On Being the Lead Husky

The secrets Golding knew about British schools

Of all the books we were made to read as children, I could never understand why we were supposed to think so highly of Lord of the Flies. Watching the new BBC production reminded me how bullying was fetishised at school.

At the village school there was a boy whose father had died in a motorcycle crash. The boy was a bully. He had come from a special school. We all knew that they were for bad boys. I saw an easy opportunity to get my own back. On the school bus, I said he should go back there now his dad was dead.

There was silence. I looked out of the window.

The brakes squealed and the engine roared as the bus raced round the corners of the country lanes. What I said was horrible, I knew that. I wanted to jump off the bus and run away over the fields in shame.

I was reported to the headmaster. He was a decent man. But he said, “I have to set an example, though I am reluctant.” I could hear the cane swish before it hit me. I knotted the tears and the

unfairness up inside me. It was the first time.

Jack punches Piggy for shame of letting the beacon fire go out. Aged twelve, reading this book, the injustice of it stung me. I could never get much further than that.

At my new school, bullying was an everyday thing. Almost like it was part of the timetable. There was one boy in my class who kept telling me I was a poof. I did not know what it meant, only that it wasn’t a good thing. All the other boys laughed and chanted with him – poof poof poof at me. Once a master came in and saw. I thought he might defend me. He looked for a moment, and turned to walk towards his desk, calling us to order.

The bully had two friends. They got me in the corner of the school yard outside the bogs and held me down, gobbing all over my face and blazer. Even in my mouth when I cried for them to stop.

One day just before class, he approached my desk. Something red filled me up. My fists clenched so hard. I don’t really know what happened, but I ran at him. He wasn’t expecting it. I saw the surprise on his face and felt the bulk of him at the same time. My body crashed into him. Skinny but with enough force. As we both fell, he hit his head on the metal leg of the desk.

There was blood.

I thought they would cheer. But everyone went quiet and looked at me.

I meant to hurt him, I think. But it scared me. For a while he didn’t come near.

A few weeks later, we were on a cross country run, around the playing fields. They must have planned it. I was straggling. The games master who normally kept shouting at us at the back wasn’t there. Out of nowhere, they pounced on me, pushed me face down and silently gave me a kicking. Back in the changing rooms, I washed the blood and mud from my mouth.

That would teach me to fight back.

Back home in the holidays, the gamekeeper took me into one of the old sheds on the farm to teach me how to throw punches. I couldn’t hit him like he showed me. It was the same as when he wanted me to break a rabbit’s neck. The rabbit wasn’t properly dead. He handed it to me. “Finish it off, son.”

But I couldn’t. The feeling of its legs kicking for life. The terror in its eyes. It made me sick. I am not strong. But I could not break something weaker than me.

He gave up when he saw I wasn’t tough like that. But he said something I have never forgotten. At first, I thought it was just a joke.

“You’ve got to try to be the lead husky, son,” he told me. “Or the view is the same all the way.”

It has taken me a lifetime to work out what he meant.