Margaret Merry - Essex Girl - A Post-War Childhood

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Student of Art

2007-06-12T09:56:00.000+01:00

When I enrolled for the pre-diploma course at Falmouth School of Art I hadn’t realised that we were to be guinea pigs for a new, degree-equivalent qualification called the Diploma in Art and Design which was to replace the former National Diploma in Design. This meant that in addition to the wide range of subjects we would be tackling we were expected to devote some time to the study of those which were not connected with art and, as with other degree courses, we’d be required to produce a thesis in our final year. The most important aspect of every art student’s curriculum is life drawing. I had never before seen a naked person so when, on the occasion of my very first lesson, I walked into the studio and saw the unclothed model I couldn’t stop myself from blushing. However, as soon as I began to concentrate on drawing her I ceased to think of her as a body and saw instead a complex arrangement of shape, form, texture and perspective. After that, I was never again embarrassed by nudity.
As well as life drawing, we were given the opportunity to experiment with a number of different media. We learned how to do silk-screen printing and how to make etchings from metal plates and to print the finished work on Japanese paper; we studied typography and calligraphy and various aspects of design, including Paisley patterns and tartans; we did action painting, abstract painting and still life painting; we made use of the extensive and rather lovely grounds for the drawing of plants and trees; we studied sculpture and were given a project to produce an abstract sculpture using plaster of Paris but since, in Cornwall, the influence of Barbara Hepworth was so strong, it was difficult for us to come up with something original. We were also required to have a sound knowledge of the history of art and a good deal of our time was devoted to its study. Fashion design was optional but I’d always wanted to have the opportunity to find out more about it even though I didn’t intend to take it up as a career, unlike the other students in that particular class. I loved not only the drawing and design aspect but also the handling of different fabrics, the art of pattern making and, of course, the construction of garments. I was so keen that I even signed on for an evening course in tailoring, a skill which was to prove immensely useful in later life. When my designs were displayed in the cabinet outside the art school I felt very proud.
Because it was a brand new pre-diploma course there were frequent changes to the syllabus which caused some discontent among the tutors and the students. It was unsettling and we really did feel that we were being used as guinea pigs. Also, I had the impression that one or two of the tutors were more interested in pursuing their own work than in teaching us. On the other hand, our drawing tutor was a very accomplished and distinguished artist and the good grounding he gave us was to prove a great asset when I went on to Hornsey.
I made friends with two other students who came from St. Ives: Martin was a good-natured, easy-going boy who recklessy blued the whole of his grant money on the first day of every term but was so optimistic about everything that nothing ever seemed to worry him. Vicky was a clever girl who had a flair for design and typography. I always turned to her for advice because she was mature for her age and so much more worldly-wise than I was. I was pleased when, the following year, both Martin and Vicky joined me at Hornsey to do graphic design. Also in our group was the boy from the Saturday morning classes on whom I’d had the crush. I disliked him when I discovered how conceited he was and couldn’t imagine what I’d ever seen in him; he wasn’t even particularly nice looking. He was so self-assured that he behaved before the tutors as though he was their equal and I considered that this was very disrespectful. He annoyed me by telling me in front of all the other students:
‘You’re innocent from the top of your head to the tips of your toes!’
‘But not in between!’ retorted Vicky.

Falmouth, like Brixham, used to be a fascinating town with its old buildings, streets, quays, docks and harbour. Nowadays, many of its most interesting and appealing features have disappeared and most of my old haunts have either been lost or manicured beyond recognition. As art students, we found plenty of material for subjects to draw or paint and I used to spend hours sitting on Customs House Quay sketching the fishing boats which, when I was a girl, were the beautiful, old, wooden ones. I loved it best on summer evenings when it came alive; the local boys used to show off by making perilous dives from the jetty into the murky water far below; holidaymakers wondered about eating fish and chips; men tinkered with their boats. Sometimes, there was an old fairground organ on display which played favourite melodies to which one particular, eccentric, elderly woman regularly used to perform ballet exercises using the railings alongside the quay as a barre, to the bemusement of passers-by. As with all towns, Falmouth has expanded with the passing of the years and the high-banked lanes where I picked primroses as a child were flattened to provide land for housing estates. The avenue of elms through which I used to walk to Swanpool and where I was once attacked by a beligerent tawny owl is now bereft of trees due to Dutch elm disease. The High School closed with the advent of comprehensive education but the main building is still there and once, not long after I’d obtained my teaching qualifications, I returned there to give adult evening classes run by Cornwall County Council.

It’s often puzzled me why people refer to the sixties as the permissive years. When the fifties ended, public morals were as outraged by certain issues, such as illegitimacy, homosexuality and divorce as they always had been and these attitudes remained unchanged for some considerable time. During the entire five years of my career as a student I never knew a single person who used drugs and avoided the company of the rather unsavoury set, to whom my mother referred as ‘mumpers’, who were the pioneers of the drug culture. Sexual freedom didn’t exist until towards the latter half of the decade, when the contraceptive pill became available and, until then, fear of pregnancy was the most powerful deterrent. I think young people today would be incredulous if they knew of the stigma attatched to unmarried motherhood which existed in those ‘permissive’ times. If a girl became pregnant, more often than not she would be sent away to one of the grim institutions known as ‘mother and baby homes’. Most of these were run by the Church of England and inmates were required to do housework and attend chapel daily. Six weeks after birth, their babies would be taken away and offered for adoption. Their families would explain their absence by telling friends and neighbours that they’d gone away to work, to visit relations or to have medical treatment.
Although we were on the brink of a fashion revolution, meanwhile we still dressed as our parents did although, as art students, we were a little more adventurous than most young people. The Army and Navy stores in Falmouth once had a consignment of sweaters knitted from a coarse wool, stiff with lanolin, in horizontal stripes of black and red and because they were so long, we girls were able to wear them as dresses. With the addition of a wide belt and black stockings we were able to achieve our own version of the ‘beatnik’ look and thought we were being terribly outrageous when we strutted around Falmouth thus attired. My mother was as disparaging as ever and told me I looked like a demented wasp. A few years later, when the miniskirt made its appearance, the brevity of my dress was the talk of Falmouth when I returned home from London for the holidays.
I went to the cinema with some of the other students to see The Sandpiper, starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor; it was the first film with an adult theme that I’d seen and so I thought I was being terribly daring. We rather admired the arty set as they were portrayed in the film and I expect we would have liked to emulate their liberal, Bohemian way of life. For my part, I desperately wanted to look like Elizabeth Taylor and tried to copy her hairstyle and make-up because one or two people had told me that I resembled her.

In 1962, the very great concern of many people was the threat of nuclear war. In October of that year the threat almost became a reality when the ongoing Cold War between the United States and what was then called the Soviet Union came terrifyingly close to escalating into nuclear conflict owing to the Cuban Missile Crisis. It lasted for thirteen days and we students were so worried that one boy even tried to dig a fallout shelter in his parents’ front garden. I have a vivid recollection of sitting on a bench with Jenny discussing the situation. She told me that her parents were going to emigrate to Australia in the event of war and this shocked and depressed me more than anything. When the crisis was over, nuclear disarmament was the main topic of conversation and we were actually given a talk by the wife of Bertrand Russell, the famous pacifist, who exchanged telegrams with Nikita Khruschev, the Russian Premier, at the height of the crisis.
But even the threat of extermination couldn’t quell our youthful exuberance and determination to extract every shred of enjoyment out of our lives. We were aware that, as art students, we had a certain mystique and showed off accordingly. One day, when we were on the beach looking for interesting pieces of driftwood to draw, we got into conversation with a man who was intrigued by our activities. When we explained that we were students from Falmouth School of Art, he asked who paid for our education fees.
‘You do!’ we replied, cheerfully.
Student grants were very generous in the sixties and, since in Cornwall further education was the exception rather than the norm, there was plenty of money available. Even though I was living at home, the grant I received was handsome; unfortunately, I had to hand over most of it to my mother for my keep.
Eventually, the time came for us to make up our minds to which art colleges we intended to apply in order to continue our training. On the advice of our tutors, I chose the London College of Printing and Hornsey College of Art because they both had outstanding graphic design facilities and my interviews were arranged so that I had one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. I’d been a conscientious student so my portfolio was full; the importance of keeping a sketchbook had been stressed upon us but when I came to prepare for my interviews I found that most of my sketches had been done on loose pieces of paper which I hastily had to assemble and staple together at the last minute. It was at times like these that I realised just how untidy and disorganised I was.
When I’d applied to the colleges of my choice I felt confident that I’d get a place at least one of them; when I boarded the train at Truro on the day before my interviews were to take place, however, that confidence had waned considerably. What if I didn’t get in at either? It was a situation to ghastly to contemplate. But at Paddington, as I stepped off the train, I breathed in the familiar London smells, heard the distant roar of the city, felt the throb of life all around me and my confidence returned; I knew that nothing would come between me and London now. In a few months, I would be returning as a student.
Harry knew the streets of London as well as a cabbie and I marvelled at the ease with which he negotiated the busy, complicated traffic systems as he drove me to my first interview at the London College of Printing. I was in awe of the large building with its labyrinthine corridors full of hurrying people and it seemed a far cry from the intimate atmosphere of Falmouth School of Art. But the Principal saw that I was nervous and put me at my ease. After looking through my portfolio, he told me that he’d be pleased to offer me a place; however, he spoke disparagingly of the standard of teaching at Falmouth and said I would have to un-learn everything I’d been taught there. It would have been better, he said, if I could have done my pre-diploma year in London. These comments didn’t go down well when I reported them on my return home.
Hornsey College of Art was completely different. The main building, where the interviews were held, was situated in a rather pleasant, peaceful location with trees and green spaces and the atmosphere, as I stepped through the entrance, was friendly and more relaxed than that of the other college where everyone had seemed so busy and preoccupied. Here, the pace of life was more like that to which I was accustomed and the Principal, too, seemed very laid-back and friendly. He told me that he was satisfied with my portfolio and offered me a place in the graphic design department which, he said, was situated not in the main building but in another part of North London. There were also studios in nearby Alexandra Palace. Although I’d already decided that I preferred Hornsey, I consulted the Principal at Falmouth School of Art to ask his advice. He suggested that as my work was very illustrative I might consider specialising in that particular branch of graphic design at a later date, in which case Hornsey would be the better choice. So therefore, when the two letters arrived to confer the offers of the respective places, I declined one and accepted the other: Hornsey it was to be.
Now that the stress and uncertainty regarding my future was over, I settled down again to enjoy my last weeks at Falmouth. The fashion tutor said I had a real flair for the subject and that it was a pity that I hadn’t considered it as a career. I pondered over her words and began to worry that perhaps, after all, I’d made the wrong choice in opting for graphic design. She told me that it wasn’t too late to change my mind because there were still places at Ravensbourne College of Art, in Kent, which had a big fashion department. Feeling reckless, I applied for an interview; after all, it had been my tutors who’d advised me to specialise in graphic design. In my heart, secretly, I wanted to be a dress designer.
I awoke on the morning before I was to travel to Kent for my interview feeling very strange. My head throbbed, I felt nauseous and there was a persistent, stabbing pain in my side. As the morning wore on I became so ill that my mother had to telephone the doctor who examined me and called for an ambulance which took me to the City hospital in Truro. Later that day, I had an emergency operation to remove my appendix. By the time I was better, it was too late to apply for any other college place and so I had to accept the fact that I wasn’t, after all, destined to become a dress designer.
I suffered another mishap shortly after recovering from my operation. One morning, as I was with a group of students on the way from one studio to another, I stumbled on a step and the abrupt, awkward movement I made to grasp the handrail to stop myself from falling fractured a bone in my foot. The boy behind me asked me if I was all right but when I told him I’d broken my foot he laughed and said I couldn’t have because I hadn’t even fallen over. I hopped to the secretary’s office to ask her to telephone my father but when I explained my predicament she regarded me without sympathy.
‘What do you mean, you’ve broken your foot?’ she demanded. She was a bossy old thing who treated the students like children so that nobody liked her very much.
‘I stumbled on the steps outside.’
‘But you can’t break a foot just by stumbling. It’s probably just bruised. Go and sit down for a bit till it feels better,’ she said, dismissing me. I had to argue for some minutes before I could persuade her to summon my father. Later that afternoon, when my leg was encased in plaster from my foot to my knee, I made a point of parading it in front of her.
Throughout my childhood, I’d learned how to cope with all the fractures I’d suffered; since there was nothing to be done about it, I just had to get on with my life and it never occurred to me, until the schools’ doctor brought up the subject, that the condition which afflicted me might affect my career. After I’d been at Hornsey for a year or so, the college nominated me for an award which, if I was successful, would allow me to go to Paris to study art for a year. I couldn’t believe in my good fortune and went about in a daze. Paris! Could it really be happening to me? During the Easter holidays I returned to Falmouth and one afternoon, foolishly, I accepted my sister’s invitation to ride her pony. Disaster resulted and I fractured by back which meant that I wasn’t able to return to Hornsey for weeks by which time it was too late for my nomination to go forward. Had I not suffered from brittle bones what a different course my life might have taken!

My friend, Jean, dropped in one afternoon while I was at home. I hadn’t seen her since I’d left the High School so I was delighted. She told me that the main purpose of her visit was to ask my advice and I was astonished because she’d always been so self-assured that I couldn’t imagine her needing to seek advice from anyone, least of all me. She was thinking about getting engaged, she said, and she realised that although she was very young she thought herself mature for her age. This was indeed true: Jean had always behaved with far more maturity than the rest of us. Nevertheless, the thought of her, of all people, contemplating such a thing as marriage was quite shocking. She was an exceptionally clever girl with a brilliant career ahead of her and it was unthinkable that she should give it up for the sake of a mere man. I had no idea who he was but, at that moment, I felt a deep resentment for him. He couldn’t really love her or he wouldn’t expect her to make such a sacrifice. But I couldn’t tell Jean this, of course; besides, I think she’d come to me for reassurance, not advice. I never found out what happened regarding her romance because I lost touch with her when I went to London. However, it must have turned out all right in the end because she did go on to have a great career.

My last days at Falmouth School of Art were drawing to a close and my mother was nagging me again about getting a holiday job. Certainly, I needed the money: there were many things I had to buy for before going to London in the autumn and my clothes situation was desperate. I was very pleased, therefore, when a couple of girls from the art school asked me if I’d be interested in joining them by working as a waitress in a popular restaurant in the main street of Falmouth. I accepted, gratefully; I’d dreaded the thought of another washing up job and although waitressing was no doubt hard work, at least there’d be tips on top of the wages.The restaurant was owned and run by two men and when one of the girls asked me if I thought they were homosexuals, I didn’t know how to reply because my rudimentary sex education hadn’t included any other aspect of human sexuality other than the kind which existed in marriage and I had only the vaguest notion, like so many of my friends at that time, that such things happened.
A few weeks later, I went to Plymouth to buy fabrics so that I could run up a new wardrobe. I’d acquired some flair owing to the fashion classes I’d attended and I realised that the way I dressed was dull and unimaginative, largely due to the influence of my mother who’d always dictated what I should wear. As I climbed on to the train at Truro, I told myself that the next train I boarded would be the one taking me to London. London! Every time I thought of it, my stomach fluttered. My mother had insisted that I lodge with Ethel while I was at college and since the age of consent was, in those days, twenty-one, I had no choice but to agree; however, as soon as I came of age, I had every intention of seeking my own bedsit. There seemed to be no shortage of accommodation because when I’d attended my interview at Hornsey, I’d noticed all the advertisements for lodgings in the windows of newsagents and other shops and although most of them stipulated ‘no blacks’ or ‘no Irish’ I hadn’t seen many which said ‘no students.’ Meanwhile, I was fond of Ethel and grateful to her for agreeing to put me up.

September was drawing ever closer and because I’d been so eager to begin my new life in the Big World, I’d forgotten about the parting. The fact that I was leaving my family bothered me not the slightest: I’d miss our cats and our dog, Laddie, far more than I’d miss them. No, it was the thought of leaving my friends which saddened me most. I’d taken their presence in my life for granted but now that I was saying my farewells to them, I realised how much they meant to me. Then, of course, there was Falmouth, my home town. Although I’d never admitted it, I was deeply attatched to the place in which I’d done most of my growing up. I’d miss the beaches, the harbour, the town with all its funny, old-fashioned shops, the surrouding countryside and all my favourite haunts. Would I return, I wondered? Of course, I’d be coming home for the holidays but what would happen when my years at college were over and I had to pursue my career?
My last days at home were spent preparing myself for London. I had to sort through all my belongings to decide which of them I was going to take with me but there was nothing to which I had any particular sentimental attatchment. I was embarking upon a new life and therefore I wanted all my things to be new. The college had sent me a list of materials I’d need to purchase but since two of these - a drawing board and a portfolio - were very large I decided to get these in London. On my last day I went for a walk so that I could say goodbye to Falmouth and, to my astonishment, my mother asked if she could accompany me. During the walk she lectured me about the dangers of living in London and the inevitable temptations that would come my way, by which I assumed she meant boys. She was concerned that Kenneth, the indomitable, might attempt to pursue me there but I assured her that I had no intention of allowing him to interfere with my life. She insisted on coming with me to London to see me settled in at Ethel’s and to help me with my luggage; I was not overjoyed at the prospect but not even she could quell my excitement.
As the train slid out of Truro Station, I had my last glimpse of the cathedral; the sight of the three, tall spires as the train slid around the bend in the viaduct would be the first thing to greet me when I returned for the Christmas vacation. How distant that time seemed! Still, I felt no regret, no hint of impending homesickness. Between Exeter and Taunton our train suffered a derailment. It was nothing serious but it meant that we had to be bussed to the nearest station to wait for a replacement train to take us on to London. The accident had been no-one’s fault but my mother was determined to find someone to blame. After we’d waited on the station for some considerable time, a railway official informed the passengers that another train had been commissioned but we’d have to wait for it to be cleaned. A few moments later, to my acute embarrassment, my mother marched up to the harrassed official to inform him that she’d been nominated by the other passengers as their spokesperson and that they didn’t care about the train being dirty: they just wanted to get on with their journey.
We were very late by the time we reached Paddington, where Harry and Ethel had been waiting for us. The next day, my mother and Ethel came with me to help me with my purchases. How wonderful were the vast art suppliers in London after the poky shops of Falmouth! Such a bewildering array of papers, paints and other materials! I couldn’t help recalling those years, long ago, when I’d been so desperate for something to draw on that I’d torn the end papers out of books. My mother returned to Cornwall the following day and Ethel came with me to see her off. She kissed Ethel on the cheek and, for a moment, I thought she might do the same to me but, with no display of emotion at all, she told me to behave myself and boarded the train. Equally emotionless, I watched her wave to us as the train began to slide out of the station; at last, she disappeared from view.
‘Come on!’ said Ethel, ‘Let’s go home!’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Sweet Sixteen

2007-06-12T09:54:00.001+01:00

Despite my intention to make myself indispensable in the shop, I very quickly reverted to my old ways; in fact, my behaviour deteriorated and I became moody, rebellious and defiant.I was discontented with my life and with my looks and would spend hours in front of the bathroom mirror viciously squeezing pimples, deriving a perverse pleasure from making myself look as ugly as I could. Because my life seemed pointless, I had no enthusiasm for anything and my school work began to suffer as a result. I lost interest in all my subjects, even art: we’d been working with modelling clay which was a medium I disliked intensely and so I made no effort at all. At home, I flew into a rage if my sister interfered with any of my things and depite my mother’s nagging, my bedroom was so untidy that, regularly, she’d storm into it, hurl everything that wasn’t already there on to the floor and then sweep the whole lot on to the landing and down the stairs in a great, engulfing tidal wave of clothes, shoes, make-up, books and other paraphernalia; all I could do was to look on in a kind of awed silence. Auntie Frances remarked that I’d grown very cynical of late and that it didn’t suit me; however, the more I was criticised, the worse I became.
The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that, owing to a new form mistress, it was a very unsettling time at school not only for me, but for the whole class. She was a young woman and because she had all the zeal of a new broom, I expect it was her first teaching appointment. However, from the moment she stepped through the door, events did not augur well for a good relationship. It was a strictly observed rule of the school that pupils should rise whenever an adult entered a room so, when our new teacher appeared, we dutifully scrambled to our feet - all, except, of course, Jenny. With a stern, unsmiling expression which was no doubt meant to convey authority, the young woman regarded us; suddenly, her gaze fell upon Jenny and, eyes widening in indignation, she made a silent gesture for her to get to her feet immediately. Jenny grasped the sides of her desk with her hands and, with much clattering and scraping of chair legs, hauled herself to her feet. It was lamentable that not one of us had the courage to speak up and thus save not only Jenny from humiliation but also our new form mistress from the embarrassment of having to apologise to her in front of the whole class and I despised myself for my cowardice. It was an unpleasant incident and it seemed to me, in that moment, that the class had made an unspoken pact to be as disruptive and unco-operative as it could with this new teacher.
I’m ashamed of myself when I look back at the hard time we gave that poor woman. We disobeyed her flagrantly and the more upset she appeared, the more we tormented her. It was as though we were fired by a strange excitement, a feeling of exhilaration, at having the upper hand and it was a very good thing that, eventually, we grew tired of persecuting her and settled down again to concentrate on our impending G.C.E. examinations. I, too, pulled myself together and made a determined effort to work as hard as I could.

When Falmouth School of Art advertised Saturday morning classes for schoolchildren interested in taking up art as a career, I signed on eagerly. The teacher was a young man, full of enthusiasm for his subject, who declared that anybody could draw or paint and that one person’s efforts were no less deserving of merit than the other’s. I found this philosophy hard to understand and rather resented his opinion that the work of all of us was of equal standard when it manifestly wasn’t. After a few weeks, those who didn’t possess much ability dropped out so that only the keenest of us remained. One of these was a boy, slightly older than I was, on whom I had formed an enormous crush. In his presence I was so overcome with shyness that I could never bring myself to speak to him but one evening, as I was making my way to Gillian’s house, I bumped into him. He was wearing the uniform of an Air Training Corps. cadet and he looked so handsome that the wild confusion in which I suddenly found myself left me utterly deprived of speech and I could barely give an intelligible reply to his friendly greeting.
I assumed that he was on his way to the Drill Hall for a weekly meeting in which case, if I contrived to be in the same place at the same time on the following week, I’d bump into him again.
So, on the same day of the next week, after taking considerable care with my appearance, I sauntered, with exaggerated nonchalance, along the road where I’d previously encountered him and, sure enough, before very long he appeared. Once again, he greeted me cheerfully and, once again, I was overcome by acute shyness. This state of affairs continued for several weeks and just as I was about to give up all hope of ever getting anywhere with him, one Saturday after art class he asked me if I’d like to go to the A.T.C. party at the Drill Hall. I floated home in a daze of ecstasy, hardly able to believe that he’d actually asked me to go out with him. I was determined to look my best for the occasion so spent a long time in front of the bathroom mirror experimenting with make up. When my mother said that I’d look better without any of that muck on my face after I’d asked her for advice, I decided to consult Jenny, who was an expert on such matters. She’d once turned up to school with her auburn hair dyed a vivid shade of red after having rinsed it with the contents of a bottle of vermilion drawing ink and how she’d got away with it I never knew; school rules regarding the wearing of make-up and the colouring of hair were so rigidly enforced that Miss Jacob had, on one occasion, dismissed from the class some girls who were still wearing the barely visible vestiges of the previous evening’s lipstick.
‘What you need to do,’ said Jenny, ‘is to underplay the lips and exaggerate the eyes. Try applying a pale foundation, a pale pink lipstick and then do up the eyes with lots of smoky shadow and lashings of mascara.’
So, armed with the much appreciated advice of the connoisseur, I trotted off to Woolworths to purchase a stick of very pale foundation and a lipstick of the palest pink I could find. Hours before I was due to set off for the party I locked myself into the bathroom and set about transforming myself. With my array of cosmetics laid out before me, I proceeded to dab, smooth, paint and smudge but when, some considerable time later, I stood back to inspect my handiwork, I was dismayed: the effect was truly disastrous. The thick, chalky foundation had whitened my face so much that, together with the corpse-like effect of the lipstick and the contrast of the blackened eyes, I resembled a ghoul that had suffered a nasty shock. Frantically, I rubbed at my face with cotton wool to try to remove some of the foundation but, the more I wiped, the more it seemed to spread. In desperation, I scrubbed my skin vigorously with a face flannel only to reveal a complexion which was inflamed and blotchy as a result of so much friction. At that moment, my mother hammered on the door to tell me that I’d been in there long enough and that other people wanted to use the bathroom.
‘What am I going to do?’ I wailed.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied, ‘I always had good skin when I was your age and never needed to wear all that muck on my face.’
I went into her bedroom, helped myself to a generous scoop of her Nivea cream and smeared it on to my face in the hope that, by the time I’d done my hair, my complexion would have calmed down. Unfortunately, my hair, when I’d removed the rollers, refused to do want I wanted it to and the double crown at the back of my head, no matter how much I sprayed and backcombed, remained stubbornly on end, with the scalp exposed, making me look like a moulting cockatoo. By the time I was dressed and ready to go, all my confidence had vanished and I wished that I’d never been asked to the party in the first place. When my father dropped me off at the Drill Hall he told me that he’d be back at nine-thirty on the dot to pick me up and that I’d better be ready. Full of trepidation, I went inside to find that only a few people had arrived and since I didn’t know anyone apart from the boy who’d asked me, I pretended to be interested in a pile of gramophone records on a table. Gradually, the party livened up and a few couples began to dance. My partner suggested that we joined them but I protested that I couldn’t dance and turned my attention back to the records. Not long afterwards, I was surprised to see another girl from the High School walk in. Although she was in the same year as I was, I didn’t know her very well and had hardly ever spoken to her. She was a tall girl who was so thin that she looked like a skeleton; her best feauture was her soft, brown hair which, when it was newly washed as it was on this occasion, framed her face prettily, softening the sharp, jutting angles of her bony features. Just as I was attempting to summon the courage to talk to my partner, another boy came up to me to tell me that my father had arrived to take me home. Embarrassed, I rushed outside.
‘Please let me stay a bit longer!’ I pleaded.
‘No!,’ he replied, ‘You’ve got to come right this minute.’
‘But it’s not fair!’ I wailed. ‘I’m not a child any more and no one else has left yet.’
‘Come on! ‘ insisted my father, getting annoyed.
Humiliated, I returned to fetch my coat and say goodbye to the boy who’d invited me; I couldn’t see him at first, then, to my utter dismay, I spotted him on the floor dancing with the skeletal girl from my school and they seemed to be getting on so well that I simply slunk away without a word. It served me right that he preferred someone else since I’d hardly spoken a word to him all evening. What a dead loss he must have thought me! Miserably, I went to find my father who was waiting impatiently by the car.
My pride had been so wounded that I resolved never to speak again to the boy who had deserted me for another girl but at the Saturday art class I overheard the tail end of a conversation he was having with another boy.
‘I thought she was lovely when we were snogging under a lampost,’ he was saying, ‘ but when I saw her again in broad daylight she was so bloody ugly that I nearly threw up!’
My injured feelings were greatly mollified and when I next saw my rival, I regarded her with pity.

There was no doubt in my mind that art was to be the career I wanted to pursue and I already had my future mapped out: I would leave school after I’d completed my ‘O’ levels to do a pre-diploma course at Falmouth School of Art. The art school didn’t have college status at that time and so, eventually, I would have to seek a place at one which did; that, however, was way into the future and I didn’t have to concern myself about it yet. In the meantime, in order to obtain the five necessary passes for the course, I decided to concentrate on only those subjects at which I was best.
The General Certificate of Education ‘O’ level examination was very different from today’s General Certificate of Secondary Education and when I was teaching and had my first sight of G.C.S.E. paper, I couldn’t believe how easy the questions were. Our work involved far more thorough, detailed study and required a great deal of learning by heart, especially in subjects like English Literature; for example, we had to be able to quote long passages from Shakespeare’s plays and also some of the most important sonnets, something so thoroughly done that I can quote them still even to this day. We were also studying the work of the war poets, such as Siegfreid Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and because I found their verses so inspiring, I was able to memorize them easily. Gillian had fallen in love with Rupert Brooke and was outraged that the life of such a gifted, handsome young man should be so cruelly cut short. In Latin, we also had to learn long passages from Vergil’s Camilla and Homer’s Odyssey. There were certain lines from these verses which I found particularly beautiful, such as the description of Camilla, the virgin queen of the Volscians in Roman legend, so fleet of foot that she could run over a field of corn without bending a single blade. Penny and I both had romantic yearnings and it was words like these which fired our fertile imaginations.

When the visiting schools’ doctor asked me if I’d a career in mind and I told her that I planned to go to art school, she was disapproving. Because of my brittle bones, she declared, the rough and tumble of college life would be too much for me and that it would be better to opt for a more sedate profession, such as nursing. Nursing! I was aghast: it was the very last career I’d have chosen for myself. Ignoring my expression of horror, she leaned forward to carry on talking to my mother.
‘It’s such a worthwhile profession’, she enthused, ‘and employment is guaranteed, unlike art where you can never be sure of getting a job. Besides, you wouldn’t have to worry about Margaret if she was in a hospital environment, would you?’
Beaming with a smug satisfaction which made me long to kill her, she turned to me.
‘Remember, dear,’ she said, ’you can always keep up your art as a hobby. So much more enjoyable that way, don’t you think?’
I burned with resentment at her implication that art was a profession less worthy of others and was more determined than ever to abide by my original decision to go to art school. Not long afterwards, all the girls in my class were interviewed by the Headmistress to discuss what they’d be doing after the examinations. When I informed her of my intention to leave school, her reaction was similar to that of the doctor.
‘But, Margaret,’ she protested, ‘when we join the Common Market, the country will need girls like you who are good at languages. You must take your ‘A’ levels and go on to university. Besides, you can always keep your art as a hobby.’
So, then, she too thought that an artist was of no worth! But I was not going to be deterred and the more she tried to change my mind, the firmer I became in my resolve. The argument continued until, after an interview with my mother, a compromise was reached: I would not leave school that year but return in the autumn to study art at ‘A’ level and sit for the exam at the end of one year instead of the customary two. I’d also continue to attend English Literature and French ‘A’ level classes in case I had a change of heart about not wanting to go to university. No chance of that! I wasn’t happy with the arrangement but I acceded to the proposal, reluctantly, when the Principal of the art school suggested that, if Miss jacob approved, I attend classes there once or twice a week. The ‘A’ level art wasn’t a necessary qualification, he said, but it would be a feather in my cap if I did get it.

