Boy (2)
"He can rest there for a few minutes," my grandparents said.
This was in 1924. It was normal to cut a child's adenoids with no anaesthetic in those days!
CHAPTER FOUR
Boarding school
In September 1925, I was nine years old, and it was time for me to go to boarding school. Children stay the night at boarding school and live there without their families.
St Peter's School in Somerset was the nearest English boarding school to our house in Wales, but it was across fifteen miles of sea. This sea was called the Bristol Channel.
For school, my mother gave me a very special new box. It was called a tuck box. Every child at boarding school has a tuck box. They are always closed with a key, and no teacher can look inside them. Boys keep food, toys and other special things in them. At St Peter's, one boy kept a frog in his tuck box!
My mother travelled to St Peter's School with me. We went to Cardiff in a taxi and then across the water by boat. On the English side, we went in a second taxi to the school. I had a new school uniform. All my clothes were new, and everything had my name on it.
St Peter's School was outside the town. It had beds for 150 boys and rooms for the headmaster's family. There was a lot of grass outside for playing sport.
On the first day there were many boys and their families in front of the school. The very tall headmaster walked from group to group to meet the parents.
"Goodbye, Mrs Dahl," he said, quickly. "It's time to go. Don't worry; we will look after him."
My mother understood. She said goodbye to me and left in a taxi. The headmaster went to talk to a different family. I stood there with my new tuck box and began to cry. I was sad because I did not want to live away from my family.
Life at St Peter's School was difficult. The teachers were not friendly, and I was always frightened of the cane. We had to wash in cold water, and the food was bad. I wanted to go home and see my family.
At night in bed, I always thought about my family and tried not to cry. They were across the Bristol Channel, and I could see the sea from my window. I always went to sleep with my face towards my family. I never turned my back towards them in bed.
Mothers sent their hungry sons food every week. This made the headmaster happy, because food was expensive.
"Send food as often as you like! Once a week. Or twice a week!" the headmaster always said. "Your boy gets good food here, but food from home is always more special. You can send them things like fruit and a big cake. You don't want your child to be the only boy with an empty tuck box."
Every Sunday, every boy at St Peter's wrote to his family. We never wrote about the bad things at school. We only told our parents good things, because the headmaster read our letters.
He saw our bad spelling, but we could not change it in the letters. We had to write the words correctly later.
"No teacher has read this letter," our parents thought, "because there is bad spelling in it. Everything in this letter must be true! My child is happy at school."
I wrote to my mother that first Sunday, and then I wrote to her every week for thirty-two years. Sometimes more than once a week. In 1957, she died, and I found more than 600 of my letters to her. She kept them all.
CHAPTER FIVE
A drive in a car
After three long months at boarding school, it was time for me to go home for the Christmas holidays. How wonderful to be away from school!
While I was away at St Peter's, my family bought a car. I was very happy to be home with my family, and I was also excited about the car! In 1925, anyone could drive a car. You did not need to learn a lot. My very old half-sister was twenty-one years old. She had two thirty-minute lessons, and then she could drive us in our car.
That day, seven of us sat in the car. In the car were my very old half-sister, my half-brother (eighteen years old), my sister (twelve years old), my mother (forty years old), two small sisters (eight and five years old) and me (nine years old). We were very excited.
"How fast will it go?" we asked our very old half-sister. "Will it go at fifty miles an hour?"
"It can go at sixty miles an hour!" she answered.
"Oh, let's make it go at sixty!" we shouted.
"We will go faster than that," she said.
My very old half-sister started the car, and we drove slowly through the village. People in the street were excited to see our car.
After five minutes, we left the village.
"You see! I can do it!" our very old half-sister said.
"Go faster!" we shouted. "We're only going at fifteen miles an hour!"
My half-sister began to make the car go at about thirty-five miles an hour. Then we came to a corner in the road.
"Help!" she shouted.
The car went into the side of the road. There was broken glass everywhere. My family were all OK, but I was badly hurt. My nose was nearly cut from my face.
My very old half-sister drove the broken car to the doctor very slowly, at about four miles an hour.
"Wow!" said the doctor. "Look at his nose!"
"It hurts," I cried.
"Please help him!" said my mother.
"Don't worry," said the doctor. "He will keep his nose."
An hour later, the doctor came to our house. I lay on a table, and someone put something white from a bottle on my face. It smelled very strong.
I tried to stand, but strong hands held me down on the table.
