2 CRAIGTON HALL
On a golden September morning about the middle of the last century, Major Royle, the headmaster of Craigton Hall, was addressing a small group in his office. Autumn sunshine poured through the high, uncurtained windows, lighting up a fine print of Man In Armour and highlighting the dark panelling around the walls.
The group he addressed was composed of 'home teachers' in training - three young women and a slightly older man. When qualified, they would, like me, visit blind adults in their homes, teaching Braille and crafts, and looking generally to their welfare. The year they spent in training at Craigton Hall was supposed to equip them with the basic skills and give them experience of blind people.
Today, the head had been introducing them to the history of blind education in Scotland.
'The children are all happy here,' he was saying, his long legs stretched complacently beneath his huge desk. 'That is because we give them a lot of activity. They all say they're glad to get back after the long summer holidays.'
'I suppose they're bored at home,' said the slightly older man, ingratiatingly.
'Just so. The parents don't know what to do with them. They spoil them, with too many sweets and too much lazing about. Here they get gym, play football, run about in the grounds.'
'Yes, we've all seen that,' said the male student, brightly.
'It seems a shame, though,' interjected one of the young women. 'To take them away from home for so long. They must miss their families and friends.'
'That's true,' said the Major, rather stiffly, 'at least for some time. But what is the alternative? You can't educate blind children in a normal school. It's a job for specialists.'
'Wasn't there a class of blind children in one of the Glasgow schools before the war?' queried the same young woman.
'Yes, but it never worked. Only the very occasional high flyer did well under that regime. Most languished because they couldn't take the pressure. Here everyone is stimulated to reach their personal best.'
'Is that why Glasgow stopped having blind children in its schools?'
'Partly. But remember the war. Blind children were evacuated from the cities. When the war was over, it made sense for the education authorities to send their blind children here. Small special schools and classes dotted around the country are inefficient. I am the leading expert on education of the blind in Scotland, whether you're talking of very able pupils or those, and unfortunately there are many, who are mentally defective.'
'But I still wonder,' pressed the young woman, 'whether they wouldn't get more understanding of the ordinary world of sight if they stayed at home and went to the local school.'
The Major frowned. This was becoming tedious. The debate went back to Victorian times. It was now settled. It was simply a waste of time to go over it all again.
Aloud he said, 'They can gain that later, when they leave here. We have the best conditions to develop independence as a foundation for the rest of their lives. You've seen how it is here, our beautiful grounds, companionship in the dormitories and hostels. If they weren't here, most of them would be neglected in a two-roomed tenement dwelling.'
The Major looked at his watch. 'I'm afraid I have to finish early today,' he said. 'I am expecting a new pupil very soon and I must talk to the parents.'
The 'home teachers' rose deferentially and left the office.
At the same time the new pupil was about to make his entrance. He alighted from a tram car at the school gate in south Edinburgh, accompanied by his parents. The husband descended awkwardly, encumbered by two large suitcases. His wife followed, turning to give assistance to her son, who looked about 16. When they reached the safety of the kerb, the parents paused to take their bearings.
'That's it over there,' said the father and they proceeded to cross the road,
which was not very busy, for the 'rush hour' was long since over. On the farther
side they came to a large pair of heavy, wrought-iron gates thrown wide apart.
The sign on the right-hand pillar of the
gate read:
'Craigton Hall Asylum and School for the Blind' followed by the Latin legend Dominus Regit Me. None of the three knew this meant 'The Lord Rules Me'.
'Hey!' the father exclaimed suddenly, as he passed between the pillars. 'Look at these dogwoods. Isn't that a gorgeous red bark!'
'Yes, fiery,' murmured his wife, without enthusiasm. 'I suppose this gatehouse here is for the janitor or somebody,' she added.
They began to walk slowly up an avenue of overarching trees, mostly rowan and birch, planted in wide borders, and densely undergrown by holly and other evergreens. The young man could see nothing of them, but heard their leaves rustle in the breeze, like the skirts of Victorian ladies. Then the avenue curved left and the massive gable of the school seemed to shut in the sounds around him.
