The Bully

Hammil Academy
Greater Marsten
Berkshire, England
1970      

Part 1

“You wanted to see me, Mr. Fitzsimmons, sir?”

        Roger Haskins stood in my doorway, still dressed in his school uniform.  He was one of the lads who looked like an unmade bed most of the time, one of those who stayed just barely on the side of acceptable.  His shirt was pulled partially from his trousers, but only partially.  His school tie was crooked.  I looked at the whole of him a moment, wondering what sort of boy would come to see his Housemaster upon being summoned without just a little bit of primping.  Whatever sort it was, it was apparent young Haskins was definitely one of them.

        By the looks of him his hair hadn’t recently felt the shining and sorting bristles of a brush, either.  His muddy coloured brown locks were in disarray, and to that extent matched the looks of his scruffy shoes; the bow in the laces of one was loose, the other entirely untied and flopping.

        His uniform jacket appeared not to have been cleaned and pressed for some time, and it covered a shirt which showed the boy’s carelessness with either his soup or spoon at the lunch table today.  I hoped it was today.

        Some boys can get away with this degree of dishabille.  They have an insouciance, a sparkle, an impish grace that endears them to one even while that one is rebuking them for their sloppiness; that excuses their lack of discipline, that makes one realize he is indeed in the presence of boys, incorrigible ones to be sure, but boys.

        This boy, however, had none of that agreeability about him.  There was nothing appealing about him.  There was a glower in his gaze, an arrogant smugness when he looked at you, a challenge in his slouch.  The dress and decorum being flaunted in front of me I could excuse.  It was his eyes that I found most disturbing.  His eyes challenged me in a way that reached a physical level.  I wondered briefly, how did they affect his fellow students, his age level peers, his form mates? 

        He was large for his age, both in height and stockiness.  His voice had changed in the past few months and was now a full baritone.  His dark eyes were close set in an acned round face and his full eyebrows shaded them sufficiently so I supposed they could, in the right circumstances, look menacing.  I was sure they had to appear thus to members of the form below his, and probably even to the less intrepid boys in his own.

        Roger Haskins had a reputation, and looking at him leaning against my doorsill, challenging me with his presence, I could see why he did.  There was an air about the boy that spoke of trouble.  His reputation had grown, it seemed, by innuendo, by gossip, rather than other boys coming forward to me or my associates.  Boarding schools have traditions and a culture, and boys didn’t tell things about other boys to the masters.  It was considered peaching, and it simply wasn’t done.  With head boys and prefects looking on, most policing was done by their own, and for the most part the system worked well enough.  When it didn’t, people like me got involved.  I’d been doing this for enough years and cared enough about the safety and well-being of my lads that I’d developed an internal espionage system, an intelligence system that few of the boys realized existed.  But I knew what went on in my house and in the school itself far more than was suspected.  Roger Haskins had a reputation.   I knew it.  I also knew it was an earned reputation, one he deserved, not one he pretended to. 

        Roger Haskins was a bully. 

        And today, he had just finished a period of harassment directed towards a boy two years younger and three stone lighter than he, a boy who was bound by school tradition and politics to simply take it, mum’s the word and no peaching.  The boy had done just that.  There’d been no murmur from him to anyone.  But he’d been found left alone in the house changing rooms, lying naked on the floor huddled in the corner behind the hamper that was used to collect wet towels.  The janitor had found him when he’d come to collect the towels for the laundry.

        The boy’s name was Peter Sandervale.  He was 13 years old, a slight, good looking lad with a smile on his face most of the time, crystal-bright and intelligent blue-green eyes and a shock of light brown hair worn a little long which looked very good on him, ringing his youthful, handsome face.  His appealing looks and friendly, outgoing manner were even more disarming when one came to realize that he didn’t appear to be the slightest bit aware of his personal charms.

