Memories: Clive James, an Australian schooling
I kept my feared but wished-for appointment with the deputy headmaster. It was long, thick cane with a leather-bound tip. Unlike other canes I had seen, it did not seem to be flexible. Instead of swishing when it came down, it hummed. The impact was like a door slamming on my hand – Clive James, the Australian writer, humourist and TV critic, who was born in 1939 and grew up in Sydney.
In his memories Clive James
recalls being caned many times at school (something he welcomed at first). At
primary school he endeavoured to become the class smart-alec. One day, using
his knowledge of friction he conspired to rub the edge of his wooden ruler
against cut grooves in his desk causing smoke to billow.
“The billow was fretted
with fire. Mr Slavin’s [his teacher] eyes turned towards me. He gave me his
full four strokes. The pain was considerable, but the glory was greater.
‘What’s sauce for the goose,’ he said as I tucked my smarting hands under my
armpits, ‘is sauce for the gander’. Mr Slavin’s epigrams were distinctly
sub-Wildean but he had a knack for trotting them out at precisely the
appropriate moment. He might even have had an inkling of how much I wanted to
be a goose.”
James is emboldened by his
notoriety and he wants to become a “victim” of the schoolmasters. Still at
primary school there is a craze for fighting one another with “dongers”, an
ordinary handkerchief folded into a triangle and rolled and soaked in water to
give it weight. He attacks a defenceless girl with his donger and is sent off
for punishment.
He writes, “And so I kept
my feared but wished-for appointment with the deputy headmaster. He
was a tall slim man in a grey dust-coat. I can’t remember his name,
but I can well remember his quietly sardonic manner. He pointed out
to me that in hitting the little girl I had caused her pain, and that he was
now about to show me what pain was like. The instrument that I had
employed on the little girl had been strictly banned.
“The same embargo, he
explained, did not apply to the instrument he would now employ on
me. I was inspecting this while he spoke. It was long,
thick cane with a leather-bound tip. Unlike other canes I had seen,
it did not seem to be flexible. Instead of swishing when it came
down, it hummed. The impact was like a door slamming on my
hand. I was too stunned to even pee my pants. The same
thing happened to the other hand. Then the same thing happened to
each hand twice more in succession. That would teach me, he informed
me, to hit little girls with dongers.
“If he meant that it would
teach me not to hit little girls with dongers, he was
right. For one thing, I couldn’t have lifted a donger, let alone
swung one. When I tried to feed myself my play-lunch sandwiches, I
kept missing my mouth. But at least the fame accruing to the maximum
penalty had raised my status somewhat.”
Later, at Sydney Tech
secondary school, he discovers a talent for amusing the class by farting at
will. His maths master is not amused when James does this in class and sends
him to the deputy headmaster, “carrying a note inscribed with the numeral 6,
meaning I was to be given six of the best”.
He writes, “The deputy head
Mr Dock, inevitably known as Hickory, lacked inches but made up for them with
agility. A short, round man, he had a long, thin, whippy cane and
would have looked like Bobby Riggs serving an ace if he had not prefaced his
windup and delivery with a short swerving run starting in the far corner of the
room. He didn’t waste time talking. He just opened the note, glanced
at it and reached for the cane.”
James goes on, “Since the
rules stipulated that the hands be hit alternately, for each stroke Hickory had
to change corners of the room before running up to serve. He covered a lot of ground. I
found the shock of each impact nothing like as bad as the anticipation. Unfortunately, the aftermath was worse
than anything that could be imagined. I zigzagged back to class with
my hands buried between my thighs. But even in the midst of my
agony, I was already secure in the knowledge that fame was assured.”
Extracted from Clive
James, Unreliable Memories
(publisher Picador: 1981).
Clive James
Picture
credits: Darrien and BBC.
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