'Girls' Entrance,' his father read from a signboard fixed to a tree, where a path turned sharply off. 'I think we carry straight on.'
They emerged from the shade of tall elms into bright sunshine, flooding a green expanse of lawn.
The parents stopped to take in their first view of Craigton Hall, where their son was to be a boarding pupil. It was a stately pile of three storeys, with high attic windows peering from under a steeply pitched roof. The broad facade spread left and right of a jutting porch. At each end, a wing protruded to front and rear. High above the porch a clock, mounted on a tall tower, gazed serenely south. Craigton Hall was what it looked; a monument to Victorian philanthropy, echoing baronial pride and chivalry.
As the couple stood pondering all this, the clock struck 12 tinny chimes.
'It's time,' said the father. 'Best go in.'
The mother sighed, as she picked up one of the suitcases. Her husband pushed open the heavy door and she guided her son into a cool atrium. In a far corner they saw a glass-panelled booth where a man was instructing a young woman in the mysteries of telephone operating. As the parents drew close they observed that the young woman was blind and her instructor nearly so. He had evidently heard their approach, for he drew back a glass panel and leaned out, his right ear rather than his gaze directed towards the newcomers.
'Can I help you?'
'Yes thanks. We're Mr and Mrs Barr and we've brought our son Douglas to be
a
pupil here.'
'Very good,' said the receptionist, who was evidently expecting them. 'I'll let the Major know.' Turning to his switchboard he put through a call.
This done, he came out to escort the Barrs through an inner door which
admitted to what was called 'the front hall'. They stood for a minute or two,
which seemed an age to the nervous parents. Then Douglas heard a heavy tread
pounding over the bare flagstones to greet them. Douglas immediately knew that
Major Royle was very tall, for the 'Good morning' boomed from far above his head,
and the massive hand that took his suggested the proportions of a
rugby forward.
The invitation to enter 'my office' was clipped.
As Mum led him in, Douglas heard the claws of a small dog scurrying over the floorboards. He would learn that this pet terrier accompanied the Major everywhere about the school. It now trotted obediently to its basket and settled itself in comfortably, as though authorised to witness the proceedings about to begin.
Motioning the newcomers to chairs in front of his desk, untidily piled with heaps of files, documents and other papers, the head sat down behind and assessed them through his thick horn-rimmed spectacles. These made his eyes seem very large, giving an owl-like appearance to his face, an impression reinforced by the prominent hooked nose. Horace Barr glanced approvingly at his wife. He liked this man's demeanour, which said very obviously, 'I'm the boss.' After a long, scrutinising silence, the Major got down to business. Mr and Mrs Barr's son, he began, in clipped military style, would join 'Senior 2' who were beginning their second year of post-11 education. Douglas had been in the third year at Oaklands school in Glasgow, but this difference received no explanation.
'For the time being he will live here in the school, but in course of time, and provided his conduct reaches the high standard we expect,' (the last words spoken with emphasis) 'he will go to live in the boy's hostel a little distance away. This is just like any other school,' he continued, addressing Douglas directly for the first time. 'You are here to learn and we expect you to do your best. It is not a feather bed. We have many activities out of school - a Scout troop, for example, in which all boys are expected to take part. You will learn our rules gradually, as you go along.'
'What about clothes?' asked Mrs Barr. 'We read in the letter you sent that they can wear their own clothes if they like.'
'That is true,' said the Major stiffly. 'But we prefer it if he wears school clothes. It is not a uniform that will brand him, or anything like that. Just flannel shirt, corduroy trousers, tweed jacket. We like everybody dressed to the same standard.'
It was clear that any objection from Mrs Barr would not be welcome and, for her son's sake, she checked an inclination to argue the point and asked, 'How often will Douglas be able to come home?'
'We allow the pupils home for two weekends each term, but that is dependent on your making the necessary arrangements to pick him up from school. When he is in the hostel he will be free to go home by himself.'
Mrs Barr did not like either of these solutions but again said nothing.
'Between visits, they can write home. One of the staff will write a letter for him.'
'Douglas can type already,' said the father proudly. 'Do you have typewriters that the pupils can use?'
