What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
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Gormenghast
SOLVED: Adult Fiction
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SOLVED. Fantasy story about a classroom of unruly schoolboys who conduct a very dangerous act involving balancing on a floorboard outside a very high window, all while the teacher is asleep on the desk at the front of the class. Read around 1983. [s]
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"The black-haired boy with the birthmark had flexed his knees, hollowed his back, clapped his inky hands and leaped from the window-sill out into the morning sunlight, where the branches of a giant plane tree were like lattice-work against the sun. For a moment he was a creature of the air, his head thrown back, his teeth bared, his fingers outstretched, his eyes fixed upon a white branch of the tree. A hundred feet below him the dusty quadrangle shone in the morning sun. From the schoolroom it looked as though the boy was gone for ever. But his pards by the window had flattened themselves against the flanking wall, and their enemies, crouched behind the desks, had their eyes fixed on the slippery floorboards that ran across the classroom like a strip of ice."The boy in mid-air had clawed at the branch, had gripped its end, and was swinging out on a long and breath-taking curve through the foliaged air. At the extremity and height of this outward-going arc, he wriggled himself in a peculiar manner which gave an added downlash to the branch and swung him high on the up-swing of his return journey–high into the air and out of the leaves, so that for a moment he was well above the level of the window from which he had leapt. And it was now that his nerves must be like iron–now, with but a fraction of time to spare before his volition failed him, that he let go the branch. He was in mid-air again. He was falling–falling at speed, and at such an angle as to both clear the lintel of the window and the sill below it–and to land on his small tense buttocks–to land like a bolt from heaven on the slanting floorboard; and a fraction of a second later to thump into the leather wall at the far end of the schoolroom, having whirled down the boards with the speed of a slung stone."
Wow, amazing!! That's it! Thank you so much... And so quick too. Not a short story at all. I had managed to find a short story read to us by the same teacher at around the same time and that was fairly easy ("The Vertical Ladder" by William Sansom, seemingly a favourite of English teachers at the time. The feelings of isolation, despair and resignation are still very fresh after 4 decades!) but this had proved much more elusive. I've just re-read the chapter in full and we were only read the part from the beginning of the chapter up until the other professors are in the hallway outside, the boys realise they have not re-arranged the room correctly and the classroom door handle begins to turn... leaving us wondering whether they got caught. There's nothing like a 40 year cliff-hanger! We then had to "write something similar" in class. I think that's where the idea of the "window being closed" came from: me! haha
I could remember a lot less of it than I'd thought. I'd forgotten all about the tree and the fact that it was a team game but did have a vague inclination that more than one boy might have undertaken the trial.
The description of the floorboards is exactly as I remember it but their arrangement is different and the leap to the tree, the springing back and the landing is pure fantasy:
"Everything was ready. The two loose floor-boards had been taken up and the first of them was propped against the window-sill so that it slanted across and towards the floor of the classroom at a shallow angle. Its secret underside had been scraped and waxed with candle-stubs for as long as could be remembered, and it was that underside which was facing the ceiling. The second of the long floor-boards, equally polished, was placed end to end with the first, so that a stretch of narrow and slippery wood extended some thirty feet across the schoolroom from the window to the opposite wall."
The game was indeed deadly but not because of the 100 foot drop but because of the objects which had previously been catapulted at the players by the other team: "There has been a time when clay - and even glass marbles were used; but after the third death and a deal of confusion in the hiding of the bodies, it was decided to be content with paper bullets".
Funny how Bellgrove changed to Bellfag in my mind but I only heard the passage once, aged about 10 years old, about 40 years ago so I won't beat myself up about that.
This is Bellgrove's description which is exactly as I remember it:
"What, for instance, was that sacklike monster, that snoring hummock, that deadweight of disjointed horror? Vile and brutish it looked as it lay curled like a black dog on the Professor's desk; but what was it? One would say it was dead, for it was as heavy as death and as motionless; but there was a sound of stifled snoring coming from it, with an occasional whistle as of wind through jagged glass. .......the black and shapeless thing was indeed the old master himself, lost beneath the awning of his gown. For his pupils had draped it over his reverend head, as they always did when he fell asleep."
Bellgrove is very much alive at the end of the chapter,
[SPOILER AHEAD]
...unlike the current Head who dies horribly shortly after entering the room allowing Bellgrove to assume the role quickly. I'm annoyed that I will never know why our teacher insisted he was actually dead, perhaps he was re-reading from an excerpt and got Bellgrove muddled with Deadyawn? Anyway, the boys got away with it, that's the main thing.
An odd choice for reading to kids, I'd think, but maybe he liked Peake's use of language? Anyway the Gormenghast books are among my favourites since my teens, so it wasn't any trouble to identify! I hope you enjoy reading them all.
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Gormenghast (book 2) of the Gormenghast series by Mervyn Peake - Genesistrine's find.
What's the Name of That Book???
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I think there was a new boy in the class and he was forced to undergo an initiation ceremony or it might have been a routine “dare” or the forfeit for a lost bet.
The boys quickly lifted a loose floorboard which had previously been waxed and polished on its underside to make it slick and slippery. This board was placed upside down, outside on the window sill of the very high classroom. The boy was forced to stand on the board outside while the window was closed. I can’t remember if the board was sticking out like a pirate’s “plank” (pinned by the closed sash window) or whether it spanned from one window sill to the adjacent one. Either way, the new(?) boy was forced to walk along the slippery plank, risking his life. I can’t remember the ending but I don’t think he fell (although he might have). I’m not sure if he was let back in or was left on the plank outside the window at the end of the story.
One of the characters (including the teacher) might have been called Belfag/Bellfag but I might have mis-remembered this or it might have been “The Bell Fag”; the student responsible for ringing the class bell. (In the UK, the term “fag” was part of the system of “fagging”, common in boarding schools until the late 20th century but now outlawed, where younger students would carry out menial tasks or favours for senior students or prefects. It has no connection to the US derogatory usage of the word.)