remarked to the Headmistress that they seemed like two halves of a single personality – feeding off each other and challenging each other to achieve more and more.
They both easily won Government scholarships to the high school of their parents’ choice, and although the ranking was never publicly announced, rumour had it that Basil Raatgever had scored the highest mark ever achieved in the scholarship examinations and this was two marks higher than Basil Ross’s mark. The scholarships they won, in fact, nearly put paid to their remarkable joint development and achievement, for Basil Ross was a Roman Catholic and opted to attend St. Stanislaus college, whereas Basil Raatgever’s family, though nominally Anglican, did not practice any religion, and wanted Basil to attend Queen’s College, as his father had done. This proved to be a major crisis for the two boys who, at this time, were the best of friends and almost literally inseparable. The two families met and discussed the problem with the boys’ teacher, Mr. Greaves. He reminded everyone that the boys’ remarkable development as scholars began only when they were placed together at adjoining desks, and continued as a result of their strong friendship and preoccupation with each other. He offered the opinion that to send them to separate schools might cause them to revert to the underachievement that had characterized their earlier classroom efforts. In the end it was reasoned that, although Queen’s College was considered to have the edge academically, the difference was small and the boys seemed to need each other more than they needed top quality teaching. So, since religion was of no consequence to the Raatgevers, but of great importance to the Ross family, the boys would go to St. Stanislaus college.
In the first two years at high school, the boys continued taking turns at placing first and second in class; but their strange competitiveness and hunger for achievement began to manifest itself in other spheres, notably on the sports field. Despite their inseparability and the similarity of their accomplishments, the boys were not physically similar. Basil Raatgever was tall for his age and very thin, while Basil Ross had a somewhat shorter, more muscular build. This difference became more evident as the boys grew older, so that when they took to sports they had to settle for achieving equal prowess, but in different spheres. In cricket, for example, Basil Raatgever was a tall and elegant opening batsman, while Basil Ross used his more muscular physique to good effect as a fast bowler and a useful slugger and scrambler for runs in the lower order. In athletics, there was no one in their age-group who could beat Basil Ross in the sprint events and no one who could jump higher than Basil Raatgever. In this way the boys’ symbiotic relationship, their friendship and their remarkable dominance in all the areas in which they chose to compete, continued for the first few years at St. Stanislaus college.
Their schoolmates always spoke of them in the same breath - ‘Ratty-and-Ross’ – as though they were a single person, and boasted to outsiders about their achievements.
It was in the third form that the trouble between the two Basils began. It started, as always, with little things, such as the fact that Raatgever was the first to manifest the onset of puberty. After a brief period of dramatic squeaks and tonal shifts in his voice, especially when chosen to read in class, Basil Raatgever soon acquired a remarkably deep and rich baritone, which seemed all the more incongruous coming from such a slender body. Basil Ross’s voice took longer to change, and in any case did not ‘break’ dramatically like that of his namesake, but deepened slightly over time, so that by the end of that school year it was different, but still high and somewhat squeaky, compared to Raatgever’s. The other boys began to call them ‘Ratty-and-Mouse’.
Then religion played a part in dividing the two Basils. They both did equally well in religious studies and Raatgever, although not a Catholic, attended weekly Benediction and Mass on special occasions with the other boys. But in the third form, Basil Ross was trained as an altar-boy, and, on one or two mornings a week he got up early and rode down to the Cathedral to serve at 7:00 o’clock mass. On those days he went straight on to college afterwards and did not cycle to school with Raatgever as they had done since the first day of first form.
Basil Raatgever pretended to take it in his stride – he knew he was not a Catholic and could not serve Mass, and he discovered that he did not really want to, but at the same time he was resentful that Ross had found a sphere of activity from which he was excluded. Basil Raatgever sulked, and in small and subtle ways he began to be mean to Basil Ross in revenge. On one of the days when he knew that Ross would pass by for him, unfasten the front gate, cycle right under the house and whistle for him, Raatgever ‘forgot’ to chain the dog early in the morning as he always did. The result was that Skip attacked Ross, forcing him to throw down his bike and school books and clamber onto one of the gateposts, putting a small tear in his school pants. Raatgever came down and berated the dog and apologized, but Ross had heard, above the noise of the falling bike and barking dog, muffled laughter coming from the gallery above.
There were other such pranks and, as with everything they did, Basil Ross tried to outdo his friend in this area as well. By the end of that year, when promotion exams were in the offing, each boy ostentatiously cultivated his own circle of friends and the two factions waged continuous verbal warfare.
Then one day Raatgever said: ‘Ross now that we’re no longer friends, I hope I won’t find your name under mine when the exam results are put up – try and come fifth and give me a little breathing space.’
Ross had replied: ‘Ha, you wish! You know I’ll be coming first in class and I’m certain you’ll be swinging on my shirt tails with a close second as usual – but believe me, nothing would please me more than to put a dozen places between us – even if I have to throw away marks to do it.’
Immediately he had said this, both boys were determined to show that their friendship and equality were at an end. The profoundly shocking result was that Basil Ross and Basil Raatgever were ranked a joint 10th in class in the promotion examinations! Even when they were deliberately determined to do badly, each did so to exactly the same extent – in fact they got identical overall marks – and of course, none of their teachers were fooled as they had lost marks with silly, obvious ‘mistakes’. They were both sent in to see the headmaster and letters were sent to their parents along with their reports.
This incident had the effect of making both boys more irritated with each other and, at the same time, more certain that there was some uncanny chemistry going on between them that prevented them from breaking free of each other. They began to feel stifled, trapped in their relationship.
Then there was Alison Cossou. She was a bright, vivacious convent girl who boarded with relatives in the house next door to the Raatgever’s, because her parents lived in Berbice. Basil Raatgever had known her for years and had found her quite pleasant and easy to talk to, but never had any amorous feelings towards her. Basil Ross too had known her casually, as his friend’s next-door neighbour, but when Alison began attending seven o’clock mass at the cathedral and Ross, serving mass, saw her in a different context, he developed a serious crush on her. He would make sure that he touched her chin with the communion plate; this made her eyelids flicker and she would smile and Basil Ross would thrill to a sudden tightness about his heart. Then they took to chatting on the north stairs after mass. When he began stopping outside her gate and chatting with her in full view of the other Basil, the latter felt that he was being outmanoeuvred on his own doorstep and became incensed. So Basil Raatgever launched a campaign to woo and win Alison Cossou from Basil Ross and this new rivalry intensified the bitterness between them, as well as the hopeless sense that their lives would always be intertwined
This situation continued throughout fourth and fifth forms and the boys’ mutual hostility and constant sniping at each other began to irk the teachers as well as their classmates. They were still considered inseparable and still spoken of in the same breath, but now their fellows adjusted their joint nickname, so that ‘Ratty- and-Ross’ became, derisively, ‘Batty-and-Rass’. Even so, they continued to draw energy and competitive zeal from each other, so that St. Stanislaus won all the interschool sports events in those years as the two friends/enemies swept all before