Although I’d decided to put all thoughts of boys out of my mind until I’d completed my ‘O’ levels, a major distraction was about to disrupt my life. Penny had an older brother who was a pupil at Falmouth Grammar School and, through him, she was able to meet a number of boys. I wasn’t surprised, then, when she confessed to me that she’d taken a liking to one of them. When he sent her a message to say that, by consensus of general opinion, he thought it would be a good idea if they went out together Penny was delighted and even more pleased when he sent her a hand-drawn valentine card depicting the door of a public convenience with a sign on it saying ’vacant’ which, when you pulled a tag, changed to ‘engaged.’ Kenneth, the author of the card, was obviously extremely witty but, I thought, secretly, it wasn’t a very romantic way to proposition a girl. Still, I was curious to meet him and agreed to accompany her when she told me that she was a bit nervous about going on her first date with her new boyfriend. When I saw Kenneth for the first time my initial impression was that he was wearing some kind of comic mask comprising an exaggeratedly enlarged nose attatched to a pair of heavy, black-rimmed spectacles. The mask effect was heightened by the stark contrast of the utter normality of the rest of him: he was neither too thin nor too fat, neither too tall nor too short. I tried not to let Penny see how startled I was by his bizarre appearance and I wondered what she could possibly see in him.
As we strolled around the town, I discovered that Kenneth was surprisingly easy to get along with; also, he had a good sense of humour and a keen intelligence which, I guessed, was what had attracted Penny to him. When he suddenly put his arm around her shoulder I took it as my cue to make a discreet departure. I’d been a little embarrassed about having to play gooseberry and I’d been waiting for a suitable opportunity to leave. I was just about to excuse myself when, to my astonishment, he put his other arm around me and pulled me towards him. Penny and I were both so startled by this that we threw him a simultaneous look of surprise. He, however, was oblivious and strutted along, obviously proud of the fact that he had two girls in tow. The unusual situation in which I found myself made me feel very uncomfortable and I was relieved when, at last, I was able to make my departure. The incident preyed on my mind and I was still thinking about it when I went to sleep that night; by morning, however, I’d forgotten all about it.
The following day was Sunday and that evening we were surprised by a knock on the door. My mother opened it and, a few seconds later, I looked up in astonishment to see Kenneth standing there. He asked me if I’d like to go for a walk so, assuming that he wanted to talk to me about Penny, I agreed. We strolled around the town, as we’d done on the previous evening, chatting amicably, but no mention was made of Penny. Just as I was beginning to wonder about the purpose of his invitation to escort him, he suddenly put his arm around my shoulder and drew me close. My first reaction, apart from surprise, was indignation; I’d given him no encouragement whatsoever yet he evidently assumed that I found him attractive. What an extraordinary presumption! Did he not realise that his physical appearance would repulse any girl? Because it was Sunday, the streets were quiet and, also, it was getting dark; I was glad of this because I was afraid of being seen in this situation by anyone I knew. But just as we were making our way back to Killigrew Road, I was horrified to see some girls from my class on the other side of the road. I shrank into the shadows, praying that they wouldn’t see me, but as they passed I heard one of them gasp:
‘Did you see who that was? Margaret Walker! What’s she doing with him? ‘
My heart sank because I knew now that there would be no hope of Penny not finding out about what had happened. Oh, it was so unfair! I’d done nothing to get myself into this situation yet I was sure to get the blame for it. Kenneth seemed quite unconcerned.
‘Don’t worry about it!’ he said, cheerfully.
Anxious to get home, I was relieved when, at last, we came to my back gate. I wished him goodnight but, just as I was lifting the latch, he grabbed me and planted a firm kiss on my mouth. There was now absolutely no doubt about his intentions: he fancied me and he had the audacity to assume that the attraction was mutual. If I’d not been such a coward and if I hadn’t been in awe of him because he was older than I was, I’d have told him to his face that I found him unattractive and that I considered him to be not only not good enough for me but also definitely not good enough for Penny. It would have given me the greatest satisfaction to send him packing, there and then.
‘Who on earth was that? Or should I say what was that?’ demanded my mother when I went indoors.
‘No-one to do with me,’ I replied. ‘He’s a friend of Penny’s.’
‘What’s he doing hanging around you. then?’
‘He just wanted to talk.’
At school the next day I kept my head down and avoided Penny. I strained my ears to hear any whispered conversations but nothing appeared to have been said and I felt more hopeful that my secret might not be revealed. However, that afternoon, after lunch, I saw Penny look in my direction several times and I knew that the cat was out of the bag; coward that I was, I didn’t have the courage to face her and explain what had happened. That evening, Kenneth called again but I excused myself by saying that I hadn’t finished doing my homework. The following lunch break I was sitting on top of our air raid shelter, my favourite spot for sunbathing, concentrating on my revision, when a movement startled me and I looked up to see Kenneth’s grinning face. So far, all our encounters had been evening ones and because artificial illumination is far more forgiving than the harsh light of day, I hadn’t appreciated just how wierd his appearance was and if, before, I’d found him merely unattractive now I discovered that he was repulsive to me. I studied his features with a kind of fascinated horror. His hair was lustreless and mousy with a stiff, matted look as though it hadn’t been washed for some while; the length of his sharply pointed nose was greatly accentuated by the hideous, heavy, black-framed spectacles he wore, the thick lenses of which concealed eyes which were deep-set and too close together; his skin was badly affected by acne and the inflamed, red spots which covered his chin had yellow centres which looked as thought they might erupt spontaneously and his loosened collar revealed a neck which was punctuated by a row of blackheads; his mouth was distorted by crooked teeth which had curious green stains on them. I wasn’t surprised when, later, he boasted that not only had he never had dental treatment but also that he never needed it.
‘I thought you said he was Penny’s friend,’ said my mother, accusingly, after he’d gone. ‘Don’t you dare go getting mixed up with the likes of him!’
But every day - sometimes twice a day - Kenneth continued to haunt me. One lunch hour he appeared with a glistening globule of nasal mucous suspended from his nostril and every time he drew breath or exhaled, it quivered gently like a breeze-blown leaf on a tree. He turned up again later that evening and I was astonished to see that it was still there, only dried up. I found it difficult to disguise my revulsion and I couldn’t understand how he could be so uncaring of his appearance never to look in a mirror; also, I had a growing conviction that he didn’t wash.
When my sister first saw Kenneth, she gaped at him in undisguised amazement.
‘He’s a queer gink!’ she declared, using a popular expression of the time to describe a weird person. She christened him with the name ‘Lesser Spotted Dunkweed’ - later abbreviated to ‘The Dunkweed’ - because, she said, he looked too peculiar to be considered human. Auntie Frances was more startled by his acne than anything else about him. To give him his due, there wasn’t a lot he could do about that, although regular washing might have helped. At that time there was no treatment for acne, other than exposure to ultra-violet radiation which, these days, would probably make dermatologists throw up their hands in horror at the very thought. My mother grew daily more anxious about my association with him.
‘People are starting to talk,’ she warned me. ‘You’ll never get a decent boyfriend if you’re seen around with someone like that. He’s uglier than a toad.’
Gillian told me that she’d been asked by another boy from the Grammar School:
‘What’s a nice girl like Margaret doing with the likes of him? ‘
I was, indeed, beginning to feel concern about the fact that Kenneth was haunting me. Besides, there was a boy I had my eye on and I knew I’d stand no chance with him while someone else was hovering in the background. There was no getting away from him: he knew my routine and my movements so well that wherever I went, he was there. Again and again, I chided myself for being such a coward that I couldn’t face up to him and I longed to make it up with Penny. One day, I accepted - with some trepidation - his invitation to go to his parents’ house for tea and was astonished to find how extremely nice - how surprisingly normal - they both were. I hadn’t known that they had a younger son whom I recognised as the rather unpleasant and furtive boy I’d often seen hanging around the street behind our house in Clare Terrace. He’d aroused the suspicions of the neighbours and they’d hinted darkly at misdeeds too shocking to mention. How unfortunate, I thought, that someone as nice as their mother should produce two such awful sons.
Kenneth’s parents were fond of motoring and at weekends they invited me along, too. I was familiar with most of the popular tourist spots of Cornwall because I’d visited them with my parents or Harry and Ethel, but now I found myself in places, as yet undiscovered, that I hadn’t realised existed. We walked over sand dunes beneath huge skies exultant with larksong to wide, deserted beaches pounded by Atlantic surf; we explored disused quarries where there were deep, mysterious pools and granite landscapes of ancient sites and standing stones. On the more gentle, southern part of the county we wandered through spring woods carpeted with bluebells and anemones or walked along the shoreline below pretty, creekside villages. I loved these outings so much that I was able to endure Kenneth simply for the privilege of being able to accompany his family. He, however, took it for granted that it was his company I preferred.
After a while, he began to find fault with me and to criticise me. For example, he told me that, in his opinion, my paintings were childish; my friend, Gillian, he said, was always beautifully dressed, implying that I wasn’t; he asked me if I was aware of the annoying habit I had of interrupting his father when he was talking. The comments stung but I was too gullible and ignorant of the ways of the opposite sex to realise that this was his way of breaking down my self-esteem in order to exert his dominance of me. Often, when I strolled through the town, I would make a detour in order to look in the window of a certain antiques shop where an unusually beautiful fan was displayed. It wasn’t very expensive and I’d told Kenneth that I was saving up to buy it. One day, however, I was dismayed to see that it had gone and when I told him how upset I was at its disappearance he confessed that he’d bought it himself in order to prevent me from doing so because, he said, it was too good for me and that if I owned it I’d only break it, as I did with all my possessions.
The impending G.C.E. examinations provided me with a good excuse not to see Kenneth and, furthermore, my mother forbade him from coming to the house. At last, I was able to devote all my concentration to my revision so that when the time came for us to sit for our exams, I was quietly confident. My sister had not fared so well with the eleven-plus and on the day she received notification that she hadn’t passed, she was afraid to come home after school. When it began to grow dark our mother was so concerned that she decided to notify the police; at that moment, however, Jean appeared and, silently and shamefacedly, handed her the slip of paper informing our parents that she’d failed. I’d expected my sister to suffer the full force of our mother’s wrath but, to my surprise, although disappointment was written all over her face, she said not a word. Because Jean had failed her eleven-plus, I took it for granted that the promised pony wouldn’t be forthcoming and was therefore greatly surprised, and not a little indignant when, some time later, our mother took out a loan so that she could purchase a pony. I thought it most unjust that I should have received nothing, not even the piano lessons I longed for, for passing my eleven-plus whereas my sister, who had failed, was being rewarded with a pony. I brooded for some while until it dawned on me, after hearing our mother boasting to a customer, that the pony was simply a means by which she could elevate her status and I had to concede that the phrase ‘my daughter’s piano lessons’ sounded far less impressive than ‘my daughter’s pony.’
Every summer, my mother nagged me to get a holiday job and this time there was no getting away from it. I dragged myself, reluctantly, to what was then referred to as the Labour Exchange where I found that the only temporary employment available was washing up in hotels and other boarding establishments. It was hard, physical work and I hated it. I strained my back, which had always been weak, lifting heavy trays of cutlery and had to consult our doctor who prescribed a foul-smelling, mustard-based liniment which was to be applied to the affected part. The warming effect of the mustard was pleasant but the smell was so appalling that it made me retch and so I decided I’d rather put up with the backache. In due course, the ‘O’ level results arrived and I was gratified and relieved to discover that I’d got distinctions in languages and art and that there was now nothing to stop me from becoming an art student.
It was strange returning to school as a sixth-former, one of that élite band of whom I’d always been so much in awe. I felt as though I were an imposter, belonging neither to the High School nor Falmouth School of Art and although I was supposed to attend French and English Literature classes, I had no intention of devoting my time to either of these subjects because I wanted to concentrate on my art in order to make the year pass as quickly as possible. I didn’t like the unsettling sensation of being in a state of limbo, neither here nor there. From the ‘A’ level syllabus I chose those subjects at which I was best, such as plant drawing, imaginative composition, calligraphy and so on: I also decided to make a marionette, the given theme of which was ‘Fire’. I spent a long time poring through books for inspiration and sketching ideas
for my puppet. The most important part of a marionette is, obviously, the head; it has to be able to convey some sort of expression so I modelled the features of mine to be powerful, imperious and rather severe. When I painted the finished, papier måché head, I paid particular attention to the eyes, which I wanted to blaze, and it was while I was applying the finishing touches that it occurred me that my puppet’s features bore a striking similarity to those of Miss Jacob. Perhaps, subconsciously, she had been my inspiration. For my puppet’s head-dress and flowing robes I’d collected a selection of pieces of transparent fabrics in appropriate, fiery colours and to achieve a realistic effect of fire I was going to cut out flame-like shapes from sheets of red and orange acetate. With so much time to devote to my efforts, I was confident that I’d achieve a good pass in the final exam.
When I went for my first lesson at the art school I had the idea that I’d be joining the other students; instead, I was shown into a small side room by a rather impatient tutor who gave me a perfunctory demonstration on how to draw from life using negative as well as positive shapes. He then disappeared and I was left alone for the next couple of hours. My mother had acquired a second-hand duffle coat which, she assured me, was what every art student wore. It had about as much fashion appeal as a horse blanket and I hated it. When I went into the cloakroom to retrieve it after my lesson, I overheard two girls talking about it.
‘Who on earth wears a duffle coat these days?’ asked one.
‘I certainly don’t know anyone who does,’ replied the other.
I stuffed the detested coat into my bag, resolving never to wear it again. Outside the main building, on the wall by the pavement, was a display cabinet featuring the work of some of the fashion students. I found their drawings even more interesting than the work of the other students on display inside and wondered, wistfully, if the day would come when my own drawings would be exhibited.
Kenneth had left the Grammar School to begin a course at a college in Coventry but if I’d imagined that, at last, I was going to be free of him I was mistaken: he hitchhiked home on the Friday evening and was on my doorstep the next morning. This routine continued well into the winter months and even when the country was brought to a standstill by a bout of severe weather, somehow he managed to make his way back to Falmouth. Lately, I’d noticed that he seemed to be paying a great deal of attention to Jean and this disturbed me greatly because I knew that if my mother had the slightest suspicion that he was taking an unnatural interest in her, all hell would be let loose and she would make the most dreadful accusations. These concerns prompted me to sever the relationship as quickly as possible so, one Saturday afternoon as Kenneth and I were sitting on a pavement bench, I took the bull by the horns and told him that I didn’t want to have anything more to do with him. I was totally unprepared for his reaction. He said nothing then, suddenly, he threw his head on to my lap and with great, choking sobs began to weep. I was horrified. I’d never imagined that he was capable of making such an exhibition of himself. When a passing motorist pulled up to ask if anything was the matter and I had to reassure him that everything was all right, I could have died of shame and embarrassment. I feared that, at any moment, someone might walk past us and so, in desperation, I told Kenneth that I hadn’t really meant what I’d said. Instantly, he stopped howling, stood up and carried on in his usual, cheerful manner as though nothing had happened.
The incident had embarrassed me so much that the following Saturday morning when he knocked on our door I told him I didn’t want to see him, turned my back on him and went upstairs to my room, shutting the door behind me. At this, he promptly sat down on our stairs and began to weep and my mother, who was doing the housework at the time, was obliged to vacuum around him.
‘For goodness’ sake get rid of that bloody boy!’ she hissed from the landing and so, once again, I had no alternative but to tell Kenneth that I hadn’t meant what I’d said.
This state of affairs could have gone on indefinitely had his college work not begun to suffer as a result of his weekend trips from Coventry to Falmouth, forcing his parents to forbid him from coming home. Even so, I was not to be free of him and soon found myself receiving letters. Lately, I’d discovered that my mother had been intercepting and opening all my correspondence and although I was beside myself with fury and outrage, I didn’t have the courage to confront her about it. There was a prurient side to Kenneth’s nature and I was terrified that she might get hold of one of his letters. One day, my worst fears were realised when I spotted an envelope with his handwriting on it protruding from the pocket of her apron. Panic stricken, I ran to Jean to beg her to try to retrieve it while I set up a distraction. The ploy worked, thanks to my sister’s nimble fingers, and it was just as well that the operation was successful because the contents of the letter, had she read them, would have enraged her to the point of apoplexy.

In the spring, Ethel invited me to spend a few days in London with her and Harry and I was so excited at the prospect that I could hardly contain myself. When I boarded the Paddington train at Truro I was wearing the smart new coat, made from a soft wool in a flattering shade of red, that I’d been given for Christmas. It was a far cry from the school uniform that I’d been forced to wear on my last, unaccompanied railway journey and I felt very grown-up and sophisticated. The train was quite crowded but when we reached Plymouth all the other passengers in my compartment disembarked. While we were waiting for the dining carriages to be attatched, I was reminded of a family journey by rail from London to Falmouth made some years ago when Jean and I had been little girls. In the days of steam, the big locomotives pulling the trains from Paddington to Penzance were replaced with smaller ones when the dining cars were detatched at Plymouth. The operation took about twenty minutes and so passsengers often used to take advantage of the wait by getting out to stretch their legs. On this occasion, our parents went off to get a cup of tea leaving us alone in the compartment but with the assurance that they’d be back long before the train was ready to leave the station. However, during the process of exchanging engines, the carriages started to move and Jean and I were convinced that the train was going and we’d been abandoned to some unknown fate. We stared at each other in horror, not knowing what to do. Jean burst into tears and my panic was so great that I overcame my fear of adults to call out of the window to ask a passer-by if the train was leaving.
My reminiscences were interrupted when a noisy group of servicemen entered my compartment followed, a few moments later, by a man in a business suit who sat down next to me. We left Plymouth and some time later, as we were speeding towards Taunton, he stood up to reach for his briefcase in the overhead compartment. I assumed he was getting ready to disembark at the next station but, after removing a magazine, he replaced the briefcase and sat down again. For half an hour or so it remained unopened on his lap then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him remove a pen from his pocket. A few minutes later, I became aware that it had gone very quiet in our compartment and, glancing sideways, I saw that the man had opened his magazine, which featured explicit photographs of naked women, and was meticulously circling their nipples with a red, ball-point pen as he turned each page.
‘Are you going all the way to Paddington?’ he suddenly asked, startling me so much that I jumped. I nodded and turned away, hastily. A few seconds later, he began to shift about and I realised that he was edging his way towards me; the next moment, I felt his hand brush against my thigh. At this, one of the servicemen sitting opposite me stood up, crossed over and, with great deliberation, sat down between me and the man. I smiled at him with gratitude and when we reached Paddington, he and his companions escorted me from the train, to the astonishment of Ethel who was waiting to meet me. What had occurred was to be by no means my only unpleasant railway encounter: during my student years I travelled a great deal by train and I discovered that it is a form of transport which has an irresistible attraction for men with unusual sexual tendencies. Fortunately, I learned how to deal with them.
Harry was the caretaker of the large block of flats where he and Ethel lived in a pleasant part of Islington, not far from Sadler’s Wells Theatre. They were Londoners born and bred and were very proud of their city. They showed me to all the famous places - the Tower of London, Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace and so on and Ethel took me to Madame Tussaud’s and, best of all, the London Planetarium which thrilled me beyond words. One evening, as a surprise, we went to Covent Garden to see a gala ballet performance and I couldn’t believe that I was actually seeing, with my very own eyes, famous dancers whom I’d only ever seen before on television or in photographs. The gala included as its highlight a performance by a legendary dancer called Antonio who gave a wonderfully exciting display of a fusion of ballet and flamenco to the music of Ravel’s Bolero . I was so thrilled by everything that I’d seen in London that, when I returned home, I thought Falmouth the dullest place in the world.

One day, at school, the fire alarm sounded and in accordance with the drill which had been practised several times, all the girls filed out in an orderly manner. On these occasions I always stayed behind to give Jenny a hand and so we were accustomed to being the last ones to leave the building. This time, however, as we stepped outside we were greatly surprised to see a fire appliance parked there. We asked the firemen if the school was on fire but they laughed and told us that they were there as part of the drill. Some of the men were young and very handsome and we spent several enjoyable minutes chatting and flirting with them. A day or so later a girl came into the art room where I was working to tell me that Miss Jacob wanted to see me in her study. Quaking in my shoes, wondering what it was that I’d done, I knocked on her door, timidly. To my infinite relief she was smiling when I entered. She told me that the firemen who’d attended the drill had been very impressed because I’d stayed behind to help my friend, not knowing whether or not there was a fire, and that I’d been commended for bravery by the Fire Service. I could barely suppress a smile because no one knew better than I what a coward I was! I was flattered by the praise but, at the same time, slightly offended: fire or no fire, did they really believe I’d have left my friend to fend for herself?
Towards the end of my last term at the High School we had an open day to which parents, families and friends of the pupils were invited. My mother insisted on being shown around the school, even though she’d inspected it thoroughly on several previous occasions, and I had no choice but to trail around after her feeling very self-conscious and embarrassed by the fact that she was wearing what she referred to as her ‘costume’, even though it was a warm, summer’s day, with the rubber girdle underneath. As we came out of the main building into the sunshine I saw Jenny sitting on a low wall surrounded by a large group of girls from our class. She was laughing and chatting happily and didn’t notice us as we passed or hear my mother call out ‘Hello Jenny!’
On the way home, my mother was very quiet and from her grim, tight-lipped expression I could tell that some kind of trouble was brewing. I never fully understood what happened afterwards because I wasn’t told but I believe my mother wrote Jenny a letter expressing her disgust that she’d been deliberately ignored by her at the open day. But I knew perfectly well that it hadn’t been the fact that she thought she’d been snubbed which prompted her to remonstrate in this manner: she’d been motivated by sheer jealousy. The huge popularity which Jenny enjoyed, plus her irrepressible happiness, her vitality and exuberant good nature had been plain to see and my mother hadn’t liked it. My father was appalled by what she’d done and for the first time that I could recall, he confronted her.
‘That poor, crippled girl! ‘ he said. ‘That poor, courageous, crippled girl! How could you?’
This time, my mother evidently realised she’d gone too far because she wrote another letter to Jenny to apologise. Her suspicious, jealous nature invariably led to some kind of unpleasantness, usually in the form of unfounded accusations. For example, she was in the habit of hiding money in food packets, such as custard powder, which she’d then replace on the shelf. When the contents of the packets were used up, she’d throw them away, together with the money, and later, when she found that the hidden notes had disappeared, she’d accuse someone - usually a particular friend of my sister who happened to live in a council house and couldn’t, therefore, be considered trustworthy - of having stolen it. It was a wonder that Jean and I had any friends at all.

At the end of term assembly on my last day at the High School most of the girls who were leaving cried. I regarded them somewhat contemptuously, feeling quite unmoved by the occasion. It wasn’t until some time later that I realised just how much my life had been influenced by the happy years I’d spent there: the school had been the one, cohesive force in my childhood, giving me not only the privilege of a first class education but also the security and stability I’d never had at home. Now that I was no longer part of that sheltered and untroubled environment, I suddenly felt afraid.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Roy the Greengrocer

2007-05-30T11:05:00.000+01:00

Our shop was called Roy’s High Class Fruiterer and Greengrocer. My father obtained his stock not only from wholesalers but also from private growers and Jean and I often used to accompany him when he drove into the countryside to buy produce from market gardeners. In those early days, when he was fired with enthusiasm, he would even drive all the way to Penzance to meet the ferry, The Scillonian, which brought passengers and produce from the Isles of Scilly to the mainland. Sometimes, elderly gentlemen would call into the shop with vegetables of prize-winning quality they’d grown themselves and, with modest pride, offer them for sale. Occasionally, they brought flowers and I can remember once opening a box in which, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, were the most beautiful ranunculus flowers, themselves not unlike tissue paper, in an array of the loveliest rainbow colours. In Cornwall, when I was a girl, fields and fields of brightly coloured anemones were a common sight and when they were in season, our shop was full of the bunched, tightly budded flowers. They are seldom seen these days and probably never will again be grown in the same profusion because they were attacked by a devastating virus and growers replaced them with daffodils. My father sometimes acquired stock cheaply because it was not fresh and often, when a customer came into the shop asking for a lettuce, he’d say:
‘Hang on a moment - I’ve got some growing out the back so I’ll just go and cut you one.’
In the yard he had a bucket of water in which he kept a supply of none-too-fresh lettuces and, having selected one which wasn’t too far gone, he’d pull off the browning outer leaves and cut a slice from the stem. Then he’d take the lettuce to the customer and say:
‘You can always tell when a lettuce is freshly picked because the stem is nice and white, like this one.’
He had nicknames, most of which were very silly, for all his regular customers. For instance, there was Fur-Cuffs, a woman who wore a fur-trimmed coat; then there was Flop-Out, whose décolleté , however inclement the weather, displayed an ample bosom; Slimcea, whom he named after the low-calorie bread, was a woman of enormous proportions while Promiscuous had an inordinate number of children of dubious paternity. Nut-Case, an ageing widow, was in the habit of donning her best finery on fine, Sunday afternoons and, with erect back and swinging arms, would stride around Castle Drive - monkey parading, my father called it. She favoured full skirts in bold prints of loud colours and fitted, white blouses worn with a wide belt. She was very tall and with her dyed black hair, painted red lips, rouged cheeks and mannish gait she looked so much like a not-very-successful transvestite that passing motorists used to stare in astonishment. There was also The Ginger Tart, a divorceé who had once propositioned him when he’d been to her house to deliver her order of fruit and vegetables. She was wearing a loose robe which, when he stepped into the hall, she opened to reveal the fact that she was totally naked underneath.
‘What do you think of this?’ she asked him.
If my mother had ever found out about that encounter, there is no telling what might have happened.
When the shop was well-stocked it looked fresh, bright and colourful; if, however, my father was hard-up and couldn’t afford new stock it looked dingy and depressing. There was quite a lot of space to fill so he thought it would be a good opportunity to indulge one of his interests and keep tropical fish. The tanks were large but he couldn’t afford to buy all his fish at once and so Jean and I were sent every so often to buy them in twos or threes from the aquarium on Falmouth’s Customs House Quay. He wasn’t allowed to go there himself because my mother had accused him of taking too much interest in the woman - that tart with half Timothy White’s on her face - who sold the fish. When he had the cash to purchase new specimens he’d say to us:
‘Go and get us a Siamese fighting fish, will you?’ or:
‘Get us half a dozen guppies and a couple of kissing gouramis, will you?’
He was very fond of his fish and on one occasion, when he hadn’t been able to afford to pay the electricity bill and our supply was consequently disconnected, he sat huddled in a corner of the shop, head in hands and brow deeply furrowed, racking his brains to try to think of a way to fiddle the meter and restore the electricity before the water in the tanks started to cool.
‘Go away and leave me alone!’ he’d groan if anyone tried to speak to him.
In the shop he kept a barrel of vinegar which he used both for the pickling of onions and for selling to customers. Later, he obtained another, identical barrel but this one contained sweet sherry from which he regularly fortified himself with a surreptitious nip. He told my mother that the second barrel was full of vinegar, too, and, curiously, she believed him; in fact, I don’t think she ever discovered his secret although he lived in perpetual terror that she might unwittingly serve a customer with sherry instead of vinegar. He would sit in his corner sipping sherry and peeling shallots with the same grimy penknife he used for removing dirt from his fingernails and cutting lettuces: Roy’s pickled onions were very popular with the customers and at Christmas the shelves groaned under the weight of all the jars he had filled. Once, during a particularly acrimonious argument, my mother hurled one of the jars of onions at him; it was a particularly large jar and as it broke, onions and vinegar flew in all directions. It took many weeks for the smell to disappear. During slack periods he would sit reading from one of the volumes of the complete works of Dickens which he kept in the back of the shop and he often bemused customers by quoting passages or referring to characters from the novels. He had a subtle sense of humour but, like the literary quotations, his jokes went over the heads of most of his clientele.
Not infrequently, representatives of insurance firms or other, similar concerns would come into the shop trying to sell him policies and he always had difficulty turning them down. He was even persuaded to suscribe to a funeral expenses fund ( he called it his ‘coffin money’ ) which was collected every month by a shifty-looking old man who bore a disturbing resemblance to Fagin. He was also unable to resist buying goods, particularly watches, from itinerant traders. Indeed, word must have spread far and wide because, before very long, he was invaded on a regular basis by swarthy, mysterious-looking men speaking in rapid, unintelligible, alien tongues, selling an assortment of dubious merchandise. Whenever charity collectors ( he called them ‘tin rattlers’ ) came through the door he would groan and, if he could, make a hasty disappearance.
My mother accepted her share of the work involved in the running of the shop with very poor grace. The Cornish dislike those who boast almost as much as they dislike those who criticise and since she was in the habit of doing both, it was inevitable that she would make enemies. Once, a woman came into the shop when she was serving and asked for a turnip. When she replied that they didn’t have any, the customer could hardly believe it because in Cornwall the turnip - or, to be exact, swede - is an essential ingredient of the pasty and so to a Cornish person a greengrocer’s without turnips is as scandalous as a pub with no beer. My mother quelled the poor woman’s protests with one of her crushing retorts:
‘Where I come from,’ she said, coldly, ‘they feed them to the cattle.’
Amongst my father’s regular customers was a Cockney couple, both of whom were very much of the ‘you don’t want to do it like that!’ ilk, and since my mother disliked intensely anyone she considered a ‘know-all’, she made no pretence of concealing her contempt for them. However, being Londoners, they were impervious to her derogatory remarks and withering scorn and seemed to enjoy taunting her. The subject of shoe sizes came up one day and, staring pointedly at my mother’s feet, the woman said:
‘In my day, if you took more than a size two you were considered a clumsy cow.’
At this, my mother, who was a size five, could only seethe with tight-lipped fury.
Because the shop was ‘open all hours’ my parents took their meals in shifts. My mother would have hers first then stomp into the shop with an ungracious:
‘Do you want this or not?’
That signified that his was on the table. He suffered badly from indigestion and would often send Jean or me to the chemist’s for slippery elm or other, old-fashioned remedies: he knew he would get little sympathy from our mother so he never consulted her. It was shortly after we moved into the house in Killigrew Road that they finally stopped sharing a bed and although she blamed it on his snoring, I think the truth was that she just couldn’t stand him being near her any more. In winter, in order to warm his bed, he made himself a most bizarre and dangerous contraption. He obtained from the chemist’s a large, flat, lozenge-shaped tin that had once contained the vile-tasting Hack’s lozenges which, in those days, tended to be favoured by heavy smokers for the relief of their coughs. The tin was just wide enough to accommodate a low-watt light bulb and this homemade bed-warmer produced such a great deal of heat that every night the smell of scorching sheets would pervade the house and on several occasions the bed nearly went up in flames.
As well as mice, my sister and I had acquired a pair of rabbits. Very soon, they had babies which were so enchanting that we promptly went to buy another pair of a different variety. These, too, very soon produced young and before long we found, like the mice, that we had a great many rabbits. There were black ones, white ones, brown-eared ones and mixed ones and because we didn’t have enough hutches to contain them all, we let them loose in the garden where, as free-range rabbits, they existed very happily. Often, our father used to open the door at the back of the shop and call:
‘Come on! Come on!’
and the rabbits would come hopping down the steps into the yard for tit-bits. One day, a cutomer saw one of them actually inside the shop.
‘Mr. Walker!’ she shrieked, ‘There’s a rabbit in the shop!’
Their mating habits were nocturnal and their favoured place for this very noisy operation was in the back yard directly under the window of our father’s bedroom. Fed up with disturbed nights, he devised a means of frightening them away. Using a long piece of string, he joined together a number of empty tin cans which he hung out of the window. When he got into bed at night, he attatched the end of the string to his big toe so that when the rabbits began their mating activities all he had to do was wriggle his foot and the rattling of the cans would scare them away. When the rabbits began to make burrows in the garden and our mother found herself disappearing down holes every time she hung out the washing, she declared that enough was enough and the rabbits would have to go. Regretfully, Jean and I had no choice but to give all of them away to our friends.

After the initial burst of enthusiasm, my father lost interest in the shop and although he kept it going for a number of years, he was always in debt and bailiffs called on a regular basis. He could not afford to tax or insure his car so that when he went anywhere it had to be by way of what he called his ‘anti-fuzz route’ which included most of the back streets of Falmouth. Every Saturday, my mother did a weekly shop and he would work himself up into a state bordering on panic if the takings were down and he thought he might not be able to give her the housekeeping money. When she was ready to go out, she would fling open the door which separated the living quarters from the shop and demand:
‘I want my money!’
If he wasn’t able to give her the full amount, she would repeat:
‘I want my money! I’ve got to have my money!’
and even though he pulled open the drawers of the till to prove to her that they were empty, still she would insist:
‘! want my money!’
A bitter row would ensue but, eventually, she’d storm out of the shop with whatever he was able to give her and with dark threats as to what would happen if he didn’t come up with the rest by the time she got back.
Before my mother would venture out of the house, a complicated, almost ritualistic, procedure had to be carried out beforehand. Firstly, she would perform a ‘strip wash’ which involved removing all her upper garments and sponging herself down at the kitchen sink. Why she never used the bathroom for this operation, Jean and I could never understand and, strangely, my earliest memory of my mother is of her standing at the kitchen sink stripped to the waist. The second stage of the preparation was the putting on of her newly-acquired rubber girdle, for which she needed the assistance of Jean and me. This was not an easy undertaking because the girdle was extremely tight and the rubber inflexible. Jean would attempt to pull up one side and I the other while simultaneously pushing in bits of bulging flesh. It was very difficult to avoid laughing but we daren’t because she would take offence and say:
‘What’s so bloody funny?’
When at last, after much struggling, broken fingernails and suppressed mirth on our part, the girdle had been fitted, she would go upstairs to sit in front of the dressing table to attend to her face. This would begin with a vigorous patting of the cheeks with the palms of her hands; no doubt she’d read somewhere that doing this was good for the circulation but to us it looked painful, rather like a form of self-chastisement. Next, she would perform extraordinary contortions of the face which involved pursing the lips and stretching the chin as far forward as they would go, like some weird species of deep-sea fish filtering plankton. More face-patting followed, only this time for the application of Nivea cream and powder. Lastly, she would apply a dark red lipstick. We had come to learn that the dark red lipstick was a good sign because it meant that she was in one of her better moods; if, however, she appeared at any time wearing lipstick of a pink shade it meant that she was in a bad mood and we had all better watch out.
Jean and I had come to dread Saturday afternoons because our mother always demanded that one of us should accompany her to help with the shopping. She was so convinced that she was being overcharged that, at the supermarket checkout, queues of impatient customers would form while she insisted on going through every single item on the bill. We would have no choice but to stand and wait, cringing with embarrassment, while she argued. There were a few shops she wouldn’t go to because she’d had a row there and a few more where she was on the point of having a row and we hoped, fervently, that there wouldn’t be an eruption while we were with her. She was always on the lookout for a bargain so, when all the shopping apart from bread and cakes had been purchased, we had to hang about until almost closing time because there was a particular baker who often reduced the price of any remaining stock. She was very fond of cakes but suffered from an allergy to almond essence and this required Jean or me to act as tasters before she could eat any kind of purchased confectionery. If, by any chance, she happened to eat even the smallest morsel of anything containing that flavouring her face would immediately start to swell in a manner which was most alarming and it would remain in that state for several hours; those were the few occasions when we actually felt sorry for her.
The stress of living with my mother for all those years, financial worries and the fact that he was a heavy smoker, took their toll on my father’s health and as well as digestion problems, he also suffered from bouts of bronchitis which were so bad that he would be confined to bed for several days. My mother was not at all sympathetic and complained that not only did she have to mind the shop but also she had to keep running up and down the stairs all day after him. I felt very sorry for him at these times and I was concerned because he was obviously very ill.
‘It’s his own fault,’ my mother would say, ‘smoking that stinking shag all the time.’
He rolled his own cigarettes and ‘stinking shag’ is how she referred to the tobacco he used. Jean and I thought she had a nerve to criticise his smoking habit when she, herself, smoked just as much as he did. He was hardly ever able to relax. He was seldom allowed to go to the pub and if he did, it was usually in the company of Uncle Cliff who favoured dingy establishments in the vicinity of the docks. One of these was a hotel, overlooking the Customs House Quay, which was run by a rather dour old gentleman who had a compulsive habit of pursing his lips and pushing his chin forward in a manner similar to the curious facial contortions which our mother performed as part of her beauty routine. He had a black cat called Tinker who used to sit on the bar and to whom he was devoted; if he made conversation, it was nearly always about what tinker had been getting up to. The lavatory was situated at the end of a dark corridor and was so old that it must have been antique; it had a wide, wooden seat and a long chain which you had to pull several times to make it flush. The guest accommodation was above the bar and the clientele more often than not included adulterous couples. In those days, extra-marital affairs were considered far more scandalous than they are today and a good many boarding establishments tended to be suspicious of couples whom they suspected were not married or conducting affairs. Such was the reputation of this decidedly insalubrious place that it was not uncommon for the proprietor, while he was running the bar, to receive telephone calls from angry husbands or wives trying to locate the whereabouts of their erring spouses.
There was another equally gloomy bar in which Uncle Cliff and Auntie Frances, our parents, Jean and I once saw in the new year; apart from ourselves, the only other patrons were some foreign sailors who spent the entire evening staring, much to my discomfiture, at me. At midnight, they got up from their seats, came over to where we were sitting and each one kissed me solemnly on the cheek. I blushed so much that I think it must have taken some considerable time for my complexion to return to its normal hue. To honour the arrival of a new year, the landlord passed around plates of haggis. Jean turned pale at the sight of it but I took a cautious bite and declared that it was disgusting and smelt of old socks; our mother said, in her opinion, it was off.
The only times my father was able to relax were when my mother went out for the evening. Some time after we’d settled into the house in Killigrew Road she discovered that they held bingo sessions in he crypt of the Catholic Church just down the road and soon became addicted. This gave him the opportunity to settle down in front of the television with his sherry in the knowledge that he had at least a couple of hours respite. Jean and I were usually in our rooms and every so often we would hear him bellowing at the screen. He could not abide female singers in any shape of form and the sound of a woman’s voice in song was torture to his ears. If he was watching a programme and one happened to put in an unwonted appearance he would consider it a monstrous outrage.
‘They’ve worked one in!’ he’d wail. ‘They’ve gone and worked one in!’
On Sunday afternoons he was obliged to take our mother for a drive so that she could ‘get some air.’ She spoke as though she lived in some polluted inner city and we thought it very strange that she should consider herself deprived of ‘air’ considering that we lived in such a clean environment. We generally ended up in the car park of Castle Drive overlooking Falmouth Bay and although she said it was because she liked to look at the view, she seemed to prefer glaring at the other people sitting in their cars.
‘Some people don’t know how to park!’ she’d mouth at them.
In the evening, we were in the habit of visiting Auntie Frances and Uncle Cliff for a game of cards. Jean would sit happily drawing horses and chatting to Auntie while I joined in the rounds of whist or nap. The cards were very old and greasy from so much handling and our mother said that the reason Uncle Cliff refused to play with new ones was because he was an old cheat and that they were all marked. Nevertheless, those evenings, despite the choking atmosphere of cigarette smoke, were enjoyable and at least our father was able to forget his worries for a short while.
He had always enjoyed driving and loved cars, particularly Jaguars; his dream was to win the pools and buy an E-type. During the fifties he’d owned a number of different cars including an Armstrong Siddeley saloon which, I remember, had running boards and another, rather handsome car, a Riley, which I think it must have been quite unusual because it was frequently admired by car enthusiasts; he also became the proud owner of a racy, red, convertible Jaguar which once lost a wheel while we were driving down a hill in Falmouth and, later, another Jaguar, a big, powerful, beast of a thing in which he once touched one hundred miles per hour ( not many cars could do that in those days ). At one time, he’d belonged to the Automobile Association during the days when A.A. mechanics drove around on motor bikes, saluting members; Jean and I always felt very important when our car was acknowledged in this manner. One winter’s evening he showed off by driving on to the beach at Gunwalloe, a deserted and inhospitable place, and promptly became stuck in the sand. After several, futile attempts to reverse the car he realised that there was no alternative but to walk to the nearest farm to see if a tractor was available which would be the only means of towing the car off the beach. Outside, a fierce gale was blowing and driving rain was pelting the windscreen; worse than that, the tide was coming in, fast. Jean, our mother and I were too terrified to remain in the car watching the great, foaming waves rolling in and breaking on the beach, only a few feet from where we were sitting, so we decided it would be better to face the elements and try to seek shelter somewhere. I ran to a telephone kiosk and shut myself in there while they sought refuge in the public conveniences; apart from the church, there appeared to be no other buildings in that bleak and lonely place. After what seemed an eternity, a tractor turned up and with an expertise born of experience ( many a foolhardy motorist had got into the same predicament ) attatched a rope and towed the car away from the incoming tide in the nick of time.

My sister was fond of her father and had a much better relationship with him than I’d ever had. By now, she was a pupil at Clare Terrace School and, under the strict regime of Miss Prince and pressure from our mother to pass the eleven-plus, was suffering the same anxieties as I had. But at least, out of school hours, she had a means of escape because, to Jean, there existed on earth only one thing of importance: the horse. She lived, breathed and had her being in horses and every moment of her spare time was taken up with activities involving them. In our hall, secured to the banisters at the bottom of the stairs, the makeshift saddle she’d made and on which she would spend hours astride, became a permanent fixture. She persuaded our parents to let her have riding lessons and was promised that if she passed her scholarship they would buy her a pony of her own. Our father had a supplier, a local farmer, who owned an old dobbin and for ten shillings he’d allow Jean to ride it. I thought this was an outrageous waste of money and the farmer an old crook. Our Sunday afternoon family outings would, at Jean’s insistence, involve driving into the countryside outside Falmouth laden with bags of fruit and vegetables which were so past their freshness that there was no way they could be sold in order to feed three horses she considered were neglected. Considering the amount of time they took ambling up to the gate and the disinterest with which they regarded our offerings I didn’t think they could be as neglected as she would have had us believe. We had to park by the gate of the field in which they lived and sit patiently in the car while she called:
‘Misty! Fir-cone! Jenny!’
It seemed to me that she knew the name of every single horse within a five-mile radius of Falmouth and her obsession was beginning to get on my nerves.At weekends, I hardly saw anything of her because she was accustomed to getting up very early in the mornings in order to walk the not inconsiderable distance to the riding stables where she had her lessons. On the way, she would often stop opposite a certain house to observe the curious behaviour of a man who was in the habit of standing in an upstairs window and masturbating. One day, she was accompanied by a friend who, being considerably more enlightened than Jean, realised what was happening and promptly called the police from the nearest call-box. My sister thought it was hilarious when the policewoman who interviewed them asked:
‘Did you see his privates?’ In matters of sex, she was as ignorant as I had been at that age but through spending so much time at the stables in the company of boys as well as girls and through witnessing the frequent couplings of a variety of farm animals, she soon acquired a knowledge which was far more comprehensive than mine.

Although our next-door-neighbours were quiet, pleasant people it soon became apparent that my mother had conceived totally unwarranted feelings of jealousy towards the woman and was biding her time for the opportunity to pick a quarrel. This actually happened after Mr. and Mrs. Thomas, as they were called, built a bathroom extension in which there was a window overlooking our back yard. Since the window was of frosted glass no-one could look out of it but this mattered little to her and she railed against the couple with all the ferocity of which she was capable. She had no sense of humour whatsoever and the only things which made her laugh were other people’s misfortunes. She made up silly words to popular tunes and would expect us to laugh with her while she cackled with glee over her own wit. She made a point of looking down into next door’s garden while Mrs Thomas was hanging out her washing.
‘Don’t throw your falsies away!’ she’d sing in reference to the padded bras which our neighbour wore.
Poor Mrs. Thomas’ wardrobe suffered a good deal of criticism. It was quite undeserved because she was, in fact, a smartly dressed woman and when, one winter, she appeared in a rather nice new coat, my mother could barely contain her envy.
‘Hasn’t that woman got anything else to wear?’ she asked, after the coat had had a few airings.
Mrs. Thomas’ coat became a good distraction ploy because if, at any time, Jean and I suspected that we were about to suffer maternal ire, before she had the chance to open her mouth we’d say something like:
‘We’ve just seen Mrs. Thomas down town and guess what! She was wearing that coat again.’
It was a cunning stratagem that always worked. Our neighbour was not the only person of whom she was jealous. She made catty remarks about various customers who visited the shop and harboured dark suspicions about women to whom she thought our father was paying what she considered undue attention. Jealousy is the worst kind of emotion because it festers in the mind and eats away at the soul; gradually and irretrievably, as her obsessions became worse, it altered her appearance. Because her eyes were so often narrowed with suspicion, her brow became creased and furrowed; her compressed lips pulled down the corners of her mouth, thrusting her chin forward and causing deep scowl lines on either side of her face. It is no wonder that the very thought of our mother’s glowering countenance was enough to strike fear into our hearts.
Not only was she a very jealous woman, she was also inordinately superstitious. We were accustomed to seeing her throwing spilt salt over her shoulder, touching wood or un-crossing knives; once, we’d brought home some may blossom that we’d picked and when she screamed at us to get it out of the house, we thought she was joking and did the same thing again a few days later; this time, her reaction to what we regarded as mere playful fun was so violent that we were left dismayed and puzzled. On another occasion, I came home with a peacock feather I’d been given; it was one of the loveliest things I’d ever seen and I was very proud of it but when my mother saw it she shrieked:
‘Get it out! Get it out at once! It’s unlucky!’
The house in Killigrew Road had a long, narrow garden and every morning she would walk up the path to the back gate, open it, peer into the lane and glare ferociously at the world in general. When she had satisfied herself that everything was as it should be, she would make her way back down the path touching, at intervals, the wooden fence which divided our garden from next door’s. After a while, it became evident that the touching of wood was not so much a habit as a compulsion which grew worse with the passing of time.
Ethel, Harry and Judy continued to holiday in Falmouth almost every summer but after we’d moved to Killigrew Road and there wasn’t room to accommodate them, they had to rent a caravan on the outskirts of the town. My mother had knitted identical, Fair Isle sweaters for my father and Harry and it amused them both to wear them simultaneously. They thought that it was hilarious when in the shop one day, clad in their sweaters, a customer remarked:
‘You can tell you two are brothers!’
No two men ever looked so unalike.
To Jean, Ethel’s visits were not welcome and mealtimes in her presence were a purgatory which she would have given anything to avoid.
‘If I were you, Ivy, I’d make her eat that,’ Ethel would remark as my sister pushed to one side most of what was on her plate.
I used to enjoy accompanying Ethel and Harry when they motored around the county visiting all the most popular places but Jean would have nothing to do with them and would escape to her riding school at the earliest opportunity.

