History of boy who knew Bennett
IT WAS just before the turn of the millennium, as Alan Bennett attended the West End premiere of his latest play, that his friend Albert Benson retired from a lifetime’s service at Greenwood and Batley.
They had not seen each other since their lives went separate ways, 50 years earlier. But each had remained acutely sensitive to their different fortunes.
The injustice felt by Mr Bennett towards Mr Benson’s straitened circumstances was betrayed in a letter to their old primary school in Leeds, which was published last week as the school marked its 150th anniversary. It rankled, he wrote, that the chum with whom he shared initials and a school desk had been deprived of the chance to take the entrance exam for secondary school.
Mr Benson harboured no such resentment. “There was a war on, wasn’t there?” he shrugged.
Mr Bennett’s route to fame went through West Leeds High School and then Oxford. His friend, out of the education system at 14, clocked on at the engineering works behind the gasworks on Armley Road, for 17/6 a week – £34 in today’s money. By the time they gave him his retirement cheque, he was their accountant. He had been surprised to read in last week’s papers that Mr Bennett
Albert Benson, who was at primary school in Leeds with Alan Bennett. had singled him out among his memories of what was then Upper Armley National School, on Theaker Lane. But he was not resentful. “Alan was fortunate that his father was in business, with a bit of collateral behind him,” he said. “So while he was able to finance him, our family unfortunately couldn’t.”
Mr Bennett had said Albert was the brighter of the two, but that necessity had dictated his future. “I knew then that this was unfair,” he wrote to the school.
Mr Benson concurred. “It’s not what you know – it’s who you know. If I’d have been in Alan’s position I might have been as fortunate as him, given a gentle push. Unfortunately, I didn’t have that push.
“My father was in the Army, trooping about Africa somewhere, and mother went out to work – so we were left to fend for ourselves.
“Life during the war was a matter of existence. I never had time to think about fairness.”
The two were not separated by class. “Alan was like all the rest
Left, Albert Benson a school friend of Alan Bennett; above with father Fred, mother Lillian and sister Doreen; below, Alan Bennett and inset, pupil Klaudia Szep with the letter he wrote. of us. We were all gawky-looking, all friends together,” Mr Benson said. “You went to school, came home, had a game of football – you just lived from day to day. There was never any trouble.” He considered his own family to be fortunate, even though they lacked money. “We were posh because we had a back-to-back with a kitchen. It overlooked the toilet, but to get to it you had to run up the street and down the next one. If you were stuck, you could climb through the window.”
When his father, Fred, returned from the war after three years away, his son’s enforced departure from school was never discussed.
“My parents had their lives to live. And I was courting by then,” he said.
He and Una, his wife of 63 years, raised two daughters, whom they hope to take to the anniversary garden party of what is now Christ Church Upper Armley School in the spring.
One of their grandsons finally made it to university.
Alan was like all the rest of us. We were all gawky-looking.