- ContributedMarriott on his first day in school at Jamaica College.
Louis Marriott, Contributor
This is the thirty-second in a series of articles reliving the years up to Independence by a journalist/broadcaster, whose childhood and maturation coincided with Jamaica's
ON THE day that I entered Jamaica College (JC), Thursday, January 9, 1947, I had lunch three times with different aunts. After the second lunch, with Aunt Cissy, I was posed for a photograph in my premier appearance in my first suit, sponsored by my lunch host to satisfy a requirement of the JC clothes list.
When I returned home from my lunches, Mama rounded up all her children, including my younger sister Madge, adopted by Mammy, and ordered us to kneel. She then said a prayer that I would realise what a great opportunity had come my way and that I would do nothing to jeopardise it in short, that I would not be expelled from JC. Madge made a disparaging sotto voce remark about me as we rose to our feet. Mama heard her and slapped her.
Later, Mama and I boarded the Papine tramcar with my large new brown box-shaped leatherette suitcase. Inside the suitcase were all the items on the clothes list. As stipulated, each item had sewn inside it a label with my name written in indelible black ink.
MY FIRST DAY
Mama and I were an oddity walking with the suitcase halfway up the semi-circular driveway. Other boys were arriving in what were obviously their family cars Austins, Buicks, Fords, Humbers, Pontiacs, Daimlers, Chevrolets, Jaguars, Plymouths, Vauxhalls, Hillmans, Desotos, etc. I felt scores of eyes watching me in amazement, the brains above them no doubt trying to figure what kind of strange creature this was arriving with his mother on foot.
I was assigned to Musgrave House, one of two houses for junior boys. Musgrave boarders lived in the Simms building, named after a former headmaster, Archdeacon Simms, whose ghost was reputed to occupy the loft of the building. Simms House was a long two-storey structure facing Old Hope Road, with a central tower that went up a further story. At the bottom of the tower was a flight of steps allowing access to the bowels of the building through the adjacent vestibule. On the ground floor were a dining room, where boarders had their meals, a second dining room, which came into use when day boys had to be fed too, a form room, the book shop and headmaster Hugo Chambers's office. At the eastern end of the building was the headmaster's living quarters, which he shared with his wife Alma, son Carl, a JC student then in the middle school, and dog Lassie.
At the top of the building was a carving in masonry of a griffin, the mythical half-lion, half-eagle creature that was the school's emblem. I was told that our motto was 'Fervet Opus In Campis', Latin for 'Work is burning in the fields'. I was given a copy of the school's rule book, a little blue pocketbook that prescribed mainly what activities were prohibited. Most of the rules applied principally to boarders. Out-of-bounds areas were defined. Some areas were out of bounds after dark; others out of bounds, period. Among myriad other restrictions, there was to be no talking in the dormitories after lights out; no throwing stones; no climbing trees; no walking on grassed areas; and, perhaps most serious of all, no smoking.
As instructed, I delivered my suitcase and its contents to Miss Rose in the linen room on the first floor of the Simms building. There were four dormitories in the Simms building, numbered one to four, and my bed was in third dorm. Dormitories were out of bounds during the day, so, after a brief introduction to my living quarters, I was let loose to begin my initiation rites on the campus.
BOY - MY NEW NAME
Every new boy especially the small ones was fair game for all other boys. "Come here, boy!" commanded 12-year-olds. I soon learnt that it was an order not to be ignored or disrespected, for those already there hunted small boys in packs. "What's your name, boy?" they asked. That was the only time I seemed to have a name, for I was almost always addressed thereafter as 'Boy'. "You have any sister, boy?" they asked. The affirmative answer was followed by the question, "Which school she attends?" They seemed to lose interest after hearing that it was not St. Andrew High School for Girls.
I had an unfortunate first encounter with a boy of the middle school. He was disconnected from a group of boys who were apparently his friends. They pointed him out to me, told me his name was 'Zeef', and gave me a message for him. When I called him 'Zeef', he was livid. He struck me in the head with his knuckles, an act known in JC vernacular as "cuffing". The other boys told me that I shouldn't have called him 'Zeef'. I should go back to him and apologise, but be careful to address him as 'Mr. Zeef'. However, Mr. Zeef proved equally punishing. I took a number of painful blows before I learnt that his real name was Graham.
SINGER
"Sing, boy," I was ordered. It was standard procedure for new boys to be required to sing. Some knew only songs like the National Anthem, God Save The King, or Mary Had A little Lamb. I knew the popular songs of the day: White Christmas, The Gypsy, Laughing On The Outside, Golden Earrings, Let It Snow, Don't Fence Me In and Louis Jordan's string of hits like Caledonia, This Chick's Too Young To Fry, and Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens. I was a rarity at JC, a boarder from the Corporate Area. It happened because my scholarship included boarding, and it was the consensus at home that I needed the discipline of boarding school. As a Corporate Area dweller, I was exposed to popular songs, which was not the case with the vast majority of boarders, who hailed from rural parishes. Because of my background, working on stage from an early age, I also brought a certain panache to my rendering of the songs. The result was that I was called upon to sing more often than the other new boys. I may have inadvertently picked up a nickname in the process too, for I was soon known as 'Posey' Marriott and singing apart I could think of many other boys with far better claims to the name 'Posey' than I had.
LUNCH TIME
When the supper bell rang, at 6:25 p.m., we repaired to the dining room, where the boarding houses were segregated. The Scotland House boys and their feeder juniors, the Murray House boarders, sat in the eastern half of the dining room. In the western half sat the Simms House boys and Musgrave boarders. We were all on benches facing long tables with knives and forks, jugs of water, starchy foods and vegetables. At the head of each table was a prefect or monitor, with a tureen of meat on the table in front of his space.
There was a raised head table, at which sat all the boarding masters. There was a pecking order in the seating, the head chair being occupied by the senior boarding master, housemaster of Simms House, a Barbadian named Carl Jackman. Being the Latin teacher, Jackman eschewed the use of English in the grace. After hitting a gavel a couple of times to bring us all to our feet, he intoned: "Benedictus benedicat per Jesum Christum Dominum Nostrum." Our monitor dipped a ladle into the tureen, scooped up a couple of beef balls and some gravy, deposited it in a plate and passed it to the boy on the left. The boys relayed it to the other end of the table. The process was repeated on both sides of the table until everyone had his beef balls and gravy. As soon as meat landed in front of a boy, he would request of his neighbour: "Down the line, rice." The request was repeated until it reached the boy sitting in front of the rice, who would then send the container in the direction from which the request came. Often, it was "Down the line, bullets." Bullets had nothing to do with ballistics. They were, in JC vernacular, small spherical cornmeal dumplings.
JC had its own peculiar language. A big eater was a 'blocker'. An urchin was a 'jeep'. The many ways in which one could be attacked in the head included 'smashing', 'specking', 'slamming', 'prenging' and 'splooshing'. There were also many names for one's posterior, such as: 'critch', 'critch box', 'toomy', 'toomy box' and 'tocas'. It was a strange new world that I found myself inhabiting on January 9, 1947. In many ways too it was quite intimidating.
Louis Marriott is a journalist and broadcaster, a former BBC producer/presenter and Press Secretary to the Prime Minister of Jamaica.
