A Long Time Coming

The high-achieving academic image of Southfields Boys High School, with its famed choir and Latin lessons, the Eton Fives, squash courts, fencing tradition, planetarium for students of astronomy, and the ball boys provided every June for the Wimbledon Tennis tournament were all indicators of its heyday as a grammar school. By the early 1970s, this reputation was beginning to freefall, blamed by some on its comprehensive status and the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) liberals at Westminster's County Hall. Whatever the reasons, its glorious past was long gone, steadily in decline. During my days as a pupil, an opposite view, a reputation for toughness, grit, and brutality common to many inner city schools gained ground.

A number of belligerent youths attended the school, some of whom were proudly allied to Chelsea Football Club, Shed End supporters from the nearby Argyle and Ashburton housing estates. The majority of pupils were just rough and ready plebeians, the offspring of hard-working families of mainly English descent, with a scattering of Irish, Mediterranean, and African Caribbean types, all of whom would always stand their ground in physical disputes. Indian subcontinent pupils (Asians) were scarce, known for their meekness, academic prowess, and considered easy pickings by some warlike, white skinhead lads. These moronic youths loved etching the letters NF onto wooden desktops, a permanent declaration of their loose links to an openly fascist organisation called the National Front. It was an era notorious for Paki bashing weekends or the alternative, stalking Nancy boys for a spot of queer bashing in and around the Brompton Road area of Earls Court.

Fights were commonplace and for the most part fair – one-to-one bare-knuckle bouts. They would routinely take place during break time in the playgrounds and, on occasion, in neighbouring roads outside the school. Opponents would square up, first making sure to remove their expensive maroon school blazers, embroidered on the chest pocket with the We Serve badge, to be held by best mates. The combatants would be encircled by a swiftly gathering tide of one hundred plus adolescent boys, every one of them baying "Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!" and all keen to see the protagonists quell their anger in a flurry of violent punches or kicks. Being engulfed in these unruly scrums bought time for aggression to take its natural course. A crowd would act as a temporary barrier to intervening teachers unluckily burdened with playground duty. By the time an authority figure arrived the victor or vanquished would be known and his status among peers would be enhanced or diminished.

One clash in particular gained tragic notoriety in 1971. In an innocuous mid-morning break time game of football that cold autumn day, a heated dispute arose over a penalty kick. Roy Peters, aged fourteen, was stabbed once, a sudden, violent thrust to his chest with a penknife, wielded by the clenched hand of one of the Johnson brothers. He collapsed instantly into a motionless heap upon the damp tarmac. I was present, though not a witness, and I helped carry limp Roy from the playground to the school medical room while his mouth oozed bright maroon froth, his grey shirt became increasingly bloodstained, and his bellows laboured, as he gurgled audibly. Back in class, when lessons resumed I would tell fellow pupils of my fervent belief that Roy would not survive such a mortal blow to his pierced lung. Later that day he died in Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton. On the day of the funeral, I stood alongside two thousand other pupils plus teaching staff, respectfully assembled outside the school as Roy's funeral cortege drove slowly past en route to his final resting place.

At age fourteen, my ego's burgeoning sense of omnipotence was jolted by the spectre of death, which seemed ever close at hand. A good school friend called Rudolph "Legs" Smith lived near my family home in East Hill area of Wansworth and was in the year above me at Southfields Boys High School. One Friday night at a reggae dance held above the Clapham Hotel pub in South London, he was cut up across his face, chest, and forearms by an older jealous rival for a girl's affections, action that was intended to warn him off. As befits his nickname, Legs had a lanky yet muscular physique, was tall as a tree (six feet five inches), and was a great all-round athlete with a basketball jump shot that I coveted. He had fallen for sixteen-yearold Dorette, a voluptuous, Afro-haired Jamaican girl with a passion for short skirts and platform shoes. She attended West Hill Girls School near Wimbledon Common, roughly one mile away from Southfields Boys High School.

This equally large girls school was a daily haunt where alongside schoolmates I viewed the eye candy disembarking at the No. 37 bus stop. Outside West Hill's school gates I encountered and began my pursuit of Dorette's equally beguiling, slimmer, yet vivacious younger sister, Yvette. Sadly, Legs would die within the year, not the result of a further knife attack from his Battersea adversary, but smitten by invasive cancer of the liver. His formerly athletic physique had become a ghastly, haggard corpse, displayed for mourners in a casket in his bereaved parents' living room while country and western songs of Jim Reeves played sombrely in the background.