JUNIOR SCHOOL

- Wonderful Teachers -

 

My brilliant luck was to have Basil "Baz" Hilliard as my first form teacher in the Junior School. He had swept-back grey hair and rode to school each day on a classic motorbike. I think he was the most jubilant man I've ever known.

My memories of him are all of laughter and enthusiasm. He lived his life as a derring-do adventure, pitched with high drama, blood and thunder. He taught me (and this was real teaching) English and Latin.

"Hic - Haec - Hoc!" he would exclaim, all froth and sputter, his mouth literally drooling with excitement, salivating as he laughed, bringing a dead language to life - so that you almost cared that "The Gauls, having been laid waste by Caesar's generals, were waging war against the Belgae".

When he handed back my stories, scrawled in a spidery hand that Major Marsh had never managed to correct, he would literally spatter me with his exclamations. "Fantastic! This is a work of pure genius, Henderson! Rarely in the annals of my illustrious teaching career (pause for laughter from the class) has such a piece of literary eloquence uttered forth from the ranks of the schoolboy classes!"

The thing about Baz Hilliard was that he loved and understood children. They were more jubilant than adults. And he shared his life with us : we shared humour, shared his melancholic moments, his rantings and ravings, shared the romantic dream of life that he could never quite relinquish.

You had only to hear his motorbike creating uproar as it thundered about the town, to know that there was goodness abroad, and joy.

The greatest drama of all was saved for the sportsfield. He was not only my form teacher but my Housemaster as well, and this gave all of us in Hawks an enormous advantage. He would prowl up and down the touchline in his wellingtons and greatcoat, bellowing to the gods "Do or Die, boys! It's Do or Die! There's nothing for it now, but Attack! Attack! Attack! Lay down your lives, my boys, lay down your lives! Death or Glory! Death - or - Glooooory!"

And the adrenalin would rush, and we would fight to the finish, knowing that this was no small football match but a battle of the gods against our rivals, Reeves, and some final valhalla. Our cause was helped by Reeves' Housemaster, an arcane and ironic man, Brian Terry - to whom games were anathema and mud was a vile pestilence. Langorous, casual and purportedly indifferent, Mr Terry would long for the final whistle, while Baz was evoking the daemons and summoning up one last hurrah.

I was genetically similar to my father and sporting ability was limited to walking, running, and (later) to mountaineering. But I remember on one occasion, with minutes to go in a house match, I chanced to be the only child left in the enemy's half (having probably run out of puff) and a long boot up from the goalie left me with just their own goalkeeper to beat. "God of Battles! This is your moment, Henderson! This is your moment!" And against all sporting probability I stuck it in, a victory goal. Hilliard danced on the touchline, more astonished even than me. When the final whistle went, moments later, he came up to me - still salivating and frothing - and put his arm around me lovingly. "Remember this day, Henderson!" he whispered excitedly. "Remember this day! This was your finest hour. This was your day of glory."

When I look back now, that kind of jubilation has almost gone. We live in a more wearied and cynical age, with television and yoof culture all around us. A teacher would hesitate even to touch a child - and yet that kind of natural touch was exactly what I needed, then as now. Privately, Basil Hilliard had his share of sorrows like many others, but he was a dreamer of dreams, ever young at heart, a believer in beauty.

By my second year in the Junior School I was growing in confidence, and my new form teacher was John Edge - nicknamed "Tat". I found a rapport with him that helped me believe in myself. He taught me History and his love of History has ever since been my own love of it too. It was mostly medieval stuff, and he brought it alive and made me realise that History is as real as here and now, it is people and lives and imagination. It is humanity and passion. It is ordinary life and extraordinary lives.

Later, I was taught by other great History teachers, but it was Tat who started me off. He was just so excited by his own subject, and would spend breaktimes talking to me about it, and bringing it to life. I did projects in the holidays. I scoured the libraries. And John Edge enthused me from "inside" his subject, not teaching it as a "subject" or a National Curriculum unit - but sharing a lifetime's scholarship and enthusiasm and knowledge.

Neither John Edge nor Basil Hilliard were young men. They had seen most of their lives, and were approaching retirement - yet they were the youngest of men, if you see what I mean. In the Celtic traditions, there is an island realm or Otherworld called Tir n'an Og - a land of the ever-young. And that was what they were in my recollection. Ever young and full of so much life.

They were wonderful teachers.

 

 

JUNIOR SCHOOL

- Spud-

 

Many teachers stand out in my memory from my days at Berkhamsted School, but one whose memory still touches me with particular emotion and fondness was John Longrigg, known to all as "Spud".

He was called Spud quite simply because he looked like a potato. He was a short and portly man with a rounded face, snub nose and bald head - bald, some said, because of an injury in the war. The war seemed to have had a lasting impact on him.

He could be quite moody and irascible, and was NOT a teacher to be crossed - pupils would enter his classes cautiously and politely. And yet, when you got to know him, there was another whole side to him - a softness, a sadness, a kind of Churchillian melancholy that could brood over him for days on end.

And that softness made things difficult for him, in those days when emotions were unfashionable or not to be shown : because he was a very passionate man, a patriot and deeply humane. I'm not sure how he was viewed by some of the stuffier, more serious establishment figures at the school but, to me, he seemed sensitive and human.

He would sometimes take a drink at lunchtime, especially on a Friday. And why not? Besides, there was something in his nature - a kind of courage I felt - that generated respect, and as pupils we could endure his occasional irascible outburst in return for his warm humanity.