'That can be arranged,' said the head. Douglas, hearing him glance away
through the office window, felt that the question had been a little embarrassing.
'Now it is almost dinner-time,' said the Major abruptly. 'I will ring for Miss
Starkey, the matron, to show you where
to go.'
The whole interview had lasted scarcely 20 minutes. The parents understood the 'you' to include them, so what followed was a shock.
Pressing the switch of an intercom, the major said, 'Ask Miss Starkey to come in now.' An elderly matron entered. Her starched white uniform scraped harshly as she advanced to greet the Barrs, saying nothing to Douglas.
'Take Barr upstairs, Miss Starkey,' said the Major, gathering up some papers. 'Now goodbye, Mr and Mrs Barr.'
Douglas followed the rustling matron out of the head's office into the entrance hall, where he said goodbye to his sorrowful parents. Dad picked up the two heavy suitcases, filled with the redundant clothes, and Mum opened the porch door for him.
In later years, I would often hear Peggy Barr complain bitterly that they had not been shown so much as the bed their son would sleep upon. 'We were just sent packing,' she said.
* * *
Miss Starkey said little in the Major's presence, but silently assessed the newcomer and his parents.
Mrs Barr was still a presentable woman; well preserved with a comely figure. But the accident that blinded her son after a bus knocked him off his bike in a Glasgow street, had greatly altered her. Neighbours had been shocked to see how quickly her face had become lined and her hair grey. Her husband looked every inch the intelligent working man, dressed in a smart brown suit with a light blue stripe, shoes polished to a dazzling gleam. Miss Starkey thought they spoke 'quite nice' (at least for Glasgow people). 'They're decent, respectable types,' she concluded. 'They won't give much trouble.'
It was Douglas who really interested her, however. He was tall and already seemed well set up. She was struck by his eyes, which looked as though he could see. Most blind people have difficulty directing their gaze towards an object. Douglas's eyes seemed to focus on anything that caught his ear and Miss Starkey felt that he was looking directly at her.
His features were already well moulded. She noted the high forehead, surmounted by waves of dark blond hair falling forward. The eyes were deep set above a straight nose and a firm, somewhat jutting chin.
'Could be rather wilful,' she thought. 'He'll need watching.'
She also thought that the appearance of strength and intelligence was slightly countered by the shape of the mouth. It suggested sensuality. That wouldn't do. It was her business to curb anything like that.
Had Douglas known what she was thinking it might have fixed his first impression of his new school. He knew nothing of it of course, and before reflection had time to form very much it was cut short by the clamour of an electric bell, which broke out suddenly right above his head. It signalled the end of morning school. Boys and girls burst out of classrooms to right and left and the corridor became a babble of young voices, talking vivaciously. Douglas had speculated a good deal on what he would find in a school for the blind. He had expected rather melancholy children, groping along with arms outstretched, but these boys and girls seemed full of joy and strode confidently about. He wondered how they could hear where they were going against the deafening clamour of that bell.
Douglas could only stand and listen in astonishment. He heard one boy emerge from the melee and run up to another. Addressing him in perfect mimicry of John Arlott, a cricket commentator whose Dorset accent was then well known on the wireless, he cried: 'Six to the third man boundary!' Simultaneously, he tapped his friend lightly on the crown of the head, clicking his tongue to make the sound of leather on willow.
Douglas, who, like most Scots, knew nothing about cricket, wondered for a moment if he had landed in a madhouse. He would soon learn how important the wireless was to these children during the long summer holiday, and how word crazes sprang up like bush fires at Craigton Hall.
'Wheeze, Dick!' responded the boy whose head had been so insulted. 'Your head may be hollow. Mine isn't!'
Miss Starkey took Douglas by the elbow and steered him through the throng.
'Normally you would go up the boys' stairs,' she said. 'But as the corridor is so
busy just now it will be quicker to go up the grand stairs just here.' She led
him up a deeply carpeted stairway that gave on to a linoleum-covered corridor
above. 'This is the boys' floor. You must never use the grand stairs,' she
instructed. 'And never go up the girls' stairs or on to the girls' corridor
without permission.'
