Hildred's eyes were the worst set of eyes with which I've seen anyone looking. When I first met him, it was upon the occasion of a school match. Boys (players and spectators alike) were transported in bulk by a convoy of minivans with the teachers as drivers - to a school across the other side of the city for a needle match between our respective rugger teams. I was a second-row forward with a hankering towards a position more suitable for my sprinter's frame - such as wing three-quarter. But most of that is misguided history, as useless as old bones in new dogs.

Yet, Hildred does not stay as mere history. He haunts me far into the future, too. He was one of the masters at the opposing school, the rugger teacher, in fact, whom all his boys either called Sir or Mr Hildred, their respect seeming to border on fear. Behind his back, I'm sure one of the pupils referred to him as something quite different, a nickname not dissimilar to Bulth or Wulth or something.

The actual day started cold and blustery: a day where either scarves were flags or necks stiff - as Brian (my best friend) always said. Eventually, after many attempts at favouritism and confusion, we were hustled aboard and driven through our school's gates, cheering loudly - thinking, in our boyish way, that this was the most important event in the whole wide world. Selfishness slouches hand in hand with shame - except, of course, when you're young. Then, all's self and nothing's everything else.

That day, we shouted out crass racist comments, as we trundled through the grey-streaked streets of the inner city. We howled in self-intoxication - until the teacher at the front told us to quieten down and save our energy for the playing-field: that area between the huge H-posts where boys formed dots - and dots formed the patterns of an inner rhythm divorced from self. And as we swung into the almost identical gates of the opposing school on the other side of the city, much of our initial enthusiasm had depleted. The minivans lined up in the playground: a makeshift carpark, where weekdays saw the stranger games of boys without rules. Our teachers became more officious, showing-off in front of the "foreign" teachers - one of the latter being Hildred. On first impressions, he struck me as only ordinarily tall, but as Brian and I drew closer, we discovered he was taller than both of us put together. His face looked as if it were two overlapping faces, both as ugly as each other, but even uglier by being two instead of one. He sported a baggy track-suit, as if it hid a multitude of sins.

This Hildred made a commotion of directions which our teachers followed in a piecemeal fashion, some of us boys being delegated to various tasks as a result. Brian and I were told to liaise with the other team, because, apparently, they hadn't been able to muster a full contingent - and we would have to make their thirteen up to the requisite fifteen, which seemed a ludicrous state of affairs for such an important match. Were we intended to play below par, so that our team proper would be more likely to win? Or were we to bust our guts scrummaging on behalf of "the enemy", which was a lot to ask of us, having been instilled with a fighting team spirit and the overwhelming urge to win. But, of course, winning was the goal, on whichever side we played, wasn't it? I looked at Brian. Brian looked at me. Our eyes spoke volumes. We had no real doubt why we were the chosen ones to play for the wrong team - and I think Brian almost cried. Picked to be traitors. Because we could be trusted to muck the ruck, or whatever the correct expression was. I slapped Brian on the back as if not to worry. We'd show them. We'd score the winning try that was our own school team's losing one. Together we followed the boy strangers into their changing-room in Hildred's wake. There, amid the hubbub of laughter and half-broken voices, Hildred shepherded us into some semblance of a team - all wearing the same purple strip and jabbing out our legs in mock exercise just like the professionals. There was an odour of boy and beast, without quite crossing the borderline of stench. The others told many things to Brian and myself as we changed ... although the general rumpus caused their words to hang head-to-tail without the sense that those who first uttered them had intended. That their school was under an iron fist. That they hadn't seen their real headmaster for months, if not years. That Mr Hildred often joined them in the hot showers after matches - his underparts, they maintained, being more suited to those of a bull or stallion. That there were signs of shaving on Mr Hildred's back but where the blade had inadvertently missed shanks of tawny hair tufted out. That Latin lessons had been replaced by more Biology ones, which they always had just before lunch. That there were ever only thirteen players available for rugger against other schools instead of the more rightful fifteen, despite there being a strict regime of involuntary games. That the last two visiting schoolboys to play for their side had...

The chitchat was interrupted by Hildred wrenching out blinding ear-aches on his heavy-duty whistle - which entailed us silently trooping from the pavilion in Indian File towards the playing-field. The latter's lush green was patched with an archipelago of brown, despite the season having been wetter than most. Brian and I were relieved, however, to discover our erstwhile class colleagues desultorily practising - with the teachers I recognised standing in a small group, at a loss to take matters in hand before Hildred turned up to organise them. I may have recognised most of them, as I said, but, in hindsight, my schoolfriends appeared slightly different - or it may have been that Brian and I looked slightly different, a fact which had rubbed off on them. Observation can actually affect the reality it observes: a fact I later only realised by means of hindsight.

A certain individual who used to sit next to me in English made a catcall upon spotting our purple strip. "Tomkins looks a real nancy-boy!" said another cheeky lad whom I just about recognised from my school's Lower Remove. He received a clip round the ear from a "foreign" teacher for his pains, before one of our own disciplinarians had the chance to reprimand him. I was the Tomkins at whom the reference had been directed and I blushed from tip to toes - or I felt as if I did. My embarrassment was short-lived because, at that moment, Hildred marshalled us all upon the pitch between the tallest H-posts I had ever seen.

The match was a draw, which made a change from losing about sixty-nil as was our more customary result on such occasions. The referee was one of the "foreign" teachers who kept disallowing, for no obvious reasons, various ties and drop-goals. The end-to-end toppling of the oval ball always seemed to take it into touch whereupon we fought manfully for it in line-up after line-up without making incursions into each other's territory. Hildred was nowhere to be seen for the whole match and I thought it rather peculiar that he was not supporting his team from the touch-line, as the other "foreign" teachers seemed to do - with grunts, if not full-blooded cheers. Once, I spotted a large dog in the distance loping across another pitch but I could not concentrate my attention on it before being violently tackled to the ground by a member of the opposing side, despite being nowhere near the ball. Brian had what I would call a low-profile game; being the hooker, he was often out of sight within the scrum. But that didn't explain why he wasn't in the line-ups. Hildred had, from the start, given me the full-back position instead of my usual second-row forward. So, I was out in the open the whole time, kicking my heels behind my team - and I don't think I felt the ball even once.

I began to worry when I didn't see Brian in the 'foreign' bath-house, after the match. He had evidently skipped this act of cleansing, abandoning me to the strange showers. Hildred turned up, midway through our bare ablutions, howling at the top of his voice. I now understood what the others had earlier said about him. I had never imagined that any teacher, of whatever breed, could possibly be quite so blatantly naked. And when he bent his back to me, there the blood-engorged, vein-knotted tail ended.

Published 'Night Terrors' 1996