Chapter 2 from "Mirth As It Is In Kevin"

 

Chapter Two – A Harrow-ing Introduction

Daylight filled the room as my heavy sleep was felled by an unbidden morning. Ghostly plumes of fog arranged themselves outside my window, ready to be let in and choked on. It was a typical Harrow School morning for an atypical Harrow boy. And my roommate, 18- year-old Wallace Fox, had just upchucked into a too-shallow straw boater.

My introduction to public school Wally was an onslaught of personal disclosures; that his was a family of prominent laughing-stock, kept back by a chain of misfortunes that seemed on the surface to be brought on by the lighting of social dumpster fires and the burning of bridges. An uncle gambling away multiple fortunes; a cousin who bullshitted his way into muckraking journalism (under an assumed nickname!) and yakked his way into multiple defamation suits; and most demonstratively for our present purposes, his ill-fated father, Colwin Fox, whose law practice was undermined by its titular head’s disbarment-worthy criticism of a judge whom had presided over one too many of Colwin’s poorly conceived arguments.  Connected with Wally in my mind were scenes of social degradation and public humiliation; and in my 17-year-old head positively swimming with teenage attempts at allegory, aphorism and allusion, I imagined his family crest taking the form of a giant cartoon mouth garlanded with wicked verbiage.

I found this particular morning unflattering to my current adolescent condition; so, tunneling under the covers, I attempted to return to dreamland.  My newly assigned roommate, despite having no hangover remedies to speak of (‘Hair of the Dog’ still being at least a decade in the distance from our lexicon) made it his morning’s mission to keep me awake and loop me into his post-carousal routine.

“While you were copping a nod, I was on the horn with some friends who can sneak us into a licensed premises.”

I pulled the sheet down to reveal one weary glaring eye. “’Copping a nod’ is grossly dismissive of my desire to get some real shut-eye,” I spat, “and isn’t sneaking into a licensed premises what you did last night?”

What I quickly discovered as our friendship began to burgeon is that Wally Fox exercises absolutely no discipline over his appetites.

Talking of appetites, I next saw my troublingly curious roomie after he had scrubbed and powdered himself into a splendidly florid condition for his arrival at the communal dinner table.  We at Rendalls were quite house proud, and particularly covetous of our meal menus, which to us read like a cornucopian feast; until we discovered that there was no discernible difference in catering among the hallowed houses of Harrow.  This caused unbounded amounts of consternation, until Wally Fox leapt into the fray with his all-nonsense take on house living.

“This must be my lucky day! Chicken Kiev again!”

Wally made a hard, bouncing landing on the bench next to me, startling more than one of our reserved schoolmates and insinuating his slovenly eating habits into our previously tranquil meal.

“Are you twats still getting your ekker intercoursing on the merits of and demerits of house meal offerings?”

A new boy called Blanche chimed in feebly, “It is my firm belief that the reason you see more Bradbys boys at the tuck shop is the inferior quality of their catering.”

“I’ll wager your firm belief couldn’t measure up to the sustained wood of my trouser furniture! Firm this, Blanche!”, as Wally raised a closed fist in our general direction.

“Charmingly over-familiar, Fox. Yet, as ever, scarcely contributes to our understanding.”

“Perhaps you lizards could take a survey of those old goats lining up for morsels.”

“Oh, God,” I spluttered into my chicken. “One of those old goats is my mother!”

Meanwhile, at the headmaster’s office…

“Someone has deposited a gaggle of pensioners at our doorstep…”

“We have doorsteps at Harrow? I wasn’t aware and did not authorize.”

“All right, perhaps they were ditched at the proscenium arch – is that better?”

“Why are you pestering me with this?”

“It seems one of them, a certain Margaret Hickinbotham, proposes a filial claim to one of our pupils.”

“Well, that would be the one called Hickinbotham, I should think. Christ on a digestive. Can’t you sort this out on your own?”

“I should be remiss if I did not point out that the nameplate on the door I’ve just passed through reads ‘headmaster.’ I defer to the superior judgment which this title implies, not to mention the wage packet. Come, Dudley, and demonstrate for this community that the faith they have placed in you is justified.

