You would always think of old Vidhrio as the quintessential Englishman. True, his name was Hispanic sounding enough if we’d stopped to think about such things, but his lean and ascetic appearance, the neatly tied bow tie he always affected, the well-modulated tones warbling from somewhere deep within his tall frame, and the rest of his severe, almost sombre clothing had Home Counties pedagogue written all over them.

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     That would be fifty years or more before the time he actually lived in the Home Counties, of course. If you had absolutely no imagination you might mark him down as the teacher of Geography at a prep school, distinctly of the second rank. This was, in fact, what he was.

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     We pupils had all but forgotten his real name. When he’d come to St. Cuthbert’s years before as a young man – it was funny for us to think  old Vidhrio could ever have been young, though in fact he couldn’t have been so incredibly old then – some bright spark had named him ‘Mr. Glass’; a translation it was. Anyway, this sobriquet had stuck to him very firmly.

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     Not that you’d see him as brittle or transparent or anything of the sort, but for some reason this was who our Geography teacher became. All used the name when referring to him. I even gained some notoriety by calling him Mr. Glass to his face once in my early days at the school. I wasn’t being brave or reckless, simply forgetful. He didn’t bat an eyelid. He probably thought of himself as Mr. Glass as well.

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     Our teacher wasn’t Spanish at all. I found out years later that his grandfather was Portuguese. The family had lived in Chiswick, West London for two generations past. But genes, or blood, or whatever it is, will out. That’s what I really want to tell you about: what happened on a day so many years ago now.

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     ‘Boy,’ he said to me in the quad on the morning of the day before – our school had a quadrangle would you believe, complete with a pond, impressively-sized goldfish, and trickling fountains. ‘Wait there a moment’.

I froze. I hadn’t been running or even hurrying. Nor had I made a hash of my geography prep or done anything else to annoy him as far as I could see.

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     How, today, can I convey what St. Cuthbert’s was like? If old Glass was fifty years out of date, the school rules, and the way the place pretended to be was at least a century behind its time – this was back in the nineteen-sixties. Being cynical, I suppose someone thought they could charge higher fees in that way. Anyway, this pretence was the thing that ruled absolutely everything in the school. 

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     The sixties wasn’t the decade when things changed for all of us. The world of popular culture was something a million miles from St. Cuthbert’s. Things did change for me personally, though, perhaps more dramatically than at any time since, though not in the way you read about in the newspapers, see on social media, or watch on television.

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     In our school at that time, it simply wasn’t the done thing for teachers to talk to we pupils in the quad. So, you might be able to imagine the way I was feeling when Glass spoke to me. I was shocked.

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     ‘Boy,’ he repeated, satisfied he had the attention of that part of my scrambled wits not casting about for whatever misdemeanour of which I’d been guilty. ‘Tomorrow evening I’m giving a small, er, party, for some chosen pupils. Be at my study at eight o’clock.’

With that, he turned his back and marched off, black gown streaming behind him like the plumes of some tall black bird. He neither waited for, nor expected a reply. It was the way things were done in St Cuthbert’s.

*

     For the next day-and-a-half I didn’t think of much else. I was surprised old Glass had even noticed me, let alone that he had picked me out as a ‘chosen pupil’. Thank goodness we didn’t have a geography lesson before this mysterious party, or Lord knows how I’d have been able to get through it.

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     I was grateful when at last the evening of the next day came and I could set off through the dampness of the early March hour towards the ‘small party’. I was tingling with excitement. Nothing much ever happened at St. Cuthbert’s, you understand.

 

     ‘Ah. Come on in,’ said Glass as he opened his door. ‘You’re the last to arrive.’

 

     This was a small enough victory, but it made me think that sitting tight through the last hour of purgatory had been worth it. I hadn’t taken my eyes off the clock for the last half-hour. Have you ever done nothing but sat there and watched a clock for this length of time? Well, if you have you might know what I’m talking about.

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     I looked across to see who else was among the favoured few. There were only three other boys present. There was Martins, thin and worried-looking, and the best part of a foot taller than the rest of us. He probably looks now something like old Glass did at that time, would be my guess.

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     Then there was Foxy – Colin Fox, although we never thought of him as a Colin. Foxy was chubby and had nervous eyes that kept darting about everywhere, wherever he was. His face broke into a fleeting smile at the oddest of times. He was a bit slow or daft in truth, but I suppose just as long as his parents paid the exorbitant fees on time this didn’t matter one tiny bit.

 

     The third boy was Broome, of whom I can’t now remember anything apart from the huge strawberry birthmark slap in the middle of his freckled left cheek. It didn’t bother him much, though – or at least it didn’t seem to trouble him at that age – and he grinned when he saw me. Broome was the only one I was at all friendly with, and I didn’t know even him all that well.

 

     Fortunately, Glass broke the silence that had descended on the room as soon as I walked in. I wasn’t antisocial or anything of the sort, but I hadn’t been a pupil for a full year by that time and was only just beginning to be accepted as ‘one of them’. Not that it looked as if there’d been a great deal of boyish chatter before my arrival. None of we boys knew what we were expected to do or say.

     

     

     ‘You’d like some refreshment, I’m sure. What is it to be? Wine?’

 

     Wine? Jesus! He may as well have offered us opium. Remember, we were only twelve years of age, and this was St. Cuthbert’s. Fortunately, all four of us managed to nod assent – the other three went up in my estimation at that moment – and soon Glass was pouring steadily into the five glasses already neatly arranged on the table. I can still hear the faint slooping, gurgling sound in my mind today.

