大象传媒

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Soon after VE Day the school governors of Epsom College decided, now that the war in Europe was over, to celebrate by having an Open Day, Founder's Day, later in the summer term, to which parents were invited. On the morning of the day in question there was consternation amongst the staff when it was discovered that the statue of the school's patron saint, St Luke, was seen to be wearing a Carr House scarf. This was all the more remarkable because the statue was in a niche high up on the wall of a tower forming part of one of the main buildings, about thirty feet off the ground. The college's portable fire escape ladder had to be brought before anyone could get up the tower to undo the scarf before any parents arrived.
As soon as the Open day was over, we were all summoned to the Main Hall and a directive was issued by the Headmaster, Mr. Franklin, to the effect that if nobody owned up before nine o'clock the next morning, the whole school would be punished. (This, I think, was a good scheme cooked up between the Headmaster and the Bursar to obtain some cheap labour). Nobody did own up immediately, so the very next day we were all despatched up to the Downs, into a hollow on the golf course running parallel to Longdown Lane South, from the side of which we passed into a tunnel entrance** - long since disappeared - and entered a labyrinthine series of chambers deep in the chalk. This, it transpired, was an underground air-raid shelter constructed at some time during the war. In earlier walks over the Downs we had previously found strange metal chimney-like objects hidden amongst the trees to the west, and we now realised that those were the tops of ventilation shafts. The old shelter contained numerous strongly built wooden beds. The Bursar, it transpired, had bought some of these as a job lot, cheap, and it was our job, as a punishment, to form up in twos and carry them down to the school. In later months they appeared in various places around the grounds - fixed together in pairs, for example, they made decent benches from which to watch the First Team at cricket.
In that summer, my first term in Carr House, I was fag to one of the house prefects. This was not an onerous task, as all I had to do was clean his shoes and dust his desk each day. One day as I was tidying his desk, I realised that the papers I had picked up were a full and complete confession to the placing of a scarf round the neck of St Luke. He had, it seemed, planned it all for late on the evening before Open Day with a boy in another house who, at the last minute, was unable to get out of his dormitory. So he had cajoled a substitute from our house, Carr, to be his assistant. They had 'borrowed' one of the fire-escape ropes intended to be thrown out of the dormitory window in case of fire, and had climbed to the top of the tower. They had thrown the rope over the parapet and the prefect, leaving his accomplice to hold on for dear life, had climbed down the rope, tied on the scarf, and climbed back again. One slip on either of their parts could have been fatal. The confession I saw, in which it was made clear who was the instigator and that his assistant was not to blame, was submitted to the headmaster, Mr. Franklin. The culprit was allowed to sit his exams, then expelled. I believe he got a commission in the Indian Army soon afterwards.

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