Noah is a private-school boy.
This is a statement of fact. By uttering it, I in no way pass judgement. Deep down, I suspect Noah thinks such a creature is a fine thing. Perhaps he is right, but for me the jury is still out. Private-school boys have nice accents and clean up well, but they can be rather nerdy.
Is Noah nerdy? Under torture, I might concede as much, but so what? He knows Hamlet is not an egg customarily eaten at breakfast, and that Wilfred Owen is not a testamentary successor of a man named Frederick. Taken together with a Lear after lights-out, such qualities count for much.
Actually, the statement of fact is inexact. Noah is no longer a boy in a private school. He is a man who cannot forget that he once went to one. Once he may have dressed in short pants and played conkers, but he is now an adult who pants as he conquers. His problem is that he keeps mixing up the two, and the blood of the private school — blue, naturally — courses through his veins.
Being thus bloody-minded, he takes a keen interest in the private school as an institution.
“What do you think of this saga at Bishops?” he asks.
I look at him quizzically. Quizzically is how I look when especially nonplussed.
“They’ve been running the gay flag up the mast.”
“Better, I suppose, than running the mast up the gay fag,” I answer. I am by no means sure the topic interests me. Half-tempted to say as much to Noah, I am inclined to add, “My interest in the topic is flagging.”
But not very inclined. Deviancy at school is surely a better subject than the vagaries of the stock market. So instead I ask, “What do you think about it, dear post-pubescent OB?”
“I prefer not to say,” he says. “Let me tell you why. In the comments in response to your last piece — which I do read — I was called a Noah-it-All. I am not, but you insist on framing me as such. It’s all your fault.”
“Well, pooh and bah,” I reply — quite wittily, I think.
“What?” says Noah, now himself nonplussed.
I prefer not to respond. There is little point when one’s interlocutor will probably conclude that a Pooh-Bah is the same as a Pooh Bear. A private-school education is not all it’s cracked up to be.
“Please, please, tell me what you think. Honestly, you are not a know-all. Quite the reverse. It’s not your fault that you know so much. You are, after all, a trained lawyer!”
“‘Fine words butter no parsnips.’” I know what this aphorism signifies, though I have yet to see a real-life parsnip.
“But all right, I shall not be petty.”
“According to the news, which for once may be accurate, the headmaster, some teachers, and the senior boys of Bishops are flying the LGBTQ etc. flag on the flagstaff above the school. The Old Boys are objecting; they are not objectionable, I stress, but objecting.”
“The Old Boys are being silly,” I say. “I mean, would they mind if the Paraplegics flag was being flown in this way? It seems to me the issue is just a storm in a teacup.” I can dish out clichés too.
“Are you suggesting that gay people are disabled?” Noah asks.
“Well, they are a little, aren’t they? Remember how we used to treat homosexuals, cross-dressers and the rest of the bunch as ‘deviant’? This has obviously caused much pain, which, being enduring, cannot but be disabling.”
Orotund and ponderous, I am afraid, but I must record it as I said it. That I become high-flown is not my fault: living with Noah is an occupational hazard, and a trifle disabling in its own right.
“So do you support the decision to fly the flag?”
“No, decidedly not,” I reply.
“Correct, correct and correct again,” says Noah. “The Old Boys are in the right. A flag is a symbol of the institution or activity it represents. Bishops is a school for boys in general. It is not a school for gays. Flying the flag is there to represent the school as a whole.”
“Ah, but apparently the school also flies the flag of St George? What do you say to that?”
“Displaying it represents the Christian aspect of the school. Surely that’s obvious. You don’t suggest, do you, that it depicts the slaying of the Herschel dragons?” A nasty jibe, this. Some of my best friends went to Herschel and would breathe fire if they heard Noah speaking like this.
“Well, do you suggest that it can never be right to fly an alien flag?”
“No, I don’t. I can see the school flying the Springbok flag to symbolise support for the SA team in a World Cup tie. But the school must act with discretion. The display always signifies support for what it depicts and so should be uncontroversial.
“The gay pride movement is fraught with controversy. This is not just because the people and their practices are so often repellent; it is because they are militant in their demand that their choices be accepted. I mean, trans men in girls’ loos, etc. Calls for people to subscribe to this stuff, to espouse it, are bound to create discord. This is what flying the gay flag is doing, surely!”
Snuggling up to Noah that night, I ask him, a little mischievously, “Were you ever buggered at your precious school?”
“No,” he answers after a pause, “but there were masters and boys that gave us the willies. Metaphorically, you understand, not actually. Looking back on it, I think most of the bachelor masters must have been gay, but they kept it to themselves, if you know what I mean.”
“I am not sure I do,” I say, “but I think I shall leave it there.” And there it stayed.
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