Miss Starkey set off at a brisk pace. It was clear that she expected him to follow. Fortunately, this was not too difficult. Although her soft shoes were almost silent on the linoleum, she rattled a large bunch of keys which she always carried in her right hand.
At the end of the corridor they turned into a duty room, where 'matron' gave instructions to a 'housemother' that Douglas was to be measured for school clothes. This done, Dick Greenslade was summoned.
'This is Douglas Barr, Dick,' the housemother said. 'Show him the top boys' dormitory and then take him to dinner. See he finds his way around the school over the next few days.'
* * *
Dick led Douglas across the corridor into a long dormitory with five iron beds projecting from the wall on each side. One was enclosed within a wooden partition.
'This is Jack Byfield's cubicle - the cubie, we call it. He's out at work just now and sleeps in here at night.'
'Why does a working man live in the school?' asked Douglas.
'Well, he's blind and I suppose he has to live somewhere. He gets his bed and board for supervising the dormie at nights.'
Dick then showed his charge the other beds. Each was identically made up, with the cover tucked in, 'envelope fashion', at the bottom, and the top sheet neatly turned over. Beside each bed stood a simple wooden chair and a 'treasure bag' hung from the head rail. Apart from these objects, the dormitory was bare of furniture. It was lit by four high windows and warmed a little by pipes from a central heating boiler.
Everything about it was Dickensian, not to say spartan. Douglas, however, was not surprised. During the preceding year he had been in and out of hospital, a convalescent home and charity offices. All had cold linoleum, comfortless wooden chairs and starchy supervisors, distantly impersonal. In any case, he had shared a cramped bedroom in his mother's council flat with his brother back in Monshill. This sparsely organised space would not be unwelcome.
Suddenly Dick spoke.
'There's Andy Noble sitting reading a comic on his chair. Noble, you should have spoken when we came in, I didn't see you there.'
'I'm busy,' the other boy grunted, in a tone that plainly indicated he didn't
want to
be disturbed.
'What did you say he was reading?' asked Douglas.
'He's reading the Beano,' said Dick, referring to a popular comic book of the day.
'I didn't know you could get that in Braille?' Douglas said, very surprised.
'You can't,' said Dick, with a patronising air toward the rookie. 'He's reading the sighted comic with his eyes.'
'But I thought everybody here was blind!' exclaimed Douglas, astonished.
'Well, you'll soon know different. Those who can see nothing we call "totals" and those who can see a bit are "partials". I'm a partial and Noble's what we call "a good partial." '
'But if you can see to read, why aren't you in a sighted school?' Douglas asked.
'That's a good question. I couldn't see the blackboard at my school, so they sent me here to Craigie. Why did they send you here, Andy?'
'Same thing,' said Noble, looking up from the comic, then continuing in a tone of exaggerated cynicism, 'You can't see the board there and you can't read with your fingers here. That's education.'
'You see he can only read with his nose about two inches from the book,' said Dick. 'Of course, every boy here is supposed to learn Braille and they do a bit. But laddies like us can read it easier with our eyes. If we do that, though, we get a row for peering down at the page-"scrubbing with our noses", it's called - if anybody can be bothered, that is.'
'How do you mean?'
'Sometimes the blind teachers let on they can't hear us doing it. That's because they can't bear to listen to us reading so slowly with our fingers.'
Douglas was fascinated, just dying to know more about this strange school, but their conversation was cut short by the bell for midday dinner.
'Come on,' said Dick. 'I'll show you where to go. Are you coming, Andy?'
* * *
The three boys went out on to the corridor and turned left. A little way along they found the boys' stairs and descended to the bottom corridor. Though he had been blind for less than a year, Douglas had already become practised in memorising new spaces quickly, so as to gain independence as fast as possible. He therefore paid close attention as they turned left again, reaching the grand stairs. Dick pointed out that there were two narrow passages leading off the corridor, one on each side of the staircase. These gave entrance to the dining hall; the lefthand passage for the boys, the righthand for the girls.