        The janitor had seen him when he’d moved the hamper.  Sandervale was unconscious, not moving at all, but when the janitor leaned down and touched him, after saying, “Oh, lord, what’s this, then?” and initially getting no response, the boy had eventually moaned, then started to struggle to get off the floor.  The janitor had helped him and seen bruises on his face and body.  He told the boy to get dressed and he’d help him to the infirmary, but the boy had been adamant in his refusal to be coddled.  He thanked the janitor, but said he’d sort himself out, even while still grimacing in obvious discomfort.  Then he’d made his way to his locker, moving gingerly, and had begun dressing.

        It was the janitor who had told me about it.  He, along with several other members of the staff, mingled unobtrusively with a select few of the older boys who had signed on as well for duty to keep the school running smoothly and free from the sort who would take advantage of the weaker and younger members of the student body. They were part of my eyes and ears.  Hundreds of boys had passed through the school in the time I’d been there, and the ones in my house were totally unaware that they were being watched over, or, in some cases, watched.

        The janitor had told me it was Sandervale who had been hurt.  He told me he looked like he’d been duffed up pretty thoroughly.  He also told me when the lad had turned around to walk to get his clothes, there was blood on his bottom, and that he was walking very carefully.

        He’d told me this in the early afternoon.  I’d looked for Sandervale at tea and supper, but his place at his table had been empty.  I’d casually, in passing and hopefully in a simply curious sort of way, asked one of the prefects where Peter was and was told he hadn’t been feeling well and had begged off the meals, and one of his friends had taken him something in his room.

        It wasn’t my place to look in on Sandervale.  A Housemaster rarely visited a boy in his room.  It was always the boy who came to the master.  The fact he wasn’t coming to me meant he was trying to play his part in the ancient game played by bigger boys and smaller ones.  He was trying to simply survive and not go calling for help.  Calling on masters for help was a diminishing and entirely unacceptable enterprise for almost any boy, certainly any boy of mettle.  Reputations and self-esteem are built by actions in this situation.  Or lost.

         But I couldn’t stand by and let the person who did this get away with it.  It was immoral for me to do so, and there was another factor involved. 

        I hated bullies.  While I realized they were a fact of life and existed in every school that had ever taught a lesson, this did nothing to mitigate my vigorous dislike of the breed. 

        I didn’t know who had attacked Sandervale.  I didn’t know the circumstances behind it.  It was possible Sandervale had done something to bring what had happened onto himself.  It was possible he even deserved it.

        I didn’t believe it for a moment, however.  I knew something of all the boys who lived in my house.  I knew Sandervale especially well.  He was not only friendly and outgoing, but he seemed to have problems with maths and didn’t hesitate to take me up on the offer I had made to all of my charges: to come to me with any and all problems, even academic ones.  That last was meant to be a dry joke.  I included it in my opening remarks every year and it had become tradition that the boys all chuckled appreciatively.  Sandervale went one step further.  He took me up on it, and showed up at my door, sometimes twice a week, sometimes even more often than that, puzzling over some obscure mathematical turn of fancy he’d seemed to have missed the explanation of in the lesson. 

        He was a bright enough boy, except for a distrust of the maths text and Master, and I quickly got to liking him, and liking his visits.  He was cheerful and inquisitive and not a bit shy and soon we were talking about a lot more than maths when he dropped by.  I learned about his family, who found it a bit of a struggle to keep him in boarding school but were determined he was going to get into university and were supporting him assiduously in the endeavor.  I learned that he was interested in reading law, or that’s what he thought now.  Maybe next year he’d be interested in French literature.  He didn’t know for certain, but smiled when he talked about it and his youthful enthusiasm never failed to cheer me.  I came to appreciate his visits, and we had begun establishing a relationship that for all intents and purposes was closer than I usually enjoyed with one of my younger charges. 

        We got on so well, and he was such a frequent visitor, that on one occasion, when he was more vexed than usual about not quite understanding how to attack a maths problem, I had been trying to comfort him and had inadvertently addressed him as Peter, and a luminous smile had brightened his face.  Since that time, I’d frequently used his Christian name when we were alone.  

