EARL SPENCER: I Was Easy Prey For Matron s Calculated Warmth

pipewire.orgDespite our privileged backgrounds, my classmates in the 1970s were no different from any other boys aged 11 or 12 in finding the subject of sex endlessly intriguing. Our actual knowledge of this special interest, however, tended to be rudimentary and confused. We were on constant high alert for words that alluded in any way at all to genitals, breasts or bodily functions. We had vague ideas about words that were sexual, but these were random notions rather than concrete knowledge.

And even John Porch (whom we nicknamed Jack), the headmaster of our prep school, Maidwell Hall in Northamptonshire, would have struggled to be disgusted by what we considered to be pornography. Some of the older boys had copies of Health & Efficiency, a monthly naturist magazine. It featured a regular-looking naked woman on its cover, with a strategically placed man - also naked, but nothing on show - talking attentively to her in a humdrum setting, such as the kitchen.

I added to the illicit literature of one of the most expensive private schools in England by smuggling in a copy of my mother's Cosmopolitan. The articles made only the vaguest sense to us. My understanding of sex, then, was pretty normal for a boy of 11. I was curious yet unknowing, and should have remained so a while longer. Instead, my innocence was taken down a different course, where confusion, shame and self-doubt lurched out from the shadows.

Unaware that such a crime existed, I had no idea that I had become a victim of sexual abuse. Charles Spencer with sister Diana and nanny Mary Clarke on the day he leaves for Maidwell Hall in 1972 Back in the 1970s, Sập gỗ nguyên khối gõ đỏ the role of assistant matron was filled by a succession of 18 to 22-year-old women, from what were considered 'good' families. There must have been eight or ten of them during my Maidwell years, Chiếu ngựa nguyên khối gỗ gõ đỏ staying a term or two to plump up their résumés. Rather than address any of them by her name, we had to call her 'Please'.

This Maidwellian tradition, which applied to all female members of staff, was seen as a way of instilling good manners into the boys. (Even as a new boy of eight, I remember thinking this was deeply odd.) While I can't recall most of the other assistant matrons, there was one who will remain with me till the day I die. She was 19 or 20, tall and slender, with brown hair and rosy cheeks on a handsome face. I've long since given up trying to understand what lay behind her behaviour.

It's beyond my comprehension. All I can do is say what happened. In the middle of term, I was moved up into the school attics to one of a pair of dormitories called 'The Uppers'. I was 11, and by a few months the youngest of the half a dozen boys already there. I'd only been in The Uppers for Bộ ngựa gỗ hương a night or two when I awoke to whispers coming from the other end of the dormitory.