Beyond Fear. Dorothy Rowe

been, all the time she was with us. Perhaps she’ll write to me when she gets back home.’

      Mark and Alice, spending Christmas with their own families, had phoned over the holiday. ‘They didn’t want to talk to me,’ said Jack. ‘This is my punishment.’

      Joy told me how she and Ray had talked together about the sexual approaches Jack had made to his son, which Jack did not remember. They had not included Jack in this conversation because they both wanted to spare his feelings. Now, in her gentle, precise way, she told me what Ray had told her. Jack sat with his head down.

      Ray described three events. The first was a simple enquiry from Jack as to whether Ray got erections. Ray had not sensed there was anything wrong with this until Jack, leaving Ray’s bedroom, had said, ‘Don’t tell your mother.’ The next time Ray and Jack were playing, just fooling around, Jack put his hand down Ray’s trousers and touched his penis. Ray pulled himself away. The third occasion was no more than a look which Ray, undressed, found hard to distinguish from the close looks which parents give to children when inspecting for unwashed faces and adolescent pimples.

      Jack still could not remember these events. ‘Jack doesn’t bother to sort things out,’ said Joy. ‘Something happens and he just covers it up with something else. It’s like our attic. When we moved to that house he just piled things up there, just a higgledy-piggledy mess. That attic always reminded me of Jack’s mind. I hated to go up there. But now I’ve got everything in it sorted out. We put up some shelves and changed the glass in the window to let in more light.’ She smiled. ‘Now we’re getting his mind sorted out getting things clear and in order.’

      The reason that the attic, like all the cupboards and shelves in their house, was crammed full of things was because Jack couldn’t bear to throw things away.

      ‘We weren’t allowed any possessions at the orphanage. If you had something you had to carry it with you to keep it or it disappeared. When I went into the orphanage it was just after Christmas and I had all my Christmas presents. They soon disappeared. I had a billiard table and cue. The cue was the first to go. One of the masters took it and used it as a cane. He often belted me with it. I soon learned how you had to get things. You were always on the lookout for something you could exchange for something else. But it always had to be something you could carry with you. It wasn’t until you were a work boy that you had a locker, just a small one, about eighteen inches square, and you were allowed to buy a lock to put on it. But even then someone would break the lock and take your things.’

      Jack talked about the beatings and indiscriminate cruelty in the orphanage. The matron, he said, wore a large ring, and as she walked past a boy she would slap him across the head, often cutting his face with the ring. Even today Jack cannot bear to have his head touched.

      ‘We would get belted for anything and nothing,’ he said. ‘Every fortnight we had boot inspection. We had to stand holding our boots upside down. The chap who mended our boots would allow us to lose just one stud from the sole. For every other stud missing you’d get a belting. We’d do anything to get studs for our boots. If you found one you treasured it like gold. Sometimes you’d manage to get hold of a new one and then you’d have to scratch it for ages to make it worn like the other ones. If he thought you’d put a new one in, well, you’d had it.’

      The boys were beaten and whipped for all kinds of offences and often for nothing at all. ‘I wet the bed every night from the time I went into the orphanage until the time I left. There was a group of us that did this, and we were always punished, every time. We’d be beaten, or wrapped up tight in the wet sheets and made to stand out in the cold. All the other boys knew what you’d done. We always had to wash our own sheets. The staff never did anything to help us.’ There was no one to whom the boys could turn for help. ‘No one would have believed us,’ he said, ‘and my mother, even if she had believed me, which she wouldn’t, wouldn’t have done anything anyway.’

      As Jack described at length the cruelties that had been perpetrated on these helpless boys, he smiled and occasionally laughed. I asked him why he did so and he said, ‘Well, it’s a long time ago, and there’s nothing I can do about it.’

      I asked him whether he had beaten his own children. ‘Nothing like the way I was beaten,’ he said. ‘Only when they needed it.’ ‘I’d stop him,’ said Joy. ‘I can’t bear violence. It’s so ugly.’ ‘Alice was the main one,’ said Jack. ‘She used to wind me up. I wouldn’t belt her just slap her around the face.’

      Several times in this conversation Jack remarked with some awe how he was remembering things he had never thought of before, ‘not just general things, but specific things. I can remember just what happened and what I felt.’ He went on, ‘You know, when I remember being with someone then, I remember it as being pleasant. It was warm. You were accepted, even though it was only for a night. The masters, well, they lived two lives. If one of them said to you “Come to my room at seven o’clock tonight” you knew what it was for. You weren’t going to get belted. They were really nice to you then. They gave you sweets and cakes, things you hardly ever got. Then next morning if you stepped out of line they’d belt you. If a master chose you, well, it was like being taken out of the pond. We were just like fish in a pond. If one master chose you, then the other masters didn’t. They each had their own group of boys. Your master might keep you for a long time, or he might get sick of you and then you’d get thrown back in the pond.’

      Jack stressed that the good part was that ‘you were always paired off with someone. There wasn’t much group sex. Sometimes the boys in the dormitory would have, for want of a better word, a wanking party to see who could come first, and there was one master, a slimy creep, who used to get several boys in his room and make them do it while he watched, but most times, even with the boys in the dorm, even if it was only once, it was just the two of you. It made you feel special.’

      Jack was very special for over a year. One master, known as the Major, singled him out. In his room Jack learned more than sex. The Major played records and introduced Jack to classical music. Music became Jack’s great love. The Major would also take Jack on excursions out of the school. ‘He would take me to Salvation Army meetings. Sometimes they would have concerts, really good music. And they always made a big fuss of me. They’d stuff me full of cakes and buns and give me a big bag of food to take back for my friends. I was really happy there. It was great, getting out and meeting people.’

      Then, suddenly, the Major left. ‘The staff were moved around the different homes a lot,’ he said, ‘but we usually had a few weeks’ warning. With the Major, he just left in twenty-four hours. I was thrown back in the pond and I was just another boy there for, well, over a year.’

      I asked Jack whether the other boys were envious when one boy was singled out by a master. ‘No, they just took it for granted. Everyone did it. If you woke in the morning and saw a boy’s bed empty you knew he was with so-and-so. And the boys who went with masters, they brought back sweets and things, for the other boys. If they didn’t hand them out they had them taken off them.’ Jack had felt envious of anyone who had something that he did not have.

      Despite their continual financial difficulties, Jack and Joy had always found the money to give their children the things they needed to pursue their interests. If one was interested in music, then musical instruments were bought. If another was interested in tennis, then tennis rackets and tennis lessons were bought. Jack was proud of his children’s achievements and of his hard-won ability to give them what they needed, but underneath that there must have lurked a small boy’s envy of the other kids’ possessions.

      The conversation turned to television, and Joy remarked that Jack could not stand any programme that revealed emotions. When I enquired, ‘What emotions?’ it became clear that Jack could not tolerate watching the expression of realistically tender feelings. He enjoyed the violence of westerns and war films (‘Well, it’s only on the screen, isn’t it?’) but the expression of real, tender, personal feelings, with all the concomitant yearning and pain, was something he could not bear to witness.

      Joy had suggested that Jack might like to come to see me on his own, and I was