“You seem strangely unconcerned that with a thirty-second phone call I could render your wage packet superfluous.”

“If you promise to make that call right now, which would ensure that I’ve no further participation in the scene currently unfolding in the dining hall, well, I double-dog dare you…”

“Quite. I much preferred your former Pickwickian manner to this…this…well, I haven’t identified it yet.”

“That manner still resides in me, sir. It’s your fecklessness that brings forth a quite other character.”

“Can you at least debrief me on the motives for the appearance of these interlopers?”

“It appears to be a field trip, sir.”

“Right. A field trip which just happens to contain among its participants the mother of one of our pupils.”

“I really do think we should make haste, sir. You see, Ms. Hickinbotham is reciting dirty limericks.”

“Christ, why didn’t you say so! I thought perhaps hostages were being taken. Hustle now, Roger – lead me to the front!

The faint light of an October morning wove its way through threadbare curtains, as I awakened to scattershot images of familiar figures elbowing their way into my drugged vision. Or at least I assumed it was a drugged vision I was seeing this strange world through; because the last thing I remember before disconcertingly waking up in my bed in full dinner dress was the image of my mother mocking 17-year-olds for not laughing at her filthy jokes; and my schoolmates, their faces bright with the feel of a new autumn, returning fire with incredulous nincompoopery; and all the while mum was working the crowd under an assumed nickname.

“Don’t you get it, boys? Ben lives above Paddy’s non-existent abode, to get out of trouble…oh, it’s no good having to explain a joke of such extraordinary subtlety…”

 “Is that what the People’s Friend thinks is fit to print these days, is that it?”

“How would you know? No one under the age of forty reads the People’s Friend!”

My first waking moments after this travesty found me with the overwhelming feeling which Dorothy must have felt in her bed at the end of the Wizard of Oz; the only thing that seemed to be missing was a traveling showman. However, it could be argued that Meg filled that bill.

“You’d worked yourself into quite a state, Kevin. But what’s it all about?”

As I lay their soaking in the waves of a spirited conversation, evidently concerning my well-being, I found that their voices could not be lifted above the tedium of schoolmarm concern. This was chiefly due to the fact of Wally, who, while coming from a long line of eloquent mischief-makers; and having the bizarre fortune of being both endearingly normal and wildly charismatic, leading the ludicrous conversation swirling around me; as one might expect from a socially inept descendant of the realm of the emblazoned.

“He’s always been like this,” harped a feminine voice too familiar to presume such cheekiness in mixed company. “Forever embarrassed by his mother’s antics.”

“You don’t say?” Wally piped. “It’s a bit much, isn’t it? Falling away in a faint like that. Seems wholly disproportionate to the circumstances.”

“Try telling him that! I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’ve suffered – he’s a good son – but the occasional bouts of theatricality are off-putting.”

“If I may interject,” the assistant headmaster ventured, “he appears to be on the verge of awakening.”

“On the verge of awakening, or on the verge of an awakening? It’s a crucial distinction.”

“I shan’t speculate on the boy’s metaphysical condition, only his stage of consciousness.”

“Perhaps we can solve him together, Meg. I could do with a project. Harrow can be quite stifling for a precocious ne’er-do-well like me.”

Despite all this high-minded tripe, Wally Fox was bound sentimentally to the old way of life. Which means he is very much “of” Harrow. He has no oppositional fortitude, no latent hatred of the establishment to bring to the surface; and certainly no sincere desire to get to the bottom of Kevin Hickinbotham, as it were. This was never more true than as I watched Wally peeling off his Harrovian jersey before mother had even darkened our threshold in exit; as if in discarding the garment he was also discarding any notion of undertaking a conversation with me on any subject beyond his newfound fascination with the member of the Hickinbotham tribe whose Jovan musk still lingered in the air.

On the approach to the local Polytechnic, one finds conspicuous the absence of the guardian gargoyles rising snarling from the abutments which grace our buildings at Harrow. It is this kind of aesthetic nitpicking in which I had begun to partake as my scandal-prone roommate continued to descend into paroxysms of puerile pedantry on the subject of comedy; and how my mum was going to school him in the art of the rib tickle. That is, if he could stop thinking about how to get another pickle tickle long enough to have anything else enter his fool head.

