## Caught at St James (F/m)

The following account takes place in the middle of my second form year at one of Australia's most prestigious independent boarding schools. I was eleven and a half years old and, because I was two years younger than most of my form mates was among one of the youngest boys in the school. By the standards of the time - much stricter than those of today, especially for somebody attending such a school - I was quite a poorly behaved child. I wouldn't say I was a bad person, but I was, in many ways, a naughty little boy. I didn't like obeying rules unless I agreed with them, and I didn't agree with most of them. And I really liked money - and except that I would not actually steal, I wasn't too particular as to how I got it - I used to do other people's homework sometimes in exchange for cash, more often I would simply charge them for helping them a little.

In second form we got eighty cents a week pocket money, which was a lot more then than it is today, but still wasn't a vast amount by any means. And if we didn't spend it in a week, we were supposed to draw less the following week - if we had twenty cents left, we were only supposed to draw sixty cents, for example. A record was kept of how much you drew so you didn't lose out on the money long term (any left in your account was given to you at the end of the year, and with your Housemasters permission, you could draw saved money to buy something special), but you weren't supposed to have more than a weeks pocket money on you under any normal circumstance. As we got older, they got more flexible about this if we were considered trustworthy but back in second form it was still a strict rule.

For various reasons (or perhaps I should say to engage in various schemes) I was trying to build up some unofficial savings of my own. I wasn't very good at it to be honest - when I got money I felt an irresistible desire to spend it on lollies and I was only occasionally able to suppress that urge. But when I did manage to save some money, I used to cache it in various locations around the school. We had no privacy in the boarding house, everything we owned was subject to search whenever the Housemaster or the House Matron decided it was necessary, so I couldn't keep the money there. Caching it in secret locations I found around the school meant I kept my money safe, and it also meant it took me a little bit of time to fetch it when I needed it which cut down on the impact of impulsive desires on my saving plans. Occasionally I lost money I cached - somebody else found a cache I assume, but I was actually pretty good at finding places and hiding things so that was quite a rare event.

At the time of this account, I had, I recall, a total of two dollars and twenty cents cached at three separate locations around the school - and this was a significant amount of money. It was enough to buy three Biggles books.

I had only recently encountered Biggles - loaned one of them by my Housemaster who was trying to wean me off Enid Blyton as he felt that Enid Blyton books were too juvenile and likely to lead to me being teased if I continued reading them. And it worked. I liked Biggles. And Green Knight paperbacks cost 60 cents each. So I had the money for three of them - it was just a question of getting to a bookshop - and that was quite a problem. The school was fairly isolated. There were, of course, bookshops in the two cities the school was located between but opportunities to go into either of these were seriously limited, most especially for junior boys.

But there were occasional opportunities and one of these was coming for me.

Our school was deliberately competitive about academics. At the end of every week (except at the very start of the year) every student in virtually every subject in each form was ranked from 1st down to however many boys there were doing a subject in each form - somewhere over one hundredth at lower forms where all subjects were compulsory - it was probably a pretty rotten system for the boys down in the lower levels but for me who was nearly always near the top - well, I liked it. Regardless or whether or not it was a good idea or not, it was how things worked and some Masters took it more seriously than others. Some of them, especially the older, more traditional staff members used to make us sit in class ranks in class - I believe it had once been required at the school but in my time it was left up to the individual Master. And as far as I can recall none of my Masters did it in First Form, but my Mathematics Master, Mr Morris, did in the Second Form.

The lowest performing student in a class had to sit nearest the Master's desk at the front of the room, while the highest performing students had to sit nearest the back of the room. And when it came to Mathematics, I was the best student in my entire Form - and therefore also the best student in my class. So I was stuck in a back corner of the room.

And Mr Morris - a fairly astute man who was keeping a very close eye on me to begin with as he believed I was a cheat - noticed something about my performance in his class. When it came to our weekly Mathematics test - which was handed out on a mimeod sheet of paper so we had it right in front of us - I rarely got a question wrong. When I had to copy work off the board though, I used to make mistakes - mistakes that came from errors in transcribing numbers - and he came to suspect I might have a slight visual impairment.

