Stephen Fry - MOAB IS MY WASHPOT

‘Nothing,’ he said and tried to move on. McCallum was someone of little account and I knew that I could master him.

‘You muttered something just now,’ I said grasping him by both shoulders, ‘you will tell me what it was or I will kill you. It is that simple. I will end your life by setting fire to you in bed while you are asleep.’

McCallum was the sort of gullible panicky fool who took that kind of threat very seriously indeed.

‘You wouldn’t dare!’ he said, proving my point.

‘I most certainly would,’ I replied. ‘Now. Tell me what it was that you said just now.’

‘I just said… I said…‘ he spluttered to a halt and coloured up.

‘Yes?’ I said. ‘I’m waiting. You just said…

‘I just said “Queer”.’

‘Queer?’

‘Yes.’

‘You said “Queer”, did you? And why was that?’

‘Everyone knows. Let me go.’

‘Everyone knows,’ I said, strengthening my grip on his shoulders, ‘but me. What is it that everyone knows?’

‘This afternoon…, ow! You’re hurting me!’

‘Of course I’m bloody hurting you! Do you think I would be exerting this much pressure for any other reason? Go on. “This afternoon…“ you said.’

‘When Halford got out of the pool…’

‘Yes, what about it?’

‘You… you put your arm round him like a queer. Halford is hopping mad. He wants to beat you up.

In my shock, outrage, horror and indignation I let go of McCallum completely and he took his opportunity, scuttling away like a fat beetle, shouting ‘Queer!’ as he rounded the corner out of sight.

I didn’t even remember putting my arm round Halford’s shoulder. I suppose I must have done as I had walked him round the pool.

All the blood drained from my face and I came close to one of those early adolescent fainting fits which sometimes stay with you till late in life, a physical sensation that can overwhelm you if you stand up very suddenly – a feeling that you are close to blacking out and falling down.

Halford thought I was queer because I had put my arm round him. Put my arm round him to support him! The very same Halford who was wandering naked with me around the bathroom not two nights previously. The Halford who taught me how to shut my cock in a door. The Halford who did a backward somersault naked on the floor at me and pushed his finger up his arse, giggling. He thought I was queer? Queer for putting an arm round him when he had cramp? Jesus.

I stumbled to a back stairway to try and find a private place to go and weep. I had got no further than the first landing when I walked straight into the hairy tweed jacket of Mr Bruce, history master and quondam internee of the Japanese Army.

‘Hello, hello, hello! What’s up here?’

The tears were streaming down my face and it was no good pretending it was hay fever. Racked with sobs, I explained about Halford's cramp and the disgust I had apparently caused him when just trying to be helpful. I did not, of course, mention our night time prowls in the nude, the sheer hypocrisy of Halford’s reaction, the unfairness and injustice and cruelty of which was what had really knocked me for six. Mr Bruce nodded gravely, gave me a handkerchief and disappeared.

I crawled my way on up to a bed and lay there weeping until tea, when I decided that I might as well get used to my unpopularity and face the howling mob in the senior refectory.

As I tried to wedge myself into my place on the bench, an artificially huge gap appeared as the boys either side made a huge show of distancing themselves from the disgusting homo who was polluting their table. Pale but resolute I started to eat my tea.

Halfway through the meal a gong sounded. Everybody looked up in surprise.

Mr Bruce was standing at the end of the room, an arm upraised for silence.

‘Boys,’ he said. ‘I have a special announcement to make. I have just heard of a heroic act of kindness that took place by the swimming-pool this afternoon. It seems that Halford got into difficulties with cramp and that Fry helped him to his feet and did exactly the right thing. He walked him about, supporting him carefully all the way. I am awarding Fry five merits for this sensible, cool action.’

I stared down at my plate, unable to move a single muscle.

‘Oh, by the way,’ continued Bruce, as if the thought had just struck him. ‘It has also come to my ears that some of the younger, sillier boys, who are ignorant about such things, think that someone putting their arm around a friend in distress is a sign of some sort of perversion. I look to you senior boys, who have a rather more sophisticated understanding of sexual matters, to quash this sort of puerile nonsense. I hope, incidentally, that Halford has thanked Fry properly for his promptness and consideration. I should think a hearty handshake and good manly bear-hug would be appropriate. That’s all.’

A squeak of brogues on floorboards and he was gone. After one and a half seconds of unbearable silence, palms began to rain down congratulatory thumps upon my back, Halford rose sheepishly from his bench to thank me and I was in favour once more.

Ant Cromie writes me that Jim Bruce died a couple of years ago, God rest, nourish and soothe his immortal soul. He walks now with Montrose, William Wallace and Bonnie Prince Charlie himself. He saved my last term at Stouts Hill and I will honour his memory for ever.

But does that, or does that not tell you something of the psychological minefield one trod through in those days, when it came to questions of sexual nature, of sexuality, as we would say now? The difference between sexual play and queering; the blind terror that physical affection inspired, but the easy acceptance of erotic games.

At Uppingham, much the same views obtained. Those whose morning prongers one brushed as Morning Fag did not think of themselves or of me as queer in any way at all. I am not sure anyone really knew what queer really, really meant. The very idea of it made everyone so afraid that each created their own meaning, according to their own dread of their own impulses.

You could openly admire a pretty boy, and all the middle and senior boys did. It was a sign of manliness indeed to do so.

‘Just ten minutes alone, me and that arse…‘ a sixth former might say as a cute junior walked past. ‘That’s all I ask,’ he would add looking skywards in prayer.

‘Oh no!’ One senior would clutch another as they caught sight of a comely new boy, ‘I’m in love. Save me from myself.’

I think that the logic of it was that new boys, pretty boys, were the closest approximation Uppingham offered to girls. They were hairless in the right places and sweet and cute and comely like girls, they had fluffy hair and kissable lips like girls, they had cute little bottoms like… well, they had cute little bottoms like boys, but hell, any port in a storm, and there’s no storm like pubescence and no port like a pretty boy’s bum. All that public swooning however, was no more than macho posture. It proved their heterosexuality.

Some boys however had the most definite reputation for being queer, in the fully snarled out, spat out sense of the word as it was then used – before, that is to say, its triumphant reclamation by the proud homosexuals of today. I never quite understood how these reputations arose. Perhaps they came about because the accused had been caught looking furtively at someone of their own age in the showers – the furtiveness was more likely to earn you the label queer than open, frank inspection – perhaps they gave off some signal, nothing to do with campness or effeminacy, some signal that the healthy adolescent male responded to with hostility or guilt or desire. Perhaps it was all a dress-rehearsal for the tribal tomtomming of irrational rumour, bigotry and dislike, dressed up and explained as instinct, that today in the wider world decides daily on the nature, character and disposition of the well-known: that asserts Bob Monkhouse to be unctuous, David Mellor to be a creep, Peter Mandelson Machiavellian, John Selwyn Gummer odious and John Birt sinister.