Two events occurred close together in time, but disconnected. Both had an impact
on me.
The first related
to an Engineering student resident at Halliday Hall. He was charming, somewhat
naïve, and had a habit of saying dumb things. He was to be married in that
early spring of 1964, and seemed not to talk about much else. I rather liked
him, but many people in the Hall would groan when he joined their group or said
something silly related to a television News item or program. There was a stag
night at the Hall, organised by all the Engineering students, and this
character got absolutely plastered, and passed out. Some of his friends carried
him upstairs and put him to bed. At breakfast the next morning he came down
looking most odd. He had been growing a rather wispy young man’s beard for some
weeks – I guess in an effort to look more grown up and manly at his forthcoming
nuptials. His so-called friends had decided to play a prank, so after they had
got him to his room, they organised a razor and some soap. And shaved the left
half of his face. I am not sure he had quite realised what had happened. He was
bleary-eyed, not quite with it, but had decided he needed breakfast to help
with his hangover. He clearly was miserable about what had happened, but had
taken it fairly well. I was later to learn that the so-called friends had also
shaved half of his pubic hair.
Why do people go
that far with practical jokes? At one level you could say that he had not been
harmed physically, but given his nature and behaviours in Hall, he was not only
naïve, but rather sensitive in nature. He had a sort of funny story to tell
(for the rest of his life), but I have always wondered how he explained what
had happened to his new wife, and how he himself came to terms with friends who
were somewhat less than caring friends. They were perpetrators who treated him
like a victim. What I now know about practical jokes is that they invariably
include a modicum of anger, malice, or sometimes envy. The perpetrators (we might
use the term ‘bullies’) are actually courting real physical or emotional
damage. “That will teach him!” they say, laughing amongst themselves. They
would be horrified if something really did happen, and might even be horrified
at my explanation, not wanting to recognise their own underlying feelings.
It took me a long
time before I could make sense of my discomfort about the incident. I had not
been a direct part of the bullying; had not known it was about to occur. But (post
hoc) I was a passive onlooker. Our poor friend did look odd enough the next
morning to make us smile. But I was uneasy, could not shake off the discomfort,
and wondered for a long time whether his personal image had been damaged permanently
in some way. At least our coffin in the Lord Mayor’s Show, and then on The
Underground, had harmed no-one.
The other incident
occurred at about the same time, and was in the context of a Spring Saturday Open
Day at Halliday Hall. There were events during the day with stalls erected
around the grounds. There was a tennis competition. And later that night there
was to be a Halliday Ball with a band; I was never to find out who, or how good
they were.
I had invited Jan,
and while she could not come during the day, I looked forward to seeing her in
the early evening. She arrived looking tense and teary, clearly did not feel
anything like joining in the frivolities downstairs, and we went up to my room
(strictly against the rules, but who cared). She just wanted to be held, and it
was some time before the story leaked out in its entirety. She had got dressed
up, gone to Kidbrook station to catch the train, and in the early evening
darkening light had been followed. Anxious she began to walk faster, and as she
neared the station she had been grabbed. She had rolled down a grassy bank. It
was not clear what his intent had been, but the best we could understand was
that he was a lonely man seeing a pretty young woman, and wanting her. She
fought him off and he ran away, luckily not stealing her handbag or her student
bag with notes for an upcoming paper that had to be written. Luckily Jan was
not seriously harmed physically, though she did have some scratches and
bruises, and her coat had got pretty dirty. But emotionally, Jan was very bruised
again. She had been through the episode in Adelaide, and survived that well,
but this new evidence for the dangers of being alone left her confused, numbed,
distressed and questioning why men did such things. We talked and talked, and I
held her fully clothed, fully protected and loved, throughout a night of
weeping. We had some tricky manoeuvring the next day to escape The Hall without
being seen. We had listened to the music, dancing and frivolity outside in the
night, and I guess everyone was exhausted and sleeping off the effects of
alcohol and a slightly wild night. We
got on with our lives, but I know that it left Jan scarred; it wrecked her
confidence and self-reliance for some time, and she became more tentative than I
had ever known her. But, if it were possible, we bonded more deeply during that
night of upset.
With a group of
others from my year I stood, anxiously fearing the worst, in front of the list
of those who had passed 2nd MB, my eyes not really seeing the names.
“Well done Ged!” said someone, and I had to shake myself to clear my vision and
find my name. Apparently I had passed. It took a while to sink in. And then
several of us were thumping each other on the back, and laughing somewhat
maniacally. Others sloped off, heads hung low. My physiology partner Chris
Lines had failed, and I did not find him in the melee, nor later. As we moved
forward going with this particular tide, there were rather a few friends I was
not to see again, and failed to follow up. I have regrets about that, but we
all got swept up in the excitement of the moment, and the need to make a myriad
new arrangements. Of course, as I have mentioned before, the successful students
were now split into 3 groups to go to their respective hospitals. So there were
highly successful people, whom I had admired, who I would not see again, and
never until now wondered how they got on, what avenues they followed, and
ultimately how successful they were in their careers and lives. One of these
was Rob Walton, a rather formal and correct person, hard working and
thoughtful, and one of our bridge group at Halliday Hall. I miss his solemn
advice, and (what seemed to me) his almost encyclopaedic knowledge base. And I
wonder where he got to in life.
But a small group
of us got down to planning a new place to live; we had to move out of our
beloved Halliday Hall within weeks. Jim Flower (later to become a GP), Richard
Lenz (later to become an anaesthetist (and my best man), Barry John King (also
later to become a GP in Norfolk) and I decided it would be great to move in
together. I can’t remember who found the place, but someone came across a small
two-storey house at 4, Melon Road, Peckham. It only had one large bedroom (that
would take three beds) and a tiny one that took one, but we jumped at the
chance, and got ready to move. I think Jim Flower scored the single bedroom (much
to my chagrin).
It was dirty. It
had previously been abused over many years by students, and we had to work
really hard to clean the place up to make it habitable. The focal point was the
kitchen, which had one of the most filthy and abused gas stoves I had ever
seen. Jan, bless her, used up nearly a whole day of her life to ensure we did
not get food poisoning. And then she cooked a stew for us that night. There was
basic furniture, which needed attention, but we had to supply our own sheets
and blankets, and then had to arrange food supplies and arrange utensils,
crockery and other things that were not part of the deal. We loved it. We
wanted parties. But we also had to discuss the realities of house rules and
some rosters for cooking and cleaning. I was fairly relaxed about it all, Barry
was enthusiastic about everything, Jim had his own strong ideas about how life
should be, and Richard was the sensible, organized grumble bum, who made us see
reason from time to time. It became home.
Melon Road was only
a short walk from The Rye in Peckham, our local shopping area, and only a short
bus ride to Denmark Hill, Camberwell. From memory, Jim had a mini, and was
generous to ferry us around. Sadly the house no longer exists, having been
knocked down several years later (to build flats, of course).
