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Looking back on that appalling period of my life I do not feel, as I did then, that it was my fault; nor the fault of my contemporaries, or the local school authorities. The parents, staff, all were caught in a web of undirected menace. Sex, ‘wiggling’ of whatever variety, was the only redeeming thing in our lives. It was not the cause of anything; it obtruded because it shone out – as anything that brought relief in that dreadful darkness would have done. Since it obtruded it became the target for hostile attention. It did not dawn on me that it was ‘wiggling’; it glowed into realization; first darkness, incomprehension; then an incandescence in my reddening cheeks – they knew even before I did. They always did. “Nothing! Nothing!” I would say, “I haven't done anything!”
Years later I complained of a sore place in my mouth to a most formidable, Christian old woman who asked me if it had not been caused by smoking. Since I did not smoke – my first experience of a cigarette had made me sick – I had no difficulty in saying “No”. Then I saw her eyes were staring fixedly at me and I knew I had done something wrong. “No!” I said, “I haven't”, becoming red. The glow burned ever more brightly in my cheeks. “Honestly! I haven't”, feeling angry now as well as frightened. Of course she believed me. She believed me in that quiet, forgiving, Christian kind of way which showed in the bright smile which illuminated her features – and would even have illuminated mine if only I had been a good boy, a nice boy instead of a bad boy, a dirty little wiggling horrid boy. Well, I had not, definitely not put poison in any boy's food. But there it was; ‘Conscience makes cowards of us all’. No one told me that that did not prove I was guilty, but only that we are all cowards. My mouth hurt; maybe my mind hurt. Gradually I learnt – the realization of
the horrible truth about the poison in the food was one milestone on that path of learning – the rules of the game. First, you go and ask for