He reported this my House Matron and she arranged for me to have my eyesight tested. The school had quite a large medical staff of Matrons (one for each House) and under-Matrons (no idea how many of those there were - they were often young woman, newly trained nurses, gaining experience at the school to become school nurses, I believe - and they were often only around for a short time - we used to see them mostly when they relieved our House Matron) and by the end of my time at the school, there was even a Medical Centre on the grounds - virtually a small hospital. Masters and their families, domestic staff and their families, mostly lived in houses built on the large grounds of the school, so along with the boys there was quite a sizeable community and it justified that type of commitment to health care - but we still needed access to specialist services on occasion, and the most common place that boys got that type of attention was at the new Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. It took around an hour and a half to two hours, all things being equal to get to the Royal Children's Hospital by train and tram and when this was necessary, junior boys - those up to Fourth Form - were always accompanied by either the Matron, or very occasionally, if all that was needed was an escort and no decisions were going to be taken (for example when a boy needed regular treatment) by an older boy. Fifth and Sixth Form boys who had routine appointments at the hospital were generally allowed to go alone, unless, of course, there were decisions that had to be made that they shouldn't be expected or allowed to make alone, or if there were issues that meant they needed an adult with them.

Being in Second Form, I most definitely needed to be escorted into the city and to the hospital and normally it would have been my House Matron who took me. But it turned out that a First Form boy from another House also needed to go to the Royal Children's Hospital that day and so it was decided that I would go with him and his House Matron.

There was absolutely no guarantee I would have a chance to buy my Biggles books - we were going into the city purely for medical reasons and they, of course, took priority. But getting two and from the hospital alone required a total of at least three hours travel and more often it was four hours or a little more. With waiting around at the hospital for appointments and the time needed to do whatever treatment or testing was necessary, the time all added up - so the normal procedure was to leave shortly after breakfast for appointments the school tried to make in the mid morning, and then to have lunch in the city - Matron would take us somewhere suitable and she had the money to pay for it - and then return to the school aiming to get back at latest before five o'clock. And if there was time, and if you were good, it was quite common for the Matron to let you have a look around a bit of the city - it was fairly common to go to the Coles Cafeteria for lunch (for some reason that was considered a fairly genteel place, though I'm not sure why - I liked their crumbed sausages though) and then to have a look around the big Myer (a department store) as we headed back to Spencer Street. And Myer sold a lot of books.

And so on the evening before my trip to the city, I gathered my money from its hidden locations and in the morning after a shower, I dressed for the city with the help of one of those under-Matrons I mentioned. I don't mean that she had to help me get dressed - I was 11 - but going into the city was treated as a big deal. We were out in public, representing our school - and it was a prominent school with a well known uniform. Boys from our school were noticed, and the school certainly didn't want us to be an embarrassment. And so, the order of the day, was our best school uniform. White shirt, blue tie, grey shorts that went virtually down to the knees and grey socks that came virtually up to the knee. Black shoes, polished to shining perfection (though not by me - by my best friend who was a master of the art - he polished my shoes, I made his bed). It was getting the tie tied perfectly and the socks to the right length that the under-Matron supervised - making me retie and retie that tie until it was perfect, before she attacked by hair with a comb - they really were intent on us looking our best. Finally when she was satisfied, I was sent off to breakfast with a threat of a blazing bottom if I spilled anything on myself and after breakfast, the final touches - the blue blazer and, horror or horrors, the blue school cap.

The cap was on the way out while I was at the school - it was made optional for normal wear in my first year which meant nobody wore it. For a while though, it was still required wear when 'travelling', which meant we had to wear it on this trip to the city. I honestly didn't mind it - it was the older boys who felt it was ridiculous.