One of my father’s suppliers lived in a manor house, on the Lizard peninsula, which had recently been converted into a country club. We accepted his invitation to visit it and so one evening, not knowing quite what to expect, we drove out there. It was a rather beautiful old building with many oak beams, latticed windows and wooden panels. In the bar, in keeping with the atmosphere of quiet dignity, the clientele conversed in low tones and was of a class which my mother considered superior and more worthy of her presence. Definitely not like the sort of low company you found in ordinary pubs and later, in the shop, she took pleasure in telling customers that she and her husband had been invited, by its owner, to a very exclusive country club. There were quite a few, similar establishments in and around Falmouth and she persuaded him that it would be good for business to be seen in such places. Jean and I enjoyed these excursions and I took pains over my appearance because there were sometimes boys of my age with whom I could flirt. On one occasion, a boy asked me if I’d like to dance and, although I would have liked to accept, I couldn’t because I’d broken a bone in my foot and my leg was encased in plaster up to the knee. The boy would not accept my refusal to dance and pulled me up from my chair; when he saw my leg, which had been out of sight under the table, he was mortified with embarrassment and, stammering apologies, scuttled off. He had seemed a nice boy and I cursed my broken foot for putting to an end what could have been an interesting encounter. Once, at another country club, I glanced up and met the eye of a boy on the other side of the room. Immediately, I looked away and pretended to be disinterested but, every so often, I gave a sly look in his direction and saw that he was still staring at me. Assuming an air of nonchalence, I got up and sauntered into the garden, knowing that he would follow me: sure enough, he did.
‘I saw you looking everywhere in the room except at me,’ he said, reproachfully. ‘I wanted to meet you because you’ve got green paint on your hand and that means you must be an interesting person.’
This was a novel approach and I was impressed. This boy had an air of maturity that I hadn’t yet come across in other boys of his age and I was deeply disappointed when he said he was holidaying in the area and he and his family were due to return home the following day. He asked me about myself and after we’d chatted for a while, he suddenly caught me by the shoulders and kissed me. Since there can be no setting more conducive to romance than a Cornish garden on a beautiful evening with the rhododendrons all in bloom and the singing of blackbirds filling the air, I was unable to resist. This was my dream of romance come true! But the next moment, it was rudely shattered with the sudden materialisation of Jean who had been sent to find out where I’d got to and to tell me to hurry up because we were about to go. I had no choice but to make my excuses and leave. It was only when we were in the car on our way home that I realised I hadn’t even asked the boy his name.

Every year, with the approach of autumn, my father would buy several boxes of small, green grapes which, said the wholesaler, were from a region of Spain called Almeria. When you bit into the firm flesh, the juice from the grapes would explode on to the tongue with a delicious burst of sweetness and I think Jean and I must have surreptitiously consumed between us as many grapes as were actually sold. Not for a moment did I ever imagine that one day I‘d come to know very well that mountainous and arid province of Spain from where those grapes came. At Christmas, the shop was filled seasonal stock and the smell of tangerines, oranges and grapefruits would reach every corner of the house. This was the one time of the year that it looked really nice; there were boxes of chestnuts, big hands of bananas suspended from butchers’ hooks, bunches of celery, sacks and sacks of Brussels sprouts, bags of mixed nuts and mountains of apples and pears. Because he had the reputation of being open all hours, customers would think nothing of knocking him up on Christmas Day for something they’d forgotton. He regularly made up a hamper containing a generous selection of fruit and vegetables on behalf of a neighbouring pub for their weekly raffle and on one occasion, a disgruntled woman came into the shop brandishing an apple; she said that it was in the hamper she’d won in the raffle and demanded a replacement because it was going rotten.
Soft fruits were widely grown locally and in summer the shop would be filled with punnets of raspberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, gooseberries and, of course, strawberries. If the weather was warm the fruit deteriorated quickly and so we had to help our mother with the fiddly task of stripping the small berries from the stalks and topping and tailing the gooseberries so that they could be made into puddings or jam. She regularly cooked beetroots to sell in the shop and since we both enjoyed peeling off the skins when they had cooled we used to fight over who should have the pleasure. When apples were cheap and plentiful, we made toffee apples for the shop but, again, I think we probably ate more than we sold. In those pre - Common Market days, there were many productive orchards in Cornwall and lots of the varieties of apples which were grown then probably no longer exist today. Every one of these apples had its own, characteristic smell, taste and colour and even the names - Cornish Gillyflower, St. Edmund’s Russet, Beauty of Bath, for example - seemed to conjure up images of the kind of picturesque, rural England which those of my generation remember with nostalgia. Nowadays, the only variety of cooking apple seems to be the Bramley; in our shop there were several, such as Early Victoria, Rev. W. Wilks and Crawley Beauty. My father was a daydreamer and one of his most frequent reveries involved his being chosen to take part in a television or radio quiz programme in which one of the questions would be to name a specific number of English varieties of apple. He would also confound the other contestants by being able to name the world’s largest rodent and giving the correct answer to the question:
‘What is the square root of minus one?’
My mother was infuriated by his daydreaming and told him that he was useless and had no go in him. She railed at him continually but it had no effect other than to make him even more detached. The shop ticked over but the financial situation was not improving and I realised, for the first time, just how hard-up my family was. Guiltily, I reflected that I could have been less
unwilling when I’d been asked to lend a hand in the shop during busy periods. I was in the habit of entering the house via the shop and there had been several occasions when, as I’d barged past without even acknowledging him, he’d called out after me:
‘Make us a cup of tea, will you?’
And I’d replied:
‘Make it yourself!’
I was filled with contrition. Perhaps if I’d helped in the shop more often he’d have been able to organise himself a little better and our money troubles would not have been so serious. I knew that he had problems with the bank because he was under an obligation to pay in a certain amount each week; Jean and I usually did this for him and it was a chore we disliked very much because of the way we were treated by the supercilious bank clerk who dealt with us. He would take the cash and the paying-in book without a word and regard us, unsmilingly, over his spectacles as if we were the lowest form of life. The thought of my family being subjected to this humiliation filled me with such resentment that I resolved to turn over a new leaf and do something to try to help the business to improve. Inspired with sudden zeal to render myself useful, I decided that I would spend, in future, all my free time cleaning the shop, dressing the windows so that they always looked nice and helping to serve customers. Such was my optimism that I was certain, before very long, our troubles would be over.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Teenage Romance

2007-05-30T11:04:00.000+01:00

To my mother, the ultimate in elegant attire was the combination of a red, V-necked jumper and a white, pleated skirt. It looked, she said, rich. As far as I was concerned, the pleated skirt was the most hideous garment ever to be invented and only the very tall and the very slender could get away with wearing it. Once, to my extreme dismay, she bought a length of cream serge and commissioned a dressmaker to run up a skirt which, as I had feared, had the effect of shortening my legs while making the rest of me look as wide as a house. When it was washed, all the pleats would fall out and have to be pressed back in again in what was a tedious and time-consuming operation. There are no words to describe my loathing of that cream serge skirt and I was very thankful when, after successive washings, it shrank. But such was her determination that I should have one, she kept a continual eye out whenever she went shopping and eventually, to my disgust, found one. This new skirt, at least, was permanently pleated and because the material was lighter, it didn’t hang from the hips in such a bunched-up, unflattering way. She knitted a jumper, in a rather pleasant shade of orangy-red and when I tried it on, together with the skirt, I admitted, grudgingly, that the effect wasn’t too bad.
Wearing the new jumper and skirt, I decided to walk to Gillian’s house to seek her much-valued opinion and as I stepped outside, who should I see standing in next door’s garden, chatting to Miss Richards and Mrs. Andrews and looking, with his wind-ruffled hair, so utterly, so heart-breakingly handsome that I could have fallen at his feet in adoration, but Mr. Sherwood. I flushed a vivid red and to hide my confusion pretended to examine one of the Anemone japonicas which grew in profusion inside our small front garden.
‘Don’t they grow up quickly these days,’ remarked Miss Richards, looking at me approvingly.
My heart swelled from sheer joy. For the first time, Mr. Sherwood had seen me out of my silly, childish school uniform and Miss Richards thought I looked grown up! I flew to Gillian’s on wings of ecstasy.
In the fifties, teenage fashion had not yet come into its own. We tended to wear more or less what our elders wore and it was not really until the sixties and the advent of the miniskirt that we were finally able to dress differently from our parents. I had bought myself a basic pattern comprising a fitted bodice and gathered skirt from which I made several dresses; I varied them by changing the length of the sleeves or altering the neckline and I trimmed them with ric-rac braid or broderie anglaise lace. I loved fashion drawing and was inspired by famous designers, such as Dior, who favoured long, wide skirts and tightly fitted bodices with impossibly tiny waists. Dress pattern sizes differed from those of today; busts were smaller then, as were waistlines. To achieve the tiny waist you had to wear a wide, elastic belt around your middle and it was so uncomfortable and constricting that breathing was almost impossible. Petticoats - or underskirts as the Cornish called them - were always worn under the full skirts and when a fabric called paper nylon came on the scene, it was de rigueur to wear a petticoat made from it so that your skirt would stick out more. After a couple of washes, this fabric would become limp so that you had to rinse it in a sugar solution in order to restore the crispness. I can also recall buying lengths of imitation whalebone from Woolworth’s which were sold specifically for making into hoops to be incorporated into petticoats. The more you could get your skirt to stick out, the better!

My mother’s guests one summer included a family who had a son a couple of years or so older than I was and it very soon became apparent that he fancied me. Although he had no physical defects as such, his mannerisms and habits seemed to deviate from the normal behaviour of boys of his age and it was almost as though he were an ageing man inhabiting a young man’s body. Normally, I was highly flattered if I suspected that a boy liked me and would encourage him unashamedly but this boy, David, made my flesh creep. At mealtimes I had to assist my mother by waiting on the guests and one evening, when I was helping to clear the tables after dinner, he came up to me and whispered:
‘I can tell you like me because you always make sure I get a bigger portion than anyone else.’
I flamed with indignation. It wasn’t true! And anyway, my mother dished the food on to the plates, not I. I decided that I definitely didn’t like this boy and determined to keep out of his way. When their holiday came to its end and the family was preparing to depart, to my consternation he asked if he could be allowed to stay on for a few days. No sooner had they departed, than David approached my mother to ask if he could take me to the cinema. What a cheek not to have asked me first! I thought that she might have refused consent on account of the fact that he was older than I was, but she merely told him to ask me. I faced a dilemma: I was nervous of this boy and I didn’t want to go out with him yet my mother seemed almost to approve of him. If I turned him down, would he take my refusal as mere girlish shyness and continue to pester me? He seemed very keen, so it was highly likely. Perhaps it was better to go out with him and get it over and done with. After all, I only had to keep my distance and he couldn’t get up to much in the cinema. So I agreed.
I felt very self-conscious walking into the cinema with a boy. He paid for the tickets but to my disappointment didn’t offer to buy any sweets; I was so nervous and unsure of myself that I needed some sort of distraction to give myself countenance. After we’d settled ourselves in our seats and I’d squeezed myself into the furthest corner of mine, I tried to concentrate on the screen. David was making gulping noises every time he swallowed and after a while it really began to get on my nerves; also, I could hear him shifting about, gradually edging closer to me. Glancing sideways, I saw with alarm that his arm was stretched across the back of my seat and that his hand was almost touching my shoulder. I cringed as the inevitable happened and he put his arm around me; his breathing was loud and the gulping noises worse than ever. He smelt of onions and I suspected that he’d been scoffing a pasty, as I’d seen him doing before, from the nearby Cornish Pasty Shop. No wonder he hadn’t wanted any sweets! He tried to draw me towards him but I shrank away.
‘You’re not very friendly, are you?’ he whispered.
We remained in that uncomfortable position until the end of the film, of which I have absolutely no recollection, and was, for once, glad that I was under orders to come straight home afterwards. He tried to hold my hand as we made our way back to Clare Terrace but I kept both hands fastenened firmly on my bag and was silent and unresponsive. If I had disliked David before, I disliked him more than ever now. At last, his stay came to an end and I was so relieved that I was almost friendly to him when he came to say good-bye. He asked if he could write to me and I replied, airily, that he could if he wanted to. After all, I didn’t have to reply, did I? But he must have taken this as encouragement because, without warning, he suddenly leant towards me, put his hands on my shoulders and bent down to kiss me. At the last moment, I turned my face and his wet kiss landed on my cheek. With that, I scuttled off to the safety of my room while he, crestfallen, walked away. Afterwards, he did write to me but I never replied.

That summer, I was going to Brixham to stay with my cousin Stephanie and I was full of excitement at the prospect. My mother had bought me a new dress and an outfit consisting of a pair of white shorts and a long, sleeveless top which was made from cotton printed with horizontal stripes of red and yellow. This outfit flattered my figure and made me look taller and I was gratified when, the first time I wore it, boys looked at me and workmen whistled. But for the train journey, my mother insisted that I wore my school summer uniform. Travelling alone, I would be much safer like that, she said. Our summer uniform consisted of a very plain, shirtwaisted, cotton dress which, worn with the regulation white ankle-socks, made me look ridiculously childish and the thought of having to be met by my cousin attired in such a manner filled me with dismay. I raged and pleaded alternately, but she wouldn’t relent. When we reached Falmouth Station on the afternoon of my departure and she bought my ticket, I realised that it wasn’t concern for my safety that had made her insist on my wearing my school dress but the fact that it made me look young enough to pass for a child and thus travel half-fare. I was mortified.
Auntie Lal and Stephanie were waiting for me at Newton Abbot Station and the first thing my cousin said was:
‘Is that your school uniform?’
I replied, shamefacedly, that it was and Auntie Lal said my mother was very sensible to make me wear it. You never knew what sort of dirty old men were hanging around on trains these days. I was consumed with envy when I saw Stephanie because she had achieved, with seemingly very little effort, the much sought-after Brigitte Bardot look; She had the blonde fringe, the pout, everything. Compared to me, she looked sophisticated and mature. We were awkward with each other at first but by the time we had reached Brixham, the old sense of comradeship had returned and we began to make plans for our time together. The next morning, I put on my new shorts and top but Auntie Lal told Stephanie she wasn’t allowed to wear hers and that she must put on a nice skirt instead. We set off down the street but we hadn’t gone very far when my cousin said:
‘Hang on a sec - I’ve just got to pop in here for a moment.’
With that, she dived into the bus station and disappeared into the ladies’. A few minutes later she emerged and my jaw dropped from sheer astonishment. Gone was the ‘nice skirt’ and in its place were the briefest white shorts I had ever seen. They accentuated her long, suntanned legs in a manner which was unashamedly provocative and if this effect were not enough to make everyone stare, she had knotted her modest blouse in such a way that that her brown midriff was completely exposed. Also, she had accentuated the luscious pout with a generous application of pale pink lipstick and outlined her eyes with smoky black kohl. The transformation was startling and I was both shocked and envious; if only I were as daring!
‘What would your mum say?’ I gasped.
‘Oh, she won’t find out. She never does. She’s been paying for me to have elocution lessons for ages and she’s no idea that I’ve never been - not even once. She sends me off looking all sweet and demure but she doesn’t know I always keep a change of clothes in my bag.’
Stephanie asked me if I’d ever been kissed by a boy and I had to confess that no, I hadn’t. I told her that a boy had tried to but that he was creepy and I hadn’t fancied him.
‘Oh well,’ she said, nonchalantly, ‘not to worry. We’ll soon pick up some decent boys.’
I was alarmed yet, at the same time, thrilled. What would my mother say, I wondered, with a slight stab of anxiety. Still, she was miles away and she wouldn’t know what I was getting up to here in Brixham. We found some decent boys very quickly, just as Stephanie had predicted. They were both on holiday in the area with their families and after the briefest of introductions and the minimum of preamble we found ourselves lying in the arms of our respective swains on a grassy slope overlooking the beach. Mine was a rather good-looking boy, tall and fair-haired, and I didn’t protest when he began to kiss me. The kisses were very dry and not at all ecstatic and I suspected that he was as inexperienced as I was. All the same, we whiled away a very pleasant morning.
‘Aren’t we going to see them again?’ I asked my cousin as we made our way back to the town.
‘Not bloody likely!’ she exclaimed. ‘There are loads of boys to meet yet. We don’t want to get stuck with those drips.’
I was rather sorry because I had quite liked my drip.
My time in Brixham flew by in a delightful succession of flirtations with numerous boys. One afternoon, we were walking along a country lane when we heard a fire-engine speeding towards us. As it rounded a bend and the driver spotted us, the vehicle screeched to a halt and the firemen who had been hanging on to sides leapt down into the road and we all spent a very pleasant five minutes or so sitting on the grass verge chatting and flirting outrageously. We were rather sorry when they said they’d better go because they had a fire to put out. When we told Auntie Lal about our escapade with the firemen she was outraged and said it was a disgrace: the Fire Service was paid to put out fires, not go pestering young girls. She’d a good mind to ring the Fire Station and lodge a complaint.
Whenever we took ourselves to the beach we would often see a very handsome youth, in the company of an older man, sunbathing at the water’s edge. There was an air of mystery about the couple and so we decided that he must be a foreign prince and the older man his bodyguard. We took to following them and spying on them from the clifftop and although we did our utmost to attract the attention of the handsome youth, he took no notice of us at all. We invented romantic stories about him and the more he ignored us, the more our ardour increased. The bodyguard was very attentive and doubtless discouraged his charge from associating with strangers: he was, after all, of noble birth and it would be unseemly for him to fraternize with any old riff-raff. So we had to be content with worshipping from a distance. A more enlightened observer would have taken it for granted that the couple was, of course, gay, but we, in our youthful ignorance, knew nothing of such things.
We didn’t quite know what to do with ourselves when it rained and we were confined to the house. Once, Auntie Lal gave us some ironing to do and she was horrified when she discovered that I’d ironed Uncle Albie’s handkerchiefs into triangles instead of squares. Since we weren’t to be trusted with the ironing, she told us to stay in the kitchen while she went to the shops so that we could keep an eye on the oven in which were baking two fatless sponges she’d knocked up. When they were done, we had instuctions to take them out of the oven, let them cool for a few seconds, then remove them carefully from their tins. They’d be nicely cooled by the time she returned, she said, and then we could help interlay the sponges with a filling of clotted cream. The attention we devoted to the supervision of the baking of Auntie Lal’s sponges was commendable. They were removed from the oven, light and risen to perfection, at the optimum moment. With the utmost care, we prised them cleanly from their respective tins and placed them on a wire rack to cool. When Auntie Lal still hadn’t returned, and seeing that the sponges were now completely cold, we decided to surprise her by doing the filling and final presentation ourselves. Slowly and meticulously we spooned an even, but extravagant, layer of cream onto the bottom sponge then carefully placed the other on top; lastly, in what was a most professional-looking finishing touch, we sieved a dusting of icing sugar over it.
It looked mouth-wateringly, tantalizingly delectable.
‘Well,’ remarked Stephanie, with her usual sagacity, ‘since we’re going to have it for tea, it wouldn’t do any harm to cut a couple of thin slices just to see if it’s all right.’
The sponge tasted as divine as it looked. Devonshire clotted cream is not so rich or sickly as Cornish cream and the combination of this with the light, melting texture of Auntie Lal’s fatless sponge was sheer perfection. After we’d consumed with unladylike rapidity the first two pieces, Stephanie said we may as well help ourselves to another couple. After all, it wouldn’t make much difference now that we’d already cut into the sponge. By the time we’d finished our third slices, the sponge was considerably attenuated.
‘Well,’ said Stephanie, philosophically, as she cheerfully cut two more slices, ‘may as well be hanged for sheep as for lambs!’
When Auntie Lal returned home and saw on the plate the last, remaining sliver of cream sponge, Stephanie received the full force of her wrath and we were sent upstairs in disgrace.
One sunny afternoon, we were lying on a grassy clifftop watching the mysterious foreign prince and his devoted bodyguard on the beach below when we saw a boy sitting not very far away from us looking in our direction. I took out my handbag mirror to check my face ( I had become very vain ) and Stephanie said:
‘Go on! I dare you - shine the mirror into his face!’
Obediently, I caught the sun in the mirror and flashed it into the eyes of the boy. He smiled, got up and came over to us. He was a very nice boy and both of us took an immediate fancy to him. He told us that his name was Norman and that he lived in Wales. After chatting for a while, we decided to go for a walk along the cliffs; at that point, neither Stephanie or I knew which one of us Norman fancied. We came to a stile and while I was attempting to scramble over it, I stubbed by big toe and it began to bleed. With great gallantry, Norman suddenly scooped me up in his arms and lifted me over the stile. Stephanie was annoyed and whispered that I’d done it on purpose. That evening, the three of us sat on a seat overlooking the sea and Norman began kissing me.
‘Put some effort into it, can’t you!’ chided Stephanie, the experienced.
I put some effort into it and found, to my surprise, that I rather enjoyed being kissed by Norman.
We were late home that night and Stephanie’s older brother, Tony, had been sent out to see where we’d got to. Because it was dark, we didn’t see him until he was almost upon us and when we did, I quickly extricated myself from Norman’s arm, which was around my waist, and told him to run, quickly.
‘Who was that?’ demanded Tony, looking very big and menacing as he loomed out of the shadows.
‘Him?’ said Stephanie, innocently, ‘Oh, that’s only Norman.’
‘Norman!’ bellowed Tony, after the fleeing figure. ‘I’ll give him bloody Norman!’
When we got home, Tony told his mother that we’d been hanging about with some boy called Norman.
‘Boys called Norman are common!’ declared Auntie Lal, disapprovingly, and sent us straight to bed.
I never saw him again. My holiday in Brixham was coming to its end and a couple of days later I resigned myself to the ignominy of having to put on my school dress in front of my cousin and caught the train back to Falmouth.
I’d only been home for a very short while when the neighbour’s nephew, Nigel, who had just arrived on his annual visit, knocked on our door. I could tell from his look of surprise that he thought I’d matured a great deal in the last year and I was gratified. He asked me if I’d like to go out but I decided to play hard-to-get and said I’d think about it. Firstly, I had to go round to Jenny’s to tell her all about my holiday. Her parents had sold their house in Penryn and they now lived not very far from Clare Terrace. When I reached Jenny’s house, I found Wendy there, too. I told the girls about my escapades and I think they weren’t inclined to believe me until, glancing out of the window, they saw Nigel who, predictably, had followed me.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Jenny, surprised.
‘Oh, nobody much,’ I replied, airily. ‘Just some boy.’
Jenny told me later that after I’d gone, Wendy had said, wistfully:
‘You and I will never get boyfriends.’
To which Jenny had muttered, under her breath: ‘You speak for yourself!’
Nigel grew daily more keen and wherever I went, there he was, too. It was all very flattering and I didn’t exactly discourage him then, one evening, his ardour overcame him and he pinned me against the side wall of our house and began to kiss me. At that moment, Fred from Fred’s Stores happened to be passing and the next time my mother went into his shop he remarked:
‘I see your daughter’s started propping up walls now.’
I was reprimanded in no uncertain terms for my indecorous behaviour and warned not to be seen carrying on like that again. Fred, I decided, was a mean old sneak and I determined never to patronize his shop again. Meanwhile, Nigel grew more ardent and began to pester me so much that it got on my nerves; there were, after all, things I wanted to get on with and he was taking up too much of my precious time.
‘Would you do something for me?’ he asked one day.
‘What?’ I replied, cautiously; there was something about the tone of his voice that put me instantly on my guard.
‘This!’ he said, thrusting an open pocket dictionary into my hand. I stared at it, perplexed.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I want you do do that word there with me.’
I looked at the word he was pointing at. Intercourse it said.
I was shocked at his audacity. As if I would contemplate doing such a thing! There was not a single girl of my acquaintance who didn’t know that the worst thing you could do was to have sexual relations with a boy. If you did, you were ruined for life and no decent boy would ever touch you afterwards. My mother referred to it as ‘denying the man you marry of his natural right’. Even more of a deterrent was the risk of pregnancy; the very word struck fear in our hearts and if, by some terrible and vengeful act of fate, the unthinkable should happen, there would be no way out but suicide. Besides, if a boy really liked you, he would respect you and not jeopardize your reputation by making such demands. And what a curious way to proposition a girl! Was that how it was done, with the aid of a pocket dictionary? I hardly thought so and after my anger and indignation had abated, I realised that, despite his bragging, his arrogant strut and his air of assurance, poor Nigel had had, most probably, no experience with girls at all; before me, he’d most likely never even kissed a girl. I felt nothing for him now, except contempt, and determined that he was an acquaintance not worthy of further cultivation: in other words, I gave him the boot.

It was apparent by the end of that summer that my mother’s enthusiasm for the bed, breakfast and evening meal business had begun to wane because, I think, she was finding that it involved too much work. Throughout her marriage, apart from her brief spell of service as a Wren during the War, she had never had any kind of employment and, indeed, was very scathing of mothers who went out to work. She maintained that it was very bad for a child to come home to an empty house and boasted that she’d always been there for Jean and me. This was not strictly true; most afternoons, she took to her bed and was often still asleep when we came home from school. As we grew older and more aware, my sister and I began to wonder what our mother did all day. She had never been houseproud and the amount of time she devoted to housework was by no means excessive. She had developed a routine which seemed very strange to us because it was so unlike the behaviour of our friends’ mothers. She would go to bed in the small hours after having spent the evening reading or knitting and get up very late, always in a foul temper, and spend a long time over her breakfast. She had the Daily Telegraph delivered each morning and after she’d read it she would settle down to what she considered the serious business of doing the crossword. The Daily Telegraph was sacred and woe betide anyone who dared lay a finger on it before she’d looked at it; once, in my youthful innocence, I committed the irredeemable sin of filling in the crossword with nonsense words and was punished with what I considered to be most unwarranted severity. When she went out, it was generally to the shops or the library; due to her voracious appetite for reading, she got through several books a week. She had no friends and Auntie Frances was the only person she ever visited.
Our parents had moved house so many times during our lives that Jean and I weren’t at all surprised when they put Clare House on the market and went off on frequent property-hunting forays. We found these excursions boring and time-wasting because our mother always wanted to view impressive-looking dwellings which were obviously way beyond our modest means. I think she did this purely to boast and justify her much-uttered words:
‘We nearly bought that house!’
Although we were used both to the inability of our parents to settle anywhere for any length of time and our mother’s impractical money-making schemes, when they announced that they were going to buy a shop and start a greengrocery business we were astonished. A shop! Well, that would be a novelty. But what about our mother? We couldn’t imagine her being a shopkeeper. For a start, you had to be friendly and polite to people and she’d be bound to fall out with someone or other before very long. And what about our father? He’d never had any experience in retail trade and as for keeping accounts and paying bills we knew from the frequent rows concerning the subject that he was absolutely hopeless. Even though we thought they were quite mad, it might be fun, just the same, to own a shop.
While we were in the throes of packing up prior to the move, Jean and I discovered in one of the inner attics a bag containing bundles of letters tied up with ribbon. Intrigued, I pulled an envelope from one of the bundles and took out the letter which was inside it.
‘It’s a love letter from him to her!’ I exclaimed as I ran my eye down the page of neat handwriting.
Gleefully, we tipped the bag on to the floor and began to riffle through the contents.
‘Look at this! He actually wrote her a poem!’
Convulsed with giggles, I read out the lines of verse to my sister:
One night as I stood by my window
My thoughts flew over to you
To where my true love lay sleeping
I wished I could be there, too.
‘Blimey!’ I marvelled. ‘Can you believe he actually wrote that to her?’
When I read out the final lines, which alluded to the reprimand of a passing bird bearing witness to the lover’s yearning, we both collapsed with laughter:
Naughty to wish you were with your love
When your love is tucked up in bed!
It semed to us quite incredible that there had once been a time when our parents had loved each other. Neither of us had ever seen them exchange an affectionate gesture or a kind word and over the years the sheer force of our mother’s jealous rage had demolished and cowed our father to the extent that we didn’t expect him to regard her with anything other than bitterness. She continued to hurl at him accusations concerning the affair of Judy in the woodshed and the incident seemed, in her mind, to have festered with the passing of time so that the allegations were now nothing less than fantastic. He had been in the habit of popping into a nearby pub every now and again but that modest pleasure was brought to an abrupt cessation when she became convinced that he was carrying on with the barmaid. He was accused, too, of ogling a woman who was often seen sashaying around the neighbourhood in very brief shorts. She had strikingly red hair of extraordinary length; it hung down her back well below her waist , covering the shorts and giving the startling impression, from behind, that she had nothing on. It was a spectacle enough to make anyone - man or woman - look twice.
Our new home was in Killigrew Road, a long, steep, busy thoroughfare which carries traffic from the centre of Falmouth to the main road. There were several shops in the vicinity: a chemist’s, a couple of butchers, a post office, general stores and a funny, old-fashioned draper’s which displayed in its windows underwear which looked, to Jean and me, as if it belonged to some bygone age. Whenever Ethel came to Falmouth she would make a bee-line for that shop because it was, according to her, the only retailer in the entire country which still had in stock the long, elasticated at the knee, pink, satin bloomers she had always worn; similarly, she had managed to find the only hairdressser in the whole of London who knew how to do the marcel waves, long gone out of fashion, which she had always favoured.
Although we were able to take possession of the house, the shop below was occupied by a tenant and there were still a few weks to go before the lease expired. Jean and I were highly amused when we discovered that our new home was, in fact, the town’s registry office!
I had recently acquired a small, rather antiquated, accordion and when a newly married couple emerged from below I would hang out of the upstairs window and give a wheezy rendering of Here Comes the Bride. Passers-by would look up in astonishment and I don’t think my musical abilities were very much appreciated by the newly-weds.
In fact, it was the accordion which brought about the abrupt termination of my adoration of Mr. Sherwood. We were learning German carols and I’d taken it to school so that I could accompany the class in a rendering of Tannenbaüm . Although I had devoted much time to practicing the tune, I was so nervous when I stood up before the class and began to play that I kept running out of air and instead of a pleasing melody, the only sounds I was able to produce were painfully stringent discords. The girls could barely contain their laughter and as I struggled to regain control of my accordion, I heard a distinct titter from Mr. Sherwood who was sitting at his desk directly behind me. He was laughing at me! Overcome by confusion and shame, my cheeks aflame, I returned to my desk.
‘Well done, Margaret! Thank you very much.’
Mr. Sherwood was hardly able to disguise the laughter in his voice and it was at that moment that my idol came crashing down. I sought revenge and found it by giving him a new name: Das Ding ( the Thing ) and drawing malicious caricatures of him and cartoon strips depicting ludicrous adventures in which he was the protagonist. Later, I gave them to Penny and she still has them, to this day.

That Christmas, my social diary was full and because I had been invited to so many parties, my mother gave in to my pleadings and bought me a new dress. It was made of a soft woollen fabric in a flattering shade of dark olive green and I thought it quite the best dress I had ever owned. At the first of the parties a boy I hadn’t met before attached himself to me and stayed by my side for the duration. When he sat down, he pulled me on to his lap and I blushed both with pleasure and bashfulness. My new conquest, John, was tall and dark and I thought that he was very nice-looking but when it was time to go home he didn’t try to kiss me, as I’d hoped, or asked if I would go out with him, as I’d expected. I was disappointed but quickly put him out of my mind because Stephanie was coming with her parents to stay with us for Christmas and I was too excited to think about anything else.
When I saw my cousin it was evident that she now made no attempt to conceal from her mother the fact that she wore make-up. I looked at her black-rimmed eyes with envy and promptly ran to the chemist’s at the top of Killigrew Road to buy a black eye pencil so that I could achieve the same effect.
‘Take that muck off your eyes at once!’ ordered my mother. ‘It makes you look common!’
On Christmas Eve an envelope addressed to me was delivered and when I opened it I found that it was a Christmas card from John.
‘You’ll have to send him one in return,’ said Stephanie, after I’d told her about our meeting at the party. ‘He obviously expects you to otherwise he wouldn’t have written his address.’
I set about drawing and painting a card and when I’d found an envelope, my cousin and I went off to deliver it.
‘Don’t just put it through the letterbox,’ she commanded, ‘ring the doorbell and hand it to him personally!’
‘But what if he’s not in?’
‘Just do it!’
To my relief and pleasure, John himself opened the door and, blushing, I handed him the card. He seemed flattered and impressed that I’d taken the trouble to draw him a card and I wasn’t too surprised when he asked me if I’d like to go out with him. Christmas Day that year was one of the best I’d ever spent because not only had I the company of my cousin but also a date with a boy I really liked to look forward to. Stephanie and I had an intimate discussion about boys that evening as we sat over the remains of the turkey ( intended for lunch the following day ) and recklessly pulled off big chunks of breast.
On my first date with John, we walked around Falmouth, hand-in-hand. When he saw me home, my mother was lurking in the door waiting for me and so I assumed that was the reason he didn’t kiss me goodnight.
‘I hope you’re behaving yourself with that boy!’ she said as I came through the door.
At school the next day, a girl from my class told me I had better watch out because John had been going out with another girl before he met me and she wasn’t too happy about our liaison. I knew the girl in question but I’d never had a great deal to do with her as she was an odd sort of girl, one of those who aren’t terribly popular. She was quite nice-looking, tall with a well-developed figure, but she went about wearing an enigmatic smile which had the effect of half-closing her eyelids, giving her the appearance of a somnolent owl. When I bumped into her in the playground, I asked her if she minded me going out with her ex-boyfriend and although she said no, she had finished with him, I could sense that she did mind and when she asked me what I thought of him I decided that it would be unwise to let her know that I liked him and instead told her that I thought he was a bit of a drip. She wasted no time imparting to John this information so that the next time I saw him, he was full of sulks and I had to convince him that although I had called him a drip, I hadn’t meant it. Our dates consisted of nothing more exciting than strolling around Falmouth hand-in-hand and still there were no good-night kisses; I was beginning to think that John was a bit strange and I rather regretted spurning the attentions of another boy, with the unusual name of Gibson, whom I liked. He was a little younger than I was but he had impeccable manners and certainly knew how to treat a girl. Once, he invited me to tea at a rather smart establishment in Falmouth to which I’d never been. He bought me a cake which, with the exception of Auntie Lal’s divine Devon cream sponge, was quite the most exquisite piece of confectionery I’d ever tasted, consisting of layers of the lightest, melt-in-the-mouth pastry, real cream and pineapple. If only John would take me out to tea!
One chilly, damp evening, after our usual, aimless stroll around Falmouth, we ended up sitting in a shelter on the seafront. John had his arm around me and I sensed from the quickening of his breath that he was about to do something he hadn’t had the courage to attempt before. Was he at last going to kiss me? He held me closer and suddenly I felt a fumbling somewhere in the region of my left armpit. The breathing grew louder, the fumbling more urgent and then, as abruptly as it had begun, it ceased. We got up from the seat and made our way home, hardly speaking a word.
The next time I saw John, he seemed to be very distracted about something and when I asked what the matter was he told me he’d received an anonymous letter in which unpleasant things were written about him and various mutual friends and acquaintances; on the other hand, the letter was full of praise for me. I asked to look at it but he only allowed me the briefest glimpse. It was obvious to me that it was the handiwork of his ex-girlfriend but although I told him this, he remained unconvinced and even suggested that I, myself, had sent it. Clearly, the letter had been written to give the impression that I was the author and I was offended that John should consider, even for a moment, that I was capable of doing something so silly and childish. The writer of the letter had not covered her tracks very well and it didn’t require a great deal of detective work to ascertain that the Owl, as I now called her, was the culprit. She lived not very far from Auntie Frances and so I was acquainted with their mutual neighbours. She had always been a strange girl, they told me, who never seemed to have many friends and appeared to prefer the company of children much younger than herself. Not long after this incident I received an anonymous letter myself. The writer, purporting to be male, said that he’d seen me in our shop and that he would like to get to know me and suggested a time and a meeting place. This letter was followed very soon afterwards by another and as I was convinced that they were, yet again, the work of the Owl, I decided to tackle her the next time I saw her. She denied having sent any anonymous letters at all but it was clear to me that she was lying; nevertheless, there were no more letters after that.
I had gone right off John! There was, I told myself, something very strange about him, something decidedly creepy. These sentiments were confirmed the next time I bumped into him on my way home from school when, to my astonishment, he suddenly leant over and snatched my diary from my open satchel. Ignoring my protests of indignation, he turned on his heel and hurried away. What, I wondered, could he possibly want with a pocket diary which contained nothing but silly schoolgirl nonsense and certainly nothing incriminating about him?
I was so outraged by his unwarranted behaviour that I decided, with my friend Gillian for moral support, to go to his house the following afternoon to demand the return of my property; I had the idea that I might tell his mother what had happened if he refused. But he must have seen me coming because, when I rang the doorbell, the door was instantly opened by him and, without a word of explanation or apology, he thrust my diary into my hand.
Our romance having come to an acrimonious end, I determined never to speak to John again. Several years later, when I was in my early twenties and doing a post-graduate teaching year at Bristol, he turned up again, quite out of the blue, when I was at home for the Easter vacation.
‘There’s a young man called John here to see you!’ shouted my father from the shop.
Wondering which of the many Johns of my acquaintance it could be, I left what I was doing and opened the door. When I saw who it was, I could barely contain my astonishment. He had matured a good deal and his manners were charming; he asked if I’d like to go for a drive and since I had nothing better to do, I readily agreed. We went to the north coast, parked on a cliff ledge and chatted. He seemed not to want to know what I’d been up to during the years since we’d last seen each other and wanted to talk only about himself. He was engaged, he told me, and was going to get married when the college course he was attending had ended. He confessed that due to his lack of experience, the physical side of his marriage might suffer; in the same breath he told me that his college would be holding a May ball and asked if I would like to go. I could, he said, spend the night at his place. I replied that I’d think about it although I had no intention of accepting his invitation. After all, I’d been a student at one of the most famous art colleges in London where, in the sixties, everything was happening. I should hardly be interested in travelling all the way from Bristol to attend a student function at some obscure Plymouth college. It was not until later that day it dawned on me what John had been trying to ask me: he wanted someone to relieve him of his virginity before his marriage and he had chosen me. I was so angry and so offended that I wanted to tell him exactly what I thought of him but when I’d calmed down I realised that it would be better to forget about it. Some time later, in passing, I saw him again; I glared at him and he glared back at me. I pitied the poor girl who eventually married him.

