Noisy at the Wrong Times (24 page)

DRAMA QUEEN

A
s I have intimated, there were a couple of activities at Woolverstone that could engage and inspire me to fruitful endeavour. Sport was one, and drama was the other. Neil “Noddy” Clayton became more of a regular fixture in my life during the fourth year. He taught me English Literature and was the drama teacher who directed and produced the school plays. I liked Noddy who was a brilliant teacher, full of bright language, and was one of the early masters when Woolverstone was set up. I set about annoying him immensely.

Serge was a good actor and the year before had stolen the show as a gay art dealer in “Black Comedy”. Noddy liked Serge and detested me, especially my showing off and attention-seeking whilst he was trying to teach us English literature, but he assumed I had similar stage talents to Serge and he wasn’t going to let a little hatred get in the way of useful resources. He ensured I was involved in the forthcoming production for which he auditioned me by simply asking if I had acted before. I said I had. That was enough.

That year, things were going to be different and, rather than taking a standard text for subject matter, Noddy had decided that we ourselves were to conceive, write and develop a series of dramatic pieces. Among a collection of monologues of varying coherence and a ‘movement’ piece where scores of boys wearing stockings on their heads formed a human pyramid to ethereal music was a mini-play about the witch-hunts
and trials of the eighteenth century. For whatever reason, I was playing Daniel Defoe, chief prosecutor of a witch played by Helju Sadler, Pete Fart’s daughter. I do not recall who of us wrote it, but it was full of florid, decorative language that I naturally luxuriated in, affecting the most ridiculously haughty English accent for which I had taken inspiration from Alastair Sim in the St Trinian’s films. I was a horrible ham, but I enjoyed getting the laughs.

I was also the model company member, learning my words, being quiet, attentive and helpful to other cast members during rehearsals. Something very strange had become of me. And I loved the entire process of producing the play. If you gave me a text to read, say, about the effects of glacial erosion, it would pass through my eyes and into a void, where it would evaporate. Give me a script, and the words, both mine and those of every other cast member, would be committed to memory, ordered and filed into neat lines in a strong room from which they would never escape. You were as likely to get a prompt from me as one from the person whose job it was. If you were still forgetting your lines on the second day of rehearsals, I was at you in a trice, criticising your lack of professionalism but offering to help you with it afterwards. So diligently did I learn my part, as well as everyone else’s, the rumour started doing the rounds that I had a photographic memory. I did nothing to dispel it although all I did was allow my brain to do what came naturally, which is to absorb information. I was a fifteen-year-old luvvie who thought the enterprise of producing theatre was as seriously important as drawing up a new Europe. My performance in rehearsals was as committed as it would be when audiences arrived, and Noddy’s advice was taken, discussed and put into practice. For once, I was at the head of a hierarchy on merit and I enjoyed the way that others looked to me, asked for advice and
commented on how good they thought I was. I was in my element and acting was like being given permission to misbehave. You could play the fool, follow the emotional mood of the moment, pull silly faces and, if the script had it, swear in front of masters without fear of repercussion. The play was the school expressing itself, and it was the focus of the entire term. For once, I was speaking words that could be heard by hundreds of people but this time they were listening. For the hours he spent taking me through rehearsal, Noddy Clayton behaved as though the sun shone from whichever of my orifices was not spewing expletives.

The school play that year was a rum old piece precisely because Neil Clayton had encouraged us to write it. As a teacher of English, Clayton was able to count Ian McEwan among his past pupils, and as a drama teacher he produced several fine actors, including Neil Pearson, so we should have taken any encouragement he gave. To this day he is immersed in the world of books, buying and selling valuable libraries. Back then, he was thus immersed because his lessons took place in the library. His knowledge was immeasurable and his enthusiasm, when he wasn’t teeing off at Ipswich golf course, was endless. He enjoyed having us read Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales
in Middle English and it was his reading of it that ensured half of the Miller’s Tale remains with me today, buried in my memory. Some of that might be to do with the fact it is one long fart gag, but nevertheless, Clayton’s evocation of its characters brought it vividly to life. I still recollect the relish with which the arse was proffered from the window in his telling of it.