In any event, as I headed off to the main school to meet up with the House Matron who would be escorting me to the city and her other charge, I must have looked the picture of the proper little schoolboy. Cap, blazer, shorts, tie, clean and pressed and ready for the day ahead. I was missing a day of classes, I had nearly three weeks pocket money in my pockets, and despite the fact that I was going to a Hospital was anticipating nothing worse than an eye test - perhaps eye drops at the very worst. It was a cool day, but fine, and I had every reason to think it would be a pretty good day.

Outside the main building I met Sister McAlister and Larry Moreland. Sister McAlister must have been in her late forties - old to an eleven year old, but certainly still hale and hearty. She was fairly typical of the Matrons I encountered at school in that she was most definitely a kind, compassionate and caring lady but at the same time, didn't take any nonsense from the boys in her charge. I believe she'd been an Army nurse during the war - she certainly walked and stood as if she had genuine military experience and the first thing she said to me as she saw me that day was to tell me to stand up straight. She inspected me and obviously decided I was acceptable, and after she had checked that both of us had been to the toilet, we set off towards the gates on our way to the train station. She was in civvies - not her normal nursing uniform, but a nice dress and jacket with a hat on her head and that was good as well. It was felt to be somewhat demeaning to be walked around the city by an obvious Matron - the way she was dressed, she could have been your mother or an aunt and that was far better. She also had a handbag in her left hand, and I was delighted that she had Larry by the right hand. He was almost certainly a year older than I was, but in the form below me, and it was obvious she believed I was the older boy, or she would have had me by the hand. I didn't advise either of them of my age. Larry was about the same size as me - a freckle faced, brown haired boy, who seemed nice enough. We had seen each other around - but hadn't really met before.

Our trip to the hospital passed without incident - it did take nearly two hours all told, but we were easily in time for our appointments. I was left in a waiting room and told to do what I was told by the hospital staff - Sister McAlister had to go with Larry for his appointment elsewhere in the hospital. She told us, before she took him away, that if we were both good, she would take us to the Coles Cafeteria for lunch so things were looking good from my perspective. After a while I had my eyes tested and was sent to wait outside in the waiting room again and when Sister McAlister eventually returned with Larry who looked as if he'd been crying (he had been - they'd had to cut some sort of growth away from his armpit) it was explained that while my eyesight was within normal ranges, there was a slight discrepancy which reading glasses would help. I was told to take Larry to the toilet (again, it was clear that Sister McAlister believed I was the older) while Sister McAlister arranged for the glasses to be produced. And after all that was done, we went outside and boarded a tram that would take us back towards the centre of the city.

We didn't get there. As the tram trundled past the Victoria market we heard a loud screech of brakes, followed by an even louder sound of crunching metal. Just ahead of the tram, two cars had collided heavily. Now, of course, Sister McAlister was a nurse and she snapped at us to follow her. As we leaped out of the tram, we could see the two badly damaged cars about fifty yards or so ahead of us, and Sister grabbed one of us by each hand - her handbag swung on its straps and ran towards the accident. As we got close to it, she turned to me and spoke.

"Nathan, take Larry into the gardens and wait where I can see you. Don't come any closer to these cars. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Matron."

I grabbed Larry's hand - it seemed instinctive and we carefully crossed the road and into Flagstaff Gardens - I didn't know what they were at the time, but I do today. They were pretty enough gardens, but in all honesty, it was rather boring standing there - I would have much rather been at the accident, but I knew better than to incur the wrath of a Matron - and besides she'd put me in charge of Larry who was looking a little green. We saw police arrive, and a couple of ambulances, but we couldn't really see what was going on. It all seemed to be taking an awful long time and I walked as far away from where Larry had sat down on the grass as I thought I could - being careful to always be in sight of Sister McAlister - and I spied over the other side of the park, an odd looking tower through the trees.

Since starting at my school a year earlier, I developed the beginnings of an interest in old buildings - we had a few around the school and walking through them I could feel the history of the place. We visited other similar schools for sporting events on Saturdays and again I liked looking at the old buildings that some of those had - but this tower looked different from anything I had seen before. It seemed to be made of sandstone - but it looked older than other standstone buildings I had seen - and there was a smaller tower on top of it, oddly shaped, that I thought might be bluestone - it was hard to tell from where I was but the building interested me and I was still staring at it as Sister McAlister came over.