Like other girls of my age, my moods fluctuated wildly between periods of soaring elation and unaccountable gloom. My youthful breast surged with passionate yearnings and my head was filled with romantic dreams but, so far, fulfillment had eluded me and I was beginning to fear that I would never meet someone with whom I could have close relationship. I longed for affection and naïvely imagined I would find it if only I could meet the right kind of boy but, to date, all my friendships with members of the opposite sex had ended in disappointment and disillusionment. Was I destined never to find the love of my life?

CHAPTER TWELVE: Growing Pains

2007-05-30T11:03:00.000+01:00

Between the ages of thirteen and fifteen I underwent, like the rest of my school friends, all the usual emotional confusion and hormonal havoc caused by the sudden physical changes which were taking place in our developing bodies. Firstly, there was the momentous occasion of the first period followed, not long afterwards, by the significant acquisition of the first bra. I had been pestering my mother for one for some time, even though I was in possession of nothing more spectacular than a pair of bee-stings. I was envious of the more well-developed girls in my class who were already proudly sporting their first bras and I bemoaned the unfairness of it with Jenny, whose mother was being as unreasonable as mine. Then I had a brilliant idea. Why didn’t we make our own? We both enjoyed sewing and it couldn’t be that difficult to construct one. Fired with enthusiasm, I set about designing my prototype. I found a piece of plain, white fabric and from it I cut two circles. The next stage was to mould the circles into cups and this proved to be far more difficult than I had envisaged. At last, after much stitching and shaping of one of the circles, I achieved a result which was not perfect, but passable: the biggest problem was trying to construct the second circle of fabric into a form which matched the first. This turned out to be a task beyond my capabilities with the result that, in size, my two cups differed wildly. Undaunted, I proceeded with the next stage, which was to make the side pieces. This was comparatively easy. Attatching the cups to the side pieces was, however, more of a challenge and I had not even begun to think of how I was going to fasten the finished garment. But I soldiered on and, with the aid of a piece of waistband elastic and some seam tape for straps, finished my bra. Quivering with excitement, I stripped off my clothes, fitted the bra around my chest and examined myself in the mirror. Although the reflection which stared back at me was in reality that of a flat-chested little girl wearing something which resembled a pair of lop-sided water-wings, I imagined myself as a mature young woman modelling a glamorous undergarment. I was very pleased with the result of my labours and I couldn’t wait to take my bra to school the next day so that I could show Jenny.
After all, I didn’t have to wait too long for the purchase of my first, proper bra. My anguish came to an end on the day my mother took me to a dingy little shop at the far end of the town where they had a selection of reasonably priced underwear. The assistant was so patronising that I was too embarrassed to accept her offer of trying on a bra for size and settled for the first thing which my mother deemed suitable. It was of white satin moulded into two, conical shapes by means of a great many rows of circular stitching and although it did nothing as far as figure enhancement was concerned, at least I would be able to join the ranks of those superior, much envied, bra-wearing members of my class.
Next to her first bra, a girl’s second most important acquisition was her first suspender belt and nylons. I had come to loathe the childish, white ankle socks which we were obliged to wear as part of our school uniform and I longed to show off my legs; they were the only part of my body with which I could find no fault. Besides, girls who wore stockings looked so grown up. In the fifties, nylons were expensive and you learned to take care of them. If you had a ladder which wasn’t too bad, you could take the stocking to the Scotch Wool Shop in Falmouth where they would mend it for you; even so, it was fairly expensive to have this done. I had my first pair of stockings in time for the school’s Christmas party and I felt very superior when I looked around and saw that there were a few girls in my class still wearing ankle socks.
A boy had begun to take an interest me. He had spotted me out walking one day and had followed me home. After that, he hung about waiting for me and followed me whenever I went out of the house. He certainly wasn’t shy; he introduced himself as Roger Jackett and asked if I’d like to go out with him. He was a decidedly unprepossessing boy, with not a single nice feature to commend him and, if that were not bad enough, had a very broad Cornish accent. I thought he was decidedly common and was terrified that my mother might see him and think I was encouraging him. To my extreme vexation my sister realised what was going on and made jokes about him.
‘Your boyfriend’s ugly!’ she taunted.
‘He’s not my boyfriend!’
‘Yes he is. You love him!’
‘Shut up! I do not! ‘
‘Yes you do!’
‘I can’t even stand him, so there!’
‘Well, I’m going to tell Mum.’
‘You say anything and I’ll kill you.’
And so it went on. I managed to avoid him by changing my routine but one afternoon, while I was out with my friend Jean, I saw him in the distance hurrying towards us with a broad grin on his silly face. I was filled with dismay; what would my refined and sophisticated friend think of my having anything, no matter how remote, to do with an awful boy like that? I looked around in desperation for some means of avoiding the encounter but he was bearing down on us, rapidly. The only thing I could do was to ignore him and pretend I didn’t know him. But, with characteristic persistence, and quite undaunted by the look I gave him which should have sunk him into the very earth, he followed us all the way home. I was humiliated, ashamed and so angry that the next time I saw him I told him to clear off and leave me alone: eventually, he took the hint.
It was not very long after this that I encountered my first flasher. Whenever I was visiting Auntie Frances, I used to take a short cut through a wooded area known as The Dell. It was a lonely place, frequented by dog-walkers and courting couples who took advantage of the seats which were placed at intervals along the path. I was returning home from Auntie’s one afternoon, by way of the Dell, when a youth stepped out from the undergrowth, startling me so much that I jumped.
‘Do you want to play with this?’ he asked.
I gave him the briefest of glances and saw that his fly was undone and that he was holding something pink and protruding in his hand. A familiar stab of fear shot through my body. Instinct warned me not to make eye contact and I looked away, quickly. With my heart hammering inside my chest, I walked on as though I hadn’t heard him and although I didn’t turn my head to look, I knew he was following me.
‘Where do you live?’ he asked, coming up behind me.
If only someone would come along! Why was there not a soul about that afternoon? I continued on my way, my eyes averted, resisting the temptation to run.
‘Over there.’ I said, pointing to the nearest house and making as though I were going in that direction. The house had a garden with a gate opening on to the footpath and I think he believed me when I told him that I lived there because, just as silently and suddenly as he’d appeared, he vanished. With that, I began to run as fast as I could and didn’t stop until I’d reached our house: I never went alone to the Dell again.
During the summer holidays, the nephew of one of our neighbours in Clare Terrace used to come to stay with her every year for a fortnight. His name was Nigel and he was a few months older than I was and although we had ignored each other previously, now he began to take an interest in me. Unlike poor Roger Jackett, he was not unattractive as such; it was just that, with his round, babyish face and fair hair which had a way of forming itself into a quiff on his forehead, he bore a most unfortunate resemblance to Hergé’s Tintin and every time I saw him I had to quell the urge not to laugh. We went for walks together and he told me how brilliant he was at school, how wealthy his parents were and how much he excelled at sport; I might have believed some of his accounts of his remarkable achievements but when he told me that one of his uncles was Billy Smart, the famous circus owner, I realised that everything he’d been telling me was invention and that in reality he was just another ordinary, rather immature boy. All the same, I agreed to accompany him on a ferry trip to Flushing, across the water from Falmouth, if my mother allowed me.
Although I had made it obvious that I was sceptical about all things he’d told me, it didn’t prevent him from continuing with his improbable boasting all the way to Flushing and back. Clearly, he was hoping to impress me but did he really imagine I was so stupid that I was going to believe such wild stories? Billy Smart indeed! When we boarded the ferry for the return journey, he perched himself on a railing, put his feet on the seat below and assumed a nonchalant attitude which he no doubt imagined was very cool and sophisticated. When the ferryman went up to him and ordered him to take his feet off the seat I was deeply embarrassed and tried to look as though I wasn’t with him.
Later that afternoon, my mother came into my bedroom and shut the door behind her. That meant trouble.
‘Have you been behaving yourself with that boy?’ she demanded.
I looked at her, blankly. Had she heard about Nigel getting told off for putting his feet on the seat? I’d had nothing to do with it and hadn’t, as far as I could recall, misbehaved in any way whatsoever.
‘You know what I mean!’
But I didn’t know what she meant. From her expression, I could tell that it was something distasteful, and I flushed. The following day, when Nigel called to ask if I was going out, my mother insisted that my sister went, too.

That summer, my mother was busy with guests and as a result my shell ornament enterprise was very successful. As well as bed-and-breakfast, she also did evening meals and I was called upon to help with the preparation and cooking. I don’t know what the guests must have thought of the food my mother served up; her cooking had certainly not improved over the years. The only thing that was ever praised was the Yorkshire pudding, the mixing and baking of which I had sole responsibility. When it came to food, she had absolutely no imagination and regarded anything new or unfamiliar with deep suspicion. She relied a lot upon roast dinners because she found these required less work; however, she had no idea how to cook a joint properly. She would smother the meat with a thick coating of lard, shove it into a roasting tin and leave it in the oven for so long that when it was finally taken out it was only a fraction of its original size. Even fatty pieces of pork were plastered with lard and everything - beef, pork or lamb - was served with mint sauce and thin gravy made with nothing more than an Oxo cube and water.
Sometimes she would bake pies made from gritty minced beef boiled up with onions and an Oxo cube. She would line a large plate with pastry, add the cooked mince and then cover it with more pastry and if she was feeling particularly daring, she would vary the pie by using sausage meat instead of mince. Fish was always fried - again in lard - and chips cooked in beef dripping. She shunned cooking oil and could not be persuaded even to try it. I was always astonished when guests returned the following year. During the winter months we had lodgers - students from the art school - in the attics. When they were out of the house, my mother would go through all their possessions. One day, she found a bank statement belonging to one young man and was surprised to discover that he was very well off. She kept talking about it and I was terrified that she would be found out. I was appalled that she could do such a thing; no-one had the right to go through people’s personal effects. Later, I discovered that she was an expert in steaming open envelopes and that there was not a letter delivered to the house that was not intercepted by her.
It was while we were living in Clare House that she suffered a miscarriage. One morning, my father didn’t go to work and my mother stayed in bed. A district nurse came to the house and there was much toing and froing with bowls of water, towels and sheets. The bedroom door remained closed and I could hear them conversing in low voices. When she had recovered, my mother told me that she had been going to have a baby but it had died before it was due to be born. It would have been a little boy, she said. She had always wanted a son and the loss of this one must have been a great sorrow. It occurred to me then that this had not been the first time she had lost a baby: I recalled previous incidents when we had been visited by district nurses and there had been much activity with bowls of water, towels and sheets and hushed conversations behind closed bedroom doors. Some years later, after I had been told by a specialist that I should consider very seriously whether or not I should have children because of the risk of passing on my brittle bones, I realised that all the miscarriages that my mother had had were almost certainly due to the condition. It is most probable that her final miscarriage was caused by the baby suffering a major trauma, such as a broken neck; it is not unusual for this to happen if you are affected with brittle bone disease.
I have sometimes discussed with my sister what would have happened if our brother had survived. Doubtless, he would have suffered a great many fratures and because of the seriousness of his condition been confined to a wheelchair. Our mother would have made us feel that it was our duty, not hers, to look after him and as an adult he would have been such a great burden and a responsibility that our lives would have taken very different courses.

At school, in art, we were learning how to make marionettes, beginning with the heads. Firstly, we moulded the heads from pieces of plasticine and after we had greased them, we applied little strips of tissue paper and glue in several layers. When they had dried, we made incisions around the sides of the heads and carefully prised the two pieces apart. When they had been separated from the plasticine, we had to join the heads together again and finally, when they were dry, we had to paint them. This was the most exciting stage of the operation because now the heads were beginning to look like real puppets. We had chosen what characters we were going to make and I, being so mad on ballet, wanted to do Anna Pavlova dressed in her Dying Swan costume. However, Mrs. Andrews said that this was a very hackneyed subject and why didn’t I chose a costume from a less well-known ballet. I was disappointed because I had been looking forward to making her tutu of white net and decorating it with feathers. I decided that I would make my own Dying Swan at home.
One afternoon my parents returned from one of their regular visits to the auction rooms and told me that there was a puppet theatre amongst the lots currently on view. I threw down what I was doing, plunged out of the house, raced around the corner and along the next terrace to where the salerooms were situated and dived into the entrance. There were crowds of people examining the lots on view and I had to push my way through them. I looked around eagerly for the puppet theatre but all I could see where armchairs, tables and other boring items of furniture; and then I spotted it! I could not prevent myelf from gasping out loud with delight. I looked at it in awe. In reality, it was nothing more than a screen consisting of three hinged panels with a rectangular hole cut out of the centre one for the stage but in my imagination it was Covent Garden, Sadlers Wells and the Bolshoi all rolled into one. It was romance, fantasy and wonder incarnate. I had to have it. If I didn’t, my life would have no purpose. What if someone else bought it? It wouldn’t be fair; it would be wasted on some other person. It was destined for me. But how much would I have to pay for it? I had only a few shillings to my name. Reluctantly, with a last, yearning look at the puppet theatre, I left the salerooms and went home to tackle my parents.
‘Please will you get it for me?’
‘Well, only if it doesn’t go for too much.’
‘How much do you think it will go for?’
‘It’s hard to say. It depends on how many other people are interested in it.’
‘Do you think many people will be after it?’
‘Well, it’s not very likely but you never know. It only takes one other interested party to push up the bidding.’
‘How much will you bid for it, then?’
‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
‘Yes, but how much? ‘
So it went on, and for the whole of the following week I pestered my parents relentlessly. There was nothing else - nothing - that I wanted in the whole world other than that puppet theatre. If I didn’t get it, I would die.
On the afternoon of the sale I couldn’t concentrate on my work at school and kept looking at the clock. How slowly time seemed to passing! What were my parents doing right now? Perhaps the bidding had begun for the theatre. Perhaps, at that precise moment, someone else was putting up their hand. No! it was unthinkable: the theatre was going to be mine. It had to be. At last, it was time to go home and I flew back to Clare Terrace. Had it ever taken so long to get from school to home? I was running as fast as I could yet getting nowhere. After an interminable age, I reached our front gate, hurled myself through it, flung open the porch door and charged into the house.
‘Did you get it?’
There was an agonising pause; my mother was tormenting me.
‘Yes,’ she laughed, when she saw I could bear the suspense no longer.
‘Oh! Where is it?’
I had to see it to prove to myself that it wasn’t a dream.
‘Your dad’s picking it up this evening.’
For the next few weeks every spare moment I had was devoted to my puppet theatre. I made curtains for it and painted scenery. I was going to produce my own version of Swan Lake and was working on the leading ballerina. I had a bit of a setback because our dog, Bosun, got hold of the head I had moulded for her and chewed it to pieces and I had to make another. Her arms, legs and torso were constructed from stockinette padded with kapock and articulated with small strips of leather. I had no idea how to attatch the strings and make the rods because we hadn’t reached that stage in our puppet making at school but that minor detail didn’t deter me. I sewed a tutu from white net and adorned it with silver sequins and the smallest white feathers I could find and made tiny pointe shoes from a scrap of pink satin. When she was finished, I thought she looked beautiful. My puppet theatre was the most cherished thing I had ever owned and throughout those weeks my happiness knew no bounds.

Despite the trials of early adolescence I was still able to concentrate on my school work and enjoy my favourite lessons. My end-of-term reports were good and I was awarded school prizes which were handed out as book tokens on speech days. My school friends and I exchanged confidences and discussed boys. Jenny had fallen in love with Tommy Steele and invited me to her house because she wanted me to watch with her a television performance he was giving.
‘Then we can both swoon together!’ she declared, happily.
I didn’t know what to reply to that. Tommy Steele didn’t appeal to me and, besides, with those teeth he was a dental disaster. I had to tell Jenny that I wasn’t keen on him. She was incredulous.
‘Well, then - who do you like?’ she asked.
‘Nobody, really.’
‘But you must like somebody, otherwise you’re not normal!’
I was too embarrassed to tell her that I did, in fact, have a secret passion. I had seen in Falmouth a poster advertising a forthcoming piano concert. On the poster was a photograph of the profile of a handsome young man who was the very personification of the romantic hero. His name was Peter Katin and I could not wait for the day of the performance so that I could see him in the flesh. When I bought my ticket I asked if I might possibly be allowed to have one of the posters after the concert and not only did they say I might but also asked me if I would like it autographed. My friend Penny was very envious because she had romantic notions similar to my own. In fact, she had a big crush on a roadsweeper, of all people, because she said he looked aristocratic. Perhaps she thought he was some Russian prince in disguise.
But it was not long before Peter Katin was displaced as the object of my admiration and embodiment of the romantic ideal. A new master had come to the school to teach German and from the very first moment I saw him, I conceived an ardent passion. He was called Mr. Sherwood and he was tall, dark and strikingly good-looking. He had about him a glamour that you did not associate with schoolmasters; in fact, he was so handsome that he could have been a film star. I was helplessly smitten. I looked forward to German lessons more than any other and worked so hard to please Mr. Sherwood that I picked up the language quickly and in tests and for homework achieved the highest marks. I desperately wanted him to notice me, to favour me over the other girls. In class, I drew surreptitious sketches of him and at home translated these into as lifelike a portrait as I was capable. I pinned it on to the wall of my bedroom so that I could gaze at it and imagine myself in all sorts of romantic situations with him in which I would not be a mere, silly schoolgirl but an alluring, beautiful young woman..........

At long last, my mother agreed to let me have my hair styled. An appointment was duly made and I set off full of excitement because I was convinced that I was about to undergo a transformation from schoolgirl to fashionable young woman that would be so miraculous no-one would recognise me afterwards. But my mother called me back.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘give this note to the hairdresser!’
Dismayed, I waited until I was out of sight of our house then I read what she had written.
‘Please do Margaret’s hair nicely,’ said the note, ‘and I will recommend you to the High School.’
I seethed with silent indignation. Who did she think she was? At my school she had no influence, no authority whatsoever yet her note conveyed the impression that, at the very least, she was Head of the Board of Governers. It was preposterous! Besides, the hairdresser was, no doubt, fully qualified and experienced and would be highly offended by such a slight on her competence. I had no intention of handing over her ridiculous note and looked around for a litter bin in which to throw it. Then I stopped in my tracks. The first thing my mother would be sure to ask when I returned home would be:
‘Did you give the hairdresser my note?’
I would have to lie and she would read the guilt on my face, as she always did. She would be livid. I agonised over whether to face acute embarrassment at the hairdressers’ or maternal wrath. I was still agonising by the time I reached my destination and, at the very last minute, decided I had no choice but to deliver the wretched note. The hairdresser’s face was expressionless as she unfolded the piece of paper and ran her eye over it. She sat me down in a cubicle, closed the curtains, excused herself, and disappeared. I heard her whispering to someone and a woman’s voice replied:
‘How ridiculous!’
My cheeks burned with shame and humiliation and I knew beyond all doubt that I would never forgive my mother for spoiling an occasion to which I’d been looking forward for so long.
As it turned out, I didn’t very much like my new hairstyle. It was too stiff and formal and when I returned home, the first thing I did was to give it a vigorous brushing. Afterwards, with a little practice, I soon found that I was able to wash and set it myself into a style which was much more pleasing. Compared to today’s vast range of haircare products, those of the post-war period and the following fifties were decidedly primitive. As a child, I used to hate having my hair washed. Shampoo was bought in big, paper sachets and as it came in powdered form, you had to dissolve it first in warm water. I had to sit on a chair with my head over the kitchen sink and a flannel over my eyes while my mother tipped the jug over my hair. Despite the flannel, the shampoo always got into my eyes and stung unbearably and the shampoo was so alkaline that it was necessary to neutralize it with a final rinse of vinegar. Gradually, though, products improved and a much wider choice became available. I used to buy shampoo in individual, transparent sachets and setting lotion in individual phials which were so highly coloured and perfumed it is hardly surprising that I regularly suffered from scalp irritation.
To complement my new hairstyle, I wanted to experiment with make-up. My mother said I was too young to start plastering my face with all that muck but if I really wanted to, I could try a hint of mascara. So I bought myself a compact of Rimmel’s black mascara which was in the form of a little block, together with a brush. You spat on to the mascara, worked it up to a paste with the brush then applied it to your lashes. It was a very uhygienic procedure and it’s a wonder I didn’t end up with chronic conjunctivitis. Fluttering my newly blackened eyes I went in search of my sister.
‘Can you see anything different about me?’
‘No,’ said Jean, after a brief glance.
‘Look at my eyes! Can’t you see anything?’
‘No.’
‘My eyelashes! Look at my eyelashes!’
Jean was getting fed up by now. She looked at my eyes but it was obvious that she could see nothing remarkable about them.
‘I’ve got mascara on. Can’t you see?’
‘Oh, yes, I can see the difference now,’ she lied.
Later, I bought myself a lipstick from Woolworth’s and applied it liberally.
‘Go upstairs and take some of that lipstick off!’ demanded my mother as I was on my way out. I went upstairs, waited a few moments, then went down again, my lipstick untouched.
‘That’s better!’ she said, approvingly.
I was not content with the lipstick and the mascara and decided that there were many more essential items of feminine adornment which I had to have. For these, though, I required money and so I would have to think of ways of earning some. People always admired the hand-painted greetings cards which I gave them so I thought it might be a good idea to try to sell some of my designs. I took a selection to a gift shop in Falmouth and they said that they would be delighted to try to sell them for me. They even gave me some embossed photograph mounts which, folded over, made very professional-looking cards. I was so proud when I saw my handiwork displayed in the shop window. I also hit upon the idea of selling home-made sweets, another skill I had acquired. Without considering the cost of ingredients, to which I helped myself from the kitchen cupboard, or the electricity, I made coconut ice, fudge and toffee. It looked and tasted so good that I consumed a good deal of it before selling the rest to my school friends. I’m always reminded of that coconut ice when, in early spring, I see the almond trees cascading down the mountainside in a glorious display of pink and white blossom outside my kitchen door here in Spain.
Once, my mother had given the remains of a steamed marmalade pudding which I’d made to Fred ( I think she rather fancied him ) of Fred’s Stores and he was so impressed that he asked me if I’d make him puddings on a regular basis; he said he’d supply the ingredients, of course. He also paid me generously and that helped to swell my modest funds considerably. Fred had acquired a boxer dog, called Peter, which used to roam all over Falmouth, getting himself and Fred into trouble. One Christmas, Fred accidentally shut him into the storeroom above the shop where he consumed the better part of the season’s stock of chocolate and was, in consequence, very ill indeed.

It was while we were living at Clare Terrace that a telegram arrived one day for my father and because he was at work, my mother opened it. To receive a telegram was an event which rarely happened in our household, so Jean and I were agog. But not a word was said: she merely popped the message into the pocket of her apron and carried on as though nothing had happened. When my father came home for lunch and stepped into the hall, she announced:
‘Your father’s dead.’
Just like that, as though she might have said:
‘The electricity bill arrived today,’ or ‘The carving knife needs sharpening.’
Jean and I were stunned. We had been fond of our grandfather and it seemed hardly any time at all since he’d stayed with us; we’d walked with him all over Falmouth and he’d stopped to stare at the sea and say, as he always did:
‘If you lived in London, you’d pay five pounds just to look at that view.’

My mother’s early morning bad moods were now so bad that Jean and I were in the habit, during weekends and school holidays, of sneaking out of the house before she got up and not returning until it was safe to assume she’d had her breakfast and was in a less volatile frame of mind. Neither of us could bear to watch her consume her breakfast which often consisted of a watery boiled egg over which she’d slurp noisily. She’d look up, see our undisguised expressions of disgust and say:
‘If you don’t like it, sod off!’
So we sodded off.
It was during our early morning wanderings that we would often, in the vicinity of Gyllingvase Beach, encounter a very distinguished-looking and immaculately dressed gentleman who, whenever he met us, would take off his hat and wish us a good morning. Since he was obviously a person of high status and importance, we were highly flattered. We wondered who he could be but it was not until some considerable time later that we discovered our elderly gentleman was, in fact, Howard Spring, the famous novelist.
Although I had absolutely no interest in history whatsoever, I was pleased when Miss Bates suggested that I choose, as the subject of the project we were to be doing in the holidays pertaining to the Tudor period, sport and entertainment. My imagination was fired and I set about scouring the history section in Falmouth Library for ideas and information. Dancing was a popular activity, it seemed, and I spent hours drawing and painting a court dancer wearing an elaborate costume which consisted of a piece of real silk glued on to the paper and decorated with lace and tiny beads. When the project was handed in it earned me a shool prize, many house points and a good deal of praise. Mr. Duggan, the music master, commissioned me to draw a picture using the same technique with which I’d done my Tudor dancer. He was very pleased with it and gave me a book token as payment. On my report at the end of term he wrote:
‘The delicacy of Margaret’s appliqué work is a reflection of herself.’
I glowed with a quiet pride but my mother made a scathing remark about my lack of progress and poor report in maths and my self-esteem was, as usual, shattered.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: School Friends

2007-05-30T11:01:00.000+01:00

Not long ago, I watched a television programme in which a historian was describing life in the fifties. Although she was a young woman, she spoke with such authority that she gave the impression that she, herself, had lived through those years.
‘The fifties,’ she said, ‘were drab, dreary years.’
This is untrue. I daresay, to a young person of today, the post-war period would have seemed drab and dreary by comparison. My generation, however, was not brought up to equate happiness with material possessions and although we had less, we were happier because, quite simply, we were never bored. We had learned to entertain ourselves by using our imagination. Our pleasures were simple. I looked forward every week to buying my favourite comics, School Friend and Girl and I spent many hours in Falmouth Library happily choosing books to borrow. Because our lives weren’t dominated by television, our hobbies occupied much of our spare time. As well as my drawing and painting I did a good deal of sewing, rattling away on my mother’s treadle-operated machine; I also had a miniature, hand-operated sewing machine, picked up at an auction sale, which was so old that it could only do chain stitch. My parents had also acquired a piano at one of the auctions they regularly attended in order to buy the furniture needed to fill our big house; it was a very antiquated piano, painfully out of tune and with one or two broken strings, but to me it was a source of endless pleasure. I wanted to have piano lessons but my mother said it would be too much on top of all my school work. What she really meant was that piano lessons were too expensive. Also at an auction, my mother had won a bid for a knitting machine. She had intended to use it herself but couldn’t fathom how to do so and so she gave it to me. I quickly discovered how it worked and found I could make my own jumpers in no time at all. It was only a very basic, single-bed machine but I could obtain all sorts of patterns and fairisle effects using the odds and ends from my mother’s hand-knitting yarns.
As far as entertainment was concerned in the fifties, the cinema played an important part. In Falmouth, we had two cinemas - the Grand and the Odeon and an evening at the pictures was something you could really look forward to. You certainly had your money’s worth. The show would begin with the ‘B’ movie, followed by Pathe News, advertisements and trailers. Usherettes would walk around in the interval with trays of ice-cream and, to me, a visit to the cinema without a choc-ice was unthinkable. You had to lick it slowly so that it would last well into the start of the main feature. As a small child, I had loved Laurel and Hardy but now that I was older I much preferred Norman Wisdom; no-one else could make me laugh as much. I saw all the famous films deemed suitable for children such as Lassie Come Home , Genevieve and all the well-known musicals; I used to drive my sister mad with my incessant, early morning renderings of songs from Oklahoma and Carousel. My school also organised visits to the cinema to see fiims which were considered educational, such as Scott of the Antarctic and A Night to Remember which was the first film about the sinking of the Titanic. There was an actual survivor of the Titanic disaster living in Falmouth and she was invited by our school to see the film. Afterwards, she climbed on to the stage at the Odeon to say a few words and be thanked by the manager; she was an elderly lady and she seemed rather overwhelmed by all the attention.
Sophisticated modern children are so accustomed to realistic special effects that they can watch, without turning a hair, films which would have scared me to death. Once, I saw a film called The Green Slime. It was about an alien, fungal growth which grew at an alarming rate and smothered everything with which it came into contact. It was abysmally bad. Even so, it frightened me so much that I couldn’t sleep that night and I had to get up in the small hours to make an inspection of the house and reassure myself that we weren’t about to be overwhelmed by rampant fungi.
My friend Jenny and I established a profitable enterprise by selling hand-painted portraits of famous film stars which we copied from magazines. These celebrities were the heartthrobs of the day because there were as yet no rock stars or boy bands. As girls, our role models, generally speaking, were Pat Smythe ( if you were horsey ) or Margot Fonteyn ( if you were mad on ballet, as I was ). If I’d been asked to name my own favourite film star, I loved animals so much that would have said, without hesitation, Lassie. How that film had made me weep!
Once, my mother took me to see the very latest in cinema-going experience, a 3D film. When we bought our tickets we were given special spectacles to wear while watching the film. The frames were made of cardboard and I fiddled with mine so much that they almost fell to bits and kept slipping off. The film was silly and I was not impressed by the 3D effects. I’m not surprised that it turned out to be a very short-lived craze.

In Britain, by the mid-fifties, there was a mood of optimism which was infectious. Even in Cornwall, which had always lagged behind the rest of the country, you were aware that things were changing and that people were looking to the future.You sensed that something exciting was just around the corner, waiting to happen. As grammar school students, we were regarded as the élite; a great deal had been invested in our education and we were expected to repay our country by pursuing worthwhile careers. During the war, circumstances gave women the chance to prove their worth and although sexual equality was still many years ahead, attitudes were changing and our teachers encouraged us to take advantage of the fact that, at last, the door of opportunity was open to us. At school, each year was divided into two groups: in the ‘A’ stream you did chemistry or physics and were expected to go on to university, while in the ‘B’ stream you did biology because these were the girls most likely to go into the nursing profession. I was glad I didn’t have to do biology because I’d seen the girls dissecting fish, frogs and other creatures and I considered this to be horribly cruel.
There were two other first-year girls from the High School living nearby and, most mornings, we would arrange to meet so that we could walk together to school. I became good friends with one of the girls, Jean: she was very mature for her age and was beautifully spoken, with no trace of a Cornish accent. She had elegance, charm and poise and these qualities had been rewarded with one of the school’s coveted deportment badges. Good posture was considered important and you were reprimanded if you slouched. If you were fortunate enough to be awarded a deportment badge you were expected to set an example to the other girls and maintain it at all times. The worst thing that could happen to you was to be stripped of your badge in morning assembly before the entire school; it was worse than a clergyman being publicly defrocked. Jean suffered this fate some time after receiving hers and although I felt it was unfair that she should have to be subjected to such humiliation, I was unable to quell a certain satisfaction because I thought she was inclined to be conceited at times and needed being brought down a peg or two. I was wary of inviting her to our house because I suspected that my mother was jealous of her. She made spiteful remarks about Jean’s looks and said that the airs she gave herself were unjustified. Once, we went to see a performance of Snow White given by a drama group to which Jean belonged and in which she played the leading part. I thought she was very good but my mother said she was wishy-washy. Later that week, the performance was reviewed in our local paper, the Falmouth Packet, and the reporter declared that Jean had ‘lent a winsome grace to the exacting role of Snow White.’ This did not please my mother.
Jean’s older sister, Winifred, was the editor of the womens’ page of the Daily Telegraph and once used her as a model for an article on hairstyes for young girls. Although Jean’s hair was shoulder length, the article descibed it as waistlength and my mother could not refrain from sarcastic comment.
‘Waistlength hair!’ she said to Jean, sneeringly, the next time she saw her. ‘Your sister’;s kidding you, isn’t she?’
I had another friend, Wendy, who invited me to her house for tea and to meet her parents. I was so nervous that when Wendy’s father held his hand out for me to shake, I proffered my left instead of my right. He made a joke of it but I was ashamed and embarrassed. Later, they invited my mother and me to Wendy’s confirmation. It took place on a cold, wet winter’s afternoon and I found myself pressed up against a scalding hot radiator. I steamed away and my bare legs scorched as the service went on and on; I thought I would die of boredom. But my mother was impressed.
‘Why don’t you get confirmed?’ she said.
I froze with horror at the very idea. All those precious hours wasted in church, all that praying. Not likely! It would be like the Salvation Army all over again, only worse. I was worried that she might insist but, luckily, she became preoccupied with some pressing matter and the subject wasn’t mentioned again.
During games lessons when the other girls would be either outdoors playing hockey or netball or in the gym hall doing P.T., Jenny and I would spend the time chatting happily; it was an arrangement which suited us well until a new, very keen, games mistress turned up and decided that we would both benefit from some form of exercise. We were affronted; we considered that we had an inalienable right to these free periods. But she made us sit back-to -back and pass a large ball over our heads to each other. We soon got bored with that and when she wasn’t looking we returned to our old ways.
Jenny lived in Penryn, just outside Falmouth, and I was so pleased when she invited me to spend the weekend with her. I quickly warmed to her parents who, after the eccentricities of my own, seemed so reassuringly normal. What a terrible time it must have been for them when their daughter contracted polio! But fate, I was learning, was indiscriminate and those who were the least deserving sometimes suffered the most. Jenny had an older sister, Diane, also a pupil at our school and one of those girls of whom we, as lowly first-formers, were very much in awe. She was blonde and slender and had a host of attentive admirers.
We had such fun at Jenny’s house. We thought we’d be terribly daring and have a midnight feast; we stole cheese from the fridge and a tin of pineapple chunks, cut them up into little squares and threaded them on to cocktail sticks. We had a bottle of Corona and some chocolate and, in the middle of the night, got up, somewhat sleepily, to consume our illicit picnic.
My friend Penny also invited me to tea in order to meet her parents. Again, I was nervous but at least I remembered to shake hands with my right hand this time. After the meal, I needed to go to the bathroom but was far too shy to ask. My need grew more and more urgent so I made my excuses as soon as I could and set off home. Penny’s house was quite a distance from mine and there were no convenient hedges en route behind which I could seek relief. I felt that my bladder was bursting but at long last I reached our house. I flung the front door open, raced upstairs, threw myself down on to the lavatory seat and then............... nothing! I simply couldn’t go.
Penny and I shared a passion for animals. Once, we discovered an injured mouse and she was so upset by its plight that she burst into tears. She wasn’t allowed to have pets at home so I think she enjoyed coming to my house and playing with our animals; we had always had dogs and cats because my father, too, was fond of animals. I had been given a pair of white mice and my father designed and made a beautiful wooden house with a sliding glass door for them. I’d been told that both the mice were female but one morning when I was cleaning their cage I discovered a nest in which were concealed several bald, pink baby mice. No sooner had the babies grown up than more appeared; very soon, they too began to have young. I was able to find homes for some of them but that still left me with a great many mice. The cage was far too small to house so many so my father bought me a shop display cabinet at an auction sale and I converted it into a mouse city. Our cat used to spend many hours sitting motionless in front of the display case staring with rapt attention, eyes as round as saucers. Even after I had eventually managed to re-house all my mice and the display cabinet had been taken outside into the back yard, the cat would still sit for hours staring at it intently.
I had another friend, also in my class at school, called Gillian. She was a quiet, sensible girl with a gentle nature and I never heard her make an unkind remark about anyone. She was always beautifully dressed and I envied her lovely clothes. Her mother made a good many of them and it spurred me on to be more adventurous with my own dressmaking projects. I had become very conscious of the fact that many of my clothes were second-hand, bought by my mother from ‘that posh woman up the road.’ My friend, Jean, crushed me by saying that she couldn’t bear the thought of wearing anything that had been worn by someone else. When I told my mother this, she retorted:
‘Well, she wears wool, doesn’t she? Doesn’t she realise it’s been worn by sheep?’
In the winter of 1957 my sister and I became victims of the Asian flu virus which medical experts feared would become the deadliest epidemic of the twentieth century. I awoke one morning with a sore throat which was so painful that I was unable to swallow. I had the idea that if I made myself some lemon juice in hot water it would relieve the discomfort but when I slid out of bed and put my feet on the floor a wave of nausea and dizziness overcame me and I fell back on to the bed. Jean had the same symptoms and we were so ill that we lay in bed for days, hardly moving. The doctor was called and we were so weak that we barely had the strength to protest when our mother forced the vile-tasting medicine he had prescribed into our mouths. The virus left us feeling very frail and it took several weeks for us to recover fully. Many girls at my school were affected and our studies had to be suspended until the worst was over.
We were very excited when our class was told one day that we were going on a school outing and that we would not have to wear our uniforms. Immediately, all the girls began discussing what they would wear and I was very relieved that my mother had recently bought me a new dress which I liked a lot and would not feel ashamed of wearing for the occasion. It was a red, tartan pinafore dress incorporating a little white blouse with a black velvet bow around the neck. If only I had a new hairstyle to go with it! I pleaded with my mother but she still insisted I was too young. Some of the girls asked if they’d be allowed to wear trousers and were told that they could provided they examined their rear ends in the mirror beforehand. In those days, it was considered offensive to be seen in trousers if you had a large bottom.
I sat next to my friend, Jean, on the coach and whereas the rest of us were behaving like silly little girls in our excitement, she was dignified and restrained. In fact, the only time I had ever seen Jean display any emotion at all was when her dog was bitten on the neck by an adder while we were out walking one day. In only a few moments, a large swelling appeared under his throat, giving him the appearance of a pelican. Poor Jean was panic-stricken. I had never seen her cry before.
‘He’s not going to die, is he?’ she sobbed.
In the event, the dog was fine. He was able to walk back to Falmouth and be attended to by the vet, Mr. Smythe. We weren’t aware at the time that Mr. Smythe was, in fact, an expert on canine treatment and was highly regarded in his profession; years later I discovered that he had written a number of extremely interesting books pertaining to his remarkable career which had begun so long ago that he had to do his rounds on horseback when he first started practicing.
We had been learning about the extraction of coal gas in chemistry and so our outing was going to include a visit to the gasworks at Truro. This turned out to be rather terrifying since it involved scaling metal stairs to great heights. I clung on to the rails for dear life and tried not to look down. Afterwards, we were to visit a knitwear factory at Newquay and then we were going to have a picnic on the beach. As far as I was concerned, the visit to the knitwear factory was the highlight of the day. How different were those huge, industrial knitting machines from my little single-bed one at home! They allowed us to help ourselves from a big box of offcuts of knitted fabric and I wanted to take armfuls. I had to be content with just a few pieces which I thought I’d be able to join together and make into a rather original bag. in the coach on the return journey, I dropped off to sleep; it had been a lovely day.