I think it was something to do with his gentle touch. Although extremely moody, and we all got "Oh shut up, you silly arse!" from time to time, Spud was a classic example of the old adage : "His bark is worse than his bite." More often he would deflate your misdeameanour with a wry grin, and "Oh yes, yes, just emptying the waste paper bin, Henderson?" and with a shake of his head he would waddle to his desk while you sheepishly picked it all up.

His great enthusiasm was cricket and he was far happier at the wicket, coaching and umpiring, than teaching mathematics to the innumerate. There was something deeply English and noble about John Longrigg - I think he summed up for me a trait of the national character : that gentleness and love of country, that brooding melancholic and unspoken passion, that ordinariness which - when pushed - will do extraordinary things.

Later, much later, when I was in the Upper Sixth and Spud used to teach Current Affairs to us on a Friday afternoon, we would assemble in the classroom and await his arrival. He was usually a bit late, and then his face would peer round the door with a bashful grin.

"Oh! You're still here, then?" and he'd waddle up to the front and sit at his desk. Even at the age of eighteen you treated Spud with caution, so we'd sit in silence and wait. And wait and wait.

He would disappear behind his "Daily Telegraph", and the class would rest in silence (probably glad to take things easy) with just the occasional rustle as Spud turned over a page. The atmosphere sometimes seemed drowsy and a little bit sad.

Suddenly he'd look up. "Did you know," he'd say, "that in Nanchang district earlier this week a tornado carried a flock of chickens three miles and dropped them in a market-place?" (I've always liked the Telegraph's obscure foreign columns.) And then he'd flit to another article, and another - no planning, no medium-term schemes of work - just anecdote and experience.

I think I learned more about the world in Spud's current affairs lessons than a dozen text books could have taught me: lessons about life, lessons about compassion. Because he would quite often refer to the wartime years - not to his own bravery - but you could feel the shudder of emotion and Britain at bay, and the lives given up (like my Uncle Sandy who died shortly after he'd left the School), and you suddenly realised that behind this emotional and fallible man were principles and courage : understated courage, and emotion just belied by the occasional welling up of tears in his eyes, which he was vulnerable enough to display.

In all the pretension and formality of a British Public School, with its grey leaders and governors and status, I valued far more the reality of spontaneous human beings, with the honesty to show their feeling. And if Spud sometimes had a drink at Friday lunchtime, then good luck to him. How many of today's managers and teachers have known his life's experience? How many could catch a lump in your throat and crack open your emotional defences? He was less cowardly though more vulnerable than most.

A human being, intensely kind and gentle, beyond the melancholy dog days and gruff bark.

Ten years after I'd left the School, I was living at home (and, actually teaching part-time at "The Girls' School" while helping to care for my father). My father was only 55 but he was dying. Such things happen to many families.

One summer's day in the lostness of this sadness and gradual wasting away, there was a knock on the door.

It was Spud. I hadn't seen him for years. He looked older and a little smaller, and his head was cocked to one side, shy about the whole situation. He was clasping a plate of cooked fish, and he just said this: "I was awfully sorry to hear your father wasn't too well, and I wondered if he might be able to eat some fish." Plate offered diffidently. "And I have a little place in Northumberland, if you'd like to spend a holiday there as a family." He didn't seek a response. He would have barked, "Oh shut up, you silly ass," if I'd got too effusive in my gratitude.

He just waddled off.

It was the last time I saw him.

This man... by the end, probably a bit cut off from the hierarchy... who'd thrown himself into the struggle for freedom like many others of his generation... just because it was the common decent thing to stand up against tyranny... had remembered my sick father and some impulse had brought him shyly to our door. I'd call it 'Love' but he would have barked at such an outward expression of the reality, that - somehow - could never be abandoned deep inside.

My father was, in the event, too sick to go to Northumberland. He died a few months later, in my arms. And the life insurance paid off his debts to the School. In return, five of us had that amazing privilege of growing up among people like Baz and Tat and Spud.

In the end, it had little to do with money. Nor the status. It was a gathering of humanity, and a community, and some strange hope that sometimes flared and shuddered, and refused to surrender, refused to go out. Refuses still today. I wonder if some of those teachers could ever have realised that inheritance of faith and hope that they bequeathed, through their own recalcitrant optimism, their own sense of beauty, however understated, that they passed on, and which lives still today, though most of their generation has, indeed, passed on.

 

MUSIC AND RELIGION

- Chapel Choir -

 

When I joined the Junior School, my father suggested I joined the Chapel Choir, and in turn that's exactly what I and my brothers did. His encouragement stemmed from his lifelong devotion to classical music, and for us it became both a discipline and a valuable lesson in life : that you can achieve real rewards through commitment and the pursuit of high standards.

I sang in the choir for six years and, at times, I would curse it - the twice a week practices; the Sunday services and evensong.

But for me it was a blessing that has lasted to this day. Music is so passionate. Music has a way of bypassing the merely cerebral and touching the heart. Music is resonance and shudders and conveys intelligence and feeling.

Moreover, it exposed me year by year to the rhythms and resonance of the Church year and the Church, opening my mind to a backdrop of spiritual reality which - though not dogmatic or fanatic - has somehow informed the rest of my life, sometimes familiar and at other times mysterious and resonant.

...being continued