Attached is a picture of some other heroes.
This lot have not done any Normandy landings, or rescued the French from evil foes. I am very pleased to think that we do not ask this of our young men today, and I hope with all my soul that we never will.
All the same they have been as brave and determined as you can be when you are thirteen. They were dispatched away from their families and off to boarding school when they were hardly tall enough to reach the light switches. They grew from white-faced first years into the confident young men they are today, and over the last two years they have worked their socks off. Oliver did sixty four hours of homework at Easter, and he was not even one of the hardest-working. They have made a massive effort, and this week they have done their Common Entrance exams.
This does not sound very much until you realise that for most of them, their whole future hangs on it. If they pass, then the public school on which they have pinned their hopes will accept them. If they fail then they will be cast into the eternal outer darkness, or at any rate have to go to some other school somewhere else.
Obviously being grown up I know that life goes on perfectly well even if you do not pass an exam and go to public school, but they are thirteen and everybody’s hopes of glory rest on them. It is a jolly lot of pressure, the exam system is a ruthless one. Oliver said that nobody has complained or cracked or given up. They have worked hard, and been dispatched outdoors to run the tension out of their legs. They have been fed enormous breakfasts to keep their morale high. They have gritted their teeth and got their heads down and done their best to earn themselves a reduction in fees so that their fathers can sleep a bit more easily at nights.
I collected Oliver today. He has finished, because he has proved talentless at Latin, and hence was tactfully removed from the class. The Latin exam is the last one, and so today a dispensation was given for any non-Latinists to go home. Oliver strolled out today revelling in his freedom and telling the others that it was their own fault for being too clever.
I love visiting the school.
Oliver wasn’t there when I arrived, and the corridor was a mayhem of bouncing fifth formers, hurling redundant French books all over the place and trying not to trip over the various dogs that seemed to be wandering about. There were several of these, sniffing at people’s bags with interest, they are probably the Head’s method of detecting illicit tuck.
I talked to a couple whilst I was waiting. One boy had exchanged his school tie for a truly magnificent bow tie, with a Union Jack on it, which I admired very much, I hope he grows up to be Prime Minister. They were such nice young men, civilised and charming and friendly, and I went home feeling at peace with our future, this generation will run the country well.
It was all happening. The blind boy tripped on the tower stairs and was picked up and rubbed down by a couple of the others, who carried him off laughing and unhurt. Somebody was playing the piano somewhere. The choir was warbling gloriously in the chapel and a gap year student was hanging about the dining hall, trying to swipe anything edible. Oliver collected armfuls of files, and we lugged them across the yard and out to the car. He has dumped them in the living room where they can be used as handy firelighters. He does not need them any more. Their contents, he explained, are all inside his head.
I asked him what he thought he had to show for five years at boarding school, and he said, rather ruefully, that it was probably a massive pile of pencil sharpenings.
He told me about the exams, he thinks that he has done all right. We will know very soon anyway, the results come back in a week.
I went to visit him before he went to sleep tonight, and found him staring at the ceiling looking despondent. He said, rather sadly, that it felt rather empty not to have exams looming up. Life yawned ahead of him, with nothing more to aim for, no ordeal in his future, just a summer of idleness. He did not think that he liked that idea.
I promised him that his future included a full-time job sweeping up hair and making coffee at the barber’s, following which he would have a new life in Scotland of digging holes in frozen snow to sleep in, and sailing through vile weather towards the Arctic, in between plenty of cold showers and maths lessons. He cheered up at this prospect and settled down to sleep happily.
They have just got a couple of days off to recover from the exams. He goes back on Sunday. This is not at all the usual sigh and groan of going back to school, because now there is nothing more to be learned. Their studies are finished. Now it will be camping and games and cinema and cricket and adventures. Their last few weeks of being together are upon them. In July they will be scattered for ever, and it will be over, they will be Old Aysgarthians and their names will be for ever included on the list of Old Boys at the back of the school magazine.
It has gone so quickly.
