I don’t know if Foe’s gambling inclinations explored other avenues. I doubt that he was a casino man, unlike R.J.O. Meyer, the famous headmaster of Millfield, who when the day’s duties were over would drive all the way from Somerset to a gaming club in Mayfair with a goodly portion of that term’s school fees in his trouser pocket. Rumour has it that when he plonked it all on red, black almost invariably turned up. On the somewhat daunting return journey in the middle of the night I dare say he would have found it difficult to stick to the speed limit.
To us boys there was no visible lighter side to dear old Foe, who said grace before lunch with a basso profundo solemnity and sang in chapel in a toneless voice somewhere around the baritone mark. He never made much of the high notes. His sermons always seemed to contain some less than compelling strictures; Mr Burrows was not a giggle a minute in the pulpit either and he made it all too plain what the devil had in store for us if we didn’t look sharp. They both made you feel they were arm in arm with the wrath of God. Tuppy took the services in chapel, and wore a surplice as a jovial sort of holy disguise. Miss Paterson (‘Patey’), who sang with a rigorous and tuneless vigour, sat two rows behind the Foxes, who were immediately behind us new boys. Mr Ling, whom we have not yet come across, and who more closely resembled a Chinese god than any Chinese god I have ever seen, did his best in the row in between. The more jolly Mrs Ling clocked in only on Sundays. They sang dutifully, while Mr Sheepshanks, ‘Sheepy’ to us all, played the organ and sang enthusiastically at the same time. Psalms were always harder work than the hymns, and I was glad when we had got the Magnificat and the Te Deum out of the way as well.
Mrs Fox went by the name of Nancy, which didn’t really fit the bill – although Lucretia would have been a bit too severe. I can’t remember Mr Fox ever looking dreamily at her and murmuring, ‘Nancy.’ Maybe he only did this in extremis. Anyway, she remorselessly called him ‘Foxy’, and they begat two sons, both Sunningdalians. By the time I came across George Dacre and Nancy, I suspect they were well past moments of high passion, and neither of them appeared particularly flighty. Mrs Fox looked a little bit like my idea of B. Wooster’s Aunt Agatha, with more than a touch of Lady Constance Keeble, Lord Emsworth’s bloody-minded sister, thrown in. She gave out boiled sweets by the stairwell outside the dining room after lunch on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays with gratuitous suspicion. Eight on Sundays, six on Thursdays, and a chocolate or Mars bar on Tuesdays. They were counted with great exactitude. If, on a recount, she discovered one sweet too many, it was a capital offence and you were lucky if she only took two away.
Mr Burrows was number two in the batting order after Mr Fox, and he didn’t come across well. To a small boy he was alarming, and anyone could be forgiven for thinking at first that he was an all-round shit. I don’t think he liked or felt comfortable with the smallest boys, and there was always a suspicion that he may have been a repressed homosexual. As far as Wodehouse was concerned, most of the time Burrows would have made Roderick Spode, alias Lord Sidcup, alias Oswald Mosley, seem a decent sort of cove. He was slim, reasonably tall and slightly bent. I think he probably had a sense of humour, but he was careful whom he showed it to. When I first came across him he was very much the Dickensian schoolmaster, but if, for whatever reason, you came into prolonged contact with him – as I did when I kept goal for the school and went on to become an unlikely captain of soccer – he was much easier. I then found a friendlier, more amenable side to him. Perhaps he was rather shy at heart, and it was only when he felt comfortable with certain boys that his outer shell fell away. I never knew what his football qualifications were, but obviously he knew a bit about the game. Whenever we played against other schools he would be mildly unforgiving at half time as we surrounded him in a group, each sucking a quarter of a raw lemon in the hope that it might turn us into Stanley Matthews. Burrows was a serious supporter of Newcastle United, and if you mentioned Jackie Milburn there was an outside chance that he might smile, and he would certainly look more favourably upon you. George Beaumont, a good friend of mine who was a member of the Allendale family, came from Northumberland, and was also passionate about Newcastle and Milburn, which meant that he and Mr Burrows became friends. He was a fine outside right, who ran fast and controlled the ball well. George was sadly killed in an aeroplane crash in New Zealand soon after leaving Eton.
Mr Burrows lived in a room, full of heavy dark-brown furniture, between the upper dormitory and the upper cubicles, from where he administered justice and discipline. He was a recognised and fully-paid-up beater, and a cane in his hands was much more a weapon of war than in Mr Fox’s. His initials were JB – for John Berry, perhaps – and his nickname was ‘Budgie’. I never remember any of his teaching colleagues slapping him on the back and calling him John, or Berry for that matter. When I joined the third form, over which he presided, I found him frighteningly unforgiving. If you were clever and were at the top of the form and gained his respect, he was a bit better. If it had not been for the soccer I would have got it in the neck.
I wonder if Mr Burrows was ever truly happy. But before we leave him, I should mention that when some of us had reached a certain age, he would allow us into his room by the upper dormitory at a quarter to seven in the evening to listen to Dick Barton, Special Agent. Agog, we followed the machinations of Barton, Snowy, Jock and the others as though our lives depended upon the breathtaking drama. Dick Barton was definitely not Mr Burrows’ cup of tea, and he never stayed to listen. Later in life I wondered if Mr Burrows ever found an obliging woman. I doubt it. But then, did he ever want one? I imagine every private school in those days had its Mr Burrows.
Miss Paterson, or Patey, who came onto the books in 1940, was not quite polished enough to have been a contender for the Lady Constance Keeble spot, but she, like Mrs Fox, would have been a definite runner for aunt-like status. I think she and Aunt Agatha would have got along pretty well, although she had about her more than a hint of Rosa Klebb, who made James Bond’s life pretty uncomfortable in From Russia, with Love. The debate about her Christian name continues. ‘Emmeline’ has its supporters, but ‘Eileen’ is probably just the favourite. They both fitted. She was spectacularly uncompromising, and did not tolerate nonsense in any way whatever. If she had a sense of humour, she wasn’t letting on. She had the unfortunate habit of shaping her ‘R’s with a loop, as they appear on Harrods vans. This particularly distressed Nicholas Howard-Stepney who spoke contemptuously of ‘Patey Rs’. Patey had a feminine enough shape, but with a keep-your-distance sort of face – and never to my knowledge did she have a single suitor. I think she would have discouraged passion in any form, and might not have been very good at it. She wore sensible shoes and even more sensible stockings, and spoke like a regimental sergeant-major. I can’t imagine her in a warm, let alone a passionate embrace, although people who give that impression can sometimes come up against the wind. Patey was also, rather surprisingly, my first cricketing mentor. She was in charge of the third-form game, and was forever marshalling the troops. The game was played on a small piece of roughish ground somewhere between the raspberry cages and the railway line, which may give it a romantic connotation it does not deserve.
Miss Paterson must have been in her upper thirties, and there was a fair amount of her. She wobbled a good deal, both fore and aft. She loved to take part in the cricket, or at any rate she felt it was her duty to do so. I don’t ever remember her batting, but she always opened the bowling. The pitch was only about fifteen yards long, if that, and while there were two sets of stumps, there were no bails. We had puny little bats, but there were no pads or gloves, and boxes were not even a gleam in anyone’s eye. Patey ran in off about five paces, and bowled underarm with a certain nippiness. If she hit you on the shin, it made you yelp a bit, and she would launch herself into an extravagant, almost