William Golding was a somewhat unconventional figure on the BWS staff by the standards of the 1950s. Men with beards were not all that common then and his old sports jackets and baggy trousers contrasted with the suits(?) worn by many of the other staff - hence, I suppose, his universal nickname of 'Scruff' Golding. Occasionally this was modified to 'Old Scruff to distinguish him from his son ('Young Scruff') who was in our year-group - and no scruffier than any of the rest of us!
My clearest memories are of the time that he was my form tutor (probably in the fourth year, or Lower Intermediate as it was then called). We were forced to attend school on Saturday mornings (a tradition continued, it was rumoured, because of F. C. Happold's disapproval of the Saturday morning cinema club at the Regal!). Mr Golding had the unenviable task of teaching us Religious Knowledge in the last period before we were released for the weekend. I don't think his teachings often touched on the Bible - much more often, he would tell us tales of the ancient Greeks. (Perhaps my life-long love of Greece partly stems from this.) These lessons were in a classroom at the top of the stairs near the chapel, with a view out to Salisbury Cathedral spire. I don't remember day-dreaming across that view in Golding's lessons; but in 'Dicky' Coombes' Maths lessons, I used to watch the little railway going up and down the spire taking blocks of stone for the repairs going on at that time.
As his form, we were vaguely aware that he was 'writing a book' - without realising that many of us were contributing to the characters in the book - let alone that it would become one of the best-known works of fiction of the period and a 'set book' for schools of the future. Of course, the schoolboys in the book are universal characters - that is why the book is so greatly esteemed - but I have always been sure that my contemporaries were uppermost in his mind as the story developed. I don't suppose it was always a one-to-one relationship; I refuse to say which character in the book my own 15-year-old self contributed to, but I can remember the other lad, some of whose character traits were rolled in with mine.
I think my clearest image of 'Scruff' is one evening, while I was still a pupil in the lower part of the school, when I went to Salisbury Fair with my parents. Walking between the dodgems and the roundabouts, we almost collided with William Golding, strolling with his family - he was eating an enormous pink candy-floss and getting it all tangled up with his beard! I was not accustomed to meeting teachers 'out-of-context' and it was such an incongruous image that it has remained with me ever since.
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