As an English teacher myself, I have at times fed off the fact that I was once a pupil of William Golding's. Authors are largely 'names' to schoolboys (and they tend to remember titles and stories rather than those names) but I have always felt that this personal touch might create some sort of bridge. Being corpulent myself, I was always pleased to point out that Lord of the Flies had been written before I arrived at BWS and that I was not, therefore, the model for Piggy!
Names, however, can be important. For a new boy in C2, it was not hard to work out why 'Scruff' was so called. His fingers were yellow with nicotine (or is that a false memory?) His less than luxuriant beard seemed similarly stained (or was it a yellow of youth flecked with the grey of ageing - 'a sable silvered' of Hamlet?), his black gown had streaks of green as the dye had mottled and seemed to have rents where the cloth had atrophied. In all this there was a contrast with the immaculate 'Gus' Barnes, his Head of Department, with the heavy polished brown shoes, the khaki shirt and primrose yellow tie and, always it seemed, the King's College blazer.
Occasionally, 'Scruff' and 'Gus' could be descried through the smoke in the staff-room. A knock at the door, it opened, enquiry made, a search for the master required and a glimpse of the two playing chess during break. What a formidable department that was: Golding the practising novelist with a famous film about to be released: Barnes, who had contributed to Scrutiny and who stayed with the Leavises in the holidays and 'Jack' Warner the elegant Cambridge graduate, doyen of 'The Studio Theatre' and producer of school plays.
Room G overlooked the Paddock which in those days was grassed and had two ramshackle cricket nets, on the left when looking down. I seem to remember that I sat by the window and that the sun shone in. The master's desk was near me at the front and there was a 'corridor' which ran between the blackboard and the front desks and along the side by the door - an 'L' shape.
'Scruff' would come in with his loose-leaf file in his hand. He would pick up O'Malley & Thompson English 1, set us a task and proceed to pace the 'L'. It is fashionable for authors to deride English teachers as being mere critics and analysts - 'Those who can, do: those who can't, teach.' - but really here was someone who could do and who, thirty-two years on, I do not remember as teaching.
I think that we must have been bored. My over-riding memory is that we measured the length of the 'L' and, each lesson, counted the number of times that 'Scruff' walked along, turned right and along, turned right, turned back and along, turned left and back to his desk. The file was open and appeared full of pages in his own writing. Was it the manuscript of a new novel? However, the high-spot came after he left the room and we calculated the distance he had walked. Folk memory suggests that it was miles.
I rather think that Golding left at the at end of that year or that, in B1, I was taught by someone else. Nonetheless, he had left an indelible impression on my mind and, as I grew older, I was more and more aware that I had been taught by a famous novelist. My last memory of him centres on a book-shop, in the High Street which no longer exists but which as an aspiring English undergraduate I haunted. One day he came in and asked whether the books which he had ordered had arrived. They had, and I was curious. They turned out to be tomes on psychology. Novelists, especially, are praised for deep psychological insights. In my youthful arrogance and scepticism I rather wondered about the purpose of this reading!
Thirty-odd years on, I cherish my memories of 'Scruff' Golding moulded and distorted as they are by retelling and swapping with other OWs. It has been my privilege to teach his novels, for me particularly The Spire, and I look back warmly to the BWS of the sixties. 'Scruff' was one of a pantheon of minds who formed and moulded me without knowing it. I reflect, as I grapple with the prescriptive formulae of the National Curriculum, whether there is still room for the characters of BWS who educated rather than taught us. Unlike Yeats (Easter 1916) I cannot tell it out in verse, but I can recite the names 'Tarz' Taylor, 'Jep' Potter, 'Ozzie' Symes, 'Tich' Bowden, 'Jack' Warner, 'Gus' Barnes and, of course 'Scruff Golding.
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