More scenes materialized. One by one still groups of grey houses, immobile clumps of colourless trees, flat grey fields, broken fences, and complex rusty machines as high as churches, some surrounded by pyramids of gravel, appeared from the mist. These softly offered themselves to our view and slipped away past. They were just suggestions, none of them was real. What was real was the warm rumbling of the ship’s engines.
Sometimes we passed tall thin poles sticking up out of the water, each faithfully reflected by another pole, pointing downwards. I suddenly saw a large fruit-like object clear its way through the mist and float quite swiftly towards us. Well, no, I realized it was anchored; we were approaching it. The thing was about the size of an elephant but fat, ugly and very rusty. It seemed infinitely forlorn, alone in the dirty water.
‘S’berl-burj,’ said the Captain. ‘It’ll clurng.’
He was right. After we had passed the poor thing and were leaving it behind, the ship’s wash caught it and the bell-buoy did indeed go clurng … and then clurng … again; a rusty reproachful sound which did nothing but cause a handful of roosting gulls to lift off and swoop around a few times before settling again on the now-silent buoy.
A small man wearing plimsolls brought me a mug of sweet tea. The cat turned up its nose at this and moved to another window but I stayed watching as a single line of gold was pencilled across the grey sea and, like a curtain, the mist slowly and graciously moved itself aside to reveal that it was a vertical wall of cloud sitting on the water under a wide, cold, very slightly blue sky.
In the sudden clear light our little ship sailed along below this tall, incongruous cliff. The estuary was now so wide that only the far horizon was edged with dark knobbly land and streaks of heavy cloud. I looked up at the cliff of cloud beside us and noticed that the very top of it was shining with pale gold light. I wondered at this for a moment and then, from straight in front of us, the sun, hoisting itself up from behind the streaky clouds, unleashed a shaft of light, a shaft which lit the whole ship and the sea and all the world around us with glorious sunshine, even reflecting it up into the ceiling of the wheelhouse, where it lit, with dappled moving light, the high cobwebby shelf where dusty bottles and packets were stored.
‘Smerning,’ observed the Captain. ‘Brerkfirst?’
‘Oh, yes, please!’ I said. Then, realising that I hadn’t been very polite, I added: ‘And, er, thank you very much, sir, I hope you didn’t mind me …’
‘Nerw,’ said the Captain. ‘Gerw.’
Nobody had told me that Copenhagen, or Kjøbenhavn as I was expected to call it, was full of canals. Well, no, not full, but there were several, with little motor boats that were buses. Nor did they tell me that it was full of bicycles, very full.
In my memory I can see a wide park with railings. It is sunny and I am standing on the pavement beside a crossroads. The traffic policeman turns and puts out an arm. At once the traffic moves forward, but silently, because it consists almost entirely of persons on bicycles, respectable middle-aged persons as well as young ones. A well set-up matron, with her broad hat pinned securely on, pedals sedately past. The back wheel of her old-fashioned sit-upand-beg bicycle has a fan of strings stretched from hub to mudguard to save her skirt from tangling with the spokes. In a basket on the carrier sits a poodle. The rider looks slightly Edwardian and very ladylike, except that she is puffing a cigar.
At another time I saw a well-dressed gentleman come past riding a very superior-looking bike. He was smiling and people were touching their hats to him in a friendly way. A short way behind him came two soldiers in uniform, cycling side by side and chatting together. Later somebody told me that the gentleman was the king, but of course I didn’t believe it.
I liked Denmark a lot. I remember it as being a gentle, courteous place with people who were always kind and really friendly. Perhaps the local courtesy had rubbed off on us because I don’t remember doing much squabbling with John. No doubt I was still very touchy about protocol and ‘fairness’ but I don’t remember being quite as grizzly as usual. If so it must have been a relief to Ray and Daisy and I hope they enjoyed that holiday as much as I did.
III. Conventional Education.
Academically, Woodstock School had turned out to be something of a disappointment so, late in 1936, it was decided that if I was to have a chance of passing the Entrance Examination to a secondary school I should attend a small school a couple of miles away in Friern Barnet which specialized in preparing pupils for that exam.
The school, which I shall call Crumlin House, was run by a North Country family, the Springbottoms, all of whom did their stint of teaching. They may not have been highly qualified but the curriculum was devoted solely to stocking up the minds of the Entrants, as they were called, with the facts and figures required for passing the Secondary Entrance Examination. Mr Springbottom, the headmaster, did occasionally allow himself to take a broader view and tell us that fixed-wheel bicycles were better than free-wheel ones if you were, as he was, a proper cyclist and that it’s the damp muggy weather that gives you colds, not proper cold weather, wise saws that we duly wrote down and committed to memory. He also taught us the arcane language of Business Letters, which included passages like:
Dear Sirs,
Yours of the 12th ult. to hand in re of which we acknowledge safe receipt of same and …
Assuring you of our best attention at all times,
Beg to remain,
Yours faithfully
… which I found quite baffling. This was mainly because Mr Springbottom never explained anything. He and the school saw their task as being to impart information and instruction, not to encourage understanding. So to the question: ‘Why …?’ he would answer: ‘Because that’s what you write.’
The school was also pretentious in a half-hearted way, with rather elaborate uniforms, a school song and long-winded speechdays which dwelt on the Spirit of the School. All this was a bit incongruous in a ‘sausage-machine’ crammer. I suspect it irritated my parents a bit and this may have caused them not to treat the Springbottoms with quite the respect they thought was their due. Mrs Springbottom in particular would make scathing remarks about the stuck-up children of clever-clever parents, which she made sure everybody knew were directed at me – though I hadn’t the slightest idea why.
Things like that weren’t important. Life was real and earnest. We had to be ready, fully primed, for the momentous Examination, at which the Entrants from Crumlin House School would sweep the board and honour their Alma Mater by excelling in all ways. As the day came closer the tension rose to fever pitch. Time after time we sat mock exams using previous years’ papers. I was very frightened and convinced that I would fail but, when at last we were taken to another school to sit the exam and the paper was laid before me, it had written on it:
I had no idea what this had to do with the kings and queens and British Empire geography I had stuffed into my head but, as all the questions were as straightforward as that one, I nipped through the paper and waited for the exam proper to start.
It didn’t start. That was it. We went home. The rest of the week was free, perhaps for us to recover from the rigours of the Exam. On the following Monday Mrs Springbottom addressed Assembly. She told us that the exam had been a great success and thanks to the valiant efforts of the school nearly all the pupils had passed. She told us that she had had letters of thanks from the parents of all the pupils, except one.
‘Except one!’ she repeated, glaring at me … ‘Postgate!’
I