        While he was able to talk intelligently about a number of subjects, I saw a noticeable spark in his eyes when the subject turned to the other boys in the school, his friends.  And when he spoke about interacting with them, I got to appreciate the depth of the boy.  Many lads his age were quite self-centered and were swept up with football heroes, cricket legends.  They could tell you the names of the members of the rock bands they liked, and even where some of them lived.  I generally found these boys to have the personality of cabbages, at least when talking to masters, and were about as interesting.

        Peter was different.  He seemed more aware of himself and his surroundings and comrades and how they all fit together than I expected of someone his age.  We always chatted easily, had from the first, though he was certainly appropriately respectful, and as I’d learned by now how to draw out boys by asking questions they had to use sentences to answer rather than single words, I rather easily got him to open up on a variety of subjects.  This really took no effort with him as he was naturally gregarious, at least with me.  But what I’d noticed in Peter that set him apart was his easy empathy for and insights into his mates.  When we spoke of them, his attitude would undergo a subtle transformation.  His interest deepened, somehow, and his supporting, caring nature was revealed.  He himself didn’t find this a bit remarkable, and in fact I could see he had no recognition at all how unusual his perceptions and actions were with respect to his fellows.  I found his 13-year-old perspectives remarkably precocious, and so enjoyed them that I had taken to  encouraging his observations when I could, steering the conversation in a direction which would illuminate this aspect of his personality.  I enjoyed hearing his thoughts on his comrades, as his maturity and fellowship were then shown to great effect.  There were two incidents recently that allowed me deeper insight into how he related to the other boys he knew.

        The first had happened a month ago.  A boy of 14, from a separate house from mine and in the form above Peter’s, was rather brutally assaulted one evening while returning to his house.  I wasn’t involved at all; all my knowledge was second hand.  His own Housemaster had handled the investigation, but it had been a topic of conversation for not only the boys at the school but all the masters and staff as well, so I knew the details.  The boy, John Enland, was a slight boy, top of his form academically, but a dead loss at games.  He was a popular lad despite that, however, as he was helpful to the other boys in his house in solving some of the perplexities they encountered in their lessons, and was always cheerful.  He was also self-deprecating about his lack of physical prowess, joining easily in the laugher at his awkward ineptitude.  He was liked for his personality and his soft, non-athletic manner was easily overlooked.  For someone to assault him, as meek as he was, seemed scurrilous to everyone at the school.

        He was alone, just before the call to evening prayers, walking back to the house after stopping at the library, and had been hit from behind, hard enough to knock him forward to the ground.  As he went down, his attacker landed on his back with both knees, knocking the wind from him, and pummeled him in the ribs, back, neck and head until he passed out.  Enland never saw his attacker; he had no idea who it had been.  He did have a possible explanation why this had happened, however.  Earlier that day he had received a birthday card from his parents containing a five pound note.  He had shown the note to the group who ate lunch with him and told them he’d treat them all in town on the coming Saturday.  The commotion at the table had been sufficient that it was fairly common knowledge that Enland had the note with him when he left the building.  After his attack, he was found with his pockets pulled out and no money in evidence.  Not only that, but his wristwatch had also been taken.

        Such a degree of violence at Hammil was unprecedented.  Word of the attack spread like wildfire, and speculation ran riot, but the investigation had been stymied almost from the start.  With no information forthcoming from Enland and no witnesses, there wasn’t a clue.  Boys in his house were questioned, of course, but as boys in all the houses had been aware Enland had received the money, there were just too many possibilities to make such questioning fruitful.  In any event, it came to naught.  No one had seen anything, heard anything, or knew anything.

        What made the incident more frightening was that, after apparently being on the mend for three days, Enland had slipped into a coma.  There had been rather more swelling in his brain than had first been identified.  When he’d become unresponsive, surgery had been performed to relieve the pressure, but he had remained in the coma for another two weeks thereafter, only recovering from it in the last week.  At this time, while no one could be completely sure, it appeared there would be no permanent damage.  We still had our fingers crossed.

