Read Online Against the Tide by Noël Browne - Free Book Online Page B

and South American pupils, as well as French, Central European, and American. French and Spanish were spoken nearly
as widely as English.
    Though I had passed through a distressing family tragedy, I appeared to have developed a tough emotional patina with a growing imperviousness to personal distress. I was a healthy young boy who
had astonishingly been transmuted, from an emotionally painful and physically impoverished home, into being a member of the pampered class. It was impossible to remain unmoved or unchanged. At St
Anthony’s we had small classes, with university graduates to teach all subjects; we had a fine gymnasium, spacious playing fields and, in summer, access to a full-sized heated swimming pool.
Our food seemed, to my impoverished tastes, like a series of state banquets. The dormitories were large, clean, and served by sumptuous bath and washroom facilities. In Ballinrobe we had carried
water by the bucket from the River Robe.
    The contrast inevitably muted my other personal deprivations. The shock of my transition from Athlone and Ballinrobe, with conventions, beliefs, and practices so different from those now around
me; the trauma of my splintered family life; the loss of my father and my mother; all these experiences brought about an inevitable continuous emotional conflict, with all that that implied for a
child of my age. Yet the contrast of life patterns was greatly mitigated by the fact that there were a large number of boys who, for quite other reasons, were feeling just as isolated as I was. It
appeared to me that we foreigners dominated the school. We recognised our common links of alienation from English life, and this created in us a spontaneous camaraderie. The school had this
remarkable distinction: there was absolutely no bullying of anyone by anyone else, either by teachers or boys.
    One of the teachers I remember best was Mr Tibetts. He had carroty untidy hair, a very red face and a bulbous nose, through which he spoke in short, nasal, and for a long time to me
unintelligible bursts of sentences, spattered with spittle. The end of his nose was constricted by his enormous hornrimmed spectacles, which appeared to rest permanently there. Even with the
thick-lensed spectacles he was still nearly blind. He was both gentle and patient; rarely exasperated, he would call out a boy, ask him for one of his house shoes and, then having told him to bend
over, inexpertly try to find the target and beat it ineffectually. Mr Tibetts gave the impression of hating his job of Latin teacher.
    The French master, M. Talibart, disliked both us and his teaching. He would read the newspaper throughout the class, taking the precaution to prod a hole through the centre with his fat index
finger to give us the impression that he was watching us. He tended when exasperated to cuff a boy on the right ear, then on the left, and kick him on the shins, muttering to himself, ‘take
dis, and dat, and dose’, ‘those’ being the kicks given under the desk. I also remember Mr Harding, a blindingly handsome black-eyed crinkly-haired teacher who, I suspect, was
illiterate. He was an awe-inspiring person, as it was said that he had at one time played cricket for Sussex. Like Brother John in Athlone, his educational concern was limited to just one subject:
sport.
    Although we were aged only between ten and fourteen years, Mr Harding took our training with extraordinary enthusiasm and seriousness. All our classes were illustrated with drawings on the
blackboard and taken up with discussions about tactical formations in the game of soccer, which he expected us to absorb and practise for the coming Saturday’s football game. We took part in
a lot of inter-school games, as there were many other preparatory schools in and around Eastbourne. Luckily I enjoyed games. From Gaelic football I now turned to cricket and soccer. Mr Harding for
some reason called me ‘Tishy’, perhaps after the Strube cartoon horse with