Far, Far the Mountain Peak Read online

  About the author

  Born in Newcastle in 1942, Arthur Clifford was educated at Rugby School and Newcastle University. He went on to train as a teacher and subsequently taught in schools in Uganda, Scotland and England. In the late 1990s he retrained as a TEFL teacher and taught English in Siberia, Budapest and Romania. He is a keen mountain climber, having climbed in the Andes and Siberia, and scaled some of the world’s most famous peaks, including Mount Ararat and Kilimanjaro. As a teacher, he led expeditions to Peru, Turkey, India and East Africa. He lives in Durham.

  FAR, FAR

  THE MOUNTAIN PEAK

  A BUMPY JOURNEY

  Arthur Clifford

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by

  The Book Guild Ltd

  9 Priory Business Park

  Wistow Road, Kibworth

  Leicestershire, LE8 0RX

  Freephone: 0800 999 2982

  www.bookguild.co.uk

  Email: [email protected]

  Twitter: @bookguild

  Copyright © 2018 Arthur Clifford

  The right of Arthur Clifford to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This work is entirely fictitious and bears no resemblance to any persons living or dead.

  ISBN 9781912575145

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Places and Characters in the Story

  1 The Enemy Within

  2 Strange Adventures

  3 A New Start?

  4 That Big, Far-Off Mountain

  5 Aftershocks

  6 Lost Childhood

  Introduction

  This book continues the story of John Denby. His early life has been told in the first volume of “Far, Far the Mountain Peak”. John was the accidental result of a frenzied love affair between Giles Denby, an up-and-coming university lecturer with strong left wing views, and Mary Ponsonby, one of his students. It was consumated during a “Ban the Bomb” protest march. Deeply involved in the “progressive” agenda of their 1960s plate glass university in a northern industrial town, neither he nor Mary could be bothered with a bawling and messy baby and young John was bundled off to live with his rich grandparents in their opulent London suburb.

  There he lived a pampered and sheltered life, sent to a posh, upper class prep school and engulfed in a world of Christianity and model railways.

  Then, suddenly, at the age of eleven, disaster struck and his cosy world was shattered. His grandparents were killed in a road accident and he was sent back to his parents in their northern industrial town.

  Having been spoilt by his grandparents, he was utterly unable to cope with his parents’ cold and hostile attitude. Their “liberated” life style and ostentatious atheism bewildered him. Sent to a new experimental school in a deprived sink estate, he was thrust into a maelstrom of delinquent and criminalised pupils. Here he was rejected, horribly bullied and subjected to a gruesome rape with a bicycle pump by a senior pupil.

  Deeply traumatised, he fled to London in a vain attempt to get back into his old happy life. After a series of adventures he was returned to his parents and sent to a small private school started by Dorothy Watson, a teacher with a mission to rescue youngsters who couldn’t cope with the local bog standard comprehensives. Unable to have children of her own, she semi-adopted him as her own son. After more traumas he finally began to make progress. In the course of all these ups and downs he learned to lead a double life, telling lies and deceiving people in order to survive.

  Now as, he enters adolescence and sex kicks in, he faces a new and deadly challenge…

  Read on to accompany young John on his “Bumpy Journey”…

  Places and Characters in the Story

  Places

  Boldonbridge: a big industrial town at the mouth of the River Boldon in northern England. Once famous for its ship building it has fallen on hard times and awaits renewal.

  Greenwood: a decayed industrial suburb of Boldonbridge. Once the beating heart of industrial Boldonbridge, it is now the haunt of down-and- outs and criminal gangs.

  Moorside: an affluent middle class suburb of Boldonbridge.

  Greenhill: the new experimental comprehensive school in Greenwood to which John was sent on his arrival at Boldonbridge. Notorious for its violence and indiscipline.

  14 Gloucester Road: Giles Denby’s ultra-modern house in Greenwood, specially designed by a progressive architect to demonstrate his commitment to “working class culture”.

  Beaconsfield School: the small private school in Moorside to which John is sent after his attempted escape to London. It is an all boys school.

  People

  Dr. Giles Denby: John’s father, a leading social historian and passionate left winger. Now an influential member of the Labour Party.

  Mary: Giles’ wife and John’s mother: she has left Giles and disappeared into Africa doing “progressive good works.” John hates her.

  Dorothy Watson: Headmistress of Beaconsfield School. A would-be missionary, who after a disillusioning time teaching in Uganda and the traumatic break up of her marriage to Lawrence, has started Beaconsfield School in an idealistic attempt to rescue pupils who have failed in the local comprehensives. Unable to have children of her own, she has informally adopted John as her own son. She keeps him in her own house during the week and sends him back home at weekends. She finds him difficult and has has doubts about him. During a hiking trip on the Isle of Rhum she actually physically assaulted him. She is devout Christian.

  Roderick Meakin: Deputy Head of Beaconsfield School. A grizzled old war veteran with the Military Medal, he has “seen it all and done it all”. Trapped in an unhappy marriage, he finds teaching the Beaconsfield kids a welcome therapy. The boys call him “Mekon”. John hero worships him.