        And how did this involve Peter?  That was what I found interesting.  The next night after the attack on Enland, when Peter was in my study and we were chatting after I’d helped him untangle a knot of mathematical conundrums, the mugging was casually mentioned and Peter’s response was not what I expected.  Everyone I had spoken to about the incident was involved in speculation about and interest in the perpetrator.  Peter was interested in something else.

        “It was terrible to hear of that, sir.  Made most of us feel a little frightened, thinking that could happen to us.  But what upset me most was, it happened to a boy who wasn’t used to any rough and tumble at all, and a nice boy at that.  If some more regular boy had been gone at like that, it might not seem so bad, he’d be more used to it, you see?  But not John.”

        “Do you know Enland, Peter?  He’s a year above you and in a different house.”  I was curious, because in the regular course of things, the two shouldn’t have had much contact.

        “I hadn’t known him, sir.  But the next day, I went to see him in hospital.  I felt so badly for him, being attacked like that, being quite badly hurt.  I was surprised when I got there.  I thought all his form would be there to console him, but it was just him, lying there in the bed, all alone.  I introduced myself, told him how sorry I was this had happened, and even though he was sore and said his head ached abominably, I could tell he wanted company, and so I pulled up a chair and we got acquainted.  I spent the entire afternoon with him.  He’s really nice.  I told him I’d be back when I could, and I dropped in for a few minutes when I could the next day, too.  I was sorry other boys weren’t visiting him.”

        The other occasion where I got to see a glimpse of Peter’s nature had occurred two weeks prior to that when I was wondering about something I had heard happened that day, and I wondered if I might learn more about it from Peter.  So I planned my strategy and, when during our meeting that evening he had been speaking about his English History class with Mr. Mellanby in response to something I’d asked him, I’d been able to say to him, innocently enough I hoped, “I understand Carter is having some problems there?”

        He’d looked at me, a slightly puzzled frown touching his face, and said, “You know everything that’s going around here, don’t you, sir?”  At that point he’d looked down, no doubt to hide what I’d caught a glimpse of, a sheepish little smile.

        “No, not everything, but I do try to keep up with things.  So what’s up with Carter?  Might he be slipping in Latin, too?”

        “Carter’s having problems, sir.  He tries to hide it.  You know he doesn’t talk much, even to us.  But I’ve watched him.  When we go into town on Saturdays, he’ll tag along if we urge him enough, and I always make sure we do, but he’s stays a little in the back, you know, with us but also a little apart from us?  When we stop in the sweet shop, he looks in all the cases, and I can sometimes see something in his eyes, but he never buys anything.  We get our stuff and sit at the tables and he joins us, but always makes some excuse if anyone asks why he didn’t buy anything.  Once, Fredericks told him he’d buy him something if he was short, and Carter got an expression on his face, and Fredericks dropped the subject and didn’t offer again.  The next time we went to town, Carter said he had some translations to finish up and to go without him.

        “I think it might be that he’s short of pocket money, but doesn’t want to make anything of it to any of us.  Perhaps he’s embarrassed, and proud.  He’s just shy enough he’s hard to get to know.  I have been trying with him, though.  I hate to see someone who seems pleasant enough not having friends, and of course it’s always more difficult for the boys who go home at night to make good friends here.  What I’ve done with Carter is, I wait till there’s only him and me in the common room, then go sit by him and start talking.  He looks a lot more relaxed with just the two of us, and if I talk about things that are happening at school, you know, innocuous things, silly things, he converses with me just fine.  Then, when the others begin to come back, he picks up his books again and I can tell it’s time to leave him alone.