“Circulate, laddie, circulate!”

Night’s reflection on the lake fomented dazzling acres of moonlight, as I wandered moodily round the grounds of the polytechnic. This had become my form of respite whenever Wally dragged me to a shindig that was not to my taste. I had just struck out wildly with a Poly girl whose hair was not plainly British in color and whose manners were not recognizably adolescent. After this abysmal failure I was sucked into the undertow of intoxication, getting absolutely stomped on foul whisky. I found myself careening around the various rooms of the labyrinthine house till finally, swathed in malevolent belches, I slumped pooped in the ill-heated drawing room. The room was stubborn in its emanating stink of moisture, as if recently bombarded by pit-stained academics donning insensible forms of tweed.

I had absolutely no intention of circulating.

It soon became clear that putting my backfield in motion might have been the better notion, as presently I was approached by yet another far-from-bright-eyed, considerably less-than-bushy-tailed bird on the make; causing me to reconsider the socialization aspect of the gathering, as this one was leaden with a fruity-drink drunk disposition. Without so much as a wink of a nod of foreplay, she was crawling up my not inconsiderable pantleg and kneeing me in the groin as she surmounted my mid-section, as if she were after something beyond me and the now-groaning sideboard; and as I fell back under the thrust of her comparatively feather weight and steeled myself for a fully-clothed rape scene, she adjusted her glasses that didn’t need adjusting, giving her the appearance of lopsidedness. Just as I was about to close my eyes (or it could have been hold my nose, the mingling of furniture polish and her alcohol breath was making me gag), she listed to the port side, wildly overcorrected to starboard, and collapsed face-first into a tray of canapes.

I must admit I quite admired her pluck; and she had crafted her movements with the accuracy of a sober person, at least until the sudden keeling into party pastry.

Wally woke up the next morning with what appeared to be unclaimed unrewarded baby teeth stuck to his cheek; in point of fact these curious items were the lost earrings of his overnight lover.

“Where do you reckon those came from?”

He accepted my bleary-eyed half-stare as a reply.

In his rumpled fireside manner, Wally stoked the electric fire with a flippant flick of a switch.  Everything in his morning’s manner indicated to me that he had no intention of allowing the momentum of the last two nights to stall; even his usual sloppy making of tea was particularly strident in its handling of cup and saucer. Too bad I didn’t have any bets on how quickly my prediction would come true.

“Hey, Fox, telephone call for you!”

Wally sprang up and out to the hallway telephone as if his very day depended on it.

“Shut the bloody door!” I cried hopelessly. When it came to goings on in our house, Wally admitted no privacy, for himself or others. Our entire floor would likely be in on whatever he would cook up on the telephone.

Through the grogginess of a stubborn if light hangover, I picked up snatches of Wally’s end of the conversation, which from the sound of it was the arranging of yet another night on the prowl. That is, until I detected a marked change in the nature of his ringing tones.

“I’m not a child!

“What does it matter that I’m seventeen?”

“This wasn’t a problem when you were shagging me this morning!

“I know you are but what am I?”

Sheepish couldn’t begin to describe the attitude that overtook Wally as he returned to our rooms. His countenance was one of the babysat boy who realizes that his sexy babysitter does in fact look upon him as “just a kid.”

“Kev, old son, we’ve been found out.”

“Who’s we? Did someone report the theft of their baby-teeth earrings?”

He proceeded to describe for me the other end of the just completed phone conversation. The following is what Wally heard as his previous night’s conquest tried to convince her friends to paint the town with Wally and me.

“I’ve got something going with a couple of Harrovians – are you in?”

“Oh, they are pale-faced hopefuls, to be sure, but they’re adorable…”

“You can’t possibly be this stupid…”

“Who wants to tell her?

“They’re sixth formers, you bloody cow!”

There was something of especial satisfaction in the knowledge that Wally had been rejected by someone who may be wondering if they had just hours earlier sauced someone below the age of consent.

“Had some misgivings, did they?”

“Yes, you could say Miss Givings was hyper-vigilant in her squaring things away.”