  James Briggs: P.E. teacher at Beconsfield School. Having failed as a teacher in a local comprehensive, he is secretly ashamed of having to work in a private school. He despises John as a spoilt upper class brat. He is a “Saved” and fundamentalist Christian who believes that every word in the Bible is literally true.

  Annie Coburn: Giles Denby’s housekeeper who looks after 14 Gloucester Road for himwhile he is in London. An old fashioned “heart of gold” Geordie, shedotes on John.

  Bob Steadman: Curate attatched to the local Moorside Church. Highly intelligent and a an accomplished scientist and theologian, he is bored stiff by his dreary suburban parish. He finds teaching the the Beaconsfield kids a welcome relief from fussy old ladies. John hero worships him.

  Michael Connolly: Beaconsfield pupil from a disastrously dysfunctional background. John’s first friend at the school. Has serious learning difficulties.

  Danny Fleetwood: Beaconsfield pupil. Lively and bouncy, he is John’s best friend.

  Martin Davidson: “Army Barmy” Martin. Beaconsfield pupil. Obese and of limited intelligence, he lives in a military dream world. Hates John because has exposed him as a fraud and supplanted him.

  Sam Hawthorne: Beaconsfield pupil. Disastrously dy
slexic… Abandoned by his father.

  Fred Macdonald: Beaconsfield pupil. West Indian lad from Barbados and the only boy to rival John’s intelligence and ability. Close friend.

  Billy Nolan: Beaconsfield pupil. Bad lad and school ner-do-well. John’s enemy.

  Billy Lees: sad and hideously abused waif and stray who was John’s only friend at Greenhill. He disappeared into the wasteland of Greenwood, John feels guilty because he was too scared to come to his aid while he was being beaten up by his classmates.

  Robert Napier: a hopelessly delinquent young criminal sent to Beaconsfield School in the vain hope that he could be reformed. Sent to a young offenders institution when his nefarious activities were discovered.

  1

  The Enemy Within

  Girls: Another Species?

  It began slowly the following year and was all about girls.

  So far girls hadn’t figured much in John’s life. There hadn’t been any girls at Rickerby Hall and the only ones he’d met had been at parties given by his classmates. They were odd, inferior creatures who wore silly dresses and did soppy things like playing with dolls. Proper boys didn’t have much to do with them.

  At Greenhill the girls had terrified him. They were vicious predators who used their superior strength to destroy anything remotely weak. They were best squeezed out of your mind. Yet real women – not his mother, Mary, because she wasn’t a real woman! – were kind and gentle things who were nice to you and cuddled you like that nice policewoman in London and that fat Martha he’d met at Giles’ weird parties. That girl at Greenhill on that dreadful Friday had, also, been kind. So girls weren’t all horrible. But they were a dangerous and alien species, best avoided – until eventually they changed into nice, kindly women.

  Of course, he’d always assumed that one day he would fall in love with a beautiful girl and get married. After all, that’s what everybody did.

  Delicious Lad’s Stuff

  That September Mrs Watson got the local doctor in to give his ‘little talk’ to Form Three. Mysteries came clear and a whole new world opened up, an exotic and deliciously ‘dirty’ world which was real ‘lad’s stuff’.

  ‘God, I was innocent!’ John exclaimed to Danny one Saturday evening as they played with the trains round at Gloucester Road. ‘And to think that I didn’t know what benders did! I mean, going up bums and that, it’s disgusting!’

  ‘My Dad just hates benders!’ Danny added vehemently. ‘He says they should have their balls cut off and be locked up for life!’

  ‘Quite right, too!’ replied John, ‘That bloke in the Lake District two years ago! God, if I’d known what he was really after I would have killed him!’

  ‘Benders’ duly took their place among the Nazis, the Argies and the Wimps as the least permissible forms of animal life. Even worse – if that were possible! – were the loathsome old men in dirty raincoats who wanted to ‘bum’ little boys.

  ‘My Dad says they should be publicly hanged at Tyburn,’ declared Danny.

  ‘Yeah!’ added John, ‘Publicly exterminated, like you do with rats!’

  Only a Matter of Time

  In Form Three, girls suddenly became the height of fashion. Everybody started to have girlfriends. John didn’t know any girls and wasn’t really interested in them either. Indeed he found the whole idea of the sex act disgusting, about as revolting as the things that benders did. The endless talk about sex bored him rigid, but to keep up his ‘big bold lad’ image he had to pretend to be interested. In place of a real girl friend he found a copy of the Sun and announced that he was passionately in love with the bosomy and bare-bottomed female he discovered on Page Three. Like his story of being expelled from Greenhill for hitting a teacher, the ploy worked: ‘Denby! He’s a real sex maniac, him!’

  Soon, however, he believed that he really would start to like girls and would have to stop pretending. He was a normal boy, after all. And as the doctor had said, it was ‘only a matter of time’.