"Come along, boys."

"Matron," I asked. "Do you know what that building is?"

She looked where I was pointing. "Yes, I certainly do. It's the Old Cathedral."

"Old Cathedral?"

"Before St Pauls was built. It was the first Anglican Church in Melbourne - I think it was the first Church, and it became the first Cathedral. It wasn't here then - it used to be in the middle of city - they moved it brick by brick. It's one of Melbourne's four or five oldest buildings, I believe."

"Can we have a closer look at it?"

Larry spoke. "I thought we were going to have lunch at Coles."

Sister McAlister looked at her watch. "It's only just gone twelve. We could have a quick look and still have time for lunch. Let's go."

As we walked towards it, we asked about the occupants of the cars. "They were lucky, boys."

"Lucky you were here, Matron?"

"Lucky that God loves all of us, boys."

We crossed the gardens and then crossed the road and I stood looking at the beautiful old church - St James Old Cathedral. It seemed out of place (and I suppose as they'd moved it brick by brick, it was) and it was far smaller than St Pauls. Thinking about it, this was probably the first time I ever saw a building that I knew was over a hundred years old - I'd seen a couple of others I now know to be that age, but there was a sign here that told me this church was 115 years old and I found that so impressive. After a few minutes, Sister McAlister tapped me on the shoulder.

"I'd like to go inside, Nathan. It's quite nice in there as well."

Larry and I both followed her in - just before we went in, she reminded us to be very quiet and respectful and that we could look around for a few minutes but we had to keep an eye on her and come when she signaled. She had to tell me twice because I was distracted by the site of a young American soldier coming out the doors - I think he heard what she was saying because he grinned at me and rolled his eyes as if to indicate that mothers (or mother figures) were the same all over the world.

It was quite nice inside - it seemed even older. Sister McAlister slipped into a pew and I had the distinct impression that she intended to pray so I moved away to give her some space. Larry went off in the other direction. I walked around looking at he pews and the walls, soaking in the atmosphere. There were a few other people in the church - a couple of middle aged ladies that I remember and a person I took to be the sexton, and perhaps a couple of others - but it was fairly empty. After a few minutes I met up with Larry next to - well, it was something like a poor box. I don't know if that's what it was, or if it was the raise money to the upkeep of the church or what - but it was box you could put money in. It had quite a wide opening - not wide enough to put a hand in (at least I assume not) but wide enough to see into - and inside I could see a rather odd note.

Australia's currency had changed only a year earlier from £ s. d. to $ and c - and this was neither one of the old notes, nor one of the new notes. Looking at it, I was pretty sure it was American - and anything American was flavour of the month among boys at my school. I wanted a closer look and I felt the box and found that the top opened - it didn't strike me as odd as the poor box in the chapel at school was never locked.

I didn't take the note out - I'd never take money out of a poor box - but I wanted to look at it. And it was an American banknote - a $20 bill - actually quite a lot of money back then. It was lying pretty flat on the bottom of the box, an image of the White House face up. I was about to close the box when:

"Oi, what are you doing?"

The sexton was coming towards us.

"We're just looking, Sir." said Larry.

"How did you get the lock open?"

"What lock, Sir?"

"Don't give me 'what lock' or I'll give you what for."

Sister McAlister came striding towards. "What seems to be the problem, Sir?"

"These boys are trying to steal money from the church."

"I'm sure they wouldn't do that."

The sexton looked over my shoulder.

"Listen, Ma'am - there should be - at least a couple of dollars in change in there by this time of day. Not just one American note."

"Are you sure?"

"I've been working here for twenty seven years, Ma'am."

"Larry? Nathan?"

Other people in the church - including the two middle aged ladies I mentioned earlier - had come up to see what was going on. Larry spoke.

"Well, I didn't steal any money. If anyone did, it must have been Nathan."

I was offended. "You little -"

"Nathan!" Sister McAlister cut me off.

"Matron, I didn't take any money," I protested.

