Stephen Fry - MOAB IS MY WASHPOT

The real Matthew Osborne is reading this now and laughing. Maybe he is groaning. Maybe he is writhing in embarrassment. It might fall out that one day in the future he will say to his wife or his children (for he is a family man now) that if they happen upon Moab is my Washpot in a library or second-hand bookshop they might be interested to know that he is Matteo. If they do read this book they will look at his grey, thinning hairs and his paunch and his faded blue eyes and they will giggle and shake their heads.

We walked back to the Thing Centre, Matthew thinking – what? Pondering my advice on friendship, ruing the snow that might cancel tomorrow’s match, hoping that his vase hadn’t cracked in the kiln, I could not guess. I walked by his side, everything inside me crying out to make this speech:

‘Come on, let’s just turn on our heels and leave this place. What does it hold for you? There’s nothing here for me. We’ll walk along the road to the end of town and, in the end, someone will give us a lift to London. We will survive there. Whom else do we need but each other? Me with my quick wits, you with your quick body. We could find work doing something. Painting, decorating, stacking shelves. Enough to buy a flat. I would write poetry in my spare time and you would make pots and play the piano in bars. In the evenings we could lie by each other’s side on a sofa and just be. I would stroke your hair with my fingers, and maybe our lips would touch in a kiss. Why not? Why not?’

Instead, we made the rather awkward farewells of those who have just exchanged intimacies -exchanged? I had taken, he had given – and he returned to the pottery shop. With no stomach left for the keyboard I trudged my way back through the snow to Fircroft. I had a horrible feeling if I went to my study I might open my heart out to Jo Wood, so I decided to seek out Ben Rudder, the House-captain and ask his permission to have an early bath and go to bed with a book. I needed to clear it with him so that I could be absent from evening call-over. Rudder could be a stickler: strange to think that such an efficient public school authoritarian should go to Cambridge, get a degree, then a doctorate in zoology, and suddenly transform himself into a committed and far left socialist, ending up as editor of Frontline, the newspaper of the Workers’ Revolutionary Party. Strange, but true. I’ve lost touch however, so maybe now he’s changed again. I hope so, not because I disapprove of the WRP, but because people who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can’t.

Rudder consented to my request and I went upstairs. That’s when it happened.

Everyone has their own story. With some it’s a deliberate and concerted attempt to get things moving, with others it might be the result of a friend’s assistance. A common one is sliding down a rope, I believe. With me it was the old cliché of soap in the bath.

Well, it gave me the shock of my life, I can tell you. I’ve described the slight revulsion of watching that boy’s penis at Stouts Hill suddenly sick up with semen, so I was prepared for the appearance of the stuff itself qua stuff; what I had no inkling of was the physical sensation. I don’t suppose anyone will be able to forget the head-swimming power of their first orgasm. Still, you don’t want to hear any more on that subject. We’ve all been there, unless we’re female in which case we’ve been somewhere else, but I dare say it amounts to more or less the same thing, but in different colourways.

I am certain, certain as I can be, that this breakthrough of mine was a mechanical response to idle lathering and nothing to do with Matthew and my having had my arm round him. At least I think I am certain.

Once I realised, at any rate, that I was not going to swoon into a dead faint or see hairs sprouting from the palms of my hands, I tidied things up and went to bed feeling rather pleased with myself. A good day.

The next day was a bad day. They really don’t come much worse. Like all bad days it started well and full of promise. The world was wedding-cake white, there would be no games. What is more I had no PE on Tuesdays, so it looked like a day of gentle trotting about from lesson to lesson, followed perhaps by a nice fat pigout at the Lower Buttery.

For which, it goes without saying, money would be required. My Post Office account book showed that I had five new pence in credit, not enough even in those far-off days for much more than a slice of bread, a glass of water and a Trebor Refresher. I had recently happened upon a new source of money however:

Matron’s handbag.

After lunch, Matron had coffee with the Frowdes and their guests, and this, I discovered, provided me with a marvellous opportunity to sneak into her flat, which was just off an upstairs corridor, dive into her handbag and snaffle what could be snaffled.

So that lunchtime I was back at the House, after a morning’s Latin, English and horrid, horrid Maths, looking forward to the joys of a splendid afternoon.

How was I to find out what Matthew might be doing? That was the only question that really concerned me. His match would be cancelled. There was talk of tobogganing down the slope that ran down from the Middle – Redwood’s was the nearest House to that area, maybe I would take the path a long way round and see if Matthew was to be found there.

I was still high on my breakthrough in the bath too. For a moment I had wondered if maybe I wasn’t whole. There is some absurd steroid that floats about inside the male and makes him feel ten foot tall just because he’s been able to come. It is founded no doubt on the soundest evolutionary principles, but it is ridiculous none the less. Since I was already close to being ten foot tall without the help of the steroid anyway, its effect may have been weaker on me than on many others, but there was still a great spring in my stride as I climbed the stairs after lunch and headed for Matron’s flat. I should have known better, it was a Tuesday in February. Many of my life’s most awful moments have taken place on Tuesdays, and what is February if not the Tuesday of the year?

I walked casually up and down the corridor a few times to make certain that it was as deserted as usual and then opened the door and went down the little passageway that led to her flat.

There, on her bed was the handbag. I opened it, reached for the purse and then, with terrible swift suddenness, a cupboard swung open and Matron stepped out.

There was nothing I could do or say.

‘Sorry’ I think was the only word I managed. I said it perhaps a dozen times, rising in trembling tones.

‘Go to your tish and wait there.’

It seems Matron had noticed the continual disappearance of money and had worked out when it was going. She had set a trap and I had walked straight into it.

There was no possibility of escape nor any suggestion of an excuse. It was plain that I was the Thief. No hand was ever caught redder, no cash register drawer ever slammed shut on more palpably guilty fingers.

By this time Fircroft knew there was a House Thief and most people guessed it was me, which is why, I suppose, I had diverted my attention away from the House changing rooms and confined my thieving to Matron’s handbag or the Sports Hall and swimming-pool changing rooms down in the school.

Rudder the Captain of House himself came to escort me down to Frowde’s office. The dear man was simultaneously distraught and furious.

‘Damn you, Fry!’ he cried, slamming the table. ‘Blast you!’

The decision had already been made. Rustication until the end of term. Rustication meant temporary banishment home, only expulsion was worse. The camel’s back was beginning to bend and creak.