"Good boy," said the doctor. "Close your eyes and sleep."
After eight hours, I woke up, and my nose was back in its place. My mother gave me a coin. British coins always have a picture of the king or queen on them. In those days, the king was George V.
"Well done. This is for you," she said.
CHAPTER SIX
Goat's tobacco
In 1926, my very old half-sister chose to marry an English doctor. He came on holiday with us to Norway My family always did everything together, but now my half-sister only wanted to be with this man. She was always with him, and they did not want to be with us. My other sisters and I were young - I was only nine years old - and we did not understand this.
We did not like the young doctor, because he took our sister from us. But we also did not like him because he smoked a pipe. He always had the pipe in his mouth, and it smelled very bad.
One day on the beach, the young doctor went swimming. He left his pipe with us and did not take it into the sea with him.
Then I saw some goat droppings on the ground, and I thought of a plan.
I quickly put some of the goat droppings in the pipe, under the tobacco. The young doctor came back and started smoking his pipe. My half-brother and sisters and I watched him.
"Ah-h-h-h," he said. "I love to smoke after a swim, and this English tobacco is the best. It's much better than Norwegian tobacco."
The sea was blue and the sun was bright. It was a beautiful day.
Then we heard a loud shout and watched the young doctor fly into the air. His pipe flew out of his mouth, and his face was the colour of snow.
"Help! Help! My body is on fire!" the doctor shouted.
My very old half-sister was very frightened. "What's wrong? Where does it hurt?" she cried. "Get the boat! Quickly! We must go to hospital!"
But the young doctor lay on the ground and breathed in the clean air. After five minutes, he started to feel better.
"What happened?" asked my very old half-sister.
"I don't know," said the doctor.
"I know! I know!" said my little sister, excitedly.
"Tell us!" said my very old half-sister.
"It's his pipe!" shouted my little sister.
"What's wrong with my pipe?" asked the doctor.
"It had goat droppings in it!" said my little sister, and she laughed.
My very old half-sister and the doctor quickly understood, and they were very angry. The doctor stood up. My half-brother, sisters and I quickly ran away from him into the sea.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Repton
In 1929, my mother asked me, "Do you want to go to Marlborough or Repton?"
They were famous and expensive English schools, but I knew nothing about them other than that.
"Repton," I answered, because it was an easier word to say than "Marlborough".
"Very well," said my mother. "You will go to Repton."
Repton was a boarding school in the middle of England. Every Repton boy wore the same, very strange, uniform. I wore it, and my sisters laughed at me.
I felt stupid in the clothes for Repton, but in the street my mother said, "You look good in your school uniform. People can see it. They think you are important because you go to a famous school."
At the station, I saw many boys, and they all wore the same uniform. The train took us all away to Repton. I was thirteen years old.
Lots of strange things happened at Repton - they did at all English boarding schools. Older boys were always more important than younger boys, and a small group of the oldest boys were the most important of all.
At Repton, we called these boys "Boazers". Boazers told us what to do, and we had to do it. We cleaned the Boazers' rooms and made their fires. We sometimes cooked their breakfast. Boazers were always right, and younger boys were always wrong.
On Sundays, two other boys and I had to clean our Boazer's room. We cleaned it for hours. We washed the floor, the windows and the walls.
But the Boazer often found something wrong with our cleaning, and he hit us with a cane.
A Boazer could stand in any room of the school and shout about a job. Then every young boy had to run to him. The slowest boy had to do the job. One snowy morning, I heard a Boazer shout about a job. I ran as fast as possible, but I was the slowest boy to get there.
"Dahl, come here," said the Boazer. His name was Wilberforce. "Go and make my toilet warm."
At Repton, all the toilets were outside, and their little rooms had no doors. In winter, they were very cold. My job was to sit on the toilet before Wilberforce and make it warm for him.
I sat on the toilet for fifteen minutes, and then Wilberforce came.
"Is it warm?" he asked me.
"It's as warm as possible, Wilberforce."
"We will see," he said.
He sat on the toilet. "Very good," he said. "Very, very good. Some boys have cold bottoms. I only use boys with warm bottoms. I will not forget you."
He did not forget me. I always carried a book with me because I often had to sit on Wilberforce's toilet. It was very boring. In my first winter at Repton, I read many books by Charles Dickens on Wilberforce's toilet.
Not everything at school was bad. Sometimes all the boys got a grey box from a company called Cadbury's. Cadbury's made wonderful chocolates.
