An affair to remember

It was the summer of 1972, my last night in School House, and I had decided to lose my virginity.

Oblivious to the ludicrousness of the idea that a twenty-something matron would welcome the attentions of a red headed thirteen year old whose voice had only just broken, I planned my campaign with obsessive secrecy. There would be chocolates, it would be passionate, and it would take place after lights out. The route to her room was relatively straightforward (no Great Escape planning required) and I knew where the bed was because she had let me sit on it while listening to records with my friend Nick Duff – Slade’s Come on Feel the Noise, Hawkwind’s Silver Machine and, appropriately enough, T.Rex’s Get it On. Such matronly generosity had been repaid, while she was out, by our rifling through her chest of drawers looking for ‘girl things’: a search in which we managed to mistake a box of tampons for condoms and a curling tong for a vibrator. Since then the sex education talk by the Doctor and Inky (‘If you are ever approached by a senior chap just say you prefer to play with boys of your own age’) filled the gaps in my biological education; but the difference between theory and practice was as wide as the Cheddar Gorge, and the purchase of Health Efficiency Magazine as a dare one Saturday afternoon in Summertown had only exacerbated the idea that women were exotic, impossibly glamorous, creatures whose pleasures would remain ever distant.

That final afternoon I bought a box of chocolates. I saw myself as the Milk Tray Man, dropping from a helicopter down onto a cliff, throwing up a rope, climbing sheer verticals with speed and aplomb before slipping in through a window to leave my gift – or, rather more prosaically, edging through the shadowy corridors of School House in my pyjamas dreaming of an expecting matron in a low cut nightdress.

Having made the purchase with my remaining pocket money I hid the chocolates in my tuck box and waited for night to fall. I would not talk after lights out or answer back as I had done a few weeks before (‘Who is talking?’ – ‘You are sir.’) I would lie still and then, when all was dark and silent, I would pretend I was going to the lavatory.

It must have been 9.30 p.m. when I decided to take my chance. I fumbled for the chocolates that lay, still wrapped, in a brown paper bag. Hiding them inside my dressing gown, I left the dorm and made my way to the room of my best beloved, expecting Paradise.

Already I could hear voices. Sensing the immediate danger of the Master on Duty I made for the bathroom and sat in wait. There, I began to panic. What if matron had gone out? What if she did not know of my love? I must have sat there for all of three minutes until I could stand the tension no longer. I pushed open the door, climbed the few steps, turned left down the corridor and…

Disaster.

‘Runcie. What are you doing?’

‘I’ve been to the bog sir.’

‘I can see that. But why are you walking in the opposite direction from your dormitory? An angle of one hundred and eighty degrees unless I am mistaken.’

‘I don’t know sir.’

‘You DON’T KNOW?’

I tried to move the box of chocolates from my side to behind my back. A fatal error.

‘What have you got there?’

‘Nothing sir.’

‘Nothing? Let me see.’

With all hope gone I decided to throw myself on his mercy. I could not give up on my love. I must confess it to the world.

‘They’re chocolates sir. For Miss Ess.’

The Master seemed to find this amusing. ‘Chocolates,’ he purred, ‘for Miss Ess.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Give them to me.’

Terrified, I handed them over. The Master seemed to take pity. ‘Don’t you worry.’

‘No sir.’

‘Can’t have you wandering down corridors at this time of night. I’ll see she gets them.’

‘Thank-you sir.’

And then he repeated the same phrase. ‘Don’t you worry,’ before turning back towards her room, taking the route I had planned, the pathway to Paradise, and all my hopes were gone.

I returned to the dormitory and wondered whether to confess all to my well-hidden teddy bear. But it was too much, even for him. I looked up into the shadowy ceiling and tried to imagine what might have been…