My friends and I were in the habit of rambling for miles and there could not have been a single part of Falmouth and the surrounding countryside that we hadn’t explored. One day, a group of us were scrambling down a wooded bank below Pendennis Castle when a boy of about seventeen or so jumped out from behind a tree and brandished a revolver at us. It is highly unlikely that the gun was real but we weren’t to know that and we were extremely frightened.
‘What are you doing here?’ demanded the youth. ‘You have no right to play here!’
His manner was so authoritative that we quaked in our shoes. He waved the gun at us and motioned towards the bank down which we’d just scrambled.
‘Get back up there!’
We clambered up the slope as fast as our legs would carry us and when we reached the top we ran to the safety of the castle entrance. We were breathless and speechless but relieved that we hadn’t come to any harm. We wondered who the boy was and if we should report the incident. Perhaps, though, we really had been trespassing and if we told anyone we might get into trouble. We were in a quandry. We were making our way back down the hill when I glanced behind me and saw, on the edge of the high wall of the castle moat, the same boy lying flat on his stomach, his gun aimed at some point in the distance, apparently pretending to be a soldier. So, then, he was not a person of authority, just a pathetic weirdo with a toy gun. Nevertheless, it had been a strange, disturbing happening and we were all very quiet on our way home.
One of our favourite haunts was the Stack, a clifftop, gorse-covered area with a network of underground tunnels which were once arsenic mines, overlooking Swanpool beach. It was a lonely place and so popular with courting couples that on fine days there was hardly a secluded spot unoccupied. It did not take us long to realise that the occasional, rather creepy, lone men we nearly always encountered there were actually part of an organised gang of peeping-toms who communicated with each other by means of whistled signals. We were too young to understand how anyone could find pleasure in spying on couples; it seemed to us a very strange, pointless pastime and it amused us greatly to mimic their whistles and by doing so cause annoyance and confusion.
I told Jenny about our escapades at the Stack and the courting couples and she thought it would be hilarious to make cardboard silhouettes of a man and a woman embracing each other which we could then put against my bedroom window on the following Friday evening when the Brownies passed by on their way home from their weekly meeting. With the curtains open and the light on, she said, it would look just like the real thing and they’d be shocked and startled. How daring it sounded! So, from a large piece of cardboard obtained from Fred’s Stores around the corner, I drew and cut out what I thought was a very realistic, life-sized representation of a couple kissing and when Jenny came to my house on the appointed evening we placed it against the window and I went out into the street which ran alongside the side of the house to see the effect. I was highly satisfied with my handiwork and when I reported back to Jenny that the Brownies were sure to be fooled, we could hardly wait for them to appear and to watch their reaction. We hid ourselves behind the curtains, laughing so much that the tears ran down our faces. The Brownies did indeed look up at the window but I think it was the sound of our uncontrollable laughter and not my artistic efforts which attracted their attention. How innocent we were!
Although we did not appreciate it at the time, we were very privileged to be able to grow up in a lovely place like Falmouth. Our summer holidays, spent mainly on ther beach, were idyllic. Although Gyllingvase was our favourite beach, changing in and out of our swimming things was something of a problem because you were obliged to use a changing hut, for which you had to pay. This meant that there was a lot of surreptitious fumbling about under towels and sometimes we’d be spotted by a beach vigilante who would tell us off. One afternoon I was running down to the sea with some friends when the younger brother of one of them accidently knocked his foot against mine. It was only the slightest contact yet it was sufficient to snap my little toe and I suddenly found I couldn’t walk. There was a St. John’s Ambulance hut on the beach so some of my friends went to off to try to seek assistance. The woman in charge said she wasn’t allowed to leave her hut and that I’d have to go to her. Since I was some distance away, at the other end of the beach, and unable to walk, this was an impossibility; what a ridiculous arrangement! It meant that if, for example, you were going to have a heart attack or an epileptic fit or even felt a bit faint, you would have to ensure that you were taken short in the vicinity of the St. John’s Ambulance hut. I’m afraid that, because of my experience of being refused help, even to this day I regard that organisation with something of contempt.
Since there was to be no assistance and I could do no more than hop about on one leg, one of my friends volunteered to walk back to my house to inform my mother. Eventually, she arrived at the beach, none too pleased, and because she had no money for a taxi, had no alternative but to call an ambulance. I had always been told by the doctors that my condition would improve when I reached puberty and began producing oestrogen, the female hormone which is beneficial to bones. However, this broken toe turned out to be the first of many fractures of the bones of my feet and it was not until I was in my twenties that my condition began to improve. At Falmouth hospital a doctor examined my toe and told my mother that because it was definitely not broken, there was no need for an X-ray. My mother explained that I had a rare, hereditary condition but, like so many inexperienced young doctors, he’d never heard of it and insisted that I needed no treatment. My mother lost her temper and a furious argument ensued. In the end, we had no alternative but to go home, my mother supporting me as I hopped on my good leg. The next day, she called our family doctor who immediately contacted the hospital. They summoned me back, X-rayed my toe and a declared that it was, indeed, broken.
‘We’re a bit concerned,’ said the doctor to my mother, ‘that Margaret might have a tendency to brittle bones.’
‘Has she now! she exclaimed, when she had recovered the power of speech.

My friend Penny and I were involved in a drama on the beach one cold, grey, winter’s afternoon. It was not Gyllingvase this time but the long, narrow, so called Castle Beach, below the Falmouth Hotel. We were so engrossed in our conversation that we took no notice of a high-pitched, wailing cry which sounded really no different from one of the many gulls wheeling overhead. The cries became more desperate and we realised that the sound was human: we turned to see, in the distance, a woman bending over another figure lying on the shingle. We ran towards them and found that they were two elderly ladies. The one who had collapsed was unconscious and there was a trickle of brown fluid running out of her mouth. I was so deeply shocked that I had no idea what to do; Penny, however, collected her wits and said that she would run back up the beach and across the road to the Falmouth Hotel to ask them to call an ambulance. Meanwhile, I remained with the women, staring down with horror at the unconscious figure and with no idea what to say to her extremely distressed companion. The ambulance arrived quickly and we stayed until the patient had been taken away on a stretcher. I sensed, instinctively, that the woman was dying; I knew about death because I’d always had pets but this was the first time I’d had any first-hand experience of human mortality and I was so deeply disturbed that it preyed on my mind afterwards for a very long time.
I was still passionately interested in astonomy and shortly after my thirteenth birthday the Space Age began with the launching of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1. Following this momentous event, a Falmouth travel agency put a big notice in its window advertising the very first bookings for a trip to the moon which prompted Penny and me to dare each other to go in to make our reservations. However, we were so overcome with giggles that neither of us could speak. At last, when we were finally able to compose ourselves, I blurted out that we’d come to book our places as passengers on the lunar expedition which they were advertising in the window. The manager told us that we’d have to come back later, probably in a few years. I don’t know how he managed to keep such a straight face.
At school, we were encouraged to have foreign penfriends and there were approved organisations which helped you to find suitable ones. Mine was American and she was called Elizabeth Grass; I thought it was a very curious surname but my mother said Americans often had strange names. The correspondence didn’t last very long because it seemed to me that we had very little in common and it was difficult to know what to write about. She appeared to be obsessed with Communists - something I thought very strange in someone so young - and in every letter she referred to ‘them’ ( being the Russians ) and ‘us’ ( the Americans ). I was rather put out by this attitude because, due to my love of ballet, I had a great admiration for Russian culture. In the end, I simply stopped writing to her and instead sent a letter to the Russian Embassy in London asking if an English-speaking penfriend of my age could be found. I was gratified to receive a very prompt reply in which they told me:
‘We hope very soon that you will be hearing from your Russian friends.’
But I never did.
There were some important changes taking place at school, the most significant being that we were soon to be having a new headmistress. Whether or not it was anything to do with the scandal of Mr. Herbert no-one seemed to know: Mrs. Robertson simply announced that she would be leaving at the end of term. The school organized a farewell concert for her and when the choir sang her favourite piece, she wept unashamedly. We were sorry that she was leaving because, although she always maintained discipline, she was not so strict with us that she inspired fear and she took pains to encourage us to regard our school as our second home.
When, at the beginning of the following term, we saw our new headmistress for the first time, it was difficult to conceal our surprise. To say her appearance was unusual would have been an understatement; indeed, I imagine the majority of us had never seen anyone like her in our lives. Although she wore women’s clothes, these did not conceal the fact that her form was very angular and mannish; she wore spectacles and her silvery grey hair was cropped very short, like a man’s, serving to emphasise the prominence of her nose and her strong features. Miss Jacob inspired in us an immediate respect and we soon became accustomed to her unconventional looks. Her subjects, about which she was passionate, were Greek and Latin; she even had a little dog called Quillo which, she told us, was a Greek name. I was so anxious to please Miss Jacob that I applied myself to my Latin studies with a renewed determination and spent almost the entirety of a weekend designing a cover for my Latin exercise book. It earned me a housepoint or two and Penny was so impressed that she decided to do the same. Whether it was because she was not very good at drawing or whether she really intended her Roman figures to be dressed in erotic underwear instead of togas, I can’t say. I remember thinking, when I saw her hand in her exercise book, that she must have gone quite mad and I cringed with embarrassment on her behalf when Miss Jacob reprimanded her.
As the end of that term approached and we revised for our exams, I had a strong premonition that one of the questions we would be asked in the Latin exam would be to write down the Latin names of as many animals that we could think of. I already knew the names of several because of my interest in astronomy - Leo the lion, Cygnus the swan, and so on - and I set about memorising as many more as I was able. When the day of the exam arrived and I saw the paper on the desk in front of me, I knew instinctively that my hunch had been right and, sure enough, when we were given the signal to begin, I turned the paper and there it was!
‘Write the names, in Latin, of as many animals as you can.’
I tackled all the questions with confidence and filled a whole sheet with the Latin names of just about every creature on the planet. Miss Jacob was impressed and my exam result was excellent.
As well as a new headmistress, we also had a new music master; he was Welsh and his name was Mr. Duggan. Whereas I had found our lessons under the tuition of Mr. Herbert very boring, Mr. Duggan’s enthusiasm for the subject could not fail to inspire. He introduced us to composers of whom I’d never heard: Vaughan Williams, Delius, Elgar and many others. He opened the door to a world of music I had never known existed and I found myself looking forward to our weekly lessons as I had never done before. My first year at the High School had gone very well but the second was turning out to be even better.

CHAPTER TEN: High School Girl

2007-05-12T15:38:00.001+01:00

If I‘d had any concerns about looking ridiculous in my new school uniform on my first day at the High School they vanished as soon as I saw that all the other new girls were as swamped by theirs as I was by mine. Our skirts came down to our ankles and the sleeves of our blazers flapped emptily about our knees. I was conscious of the stiff collar of my new white shirt and hoped, as it was a very warm day, that I wouldn’t sweat and make dirty marks on it. I knew, of course, all the girls from Clare Terrace but there were quite a few unfamiliar faces. One of the teachers approached me and asked if I wouldn’t mind giving another new girl a helping hand; I turned and saw a girl with the friendliest smile and the most open, good-natured expression I had ever seen. Next to her smile, the other most noticeable thing about this remarkable girl was her hair: it was arranged in two, thick, auburn plaits which blazed in the sunlight streaming down from the high sash windows of the school hall. She asked me my name and told me hers was Jenny. She was so nice, so engaging, that it would have been an impossibility not to like her immediately. For a moment, I couldn’t understand why she could possibly need assistance from me; then I saw that she was wearing heavy leg irons and carrying a metal walking-stick. Obviously, she was a victim of that cruel illness, the one which all parents feared more than any other, polio. Jenny explained that, although she could manage by herself with the aid of two sticks, it was easier for her to get about if she could put her hand on the shoulder of someone of a similar height, for balance, and use just the one stick. Naturally, I was only too pleased to volunteer my shoulder and, from that day, we were friends.
After assembly on that first day, we spent most of the morning sorting out timetables, electing monitors and form prefects ( prefects were invariably chosen from those girls who excelled at sport and were therefore the most popular), acquainting ourselves with the school’s rules and deciding to which of the four ‘houses’, named after famous Cornish families - Arundel, Killigrew, Grenville and Basset - each of us was going to belong. I was to be in the Arundel house. We would be awarded house points for good work and, at the end of the year, these would be totted up and the house with the most points would be the winner. After we had dealt with these matters we were asked to write an essay about the career we hoped to pursue when our education was finished and I, like the majority of the girls, wrote with lamentable lack of imagination that I wanted to be a vet.
I scrutinised my timetable with curiousity and pondered each new subject I would be studying: French: a foreign language. Would it be difficult? Latin: another language which was sure to be difficult; would I cope? Chemistry: I looked forward to that as I had always been interested in science. Classical stories: that sounded intriguing. What, exactly, were they? I longed to ask but was afraid to do so for fear of appearing ignorant. At my previous schools we had done arithmetic but here, at the High School, it was called mathematics, which made it sound far more formidable. Also, according to this timetable, there seemed to be an unconscionable amount of school hours devoted to this most hated of subjects. Still, there was art, at which I had always been able to excel, and domestic science, which was probably very easy. Divinity: that was simply R.E. with a fancy name and bound to be boring: anything to do with religion always was. Music: that sounded more interesting. History: boring. Geography: even more boring. English literature: I loved reading so I would be good at that. English language: apart from art, this was my best subject and so I felt confident as far as that was concerned. At the High school, games and sports were an important part of the curriculum but, because of my brittle bones, I had always been forbidden to take part in any kind of physical education. When I saw how hideously unflattering were the grey shorts the girls wore for games I was not sorry.
My mother and my sister were waiting for me outside the school gates at the end of my first day at the High School. I was interrogated without mercy.
‘What was it like? What did you do today?’
‘Nothing much. Timetables and things.’
‘But you must have done something else apart from timetables.’
‘We just did boring stuff.’
‘But what sort of stuff?’
‘Just talking about things - oh, and we had to write an essay.’
‘An essay? What was the subject? What did you write about?’
‘What I’m going to be when I leave school.’
‘What did you say?’
‘That I wanted to be a vet.’
‘But that’s not very original. Girls always say they want to be vets. Couldn’t you have come up with something better than that?’
‘But I do want to be a vet.’

I was awarded several house points for our first French homework. We had to draw a house - open at the front like a dolls’ house - with all the rooms and the furniture inside them identified by their names in French. I spent at least two hours, happily absorbed, drawing mine. By coincidence, our French teacher, Miss Richards, shared the house next door to us in Clare Terrace with Mrs. Andrews, the art mistress. Miss Richards spoke French with a broad Cornish accent and would have long conversations with the French onion man who was a familiar sight in Falmouth, cycling around with long strings of onions dangling from his bike. He even wore a striped jersey and a black beret, like a caricature of a Frenchman. I was getting on well with French and Latin and seemed to have an aptitude for languages.
Maths was a different story. I struggled. Algebra was entirely new to me, as was geometry, and it seemed to me that these subjects had been devised by some spiteful mind with the sole intention of tormenting those, such as I, who possessed no natural propensity. Miss May, the teacher, was an extremely kind, patient, dedicated woman and had she been otherwise - like Miss Jellis at Clare Terrace, for instance, - I would have simply given up.
English literature was more of a challenge than I had anticipated. We had to learn long passages from the Shakespeare play we were studying - A Midsummer Night’s Dream - as well as poems; we read classics such as Pride and Prejudice and, as an example of a modern novel, John Buchan’s Thirty-nine Steps, which I enjoyed. Later that year, the older girls gave a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which all the fairies were played by puppets made by the girls. Mrs. Andrews, the art teacher, knew how to make real marionettes, operated by strings, and I looked forward to that time when I would be learning how to make them, too. As first-formers, we were learning how to do calligraphy, using round-hand pens and black Indian ink, something which has proved to be a most useful skill in my adult life.
As a subject, chemistry was turning out to be as absorbing as I had anticipated it would, and I looked forward to our lessons immensely. There was an after-school chemistry club of which I was an eager member. In it, we did all kinds of exciting experiments and, most thrilling of all, learnt how to make chemical gardens by dropping various crystalline substances into jam jars filled with agar solution. To me, watching them grow, like corals, was pure magic and, with my pocket money from Auntie Frances, I bought tins of agar solution from Boots and pestered all the chemists in Falmouth for crystals so that I could make my own ‘gardens’ at home. Later, we studied the different forms of sulphur and in the consequent test we were given I obtained top marks with one hundred per cent.
Although I loved chemistry, my favourite lesson of all was classical stories and I looked forward all week to that period on Friday afternoons. Our text book was Robert Grave’s The Greek Myths; he was a highly regarded modern author and poet and I never imagined that one day, many years later, I would live in the same part of Spain as he had and actually meet his descendants. It is a great pity that this subject is no longer part of the school curriculum because no other can inspire and stimulate the imagination as much as the stories of the great heroes - Theseus, Perseus, Jason and all the others - and their adventures. After we had listened to a story, we would write our own account of it and illustrate it with drawings. I used to get so carried away, so immersed in re-living the adventure through my drawings, that when the bell sounded for the end of the lesson, I could hardly bear to return to the real world.
I found domestic science lessons very tedious. Because I did a lot of sewing at home I was by now quite accomplished and therefore regarded our sewing project as something of an insult. From a length of white cotton fabric we had to construct a cookery apron incorporating French seams, pleats and tucks. The project dragged on for weeks and by the time the aprons were finished, they were grubby and ink-stained. As well as sewing, I had also learned how to cook at home, a chore which my mother was only too glad to relinquish to me. We were taught how to make pastry, cakes and Victoria sponges - something I already knew - and how to decorate plain biscuits with icing sugar and little silver balls, an exercise which I considered to be of no use at all.
As I had expected, our geography and history lessons bored me and I did not do well in those subjects. Miss Bates, our history teacher, wore a very dark shade of lipstick which accentuated her protruding teeth and I applied greater attention to the study of these than I did to the lessons. Several years later, when we were sixth-formers, she took us for ‘general studies’ classes in which we would discuss various issues concerning the world into which we would soon be venturing. Miss Bates told us many things which would today be considered as either grossly politically incorrect or downright erroneous. As an example of one of her more outrageous declarations, mixed marriages, she told us, were a very bad thing because the children resulting from these unions invariably inherited the worst traits of each race.
Although I enjoyed our music lessons and became a member of the school choir, I did not like Mr. Herbert, the music master. Even though he joked and laughed a lot and had a very genial manner, I felt, from the beginning, an instinctive aversion. There was something about his demeanour- his way of speaking, his gestures, his poses - which I found disturbing. One day, in the corridor, he waylaid me and, placing a hand on each of my shoulders, he bent down and stared intently into my eyes.
‘Extraordinary!’ he said. ‘The whites of your eyes are quite blue. So beautiful!’
It is true that the whites of my eyes are noticeably blue: it is an indicator symptom of my brittle bone condition and people often remark on it. I stiffened with alarm from the pressure of Mr. Herbert’s hands on my shoulders and averted my eyes from his intense gaze. A deep blush coloured my face. Perturbed, I had no idea how to deal with this situation and was greatly relieved when a crowd of girls came running down the corridor and he had to release me in order to let them pass. After this incident, I kept well out of his way. He was a popular member of staff and I dared not mention it to anybody, not even to my friends: they, too, seemed to like Mr. Herbert. Then, one day, he simply vanished from the scene. Nothing was said of his sudden disappearance and none of the other girls in my class appeared to know anything about it. It was all very strange.
No-one could fail to sense that there was an atmosphere in our school. It was unnaturally quiet. The staff wore serious expressions and when they weren’t teaching, shut themselves into the staffroom. The headmistress seemed unduly preoccupied and the older girls gathered into groups and whispered among themselves in the corridors and in the playground. It was evident that something momentous had occurred which was far too shocking to be made known to first-formers. I overheard a conversation between my mother and Auntie Frances when we were visiting one day.
‘ And you should have seen him when he came out of the church with some of the other teachers after the carol service,’ said Auntie, ‘he was flirting like anything and they were loving it. He had one on each arm and they were giggling so much you’d have thought they were young girls.’
So, then, they were talking about Mr. Herbert. We didn’t have any other male teachers. Could it be that whatever had happened at school had something to do with the disappearance of our music master? I strained my ears to hear more of the conversation but Auntie kept recounting the same incident. In the end, I decided to confront my mother and ask her if she knew what had happened to Mr. Herbert. All she would tell me was that he had ‘got himself into a bit of trouble.’ I wondered what the bit of trouble was.
One Sunday, some time later, I saw my mother cut an article out of the News of the World
and, somewhat furtively, put it into a drawer. I waited for a suitable opportunity, then sneaked into the room and removed the article from where she had hidden it between some papers. Scanning the column, I discovered to my amazement that it was a detailed report of a court case involving our own Mr. Herbert. Apparently, he had been carrying on an affair with a fifteen-year-old pupil at the High School who was now expecting a baby. Extracts from the girl’s diary were read out in court.
‘Had S.I. in the back of the car.’
It was explained to the court that ‘S.I.’ was an abbreviation of ‘sexual intercourse’. What, I wondered, was sexual intercourse? I was dying to know what, exactly, was the nature of our music master’s crime but, as ever when anything concerning such matters cropped up, I was thwarted by my own ignorance. Mr. Herbert told the court that he was in love with the girl and wanted to marry her as soon as she was sixteen. I marvelled at his vanity; as if anyone would want to marry such a revolting old man! Despite his intentions to stand by the girl, he was given a prison sentence. I re-read the article so that I could memorize it and put it back where I had found it. Fancy such a thing happening at our school! It was quite incredible.
I quizzed my closest friends about the matter but they were as ignorant as I was. None of us knew who the girl in question was and, anyway, she had long since left the school. We discussed pregnancy and childbirth, about which we were totally unenlightened, and wondered what it would be like to have a baby.
‘They say it’s the worst pain you can possibly suffer when the baby comes out.’
‘Well, how does the baby come out, then?’
‘Out of your belly button, of course. Everyone knows that .’
‘But how does the baby get there in the first place?’
‘ First you have to get married and then the husband has to do something to the wife.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘But Mr. Herbert and that girl weren’t married, so how can she be having a baby?’
There was no answer to that. Our knowledge of the facts of life was miserably inadequate.

There was great excitement when we were informed that we were going to see a performance of Romeo and Juliet to be given by the pupils of Truro School. The excitement was due not so much to the anticipation of seeing a live performance of a Shakespeare play but to the fact that Truro School was a boys’ school and we in the first form were at an age when we were becoming curious about the opposite sex. When I was younger, I used to regard boys with contempt and was manifestly of the opinion that they were, without exception, immature and stupid. When I was a pupil at Clare Terrace, a certain boy used to cycle past our house almost every day and, when he saw me, would stare at me with a blatancy I considered most impertinent. One day, walking home from the High School, he caught my eye and I was startled to find myself admiring the striking contrast between the blackness of his thick lashes and the piercing blue of his eyes. Nature had crept up on me and, in a heart-fluttering moment, had caught me out when I least expected it. What a cunning trick!
We giggled self-consciously as we made our way into the theatre hall of Truro School on the afternoon of the performance. We had never seen so many boys! The older ones ignored us with pointed aloofness but the younger ones eyed us surreptitiously. I found myself wishing I had a more flattering, less childish hairstyle and attempted to hitch up the hem of my skirt by folding the waistband over several times. Truro School’s interpretation of Romeo and Juliet was such that the world’s most famous and tragic love story was turned - unintentionally - into a comedy of such hilarity that we could barely contain ourselves. In our entire lives we had never seen anything so side-splitting as the sight of all those boys dressed up as girls. We were hugely entertained and, at the final curtain-call, showed our appreciation by clapping a little too enthusiastically.
That evening, I asked my mother if I could have my hair cut and styled. She regarded me quizzically and told me I would have to wait until I was a little older. A few days later, I was sitting at our big mahogany dining table, quietly doing my homework, when she came into the room, shutting the door behind her. This was significant because whenever my mother entered a room and, with deliberation, shut the door behind her it meant that she had an accusation to make or something of extreme unpleasantness to say. I looked up, alarmed, wondering what it was that I had done.
‘You probably know all about what I’ve got to say,’ she announced. ‘I expect you talk about it with the other girls, don’t you?
I looked at her, blankly. Slowly, it dawned on me that what she was trying to say was causing her great embarrassment and I reddened, self-consciously. She saw the flush and interpreted it as an affirmation of what she had just asked.
‘You know all about it, then? The other? ‘
And with that, she turned and went out of the room. What, I wondered, was the other? ‘ her obvious embarrassment made it clear that it was a subject connected with down there. That meant it was to do with something shameful, something unmentionable. What could it possibly be?
Fortunately, enlightenment came in the form of a talk, given by two visiting professionals, at school. Our parents had received notification that we were to be given an informative lecture entitled ‘Sex Education’ so that those who did not want their daughters to attend could request their absence. There were, indeed, two or three girls from the first form who were absent; the rest of the school filed quietly into the assembly hall where the teachers were already seated and the atmosphere seemed to bristle with embarrassment as we settled ourselves on the floor below the platform where the two female professionals were waiting to begin. We listened, agog, as the women took turns to explain to us the workings of the female reproductive system and the mysteries surrounding conception and childbirth. To a young girl who was as ignorant of such matters as I was, it was all quite shocking. When they had completed their lecture, the women asked us if we had any questions we would like them to answer. There was, of course, a host of things that we were dying to know but not a single girl had the courage to put up her hand. Then, to our astonishment, one of the older girls raised her arm.
‘If a girl has intercourse just the once,’ she asked, ‘can she still get pregnant?’
There was an almost audible gasp from the rest of her classmates. They looked at each other, knowingly, and as we filed out of the hall I heard one of them say:
‘She must have done it then! What if she’s going to have a baby?’
‘Well,’ replied another, unkindly, ‘it’ll serve her right. I’d never let a boy go all the way with me.’
One of the girls from the first form whispered:
‘Did they mean that those monthly period things happen every month?’
I could not bring myself to discuss, even with my closest friends, any of the matters about which we had just been informed. My mother had instilled in me a profound sense of aversion and distaste for anything to do with down there. Yet, there were so many questions I wanted to ask, so much reassurance I needed. With this scant knowledge of what was happening to our developing bodies, most of the girls in my class began our periods when we were about thirteen. Sanitary protection was primitive in those times. We were obliged to wear around our waists elastic belts with a suspender at the back and another at the front on to which were looped sanitary towels. These were so thick, chafing and so uncomfortable that you found yourself walking about with a legs apart, John Wayne, cowboy gait. To complete the discomfort, we sometimes had to wear ‘sani-knicks’ which were, in reality, giant, plastic bloomers. We had not been warned about the stomach cramps. There were miserable mornings when I would set off for school, practically doubled over with pain, my mother’s scolding voice still ringing in my ears. As for the very basic information we had been given regarding the mechanics of sex, such had been the emphasis on the importance of marriage as the only foundation for a sexual relationship, I decided that it was something I wouldn’t have to concern myself about for a very long time.
But all these events were yet to come and, meanwhile, my happy first term at the High School ended with Christmas plays, concerts and carols. Miss Richards had taught us a French carol and while some of us sang the words, the rest of us carried out the actions. In was chosen to be a sheep - a mouton - and for my costume I wore an old, rather smelly, sheepskin rug. My cue was ‘Entrez petits moutons!’ and at this I scuttled across the floor on my hands and knees, to the very great mirth of the audience. I was such a success with my interpretation of a sheep that, from that day, I was labelled with the nickname ‘mouton.’
I was looking forward to Christmas because my grandfather, Auntie Lal, Uncle Albie and Stephanie were coming to stay with us and that meant we could all have a good time because, with company in the house, my mother wouldn’t be able to start a row. I’d helped with the making and the icing of the Christmas cake and the Christmas pudding and took charge of the stuffing of the turkey because, for some reason, she always worked herself up into a state bordering on panic as far as this routine task was concerned. Jean and I made paper chains from coloured, gummed strips and picked holly and ivy. Christmas trees were expensive and therefore not so common as they are nowadays and my mother dismissed the artificial ones you could buy from Woolworth’s as tastelss tat.
Whenever I saw my cousin Stephanie I was envious of the fact that she always seemed so much more grown-up and mature than I was. I hated my short, bobbed hairstyle and wished mine was long, blonde and curly, like hers. Jean and I had to wear the fairisle sweaters our mother had knitted for us for Christmas and I thought I looked shapeless and lumpen in mine whereas Stephanie looked sleek and elegant in her bought sweater. Nevertheless, That Christmas was the best ever. My father was allowed to go to the pub with his brother and his father before the turkey was dished up. Normally, my mother resented his going out to enjoy himself but this time she was outnumbered and couldn’t object. After lunch, we went for a walk around the Castle Drive and my grandfather said, as he always did whenever he came to stay with us:
‘If you lived in London, you’d pay five pounds just to look at this view.’
My sister and I were fond of our grandfather but our mother had always spoken of him with disparagement. Until the death of our grandmother, after which he had moved to Brixham, the couple had lived in Walthamstow, in a place called Pick Hill. According to my mother’s description of Pick Hill, it was the most squalid slum imaginable, scarcely fit for human habitation. Whenever there was a row, she would nearly always bring up the subject of Pick Hill.
‘Your father’s dirty!’ she would yell. ‘No wonder, living in a filthy hole like Pick Hill. What’s more, your mother was a thief! I’ve seen her steal tomatoes and hide them down her drawers. Why do you think I’d never eat anything she offered me when I went round to your house?’
But there were no rows that Christmas. In fact, it had been so pleasant that everyone agreed it would be nice to do the same thing the following year. The prospect delighted Stephanie and me; next Christmas, however, was a long way off.

CHAPTER NINE: The Scholarship Year

2007-05-12T15:37:00.001+01:00

When you are a child, the future doesn’t bother you too much because you don’t possess the ability to think very far ahead and so the slight sense of foreboding I used to experience when the subject of ‘The Scholarship’ was brought up was not too difficult to dismiss from my mind. Now, suddenly, it had become a frightening, unavoidable actuality which was to shatter my nerves and blight my life during the months that ensued.
My mother had mentioned the subject only occasionally during the last couple of years but now she talked about ‘passing your scholarship’ almost every day.
‘You’d love it at the High School’, she would say. Or:
‘You’d hate it at a secondary modern with all those rough, common kids.’
She bribed me with promises to buy me anything I wanted if I passed and threatened that if I failed, I would never have a career like other girls. She made me believe that if I did not pass my scholarship my life would be ruined. But it was not this prospect which bothered me: what terrified me more than anything was her inevitable wrath if I failed.
‘What if I fail?’ Those words repeated themselves in my head every minute of every hour of every day, week after week.
‘What if I fail?’
If I failed, how would I face my mother? She would never forgive me. She would make my life a living nightmare. If, on the day the results were announced, I found that I’d failed, I wouldn’t be able to go home. I would never have the courage to confess to her that I hadn’t passed. There would be no alternative but to run away. No, to fail would be unthinkable.
At school, too, we were under pressure to do well because Miss Prince was evidently determined to maintain the excellent pass rate which Clare Terrace had always enjoyed. The work became progressively harder. We were given essay subjects which I found difficult even though English was my strongest subject. For example, we once had to write a composition entitled: ‘Newspapers’. I had never read a newspaper and knew absolutely nothing about them so I wrote a feeble and fatuous account of the usefullness of newspaper, such as for making papier maché or wrapping up fish and chips. My mother bought the ‘Daily Telegraph’ and my father read the ‘News of the World’ on Sunday; to me, this title gave the impression that it must be a very important publication so, in my ignorance, I wrote:
‘The News of the World is Britain’s best newpaper.........’
The girl who sat next to me, Penny, was very clever and wrote about how reporters obtained their stories, how editors worked to put all the reports together and how newspapers were printed and published; her essay was read out in class and she was rewarded with form points.
I grappled with arithmetic, always my weakest subject despite the extra coaching I’d had from Mrs. Tobit. Miss Jellis lost her temper with girls who were slow to pick things up and so the sight of a blackboard covered with figures caused me such acute panic that my mind would go completely blank. Bad handwriting was not tolerated, either, and all our work had to be neat and well presented. We had to learn poems - such as Shelley’s Ozymandias - by heart and read books - for example, Gulliver’s Travels, - which were really quite difficult, and then answer questions on comprehension. Good spelling, naturally, was expected and as the scholarship loomed nearer, so the tests we were regularly given became more challenging.
I began to develop curious facial twitches and other nervous habits and the harder I tried to stop them, the worse they grew. I would roll and snap my eyes, distort my jaw until it practically dislocated and make strange, strangulated noises in my throat. My mother was embarrassed by my twitching and took me to the doctor, who prescribed a tranquilizing drug which had no effect at all. I had nightmares and was plagued by strange aches, sharp twinges and other discomforts which, I was assured, were merely ‘growing pains.’ As the weeks passed, my anxiety increased. I was afraid of everything: I was afraid of my mother, I was afraid of Miss Prince and I was afraid of Miss Jellis. I could not bring myself even to think of the consequences if I failed my scholarship. What if I fail...........?
Then, finally, the inexorable, long-dreaded day that we were to sit for our scholarship arrived. The build-up had been unbearable and my twitching was out of control but, as I crossed the road and entered the school gates, I felt only a numbness and the curious sensation that what was happening was unreal.
‘Make sure you read all the questions properly!’ were my mother’s parting words.
The atmosphere in the classroom on that fateful morning seemed to bristle with nervous anticipation as we took our seats. I stared at my desk, mesmerized for some reason by the brimming ink-well. Evidently, we were going to be required to do a lot of writing in this examination. I must remember to read the questions properly.........My heart gave a great lurch as Miss Jellis, grave and unsmiling, entered the classroom and walked to her desk. She told us to read each question carefully before answering, then we were instructed to turn over our examination papers and begin. I held my breath, closed my eyes and braced myself for the worst. With apprehension, I ran my eye over the pages and was surprised to see, at first glance, that the questions appeared to be not nearly as difficult as I’d anticipated. I followed the injunction we had been given to read each question carefully and realised, with a huge rush of relief, that I would be able to answer all of them.

So, then, it was all over. All we had to do now was wait for the results. My stomach turned over every time I thought of my mother’s reaction if I failed. But the questions had seemed so easy, even the mental arithmetic; surely, I must have passed? Yet, supposing the apparent easiness was a deception and there was a catch in every question that I hadn’t noticed? The doubts persisted, no matter how hard I tried to put them out of my mind. What if I fail.....?
My mother kept asking questions about the examination.
‘How do you think you got on?’
‘Could you answer all the questions?’
‘Did you remember to read the questions properly before you answered them?’
‘ Yes, but how do you think you got on?’
I became very quiet and preoccupied. Miss Jellis told my mother that she thought I was a very self-conscious child. All the time, the words kept running through my brain: what if I fail........?

We did not know when the results would be announced. One morning assembly, with no prior warning, Miss Prince suddenly informed us that she had received the results of that year’s eleven-plus examination. There was an audible intake of breath from the girls of Form One and we tensed ourselves as she prepared herself to read out the names of those who had passed. It is sometimes a disadvantage to possess a surname which begins with a letter that is placed near the end of the alphabet; I had to wait, breathless and with racing heart as she announced each successful candidate in order.
‘Margaret Champion, pass.’
We were still only on the C’s. It would take an age to get to the W’s.
‘Judith Jackson, pass.’
Still many letters to go.
‘Angela Stumbles, pass.’
We were getting nearer to the W’s. Any minute now. What if I fail........?
‘Penny Vinson, pass.’
Well, she was such a clever girl that there had never been any doubt about Penny passing; why, her parents had already bought her High School Uniform...........
‘Margaret Walker, pass.’
I had passed!
I felt no elation upon receiving this news, just a numbness, a feeling of disbelief; perhaps I had only imagined that Miss Prince had just read out my name. Perhaps it was only a dream......
Now Miss Prince was summoning the successful girls to the front in order to hand them their pass slips. Should I go? Had she really read out my name? Had she make a mistake? I would look stupid if I went to the front only to find out I hadn’t passed. Only when I looked at the piece of paper which was handed to me and saw my name on it was I able to believe that I had, indeed, passed my scholarship. An overwhelming sensation of relief washed over me as I realised that I wouldn’t now have to suffer the wrath of my mother which, if I’d failed, would surely have been terrible. Miss Prince told us that we could all go home to give our parents the good news. I didn’t have very far to go: our house was directly in front of the school, just across the road.
But the front door was locked and my mother evidently out. I ran to Fred’s Stores just around the corner to see if she was there, but the shop was empty.
‘No school?’ asked Fred.
I explained why I had been allowed time off.
‘Well done!’ he smiled. ‘Your mum’ll be pleased now, all right!’
I wasn’t sure what to do so I returned home. I waited to see if my mother would appear but when there was still no sign of her, I decided to go back to school. So I left the slip of paper announcing my pass on the doormat inside the glass porch, closed the door and returned to my classroom where those girls who had failed were sitting disconsolately.
When I went home at lunch time my mother was in the kitchen standing over the stove. I expected her to congratulate me but all she said was:
‘You laid that piece of paper on the doormat very tenderly, didn’t you?’
What did she expect me to do with it, I wondered? It was addressed to her and my father so I put it where the postman always left the letters and if I’d taken it back to school she would have been furious. Nevertheless, she’d wasted no time in telling everybody we knew of my success. I kept hearing her say:
‘I found it lying on the doormat - she’d lain it there so tenderly.’
My mother made me write to Mrs.Tobit to tell her of my success and to thank her for coaching me in arithmetic. I knew perfectly well that she was hoping Mavis hadn’t done as well as I and the letter was an excuse to brag. It took me a long time to compose it and I tore up several sheets of paper before it was done to my mother’s satisfaction.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘it looks as if it’s been written by a stiff old maid, but it’ll do.’
For passing my scholarship Auntie Frances gave me half-a-crown and Mrs. Bonham from a few doors up the road gave me sixpence. I was beginning to fear by now that the promise made by my mother to buy me anything I wanted if I passed had been nothing but a blatant lie.
All the girls from Clare Terrace who had passed the eleven-plus, and their parents, were invited by the headmistress of the High School so that they could have a look around, meet the staff and acquaint themselves with what were going to be their new surroundings. Mrs. Robertson put us at our ease immediately. Although her status as headmistress imbued her with great dignity, she was also an attractive woman who wore lipstick and elegant clothes; she had red-gold hair which was braided into a plait and looped around the back of her head. She welcomed us warmly and presented each of us with a badge on which were the letters F.C.H.S., standing for Falmouth County High School. She told us to start wearing our badges straight away so that we would feel we already belonged to the school. We obeyed but, later, it appeared that offence had been caused at Clare Terrace and the parents of those girls who had failed to get into the High School protested to Miss Prince. Consequently, we were forbidden to wear them to school and we were bewildered and dismayed when Miss Prince told us that Mrs. Robertson had denied telling us to wear the badges.

