It was in the third form that the trouble between the two Basils began. It started, as always, with little things, such as the fact that Raatgever was the first to manifest the onset of puberty. After a brief period of dramatic squeaks and tonal shifts in his voice, especially when chosen to read in class, Basil Raatgever soon acquired a remarkably deep and rich baritone, which seemed all the more incongruous coming from such a slender body. Basil Ross’s voice took longer to change, and in any case did not ‘break’ dramatically like that of his namesake, but deepened slightly over time, so that by the end of that school year it was different, but still high and somewhat squeaky, compared to Raatgever’s. The other boys began to call them ‘Ratty-and-Mouse’.
Then religion played a part in dividing the two Basils. They both did equally well in religious studies and Raatgever, although not a Catholic, attended weekly Benediction and Mass on special occasions with the other boys. But in the third form, Basil Ross was trained as an altar-boy, and, on one or two mornings a week he got up early and rode down to the Cathedral to serve at 7:00 o’clock mass. On those days he went straight on to college afterwards and did not cycle to school with Raatgever as they had done since the first day of first form.
Basil Raatgever pretended to take it in his stride – he knew he was not a Catholic and could not serve Mass, and he discovered that he did not really want to, but at the same time he was resentful that Ross had found a sphere of activity from which he was excluded. Basil Raatgever sulked, and in small and subtle ways he began to be mean to Basil Ross in revenge. On one of the days when he knew that Ross would pass by for him, unfasten the front gate, cycle right under the house and whistle for him, Raatgever ‘forgot’ to chain the dog early in the morning as he always did. The result was that Skip attacked Ross, forcing him to throw down his bike and school books and clamber onto one of the gateposts, putting a small tear in his school pants. Raatgever came down and berated the dog and apologized, but Ross had heard, above the noise of the falling bike and barking dog, muffled laughter coming from the gallery above.
There were other such pranks and, as with everything they did, Basil Ross tried to outdo his friend in this area as well. By the end of that year, when promotion exams were in the offing, each boy ostentatiously cultivated his own circle of friends and the two factions waged continuous verbal warfare.
Then one day Raatgever said: ‘Ross now that we’re no longer friends, I hope I won’t find your name under mine when the exam results are put up – try and come fifth and give me a little breathing space.’
Ross had replied: ‘Ha, you wish! You know I’ll be coming first in class and I’m certain you’ll be swinging on my shirt tails with a close second as usual – but believe me, nothing would please me more than to put a dozen places between us – even if I have to throw away marks to do it.’
Immediately he had said this, both boys were determined to show that their friendship and equality were at an end. The profoundly shocking result was that Basil Ross and Basil Raatgever were ranked a joint 10th in class in the promotion examinations! Even when they were deliberately determined to do badly, each did so to exactly the same extent – in fact they got identical overall marks – and of course, none of their teachers were fooled as they had lost marks with silly, obvious ‘mistakes’. They were both sent in to see the headmaster and letters were sent to their parents along with their reports.
This incident had the effect of making both boys more irritated with each other and, at the same time, more certain that there was some uncanny chemistry going on between them that prevented them from breaking free of each other. They began to feel stifled, trapped in their relationship.
Then there was Alison Cossou. She was a bright, vivacious convent girl who boarded with relatives in the house next door to the Raatgever’s, because her parents lived in Berbice. Basil Raatgever had known her for years and had found her quite pleasant and easy to talk to, but never had any amorous feelings towards her. Basil Ross too had known her casually, as his friend’s next-door neighbour, but when Alison began attending seven o’clock mass at the cathedral and Ross, serving mass, saw her in a different context, he developed a serious crush on her. He would make sure that he touched her chin with the communion plate; this made her eyelids flicker and she would smile and Basil Ross would thrill to a sudden tightness about his heart. Then they took to chatting on the north stairs after mass. When he began stopping outside her gate and chatting with her in full view of the other Basil, the latter felt that he was being outmanoeuvred on his own doorstep and became incensed. So Basil Raatgever launched a campaign to woo and win Alison Cossou from Basil Ross and this new rivalry intensified the bitterness between them, as well as the hopeless sense that their lives would always be intertwined
This situation continued throughout fourth and fifth forms and the boys’ mutual hostility and constant sniping at each other began to irk the teachers as well as their classmates. They were still considered inseparable and still spoken of in the same breath, but now their fellows adjusted their joint nickname, so that ‘Ratty- and-Ross’ became, derisively, ‘Batty-and-Rass’. Even so, they continued to draw energy and competitive zeal from each other, so that St. Stanislaus won all the interschool sports events in those years as the two friends/enemies swept all before them.
A month before the O-level exams began, one of the Jesuit masters at the college – one whom all the students respected – had several sessions with them of what, at a later period, would be called ‘counselling’. He sat them down, spoke to them as adults and reasoned with them. He listened carefully to all the recriminations and made them see that their main problem was a sense of entrapment – their fear that they did not seem to have the freedom to be separate and authentic persons, but must always in some way, feed on each other in order to survive and to achieve.
The priest told them it was indeed a serious situation but their bitterness towards each other was a natural reaction as they grew towards the self-assertion of adulthood. He told them that the problem was that they did not know how to deal with their dilemma and with each other, but if they promised him to try, he would help them devise strategies to either extricate themselves from, or survive, the suffocating relationship in which they had been for so long.
O-levels were thus written under a truce and in the sixth form, with the help of the Jesuit father, their relationship steadily improved. Alison Cossou and two other girls from the convent joined them in the sixth form since the subjects that they wanted to do were not available at their school. The girls had a calming effect on the class, especially on the two Basils, who outdid each other in being courteous and pleasant. In the sixth form too, the Basils discovered parties and dancing and it didn’t take long for everyone to observe with wonder that there was no equality of achievement between the boys in that sphere. Basil Raatgever was a natural dancer – he was self-confident and stylish on the floor and could improvise wonderfully in order to flatter the abilities of all the girls.
The girls were enchanted by him – especially Alison Cossou, who declared one day: ‘The man that will marry me must be able to dance up a storm, because I love to dance.’
Basil Ross heard this with dismay but he admitted defeat to himself and considered that Raatgever had won her – for now. It was not that Basil Ross couldn’t dance – he made all the correct movements and had a fair sense of rhythm, but he did not attract attention as a dancer the way his friend did, and even he loved to watch the sinuous perfection of his friend Raatgever on the dance floor.
No one will ever know how the relationship might have developed after school, for, just after writing A-levels, there occurred a shocking and mysterious event which is still unexplained and which claimed the life of one of the boys and altered irreparably that of the other.
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The priest who taught Religious Knowledge and Latin to the sixth forms, Father De Montfort – the same priest who had counselled the two Basils earlier – accompanied the entire final-year sixth on a trip to Bartica to unwind after the A-level exams. The year was 1957, the third consecutive year that such a trip was arranged, the previous two having been very successful and much talked about at the college. No one guessed that this year’s trip would be the