“I can’t think why I’m so cast down by this turn. Jesus, even her cigarettes were an unmentholated bore…”

Harrow is a public school, and therefore a regime of some psychological force; wherein the principal warring factions of society are established; achievement versus nature. Was it Jung who said, “We wholly overlook the essential fact that the achievements which society rewards are won at the cost of a diminution of personality”. A symptom of lingering pubescence, at least in the case of Wally Fox, is to do battle with forces arrayed against his nature. The sloughing off of his personality would come later; Wally would make one last stand in defense of nature. I found myself caught in the crossfire of the dueling factions of fate.

As I looked wistfully over the unfathomable horizon of my future, farther and rarer than memory can reach, it all seemed a folkloric deceit. Every school tradition we upheld, every Harrow custom we took up and carried on; every belief the ancients instilled in us, staring down from musty portraits with a beady leering; had not one whit of the substance of promise.

And the substance of promise is what delivers us back onto the shores of Wally’s fickle nature; where it strikes me as incredible that fortune lays it on so thick. Wally seemed to have all the advantages and privileges and capacities that one would hope for – and indeed expect – from a shiny Harrovian. Yet he managed to tear through all the credit he’d been gifted; called in and fumbled every favor; and burned every bridge, and still managed to come out smelling like a grand champion rose. But this rendering fallow the gardens of promise had swallowed me up and blinded me of my purpose, so all-consuming was Wally’s fulsome presence.

Giving up my masturbatory practices of youth now seemed frightfully short-sighted, as I found myself freed from Wally’s depraved purposes for at least this evening. As my randy rooms-mate continued his persuasive onslaught with several house denizens he’d targeted as replacements for my role as his wingman, I began to prepare mentally for a night of tranquil self-love.

Recalling Wally’s words of wisdom as regards the use of opiates and hallucinogens as aids to the physical act of love (“I find that a little ganja before making it helps things along”), I turned my attention to the aesthetics segment of my carefully worked out plans for an evening without Wally Fox. This was ushered in by the lighting of scented candles, rendered even more necessary than usual as Cox directed at me a particularly searing flatulence in his departure. “You know I can’t abide your stench directly before mealtimes! It puts me off my food!” However, on this night so pregnant with the potential for solitary pleasures, I simply wouldn’t allow this attempt at derailing my ambitious agenda; as I called forth the soul-fluffing power of Buddhist meditation.

“I am one with the universe.”

It’s not as if Wally and I have ever enjoyed the delightful sympathies of friendship (his knowledge of my inability to sustain an appetite for anything sensate when confronted with unappetizing aromas notwithstanding). Being his “friend” meant only that you fluffed his ego and that you were comfortable and indeed found joy in the fleeting moments of debauchery that he would lead you into. As part of his entourage, you could find no intimacy or even familiarity, only the temporary thrill of being part of one of his escapades. He was capable of holding onto scraps of knowledge about others only because of a prodigious memory for trivialities; and only as this knowledge related to his mostly nocturnal activities; who has access to the best pot, who knows the bouncers at undiscovered dens of iniquity and houses of ill-repute; who had connections with those off-licenses who were known to turn a blind eye to under-age consumers. In fact, everyone he’d come in contact with in the time I’d known him was assigned a nickname related to what they acquired for him or provided access to him. He chose me as a friend as a “front”, to give the appearance of normalcy whenever a suspiciously unfamiliar extended family member would appear at our doorstep to enquire of his well-being. You didn’t “know” Wally Cox; you simply discovered bits and pieces of half-truths and seemingly fanciful tales that accompanied his ranting and raving about a dodgy childhood.

And yet, I was determined to know him, and to change him; and I was remorseless in pursuit of this prize. Delusional? Probably, but we all need our projects.

Something I had overheard him mutter in a candid moment when he thought no one of “import” was listening, is quite useful in understanding my status in his sorry excuse for a life. “My latent life’s purpose illumined by the wit of a middle-aged widow”.

Could it be that my mother was not a front, but in fact a means?

Then, not 15 minutes after he had vamoosed and left me to what I thought was to be a quiet night of imaginative wanking, he came bursting into our rooms like a madman.

“I’ve been accepted to Cambridge!”

“And I suppose that means I can expect to be accepted too?”