Now that the ordeal of the eleven-plus was over, I realised that I had a life after all and set about getting on with it. The term was nearly over, there was the long, summer holiday to look forward to, there was the beach and there was freedom. Our mother was preoccupied with getting the house ready for the first of the summer guests so Jean and I were able to do more or less as we pleased. I was very happy.
We visited Auntie Frances often and she always made us welcome. I believe she was genuinely fond of us and we liked her much more than we ever liked our grandmother, her sister. She bought chocolate cup-cakes and jam tarts for us and gave us money to go down to the corner shop to buy Corona, which we never had at home. We felt at ease bouncing about on the dusty, uncomfortable chaise longue in Auntie’s sitting room, surrounded by the Staffordshire pottery and the Victorian prints. When she thought we were getting bored she would say:
‘You go now, dear, if you like.’
Many years later, when we stood by her grave after her funeral, contemplating those times,
it was as if we could hear her saying:
‘You go now, dear, if you like.’
Jean and I were with our mother on a visit to Auntie Frances and Uncle Cliff when an argument erupted. I don’t know what prompted it because I was outside when it began. Jean said it was my fault because I’d told Uncle that he was ugly and Auntie was offended; I think, though, it was more serious than that. I heard my mother’s raised voice say:
‘Well, I thought you were being funny like you sometimes are!’
A few moments later, she stormed out of the house with an expression like thunder and marched us straight back home. A day or so later, when I told my mother that I was going to see Auntie Frances, she told me I was not allowed to. When I demanded why, she replied:
‘Because I said so!’
My father was looking on so I asked him why I wasn’t allowed to see Auntie Frances. He simply looked at my mother and shrugged his shoulders.
‘Well, I’m going, anyway!’ I retorted, making for the front door.
‘Oh no you’re not! You’ll do as I say!’
She stood barring my exit; I was dismayed and outraged. She had no right to stop me from seeing my aunt. She was a mean, vindictive, hateful woman. Suddenly, all the resentment and anger I’d bottled up over the preceeding months blew up.
‘You bloody old cow!’ I shouted.
My father and my mother looked at each other, without saying a word. Appalled at what I’d said and terrified of the consequences which, surely, would be dreadful, I raced upstairs and hid in the attic. When I emerged some time later, to my surprise nothing was said of the incident. At the very least, I thought that an apology would be demanded of me. But it was as if nothing had happened. Not long afterwards, relations were restored and we were able to visit Auntie again. We had missed her and I think she had missed us. She began giving us pocket money every weekend - something our parents had never done. It started as sixpence each, then went up to a shilling, then one-and-six and, finally, two shillings. She continued to give us each two shillings a week even when we were in our teens.

One day, a letter arrived from Auntie Marie and in it were enclosed two pound notes, one for Jean and one for me. She wrote to say that she had had a win on the pools and that we were to treat ourselves. In the fifties, one pound was, to us, riches beyond our dreams. Because I was becoming interested in sewing, I decided to buy some dress material with my money; Jean, on the other hand, went straight round to Fred’s Stores and bought sweets. When Fred asked her where she’d got the money to buy so many sweets, she told him that her auntie had won the pools. Twenty-four hours later, there was a rumour going around Falmouth that Mrs. Walker had won a fortune on the football pools. Our mother had a lot of explaining to do.
During the winter, we had had a lodger, an elderly gentleman called Mr. Grantham. My mother always referred to him as ‘Granny Grantham’ behind his back because, she said, he was like an old woman and she was glad when he left because he got on her nerves. But he had been kind to me; he was an amateur artist and I was fascinated and intrigued by his collection of materials, many of which I’d never encountered before. He gave me all the little broken bits of his pastels and I took to that medium with such enthusiasm that I bought myself a box of Reeves’ pastels with the money I had been given for passing my scholarship.
I discovered, too, Indian ink and experimented with pen-and-wash technique and used the scraps of fabric left over from my sewing projects to make collages. I had seen ornaments made from shells in the Falmouth gift shops and decided I could do better myself. I collected shells and made crinoline ladies from limpet shells and little mice from yellow periwinkles with black buttonhole thread for their tails. Later, I put them on display in our dining room and was delighted when my mother’s guests bought them. My days were always busy and the word ‘boredom’ didn’t exist in my dictionary. I entered a painting competition organised by the Saturday children’s cinema at the Grand and won first prize, which was a big box of chocolates. Selfishly, I kept them to myself and didn’t offer my sister a single one.

We had some curious neighbours while we were living in Clare Terrace. There was Mrs. Penhay, an eccentric, dishevelled old woman who looked like a bag lady without the bags; we used to see her stealing milk from people’s doorsteps early in the mornings. Cowboy Mitchell was a more alarming character: He wore a cowboy hat and a long, black coat and used to walk around the neighbourhood swearing to himself and brandishing a knife which he used for opening tins of Kit-E-Kat with which he fed a colony of feral cats in a derelict and vermin-infested street behind the Parish Church. Around the corner from us was a pub on the roof of which was a pet monkey. It was a rather bad-tempered monkey with a liking for wine gums. We used to throw the sweets up on to the roof but if we offered green ones, the monkey would throw them straight back at us.
There was another woman whom Jean and I disliked at first sight. Whenever she saw us in the street, she would stop and, to our extreme discomfiture, stare at us intently. She was a squat figure with fat ankles and had thick, puffy lips which looked like pale, glistening, raw sausages. One day, to our great alarm, we saw her talking to our mother and at once thought that she was reporting some shocking misdeed of which we were guilty. Our mother was looking harrassed and when the woman had walked away she called me over and said:
‘That woman’s from the Salvation Army and she wants to know if you’ll go to their meeting on Sunday afternoon.’
I was aghast at the very idea. She could not be serious! As if I didn’t know all about The Salvation Army! They and their band went to Vernon Place (which we children called Vermin Place) most Sunday mornings to play and sing. They made a horrible racket and bribed children with the gift of a penny if they would join in with:
‘I’m H.A.P.P.Y.,
I’m H.A.P.P.Y.,
I know I am, I’m sure I am,
I’m H.A.P.P.Y!’
My sister had earned her penny but it was beneath my dignity to go anywhere near them.
‘I’m not going!’ I told my mother, indignant that she should have imagined, for one moment, that I could possibly be persuaded to.
‘Well, you’ve got to, and that’s that. If you don’t, she’ll only keep on pestering me.’
‘But I don’t want to! I hate that Salvation Army lot. Anyway, you can’t make me go!’
‘Look,’ said my mother, helplessly, ‘just go the once, just to shut her up. If you don’t like it, you won’t have to go again, I promise.’
‘But what about her?’ I cried, gesturing towards Jean, who was looking on and wearing an annoyingly smug expression.
‘She’s too young.’
‘But it’s not fair!’ I wailed.
I hoped that by the time Sunday came around she might have forgotten all about it, but she didn’t and told me to hurry up and get on with my lunch or I’d be late for the Salvation Army. I lingered for a long time over my plate, thinking that she wouldn’t make me go anywhere if I hadn’t finished my lunch. But the ploy didn’t work; she took my plate away and told me to get a move on.
Full of resentment at the sheer unfairness of it all, I made my reluctant way down Jacob’s Ladder and across the road to The Salvation Army hall. With my head down, I shuffled in and scraped my way along the side of the wall in a vain attempt to make myself appear invisible. Everyone looked round as I sat down and I blushed with deep embarrassment. From the swift glance I had given the assembled company I was able to recognise several people whom I knew by sight: there was a boy wearing heavy, iron calipers, a woman with a horribly disfiguring birthmark, a man who walked all round Falmouth talking to himself. Evidently, then, the Salvation Army gave succour to every, poor Falmouth unfortunate. Did they think I was one of them, too? I saw the woman with the sausagy lips, smiling at me encouragingly. How I loathed her! This was far, far worse than anything I’d had to endure at Sunday school. The service began.
‘We’re delighted to welcome a new member this afternoon. Let us all pray for Margaret Walker!’
I genuinely did, at that moment, long for the ground to swallow me up. The embarrassment was too much for anyone to endure. Every face in the hall turned round and smiled at me.
‘Don’t pray for me, please!’ I groaned to myself.
At last, my hour of torture was over and I hurried home, my face still burning from the shame of what I’d been subjected to.
‘How did it go? asked my mother. ‘Did you enjoy yourself?’
‘It was awful! I’m never, never, never going there again.’
And I never did.

Ethel wrote to my mother to ask if she, Harry and Judy could come to stay for a couple of weeks.
‘I’m not having that Judy here! raged my mother. ‘I’ll send a telegram to say they must’n’t bring her.’
But when they arrived, there was Judy, sitting in the back of the car with placid unconcern. Ethel got out and went up to my mother, who was waiting at the gate to welcome them.
‘Look,’ said Ethel, ‘we had to bring her.’
My mother looked sheepish and awkward.
‘It’s like this,’ she said, in the tone of voice she used when she was lying. ‘We’re lousy!’
‘Well,’ replied Ethel, ‘she’s not going to be bothered by a few fleas.’
Throughout their visit, my mother was barely able to contain her irritation and dislike of Judy. One day, I saw her, Judy, go running upstairs to her room, crying. My mother was in the kitchen with Ethel and I heard her say:
‘It’s when she says “ I don’t mind” all the time............’
I don’t think the visit was successful and I found myself feeling very sorry for poor Judy, who did her best not to antagonise my mother. Evidently, the affair of the encounter in the woodshed was never going to be allowed to be forgotten.

My mother started to complain about the expense of all the items which comprised my new school uniform. When I had reminded her of her promise to buy me anything I wanted if I passed my scholarship she retorted:
‘You’ve got the uniform. You should be satisfied with that!’
I was secretly disappointed with the uniform and thought it rather dull; it consisted of a navy skirt, navy jumper and red tie and for outdoor wear there was a navy blazer with F.C.H.S. embroidered on the breast pocket in white. Later on, when the embroidery turned a grubby grey, I used to paint it with white, waterproof ink. I also had a navy mac, which came down to my ankles ‘so that I could grow into it’ and a rather unusual, sailor-style hat which was secured to the head by elastic worn under the chin. Some of the High School girls, I’d noticed, still wore the old-fashioned, St.Trinian’s-style gym-slips with long, yellow sashes tied around their waists.
When all the items for my uniform had been acquired, my mother made me try them on so that she could see the effect. She tugged at the over-long blazer, hitched up the ludicrously long skirt, straightened the tie then stood back and scrutinised me.
‘Wouldn’t you like to go for a walk in your uniform, just so that you can get used to it?’ she asked in the persuasive tone she used when she was trying to make me do something I didn’t want to.
I was aghast. The very idea appalled me. She couldn’t possibly be serious! Supposing someone from the school saw me? I would die of shame. It would be total humiliation. My mother pleaded. I refused. She cajoled and wheedled. I dug my heels in. She threatened. In the end, I had no choice but to obey her. Jean, who had been watching the drama with amused interest, was told she had to come, too, and the three of us set off. The walk was interminable. It was as if she wanted to parade me the length and breadth of Falmouth. One or two people looked at me with curiosity and then, to my acute embarrassment, a woman she vaguely knew stopped us and asked my mother:
‘Have they gone back to school already at the High School, then?’
‘Oh no!’ answered my mother, avoiding my furious glare. ‘She was trying the uniform on and felt so proud that she asked to go out to show it off.’
I felt at that moment that I had never, in my entire life, hated my mother so much.

CHAPTER EIGHT; The Caravanners

2007-05-12T15:36:00.002+01:00

Our journey ended the next afternoon at a campsite on the outskirts of Falmouth. Once again, my parents would have to go property hunting and in the meantime we were going to live in a tent. This prospect was very exciting to my sister and me; we were having a lovely time running around the big field and playing with the children of other campers. That night, my mother slept badly and woke up in a bad temper. She sent us to buy eggs at a farm down the road and set about cooking breakfast on a tiny portable stove. Usually, I disliked the combination of fried eggs, fried tomatoes and bacon but eaten outdoors it tasted much better and, for the first time in my life, I actually found myself enjoying my mother’s cooking.
Things were not going well and my parents started to argue; camping evidently did not agree with my mother. So, in the end, we packed up again and made our way to a caravan site a couple of miles away. To Jean and me, this was even better because the site was just a few minutes walk from the beach and there were woods and fields as far as the eye could see. Overhead, to my very great delight, a pair of buzzards wheeled and mewed. It was the first time I had ever seen these birds and I was awed and thrilled. It was all going to be so wonderful! Jean and I laughed for pure joy and made up our minds that we would spend the entire summer on the beach.
Swanpool Beach gets its name from the nearby lake which, when I was a child, was a rather eerie, mysterious stretch of water lined with trees and dense, reedy undergrowth. As well as swans, many kinds of wading birds, including coots, moorhens and rails, made their homes there and innumerable, elusive, small birds nested in the surrounding trees. On the path leading to our campsite was a bank on which tall plants I had never seen before grew; they had yellow flowers which came out only at twilight and my mother told me that was the reason they were called evening primroses. Not very far away was a fenced-off area with a sign saying ‘Ethyl Sludge Buried Here’ and my sister and I wondered why Ethyl Sludge hadn’t been buried in the graveyard like everybody else. There were many trees in those pre-Dutch elm disease days and it was a beautiful, flowery, unspoiled area with great scope for childish adventures. Sadly, over the years, all the wildness and mystery of Swanpool disappeared and today it is no more exciting than a duckpond in a public park.
Swanpool beach, however, has altered hardly at all; the big, granite slabs on which I loved to scramble are still piled up on one side of the beach and there are rock pools and little, secret coves at low tide as well as the mysterious cave with its dark, narrow tunnel which, they said, went all the way to Falmouth and was used by smugglers to transport illicit goods. How happy Jean and I were during those carefree summer days! We used to wake early, don our swimsuits and run off to the beach with our buckets and spades. I taught myself to swim and had no need of a rubber ring. I was becoming fashion-conscious and as it was the mode that year to wear a swimsuit with a narrow frill around the hips, I tore up a piece of rag, gathered it and stiched it around my plain costume; I was very pleased with the effect but my mother said I looked ridiculous.
One day, Uncle Cliff presented me with two model fishing boats which a colleague at the docks had carved out of wood and painted in bright colours. Even with my unsophisticated, childish taste I could see that they were very crudely fashioned, amateurish affairs but, nevertheless, I was thrilled and couldn’t wait to get to the beach to try them out in a rock pool. I raced to the beach but, to my infinite frustration, it was high tide and so I had to wait for the water to recede enough for the first rock pools to appear. Surely, I thought, the tide had never taken so long to go out before? At last, there emerged a pool with sufficient water in which to launch my boats; I carefully placed the first into it, gave it a little push and it promptly capsized. I did the same with the second one and that capsized, too. No wonder the person who made them didn’t mind giving them away, I thought, ruefully.
With the arrival of August came the holidaymakers and the beach filled out. I was showing off my swimming skills one day when another swimmer, a woman, began to chat to me.
‘Isn’t it lovely here!’ she said.
I agreed with her and she asked me if I was on holiday in the area.
‘No,’ I replied, nonchalantly. ‘I live here.’
‘Oh!’ gasped the woman. ‘Aren’t you lucky!’
During those sunny weeks I became so brown that visitors took photographs of me. One day, I came out of the sea to find my sister crying and being comforted by a middle-aged couple.
‘Do you know whose little girl this is?’ the woman asked me.
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘ she’s my sister.’
The couple told me that Jean had been climbing over the granite rocks, slipped and banged her head. They managed to placate her at last by offering her chocolate and, seeing my expression of envy, they were obliged to offer some to me, too.
‘She’s too young to be playing by herself on the beach,’ chided the woman.
Surely, I thought, I wasn’t expected to have her hanging around me all the time?
I told my mother what they’d said about Jean being unattended and she retorted that some people should mind their own business. Nevertheless, she started coming down to the beach every afternoon from then on to keep an eye on us.
My parents began to argue one morning and as the day went on the quarrel grew worse. The incident of Judy in the woodshed was brought up again and the verbal abuse became so vicious that I genuinely thought that they were going to come to blows. It was the most violent row they had ever had and I was so frightened that I felt I had to intervene. I raced around to the other side of the caravan, picked up the broom, ran back and fixed myself between them, brandishing it. They were so astonished that they broke away from each other as abruptly as two fighting cats with water suddenly thrown over them.
‘It’s all right,’ said my mother, realising how frightened I was. ‘We were only having a little argument.’
They made it up later that night in bed. There was a lot of giggling and my father was talking to my mother in a low, persuasive voice.
‘She was very brave, wasn’t she, to pick up that broom like that?’ I heard her say.

That summer, our mother took my sister and me on a day excursion, by coach, to Kynance Cove, one of Cornwall’s best known beauty spots. Although I was by now familiar with all the beaches in Falmouth, I had very little knowledge of the rest of the coastline of the county and so, when I saw the magnificent cliff scenery of this most beautiful part of the Lizard point, I was filled with awe. From a distance, the rocks grouped about the sandy beach appeared jet black; only when you came close could you see that they were actually a dark green veined with red and purple. In fact, everywhere you looked, there was colour; the pure blue of the perfect summer sky, the pale gold of the soft sand and the intense turquoise, ultramarine and cobalt of the sea all contrived to dazzle the eye with their brilliance.
The tide was receding and I wanted to be the first to plant footprints in the sparkling, wet sand. I had to wait while my mother settled herself on the beach under a rock and unwrapped the sandwiches she had made earlier that morning. The filling was tomato and although my sister took one, I declined because there is nothing in the world more boring than a tomato sandwich; besides, I was too excited to eat and impatient to explore. At last, with warnings to keep well away from the sea because it was dangerous, we set off in the direction of the nearest rock pools, Jean trailing behind me as she took bites out of her sandwich. Suddenly, there was a loud splash, like a dog plunging into water and, startled, I turned around and saw, to my astonishment, that my sister had vanished. I looked about in bewilderment and then I spotted, floating on the surface of a pool, two triangles of bread and several slices of tomato. Of Jean, there was no sign. Although it could have been only a matter of a second or two, it seemed an eternity before she emerged, spluttering and choking, from the depths of the pool. Shocked, wet and cold, she sucked in her breath and with a mighty gasp let out such a deafening howl that even the sound of the sea roaring in the distance was drowned. She ran, crying hysterically, back to our mother leaving me to contemplate, with fascination, the remains of the tomato sandwich in the rock pool, still floating.

The last week of the school holidays was accompanied by loud thunderstorms which shook our flimsy caravan and frightened my sister and me. My mother said if you didn’t boil the milk when a storm was approaching, it would go off. One afternoon, while she was out, I heard thunder rumbling in the distance and so I took it upon myself to boil the milk. Although I spilled a good deal of it and burned the bottom of the saucepan I thought my mother would be impressed by my initiative and when she returned I was offended not to receive the praise which I considered to be my due.
By the end of the summer a suitable house had been found but we could not take possession until December; until then, we were going to have to continue living in the caravan. As it happened, the new house was directly opposite the school which I was going to attend: Clare Terrace County Primary School. It sounded very grand. My sister, being still an infant, would have to attend the National School until she was old enough to go to Clare Terrace. At my new school I would be wearing a uniform. It was a rather attractive uniform consisting of a brown, pleated skirt, a turquoise blue, brushed cotton blouse and a brown tie. The skirt had straps which crossed over at the back and were fastened to the waistband at the front with buttons but because I was short-waisted, the position of the buttons had to be altered. My mother had no brown thread so the next time we went shopping in Falmouth she sent me into the haberdashers’ to buy a reel of Sylko. The shade I selected was called ‘Nigger Brown’.
Swanpool was quite a distance from our new schools and it meant that we would have to catch the bus into Falmouth every morning. Our mother did not like having to get up early to get us ready for school and her bad morning moods grew even worse. I hated the journey to school. The bus took us to a place called The Moor, in the centre of Falmouth; from there, we had to ascend a long, steep flight of granite steps aptly named Jacob’s Ladder, arduous enough for the very fit and certainly an exhausting feat for little legs.
But if I hated the journey, I hated the school even more. From the moment I stepped through the entrance on the very first morning I was fearful. It was uncannily quiet. Talking in the corridors was forbidden and strict discipline was exercised in the classrooms. Few girls were brave enough to misbehave. I was put into the élite class, which had the grand name of Form One. These were the brightest girls who were expected to pass the eleven-plus. Our teacher was called Miss Jellis and although there were more than forty of us in that class, there was not a single girl who would have dared step out of line. Every morning, at roll-call, we had to recite our class number and our names: I was forty-one Margaret Walker, the next girl was forty-two Susan Wall and so on. The headmistress was called Miss Prince and although she was a very short woman, she struck terror into the hearts of the tallest girls. In fact, my sister, herself a tall girl by the time she went to Clare terrace, was told by an exasperated Miss Prince:
‘The tall ones are always the most stupid!’

With the start of the new term, our idyllic summer was at an end. The weather was cold and damp and Swanpool beach was bleak and windswept; the happy days my sister and I had spent there now seemed a very distant memory. Inside the caravan it was cramped, but cosy. I was given homework to do, now, and my father and I used to shout at each other as he tried, with little success, to help me with my arithmetic. One night, grappling with decimals, I shouted with such ferocity that I dislodged a kipper bone which had been stuck in my throat since lunch-time.
Bonfire night arrived and the caravanners built a huge bonfire in one of the fields above the site. There was an infectious excitement in the air and everyone - even my mother - seemed to be having the greatest fun. Uncle Cliff gave me some obsolete life-boat rockets which were an enormous success because they shot up into the sky with ear-splitting reports and seemed to light up the whole bay. There were Roman candles, Catherine wheels, golden fountains and other thrilling things which delighted Jean and me because not only had we never had a bonfire on the fifth of November but also the only fireworks we had ever been allowed were a shared packet of sparklers.
There was only one person living at the site whom people disliked. She was a young, unmarried woman with a baby and in those days such a state of affairs was considered scandalous. People referred to her as ‘that tart’ and were shocked that she left the baby unattended whenever she went out. One night, I was awoken by a commotion. My parents were outside and there were many shouting, excited voices; there was another sound, too, that I couldn’t identify at first, followed by that of breaking glass. I realised, then, that the strange, crackling sound was something on fire and as I threw off the blankets and crawled to the end of the bunk in order to look out of the window, my mother came back inside accompanied by the two children from the caravan next door.
It appeared that ‘that tart’ had gone out, leaving the baby alone as usual, and a fire had started. The caravan was locked so one of the men - he must have been very brave - smashed the back window and managed to grab the baby and bring her out, unharmed. Within minutes, the whole caravan was in flames and the people in the adjacent ones had to evacuate theirs for fear of the fire spreading. My sister, the neighbouring children and I all crawled on to my bunk and watched the spectacle in awe. The speed at which the caravan burned was terrifying and by the time the firemen arrived there was nothing left but its blackened skeleton. I was never told what became of the young woman and her baby; I only remember someone saying, in a tone of incredulity:
‘She had over forty pairs of shoes! Can you believe it? Forty!’

By Christmas, we had moved into our new home, a spacious, end-of-terrace, Georgian house with fourteen rooms and the rather distinguished name of ‘Clare House’. My mother wanted somewhere large enough for her to be able to do bed-and-breakfast so it seemed ideal. It was very close to the town centre and not an unreasonable distance from the beach; also, it had fine views of the harbour and the distant Fal estuaries from the front bedrooms. At the top of the house were two large attics with little doors leading to smaller attics and you could climb out of the window with ease on to the front parapet. There were three flights of stairs and so many bedrooms that our mother said we’d have to keep changing our rooms in order to keep them aired. Underneath the house was a cellar in which some previous owner had left an old-fashioned diving suit hanging from the low ceiling. It loomed out of the darkness like a ghoul and gave me such a fright the first time I stepped into that room that I never went there again. The kitchen was disproportionately small so it was decided to convert one of the large back rooms into a kitchen and install an Aga. My mother said we were going to need acres of carpet, lots more furniture and that it would take a long time to get everything ready in time for the guests next summer.
All the houses in Clare Terrace had front gardens so small that they could hardly be called gardens at all; we were privileged because, being at the end of the terrace, we had a walled garden as well as the front one. It was not large enough to offer much scope for entertainment but the house seemed so enormous after the restricted space of the caravan that Jean and I didn’t mind. We had had to share a bunk while we were living in the caravan but now we each had our own room and I revelled in my new-found privacy. However, our mother said, next summer we would have to share not only a room but also a bed because the house would be filled with guests and all the rooms would be occupied. If any guests turned up unexpectedly, she warned us, our father would have to sleep downstairs on the floor and we would have to sleep with her. We didn’t mind sharing a bed with each other but the prospect of having to sleep in the same bed as our mother filled both of us with extreme dismay..........

..

CHAPTER SEVEN: My Little Sister

2007-05-12T15:36:00.001+01:00

Often, when I went out with my friends, my mother would insist that I take my sister, too. This was a great humiliation because not one of them was obliged to drag along a younger sibling. I was so disgruntled that I used to be deliberately horrible to Jean and urge my friends to do the same. Strangers used to stop to admire her because she was a very striking little girl with her abundance of fair, curly hair and she was always beautifully dressed. My mother was a good knitter and made all our jumpers and cardigans. Once, she bought a pattern for a knitted skirt and matching jumper and the little girl on the cover who was modelling the outfit looked just like Jean. She had an unusually good sense of colour and was particularly skilled in fairisle knits; she used to make berets of fine, Shetland wool on circular needles and I would enjoy going with her to the Scotch Wool Shop to buy yarns. I loved all the different colours displayed on the shelves and breathing in the pleasant, mothbally smell. It was usual at that time to buy knitting yarn in long skeins and since it needed two people to roll them into balls I was often required by my mother to sit still for what seemed a very long time with my arms apart, the skeins of wool hanging from my hands while she unravelled them. If the yarn was destined to be made into a garment for me I could just about endure the boredom; if, however, she intended to knit something for Jean I protested vehemently. I thought it most unfair that my sister didn’t have to help but my mother said she was too young. It seemed to me that being too young excused Jean from a good many tedious tasks.
As well as garments for all the family, she knitted dolls’ clothes and would buy little, naked, Rosebud dolls, made from celluloid, to dress. When she’d finished the clothes, she would knit tiny blankets. She would put these, together with the doll, into a little basket. I was losing interest in dolls by then but I was so enchanted by my mother’s handiwork that I begged to have a dressed doll in a basket, too.
On market days, my sister and I would accompany our mother to Bishops’ Stortford. I liked the town and the curious, treacly smell which permeated every corner. That was malt, my mother said, which was used in the making of beer. I liked the smell in the baker’s shop, too, of the new bread and the cakes. Once, while my mother was chatting to the assistant, my sister reached up to the counter and grasped with both hands a large, wooden tray filled with fancy cakes. Before anyone realised what was happening, the whole lot crashed on to the floor. I was filled with dismay and embarrassment: this was far worse, even, than the time at Sunday school when she had said ‘Amen!’ in the wrong place when the rector was praying. My mother, too, was flushed with embarrassment and was deeply apologetic. But the baker and the assistant were so charmed by my sister that they laughed off the incident and told us not to worry. They simply picked the cakes off the floor and put them back in the tray as if nothing had happened.
On one of the stalls in the street were dozens of baby tortoises and I always begged to stop to look at them. One day, the man in charge was trying to bandage his thumb which appeared to have been cut rather badly.
‘That needs a stitch, really,’ said my mother, examining it. She took the bandage and the man held out his hand while she strapped up the bleeding thumb. He whispered something to her and she blushed and giggled, like a girl.
‘But I’ve got two little girls,’ she protested.
The incident went to her head and she was so full of herself that she spent the rest of the morning strutting about with her head high as though she were royalty. I was deeply ashamed on her behalf. To make matters worse, on the bus on the way home, the woman sitting opposite us leaned forward and said to her:
‘I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but what beautifully slim ankles you have!’
‘Slender ankles are a sign of good breeding,’ smirked my mother as we climbed down from the bus. My mortification knew no bounds.
When she was five years old, my sister started school. I don’t think she liked it very much and dinner times were a daily ordeal for her because she was a very finicky eater and would have lived entirely off sweet things had she been allowed to. Particularly loathesome to her was the cheese pie and she couldn’t understand how I could find it so savoury. I was used to walking to school in the mornings but my sister found it too tiring and so we had to catch the bus. I objected to having to be in charge of her and if I misbehaved at school and was reprimanded, she would waste no time in telling my mother. I called her ‘Sneak’ and urged my friends to do the same.
During the time we were living in Little Hallingbury there occurred a total eclipse of the sun. People were not warned as they are nowadays of the potential damage to the eyes caused by looking at the sun through inappropriate media such as smoked glass or photographic film and our mother thought she was being very clever by suggesting that we looked at the reflection of this rare astronomical event in a bowl of water. So, at the predicted commencement of the eclipse, my sister and I went out into the garden carrying our bowl of water, crouched over it and waited. We waited and waited. Nothing happened: the day was cloudy and threatened rain, with very little chance that we would glimpse the sun at all, no doubt a good thing as far as our eyes were concerned. Very soon, we got bored and went off to play.
I couldn’t persuade my sister to share my enthusiasm for anything to do with space and space travel. I even invited her to come aboard my ‘spaceship’ which was, in fact, a large elder tree at the bottom of the garden and in which I used to spend many happy hours hiding in the leafy branches, letting my imagination take me on exciting journeys into the unknown, but she thought I was silly and would go off to entertain herself. Then, on the radio - which my mother still called the wireless - a new, forthcoming serial was announced. It was called ‘Journey Into Space’ and I thought it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me in my life.
From the first episode, I was captivated; in fact, I could not accept that the latter had come to an end. Surely, they couldn’t expect anyone to wait a whole week until the next episode? I could not imagine what I was going to do with myself until then. For the next few weeks my life was obsessed by ‘Journey Into Space’ and I would count the hours before each weekly episode. Uncannily, the story was very similar to what was to happen to the ill-fated Apollo Thirteen mission inasmuch that it was about a voyage to the moon which went badly wrong: the only difference was that a friendly alien did not come to the rescue of the Apollo Thirteen crew. After the final, thrilling episode I felt that my life no longer had a purpose and I refused to believe that there was to be no continuation of the series. I was lifted out of my despair when I began to read a book I had borrowed from the library about a boy with six fingers who came from another planet. The book enthralled me so much that I read it all over again and took to studying the hands of strange boys in the hope of discovering my own alien.
By now, my sister’s hair had grown very long; it was also very thick and our mother had to tame it by braiding it into two, heavy plaits. One day, our parents took us to London Zoo and while we were visiting the chidrens’ corner, an inquisitive goat ambled up to Jean and set about eating one of her plaits. She screamed so loudly that a keeper came running up to investigate the cause of the commotion; fortunately, the goat was prised off and my sister placated with ice-cream.
There was a German couple living in Little Hallingbury, not very far from our cottage. People said that they were good Germans because they had not fought against us in the war and had been anti-Hitler. Although they loved children, they had none of their own and no-one thought it extraordinary when they invited all the children in the village to a party. They entertained and fed us well but I think most of us felt a little awkward and out of place, despite the obvious effort which the couple was making to ensure that we enjoyed ourselves. Before it was time to go home, the man picked me up and sat me on his lap. I immediately stiffened and strained away from him as he began to massage my stomach.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘let me feel your tummy to see if it’s nice and full!’
With each circular movement of his hand he went lower and lower. My discomfort was turning into panic and I tried to wriggle myself from his lap. At last, I think the man realised that I knew he was doing something inappropriate and released me. I removed myself as far away from him as I could get and saw him seize upon another little girl and begin to do the same thing to her. I was relieved when my mother came to take me home and when she asked me if I’d had a nice time, I told her that I didn’t like Germans very much. Adult behaviour baffled me: on the one hand, they warned you every time you went out of the house not to talk to strangers yet, on the other, they threw you into the arms of people who, even to an artless and trusting child, were manifestly overstepping the boundaries of propriety.

One cold, March day Jean and I were in the orchard helping my father to saw up apple boughs for firewood. Stepping backwards, I tripped over a piece of wood and fell awkwardly. I knew at once that my arm was broken and, supporting it with my other one, I went to find my mother. After it had been X-rayed at the hospital, I thought they would plaster me up and send me home, as they’d always done before. But a doctor came into the room where we were waiting and called my parents aside. I couldn’t hear what he was saying but he looked very serious and I began to feel afraid. My mother walked back to where I was sitting and put her arm around me.
‘ The doctors need to do a little operation on your arm,’ she said, gently, ‘ and I’m afraid that means you’ll have to stay in hospital for a day or two.’
‘But I don’t want to!’ I cried. ‘I hate hospitals!’
It was useless to protest, I knew: trying not to cry, I allowed myself to be led away by a nurse. The damage to my arm was serious because not only had I smashed the elbow but also the injury was very close to the site of the radial nerve and my parents were warned that I might lose the use of my arm. Fortunately, the surgeons at Bishop’s Stortford hospital had had plenty of practice on the wiring up of broken bones because my Uncle Albert was a patient there, too. Over the years he had had so many repaired fractures that bits of wire used to poke out of his skin. My operation was difficult and took a long time because the surgeons had to thread all the broken fragments of bone on to a circle of silver wire. Afterwards, I was quite ill and was put into a room next to the Sister’s office. Hospitals were grim places when I was a child and strict discipline was maintained under the iron rule of the Matron, a fearsome figure in a meticulously starched and ironed uniform crowned by an elaborate headdress which looked as if it had been constructed by an expert in the art of origami. Visiting hours were limited and all sweets were confiscated and put into a large tin so that they could be shared out fairly. One evening, my mother gave me a bar of chocolate; it was my favourite, Cadbury’s Milk Tray, and consisted of six little shapes, each containing a different filling. The coffee-flavoured one was the best. I hid the chocolate under my pillow but Sister discovered it and whisked it away. When my mother came the following evening, I burst into a flood of tears because I thought she might find out about the confiscated chocolate and start a row. Sister came into the room to see what the noise was about.
‘It’s always the same,’ she announced, without sympathy, ‘they’re perfectly all right until the mothers come and then they cry.’
One night, I awoke with two urgent needs: one was for a glass of water, the other for a pee. I lay in the dark, too afraid to call out, until at last two young nurses came into the room to check on me. I couldn’t decide which of my needs was the more pressing but, in the end, opted for a visit to the bathroom.
‘Please may I be excused?’ I asked, timidly. The nurses thought this was very funny and laughed as they helped me out of bed. They were waiting to tuck me up again when I returned.
‘Please could I have a drink of water?’ I asked. The nurses laughed again. ‘You’ll need another wee-wee, then!’
While one of the nurses helped me back into bed, the other went out and returned a few moments later with a glass. I took a thirsty gulp and discovered, to my surprise, that it was orange squash, a rare treat in those days. I don’t think they realised just how much I enjoyed that drink; afterwards, they wished me a good night and went off down the corridor, laughing and chatting quietly. To me, they had seemed like angels and their kindness had touched me so much that I went back to sleep in a much happier frame of mind. The next morning I was so improved that they moved me out of the side ward and into the main ward where I immediately got on like a house on fire with the little girl in the next bed, who was the same age as I was.
My mother was late that night but I hardly noticed because I was having such a good time with my new friend and her parents. They seemed to me such lovely, generous people and made me laugh so much that my sides hurt. They’d brought a selection of sweets which we stuffed into our mouths when no-one was looking.
‘I bet they don’t share the sweets out!’ said my friend’s mother. ‘I bet that nasty old Sister has them all. I don’t call it fair.’ In fact, she was wrong: the next morning, Sister produced the famous tin and ceremoniously handed each child one sweet.
That evening, my mother said that she had some sad news.
‘Nanny has gone to Heaven to be with Jesus,’ she told me.
‘Poor Jesus!’ I thought. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than having to put up with my grandmother’s nagging for all eternity.
My grandmother had broken her wrist at about the same time that I had broken my arm and had died suddenly, a few days later, from a blood clot. It must have been a great shock to my mother who had had enough stress and worry to cope with on account of my operation and hospitalisation. I was too young, though, to appreciate this.
My broken arm gave me no trouble and a few weeks later the surgeon said my plaster could come off. My sister had accompanied my mother and me on that trip to the hospital and when a nurse led me to a room at the end of a corridor my mother was too engrossed in conversation with someone else to notice that Jean had followed me. The nurse lifted me on to a trolley, cut the plaster cast with a pair of giant scissors, prised it apart and pulled it off. Next, she carefully removed the lint bandage. Suddenly, there was a high-pitched, ear-splitting scream; startled, she spun round and saw my sister. Jean’s screams were so loud that medical staff came running from all directions to see what was the matter. The sight of my gory arm and the long scar embroidered with a row of big, black, spidery stitches had horrified my sister so much that she was inconsolable. Abandoned on my trolley, I felt indignant because of all the fuss they were making of her. I was the one most deserving of attention and I was being completely ignored. It was decidedly unfair.
Not long after my misadventure, Jean, I and our parents, on a trip to London, went to a restaurant for lunch. We had hardly sat down when my sister began to wail. The other diners turned round to stare as my mother, embarrassed, tried to calm her.
‘It’s the nurses!’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t like the nurses!’
We realised then that her distress had been caused by the sight of the waitresses in their white aprons and she had mistaken them for nurses; evidently, she had been more traumatised than anyone had thought by her experience at the hospital. It took a long while to reassure her that the waitresses weren’t nurses.

