THE MASTERY OF TABLE-TURNING
[THE STORY SO FAR - English public schoolmaster Alan Watson is now firmly under the control of a section of his sixth-form tutor group who are enjoying inflicting ever-increasing humiliation upon this mild and sensitive thirty-year-old. Under threat of blackmail, he continually finds himself more entrapped and consequently forced to obey the degrading demands they heap upon him.]
CHAPTER FIVE - Full Media Exposure
How I survived the next few days, I just don't know. News had spread like wildfire. Of course, the headmaster did much to excite further interest and unwanted speculation by making direct and, in his opinion, amusing references to the incident during the following morning's assembly in front of the whole school. He made me stand, ostensibly to take applause for my "courageous follow-through" praising my "intent upon victory at all costs" eulogising my "throwing all caution as well as kit to the winds", particularly laudatory of my effort to overcome all adversity in "it was a spectacular try" with confusion being my "only cover", and that all could learn from the "revelatory nature of Mr Watson's impressive tackle". I had to grin ruefully through these rather laboured and over-emphasised puns, crimson in the face as colleagues and schools alike chortled appreciatively, and wishing the stage floor would open up to consume me. I was roundly cheered though at the end as I had to step forward and publicly shake the Head's hand.
On the main staff notice-board in the Common Room was a cartoon put up by the art master, Derek Bamforth, entitled: "We wuz robbed!" Naturally, I was depicted stark naked with a pink shiny bottom, hurtling to the ground on the touchline. The caption to the cartoon read: "We were deprived of a triple score! When Watty crossed the line, three balls touched down!" Scarlet to the roots of my hair, I had to appear amused, when, in actual fact, I felt abused. I simply hated all this attention. That I was a hero of the hour there seemed to be little doubt, but, at the same time, I detected a definite undercurrent of derision - and even glee - that stuffy old Watty had had to sprint bollock-naked across the First XV rugger pitch.
" 'Morning, Mr Watson, sir. I didn't recognise you with your clothes on," a cocky fourth-former greeted me loudly as I walked down the corridor to my first lesson, amidst loud brays of laughter.
"Very funny, Farnworth. Button your collar and tuck your shirt in," I responded as I hardly broke pace.
"Didn't think you'd be in for the rest of the week, Sir. After all, we saw so much of you yesterday!" and yet more similar comments and heart guffaws assailed my progress through the school throughout the day.
I was in the middle of "Romeo and Juliet", introducing fifth-formers to the lustier aspects of Mercutio's dialogue with Juliet's nurse, when there was a knock on the door. Everybody stood up as Frank Hartley came into the room. It was he I was substitute for in the previous day's infamous match.
"Mr Watson, Man of the Match," he said with a chuckle much appreciated by my fifth-form group, "I am sent to deputise, for you are required instanta upon your field of glory where - even as I speak - our venerable Headmaster and some gentlemen of the press await your immediate arrival." He bowed elaborately towards me then turned to the boys and said: "Watty's going to get his piccy in the paper!"
"It's a good job they weren't here last night, or we might have seen a piccy of Watty's botty in the paper!" he added, very pleased with himself.
I smiled at him murderously, brushed past his sling nudging him slightly, and absently apologising as he winced with pain, I left the room in uproar of his making. As I crossed the quadrangle, I heard a sash window go up.
"As quickly as you can, Mr Watson. The Headmaster asked that you hurry across," the flute-like tones of his horse-faced secretary floated on the early autumnal air.
As I approached the games field I could make out four men. One was the Head, another was David Whalley the head of games; the other two I assumed to be a reporter and photographer. Oh dear, my inner dialogue was groaning, I don't want to do this! Nevertheless I had been summoned by my headmaster, and so I quickened my pace when every natural instinct told be to turn and run.
"Ah, Mr Watson. Splendid! May I introduce you to . . . ?" The names were instantly forgotten as, automaton-like, I allowed my hand to be shaken by each of these men. The Head had already given them all the details of my complete exposure, the successive failure of each and every garment including my athletic support leaving me very publicly laid bare. He had even made a weak joke that he had stepped into the breach with a Sir Walter Raleigh-like gesture, cloaking me in his own mackintosh. I think the laboured reference to the Queen Elizabeth I incident with the puddle proved too abstruse, for it never appeared in the press. Such were the investigative skills of the cub reporter sent upon this assignment, that I was asked how I felt to be naked. Embarrassed, I told him.
"Anything else?" he persisted.
"Cold," I lied. I had had no thought for the weather.
"And how do you think the rest of your team felt when you went on to score like that?" He smiled and nodded encouragingly and raised his eyebrows at me.
"Probably very glad it wasn't them," I hazarded, after what had seemed a couple of minutes as I stared in disbelief at each of the four men. Each had nodded and smiled in the same sort of vacant way, and I began to wonder if I was the only person to find the questions banal to the point of insanity.
It was then that the photographer stepped forward. He said he had a very funny idea.
"Wouldn't it be funny, don't you think," he dug the Head in the ribcage with his elbow conspiratorially, "to take a picture of Mr Watson between the goal posts, stark naked and holding a rugby ball in front of his fiddly bits?"
I groaned inwardly and my mouth went dry. Even Whispering Tim could not have dreamt up so fiendish a humiliation, I thought. And then it hit me that all this was as a direct result of him and his cohorts in the first place. The Head asked if such a thing was in the best of taste. I shook my head and started to speak but was interrupted by the photographer who loudly assured him that all would be carried out in the best possible taste, adding as a rider that such an interesting and amusing picture would guarantee a better position in the paper thereby earning maximum publicity for the school. That was the seal of my fate. The Head had recently been to a headmaster's conference on the wide-ranging benefits of publicity.
