Under the Sun Read Online Free PDF Page B

Gracie next tell her I send my love.
    â€˜Love you pieces’
    Bruce
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    The Old Hall School | Wellington | Shropshire | 13 March, Sunday [1949]
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    Dear Mummy and daddy,
    I hope you are all well. I wrote to Uncle Humphry and Auntie Peggey yesterday. 5 I like the sound of Brig 6 very much. Tell Hugh it won’t be long till I come home. Thank you for the addresses. Yesturday, IVa gave a Variety Show. There was a quiz. Someone had to go up on the stage and they were asked two questions. I went up and I was asked, what was the oldest structure in England, and, what was the wing-span of a helicopter, and then I had to be dressed up as a baby. Purce was nanney. I had to have a dummy and a rattle. I was in pram. On Thursday it was Mr Fee Smith’s birthday. We had a Tresure Hunt and afterwards in the evening we some films. There were two cartoons, one was called Andy Panda in Nuttywood Cavern and the other one was called The Pecquiler Penguins.
    Love you pieces
    Bruce XXXX
    Another one was ‘For those in Peril’. 7
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    The Old Hall School | Wellington | Shropshire | 4 May 1949
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    Dear Mummy,
    This is only a short letter to ask you if you could get me some rubber bands.
    Love you peices
    Bruce

    The Old Hall School | Wellington | Shropshire | 6 November [1949] Dear Mummy and Daddy,
    I hope you are all well. Yesturday the fireworks were absoutly wizard. There were 130 rockets, 14 cathrine weels, 4 christal fountains and a lot more. Have you heard, about the Poenix firework company. Sombody put gun-powder in some false fireworks, and there was a terrific explosion at Okengates, and all the panes of the windows in the district came out, and a girl of 17 was wounded. We had a lot, so we tied them up in a parcel and threw them in the boating pond. Half term reports are coming next time. On Wednesday, we had a match against Abberly Hall. We won 2 – 1. We had a Remberance Service to day in chapel.
    Bruce
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    Whether Chatwin was always so buoyant at Old Hall School as his letters home suggest is thrown into doubt by a short story he wrote towards the end of his life which paints a less than ‘wizard’ picture of Bonfire Night and of school life in general.
    On a wall in Chapel, a brass plaque commemorated a boy who had died at Old Hall School on 9 September 1923, aged ten. Hugh says: ‘In my time, no matron ever refuted the oft-repeated boys’ tale that Tommy Woodhouse died of constipation – the result of a silly, rule-breaking dare.’ This became the genesis for Chatwin’s virtually last finished piece of creative writing. ‘The Seventh Day’ features a nervous, skinny, religious boy – clearly based on Chatwin – eight years old, with thick fair hair, who hates going back to boarding school, so much so that he makes himself sick. He is teased by other boys about his constipation (‘He wished they’d stop laughing whenever he had hard times on the pot. The lavatories had no doors.’). He is teased about his father’s car (‘It was not a car but a grey Ford van. It had windows cut in the back and Spitfire seats to sit on. Sometimes the van smelled of pigswill.’). He is teased for his perceived self-sufficiency. ‘He hated school because no one would leave him alone. Because he was so skinny he hated being tickled by the headmaster. He hated the boy who stole his marbles and he hated the boy who pinned him on his bed and rubbed his chest with his hairbrush. At night, after lights out, the others whispered their plans for the future. They would have wives and children. He hid under the bed sheet and saw himself as the last man left on earth after the Bomb went off. He saw himself in white cloth walking over a charred landscape . . .’
    The boy also hates Guy Fawkes Night. ‘The Guys had pumpkins cut into faces. One Guy was Mr Attlee with a scarecrow hat and a witch’s broom. Mr Attlee had Hitler’s