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     I made a mental note of the name on the bottle. It was Casa da Insua, which I later found out to be one of the wines from the Dão region. I drink it today when I can get it. Of course, I recognise its inferiority to wines like Pauillac, or a good bottle of Pomerol, or even a good many cheaper wines, but I suppose we’re all condemned to trying to recapture the jewels of our youth – first time beyond our shores, first sip of alcohol, first sexual experience, and so on. Anyway, now you know why I so often drink Dão.

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     That first taste of wine was a disappointment to me. I think it was the same for all of us. I’d been expecting a sweetish, honeyed taste. I suppose all the songs and the poems, and most of all the tantalising look of the wine in the glass, or when it was being poured, had influenced me. When I tasted it I thought of it as in truth I still think of it now: rich, red, and holding a liquid promise it never quite delivers. It was a surprise to me on that evening to feel the slightly acidic, strong flavoured stuff on my tongue.

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     But I stuck to my task. We all did. Soon our teacher was emptying another bottle into five glasses, and we were drinking a little faster than before. I have an idea that we had another glass after that, or maybe even two. The truth is that I’m unsure exactly how much wine we drank that night. More than enough for twelve-year-olds, of that much I’m certain.

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      The world was becoming a warmer, less wearisome place, but it was becoming a more out of focus one, too. A buzz of conversation quickly developed. Foxy chirruped in his high nasal tones. Broome sounded very adult and wise to me. Even Martins and Mr. Glass joined in sometimes. Both seemed less forbidding than usual.

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     ‘I think you’d better go back to your rooms now,’ said Mr. Glass all at once in a voice that echoed strangely above our little crowd. ‘It’ll be lights out in less than a quarter-of-an-hour and I can’t help thinking some of you might have had one glass too many.’

 

     He was understating the case. All four of we boys had drunk too much wine. There was a slight note of panic in our Geography teacher’s voice as he made his pronouncement. It was as if, belatedly, he realised he’d gone that bit too far in helping us to relax.

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     He wasn’t looking at me when he made his speech, but at Foxy and Broome, who were both swaying quite comically by this time. If anything, my head was already beginning to clear: you might say I was already developing a taste for the demon drink. Martins seemed much the same as he had an hour or so before, although perhaps he simply wasn’t showing the effects of alcohol as clearly.

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     That evening was the last I saw of Mr. Glass. Before long, I wouldn’t see the other boys again, either.

 

     We found ourselves in the grounds of the school. Broome and Foxy were staggering about, but Martins and I managed to get them home – each of us lived in a separate dormitory. We had a close call, or what may have been a close call – it may have been nothing more than a coincidence – when Foxy stopped to vomit copiously and noisily into some flower beds, at the same time as a light went on in the nearby headmaster’s residence.

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     It was probably no more than a coincidence, but I can still remember that moment – absolute terrified hush, except for Foxy’s death rattle, which seemed so loud to me. Otherwise, our journeys back to our dorms were without incident, although in my memory they seemed to have lasted for hours. Those erratic journeys were unreal seeming, but generally without incident. I don’t remember whether Martins saw me home or I saw Martins home. More than likely, we did both things. This wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

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*

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     The very next afternoon I was removed from St Cuthbert’s. There was a monetary crisis at home. Not our first and by no means our last, but certainly the biggest so far, and I was by that time at an age when I could begin to understand what was going on.

 

     The end of my private education was nothing like the disaster it may sound. Despite its expensive reputation, St. Cuthbert’s had been at best a mediocre school. The headmaster of the state school I went to a few weeks later did at least acknowledge what century we were in. More importantly, he showed more interest in schoolbooks than cash books.

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     A couple of months later I had a letter from a former schoolmate – my last contact with anyone from the school – telling me that old Glass had left St. Cuthbert’s in a hurry and under some mysterious dark cloud.

 

     I know what you’re thinking. Sorry, I just can’t imagine Glass at the centre of some scandal of paedophilia, however neat it would make this story.

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     My family’s monetary crisis would have saved me from a dark fate in the nick of time. This would then be a moral tale if ever there was one.

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     I simply can’t picture old Glass passionately kissing Broome’s strawberry birthmark or wrestling Foxy onto the bed after a few glasses of Vinho Tinto and having his wicked way with the poor boy. Every time I try to visualise it; the images are cartoon-like and do nothing but make me laugh. No, I happen to think that old Glass was merely desperately lonely and picked on we four as some unlikely drinking companions.

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     St. Cuthbert’s, Glass, the night I had my first taste of alcohol, and Foxy becoming intimately acquainted with some daffodils, simply faded into the background of my memory over the years.

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     Until last week, that is. I happened to glance at the obituaries in one of the broadsheets. I tore the piece out. Here it is: ‘Glass, Jorge. Peacefully in his sleep after a short illness at Ickenham, Middlesex. Survived by a loving widow Maria and a fond daughter Luisa.’ 

Glass, notice, not Vidhrio. He must have accepted the inevitable and changed his name. But Jorge and not George – that would be just like him. And when did the wife and daughter come in? Perhaps leaving St. Cuthbert’s was the making of both of us.

 

     It may have been no more than a similarity of names, but I’m convinced this report did refer to my old teacher. He’d have been at least eighty-five or even more than ninety. A ‘good age’ as they say, although not quite the relic from near Medieval times that existed in some dusty corner of my memory. Anyway, I opened my last bottle of Casa da Insua we had in the house on the strength of whatever had changed the life of Mr Glass.

 

     And do you know what? For a minute it tasted as sweet as honey.