  A Demon Taking Control

  But things didn’t turn out as they should have done. Instead something bewilderingly unsettling began to happen. Slowly, by imperceptible stages, he found himself becoming interested in other boys’ bodies, especially those of the younger and slimmer ones. The ‘forbidden zones’, especially the ‘nether regions’, began to fascinate him. He found himself staring at small boys as they bent down and longing for them to drop their trousers and let him see the exquisitely shaped backsides that lay hidden underneath.

  The feeling came in waves. Some days it wasn’t there and the whole business disgusted him. Then suddenly a madness seemed to take hold of him and he would be filled with a craving to do… well, the filthy things that benders did! At the time it didn’t seem filthy at all. It seemed as normal and as natural as having a drink of lemonade. More than that, even. Much more. It was the most wildly exciting thing in the world. In these moments he seemed to become another person, as if an alien had entered his body and taken control of him, the sort of demon you read about in science fiction stories. Then the fit would pass and he would be filled with shame and disgust. Only little kids were interested in bums and that, but instead of growing up, he was becoming a little kid again. He simply couldn’t understand it.

  After games he found himself lingering in the showers, especially when the younger boys were showering, his eyes fixed on places where they should not be fixed. It began to be noticed, especially by the ever-vigilant Briggs.

  ‘Come on, Denby,’ he would say in a loud voice that all could hear, ‘Just what do you think you’re looking at?’

  Slowly the incidents mounted up. With a scarcely concealed relish, Briggs noted them down – chapter and verse – and duly informed Dorothy.

  ‘I’m worried about young Denby. He’s always lurking in the changing room ogling at the juniors when they’re showering. Frankly, I think he’s turning into a dangerous homosexual.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ she snapped, ‘I know you don’t like him and you’re probably just imagining it.’

  Drifting into Danger

  Blissfully unaware, John was drifting into danger; almost as if he were asleep in a dinghy which was being borne down an increasingly turbulent river towards an abyss. Trouble began in a round-about way.

  Billy Nolan was now a swaggering Fifth-Former. Ducking out of every difficulty that came his way, he’d set himself up as the school rebel, refusing to work, refusing to play games, refusing, indeed, to do anything remotely constructive. It was so much easier to laze about, smoking fags, reading porno mags and swilling the odd slug of vodka, so much easier than to struggle away with things like maths and woodwork. Even when you did try your best you only achieved a very modest success, and people like stuck up little snob Denby always did better than you, and let you know about it, too! But refuse to work, set the Maths teacher, Polly Parrot, squawking round the room, dodge games, smoke fags in front of the juniors on the playing field… that paid dividends. And how! You became a real hard! The juniors admired you, some of the teachers were even a bit scared of you.

  Nobody could do anything with him. About once a month his father would come up to the school and present a Grand Remonstrance: ‘You ain’t done nuttin’ for my lad! Nuttin’ at all in all the five year wot ’e’s bin ’ere!’

  Dorothy would call in Meakin and Briggs and a new strategy would be worked out to try to get him to play games or go on an adventure weekend. It never worked. Made captain of the rugby team, he simply refused to turn up. The fact was that Billy liked being bad. As the ‘rock-hard bad lad of Beaconsfield’ he was in paradise. He was King of the Corridors. The bleak world beyond Beaconsfield ‒ that world where you had to work for a living and needed qualifications and skills if you were to avoid unemployment ‒ that just didn’t exist.

  The only fly in the ointment was that little snob, Denby, who openly called him a thickoid and a wimp. H
e would like to kick him in, but he didn’t dare to. Denby could fling a hefty punch and, what was more, he had all of Form Three behind him. Hatred smouldered.

  One day it transpired that Billy had been forcing the First Year boys to buy cigarettes at exorbitant prices. He was duly hauled up before Mrs Watson.

  He was openly defiant. ‘I ain’t done nuttin’ wrong, me! They jus’ gives us money so that I can help me Dad when he runs short. He’s unemployed you know!’

  ‘But you are deliberately encouraging small boys to smoke and that is wrong.’

  ‘It ain’t half as wrong as wot your Denby does! He’s a bender wot bums little kids!’

  ‘Nonsense!’

  ‘No it ain’t! He’s your little pet ain’t he? Jus’ because he’s posh and talks posh you gives him all the prizes an’ that and you keep him at your house!’

  ‘That’s because his father and mother have left him. I’d do the same for you.’

  ‘No you bloody wouldn’t! Cos’ I’m not posh like him! And I’ll tell you a thing! The lads is getting’ right pissed off with ’im an all! Always bloody Denby, ain’t it! Even if he’s right bender wot bums liddell kids! Why not bloody us, for a change?’

  With that he stormed out of the room and slammed the door. Adolescent in a temper tantrum. Teenager out of control. School’s failed with him. Dorothy Watson, you’re a failure.

  ‘I Think There is Something You Ought to Know’

  A crisis meeting was held with Meakin and Briggs.

  ‘We can’t go on like this!’ sighed Dorothy. ‘If Billy Nolan won’t toe the line we’ll just have to get rid of him.’

  ‘Like Robert Napier,’ said Briggs pointedly.

  ‘Yes, like Robert Napier, I’m afraid. I mean, he’s corrupting the juniors. The things he said about John Denby…’