One immediate benefit arising from my decision became quickly obvious. I was no longer an inconspicuous monitor of my school. An aura compounded of snow, ice, dogs and polar bears separated me from my fellow boys, even those who had reached the dizzy heights of the First XV. To my astonishment, this also actually clouded the vision of some of the masters. I exploited this situation to the full so that my last few weeks were the happiest of my years at the school.
My housemaster, for some reason or another, was the last to hear of my new status, and when he called me in to go over my end-of-term report he appeared to think that I was still just an ordinary schoolboy. It seemed that my progress in scripture had only been rated as ‘fair’. He did not feel it to be satisfactory that the word ‘fair’ should appear on the report of one of his monitors and he might feel it necessary to demote me.
I quickly set his mind at rest by telling him my news. A curious expression came over his face when he heard that I was off to the wilds, rather as though I had opened some door in his mind that had been closed for a very long time. He wrote to me in the Arctic several times and I later heard that my replies had been read out at prayers, a signal mark of distinction.
At the end of term a special train came to the school station to pick up the boys travelling to London or beyond. The train left just after 6 a.m. in order to avoid the morning rush, so it was very early one spring morning that I discarded my school uniform and, puffed up with sufficient false pride to still any lurking doubts, set off to prepare myself for my life among the Eskimos.
Some years previously, an old great-uncle of ours had died, leaving my siblings and me £52 each. As I was shortly to become an earner in my own right, I dipped into this money to equip myself for my new life and at once purchased a colourful shirt, riding breeches and a horsy jacket. This gave me, on such occasions as I actually appeared in public in my new outfit, a sufficiently bizarre appearance to cause one of the more spiteful of our neighbours to remark: ‘He looks quite colonial already, doesn’t he?’
My mother, still under forty years old, had hardly dared to even think about the day when she would finally be released to live again, and now suddenly it was within sight. Already she and my sister were filling up the forms necessary to obtain an assisted passage to New Zealand, where they would join my brothers.
Shortly after my arrival home, an important-looking letter came from the Hudson’s Bay Company. It reminded me rather sternly that I had undertaken to achieve competence in bookkeeping and typing before leaving England, and warned me that I would have to produce certificates to avoid being left behind on the quayside. A visit one afternoon to an established business college in the town indicated that this was not going to be as easy as it sounded. They smiled pityingly and showed us the door. We journeyed round all the other colleges in the town. The answer was always the same. They did not undertake to turn out typists and bookkeepers in a matter of weeks. Finally, to my horror, mother unearthed a girls’ college willing to attempt the impossible task.
My frantic efforts to spare myself this frightful indignity were unavailing. In these days of the easy mixing of young people of both sexes it is hard to credit the conditions that prevailed seventy years ago. At school no females were allowed. Even the maids, unless they were grey-haired, had to operate out of sight of the boys. Consequently, unless there was a good social life at home, boys and young men were awkward in their relationships with girls, even singly. Now I was to be put in with a whole college of them!
Like some rare oddity, I was placed at a desk facing two rows of girls and was so busy watching for slights and suspecting all kinds of indignities that I never got to know any of them. I was to become aware before leaving that these girls had a much better idea of natural behaviour than I did.
The women in charge of the place had pulled a few strings, and a few days before my departure presented me with an official-looking but vague document. This declared me to be indoctrinated, both as to the keeping of books and typewriting, though not accepting any responsibility for the outcome of my activities.
After the presentation, one of the other pupils, a small plain girl whose nose was slightly flattened as though having been pressed against a window pane too long, rushed forward and pushed a small package into my hand. It was from them all, she said, to wish me well in whatever outlandish part of the world it was to which I was going.
This sudden expression of goodwill from my contemporaries, and girls at that, quite overcame me. The unexpected kindness never faded from my mind and the gift, a small silver propelling pencil, remained one of my prize possessions for many years.
The Hudson’s Bay Company apparently expected me to transform myself from a schoolboy into a practical handyman in the few weeks available between leaving school and the departure for Canada. They sent a list of the more important arts which it would be wise for me to cultivate. Apart from the bookkeeping and typing, it was desirable, they wrote, to gain a knowledge of the combustion engine, some idea of first aid and experience of simple cooking.
The far northern districts of Canada, being so isolated, were totally dependent on sea travel by motor boat for summer hunting. There were no mechanics as such, so it was important that as many people as possible should be capable of keeping the engines running. The lack of doctors meant that the post staff would have to deal with accidents and illness and a knowledge of basic first aid was vital. Apparently, few Eskimo women had any idea of cooking, so we would have to do our share of preparing the meals.
As the list of necessary accomplishments grew, doubts began to creep into my mind. Had this apparently ideal solution to our problem blinded me to the reality of the situation in which I was going to find myself? Not even my mother, always prepared to believe the best about me, would have claimed any practical virtues for me. Yet it seemed that it was practical people who were wanted. Of what use would it have been to be top of the German class when the motor boat broke down? How could a sound knowledge of history stop me from being sick when someone came to see me with a bone sticking out of their arm and blood everywhere? Would the promise that the form master had assured me I had shown in English give me any confidence to prepare a meal for the weary traveller?
These fears subsided when the final documents arrived for my mother and sister to sign for their passage to New Zealand. Amid the excitement at the prospect of an early release, my natural optimism reasserted itself. When the last day came, it seemed unlikely that we should ever spend time together in England again, so the three of us took a picnic and hired a boat to laze down a river through the quiet Somerset countryside, where we had passed many happy hours in days gone by.
That night I said goodbye to my grandmother. She seemed much affected. She said that she wished that she had had more money so that we could have stayed in England and not gone so far away, but the family fortunes had dwindled and there was nothing she could do. She gave me a little package wrapped up in tissue paper. It contained two spoons and a fork, silver with her family crest stamped on the handles. This was to remind me of all those people who had stared down on my childhood, and how well some of them had acquitted themselves.
Mother and I set off for London early the next morning, my sister having already gone back to her job in Bristol. We stayed at an old-fashioned hotel, and went to a theatre, and after breakfast the next morning made our way quietly to the ten o’clock rendezvous at Euston station. I remember thinking back to our first parting, on the day that mother had taken me down to start school. The tears had streamed down my face then and she had tried to console me by saying that it would only be a few weeks before the holidays. This time the tears streamed down her face as we began to move, and I did not know what to say.
Five years suddenly seemed a very, very long time.
*
I remember little about the voyage across the Atlantic. Being a summer passage, it was calm and uneventful I suppose, with little to do except eat, sleep and play deck games until we reached the St Lawrence river and had our first glimpse of our future homeland. We had a brief run ashore at Quebec, just enough to say that we had set foot in Canada, then the next day docked at Montreal, where our posts would