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| Another communication failure - this is where the bathroom mirror goes. |
The gardener at my school scowled at us and called we boys vermin. So we in turn called him Vermin. If you came too close, Vermin would smack you across the face. In hindsight it is credible that he wanted us away from his gang mower and certainly not eating his strawberry crop. It worked.
The servants staircase was towards the back of the Edwardian house which was my school. In contrast to the main mahogany stair which served the ground and first floors this back staircase went up to the second floor and down to the basement. The steps were quite small and had metal treads on grey linoleum. There were two flights to each storey and as I got older I found that I could fly down the steps faster missing out more treads. By the time I was eleven I could jump down a whole flight and descend the entire height of the building in a few seconds.
The basement was quite mysterious. Immediately opposite the bottom of the stair was a room housing two enormous oil fired boilers, constantly failing to heat the entire building. It was a bit frightening so best avoided. Moving on to the right was the boot room whose door was carved with every boys intials since the beginning. The next room was locked - Mr Drover taught woodwork there - no nickname for him as he had fought in Burma and would occasionally show us his Ghurkha knife. After this the corridor melted away into darkness and cobwebs.
Turning left at the bottom of the stair was a television room for the sixth formers, introduced to balance the new practice of displaying the first formers’ pictures on the classroom wall. After that was an area occupied by Mr Deans the caretaker. He was a tall but plain scotsman who wore a Churchillian boiler suit. One of his tasks was to clean 42 pairs of black leather shoes on a Wednesday. Mrs Deans was more than a match in facial presentation, having a large wart on her left cheek, and too much lipstick. She did the washing up for 84 boys and staff three times a day.
But Mr & Mrs Deans, of the basement, were the happiest people about - certainly happier than the headmaster who smoked himself to death on the first floor in between beatings and chapel services. The basement wasn’t frightening because, although dark damp and smelling of boiler fuel, the whistle of Mr Deans could always be heard resonating along the corridors - a whistle to summon the sirens from their whirlpools, and with a vibrato of operatic proportions.
I had not heard the like of it since, not until Barry came to do the wiring. I should ask him whether he attended the basement conservatory.
