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Carodoc went to primary school in Colchester with ‘I am a liar’ embroidered on his sweat shirt, before being dispatched, aged six, to a tiny prep school in Suffolk run by two brothers and a sister as in a novel by Ivy Compton Burnett. The lies continued — he claimed in a geography class that he had just returned from a holiday at the Taj Mahal (this was in the mid-1950s). But the enlightened sounding regime at Nowton Court — staffed almost entirely by demobbed officers — found a way of going with his mendacious flow, and taming it. Unfortunately the difficult birth of another son propels Jill into the arms of the Catholic church and Caradoc is removed from Nowton House. By then a pattern has been set; King makes up for the awkwardness and inadequacy of his relations with his parents by latching onto the kindness of teachers. He continues to be naughty, but never wants for champions as one school follows another.
This book may look like a misery memoir but it doesn’t read like one. The energy of its problem child protagonist is directed at turning knocks to his own advantage rather than proving his victim status. His disposition is generous, unselfpitying and sanguine. The headmaster at Nowton Court beats him till he bleeds, then puts his arms around him, and later invites him back to the school to make not exactly a pass, but a gentle stab at something not unrelated. He is clearly not the sort of chap to thrive in the current educational climate, but just as clearly a benign factor in the life of Caradoc King. So is Father Roger, the Jesuit headmaster of Belmont Abbey, who treated his young favourite to wine-soaked tutorials and pulled strings at Oxford when he muffed his exams.
It was Father Roger, delegated to the task by Jill, who finally told him, aged 16, about the adoption. King’s overwhelming reaction was relief. Though he exchanged pious letters with his ‘parents’ saying the fact of the adoption made no difference to either side, ‘in 15 months they would each write separate letters saying the opposite’. King was cast out of the family into which he had never fitted, and taken in by Jill’s sister until he left for university.
Decades later King tracks down his birth mother in time to meet her before she dies. Better not give the ending away — suffice it to say that Problem Child is a refreshing celebration of sinners over saints.
Because you read about biography
Also by Claudia FitzHerbert
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