Prologue
‘They say’ ‘if you remember the sixties, you weren’t there.’
For some, a decade scented by smoked lemongrass, pine, fire, and sandalwood, of wading through strong, musty, fogs of pale blue earthy and floral flavoured smoke, a world of beautiful long-haired people, some further fragranced by pretty flowers, often worn in their hair, as they progressed to San Francisco or to Woodstock, or to the Isle of White festival, who attended peace and civil rights marches, giving their love, and their sex openly and freely uninhibited they rebelled and marched to protest against the Vietnam war, to support Civil Rights, people who were ‘right on, hip and with it, man.’
I remember the sixties, just not those sixties, on those terms.
Somewhere in the hills of the English Countryside, a crying sky’s tears run down the dark, forbidding face of a Catholic boarding school for boys aged eight to thirteen.
It is six o’clock on a Friday evening, late in April 1967, the end of the first week of the summer term and a few weeks after Sandie Shaw won the Eurovision Song Contest, with a song describing a woman’s manipulation by a lover as he used the threads of love to control her, a song titled ‘Puppet on a String’.
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You stand rigid, as if bolted to the floor as his high shrill voice, badgering and directing, grates along the corridor, announcing his impending arrival.
Fear, his study, reeks of primal, animalistic fear, a sense of loneliness, of abandonment, visceral, you taste the bile rising in your throat. The stench in the room is yours, yours, and that of the many boys who previously stood riveted to this spot.
At exactly eleven years and four weeks of age, time has little meaning.
A minute may as well be an hour, as an hour might be a lifetime.
At this moment, and as always, you wish time would stand still. Better yet, unglued from this spot, time would pass you by. Like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, you wish this cup would pass you by, yet like him, you know it will not, it cannot. If you dared to suggest that analogy out aloud, he would, without a moment’s hesitation, deal with you again on Monday.
Too young to comprehend, abandoned by all, and isolated, in this moment of dread fear, you are bound to this, your singular existential crisis.
Look: no, you dare not look.
You dare not look at the roll-top desk that houses the purpose-built rack, the rack that holds six canes, graded from top to bottom by their thickness, by their potential, by their caress, by their inanimate, indifferent, and ultimately by their brutality.
A diffident, thick, meaty bamboo cane lies unused at the top; while at the hell end of the rack, a long, thin, sadistic, snake-like whip eagerly awaits life, a life only gained in the headmaster’s hand.
As he enters the room, you focus on a windowpane that freely runs with tears, tears that partly obscure woods where you often go to hide, and at the low backed armchair set neat and square in the middle of the window’s recess, a chair likely never sat in, its sole purpose being to support the weight of boys.
‘Here we are again, Mr Jackson. You know why you are here?’ he will enquire.
‘I failed the spelling test, sir.’
‘That’s a lie. You are here because, as usual, you failed to learn. It seems you never learn.’
Opening the desk, home to his torture implements, he will ask, ‘which cane would you like this evening?’ don’t be fooled, no matter what your choice, he will use the sadistic snake.
‘Drop your shorts, bend over the chair, look out the window.’ As you have done many times in the past, you do as you are told.
He is close; he examines your body, making sure you have nothing down your pants that might interfere with his ‘care’.
You hear him breathing, feel the warmth on the bare skin of your back, your thighs, and legs.
A few steps to one side, poised, snake in hand, arm raised above his head, he is ready to strike.
A downward swish, a crack, the whack, contact.
The snake lands on your bottom, curling and wrapping itself around your body, its fangs digging into the delicate skin of your bottom, your thigh.
The dam broken; you dissolve, feelings, emotions released, a bellowed furnace of fire takes its grip, you gasp for air, your nose runs, your face floods.
Three more, maybe five?
He will stop when he feels he has had the response he expects to his God given right to care, to judge and to punish.
As you pull your shorts up and turn round, he says, ‘Real men don’t cry, Mr Jackson. Stop your snivelling, go upstairs, get matron to sort you out.’
You shake his hand, saying, ‘Thank you, sir.’ The headmaster replies, ‘Yes.’ Pauses, then irritably, in his shrill domineering voice, says, ‘Go on, get out.’
While the matron attends to your blooded backside, your tears dry, leaving white train tracks on your cheeks. In the intimate close comfort of her undivided attendance, feeling the softness of her touch, you hear her gently weep, and wonder, ‘Why? Why would anyone bother, let alone care? Decades later, you will come to realise that your childhood lacked any recognisable threads of human love, instead being dominated by sadistic, abusive, life-destroying puppet masters who forced you to accept and love an abused, tortured, and crucified Christ as his redeemer and savour.
The adrenaline ebbs away, now cold, you shiver, still the pain and the humiliation echo through your brain, your body.
In a few days’ time, the red, green, and blue-coloured evidence of your punishment will disappear and turn black. Hiding your emotions from the other boys, telling tall tales of how much it didn’t hurt and how you didn’t cry, will have become easier through experience than it is to sit on the school’s hard wooden chairs.
That night in your dormitory, after lights out, wishing that you could talk to the one who really cares and understands, your family dog, you cry yourself to sleep and like a puppet on a string, you bravely think, ‘it’s only another five Friday evenings until half term.’
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Epilogue
My memories of the sixties, a decade marred by sexual, physical and psychological abuse, abuse that in part led to a life sentence of mental health issues, of night terrors associated with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, abandonment, attachment disorders, and an assortment of other physical and psychological diagnosis.
Yet my story neither started nor ended there.
Later, in my adolescence, my mother would say something like, ‘You were always such a happy, kind, caring little boy. Now you walk around with an ungrateful hangdog expression. What possible excuse do you think you have?’ (That and get down on your knees and thank God for what you have).
Later in life, I learnt and understand that there are none so blind as those that choose not to see, nor so deaf as those that refuse to hear.