My accident and the follow-up visits to the hospital meant that I had missed a good deal of schooling and my mother was worried that I might have fallen behind. Arithmetic was my weakest subject and so she accepted the offer of Mrs.Tobit, Mavis’ mother and a teacher, to give me extra coaching.
‘You don’t want to fail your scholarship on account of poor arithmetic,’ said my mother. I didn’t really understand what this scholarship business was all about; it had been mentioned once or twice before, a long time ago, but now the subject was being brought up again and again with disturbing frequency. It now loomed on my horizon like something dark and ominous and I did my best to put it out of my mind.

That summer, the happy months we had spent in Little Hallingbury came to an end; the cottage was sold and our parents told Jean and me that we were going to move back to Cornwall. A big removal lorry arrived with ‘John Julian, Cornwall’ painted on it and all the neighbours stopped to stare because none of them had been told that we were going.
‘We’re moving down to Cornwall because of Margaret’s health,’ said my mother.
We squeezed ourselves and the remainder of our belongings into the car and set off, leaving Widdy behind with the new people. In those days, a journey to Cornwall from London took at least seven hours; often, you would have to stop to let the radiator cool down and then you’d have to knock on someone’s door to beg for water or look for a stream if you were in the country. Tyres, too, were prone to puncture on long trips and it was nearly always necessary to stop to tinker with something or other. Our previous car had been an Austin Seven and it was so small and square that we named it ‘The Matchbox’. It is highly unlikely that it would have made the trip from Little Hallingbury to Cornwall.
We stopped on Dartmoor for a picnic and I now that I was older, I was able to appreciate what an extraordinarily beautiful place it was. The air resounded with the singing of larks and yellowhammers and there were foxgloves all around us just coming into flower. I had never seen them before and I was fascinated. I wondered why they were called foxgloves but my father, who knew most things, had no idea. I found out later that the word fox in this instance is derived from the word folk which is how they referred to fairies in the old days. I half believed in fairies and was charmed by the idea of the speckled, pink flowers being used for gloves. When the time came for us to continue our journey, I was sorry to leave Dartmoor. We had had to make a number of stops and it was getting so late that my father decided to make a detour and spend the night at his brother’s in Brixham. I was delighted. It was all turning out to be a wonderful adventure and I no longer felt regret about leaving Little Hallingbury and forgave my mother for telling the neighbours that my health - which was, if fact, very robust - was the reason for our departure.

CHAPTER SIX: A Village Idyll

2007-05-12T15:35:00.001+01:00

Our new address was: The Thatched Cottage,
George Green,
Little Hallingbury,
Bishop’s Stortford,
Hertfordshire.
It impressed me so much that I wrote it inside the covers of all my books, on my wooden pencil case, my school bag and just about everything else that I possessed.
My father began working on the house immediately and the first thing that had to be tackled was the conversion of one of the bedrooms into a bathroom because the existing one was a very primitive affair stuck on to the side of the house. No sooner had it been completed than a tawny owl made its home under the thatch eaves and would sit on one of the oak beams gravely regarding anyone who happened to be using the bathroom. I was delighted and thrilled because I had only ever seen pictures of those mysterious birds - tawny owls featured strongly in my books of fairytales- and here was one, literally, under our very roof!
We had a large garden, part of which was an apple orchard, and behind the cottage was a mature walnut tree; even now, whenever I smell walnuts, I think of that tree and the nuts I tried to eat, even before they were ripe. A wire fence separated our garden from fields of wheat and barley and it was easy for me to crawl underneath it and hide in the tall crops. I would lie on my stomach and study the myriad, low-growing arable weeds such as scarlet pimpernels, fumitory and my favourites, wild pansies, that carpeted the ground. I discovered four-leaved clovers, too, and pressed them between the covers of books because my mother said they were lucky.
It is difficult to recall the time we lived in Little Hallingbury without a certain feeling of nostalgia, a hankering after a way of life which, of course, no longer exists. I was happy in our new surroundings and for the first time in my life I felt that we were, at last, settled. I felt proud when visitors to the village stopped to take photographs of our cottage and I couldn’t imagine my parents ever wanting to move house again; to me, it was idyllic and I was sure there was not a better place to live in the whole world.
The village parson called on us and introduced himself as Rudolph Walker. Walker was also our surname and my mother thought she was being very amusing when she referred to him behind his back as ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Rector.’ He invited me to join the church Sunday school and my mother made me go, despite my protestations. I had to endure an excruciatingly boring half-hour every Sunday afternoon while the rector told us about Jesus and made us say prayers. It was nothing less than torture to me because I couldn’t bear to be without anything to occupy my hands or my mind.
We had another visitor one day. I was amusing myself in the garden when a strange figure suddenly appeared at our front gate. That part of his face which was not shaded by a battered, floppy hat or concealed by a long, grizzled beard was very brown and deeply lined. He was clad in a crumpled, grimy coat which came down to his ankles and was tied around the middle by a piece of string and on his feet were dusty, leather boots which had obviously done good mileage. Tramps were not an uncommon sight in those days but it was the first time I’d ever seen one at such close quarters.
‘Could I trouble you for a glass of water?’ he asked.
Too alarmed to reply, I ran indoors to tell my mother that there was a tramp at the gate asking for a glass of water but, instead of storming out of the house in indignation, as I’d assumed she would, she took a clean glass from the cupboard, filled it with water and carried it to the waiting man. I stared, round-eyed, as he took the glass and drained it.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked as he handed back the empty glass.
‘Very kind of you,’ he replied, ‘but I’m not much of a tea-drinker, thanks all the same.’
They chatted for some moments and then, as he turned to go on his way, the tramp smiled at me and said:
‘A very pleasant woman, your mother!’

I was used to changing schools by now and felt quite confident about becoming a new pupil in the village school. In this small and intimate environment I quickly got to know all the other children and settled down happily. At dinner-time we had to walk in a crocodile down the road to a wooden hut where they served our meals. We had cheese pie once a week but it was considerably more palatable than the Beacon School version and I was very thankful that we weren’t given brawn. There was a greater availability of food and a much wider choice, as well as more sweet things on the menu now that sugar was no longer rationed. School children of my generation were given free milk, usually consumed in the mid-morning break; it came in little bottles with silver tops through which you poked your straw. I detested milk. It made me feel sick and I was glad when chocolate became more widely available so that I could at least have something to take the taste away.
My father had a shed in the garden, ostensibly for storing tools but in reality a refuge from my mother, who referred to it as ‘the woodshed’. One night, a feral cat gave birth in it to a single, ginger kitten. The cat fled whenever anyone went near but we left food for her. When she wasn’t there, I used to pick the kitten up and stroke it so that by the time it was old enough to be weaned it was quite tame. I named it Widdy because it came to me when I called ‘Widdywiddywiddy!’ When Auntie Frances came to stay with us some months later she said she’d never seen anything so pretty as our orchard all in blossom with Widdy padding across the grass under the trees in the early morning light.
We hadn’t been living very long in Little Hallingbury when I made friends with a neighbour’s daughter who was the same age as I. My mother approved of her because her parents were both professional people and therefore, in her eyes, respectable. My new friend was called Mavis, an unusual name even then; so many girls were called Margaret or Elizabeth after the royal princesses. There was another girl, Patricia, who seemed keen to be my friend but there was a great deal about her of which, I knew, My mother would certainly not approve. She was one of those girls who develop prematurely and are far too knowing for their age; she whispered things to me which I didn’t understand and thought I should not know about.
‘I lie on the bed and do myself sometimes,’ she whispered. ‘It’s nice. Do you do yourself?’
I didn’t know how to reply because I had no idea what she was talking about. I asked her what she meant by do.
‘You know! It’s what they do - grown-ups. They do each other. I’ve seen them. I can show you if you like and we can do each other.’
My instinct warned me that my mother would be displeased if she knew I was having this conversation and I told Patricia that I had to go home. Afterwards, she called round to my house often but, wisely, I always made sure my mother was within earshot when we were together. One day, however, when my mother was preoccupied with hanging out the washing, Patricia pulled me down on to the ground, lifted up her skirt, positioned herself on top of me and ground her pubic bone into mine so hard that it hurt.
‘There! she cried, triumphantly. ’ That’s what doing someone is like!’
I was embarrassed and ashamed and after that avoided Patricia as best I could. My mother asked me if I had fallen out with her and when I went bright red she immediately became suspicious.
‘Have you been playing rude games?’ she demanded.
I shook my head and went redder still. ‘I don’t want you playing with that girl again!’ she said, angrily. ‘What have you been doing?’
‘She lifted her skirt up,’ I mumbled. Surprisingly,my mother seemed satisfied with that feeble answer and she didn’t press me further. She made me feel, as she always did, that I had done something dreadfully wrong even though I was innocent. I never attempted to defend myself when she made accusations of that nature because, quite simply, I didn’t understand what she was talking about. On a later occasion, my mother discovered some drawings which had been done by my sister who was then about five years old. They were only childish scribbles but they were, nevertheless, startlingly explicit representations of naked human bodies; how Jean had acquired such detailed knowledge of the human fundament I cannot imagine. Anyway, my mother was extremely angry and waved them in my face.
‘What are these?’ she demanded. ‘What do you mean by drawing such disgusting things?’
I stared at them in blank astonishment. Did she really believe I could have done such stupid, babyish drawings? I was deeply offended.
‘I didn’t do these!’ I cried, indignantly. ‘My drawings are much better than that!’
It was one of the very few instances that I actually did defend myself before my mother.

Every Saturday, my mother, my sister and I walked the three-quarters of a mile to the end of the lane where we lived and caught the Green Line bus to London in order to spend the day with my grandmother. I liked the walk because we had to go across a level-crossing and it was always a big thrill for me if we had to wait for a train to pass. On the other side of the crossing was a gypsy encampment separated from the road by a wire fence. As we walked past, groups of dirty, ragged children would stare, gravely, and I would stare back, with great interest.
‘Don’t look at them!’ my mother would hiss.
Just before we reached the main road we passed a pub called The Three Horseshoes; my father sometimes stopped there for a drink and one day he came home and told us that he’d just met the well-known comedian, Jimmy Edwards. I was delighted because I was a great fan of the radio family, ‘The Glums’, and I always used to laugh when he burst in on Eth and Ron with his famous line, ‘’ello! ‘ello! ‘ello!’, constantly thwarting poor Ron’s attempts to court Eth.

Although I enjoyed the company of my cousins, I didn’t like my grandmother very much. She nagged a lot and was always arguing with my mother. Sometimes, though, she took me to the theatre at a place called Coronation Gardens to see matinée performances of variety acts. I had been to the cinema on a number of occasions but live entertainment was a new experience. Some of the acts were boring but, one afternoon, the curtain parted to reveal a ballet dancer wearing a short, green tutu with a glittery, black bodice and a black tiara. To me, this was something new and wonderful; I gazed with rapt attention as she spun around the stage, fascinated by the black, satin pointe shoes on which she balanced, incredibly, on the very tips of her toes. I was spellbound, captivated, and from that day ballet dancers were the inspiration for all my drawings.
By the time our Saturday visits were over and we had walked the length of Peterborough Road to the bus stop, my sister and I were always very tired. Jean would fall into a deep slumber as soon as she had climbed on to her seat but I would try to fight sleep because I knew I’d only have to wake up again when we reached the end of our journey. But the motion of the bus, the comfortable warmth and the steaminess of the atmosphere would never fail to make my head begin to nod, no matter how hard I tried to resist, and I’d drop off, only to be shaken by my mother telling me we had arrived. How I hated those awakenings! To me, the bus was like a warm, cosy bed and I could hardly bear to be dragged out of it into the cold, sharp, night air. I was very irritable but after a few moments of whining I would suddenly find myself wide awake and begin to enjoy the walk. In the post-war years, there was no light pollution in the English countryside and the night skies were a wonderful spectacle. I asked my father what stars were and he explained that they were suns, just like our own sun. Some of them were so far away, he told me, that it took many millions of years for the light from them to reach Earth and for that reason, many of them didn’t even exist any more. I didn’t really understand all this but the stars continued to fascinate me and eventually I discovered the inspirational books of Patrick Moore so that by the time I’d reached my teens I’d become a keen amateur astronomer.
People who have never been to Essex probably don’t realise what a beautiful county it is. When I was a child, motoring was a pleasant, relaxing pastime and my parents were in the habit of driving out into the countryside on fine Sunday afternoons; we passed through flowery lanes and pretty villages such as Thaxted, Saffron Walden and Finchingfield and often we would stop at a country pub in some pleasant, leafy setting. My parents would leave my sister and me in the car with a bottle each of Stone’s ginger beer and a packet of crisps. Sometimes, I would sit outside with my drawing book and pencil and people would stop to admire my sketches. Once, a woman asked me to draw her little dog and was so pleased with the result that she gave me money for it. It was my first ever sale! I felt very proud but my mother said the woman was just a drunken old tart.
Not only was there the countryside of Essex to explore but also its popular seaside resorts such as Southend, Clacton and Brightlingsea, where people enjoyed themselves without restraint. There were donkeys on the beach, Punch and Judy shows, shops selling pink, peppermint rock, ice-cream and tacky souvenirs, winkle stalls, walks along the pier or promenade and all manner of amusements and entertainments. Once, as a special treat, I was taken to Southend to see the lights. I admired them politely but, in actual fact, I thought they were very artificial and much preferred looking at the stars from my garden at home. I had a much better time when I went to Brightlingsea one day with my friend, Mavis, and her parents; to me, this resort was the very last word in seaside fantasy and we returned home tired and sunburnt, our hair stiff with salt water and sand, but blissfully content.

My grandmother had a lifelong friend, Ethel, who became, in time, my mother’s friend also. Once you saw through her rather gruff exterior, you realised that she was a good-hearted soul and over the years I became fond of her. She had a dry, very Cockney, sense of humour and a way of addressing people which amused me greatly. For example, once on a crowded railway platform, a young soldier, with his kit on his back, accidentally bumped into her.
‘’Ere!’ she exclaimed. ‘Watch where your’e going, you khaki-clad sod!’ Afterwards, whenever I thought of that incident and recalled the look of surprise on the soldier’s face, I burst out laughing.
Ethel was married to Harry and they had two daughters, Betty and Judy. I never saw much of Betty, a temperamental and volatile young woman of whom I was rather afraid, but when they came to visit us they would always bring Judy. She was a tall, gawky girl with over-large hands and feet; her dark hair was tightly braided into two long plaits secured at the ends with ribbons and her eyes, which were large and brown, were not unlike those of a benign cow. Indeed, there was something about her that was slightly bovine, both in her slow, rather langourous way of moving and her slow speech. She drove my mother mad with her infuriating habit of answering ‘I don’t mind’ whenever she was asked anything. She was at least three years older than I but she was unable to express herself and so slow-witted that it was like being with someone much younger; I found her company tedious and was glad when the visit was over so that I was no longer obliged to entertain her.
One day, when Ethel and Harry were paying us a visit, Judy wandered into the shed where my father was working. As she sauntered out again, in her dreamy, cow-like way, my mother spotted her. She said nothing but, later that evening, when the visitors had gone home, she confronted my father.
‘What the hell was going on with you and that Judy in the woodshed?’
The blank expression with which he regarded her served only to inflame her even more. He gaped at her, speechless, while she spat out shocking accusations. Vainly, he attempted to defend himself against her tirade of abuse. The row went on into the night and in the morning, dragging us with her, my mother stormed out of the house.
‘When I leave him.........’ she began. Whenever they had a row, she would expect us to side with her and she would speak to me confidingly: ’When I leave him......’
I was terrified the first time she said that to me, following one of their violent rows; my sister was in her pram and we were walking the streets, aimlessly, after she had flung out of the house in a furious rage. If she left him, where would we go? What would happen to us? She knew we were frightened and upset when she quarrelled with our father but she made no attempt to control her temper. In the normal course of events their rows would subside and be forgotten; the row over Judy and the woodshed, however, simmered on for years and would be brought up again whenever a fresh argument erupted.

When my father had finished doing up the cottage, he got a job as storekeeper for a firm of aeronautical engineers at Stansted Airport. My mother had the idea of doing afternoon teas and applied for planning permission to do so. It was granted, but there had been two objections, one from the landlord of the pub across the road and the other from a neighbour: after that, she went out of her way to snub both parties and would make cutting remarks in a loud voice if ever one of them was within earshot. My parents went to auction sales in their spare time to look for suitable furniture for the tea-room. They had good taste and by the time everything was ready and there was a sign outside saying ‘Afternoon Teas’, it all looked very cottagy, comfortable and welcoming. I had been helping my mother to practice cake-making: we baked Dundee cakes, fairy cakes, coconut cakes, iced buns, coconut pyramids and butter-cream sponges; wisely, she didn’t attempt anything too fancy. Things got off to a good start and on fine afternoons we were quite busy. Often, we would run out of eggs so my sister and I would be sent to a nearby farm to buy some more. It was quite a long walk down a lonely lane: so lonely, in fact, that we never encountered another soul. In summer, on very hot days, the tarmac along the lane would blister and we would spend minutes of intense enjoyment stamping on the glistening, black bubbles to pop them. It was worth the telling-off we received from our mother when we arrived home, late, with the eggs.
One day, a group of cyclists turned up for afternoon tea and they were so impressed that they told my mother they were going to recommend her to the Cyclists’ Touring Club and in due course a metal sign arrived with ‘C.T.C. Recommended’ painted on it in black and yellow. It was hung up next to the sign announcing ‘Afternoon Teas’ and she was very proud.
In the orchard were several different varieties of English apples and when autumn came I used to bag up the windfalls and sit outside on the green with a cardboard sign advertising eating apples for sale. I did very well and with the proceeds I used to go to the shop in the village and buy sweets. My friend, Mavis, also had an orchard but their fruit trees were mostly plums and we used to gorge ourselves on juicy, golden greengages and sweet, fat Victoria plums.
My sister and I caught whooping cough and we were very poorly. Any parent with doubts about allowing their child to have the vaccine should think again: it is a most horrible, frightening illness. When the coughing spasms occur, you are utterly unable to breathe; your arms flail as you gasp, whoop and turn blue in your desperation to get air. The attacks leave you feeling shaky and exhausted and even when you have recovered, your chest is weakened and you are far more prone to respiratory viruses than you were before. Later, we went down with mumps and that, too, is unpleasant. I was due to attend a birthday party on the day I became ill; I woke up with a high temperature and severe neck pain and felt so sick that I wasn’t even able to feel disappointment about missing the party.The family who had invited me very kindly sent round some birthday cake and other goodies afterwards but I was too poorly to eat them.
There was sickness, too, in the countryside. Myxomatosis had arrived and rabbits were dropping dead in great numbers. I was appalled and grief-stricken by what I saw; it seemed to me a cruel and terrible thing deliberately to let loose such a virulent and lethal disease upon innocent creatures and I longed to wreak revenge upon those responsible. Even the most hardened and unsentimental were sickened by the sight of all those dead and dying animals.
I had a great love of the countryside and would wander off by myself to explore without my mother ever noticing my absence. There was a farmyard not very far from our cottage with a footpath through it leading to a wood which was carpeted with bluebells in the spring. Later, there were fields of cowslips and once, on a grassy hillside, I discovered harebells which were the same shade of pale cobalt as the sky overhead. One lovely May morning, while I was sitting quietly on a branch of some ancient tree, a cuckoo alighted above me and called, twice. The bird was unaware of my presence and I held my breath, enthralled, hoping that it would call again but eventually it flew off and I heard it in the far distance. I raced home, desperate to share my experience. But whom to tell? My sister was too young to appreciate such a thing and my mother would only make some sneering remark or tell me off for climbing trees.

In school one day our teacher told us that she wanted each of us to prepare a little talk to be given in front of the class. The subject was: ‘The Happiest Day of My Life.’ I thought for a long time, trying to decide which occasion had given me the greatest happiness. I would have liked to talk about my walks in the country and my encounter with the cuckoo in the tree but I knew the rest of the class wouldn’t understand how such simple things could bring such joy; then there was the day I went to Brightlingsea with my friend, Mavis, but I knew my mother would be offended if she thought that my happiest day had been spent in the company of someone other than herself.
‘What about the time you were a bridesmaid?’ she suggested. ‘Surely that must have been the happiest day of your life?’
I thought back to that day. Ethel and Harry’s elder daughter, Betty, had got married and Judy and I were the bridesmaids. We both wore very plain, long dresses of pink satin with high waists and short, puffed sleeves. We carried little posies of flowers and had to stand about in a chilly wind for a long time while the photographer took pictures. The ceremony had bored me and I had fidgeted. Afterwards, we all went to the reception and I made myself sick by gorging on too many sweet things. Did my mother know so little about me that she imagined Betty’s wedding had been the happiest day of my life? All the same, to please her I chose the occasion as my subject and the ‘little talk’ I gave was, as a consequence, undeserving of much praise.

CHAPTER FIVE: Into The Fifties

2007-05-12T15:33:00.000+01:00

By the end of the forties, the country had dusted itself down and was making plans for the future. With the increasing availability of raw materials, businesses were beginning to expand and there was an air of optimism. Cornwall, however, remained in a state of inertia and, as always, employment prospects were poor and wages low. I think these were the reasons that my parents decided to sell up and move back to Essex. This time, there was no house for us to move into so we had to live in a caravan while my parents went about the business of house-hunting. The site on which our temporary home was parked was a large, tree-lined field, close to a river, not very far from Epping, where my sister had been born. My memories of the weeks we spent there are mostly pleasant; summer was coming, the weather was fine and there were plenty of other children to play with. The river was a great novelty; it was wide and fast-flowing and nearby was something I had never seen before, a weir. I used to regard it with grave interest because people said it was extremely dangerous and if you went anywhere near it you would be swept away and drowned.
In May 1951 the Festival Of Britain opened and all the members of my family went to the main exhibition site on the south bank of the Thames to see it. I’m afraid that all I can remember of the Festival, which was an attempt by the Government to promote a feeling of recovery from the War and encourage us all to look to the future, was that I was profoundly bored. To me, the only good thing about it was the splendid FunFair ( as it was called ) in Battersea Park. That, to a young child who had never before experienced anything like it, was thrilling beyond words. I wanted to have a go on everything. I was mezmerised, too, by the Guinness Festival Clock with its remarkable mechanism which sprang into life every fifteen minutes; although I counted the seconds and kept my eyes glued to the big hand, it never failed to make me jump when this happened. I enjoyed myself enormously and had to be dragged away, protesting, from all these delights. I was presented with some special stamps commemorating the Festival and although I kept them for years, I eventually sold them, together with my grandfather’s collection of cigarette cards, when I was a hard-up student.
It made a big difference to my life that paper was no longer such a scarce commodity. Now I could buy drawing books of good quality cartridge as well as coloured pencils and crayons. Unusually for a child, I had a notion of perspective and my schema, or way of representing the human body, was precocious; normally, a child’s schema exaggerates those parts of the body of which there is the greatest awareness, such as the mouth and the hands. I was influenced very much by the illustrations in my books and I particularly loved and studied intently the drawings of Charles Robinson and Arthur Rackham. My grandmother on my father’s side said it was not surprising that I could draw so well because her family was descended from either Constable or Gainsborough - she couldn’t remember which.
My other grandmother was pleased that we had come back to Essex and came to visit us often. I was relieved that she was too taken up with Jean to bother much with me; I was enjoying my freedom and the outdoor life. My parents, too, seemed more relaxed and, for once, the quarrels ceased and my mother became much more amenable.
It was about this time that I developed the habit of nail-biting. I don’t think it was for reasons of stress or anxiety: I was merely copying my mother who, when she was reading, would chew her nails to the quick. I thought it most unfair, then, to be chided for doing something she did. She nagged me unceasingly but I couldn’t stop; in the end, she threatened to paint my nails with a horrible tasting substance which, she assured me, would cure the habit. I didn’t believe that any such thing existed and so it came as a big shock when she produced a bottle of noxious looking, brown liquid which, she said, was called bitter aloes, and proceeded to apply it to my nails. Gingerly, I touched a painted nail with the tip of my tongue and instantly recoiled as though I had been burned for the mouth-shrivelling bitterness startled and nauseated me so much that I burst into tears. I sulked for the rest of the day but my parents ignored me. I tried to wash off the brown stains on my nails but the vile, bitter taste remained and I felt that I had never hated my mother so much.
That night, when Jean was being put to bed, my father began to tickle her. She screamed with joy as he rolled her up in her blanket, pinning her arms to her sides so that she couldn’t resist. Choking with laughter, the tears rolling down her face, she pleaded with him to carry on every time he stopped. I regarded them in sullen silence, feeling left-out and hurt. Later, before I cried myself to sleep, I resolved to run away the next morning. They would think I’d fallen into the river and been swept away by the weir. I imagined the scene: my mother would be crying and wringing her hands, full of guilt and remorse, and people would talk about them and say what cruel and callous parents they had been. It was a highly sastisfying picture.
In the event, I didn’t run away and the bitter aloes didn’t stop me from biting my nails; I simply grew out of the habit. Meanwhile, the summer came to an end and still we were living in the caravan. Term started and I was sent to a big school in Epping where there were so many children that I felt overwhelmed. Fortunately, I didn’t have to stay there for long because my parents found a house at last and, because it was quite a distance from my school, it was decided that I should attend another one which was much nearer to where we were going to live.
As soon as I saw our new home I knew I was going to love living there. It was a large, white, detatched house and the agent told my parents that it was reputed to have been a safe- house for the famous highwayman, Dick Turpin. It had a big garden with an enormous air-raid shelter on to the top of which I could scramble with ease. There was a glass porch with a grape vine growing in it but the grapes were green and so sour that they practically stripped the skin from the roof of the mouth. As soon as we had moved in, my father set about doing it up. The first task was to remove the hideously inappropriate staircase which the previous owner had installed and he was astonished and delighted to find, underneath it, the original one. He discovered, too, some old coins hidden behind some oak beams and was disappointed to be told, later, that they weren’t valuable. I had a bedroom to myself which overlooked the back garden and after the cramped conditions of the caravan it was a relief to have space of my own.
I was happy in my new school and the headmistress told my mother that in all her thirty years of teaching she’d never come across a child with such a talent for drawing. The walk to school was a short one and I didn’t mind making the daily journey by myself. The only drawback was that my mother wouldn’t let me cross the road opposite our house and so I had to shout for her when I returned in the afternoon. She was beginning to go deaf and sometimes I had to shout for such a long time that the neighbours would tell me off for making a noise. If only she could have been like all the other mothers who came every day to collect their children after school!
Jean and I both went down with measles (there was no vaccine in those days) and my mother told everyone that my sister made more fuss with her one spot than I did with my hundreds. Measles was regarded as a normal childhood illness and no-one seemed to be aware of the fact that it could be potentially dangerous. Certainly, we suffered no after-effects and I cannot remember feeling particularly unwell as a result of it, either. The disease which parents feared above all others was poliomyelitis, the effects of which were truly devastating, and if a child was feeling off-colour, the first question an anxious parent would ask was ‘Have you got a stiff neck?’ If you wanted to miss school for, say, a test you knew you’d fail, complaining of a stiff neck was guaranteed to get you off. It was a good ploy but the problem was you could only use it for a limited number of times.

I looked forward to Christmas that year with great excitement, despite the inevitability of my parents quarrelling. There were two things I desperately wanted, but knew I could expect to receive only one of them. One was a doll with long, blonde hair, articulated limbs and blue eyes with thick, black lashes; she was dressed in pale blue with white lace underwear and she was so beautiful that I loved her from the moment I saw her in the shop. The other was a magnificent, Tudor-style dolls’ house complete with latticed windows and painted black beams. Each room was furnished with tiny chairs, tables, cupboards and beds. Those little beds, complete with miniature covers! I longed for the dolls’ house with all my heart yet, at the same time, I longed for the doll, just as much. My mother kept asking me which I wanted but I couldn’t make up my mind.
‘Better leave it to Father Christmas to decide then,’ she said.
Actually, although I hadn’t confessed to my parents, I had ceased to believe in Father Christmas some time ago because a shadowy figure carrying the anticipated sack of toys had tip-toed into my room on a previous Christmas Eve and stumbled against my potty.
‘Bugger!’ the figure had exclaimed.
I awoke in the early hours of Christmas Day and in the darkness furtively felt about for my presents; my hands seized upon a large, rectangular box and I knew at once what it contained. So, I had my doll! I sighed with pleasure and was just climbing back into bed when I spotted a large object on top of my chest-of-drawers. It was the doll’s house! I had received both the doll and the dolls’ house! I could not believe my good fortune and as I fell asleep trying to think of an appropriate name for my beautiful new doll, there could not have been a happier little girl in the whole world.
After Christmas, we made a trip - quite on impulse, it seemed to me - back down to Cornwall in order to spend a few days with Auntie Frances and Uncle Cliff. During the journey, the car broke down in some isolated spot and because it could not be fixed until the following morning, we had to find somewhere to spend the night. After some desperate enquiries, a man offered to put us up for the night in the spare room of his house. He was a dealer in antiques and the room was filled with ornaments and bric-a-brac. He lectured me about not touching anything and I was deeply offended because I considered myself to be a very well-behaved child and, anyway, I wasn’t the least bit interested in his precious ornaments and had no desire to tamper with them.
We were exhausted by the time we reached Falmouth so Jean and I were put straight to bed. Auntie’s house was cold, dark and spooky and in the middle of the night I was awoken by a strange, rustling sound; I peered cautiously over the edge of the bed just in time to see, scuttling away into the shadowy gloom, a pair of large rats. In the morning, when I got up, I thought, perhaps, I had dreamt it but, that night, the same thing happened: there were, beyond any doubts, rats in Auntie’s house! I decided it would be better not to mention it to my mother.
I don’t know what it was that made my parents decide to visit Falmouth in the middle of winter but I think it might have been that they, like the rest of the country, were gripped by reports of a dramatic event which was taking place in the Atlantic, a few hundred miles off Land’s End. The World War Two Liberty Ship Flying Enterprise, bound from Hamburg to the United States, was caught in a severe storm which lasted for several days and caused the ship’s cargo to shift. Unable to right itself, the ship was helpless and so an S.O.S. was sent out. The waves were so mountainous that the lifeboats which went to the rescue were unable to pull alongside and that meant all those on board had no choice but to jump into the sea. The Captain, however, chose to remain on the ship in order to await the arrival of the salvage tug, the Turmoil. With only one man aboard, there was no possibility of connecting the tow line and so the tug’s mate, Ken Dancy, had no alternative but to try to leap on to the deck of the Enterprise. Although this was an extremely dangerous and daring feat, after several attempts he succeeded in boarding the sinking vessel. A long, slow tow back to safety began but another storm developed, the tow line parted and the Enterprise began to break up. At last, Captain Carlsen and Ken Dancy were forced to jump from the ship’s funnel into the sea and were picked up by the Turmoil, from the deck of which they witnessed the final, dramatic sinking of the ship.
The remarkable bravery of Captain Carlsen seemed to have inspired the entire country. By tradition, Falmouth has always given heroes of the sea a big welcome and when he finally came ashore, the town went mad. The streets were packed with people waiting to see him and because of my brittle bones my mother had to hold me close so that I wouldn’t be jostled. As the car carrying him approached the spot where we were standing, the cheering became deafening.
‘Go on!’ urged my mother. ‘Shout “Three cheers for Captain Carlsen!” as loud as you can!’
As if I would draw attention to myself by doing such a thing! I glared at her, furiously, and such was the intensity of my annoyance that I must have been the only person in Falmouth not to cheer and wave at the heroic captain.

It was shortly after we had returned to Essex that I had my first encounter with a bully. In a neighbouring house lived another girl, about two years older than I was. I had never spoken to her and was surprised when, one afternoon, she knocked on our door and asked my mother if I could go to her house to play. I was reluctant to go but didn’t know how to refuse; besides, my mother seemed keen to get rid of me and, as always, I was wary of incurring her displeasure. The girl took my hand and chatted to me pleasantly as we walked down the road; suddenly, as soon as we were out of sight of my house, her manner changed.
‘I had a swing for Christmas,’ she said, ‘and you’re going to push it while I sit on it.’
The swing was impressive but when I asked if I could have a go on it she shook her head and sat down, ordering me to start pushing.
‘Harder!’ she demanded. ‘I want to swing higher!’
I began to feel afraid because every time she swung backwards she did it with such violence that I thought she might hit me; my arms grew tired and I wanted to stop but she urged me on and on.
‘Push! You aren’t pushing hard enough, you lazy girl!’
My lower lip trembled and my eyes filled with tears. I wanted to go home. Suddenly, she planted her legs on the ground and leapt up from the swing.
‘I’ve got to go indoors to do something,’ she announced. ‘Come with me!’
I followed meekly as she led me into her house and up the stairs into the bathroom; with great deliberation, she slammed the door and locked it.
‘Sit there, on the bath!’ she ordered and then, to my astonishment, she sat down on the lavatory. I was horrified. You never, ever, used the lavatory while someone else was looking on. It was something you did in private and never spoke about. I felt my face grow hot with embarrassment and lowered my eyes.
‘Look at me!’ she commanded and reluctantly I obeyed. Suddenly, she gave a loud grunt and the room was filled with a horrible smell. I thought I would die from shame. When she had finished, she ordered me back down the stairs, out into the garden and back to the swing.
‘Now push me properly this time!’ she demanded. But I had had enough. A great surge of anger, resentment and defiance welled up inside me; I did not like this girl and I saw no reason why I should be obliged to spend another second in her company. I dropped the swing, turned and ran as fast as I could back to the safety of my own house. As I neared our garden gate, I heard her running up behind me.
‘Margaret!’ she called, ‘Margaret! Come back!’ her tone was pleasant, coaxing. But I ignored her and ran indoors, breathless. I was afraid my mother might send me outside again but I think she realised that something had happened.
‘You weren’t gone very long,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you want to play with her?’ I shook my head and was thankful that she didn’t question me further.
I learned a useful lesson that afternoon: children who seek the company of younger children are bullies in the making. They are unpopular and ill at ease with their peers so they seek to raise their self-esteem by dominating children younger than themselves. I never allowed myself to be bullied again.
That summer, my mother took my sister and me pea-picking. My father drove us to a field where there were several other families working and although I made a half-hearted effort to help, I soon grew bored and went off with the other children to play. I rather admired the way they nonchalantly pulled off the occasional pod and ate the peas inside but when I attempted to do the same, my mother called out: ‘Don’t eat those! Raw peas give you worms!’
We also went potato-picking but this was much harder work becaused it involved bending down and my mother decided that one day was enough even though the money was good. I was relieved because I’d seen her putting stones, when she thought no-one was looking, into the bottom of each hessian sack before filling it with potatoes and I knew that I would have been overcome with shame had she been found out.

Eventually, my father finished restoring the house and later, when strangers came round to look at it, I began to suspect that my parents were planning another move; my suspicions were confirmed when we started making trips into the countryside to look at properties for sale. One day, we went to a village on the Essex / Hertfordshire border called Little Hallingbury where there was a thatched cottage due to be sold by auction. To me, it looked like an illustration in a book of fairytales and when my mother asked if I’d like to live there, I jumped up and down in excitement. Although the thatch was in good condition, the interior was in need of renovation but my father was confident that it was not beyond his capabilities. Their bid was successful and a few weeks later we moved in.