        “From all the reading I see him do, I thought he’d be doing really well in all his studies, and so I was surprised this morning when Mr. Mellanby had him stand up and questioned him on why he was short of his homework assignment, and then told him he was failing the class and had better get it together.  He said a quite a few other things as well, some of them personal.  I looked at Carter and could tell he just hated being called out like that in front of everyone.  He hated it.  He wasn’t crying, I saw the effort he was making to force himself not to, but I could see him trembling, just standing there, staring right past Mr. Mellanby.  Mr. Mellanby was going to say something else, I could see it, but at the last moment I think even he could see Carter had had more than enough, and he told him to sit, he almost said something eles but stopped.  I kept watching Carter, and saw him grow pale.  His eyes looked strange, not just upset, but almost like he was terrified.  It took the rest of the class before he was settled down at all.  When we were leaving, Mr. Mellanby, in his usual gruff and officious manner, called him to stay, but Carter just kept going and left the room.  That made Mr. Mellanby angry.  It doesn’t take much to make him angry, if I can say that.  Sorry sir.  I don’t mean to be disrespectful of Mr. Mellanby, sir.  Mr. Mellanby pushed his way to the door and shouted after Carter, but Carter was starting across the lawn by that time, walking fast, and even if he heard himself being called, he never looked back.

        “I decided, after thinking about it, that it was real fear I saw in Carter’s eyes.  I didn’t know what he could be afraid of.  Turning in a homework assignment on time is important, but missing one shouldn’t have caused the emotions I was seeing.  I also don’t understand why he’d be failing the class.  Carter’s pretty smart, as far as I can tell.  When I talk to him he’s not slow at all.  I was going to ask him about what might be the trouble and if I could help at all, but haven’t seen him alone since then.  The only thing I could imagine him being scared of is his parents’ reaction if he actually fails that course.  Especially if they’ve been struggling to send him here, if that’s the reason Carter seems short of funds.  Actually, it’s all speculation. sir.  I don’t really know, but he does seem to need help.”

        That had been two weeks ago.  From that conversation, I figured this was something I needed to talk to Carter about, and had called him to my rooms.  He’d been reluctant to speak, of course, but I’d been at my job for years and knew ways to penetrate a boy’s defences.  It turned out his parents were in the middle of a messy divorce and he was being battered back and forth between them like a shuttlecock, and it was preventing him from doing any worthwhile studying at home at night.  He was spending all his time worrying about and trying to shut out the arguing that was occurring at his home every night and then having to put up with each of his parents trying to enlist him in the army of their side in their battle.  He told me he realized if he failed the courses he was doing poorly in, with the other problems his parents were having, he quite likely would not return to the school, and it was the one place he knew he was going to be free from them when they were fighting, and as such he very much didn’t want to leave it.  He felt safe here, and had suddenly seen that safely might be ending.  I saw then where the fear Peter had noticed in Carter’s eyes had come from.

        Some problems a Housemaster can’t solve.  Luckily, with this one I could be of some assistance.  A phone call to his home, conversations with both parents and then a talk with his teachers, a pointed and extended one with Mr. Mellanby it turned out, and then another with Carter himself, and the young man was finding life a little easier.  At least for the moment.

        So, returning to the case in point, I knew Peter better than I knew many of the boys, and knew he had a big heart and cared about his schoolmates.  He was well liked, a fairly popular kid, and he had no enemies I was aware of.

        It had appeared to me that the problem that caused him to be lying, unconscious, naked and battered in the changing room wasn’t, almost couldn’t be, Peter’s fault.  That meant it had to be someone else’s.  The fact the abuse had been physical and possibly sexual as well told me it was credible to think it was done by someone who had had his eyes on Peter, someone who perhaps found him interesting.

        And so I had asked.  Even before I saw Peter’s empty chair at supper, I had made it my business to ask each and everyone in my eyes-and-ears group who had contact with Peter in any way and so would have been around him, had they seen anyone watching Peter, anyone who might have been seen taking a more than a usual interest in him.  I’d spent my afternoon doing so.

        When I asked Alan Foster, I could see something in his eye as he hesitated to answer.  We were in the main dining room as it was tea time, and boys were bustling around us as they made their ways to their tables.  “Foster, why don’t you come to my rooms directly after this?” I said to him quietly.  “More privacy you know.”

        He smiled appreciatively at me.  “Thank you, sir.  That would be better.”

        He went to his table.  I chatted with a couple other boys as I made my way out of the hall, then returned to my house, to wait  for Foster to come and hopefully shed some light on what had happened.