Stephen Fry - MOAB IS MY WASHPOT

That entire description of the tish call is lifted, almost whole, from The Liar, but then, when I wrote The Liar I lifted that description, almost whole, from my life, so it seems fair to take it back.

Because of the simplicity with which the rules of the tish call game could be circumvented, because of the frisson of sexual possibility that they hinted at and because I always enjoyed early mornings anyway, they held no particular terror for me as a punishment. Some boys came away from being given a tish call with their faces white as a sheet. They would dutifully get up at the right time, actually get into full games kit, actually run from House to House, puffing and sweating, and actually shower before coming into breakfast and presenting their filled-in slip of paper to the polly who had punished them. I never presented it, always waited for the polly to chase me up, allowing him a moment’s triumphant thought that maybe I had actually dared not to do the tish call and that this time I was really for it.

‘Where is it, Fry?’

‘Second on the left, you can’t miss it. Smells of urine and excrement.'

‘Don’t be clever. I gave you a triple tish call yesterday.’

‘You did? Are you sure you’re not thinking of my brother?’

‘Don’t be cheeky, you know bloody well.’

‘I’m afraid it entirely slipped my mind.’

‘What?’

‘Yes. Awful, isn’t it?’

‘Well, in that case…’

‘And then I remembered, just in time. Here it is… Copping’s signature is especially elegant don’t you think? Such a handsome swagger in the curve of the… such careless grace in the down-swoop of that final “g”…’

Another duty to enjoy was that of Morning Fag. Most juniors hated it when their turn came round, but I counted off the days with mounting excitement. It involved some of the things I loved best: early mornings, the sound of my own voice, efficient service and a hint of eroticism. Maybe I should have been an airline steward…

At seven-fifteen at the latest I would spring out of bed, get dressed and tiptoe out of the dormitory. I would go downstairs to the Hall, where the skivvies would be laying the table for breakfast, bid them good morning, maybe blag a slice of bread and butter off them and check my watch against the clock on the wall. Then upstairs to a table on the landing where was laid out a huge brass bell with a leather loop for a handle. At precisely half past seven I would lift the bell and start to ring. It was heavy and took three or four shakes before the clapper really set itself in rhythm. I would go to each of the dormitories in turn and then, ringing the bell furiously all the time, shout as loudly as I could in an incantatory chant that was identical to that of all morning fags, and is impossible to set down here without musical entablature:

‘Time half past seven!’

As soon as that had been done in the threshold of each of the four dormitories I would then have to dash from tish to tish waking each boy individually, counting – and this was the tricky part – backwards in five second increments. That is to say, I would have to tell them how long they had to go before ten to eight, which was the last time-call they received before eight o’clock and brekker.

Thus, entering each tish and shaking each shoulder I would yell in each ear, ‘eighteen minutes and forty-five seconds tooo go… eighteen minutes and forty seconds tooo go… eighteen minutes and thirty-five seconds tooo go’ and so on until the time for the next general cry and the next ring of the bell which came at twenty to eight.

‘Ten minutes toooooo go!’ was the chant, and then back to the tishes. ‘Nine minutes and twenty-five seconds tooo go… nine minutes and twenty seconds tooo go…‘ before returning to the bell and the final, triumphant pealing and roaring of:

‘TI-I-I-ME TEN TO EIGHT!’

By which time boys would be clattering and roaring and streaming past me, swearing, cursing, doing up their final buttons, foaming with toothpaste and bad temper.

Some boys were terribly hard to wake, and if you didn’t succeed in rousing them fully and they were senior, they would blame you for not being up in time and make your life hell. Other boys were deliberately hard to wake and played secret unspoken games with you. They might sleep nude, under one sheet and present you as you entered the tish with all the signs of deep sleep and an innocent but perky morning erection. The unspoken game was that, as you tried to shake them awake by their shoulder, your elbow or a lower part of the arm might just accidentally rub against their twitching dick. Never a word spoken, this game sometimes went all the way, sometimes was just a little game. In my year as Morning Fag one got to know which boys played this game and which didn’t, just as they presumably got to know which Morning Fags played it, and which didn’t.

This was before I had ever masturbated myself, and although I knew all the theory and was titillated by the idea of sex, I didn’t really get the whole fuss of it. At Stouts Hill I had already learned the hard way just how complex the attitude of the healthy boy was towards queering.

At my last year at prep school, it had become very much the thing amongst a handful of us in our senior dormitory to do a fair amount of fooling around when the others were asleep. A couple of the boys were equipped with a set of fully operational testicles and bushy pubic undergrowth, others like me were not. I greatly enjoyed creeping over to another boy’s bed and having a good old rummage about. I never quite knew what it was that I enjoyed, and certainly the first time I saw semen erupt from a penis it gave me the fright of my life. I have to confess I found it frankly rather disgusting and wondered at nature’s eccentricity: like Noël Coward’s Alice I felt that things could have been organised better. One of the boys in that dorm, we’ll call him Halford, like me not fully ripened but of a sportive disposition, took the same pleasure that I did in wandering around the school naked. Together we would, with roaring stiffies, or what passed for roaring stiffies in our cases, creep around the bathrooms simply glorying in the fact of our nakedness. We might point and prod and giggle and fondle each other a little, and experiment with that curious squashing of dicks in closing doors and desk-lids that seems to please the young, but it was the nakedness and the secrecy that provided all the excitement we needed.

One afternoon, this same Halford was climbing out of the swimming pool when he suddenly got the most terrible cramp in one leg. He yowled with pain, flopped forward on to the grass and started to thrash his legs up and down in agony. I was standing close by so I went and helped him up and then walked him around the pool until the cramp had gone. Fully recovered, he streaked away to change and I thought no more about it.

As the afternoon wore on it became apparent to me that I seemed suddenly to have become extremely unpopular. One is highly sensitive to these things at twelve, I was at least. Highly. My popularity rating was something I was more aware of than the most sophisticated political spin-doctor. But I simply couldn’t understand it. It must have been one of those rare afternoons when I knew I had done absolutely nothing wrong. It was bewildering, but inescapable: boys were cutting me dead, sneering openly at me, sending me to Coventry and falling sullenly silent when I entered rooms.

At last I ran into someone who could explain. I found myself approaching a fat boy called McCallum in the corridor and he whispered something as I passed.

‘What did you say?’ I asked, stopping and spinning round.