Stephen Fry - MOAB IS MY WASHPOT

Donaldson stood by the fence, motioned me to be quiet and then suddenly leaned out and grabbed the wire with one hand before letting go of it again just as suddenly. His body hadn’t jolted or jumped at all.

‘Is it switched off then?’ I asked.

‘There’s a ticker,’ he said. ‘Listen.’

Sure enough, from some control device on one of the corner fence-posts came a regular ticking sound.

‘Every time it ticks,’ said Donaldson, ‘it sends a charge. But if you grab it in between ticks, you’re okay. Go on. Have a go.’

Still fearing some practical joke, I listened to the ticks until I felt sure of their tempo and then touched the wire and let go quickly.

Nothing.

I laughed. This was fun.

We carried on with the game, refining our ability to touch the wire for longer and longer periods as we became more and more familiar with the rhythm of the ticker and together, Donaldson and I bonded in one of those complete moments of childhood friendship that last only as long as the particular period of play, each of us knowing that the next time we met we would be no closer than we had been before.

We were soon joined by other boys, returning from their cricket, rounders and athletics, and Donaldson and I, masters-of-ceremony, initiated them into the Ways of the Ticker.

Then I had an idea.

‘What about this?’ I said. ‘Suppose we all link hands and stretch out in a line. Then one of us grabs the wire and actually gets a shock. The current should go all along the line getting weaker and weaker until it reaches the last person.

‘What’s the point of that?’

‘Well, the winner is the person with the most points. How many of us are there? Fifteen. So the person who actually touches the wire gets fifteen points, the person next to him fourteen and so on, down to the last person who gets one. If you break the link you’re out.'

It took a certain amount of organisation, but eventually some rules were roughed out that allowed everyone to get the chance to be the Fifteen Man, the one who touched the wire and bore the brunt of the current.

Never physically brave I decided for who knows what reason, that I should be the Fifteen Man first. Donaldson was next to me and grasped my free hand. When we were all firmly linked I leaned towards the wire.

‘Remember,’ I said sternly, ‘anyone who lets go is O-U-T out. For ever.’

Fifteen heads nodded solemnly. I reached forwards, held my breath and grasped the wire.

The first tick sent a surge through me that almost knocked me off my feet, but I held on for a second tick, almost unaware of the screams and giggles that were spreading out along the line.

After the third or fourth shock, I let go and looked back.

Fifteen boys were jumping up and down, yelling and giggling. The line had held.

The boy at the end, who had received the least shock was none other than Bunce and he was pink and grinny with the pleasure of having kept his nerve and held on.

We played this game for another half hour and I’m not sure I had ever been so completely happy. There was a combination of delights here that had never come together for me before: the knowledge of sweets and sweets and sweets in my pocket, the pride of a new-found physical courage, the pleasure of being not just part of a game, but master of it, the delicious awareness that I had somehow persuaded fifteen boys to break a school rule. We were in it together. I hadn’t joined in with them, they had joined in with me.

Bunce had never overlooked the casual kindness of our first meeting in the Paddington train. He didn’t ever tag, having too much dignity to be one of nature’s hangers on, but he always liked me, no matter what I did, and he always grinned when he caught my eye and looked sad when I was teased or shouted at or in trouble.

Everyone had enjoyed a turn as the Fifteen Man, we had worked out the right number of pulses to hold on for to ensure the maximum pleasure and now Donaldson and I were conferring on refinements. He suggested that the chain should actually be a semicircle and that the last man in the line should touch the wire at the same time as the first. Someone warned with awe and dread in their voice that this would cause a Short Circuit and that the person in the middle, when the two pulses of current met, would be burnt to a cinder. Perhaps we should collect a pony and use that as a guinea-pig. A pony in the middle of the semi-circle seemed a very funny idea, and a pony being fried to a crisp struck Donaldson as the most fantastically amusing proposition he had ever heard.

‘Oh, we’ve just got to,’ he said. ‘Look! There’s Cloud. We’ll use Cloud.’

Cloud was an elderly grey pony with a great Thelwell-style underhang of a belly. Cloud was the first pony I had ever ridden and I hated the idea of her being electrocuted. I had inherited from my parents a love of animals that I frankly confess to be anthropomorphic, sentimental and extreme. The very sight of bears, seals and the more obviously endearing mammals will cause us all to weep copiously. I shall never forget the red mist that descended over me, years later, when I once saw youths throwing stones at some ducks in a park in King’s Lynn. I picked up some huge pieces of builder’s rubble nearby and started to hurl them at the boys, roaring the kind of meaningless obscenities that only pure fury can put into the mind. ‘You shit spike wank turdy bastardheads… how do you fucking like it, you tossing tossers…’ that kind of thing.

Were Donaldson and I going to fall out over the use of Cloud in the game? I really did not want that, but nor did I want to be the wet-blanket that doused the spreading warm glow of the moment, the kill-joy that dislocated that perfect rhythm of these unfolding new ideas. Improvised childhood games, like children themselves, are imponderably unpredictable in their robustness and their fragility.

I don’t want to paint Donaldson as some cruel monster. I am certain he would no more have countenanced the zapping of an innocent old pony than any of us.

But this was never put to the test.

A voice came clear down the hill to interrupt us. It was the deep and almost broken voice of Evans, a prefect and the school’s best bowler. One of his faster deliveries had once cracked a middle stump in two. He took the Cricket Ball Throwing Cup every year, on one occasion throwing the ball so far that it went clean over a lane and was never found.

‘Fry! Is Fry Minor down there?’

‘Uh oh!’ said Donaldson, nudging me.

I brushed silently past Donaldson and the others, all pleasure drained from me, and started to climb the hill towards the silhouette of Evans outlined on the ridge.

What had I done wrong?

That’s absurd, I knew what I had done wrong, but I could not understand how I could have been found out. It was impossible.

Maybe Mr Dealey had seen me coming out of Cromie’s study. Maybe someone had missed a few pennies from their pocket and had guessed that I had stolen them. Maybe there had even been a witness.

‘Get a move on, will you?’ Evans stood under the great horse chestnut at the top of the hill and glowered down at me as I laboured up towards him. ‘Haven’t got all day.’

He was in his cricket whites, streaked with the long green grass stains of a man who isn’t afraid to dive.

‘Sorry, Evans,’ I said. ‘Only, it’s my asthma. I can’t run too much in this weather…’

‘Oh yes, your asthma. Well, never mind that, I’m to take you to the headmaster’s study.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Asthma and deafness too?’

‘But why? What have I done?’

Evans turned away as I reached the ridge of the hill, not even looking to see whether I would follow. ‘You’d know that better than me. Cromie just puts his head out of his study door, sees me and says, “Evans, track down Fry the Younger and bring him to me at once .”’