It would have been uncharacteristic of me to positively exploit such a gifted teacher. So I didn’t. I just took the piss. And on the recurring theme of looking gift horses in the mouth, I did whatever I could to be thrown out of his class. Clayton was
swift to give vent to his feelings about me as I skulked from the library, and although it was often unspeakably rude, it was nevertheless accurate. However, it was not unknown for such a contretemps to occur and for us to be getting along like a house on fire a few hours later in rehearsal. Whether Neil found this relationship bizarre and uncomfortable I don’t really know, but I never gave it a second thought. To me, it was perfectly natural since I wanted to be doing drama and I wasn’t overly keen on English Lit. If the irony of that strikes you as you read this, it is nothing compared to how hard it is hitting me as I write it.

It is impossible to draw a picture of the benign way in which I took to the theatrical arts. The contrast with the boy I have described in this memoir and the boy who showed enormous maturity on the stage could not be wider. I cannot truly explain it. For once, my showing off had a purpose and drew others towards me, as opposed to having the normally repellent effect. Clayton persevered with me in English Lit because he had no choice, but he confidently dragged performances out of me in the play. I wonder at the exasperation he must have felt when trying to get me to pay attention to him in the classroom and just hours later I would be held rapt by his every word. If there was a perversity to it that Neil found hard to account for or tolerate, he hid it well. On reflection, I was not even aware of the dichotomy these two personas represented, and I can easily imagine a scenario where Clayton felt nauseated by what must have appeared wilful at times. I can assure him that it wasn’t.

The first term of fourth year had been pretty good, and the second had been crowned by the school play. The report book shows that things were starting to slip somewhat although I was still hoping to take the English GCSE in the summer (a year early), which was pretty high academic attainment as far
as I was concerned. I had already decided that English was one of the subjects I would get an ‘O’level in – the rest, I hadn’t decided on yet. The tone of most masters in the book is benevolent and encouraging, so I can only think I was, on the whole, being pleasant around the school. The weeks working on the play had been a soothing factor on my behaviour, and I was still singing in the rugby choir under Derek “Doc” Thornbery, which I always enjoyed.

Doc Thornbery was a legend. He was the first rugby coach any of us had, and he had taught hundreds of boys at Under Twelves. In fact Doc wasn’t much bigger than the eleven-year-olds he taught to play rugby. Doc also taught English and it would be fair to say he was one of the most radiant and inspirational teachers I ever had. He was unorthodox, too, leaping up onto the desks and walking from table to table as he elucidated some book, text or poem. He was transfixing, speaking at volume, then a whisper, eyes wide open, hands pressed into gesticulating action, but if your attention wandered, Doc would spring leopard-like across the desks, grab you by the hair and shake you senseless as he continued to recite Shakespeare or Keats. He wore Doc Marten shoes (hence the nickname) and these helped his balance, the cushioned soles offering rudimentary suspension as he bounced across four desks to his target. In the seventies, we all had long hair, but Adebola didn’t. He wasn’t interested in Afros so kept his hair cropped short to his head. When Doc leapt across to his desk one day, he scratched away at Adebola’s head trying to get purchase on the hair that wasn’t really there. After a short while of trying, he took hold of his ear instead and shook him by that. I often think of that little vignette as a metaphor for my school life – when shaking me one way didn’t work, somebody tried something different.

Doc was just as inspirational as a choirmaster, but I never
saw him shake anyone by the hair in rehearsals. I don’t recall how I came to be in the choir – I must have auditioned – but I was a member of the junior choir in the first form so I was singing throughout my school career. I was only marginally less attentive and dedicated to music than theatre, enjoyed singing immensely and in my senior years, I recall performing in various sections of the choir, ranging from second tenor to second bass, so my range was acceptably wide. Our programme was challenging and varied, too, and we gave concerts not just to the school but also to the community at large. Doc had a remarkable ear for voices and could spot a flat note from a thousand paces when he would suddenly crouch low and stare, pointing accusingly at one section of the choir.