With a noisy sigh of resignation and in full realisation that any objection upon my part would be totally overridden by both the Head and Dave Whalley, who seemed to be very amused at the prospect of my undraped appearance in the local press, I asked when I was to be subjected to this indignity. The answer of no time like the present floored me.
"I can't stand here posing for photographs like that with children on the premises," I said flabbergasted.
"Why not?" Dave asked. "You did yesterday."
"Well . . . where do I change for a start . . . and what can I put on to get back out here?" I stammered.
The photographer looked at his watch.
"We've got to be sharpish. We're at another job in twenty minutes. Why not strip off out here? We'll act as look-outs for you."
The headmaster looked nervous at the thought of losing such a publicity angle because time was running out.
"It'll be all right, Alan. They say it'll be tasteful," he said, willing me to go ahead.
"Oh it'll be tasteful all right. We're a family newspaper," the newshound added.
"I can't strip off out here!" I floundered. My ghast was even more flabbered.
"Why not?" Dave asked again in the same tone of voice, but with a grin.
In chorus, the four of them said: "You did yesterday!"
I looked round as if seeking some form of escape - as if wondering whether the fifth cavalry were even then riding to my rescue. The rest of the pitches were deserted. Not even a groundsman stirred abroad on some menial task.
"Come on. I'll hold your clothes for you," Dave said encouragingly.
I looked at the Headmaster. He smiled and nodded supportively.
"It'll be excellent publicity for the School," he murmured.
Like a condemned man, I shrugged off my jacket. As I tugged down my tie with one hand and began to unbutton my shirt with the other, the enormity of what I was being asked to do hit home. Here I was, a fully-grown man of thirty, being required to undress in the open air whilst my employer, together with three others looked on.
"How about a head and shoulders shot of me with the ball?" I asked as I slipped my shirt off.
I was clutching at straws like the proverbial drowning man, and I knew it.
The photographer screwed up his face and shook his head.
"Not the same impact," he said by way of explanation.
"Not as eye-catching either," added the cub reporter with a knowing nod.
I shot him a baleful stare as I kicked off my shoes and began to unbuckle my belt. I do not like taking my clothes off in public. Recent events had made me even more sensitive, I think, rather than less so, and to be so closely watched by all four of them as I was unfastening my trousers was extraordinarily unnerving. Knowing I was hotly blushing, I crouched forward and stepped out of them, handing them to Dave Whalley.
"If I hold the ball now, it'll cover up my underpants," I said, the tone of my voice sounding as though it didn't believe what I was saying.
"Let's have a look," the photographer said, scrutinizing me through his viewfinder.
I took the rugby ball and held it pressed to my groin, trying desperately to arrange my forearms into a position to conceal the sides of my underpants.
"No, 'fraid not," he said. "They'll have to come off. A pity you didn't have a pair of those little bikini type briefs on. We could have probably managed then. But those big old white Y-fronts, they show up far too much."
My instinct was to turn away to take them down, but I couldn't. Their instinct surely should have been to avert their eyes and look elsewhere, but they didn`t. Four pairs of eyes unblinkingly stared at my unveiling. Trying to grab the ball with the same hand I was handing my underpants for Dave to hold, I knocked the ball out of his grasp and it bounced away in its unpredictable oval ball manner. I quickly clasped my hand to my naked groin as I darted to retrieve it. In an effort to cover my embarrassment as quickly as possible I brought the ball up hard into my groin.
Doubling over and with my eyes watering with the sudden pain, the reporter put his hand on my naked shoulder.
"I felt that," he said in supposed sympathy.
"Well, next time keep your hands to yourself, my lad," the photographer said, and laughed heartily at his own joke.
For what seemed ages I was kept in a state of nature posing for the camera.
"Just a little lower, Mr Watson, please. We only want one ball in shot, eh Headmaster?"
The photographer again dug the Head in the ribs and guffawed at his own wit. That reminded Dave Whalley of the cartoon in the Senior Common Room and he regaled all three of them with a graphic account of it.
I was in a dreamlike trance. Here I was, stark naked in broad daylight, out of doors at my place of employment, with my headmaster and another senior colleague looking on, whilst posing for endless photographs holding nothing other than a Rugby Union football to conceal my reproductive equipment. I even had to stand there while he changed the film in his camera. Action shots of my throwing myself to the ground between the posts were ruled out after five attempts because as the photographer cringingly put it, it was impossible to prevent my "dangly bits", as he called them, from flying into shot. I was asked to lie down on the line with my arms stretched out, hands holding the ball, as though having just touched down. Several of these were snapped also. The final indignity was to have to run up the pitch with my back to the camera with the ball under my arm, and therefore with no concealment whatsoever to protect my modesty from the three onlookers.
Humbled, demeaned and utterly, utterly devastated, I stepped into my underpants and hauled them up my mud bespattered thighs.
The Head tried conciliatory remarks about what an ordeal he had put me though and that it was a pity I couldn't go and take a shower before getting dressed again. The press left with a hearty wave and a promise of complimentary photographs. Dave Whalley dumped my clothing in a heap on the damp grass and said he had better get back to supervise the changing rooms as it was getting near the end of the lesson.
At morning break there was a large crowd round the board, and much laughing and jeering and wolf-whistles as I entered the room. Another cartoon of me had been put on the Common Room noticeboard following news getting abroad of my photography session on the playing field. In it I was portrayed as a male pin-up in some girl's magazine. Pinkly naked again with a very painful expression on my reddened face and with hands pressed to the bits the art man, Derek Bamforth,
had not dared to draw for public consumption, the caption read: "Guess where the bloody staple is???"