Taking the boys' way, they entered the dining hall, which was another babbling sea of voices, with stone-flagged floor, bare walls and high uncurtained windows. Douglas had almost the impression of a cathedral; lofty and echoing. Dick told him that there were tables ranged along the lefthand wall for 'school' boys and along the right for 'school' girls. There were also two tables set in the middle for the 'hostel' seniors, the sexes also segregated here.
The babble of conversation fell silent when Miss Starkey clapped her hands.
'For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful,' she intoned in a high, quavering voice, like a rather neurotic nun. Dinner consisted of soup, served in an enamel bowl, followed by a simple meal of sausages, potatoes and cabbage, and rounded off with semolina and jam. Douglas observed that the boys complained a great deal about their food, as school children did everywhere. But he had been used to school dinners for many years and these seemed no worse.
After dinner, Dick and Andy offered to show him the layout of the bottom corridor. Standing at the exit from the dining hall, Dick told Douglas to turn right and feel along the wall with his right hand. The wall was a smooth painted surface, broken at intervals by doors in heavy wooden frames, easy to find by touch as they jutted out proud.
'That's Starkey's office,' said Dick when Douglas stopped at the first door. 'Nobody likes her and we all call her "Starchy",' he added in a low tone.
At the next door, Dick said, 'Now you've reached number two. We call some of
the rooms by names and some by numbers, just to confuse you. Number two is the
hostel
boys' cloakroom.'
Douglas felt the door of number two, noting that it had glass panels, unlike Miss Starkey's office. He then proceeded to the next door, which was wooden panelled.
'That's called the smoke room - it's the male teachers' common room.'
An acrid smell of tobacco assailed Douglas's disgusted nostrils.
He hurried on and reached the boys' staircase, down which they had descended before dinner. He again felt its heavy balustrade and the great Newell post which supported it at the bottom. Carefully negotiating the gap of the stairs, he reached the wall that continued on.
'That's number four,' said Andy. 'It's a music teacher's classroom.'
'That's number five, the changing room for gym.'
Douglas now bumped lightly against a locked door facing back down the corridor in the direction from which he had come.
'That's the new gym,' said Dick. 'It was added on a few years ago. Turn left now and come back down the other side.' Douglas found a line of classrooms ranged along the opposite wall, broken by the front hall, opposite the grand stairs. He felt carefully round it, noting the school secretary's office, some chairs for waiting visitors, the connecting door to the outer porch and, finally, Major Royle's office.
In the next half of the corridor beyond the hall and stairs, he found Mr Drury's woodwork room and, at the very end, the boy's playroom.
They entered it at Dick's suggestion. There were hard wooden benches all around and bare lino on the floor, broken and crumbling in places. A loudspeaker, set on a shelf high above, faintly broadcast the BBC Home Service. There were no toys, and indeed no other objects besides a locked piano. You'd have to have a good imagination to play here, thought Douglas.
Leaving the playroom and taking the other side of the corridor, he encountered the girls' stairs, a replica of the boys' at the other end. Then he completed his tour, finding another music classroom, a pantry and a lift shaft, regaining the girls' entrance to the dining hall at the side of the grand stairs.
'Right, Douglas,' Dick challenged. 'What were they all?'
Douglas rattled them all off without a moment's hesitation.
'Hey,' said Dick. 'This laddie's a genius! Partials like us don't have to
remember
like that.'
'No,' Dick muttered under his breath. 'We can see the contrast. The walls are battleship grey, Douglas, and the doors are brown, like shit.'
Douglas was very grateful to the two friends. The great 'baronial' pile seemed less intimidating than it had when he stood nearly an hour before, young, blind and bewildered, under the deafening bell. Dick and Andy now led him back to number two, a small room with a rough, uncovered wooden floor that smelt of sweat and creosote. There were wooden benches down one side to sit on and hooks above to hang up coats.
'This is where the hostel boys leave their things,' Dick said.
'Hostel boys?" prompted Douglas.
'When you are about 16 you leave off sleeping in the school dormitories and go to live in the hostels. There's one for boys and one for girls.'
He showed Douglas a set of pigeonholes, each with the name of a boy in Braille, containing gym kit, Braille books and other odds and ends.
'Here's a football,' Dick said. 'Let's go and have a kick about on the "playgie".'
