In the Lap of the Gods 12


by Steve Morgan - Date: 2008-07-04 - Word Count: 561 Share This!

So started the terrible trio. Steve could not have fallen in with a worse pair of troublemakers if he'd tried.

It was going to be a long trip up the mountain once again.

Well known to the masters, Treadray and Noble now had a partner in crime and their names sounded more like a firm of lawyers - Treadray, Noble and Morgan.

"Thanks for sticking up for us," said Noble. "You saved us from a good old fashioned caning from old string-bean Barnett. Shit he can cane. He's the hardest hitter and he has the thinnest cane. You'd think a thick cane would hurt more but it doesn't. The thin ones cut you in half!" He paused half in thought, "but when you go to old Bready he lets you choose your cane from a pile he keeps behind his door so you want to choose the thick one if you can." This was said most matter-of-factly from one who obviously was conversant with boarding school punishments. Steve should have guessed right then and there that they were both trouble but he was just content at this stage to have two pals at his new school. Funny how things work out.

  


"I see that new boy has teamed up with Treadray and Noble," said Barnett wiping the corner of his mouth with his napkin even though there was nothing to wipe. An affectation he deemed necessary in this heathen environment. Someone had to maintain standards. Staff sat at the top table on a slightly elevated platform while the student body occupied the tables organised around the dining room. The student seating was strictly hierarchical with a burly senior prefect at the top of the table flanked by sixth Formers and so on down the table with the Form I boys cowering in a threesome at the bottom. No egalitarianism  fostered here.

It was like a built-in mechanism to ensure that no one got fat. The seniors at the top dished out the food from steel dishes with the juniors getting minor portions leaving the bulk of the meal to the top three or four seniors. With slabbies getting only one sausage and one spud it meant five or more for the lads at the top. No boarder below the Fifth Form ever got a Tuesday doughnut or a Thursday apple as these were ritualistically passed up to the top before the meal even began. You could only lick your lips as they journeyed past you up the table. Nothing was said. Nothing was done, yet everyone knew it went on.

 

"I hope for his sake it doesn't continue. Those two are a couple of out-of-control brats. Always up to no good," This came from Bert Bready a balding man in his late thirties who was a loner and Steve's teacher in a combined Form I and II class. Not being a particularly strong teacher when it came to control, he was 'hiding' in the private school system with its rigid discipline from the more open public system where the students could more easily intimidate staff. Needless to say he had the nickname of Baldy. "I'll be glad when they graduate into your Form 3 classes at the end of the year," he added to Jonathon Ballantyne. "No chance of early promotion I suppose?" grinned Bert.

"You'd be lucky!"

(See Lap of the Gods Parts 1 - 12)


Related Tags: boarding school, church, fights, military, new zealand, survivor, spelling, maori, punishment, caning, new boy, wesley college

Retired Principal originally from England but now resident in New Zealand for the past 55yrs

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