Looking that mackerel in the eye, doubting its immortality, accepting the procession of evolution from fish-like ancestors to me, was another step towards scepticism—as to any afterlife existence I might expect.
Religion has no direct authority over my beliefs, but one absorbs vague assumptions from the culture one’s brought up in. For sixty years some idea of God and the immortal soul have been central to my understanding of life, if only vaguely. I have never been a Christian. As a child, sent to church twice on Sundays, I never approached believing that Jesus died for me.
Snapshot: I recall the exact place where I was accosted in the street one day by Mr Dufeu, our maths master. He was from Jersey, hadn’t been with us long In addition to maths he also supervised our field sports, for which he wore a tracksuit and introduced us to an activity he called shacking. Look up “slow jogging” on YouTube. When he wore shorts you could see the musculature and veins of a middle-aged athlete.
I had just returned from the town library, a magnificent building, whose reading rooms had bookshelves all the way up to the tall ceiling. Mr Dufeu was coming the other way, asked what books I was carrying. They were the Analects of Confucius, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and a commentary on St John’s Gospel. “You are a seeker,” he said. It had not occurred to me till then.
He was intelligent, witty and fearless. For example he lampooned our dear Headmaster in a series of limericks, each of which picked on a feature of his personality:
I can sing, said the Head, I can preach
Every subject in school I can teach
Every game I can coach
I’m a joy to approach
Every statement I make is a peach
Mend your textbooks with tape or with paste
I repeat—they will not be replaced
Though pages are bent
And eighty percent
Are missing, detached or defaced
That I’m humble and meek you’ll agree
And a Christian as good as can be
When to Heaven you go
If you’re not sent below
Ask for Gabriel, Moses or me.
He wrote it on the blackboard to give us the chance to copy it, Mr Pack, our chemistry teacher glanced at it as he passed through. Rooms in this ancient building are interconnected, there’s only one corridor, outside the Headmaster’s study, where miscreants have to wait until told to enter. “This is rather frivolous, Mr Dufeu!”, said he
My schoolmate Bill McCullagh, Mac as we called him, reckons it was this that got him fired. It would certainly have helped that decision.
In truth it was another incident which triggered this unfortunate decision. He’d been asked to give us a mathematics test based on a past GCE paper, and publish the results. This was to predict pupils’ chances of passing the exam. Bottom scores would mean they were excused this subject: middling ones would dictate extra tuition and feedback by the teacher.
He took advantage of this lesson to introduce us to a wasn’t supposed to but he showed the results to the class on the blackboard, so as to introduce a new mathematical topic: normalising the distribution of a set of figures figures by applying weighting factors. You could say he massaged the results to equate to his subjective judgement, using a transparent formula whose assumptions could be challenged. Had he not revealed to us this wizardry, his job would have been safe. As it was, our high-minded headmaster swept aside these subtleties and fired him, as if he had committed fraud to make him appear as a better teacher. I cannot believe the poor man was guilty, whatever the charge against him.
Looking back, I’m not sure who to blame, but for some reason maths teachers didn’t last long. There were six while I was there. In the summer term of 1960, there was none, so I was assigned a correspondence course, whose tutor had no idea which aspects of the syllabus needed revision. I failed the exam, ruling out the possibility of engineering, medicine and other careers. It didn’t matter, I didn’t take my time at Uni seriously, scraped through as a BA Hons in French and Italian, which had no practical use, and hadn’t a clue what to do with my life.
I am grateful to Mr Dufeu, all my schooldays and every mistake of my life for ending up in a good place, right here.
a wayfarer’s notes 