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with a whistle between my teeth. I discovered that if I blew it, dug my heel randomly into the mud, pointed goalward and announced a scrum-down or indirect free kick every five or ten minutes or so I seemed to be able to get by.
    ‘But, sir! What was the offence?’
    ‘Don’t think I didn’t see, Heydon-Jones.’
    ‘Surely it should be a direct free kick, sir?’
    ‘If it was a direct free kick I would have awarded a direct free kick, wouldn’t I?’
    If it was a great joke that I, a sports-hating, disruptive, anti-social, rebellious triple-expulsee probationary criminal should now be dishing out punishments, blowing referee’s whistles and calling for silence at morning prayers, then it was not a joke that I ever much stopped to examine or smile over. So far as I was concerned my reinvention was complete, and the sly, furtive Stephen who had slunk about on the outside of the healthy decent world was dead and wholly unconnected to the amiable young fogey who made puns in Latin and threatened to flog the Fourth Form to within an inch of their miserable lives if they couldn’t keep quiet for a second, damn it all to Hades and back – and face the front, Halliday, or I shall whip you with scorpions, by the bowels of Christ I shall.
    Such threats were comic hyperbole, of course, but corporal punishment did still exist in those days and at that school. Did I ever raise my hand in violence to a child in the name of discipline and good order? Yes, I confess that I did. I had been beaten myself at school and had never questioned the role of the cane, ruler or slipper in school life. Before you wring your hands or make to wring my neck, let me explain.
    It came about like this …
    I am on duty one evening about a month into my first term. This means that I have to settle the boys down for the night, put out the lights and remain on call for any emergencies and unexpected crises. The dormitories at Cundall are named after seabirds: Avocet, Guillemot, Oystercatcher, that sort of thing. At my own prep school they had been named after trees – Beech, Elm, Oak and Sycamore. I suppose in the twenty-first century’s more sophisticated, child-friendly establishments school sleeping quarters are now called Ferrari, Aston Martin, Porsche and Lamborghini or Chardonnay, Merlot, Pinot Noir and Shiraz, or even Beyoncé, Britney, Jay-Z and Gaga, but in my era, the era of Peter Scott, Gerald Durrell and the TuftyClub, nature and woodland creatures were considered the most meet and seemly sources for boyhood inspiration.
    I switch out the lights in Tern and Puffin and walk along the top landing towards Cormorant, from which dormitory issues an inordinate amount of noise.
    ‘All right, settle down in here! Why is it always Cormorant?’
    ‘Sir, sir, my pillow’s broken.’
    ‘Sir, there’s a terrible draught in here.’
    ‘Sir, I’m sure I saw a ghost.’
    ‘We’re scared, sir.’
    ‘Look. Enough. I’m turning the lights out. Not a squeak. Not. A. Squeak. And yes, Philips, that does include you.’
    Downstairs I go and into the staffroom. A fire is blazing, and I sit down with a pile of exercise books for marking. Before I begin the business of correcting I fish the pipe from the pocket of my tweed jacket. I bring out with it a Smoker’s Friend – combination pen-knife, reamer, tamper and bradawl. I fiddle and scrape and poke for a while, banging out the dottle from my previous pipeful into an ashtray and puffing down the stem like a horn player warming up his trumpet. Next I prise open a tin of Player’s Whisky Flake and peel back a single layer of firm, slightly moist tobacco. The sweet woody smell laced with something that may or may not be the whisky that the brand name promises rises up to greet me like a holy balm. I lay the wedge in my left hand and with the tips of the fingers of my right I begin to massage it into the palm with a firm circular motion. Most pipe smokers prefer a pouch of ready-rubbed, but for me the