“Everyone stop, stop! First basses, on your own, quick!”

Having narrowed down the section, he would set about singling out the culprit until one poor soul would be singing solo, sounding just like the drain Doc had heard above the din of forty other voices. Being that person was unpleasant because a flat note sorely tested Doc’s patience, and he would make you sing the part repeatedly until he was satisfied you had mastered it. I’m bound to say that the choir could sound magnificent, and its peak for me was the performance of Handel’s
Messiah
when a local girls’ school and other choirs joined us to provide the full range of voices required for the piece. We really let them have it with that one.

Despite the choirs at Woolverstone, the school had become musically less ambitious than its earlier years. Weber’s masterpiece
Der Frieschütz
is a complex, beautiful opera but requires considerable vocal and orchestral forces, not to mention complicated staging since magic and all sorts of nonsense is involved. It provides a huge challenge for any professional company, but I was astonished to discover, on looking through some Woolverstone archives, that the school
had produced the opera in the early sixties. Along with it, they had also performed some Britten (the composer actually visiting the school to see the production), Mozart’s
Magic Flute
, Verdi’s
Requiem
, Menotti’s
Amahl and the Night Visitors, The Mikado
and even Smetana’s
The Bartered Bride.
These are hugely ambitious pieces, but the rugby choir was a remnant of what had been a glorious musical and theatrical history. In 1962 alone, the school mounted productions of Bertolt Brecht’s
Mother Courage
, the aforementioned Smetana opera and finally George Bernard Shaw’s play of
Androcles and the Lion
. Other years were equally challenging and remarkable. Perhaps the swinging sixties brought about the demise of such high classical endeavour, but the school certainly continued to produce, with seriousness, classical music and theatre. It must have required huge dedication and commitment on the part of masters too, in particular the music teacher Barry Salmon, although having the pupils in school twenty-four hours a day must have helped a bit. To bring young boys like us to the doorway leading to such high classical art is almost unimaginable today I suspect. It is likely the boys involved never realised that when they took on
Frieschütz
, they were producing one of the great German operas of all time, but they would come to appreciate their enlightenment later in life. That was Woolverstone: anything and everything was possible, and I can imagine the masters sitting down to devise the latest theatrical or musical wheeze, nobody wasting time wallowing in their cleverness.

Except for me.

On stage, I could indulge all sorts of haughty, high stepping self-glorification and nobody would criticise me for it. Theatre and everything attached to it was my academic high point, and it was where the dull, hard, battleship grey of my educational prospects took on a patina in which you could see the bright lights reflected

* * *

The fourth year was punctuated by a skiing trip to Italy. Mum couldn’t afford it, so I would have to earn the fare by taking various holiday jobs. Skiing was impossibly exotic to me. I longed to do it and loved the Alps, having passed through them by train whenever we travelled to see the family in Italy. Most of all, it was another opportunity to show off since I had deduced that being a decent ice skater would stand me in good stead.

Bardonecchia in the Italian Alps was full of other schoolchildren from England. It was late in the season, which meant it was cheap. Adebola experienced hair tugging again when a chattering group of Italian school kids, never having seen a black boy before, encountered him at the mountain café and proceeded to play with his hair.

Naturally, within minutes of arriving on the slopes, we had attracted the attention of a group of public school boys who proffered their school boxing champion “Johnny” as upholder of their school honour. I don’t recall why this happened but it was just like the rugby: they thought we were beneath them. We were in most respects but it wasn’t their place to remind us, we thought. If Johnny and his pals were expecting a conflict under the rules of the Marquis of Queensberry, the rain of skis, sticks, blocks of ice and fists quickly disabused them of the notion. Having asserted our dominance of the mountain, we set about hitting it as often as possible.