but it was the response, or rather the lack of response, of the teachers to this carry-on that I found completely incomprehensible. At Woodhouse they wouldn’t have put up with it. I would have been put in my place in no time (and so would have known my place). Here they took no notice at all. They suffered the inconvenience and looked away. Needless to say, this discouragement simply caused me to redouble my efforts.
In contrast to this rather frantic school life my current home life was very quiet, if not exactly homely. Kay Starr was, I think, kindly disposed towards me, but I knew that she felt very keenly the intrusion and disruption that my presence caused in her life. She was also, in herself, a righteous person, very conscious of the shortcomings of the rest of the world, which she did not hesitate to condemn.
In the evenings Kay would often say: ‘Don’t let’s bother with proper supper, let’s just have some scrambled egg on our knees.’ Then there would be small pieces of thin toast covered with reconstituted dried egg and perhaps an apple to follow. I would sit very carefully and eat it neatly and when I had finished she would look at me anxiously and her face would tell me that she couldn’t think what she was going to do with me for the rest of the long evening. Neither could I.
At weekends I was, as Kay’s protégé, allowed to partake of her life in Dartington Hall itself. This was a completely different world from the school. This was an essentially civilized, artistically sensitive foundation which had been created by Mr and Mrs Elmhirst to provide a centre of excellence, where individuals and groups engaged in the arts could be encouraged and supported in their work. There were painters, musicians, sculptors, silversmiths, even a ballet company, all busy working away at their arts, sustained by the loving generosity of Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst.
The collection of people drawn to that cultural magnet was amazingly varied and interesting. The atmosphere seemed to be very free and easy but Kay, being perhaps conscious of her position as Leonard Elmhirst’s private secretary, was at pains to emphasize the need for me to be as unobtrusive as possible. So I walked on tiptoe through that part of Kay’s world, as I tiptoed through every other part of her neat house and her neat life, because I was steeped in long-term apology for being there and being a nuisance and because I was totally intimidated by her, even though she had told me, quite firmly, that we were close friends.
Getting used to life in Kay’s cold house was not easy, but it was my life at school that was causing me the most bafflement.
Looking back I can see that what I was having trouble with was the freedom. Freedom was assumed to be the aim and joy of life, and I was sure it was, but I didn’t seem to be very good at it. Freedom was presenting itself to me as a succession of choices that I had to make. These were not just choices between set alternatives like: ‘Will you have jam or marmalade?’ These were more basic choices like: ‘Do I want to bother to get out of this chair?’ or ‘Do I want to find out what the next class is and go to it?’
This unsettling responsibility was complicated by the fact that I truly believed that I was supposed to make decisions that reflected my fancy. If I asked somebody which option I should take, I was asked in reply: ‘Well, which do you want to take?’ – a question to which I had no answer, because I had no fancy and no purpose of my own. Today I can see quite clearly that all I really wanted was somebody to be there and mind enough to tell me what to do – and that, alas, was not on the menu.
So I think I just soldiered on and, as children and chameleons do, began to take on the colour of my surroundings. I started to affect the arrogant unconcern that I imagined was the convention, disdained the timetable and tried to follow what I hoped was my fancy. I must emphasize that I was not doing this as a real affirmation of personal independence. Quite the contrary, I was simply doing my best to conform, to do what I imagined was expected of me.
Absurd as it may seem, I think that may have worked. It seems that I did become what was (for Dartington Hall School) a socially acceptable person, because my next report said that I had ‘settled down’, was ‘becoming more popular ’ and that my time was ‘for the most part being profitably occupied’.
There was some truth in the last of these observations because I found a microscope in the biology lab and became fascinated by the underwater life that seemed to appear by itself in ponds and puddles when they became stagnant. I would cycle around the estate collecting smelly jars of it and bring them back to the biology lab. I sometimes think that could have become ‘my subject’ if I had managed, or even been encouraged, to organize my studies a bit, but that didn’t happen. At one time I became very interested in pottery and spent some months doing very little else, but here again my activity was quite solitary, random and disorganized. For a few months a craze for small theatricals swept through the school. At another time people collected pieces of tubing and blew bullets made of modelling-clay at each other.
These peripheral activities were engrossing enough to ensure that the academic side of school life was neglected. I was supposed to spend half an hour each week with my tutor, Boris, to talk about my work. He was the Chemistry master and, like me, an inveterate small-joke-maker. At our tutorial meetings he was icily polite and punctilious but I’m sorry to say he was unable to conceal from me the fact that he disliked me intensely and found the task of discussing my educational future distasteful. I didn’t care a lot for it myself because I, being fifteen years old, had found other interests, so I tended to miss tutorials. When this happened Boris would remind me of the possible academic consequences of neglecting my studies, but he did so more in resignation than in hope.
The other interest I had found was not pottery, pond-life or play-acting. It was sex, or rather, the distant prospect of sex.
Many people tended to assume that because Dartington Hall School was ‘progressive’ and free of restraints, the life of the pupils would inevitably be an ongoing orgy of sexual indulgence. That wasn’t true.
Quite a lot of fairly heavy petting went on but, as far as I remember, not much else.
The general policy of the school seemed to be one of noninterference. There were no organized house-based activities, so the pupils were mostly left to stew in their juice, which probably explains why the social life was so obsessively sex-centred. Looking back I can see that although it may all have been a bit overwrought, I don’t think it was unhealthy, just children growing up.
My position in this social life was marginal. Being a day-pupil meant that I was always a sort of visitor in the boarders’ houses. This made me slightly uncomfortable. Also I was still very much in awe of girls and knew that if they were not treated carefully they could give you a nasty bite, though their bites were of scorn and derision.
At Dartington, girls began to take on a new light. They became objects of desire and they glowed with thrilling but unspecific allure. I became infatuated with girls in general but I was also in love with one girl in particular. This girl shone in my sky like the full moon. Every ordinary movement she made was steeped in sensual magic and as I watched her I knew that my sole aim in life was to approach her and be as near to her as possible. My infatuation was made all the more intense by the fact that I had no clear idea where my feelings were supposed to lead. I had hardly reached puberty and, although the rabbits had taught me that the sole purpose of courtship was sexual intercourse, the very idea of having to do anything so ungainly seemed to me quite unthinkable and I quickly put such thoughts from my mind. Doing this did not diminish my ardour, it allowed it to be pure, which was a relief. It also allowed it to be private, something which nobody else knew about. Thus it came as a shock to discover that everybody, including the beloved, knew all about my feelings, and that her very natural efforts to avoid my cowlike gaze were being aided and abetted by most of her friends, who were watching the farcical carry-on with derisive amusement.
This was a disappointing introduction
