My first day at St. Andrew’s College was a disaster which I shudder to remember. Although it still pains my self-esteem, I feel sure my tears were probably quickly forgotten by most of the witnesses.

The class to which I had been allocated was IC, seated on ancient-looking wood and cast-iron benches on the bare boards of a first-floor room looking out on Wellington Place. When the houses on the Place were still private residences this would probably have been a small sitting room. The white and grey-veined marble fireplace survived but looked lost in the classroom context where the walls and shuttered windows were painted with a sickly green oil-paint and a bare bulb hung from what was once an elegant ceiling. Apart from the packed lines of desks accommodating up to thirty boys, there was a wooden master’s desk to the right of the fireplace near the window with, in the corner behind it, a wooden cupboard looking as grimy and battered as the whole ensemble.

A Mr Fergusson, wearing a black academic gown over his standard sports-jacket and trousers, shirt and tie, introduced himself as the form master. He seemed younger than the kindergarten staff and projected an outdoor, sporting air. Yet when he spoke he had a jowl that bobbed up and down, ill-set teeth, and a habit of clearing his throat as if he had a breathing problem. Little did I know how much I would come to like and respect this dedicated man who acted as housemaster for the small boarding department, coached rugby, cricket, swimming and life-saving and ran the tuck shop. It was Fergy’s questions which did all the first-day damage that still hurts.

No places had been allocated as the first-year boys found their way to IC. I found myself ushered in the general movement to a seat in the front row, three seats in from the window. Once he had chalked up basic information on the blackboard attached to the wall over the fireplace, Fergy began at the window end of the front row asking each boy to give his name and age and to say a little about their background. I didn’t feel prepared for this and when he asked me what my father did, in answering, “My father’s dead, sir”, I couldn’t help breaking down into tears and sobs of which I was immediately and deeply ashamed.

Fergy’s questions made their way round the room, punctuated by my sobs. I remember with gratitude to this day the comfort and sympathy of my immediate neighbour on the front bench whose name was Robin Mac Cullagh.

Robin, I quickly learned, was an asthmatic who had suffered greatly from his chest and who would also find class and homework difficult. Though we never became close friends, because of that first day, I always tried to help Robin whenever an opportunity offered itself.

Classes at St. Andrews were 45 minutes long and, before the first bell rang to end my misery, I had recovered sufficiently to become the innocent victim of a much more long-lived embarrassment. With every boy introduced, Fergy started posing more general questions, like “Has anyone got a pet?”.

Wondering about the silence that hung in the air, and in an effort to reassert myself, I volunteered that while we didn’t have a pet at home, we were sometimes woken by stray cats howling in the back garden. (It was a cause of family wonderment that my brother John’s first full sentence was, “Them cats wake my”.)

The cat story was greeted with giggling by the boys, and by an announcement by Fergy that I should henceforth be known as “Pussy” Keery. I recognise that this nicknaming was warmly meant, perhaps to compensate for the crying incident, as I don’t think either Fergy or any of the class could then have been familiar with the sexual connotation that a few years later would be discovered by boarders reading Hank Janson and Micky Spillane by torch under the blankets. Through decency or over-familiarity, the nickname, which often caused annoyance during my time in the junior forms, had largely dropped out of use by the time I left school.

That I gradually learnt how to manage my first year in IC was largely due to an extraordinary incident in which the class credited me for beating the most feared teacher in the school. Where Fergy was soft and sympathetic, George Taylor was spiky and unpredictable. He had tight-cropped hair and his once-black gown had acquired a greenish hue. Mr Taylor, who taught English, was known everywhere and spoken about in hushed tones as “The Bog”. In his first-day presentation he had drawn the class’s attention to one of the larger stains on the wall. “Do you see that spot?” he asked. The boys were suitably transfixed. “That once was a boy”, said the Bog, in tones to make anyone’s blood run cold.

Some months later the Bog was teaching the basics of English grammar. Having set the class to study a chapter on plurals as homework, the Bog suddenly started asking each boy in turn to give him the plural of one of the words in the textbook’s list of unusual or difficult cases. Having begun at the back, when he got to the middle of the class without one right answer, he started piling up the books on his desk, announcing in a threatening voice that he didn’t see why he should teach the class ever again when no one bothered to do their homework. Offended by this global condemnation of the class I found myself saying, “But I know the plurals, sir”. There was a terrible silence and the Bog stopped gathering his books together. “Has anyone else done their homework?” he thundered. No one moved. “Well Keery,” said the Bog, “if you are the only boy who is interested you are the only boy I will teach”.

I assume it was the terror projected by the Bog which maintained silence when I was called up to stand beside him at the blackboard. There, under the cover of his green gown, which smelt heavily of tobacco, the Bog gave me a one to one explanation of the more difficult plurals.

George Taylor taught English throughout the school and his, at times, eccentric methods of teaching produced generally good results.

Just before the long summer holiday some years later he produced a list of books which he said anyone interested in reading would enjoy. I read them all and feel indebted to the Bog for my consequent love of reading. On the Bog’s list were Graham Greene’s “The Power and the Glory”, Eric Ambler’s “Stamboul Train”, Orwell’s “1984”, Shaw’s “St. Joan”, Eric Anstey’s “Brass Bottle” and Hardy’s “The Return of the Native”. Later on, the Bog would recommend as “a gem” Lem Putt’s “The Specialist” and Carson Mc Cullers as “the best contemporary writer”.

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