"There's an easy way of sorting this out. Empty out your pockets boys."

I thrust my hands into my pockets. I hadn't stolen anything. What did I have to hide? And felt the clink of change. Two dollars twenty in change. And under no circumstances should I have more than eighty cents.

Larry had already emptied out his pockets. Seventeen cents in change, and a handkerchief that probably should have been replaced a week earlier. I tried to stall while I tried to work out what to tell Matron about why I had so much cash.

"Matron, I..."

"Empty your pockets, Nathan."

"Matron, I..."

"Empty your pockets."

I did as I was told. A clean handkerchief. A pocket knife. And two dollars twenty in change.

"Nathan!" Sister McAlister was obviously furious. "You shouldn't have more than eighty cents. Explain yourself."

"Matron, I brought it from school."

"You can't have done - you're not allowed to have that much money."

"But I -"

Before I could explain fully - and believe me I was going to, I was pretty sure that stealing from a Church was at least an order of magnitude worse than violating pocket money rules - we heard the middle aged ladies talking to each other.

"A boy from such a good school as well."

Embarasssing the school was one of the very worst offences a boy could possibly commit. We all knew that. The schools reputation was now clearly under threat and it had to be redeemed.

Sister McAlister grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me to the front pew. She sat down and with the practiced ease of an expert pulled me across her lap. I resisted a bit, but not all that seriously. I knew there were worse things than a spanking across the seat of my shorts and I also knew that even if I was believed on the stealing issue, I was still, intentionally or not, guilty of embarrassing the school - and that importance of doing that was drummed into us so much that I did feel I'd done something wrong. This was certainly embarrassing - but I was very well aware that a Matron could have made it far more embarrassing and I wasn't going to give her an excuse.

She spanked me. God, did she spank me. Twenty or thirty hard smacks across the seat of my shorts and I was bubbling with tears after the first five or six, I think. It hurt. It hurt a lot.

When she was finished, she let me stand up, and I stood there crying as she stood up and straightened her hat, which had gone crooked.

"I'm sorry, Sir. I hope you don't think that was inappropriate."

The sexton shook his head. "I believe God quite approves of such methods, Ma'am."

She turned to the ladies. "My apologies to you as well."

"Don't worry - I have six boys - that's what they need sometimes."

She grabbed me by one hand and marched us out of the church, Larry scrambling to keep up.

"I've never been so embarrassed to be associated with the school in my entire life, Nathan. When we get back to the school..."

"Aren't we going to Coles?" that came from Larry.

"Larry, we..."

"I didn't steal any money. I got my arm half cut off. I don't think it's fair."

We were back in the gardens by this stage and we slowed down. Sister McAlister looked at Larry and seemed to calm down. She looked at her watch.

"All right, we'll still go to Coles Cafeteria. Larry. Can you leave Nathan and I alone for a moment."

I was still crying, and she opened her handbag and took out my pocket knife and handkerchief - I never saw her put them in there and I assumed my savings were now in the poor box. She unfolded the handkerchief and handed it to me and told me to blow my nose and wipe my eyes. I did so, and over the course of a few minutes I calmed down a lot.

"Now, Nathan, listen to me. You did wrong and you've been punished. It's over now. And if you can be good for the rest of the day, I don't see why this needs to go any further. We can have a nice meal at Coles and then we have a quiet trip home, and that's the end of the matter. But you have to promise to be good - and if you're not, I will have to tell Sister Beeman and Mr Pinner about this. Now - are you going to be good?"

I was innocent. But what did that really matter. Being innocent wouldn't stop my bottom hurting. It wouldn't restore my dignity. It might, just possibly have got my money back - but I shouldn't have had that to start with and I hadn't been punished for that crime. The best I could hope for was that this matter ended now. And that's what she was offering.

"Yes, Matron."

The only bit that worried me, the only loose end left was Larry Moreland - who had called me a thief, and probably believed I was one (I considered the possibility he might be - but without proof I wouldn't accuse him and he had only had seventeen cents on him) - but I could deal with him later.

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