hang on!” then went on about it being 1932.  I didn’t see what the year had got to do with anything, although, when I copied the date from the blackboard at school, I would write 1932 AD.  It was for the archaeologists, I explained to Miss Pearce, when they excavated this town in thousands of years’ time.  I told her how the Americans had put a copy of the “New York Times” under that new skyscraper, the Empire State Building, the one that was the tallest in the world.  Miss Pearce said that Britain had an Empire, not America, and I had too much to say.

Our Dad didn’t believe in minding nobs, but he expected us to do as he said.  When I passed the scholarship, some of the other boys in our street were saying Rowbothams Grammar was a school for toffs and I would get stuck-up and li-di-dah.  “Maybe I should go to t’Elementary with our Ernie,” I said to Dad.

“I say where you go to school, Bertie, not t’boys in t’street,” he retorted.  “Your name’s down for t’grammar, and that’s where you’re going.”

So here I was, standing in assembly at Rowbothams Grammar School, wearing a scratchy white shirt with a stiff, starched collar fixed by studs, a navy blue blazer with yellow braid all round the edges and short grey trousers which hung below my knees, because our Mam had insisted on buying a size I could “grow into”.  The headmaster, the Reverend Gilbert, was standing on the dais, in a crumpled black gown, reading the lesson in a deep booming voice.  “…I say to this one, Go and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh.  And to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it...” 

I thought he was tophole, a real schoolmaster, like in the comics.

After telling us, several times, how proud we should all be to be Rowbothamians, he read a letter from an old boy, now a pilot in the RAF, who wrote that he owed his success to Rowbothams and, in particular, the school motto, “Probitas quod Obsequium” (Honesty and Obedience).  I decided, that, when I grew up, I would join the RAF and one day the Reverend Gilbert would be reading a letter from me.

Then we went to our classes.  My class was called “Shell” and the next year up the “Remove”, like in Billy Bunter, and we started learning Latin, yes, real Latin – amo, amas, amat – and French.  Later that day, we stripped down to our shirts and went on to the school field.  “This is a rugger school,” explained Mr Heath, the games teacher.  “We don’t do… soccer… here,” he said, as if the very word put a nasty taste in his mouth.  My Dad and my brothers were all football mad.  So was I. 

Every evening, after tea, our Mam would clear the cloth off the table, so I could do my homework, and she wouldn’t let anyone switch on the wireless until I finished.  Dad would sometimes read my textbooks while I was working, saying over and over again, “I never had much education.”  One of the women in our street had said that I shouldn’t be allowed to go to grammar school because I would end up knowing more than my father.  But she didn’t know our Dad!

One evening, as I wrested “Chemistry for First Formers” from him, he said, “City’re playing Arsenal on Sat’day.  Want to come?”

I was aware of my brothers’ eyes bearing down upon me, daring me to be the toff from the rugger-playing grammar school.  “Of course,” I said.

“Good lad,” said Dad, patting me on the shoulder, as I put my books into my satchel.  “Me, our Ernie and our kid… we’ll be right glad to have you.”

The match was terrific.  I stood on the terraces with our Dad and my brothers, wearing my City scarf over my uniform, waving my rattle and shouting, “Cit-y, Cit-y,” until I was hoarse.  Those southerners at Arsenal were good but no match for our City.  Every time we scored, the crowd surged forward, pressing me and my blazer against the barrier, and, when we got back, our Mam said my clothes smelt of beer, cigarette and onions, which was hardly surprising because this is what football grounds smell like.  My school uniform was the only real set of clothes I had, so I wore it all the time.  Most schoolchildren did. 

The following Monday, school started with assembly and the Reverend Gilbert and his dusty, black gown on the dais, as usual.  “There is a boy here who does not wish to be a member of this school,” he declaimed, casting his black, beady eyes around the hall.  “Would the boy who was seen last Saturday at the City football ground, watching a… soccer… match, please report to my study… at once.”  Then he swept out, his gown flailing out behind him like a woman’s dress.

One of the older boys started playing a march on the piano.  This was the signal for us to file out.  I gulped.  My mottled bare knees quaked beneath the hem of my short trousers.  I watched the others in my form walk back down the corridor, to Mr Haynes and geometry.  I could not follow them.

I scuttled along the corridor beside the school hall, away from the lower school classrooms and towards the unknown region of heavy oak doors of the staffroom and the offices.  Some sixth-formers were lounging on canvas-seated chairs in the corridor, waiting for class to start.  “Oy, you, Shell!” shouted one of them.  “What are you doing here?”

I didn’t answer him.  For a minute, I stared at the oak-panelled door of the headmaster’s study.  Maybe, I wouldn’t be found out.  That the Reverend Gilbert was all-seeing and all-knowing, I didn’t doubt, but how good was his information really?  Surely, if I just did nothing, all this would pass.  Then I thought of “Probitas quod Obsequium”.

I knocked.

“Come,” called the voice from inside.

I opened the door by the smallest chink and squeezed inside.  The headmaster was standing by his desk, drinking a cup of tea from a china cup with yellow flowers on it and reading a letter.  “Yes?”  He put his cup back on to its saucer, balancing it on top of a stack of papers.  I gulped again.

“Please, sir…”  The room was dancing about in front of my eyes.  Part of me wasn’t there at all.  Part of me was looking down on myself from the ceiling.  “Please, sir… the boy at the football match… it was me.”

“Harrumf!”  He put the letter down.  “And what is the meaning of this?  Has it not been explained to you that this is the rugger school?”

“Yes, sir.”

He went on and on, how rugger was a gentleman’s game, invented by Dr Arnold at Rugby School and how rugger had made Britain great, how Rowbothams had been founded by Alderman Rowbotham in 1692, and how he had received about my transgression this morning.  I stood with my head down, studying the carpet, red and gold, with a twirly pattern.  “Well, boy.  Have you nothing to say for yourself?”

“No, sir.”

“No, indeed.  I suppose you went with boys from… other schools.”

“No, I went with my father.  My father arranged it all.”

“Your father?... I see.”  He drew in his chest and let it out again in a long slow breath.  “Well, I suppose if your father… I hope you always do as your father tells you, boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, run along then.  You’re missing the first lesson.”