I was discussing historic child abuse with an old friend last month (as you do, obviously, over a pleasant summer lunch) when she thrust James Scudamore’s 2020 novel in my hand and said darkly: “Read that.” So I did.
Using Max Denyer as his narrator, Scudamore explores the horrors of a life in certain sort of boys’ prep school before the long overdue Children Act of 1989. Apart from the appalling darkness of the sexual abuse it will a very long time before I forget the image of a ten-year-old child cudgelled so severely on the hand that he couldn’t make a fist for six weeks – his punishment for using a telephone box to phone his grandparents. And it is so vivid that I’m pretty sure that this incident is based on something in Scudamore’s own experience.
Max’s father works abroad so he has travelled the world with his parents as well as spending a lot of time with his beloved grandparents in Oxfordshire. The eccentric, earthy, one-off, small-time farmer grandfather, in particular, is drawn with great affection. Then it is decided that Max must board at a prep school six miles away. Decades later he learns that his mother was so upset at the thought of his being left there that she had a breakdown. It is effectively a brutal prison for children – no contact with the outside world apart from a weekly censored letter to parents.
Nonetheless Max eventually makes life-long friends although he’s damaged and struggles with relationships in adult life. Even as a child he is aware that sadists such as the teacher they call “Weapons Davis” (actually Eric Weathers-Davis) had an unhealthy interest in the bodies of young boys although Max himself is never a victim. Long after they’ve all left school, beans are spilled and Weathers-Davis is convicted and imprisoned.
Even more sinister, though, is the story which gradually emerges about another teacher who was kind, pleasant and treated the boys like friends. Crighton, whom they affectionately call Crimble was (is) not what he seems. Scudamore skilfully, but without clumsy signals, shifts his narrative between then, the time in between and now. He is particularly good, for example, at the Price family as the years pass. Luke and Ali were school mates and their much young sister Katharine is an important character. The family owns a house in Tuscany and it all feels very plausible.
Every single child, particularly Max’s friend Simon, who attended that school – and as they get older the network becomes very complex – is deeply affected by the things which happened there. Much of it is unspoken even among themselves. This novel is interesting on the nature of memory, suppression and how we deal with trauma. Ultimately and inevitably the school closes, presumably because of a dip in recruitment. Max visits the evocative, derelict site because it’s left to rot for years before it’s converted into luxury rural apartments.
Of course this is fiction. But there have been plenty of cases like Weathers-Davis when people eventually find the courage to tell the truth about the paedophiles they encountered in certain environments. In fact, it was an alleged incidence known to both of us which triggered the discussion with my friend.
Thank goodness it’s all very different now. Far fewer parents send young children away to board than once did. It’s much commoner to start at 13. Staff are much more carefully vetted and selected. And for the record, I taught in a boarding school from 1993 to 2004. By then the contact with parents was almost daily with pay phones in every boarding house corridor and, by the late 90s ubiquitous mobile phones. I am certain there was no abuse and pretty sure there was very little bullying. Staff were friendly, interesting, interested people deeply committed to the welfare of every student. Some things, as I often say in a range of contexts, really have got better.
Meanwhile English Monsters (the title is from Henry V) is thoughtful, insightful and compelling read with several characters you won’t forget.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian
