'A GOOD YARN'
'Wal', as we called Mr. Walter, was our master in English language and literature at our grammar school for boys. Thumbs hooked in his black gown with its greening patina and in his slightly Welsh accent, he would set us our homework with diverse strict admonitions in advance. Only once did he risk trying us out on the task of inventing the continuation to a set story...

"See if there's any budding Rupert Brookes or Edmund Blundens among you all, heh boy?"

Anything different was a welcome diversion from Wal's flat routines of adverbial nouns and gerunds or of 'weary plodding plowmen' and 'empyting dull opiates to the drains'.

At first it did sound promising to me when he told it would be about a boy at a preparatory school. That was - or had been - home ground for me. I had gone to a boarding school in Sussex until family fortunes changed drastically.

Once I'd heard the text, however, I knew it didn't have the making of a story at all. It was a most pedestrian account of daily prep. school life into which the author had struggled in vain to bring some thin thread of interest. A boy who was to play for the first time in the school cricket eleven at an important fixture had collapsed and been rushed to the sick-bay. The games master had made the boy continue playing in a downpour when he had complained of his cold. After examining him and diagnosing pneumonia, the doctor broke the news that there would certainly be no play for this boy in the match against the school rivals.

"There you are, then. Make some intelligent notes on that now then, boys, and take it on from there, will you!"

We all knew this to be speech in the rhetorical form. Mr. Walter seldom got many spontaneous answers for one never quite knew when it might sound like answering him back. When really irked, Wal could exhibit a unique sort of twacking cuff above and behind the ear, delivered each time with an unfailingly similar technique. It didn't hurt much, yet nobody exactly liked it.

"And no mere padding it out mind you! Try to make a good yarn of it!" 'Padding' and 'yarn' were passwords with Wal... and also therefore with us. We never breathed them in his presence, yet most of us could imitate the way he relished drawling out the words, dwelling on the vowels.

"Keep it good and descriptive. Try to think with a bit of sense and sensibility, like Jane Austen." Wal paused for his literary allusion to sink in . "But it doesn't matter if you can't round it off. It's mainly the syntax that I'll be lookin' for!"

Prep. school or no, that homework hung over my head like a cloud for days. In no way would anything sensible that bore the mental stamp of Austen or Eliot occur to me. How to make a good yarn grow out of that dull opiate stuff?

One way to excite old Wal out of the humdrum rut of grammar was to mention some book or author known to be to his taste. This ploy had been tried with repeated success, starting him off on peculiar book-reviewing digressions. I picked my brains for a clue; he liked war accounts, in particular The Great Escape and The Wooden Horse had qualified as 'rollicking good yarns '. But what help was that? Then there was The Magnet . Several times Mr. Walter had spoken of it with nostalgic amusement bordering on respect. He thought it a sad loss to the literary scene of boyhood. Yes, that sounded more like it.

While I had never seen a copy of that venerable first comic, I was widely read in the pulp it was held to have spawned. It's own Billy Bunter and the Greyfriars menagerie were in fact still cavorting wildly in comic papers like Boy's Own and The Hotspur . Before long, some hope dawned and creative inspiration had me in its grip.

Enlivening plot elements arose; a personal feud had long existed between the sick boy and his games master. The boy blames him openly and bitterly. In silent dudgeon and probably feeling disgrace at having let the hero catch his death, the master had absconded, simply disappeared. This was promising stuff... maybe it was 'psychological' too. What scurrilous errand might not have made the games master disappear, I speculated.

Clearly, the pneumonia had to clear up before the match or the story would die with its victim and lose all but morbid interest. So the boy became fit in time for final selection and stronger yet by the day of the match! Meanwhile, still no sign whatever of the truant master. I began to see my plot as belonging in the suspense genre. Both Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers had once received the stamp of Mr. Walter's approval!

When the deadline came, I was able to hand in my opus with a private glow of achievement. At best it was brilliant, at worst, well... a vacuum had been filled and a burden was off my back, at least.

The days dragged by in their usual mid-term manner. By the time I had lost any sense of expectation, Wal announced that the results were to be made known next day... and there was one contribution that stood apart from all the others, one that he felt would be much appreciated. There was something strangely ironic in the way he conveyed this. I had a nasty feeling that it might just have to do with my contribution. But then, could my attempt be that unique?

When the English language period began, Wal soon dispensed with most of the thirty exercise books, flinging them spine foremost across the room to or at their owners with the usual dexterity in which one could not but detect a certain sporty pride. Reserved on his desk were three of our opuses (or were they opi?). Mine had not been returned! Mr. Walter lowered those tricky eyebrows and promised a special treat, but first he would read two quite commendable efforts.

In mounting suspense and surprise, I listened to some bland realism and grammatical contortions by one of the top boys. Mine could still be the chosen one! The next but last exercise book looked like mine, but the very first words told me that mine was still in reserve. Unless Wal had mislaid it. I knew that Wal was very systematic and, as the minutes dragged on, I became certain that it must be I who had written a genuine yarn !

The first flush of joy I felt as I waited there soon gave way to a sporty sense of modesty. I was really quite glad that no-one else could yet have guessed it was I. None would have reckoned on me ... I who always scored only about average in English. Odd that the inspiration had come to me. In a sense it was not really my effort, it was just a gift from somewhere. Still, for once the muses had apparently not whispered so loud to the others.

As he raised my offering on high, Wal adopted an almost oratorial stance, waistcoat bulging and eyes flashing with a piercing knowingness. The atmosphere of the class lifted at once.

"Wait for it, boy. This is some treat you will experience now!"

So saying, he launched my thriller. Over-emphasizing all the points I had worked in for suspense and mystery, he extended himself on it like on nothing I'd seen him read before. And some of my classmates were enjoying it even more. Seeing him so genial, they laughed at old Wal's performance... or had some amusing angle crept into my style that I had failed to notice? If so, that was another plus for free. I had visions of receiving a more grandiose mark than Wal's favourite boy.

The cricket match was the climax of the piece. One of the full-bearded umpires who had come with the challenging team wore big dark glasses. He gave very unfair decisions even to the weakest of the opponents' appeals, dismissing the batsmen of our hero's team one by one with LBW, caught and run out. The right side was about to lose the match when in comes the hero, still looking slightly feverish etc., to bat 'in the last ditch' so as to save the day. By now the atmosphere at the ground was getting altogether nastier as this unsportsmanly umpire kept allowing no-balls.

Wal hammed it up and it rather irritated me that he overplayed the whole thing. He dwelt with heavy sarcasm on the more obscure clues, drawing out certain key words and pausing meaningfully, even though the grammar sounded o.k. to me. The laughter kept rising around me and I had to face the sorely disappointing idea that my class thought the story was intended as some sort of satire. Yet its thrills held them in suspense all right and Wal had never been so popular before. But soon I could no longer doubt that there was something wrong.

Meanwhile the batting side were about to lose, at which point the hero conveniently receives a ball which he slashes out at...or rather 'a ball at which he slashes out', as Wal himself put it. The ball is a real flier, ascending perpendicularily into the sun. By then Wal had moved over into farcical innuendoes with his movable eyebrows, ready for the coup de grace. The dazzled fielders run to catch the ball, but in the fraáas they manage to hem in the strange, evil umpire. The ball falls. No-one sees quite where, until the umpire falls flat, struck by it on the crown of the head.

When the roar of laughter had subsided. a roar in which I should have liked to take part myself, Wal revealed the final truth with gusto. The umpire, his sunglasses removed, the false beard and wig having come off, was seen to be none other than the truant games master, the traitor to his school! So the umpire was disqualified and the match was declared a draw. The honour of the side was saved, whereupon the boy hero could at last sag at the knees with a most realistic touch of post-pneumonial exhaustion.

I recognised that one of those 'moments of truth', a term much vaunted by Wal, was upon me. Ah well, I resigned myself to grasping the bull by the horns; my drama of good versus evil had missed the mark.

Mr. Walter waited happily and expansively until the stamping, whistling encores were over before stating his opinion. "Utter twaddle! I've never seen such balderdash, such poppycock! There's far too much of that empty-headed sensational rot around today. I'll not mention who committed it, but he should know that its the worst story I've ever read!

I was rather hurt that Mr. Walter seemed to have chosen to overlook all his praise of thrillers and who-dunnits. But then, I had to be honest, I hardly ever had read them.

Above all, there was a real consolation in my defeat; knowing how much pleasure had been given and that, after all, even old Wal had risen from the rut solely on the strength of my script.

Mr. Walter did not return my exercise book to me in front of the class. It came unobtrusively with a later batch and it helped to see that he had given me a good mark.
by Robert Priddy