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alongside my self-satisfaction: I have established, with amazing rapidity, a reputation for maniacal, self-destructive courage, and so far my single badge of honour is a really rather nasty cut, but I’m a little perturbed at the thought of future injuries I might incur in the line of this particular duty — I can hardly go all coy and sensible, now. Leeping joyfully predicts all manner of horrible fates — a broken spine, a coma, an ear ripped off. But, while I’m concerned, I know I have to go on. I am going to emerge victorious: I am going to win this challenge.
     
     
21 February 1924
     
    Lucy’s letters to me seem either strangely abstract or maddeningly matter of fact. I write to her and talk about what happened between us at Xmas and the night in the golf club and she replies with a lengthy account of an evening of Gregorian chant she attended at St Giles’ Cathedral. I write — poignantly, in the most heartfelt way — about how I miss her and how I detest my life in this school and she responds with detailed plans for her future life as an archaeologist or philosopher or — new, this — a veterinary surgeon.
    Ben L. says his new-found doubts about Purgatory have worked wonders with Doig. They spent a whole afternoon debating over just how long he — Ben — would have to linger there after a lifetime of run-of-the-mill, suburban sinfulness. He says he finds my religion positively bizarre’ and is amazed at how seemingly well balanced I appear with all this mumbo-jumbo in my background. Yes, I said, it’s all balls, isn’t it. H-D would be proud of me.
    It’s my birthday in a week — I’ll be eighteen. My only thoughts are of leaving school and beginning my life afresh at Oxford. I feel I cannot make any plans until I leave this place; it’s as if the years here have been some sort of tiresome, ultimately useless apprenticeship for the real thing that lies ahead. Indeed, these challenges prove the depths of my — our — boredom. This system has to be the most iniquitous and crippling way of educating the intelligent young (it may be wonderful for the stupid and backward young, for all I know) — four fifths of the things I’m obliged to do here strike me as an utter waste of time. Without the company of my few friends, English Literature, History and the rare engagement with some higher mind (H-D) this school — and the expense it entails my parents — strikes me as a national scandal.
    Parcel from Mother — the books I ordered: Baudelaire, De Quincey, Michael Arlen — and chocolate and a two-foot-long chorizo sausage. Do not forget, Logan Gonzago Mountstuart, your unique heritage. The sausage is delicious: hot, shouting with pepper and garlic — and irresistible. I was nibbling slices in chapel and I had this horrible feeling that a miasma of garlic was spreading along the pew. My cut is healing fast: I shall be back on the rugby field very soon. It has the makings of a rather interesting scar.
    After morning chapel Peter and I had a couple of free periods so we went into Abbeyhurst and took tea and crumpets at Ma Hingley’s. Hot crumpets with butter and jam — what could be more ambrosial? The day I can’t enjoy these pleasures will signal some kind of death of the soul. The place was empty apart from a couple of local crones gossiping about their bunions and arthritis. Peter told me he thought he was falling in love with the delectable Tess. I refused to humour him: this is a test, a challenge, I said, something coldly objective — we have to keep feelings completely out of it. But Peter went mooning on about her sweet nature, her innate sensuality, her firm, full figure and how he feels this strange union with her when they work in silence on the horses. I probed a bit further. She prefers men’s clothes, it turns out, for stable work: cavalry twill trousers with elastic-sided ankle boots, and, beneath her jacket, wears braces. As he talked on I could see that it was this image of a