Douglas's heart sank a little. He had always hated football. But he braced himself now, thinking it could not be too demanding to play football with blind boys, or even good partials.
They went out by a passage that led from the bottom of the boys' stairs, to a wide tarmac playground, bounded on one side by the gym and on the other by a high wire fence.
'I suppose only the partials play football,' Douglas said. 'I can't imagine totals running about out here.'
Before answering, Dick handed him the ball. It was one of the old-fashioned kind, never seen today. It had an internal rubber bladder covered by a leather casing made up of panels stitched together. At the north pole, so to speak, there was a slit in the casing, through which the 'cock' of the bladder protruded for inflation with a pump. This slit, or as it was always called, 'the lady', was then closed by lacing it with a leather thong.
Dick showed Douglas that a split keyring had been attached to this lace, and that a rattle had been made by piercing holes in some beer-bottle tops. These pierced metal discs were threaded one after another on to the keyring so that it looked just like the kind of rattle on a ring that babies sometimes play with. Dick shook the ball and the rattle jingled.
'See,' he said. 'The totals can hear the rattle when the ball is kicked,'
'That's OK if it's on the ground. What if it's in the air?'
'Listen,' said Dick, and he kicked the ball towards Andy, who trapped it neatly and kicked a high pass back. As the ball flew towards them, Douglas could hear the rattle whirring through the air, like the tail feathers of a bird.
'Hey!' said Douglas. 'I still can't imagine how a blind boy plays football with that.'
'Here's wee Davie Shepherd coming,' said Dick. 'He'll show you how to do it.'
A boy much shorter than Douglas strolled up to them.
'Hello, Davie,' said Dick. 'Here's a new laddie, from Glasgow like yourself.'
'What team do you support?' asked Davie. It was always the first question that boys asked each other.
Douglas thought it might seem unfriendly to say he had no interest in football.
'Rangers,' he lied.
'Wheeze,' said Davie, using the private Craigton expression of approval.
'What's
your name?'
'Douglas Barr.'
'He can't understand how totals can play football,' chimed in Dick. 'Will we give him a game?'
'OK,' Davie agreed. 'Are you total, Douglas?'
Douglas said he was.
'You go in goal, Andy,' said Dick. 'We'll all kick in and I'll give a commentary for Douglas, so that he knows what's going on.'
Andy took up his position between two drain pipes, which served very well as goal posts.
'Now,' cried Dick sharply, like a referee blowing his whistle for kick-off, and passed a sitter to Douglas. Douglas just managed to kick it back.
'To me, Dick,' shouted Davie.
Dick began a lively commentary, mimicking a well-known radio personality.
'Greenslade a high ball to Shepherd. Shepherd traps it and shoots left footed. Oh but Noble takes it, high in the air. Noble finds Barr on the left wing - Oh, he's let it through his legs. Shepherd gathers, coming round behind. Shepherd wheels right. A nice dummy round Greenslade and shoots! But he hits the post and Noble gathers.
'Noble out to Greenslade. Greenslade turns, working it right, then sends a high ball in from the corner. My word! Shepherd is there. Where did he come from? Shepherd jumps! A lovely header! It's a go-a-aal! A great goal by the Rangers centre!'
Out of breath, the boys paused to rest. 'That beats everything, Davie,' said Douglas laughing. 'I thought you boys would all be creeping around with white sticks and dark glasses.'
'Not a bit of it,' said Dick, coming over to join them. 'This man would be a good player in any school. He's built like a midget submarine and swims like one.'
'Do you go swimming as well?'
'Aye, every Friday afternoon we go for swimming lessons to the local baths. Can you swim, Douglas?'
Douglas said that he was fond of swimming.
'Wheeze!' exclaimed wee Davie.
The bell rang at that moment for the beginning of afternoon school.
'Here Davie,' said Dick, 'Douglas is in your class. Where are you first period?'
'Lousy Latin,' groaned the midget sub.
'Well take Douglas in, would you? I'm in secondary three, Douglas. That's
technical and we have basket making first period, so I'm going the other way,
down the brae to the
basket shop.'
They parted and went their separate ways.