CHAPTER FOUR: A Cornish Interlude

2007-05-12T15:32:00.000+01:00

When my sister was a few months old our parents sold the house in Morgan Crescent and we moved to Cornwall. They knew the county quite well because my grandmother’s sister, Frances, lived in Falmouth with her husband, Cliff. When they were newlyweds, my mother and father were surprisingly adventurous and they used to walk the fifty miles from Plymouth to Falmouth carrying rucksacks and wearing stylish shorts and walking boots. However, I don’t think family ties were in any way the reason for this unexpected upheaval: it is more likely that my mother had some silly, romantic notion about Cornwall being some kind of Promised Land where one could escape from the tedious routine of life as she knew it and begin a new, better one in idyllic surroundings.
We moved into a semi-detached house in Dracaena Avenue, the main road into Falmouth. I can’t remember what my father did for employment at this time but I believe it was something connected with cars because I have a clear memory of a certain occasion when he left to go somewhere up-country in order to drive a car down to Cornwall for a client and on his departure, my mother kissed him goodbye. It was the first time I had ever seen them kiss and I was astonished.
I quickly became fond of Auntie Frances; my mother called her Aunt Fan behind her back and warned me on no account to address her in the same way because it would cause great offence. Uncle Cliff had an office job at Falmouth Docks and although I was still very wary of all men, I felt at ease with him because he made me laugh and didn’t speak to me in the patronising way that most adults address children. Besides, he took me on a tour of the docks and I was thrilled because there was a busy little train which chugged and whistled its way around a network of tracks. My aunt and uncle had no children and my mother told me many years later that it was because he was never man enough to consumate their marriage. He had no family, apart from a niece with whom, according to my mother, he carried on an incestuous affair for years without Auntie Frances finding out. She also said he was a dirty old man because he’d once told her that she had the prettiest legs he’d ever seen.
I was enrolled at the Beacon school in Falmouth and my mother informed me that although she would show me how to get there, I would have to take myself to school because she had too much to do in the mornings. Not surprisingly, this prospect caused me great consternation. When it was time to set off that first morning, she saw me across the main road and I walked slowly up the hill to where I was supposed to turn left for my new school. Riven with anxiety, I looked around for the road I was meant to take but couldn’t remember which one it was. Aware that my mother would be absolutely furious, I made my way back home. I stood in front of our house, shouting at the top of my voice for her to see me across the road and eventually she opened the front door; she was, indeed, very angry with me because she had to go to all the bother of getting Jean ready and into the pram so that she could march me back up the hill to school and speak to my teacher to apologise for my lateness.
From the beginning, I disliked my new school. The atmosphere was unwelcoming and made me feel uneasy. Also, the children weren’t as open and friendly as the others I had known. Most of all, I disliked the teacher. She was very strict with us and she lost her temper frequently. She was also spiteful. One day, when we were making things out of paper and glue, she asked me to pass her the scissors; I did so, but handed them to her with the pointed end first.
‘You must never hand scissors to anyone with the sharp end towards them!’ she screeched at me. ‘This is what could happen.’ She grabbed my hand and jabbed the point of the scissors into my palm. I was so shocked and surprised that my eyes began to fill with tears and when I looked at my hand I saw that she had not only left a red mark, she had almost drawn blood. On another occasion, after a very minor misdemeanour on the part of a boy, she gripped the poor little lad’s earlobe between her finger and thumb and tugged it with such force that I thought she meant to pull it off. The sun was streaming through the window and illuminating the ear in such a way that it looked as though it was attatched to a bright red, transparent stalk. The boy cried out in pain and sobbed quietly to himself for a long while afterwards. My sense of justice was outraged and I decided that she should be punished. Just how I was going to make my teacher suffer for the offence I had no idea; in the event, the opportunity came very soon and it was very easy for me to carry out my revenge.
One day, our teacher was showing us how to make things out of raffia. She plaited some lengths together and then stitched the interlaced strands into a circle which formed itself into a miniature straw hat.
‘Look everybody! ‘ she exclaimed. ‘What do you think of this? Isn’t it a little gem!’ She was obviously very proud of her handiwork and made everyone in the class look at it and admire it. I watched her put the raffia hat away at the end of the lesson and when I was certain no-one was watching, I snatched it and hid it up the sleeve of my cardigan. A couple of days later she discovered it was missing and after emptying out the entire contents of the cupboard where all the arts and crafts materials were kept, she asked the class if anyone had seen it; I shook my head with the rest of the children. She was very angry but she didn’t know who to blame and I was satisfied that justice had been done.
The meals at the Beacon School were not as good as those at my previous school and, amongst such unappetising things as sago pudding and cheese pie, I had to face the unpleasant experience of tasting brawn for the first time. I stared at the grey slab of jelly on my plate, thinking it looked decidedly unpalatable, and asked the girl sitting next to me what it was.
‘Boiled pig’s head,’ she informed me, cheerfully. ‘Brains and all.’
It tasted even worse than it looked: salty, bitter and nasty. I thought it was cruel to expect a child to eat something so revolting and was astonished to see the others tucking into theirs with unconcern: some of them seemed even to be enjoying it. Every day after lunch, all children had to go to the gym to rest. We had to lie on the floor for what seemed to me an interminable age and I thought this enforced siesta was a very curious custom indeed; I couldn’t wait to get out into the playground and felt as though I’d been cheated of what should have been quality playtime. Although I didn’t think much of my new shoolmates, there was one girl to whom I had taken a liking. One day I asked her if she’d like to come to my house for tea; the warning bells rang in my head but I thought that my mother would, surely, on this occasion, be pleased that I’d made a new friend. We set off, hand-in-hand, chatting happily. We had to make a detour on the way so that she could let her mother know where she was going. My heart sank when she showed me where my she lived and I began to doubt the wisdom of my impetuous action.
Old Hill was, and still is, an ugly scar on the face of Falmouth. At that time, it was a large, open space on which had been erected temporary dwellings similar to those I had seen in the East End of London. However, whereas the ones in London had been well-kept and neat, these had an air of squalor about them. My friend opened the door of one of them and I followed, full of trepidation. Her mother was sitting on a shabby armchair and leapt up when she saw me; she seemed very pleased to meet me and was delighted when she was told that I had invited her little girl to tea at my house. I looked around me with curiosity because I’d always wondered what these funny buildings were like inside and saw that not only the armchair was the worse for wear; everything about the place was dingy and dilapidated and there was an unpleasant, cabbagy, hard-boiled eggs sort of smell in the room. Glancing at my friend and wondering why I hadn’t noticed it before, I saw that she, too, had the same air of scruffiness about her: my mother, most definitely, was not going to be pleased.
It came as no surprise, then, that when my mother’s gaze fell upon the little girl from Old Hill, her face froze into an expression of undisguised distaste.
‘Is it all right if she stays to tea?’ I asked, nervously.
‘She’s got to go straight back to where she comes from!’ hissed my mother, angrily. Deeply embarrassed, I said an apologetic good-bye to my friend. As I was marched indoors, I turned and saw her making her way, looking very crestfallen, up the hill. Afterwards, we never spoke to each other again.

With the arrival of summer, my mother, my sister and I made regular excursions to the beach. To me, the best thing about Falmouth was the main beach, Gyllingvase, and although I couldn’t swim, I had a large inner tube, acquired for me by my father, which did duty as a rubber ring. My happiness knew no bounds; indeed, even today when I smell sun-warmed rubber, I think of that inner tube and endless, untroubled days of sea and sunshine. In those pre-Lycra times, swimwear was made from cotton fabric ruched with many rows of shirring elastic to make it stretchy. When you went into the sea, the weight of the water would pull the swimsuit right down to your knees so that if you were anxious to preserve your modesty, you had to give your costume a mighty hitch before you came out. Even my sister had one and my mother would sit her on a towel from which she would watch me splashing about on the shore, her eyes screwed up in the sun. Skin cancer was unheard of then and no-one seemed to bother about skin protection; I had dark skin and always went brown but my sister, being so very fair, must have suffered from sunburn.
We visited Auntie Frances and Uncle Cliff often. They lived in a large, end-of-terrace house called Arwyn House. It had a big, front conservatory in which, amongst the plants, were objects of great curiosity to me. For example, there was a large mangle with a handle far too heavy for me to turn, although I always tried. Auntie Frances had breasts which hung down to herv waist because she didn’t wear a bra and my mother said it was a wonder she never caught her nipples between the two giant cylinders. There was also an umbrella stand, filled with walking sticks and ancient umbrellas, decorated with mosaics of broken china which I tried to pick off when no-one was looking. Everything in the house was old-fashioned and the living room was like a Victorian parlour: there was a vast, heavy, wooden dining table, covered with a baize cloth, and matching, equally heavy chairs on which you had to be careful not to bark your shins when you squeezed past. In front of the fireplace was a big chaise longue upon which you had to lower yourself with caution because any abrupt movement would cause clouds of dust to rise up. My mother said Aunt Fan’s habit of carefully brushing chairs before sitting down whenever she went to other people’s houses made her laugh when you considered that she never took a duster to her own furniture. Auntie was fond of china and she had a number of ornaments, mostly Staffordshire, which decorated the room but I was forbidden to touch any of it in case I broke something. She also had some Victorian prints, typically representing a variety of sentimental subjects, which I found intriguing, especially the one entitled ‘Little Lady Bountiful’. It depicted a fine lady, seated at a picnic table under a tree; her little girl, attired in a beautiful dress, carried a tray laden with sumptuous things towards two ragged, barefoot children who were looking on with exaggeratedly wistful expressions.
Auntie’s house had no electricity and instead of light bulbs they had gas mantles; decades later their house was, in fact, one of the very few left in Cornwall with gas lighting. The lighting of the gas every evening was something of a ritual performed only by Uncle Cliff. After dusk, visitors would have to sit in the gloom until, at no given signal, he would suddenly leap up and attend to the business of striking matches and tugging the little chains which hung down from the glass shade.
Uncle Cliff was a chain smoker and the walls and ceiling of the front room were stained a yellowy-brown so that it was difficult to see what their original colour must have been. My parents were also chain-smokers and after a while my eyes would begin to smart so much that I would wander outside into the front garden in search of fresh air. It was a very small, walled garden in which Auntie grew a few shrubs and summer annuals. To me, the most interesting feature was the fact that it had no gate; it used to have a splendid, wrought-iron one, she told me, but during the War the Government needed all the iron it could get to make battleships to fight the Germans and so it was taken away. The idea of Auntie’s front gate being used to fight Germans amused me greatly.
Uncle Cliff believed that it was dangerous to deposit money in banks or saving accounts and so all the cash they possessed was hidden under the bed in cardboard boxes or stuffed into pillowcases. Fortunately, they were never burgled although, on one occasion, a very drunk Danish sailor forced his way into the conservatory and urinated all over Auntie’s mangle before collapsing, face-down, on the floor. My mother said this incident was probably the most exciting thing ever to happen to them.

In December, my sister celebrated her first birthday and her second Christmas. Although I anticipated the thrill of opening my presents on Christmas morning, I was full of apprehension because it was inevitable that the day would be ruined by my parents quarrelling. Every year, without fail, my mother would say to my father: ‘Don’t go wasting money on buying a present for me!’ If my father took her at her word and she didn’t get a present from him, her expression would darken and she would go very quiet. By now I had come to realise that quietness on the part of my mother was ominous, like the calm before a storm. She would brood silently for some while and then, just as I was beginning to think that everything was going to be all right, she’d confront my father. Firstly, she’d look him up and down with lip-curling contempt and then, in a low voice, subject him to a torrent of abuse. Like a storm gathering force, her voice would get louder and the abuse more vicious; my father was the mildest of men but there was only so much that he could endure. Finally, he would snap and a full-blown row would ensue.
There were to be other years when he would think it might be prudent to ignore my mother’s injuction not to waste money on a Christmas present and after much brain-racking, tearing of hair and despairing ‘What can I get your mother for Christmas?’ he would go out and buy something guaranteed to displease her. She would accept the gift ungraciously, unwrap it, examine it and say nothing. After a period of tight-lipped silence, she would suddenly turn on my father and accuse him of insulting her by giving her a load of cheap, tasteless tat. Whatever my father did to try to please my mother, Christmas Day would always end in rows.
My father used to say that they had never had a neighbour with whom my mother hadn’t quarrelled. Next door to our house in Dracaena Avenue lived an extremely pleasant and kind woman called Mrs. Robinson. She adored my baby sister and as soon as Jean was able to crawl, she’d make a bee-line for Mrs. Robinson’s. Robbie, as I called her, made a gap in the hedge so that we could call on her whenever we liked, which was often. After a while, my mother began to resent the obvious affection we had for Robbie and started running her down. She declared that ‘that woman’ had no right to invade other people’s privacy by making gaps in hedges and an unpleasant scene ensued with the outcome that we were forbidden to speak to or go anywhere near Mrs. Robinson again. It was very difficult living so close to someone of whom we were so fond and not being allowed to have any further contact with her. It was especially hard for my sister who was far too young to understand the sudden severing of the relationship: but I was not too young to understand that my mother’s unreasonable behaviour had been motivated by jealousy. It had taught me a lesson and I resolved that if, in future, I took a liking to anyone, I would make sure she didn’t find out.

CHAPTER THREE: Talking To Strangers.

2007-05-12T15:30:00.001+01:00

One evening, my mother summoned me to her side and told me that she was going to have to go away for a few days but that when she returned she would be bringing home a wonderful surprise. Daddy would be putting me to bed that night, she said, and he would be taking me to school in the morning. I was to be a good girl and remember never to talk to strangers.
There was some confusion in my mind about the word ‘stranger’. I assumed it was the same as the word ‘strange’ which signified to me something which was odd, funny or peculiar. Therefore, I surmised, a stranger was someone who was a bit weird and it stood to reason that you wouldn’t want to talk to them if you could help it. I couldn’t understand why my mother was always going on about such people. Still, I was very curious and excited about the wonderful surprise.
My father seemed anxious and distracted when he gave me my breakfast the next morning and attended to my getting ready for school. I was startled and dismayed when he told me I would have to walk to school by myself that day because he had to leave on an urgent matter. I could not believe what I was hearing. There was not a child I knew who walked to school unescorted; besides, there was a road to cross and that was something I had never done on my own. I pleaded with him and told him that I was frightened but he was insistent and firmly propelled me out of the front door.
Our house was not a great distance from my school. There was a wide footpath which led from the end of our crescent to a road. It was not much of a road - probably no more than a quiet country lane - but to a small child like myself it was as daunting as a four-lane dual carriageway. On the other side of the road was an open space where people picnicked in summer and where my mother had once let me stop to pick buttercups. Not very far from here was a spinney through which you could take a short cut. Some of the trees in the spinney were very old and they had gnarled and twisted roots which disguised a multitude of grinning, impish faces like the illustrations of Arthur Rackham. I was always careful to avert my eyes when my mother and I walked throught those trees. Once you had passed through the little wood, you were almost at the school. In all, it couldn’t have been more than a ten minute walk.
My father was a cruel and wicked man, I told myself. I felt sure that if my mother knew I was going to school by myself she would be furious with him. Tears were pricking my eyes and my heart was thumping loudly as I made my way along the familiar route until I came to the road which I would have to cross. I stood on the path, wondering what to do. There was no sound of approaching traffic but still I dithered, unable to summon the courage to take the giant leap. Then, suddenly, as if he had materialised from nowhere, a man appeared at my side. It’s very difficult for a young child to give an accurate assessment of the age of an adult; this man was much older than my father but not quite as old as my grandfather.
‘Do you want to cross the road?’ he asked, offering his hand.
Relief flooded through me and I nodded, full of gratitude. I held his hand trustingly as we began to cross the road.
‘Would you like to see a little birdie in the bush over there?’ he asked as we reached the other side. I nodded, eagerly, because I was fascinated by birds. Still holding my hand, he led me into the bushes and I looked around, expecting to see the promised bird. Suddenly, his manner changed. He stood behind me, gripping me tightly around my shoulders and began to whisper, hoarsely.
‘Are you a clean little girl?’
I nodded because my father had supervised my washing that morning. With one arm still holding me by my shoulders, he bent down, lifted up my skirt and put his hand inside my knickers. My heart gave a terrible leap of fear and I knew, in that moment, that I was in grave danger.
In the language of animal behaviourists there is something known as the ‘predatory sequence’. It refers to the options an animal has when confronted by a predator and they call them the ‘four F’s’: fight, flight, freeze or flirt. In the instant that my situation became apparent to me, my animal instinct caused me to freeze. My heart seemed to be squeezing itself inside my chest and I found found myself gasping for breath. I was totally paralysed, rooted to where I stood. The next moment, the man was groping with his rough fingers in that place my mother had forbidden me to touch.
‘Yes,’ he said, with a funny catch in his voice, ‘you’re a nice, clean girl!’
With my back towards him I couldn’t tell what he was doing but I sensed he was fumbling with his clothing. He lifted my jumper and I felt something hard and uncomfortable pushing into the small of my back.
‘I play this game with my little neice,’ said the man, his voice shaky. ‘She likes it. She says she always has to go and have a wee-wee afterwards.’ The hard thing continued to push and rub against my back and the man’s grip on my shoulder grew tighter still. At last, he gave a great sigh and I felt him relax. He removed his arm but I remained frozen with fear and unable to move a single muscle. He re-arranged my clothing and turned me around to face him but I would not look at him.
‘You had better get off to school, now,’ he said. ‘I know your teacher - she’s a pretty little woman, isn’t she?’
Without a word, I scuttled off, instinct telling me to get as far away as possible from that place. I dared not turn around to see if I was being followed and as I ran through the spinney I was terrified that he might leap out at me from behind a tree. I ran so fast that my legs began to give way and I was gasping audibly for breath. At last, I saw my school in the distance and I knew I was safe when I saw other children with their mothers walking to the entrance. As I slowed to walking pace I became aware that something cold was running down one of my thighs. Puzzled, I looked at my leg and saw a trickle of whitish, opaque liquid which, in my innocence, I thought was milk. Some instinct warned me not to touch it so I shook my leg to try to shake it off. For the rest of the day my thoughts kept returning to what had happened to me. Could it be that the man was one of those ‘strangers’ my mother had warned me about? If so, and she found out that I had spoken to one and as a consequence something bad had resulted, then I would be in the most terrible trouble. My father had told me that when you hurt yourself or something unpleasant happened to you, it was the Devil’s way of punishing you for being bad. I must be a very bad girl indeed, I concluded, and determined that I would never tell anyone about the frightening and horrible result of my disobedience.
These days, the activities of paedophiles are seldom out of the news and I think this has led many people to conclude that it is a modern phenomenon. However, I believe that there were just as many adults who directed their sexual desire towards children then as there are today; the only difference is that the subject is discussed more openly now and paedophiles are able to communicate with and encourage each other in their activities through the Internet. Also, the word ‘paedophilia’ was never mentioned in my youth; sexually abused chidren were always described as having been ‘interfered with’.
I have sometimes wondered what became of the man who ‘interfered’ with me. He had already confessed to abusing his neice; when she was older and realised that what he was doing was wrong, perhaps she told somebody. It could be that he had many victims which surely would have led to his being found out eventually. Or perhaps he got away with it and there is a grave somewhere with a headstone describing him as someone’s ‘loving husband’ or ‘loving father’. If there is such a thing as an afterlife, I hope that man has been condemned to everlasting torment.
That afternoon, at home-time, I was on my way to the cloakroom with the other children to put my coat on when my teacher called me aside and sat me on her lap. I stiffened and shrank away, worried about the funny white stuff which the bad man had put on my leg. I’d been so scared to touch it that I handn’t even been able to wash it off and it had dried on my skin. I felt as though I had been contaminated and it made me feel uncomfortable to be in such close contact with my teacher.
‘Your daddy’s here’’, she said, ‘and guess what?’ You’ve got a baby sister! Isn’t that wonderful?’
I didn’t know what to say in reply. A baby sister? I’d had no idea I was going to have a baby sister. I wondered where she had come from and guessed that her arrival had something to do with my mother’s going away. Now I realised what the ‘wonderful surprise’ I had been promised was.
A few days later, my mother came home with my new sister. Her name was Jean, she told me, and she was so preoccupied with looking after the baby that she forgot to ask me if I had been a good girl. I was greatly relieved because I would have had to lie and she always knew when I wasn’t telling the truth. A succession of relations came to the house to see my new sister and they all said the same thing: ‘You must be so relieved that she hasn’t got the brittle bones!’
No-one took much notice of me except to say ‘And what do you think of your baby sister?’ It was a stupid question and I never knew how to reply. I wondered why my sister’s bones were different from mine and why everyone was glad she hadn’t got them. It puzzled and worried me and I realised for the first time in my life that there was something about me that was different from other children. Certainly, Jean didn’t look anything like me; she was a big, blue-eyed baby with a fuzz of white-blonde hair. I was very dark and my eyes were brown. Also, I noticed, my father appeared to be very taken with her and when people admired her he seemed to puff up with pride.
My mother was so busy looking after the baby that I was left to entertain myself for much of the time. I wasn’t able to stop thinking about my encounter with the bad man and I began to be afraid of things which had never bothered me before. The dark, for instance, frightened me now and I hated it when my light was switched off at bedtime. The folds of the curtains assumed monstrous shapes, as did my dressing-gown hanging on the bedpost. Shadows flitted across the walls in the form of fearsome images and I dared not imagine what horrors lurked under my bed. One night, a great head like a dragon’s, with bared teeth and menacing eyes, terrified me so much that I was sick under my bedclothes. If I closed my eyes I would see snakes writhing in tangled knots or monsters with huge fangs and claws. I had nightmares from which I would wake in terror; I could never remember them but I knew they were about frightful, unspeakably loathsome and hideous things.
I was now very wary of men and I would do my best to avoid any physical contact with them. I developed an aversion to masculine odours, that peculiar mixture of soap, sweat and tobacco, with which I associated all the adult males of my acquaintance. I became so anxious and withdrawn that my mother had to take me to the doctor; he examined me and asked me if there was anything worrying me at school and I replied, truthfully, that there wasn’t. He told my mother that he could find nothing wrong with me and I was probably a little anxious because I not yet come to terms with the fact that I had a new sister and was no longer the privileged only child. It would be all right, he assured her, once I had adapted to my new situation.
I think my mother was finding it hard to cope with a new baby and a troublesome older child because, for some reason, she kept me away from school. It must have been for quite some while because a schools’ inspector knocked on the door one day and she was, I could tell, very much taken aback.
‘She’s got worms,’ lied my mother, ‘so I had to keep her home.’
The next morning, I was packed off to school. With hindsight, I think that the reason she’d kept me at home for so long was that she simply couldn’t get up early enough in the morning to get me ready. She had always been foul-tempered in the morning and having a new baby to cope with obviously made it worse. Meanwhile, my nightmares continued, my fear of the dark grew worse and I became even more withdrawn and anxious.
One night, I awoke as usual from some disturbing dream but when I opened my eyes, instead of blackness, I saw that my room was illuminated by a faint light. It seemed to be coming from behind me, on my right. I lay very still, not turning my head, and a pleasant feeling of calm washed over me. Although I couldn’t hear anything, I felt as though a voice was speaking to me, in my head. It spoke to me kindly, in a tone of gentle reproof, telling me that it was wrong to allow the monsters and all the other bad things to frighten me. The voice comforted me and I closed my eyes; this time, instead of the unpleasant things that normally projected themselves on to my eyelids, I saw nothing: all was blankness. Suddenly, to my amazement, floating before my eyes were dancing, female figures, each wearing a dress of a different colour. They drifted past, swaying and gliding, in their myriads. I had never imagined that such beautiful colours existed! So many shades of blue, red, green, yellow, violet and orange! I was entranced and I felt as though I had been transported to some wonderful, magical place. After a while, I fell into an untroubled sleep.
When I awoke the following night, instead of dancers to entertain me, I saw trains. But what trains! They were not like the grimy, black, commonplace London trains I was used to. These were altogether in a different class: they were magnificent. Some were painted bright red, some brilliant blue and some dark green and they were so highly polished that they gleamed like glass. Some of them were even modified with elegant streamlining, like those I had seen in pictures. A vast and intricate network of tracks stretched before me, converging into a single vanishing point on the distant horizon. There were deep tunnels and towering viaducts, stations, signal boxes, water towers; and it was all so real that nothing would have convinced me that it was only my imagination.
After a while, I ceased to be a mere spectator of these marvellous nightly pageants and became instead a participant. Every night would bring a different adventure and I used to look forward to bedtime. I cannot say how long these waking dreams lasted: it could have been weeks or months. Gradually, they faded away and although I tried, I couldn’t recapture them. Finally, they vanished and, like all the monsters who had tormented me, disappeared for ever.
My mother, I think, began to feel sorry for neglecting me. During the afternoons she was usually in a better temper and one day she offered to make some clothes for my favourite doll by cutting up an old jumper. She chatted to me pleasantly as she cut and sewed; this was one of those all-too-rare occasions when I found myself warming towards her. If only she could be as nice as that all the time! When she had finished, my doll looked very elegant and I couldn’t wait to show her off to my cousins.
‘Won’t they be jealous!’ I exclaimed, beaming with delight and full of childish gratitude. l yearned for these precious times when she was like other childrens’ mothers

CHAPTER TWO: Broadening Horizons

2007-05-12T15:10:00.000+01:00

By the time I was four years old people were telling me that I had an exceptional talent for drawing. I took for granted my ability to draw and thought nothing of it: it was simply something I did and I had no idea I was unusual. My biggest problem was paper: there was such a great shortage of it after the war that I used to tear the end papers out of books in my desperation. To be without anything to draw on was torture to me and so every scrap of paper I could get my hands on was precious. My drawings were always illustrations of the stories I told myself and they were usually about beautiful princesses or fairies. Sometimes, I’d be called upon to demonstrate my drawing skills for the benefit of some adult or even another child. I hated and resented having to perform to order. My drawings were personal and private because they were representations of my own, secret world.
When I wasn’t drawing, I played with other children. My mother made sure that I had nothing to do with children who weren’t ‘nice’ and that meant I was always wary of bringing friends home in case she disapproved of them. Because of this, I was in the habit of going to other people’s houses to play and on the rare occasions that I did happen to bring friends home, she would ask, after they’d gone, ‘Have you been playing rude games?’
I had no idea what she meant by ‘rude’ games. To me, with my child’s limited vocabulary, the word ‘rude’ meant cheeky or bad-mannered. But I could tell from the expression on my mother’s face and the tone of her voice that the word, in this instance, meant something different, something unpleasant and nasty of which I had no understanding and a hot rush of blood would colour my face. She would interpret this as an admission of guilt, the same as she did when she asked me ‘Have you been touching yourself down there?’ I was never quite sure what she meant by ‘down there’. Evidently, it was some forbidden and mysterious part of the body I hadn’t yet discovered and to interfere with it was a mortal sin. If we were out shopping or walking in the park and she saw a little boy with his hand down his trousers she would fix the unfortunate parent with a Medusa-like glare and say in a voice so loud that everyone could hear, ‘Fancy letting a child do that!’
All my friends had birthday parties, to which I was invited. My mother never asked me if I would like one, too, and I knew that if I so much as hinted about having one, it would probably incur her wrath. It was bad enough if I asked permission for a friend to come to tea; she’d always make excuses like ‘I haven’t enough food in the house’ or ‘ Not today - some other time, perhaps.’ So I had to be content with going to other people’s parties and watching, wistfully, while they unwrapped the presents the guests had brought. My mother would never actually buy a present for me to take: it was always something of mine which could be passed off as new. If something was marked with a price, she’d erase it and write on it a higher one.
One of my friends had a slide for her birthday. It was a most impressive piece of apparatus even though it wasn’t as big as the one in the local park. After tea, we all trooped out into the garden so that everyone could have a go. In the excitement, I forgot my mother’s injunction that I was not to climb anything or play dangerous games because of my bones and so I scrambled up the steps of the slide with the rest. It was my misfortune that I happened to be in front of a particularly ill-mannered and odious boy; as I was lowering myself into the sliding-down position, he gave me such an impatient and energetic shove that I was pushed off the slide and went flying on to the ground.
I knew at once that my arm was broken and though the adults carried me indoors and tried to comfort me, I wept inconsolably, not from pain but because I feared the inevitable fury of my mother; also, I was offended by the unforgiveable rudeness of the boy who had pushed me.
It was an accident, they told my mother when she arrived in answer to the unexpected summons, just children getting over-excited. I was indignant and outraged that the hateful boy was not going to be punished, especially as he was outside with the other children playing on the slide as though nothing had happened. Still, experience had taught me that it was better to say nothing to my mother. There would only be trouble.
One day, I received an invitation to a fancy dress party. There would be prizes, it said, for the best costumes. When I found out that all the other children were going to have proper, bought outfits, I didn’t want to go because my mother said she was going to make me a costume out of crêpe paper. ‘You can go as a lovely flower,’ she said. ‘How about a daffodil?’ I did not believe her when she told me it would be just as good as all the others. My worst fears were realised. I knew it as soon as she began to tack the lime-green and yellow paper on to my reluctant person: it was going to be a disaster! She cut and tugged and tweaked in a vain attempt to try to achieve the effect she had in mind but at the end of her labours I think even she had to admit that it hadn’t quite turned out as she’d hoped. When she told me to look at myself in the full-length mirror in the hall I was aghast. Not even the most resourceful and imaginative of minds would be able see a resemblance between the confusion of crumpled paper out of which I peered and a daffodil.
‘Never mind,’ she assured me. ‘There’ll be so many children there that they’ll all be too excited to worry about what anyone else is wearing.’
I did not want to go to the party. I begged, pleaded and feigned illness but still she wouldn’t relent. So, protesting, I was marched off to the hall where the dreaded event was taking place and pushed through the door.
‘You really do look just like a daffodil!’ she lied.
When the time came for the judging of the best fancy dress and I was asked the question I had been dreading, I was so humiliated and embarrassed that I couldn’t speak.
‘What are you meant to be, dear? repeated the woman, looking perplexed. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I was a daffodil. She would have laughed, I knew. She tried again, but I kept my head down and my eyes fixed on the floor. She called to another woman who was involved with the judging.
‘This little girl won’t tell me what she’s meant to be!’
Both women studied me and tried to guess what or who I was supposed to represent.
‘Are you an animal of some kind, dear? A fairy? A cartoon character or someone out of a comic?’
But I remained stubbornly mute. In the end, they gave up. I think they felt sorry for me. Fortunately, there were consolation prizes for every child in attendance and I was delighted with mine: it was a woolly lamb with features embroidered in black and I was so pleased that I forgot my humiliating ordeal. I called my lamb ‘Larry’, after the television puppet and it became one of my favourite toys.
The best parties of all were those given by the Americans who, during the War, had been based in all parts of the country. There were always music and entertainments and they went out of their way to ensure that every child had a good time. When it was time to go home, everyone was given a bag containing toys, balloons, sweets and an orange. I decided that the Americans must be the nicest people in the world.
One day, something very strange indeed happened to me. It was also the day I very nearly died. Because my mother was always late getting up in the mornings, I had learned to dress myself and choose what clothes to wear. That morning, because my face felt so hot, I thought I’d wear something nice and cool. I had two favourite dresses, identical except for the colour - one was pale blue, the other pale yellow - made of a soft, satiny fabric. They had little, puffed sleeves and smocked bodices. I always had difficulty choosing between them because I liked both colours. After some serious deliberation, I decided on the blue.
The main problem with dressing yourself when you are very small is that you can’t do up things which fasten at the back and my dress had a row of little buttons which had to be attended to. The house was very quiet and I knew there was no point in calling out for my mother because she’d still be asleep. My father, though, was probably up and about so I decided to call for him. When I shouted ‘Daddy!’ my voice sounded strange. Somehow, everything seemed different, as though it were not real, as in a dream. Then, at the very moment my father came into the room, I collapsed on to the floor. In the fraction of a second it must have taken for me to fall, I suddenly found myself watching my own body as it hit the ground. Deeply interested by this curious turn of events, I studied my prostrate form; I was not at all sure that I had, after all, made the wrong decision about the blue dress.
My father stood over me, looking perplexed. I could tell that he didn’t know what to do and I wanted to reassure him that I was all right but he seemed not to hear me. After some moments, he went away and I guessed he was going to fetch my mother. She ran into the room and crouched over me, trying to wake me, and very soon some more people came in, accompanied by my father. How agitated they all seemed! It was so funny that I found myself laughing. I couldn’t understand why they were so concerned about me when I was perfectly all right. I tried again to communicate, to tell them not to worry, but they couldn’t hear. And how stupid I looked, lying on the floor like that! Then two more men arrived carrying a red blanket. After examining me, they proceeded to wrap it around me. Things were getting really exciting now. ‘What a lucky girl you are to have such a lovely red blanket!’ I told myself. I followed as they carried me downstairs and out of the front door. In the road, parked right outside our house, an ambulance was waiting. I’d never been inside one before, so I was very interested, especially in the rather alarming-looking apparatus at the front of the vehicle made of silvery metal and lots of rusty-red rubber tubing. I watched the men lay me down and tuck the red blanket around me and then, suddenly, everything vanished............
I remember nothing until I was told, much later, that I had had something called mastoiditis and that I had nearly died. I knew, instinctively, that my curious experience had something to do with dying but I said nothing because I didn’t know how to put it into words; besides, I doubted that anyone would believe me. It wasn’t until many years later that I found out other people had had similar experiences when they’d been close to death. There is a physical explanation for the feeling of euphoria and the blinding light which many have described and religious conditioning probably accounts for the angels and other nebulous entities which some claim to have witnessed. It is harder to find an explanation for the out-of-body sensation which I had. I think the main reason for my being able to remember it so vividly is that, during it, I had heightened awareness, even though I was unconscious. Is it possible that, when someone is near to death, the activity of quantum particles in the brain cause what physicists call superpositions - or mixtures - of quantum states? In other words, the person having a near death experience is neither dead nor alive or both dead and alive, whichever way you like to interpret it.
My life had been saved by an emergency operation and penicillin but in order to perform surgery it was necessary to shave the hair from the affected side of my head. When I came home from hospital my mother had the rest of my hair cut into a bob and to cover the bald part she attatched an over-large hair-ribbon. I hated that ribbon with a vengeance. It flopped down over my face and got into my eyes while I was drawing. Besides, my hair was straight and slippery and the wretched thing was always falling off and getting lost and then my mother would get angry and tell me to be more careful.
That summer we returned to Brixham for another holiday. Uncle Albie wanted to take a photograph of me with my cousin Stepanie in his studio above the shop and so we were dressed in our best frocks and made to sit side by side on a stool. Stephanie had long, fair hair which curled over her shoulders in wringlets while mine was scraped over my forehead and secured with the detested ribbon which was tied into a ridiculously large bow. Stephanie smiled coyly at the camera while I, head turned sideways to hide my bald bit, sat stiffly and self-consciously, feeling stupid.
By now, I was beginning to realise that my mother wasn’t like other childrens’ mothers. She seldom demonstrated any affection but I didn’t mind that very much because I disliked any kind of physical contact with her. She was always criticising other parents and other chidren and one of her favourite expressions of contempt was ‘That child looks wormy to me!’ I never understood the comparison, thinking she was referring to garden worms; she meant, of course, worm infestation but I didn’t know about such things then. Both my parents were heavy smokers and I began to develop what I think was almost a phobia of tobacco; contact with it would cause actual, physical sensations of revulsion such as gagging and retching. If I saw a cigarette end floating in a lavatory bowl I refused to sit on the seat and the sight and smell of a full ashtray would fill me with utter disgust. I hated the gestures assumed by smokers: the tapping of the cigarette on the packet before they lit it; the way they held it between their fingers; the sucking in and exhaling of smoke. My distaste of tobacco grew as I got older and sometimes I would wonder, vaguely, why other children seemed not to be bothered. Forty years later, while I was doing the ironing one evening and at the same time idly watching a television programme about the evils of smoking, they showed some childrens’ paintings. They’d been asked to paint portraits of their mothers and a surprising number of the pictures depicted the subject with a cigarette in her mouth.
‘If a mother is a heavy smoker,’ said the presenter, ‘a child comes to associate the cigarette as an intrinsic part her and subconsciously it becomes a symbol of comfort.’ Suddenly, after all those decades of wondering why I hated tobacco so much, it was blindingly clear: such had been my terror of my mother that in my young mind the cigarette became not a symbol of comfort but a symbol of fear. Even to this day I am revolted by tobacco.
One thing for which I’m very grateful to my mother, though, is that she helped me to develop a love of books. As an avid reader she would visit the library several times a week and I would be expected to sit quietly and look at a book while she browsed. You had to be as quiet as a mouse in a library in those days and noisy children were not tolerated. There was always a stern-faced librarian to glare at you if you misbehaved in any way. You were expected to take the utmost care of the books you borrowed and if there was any infectious disease in your home you were obliged to report it so that the books you’d been in contact with could go away to be sterilised.
Every night, before I climbed into bed, I was made to kneel down and say my prayers:
‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
Look upon a little child!
Pity my simplicity
And let me live my life for thee!’
Like many other children taught the same prayer I used to be puzzled as to why mice needed pitying; and where, exactly, was that place called Plicity? My religious education began even before I started school because my mother packed me off to Sunday school as soon as I was deemed old enough. I didn’t want to go but my mother said I had to because I’d been christened in the same church and that my name was written in a big book with all the other babies who’d been christened there, too. I and the other children were in the charge of a bossy young woman who had a whiskery upper lip and smelt of boiled turnips. She told us that Jesus loved every child and that Mary was a good person because, if she saw boys fighting in the street, she’d go to them and tell them that it was wrong. It was very boring. The only consolation was that we were each given a little book about Jesus. Every Sunday the teacher handed out a small, coloured picture depicting some uplifting subject to each of us and we had to stick it on to one of the blank spaces in our books. If you didn’t attend the class, you didn’t get a picture. It was a good incentive to get us to go to Sunday school because, like all the others, I wanted to fill my book so that I could get another one.
I was told that I would be starting proper school in the September of that year. I would enjoy it, my mother said, and I’d be doing lots of painting and drawing. I was apprehensive but she told me there was nothing to be scared of. But I was scared already of many things: hospitals, injections, tigers and wolves, the dark shapes under my bed which stared back at me malevolently when I lifted up the frill of my bedspread and, of course, my mother herself. I convinced myself that I would be scared of school, too. I had had a couple of upsetting experiences relating to the outside world. Once, my parents had taken me to London where we’d met up with some other family members. We were walking along a busy shopping street and the adults were talking and taking very little notice of me. Suddenly, everyone stopped to look at something in a shop window; I looked, too, but couldn’t see anything of any particular interest. I carried on looking, convinced that there must be something I’d missed. When after some moments I turned around, everyone had disappeared. Obviously, they had forgotten about me completely. Dismayed, I looked about, searching desperately for someone familiar. But when you are very small you can’t see a great deal when so many people are thronging about you. It was, after all, a busy London street. When at length the fact dawned on me that I was well and truly lost, I began to panic. I had been told several times by my mother that if I ever got lost, I should look for a policeman; he would take me to the Police Station and they would give me cakes and lemonade while they set about finding my mummy. The policeman on the beat was a common sight in my youth and you never had to go very far in order to find one. But I remained rooted to the spot, too terrified to move and tears of distress began to spill down my cheeks. Then a woman spotted me and asked if I was lost. I nodded and she said the best thing to do would be to look for a policeman. Some other people had gathered around by this time and a policeman was quickly located. He spoke so kindly and so sympathetically to me that I immediately relaxed and confidently clutched his hand as we went off to the nearest police station. ‘We’ll soon find your mummy,’ he reassured me, ‘and while you’re waiting how would you like to have some lemonade and cakes?’
So it was true, then! I cheered up immediately and began actually to enjoy my big adventure. But we didn’t get to the police station after all: suddenly, out of the crowds of people, my mother appeared looking anxious and harrassed. I was almost sorry to see her. She was very apologetic to the constable and told him how grateful she was for his assistance. Then she grasped me by the hand and marched me off without a word. Very soon, we arrived back at the place where my father had parked our car and there he was, waiting for us.
‘You’ve got to punish her!’ said my mother, after she’d explained what had happened. So my father pushed me into the back of the car, lifted up my skirt and smacked my bottom. I cried bitterly, not so much for the indignity of having my bottom smacked, but for the fact that the whole incident had been their fault, not mine. It was through their negligence that I’d been lost. Worst of all, though, I’d missed out on the lemonade and cakes.
There was another occasion when my mother sent me on a shopping errand. I was used to going on my own to my friends’ houses, which was not a very great distance at all, but the shops were much further afield and I was full of apprehension. What was worse, I had to go to two different shops and everything my mother needed was written on just the one list. Supposing they didn’t hand back the list when I’d finished in the first shop?
‘Just ask them for it back!’ said my mother, impatiently.
So off I trotted with the list, the money and the ration books in the shopping bag. It was a long way for someone so small to negotiate and I was relieved when I reached the shops at last. In the grocers’, I had to wait for a long time to be served because, being such a young child, the shopkeeper obviously thought I was with somebody and so he kept on serving other customers who came in after me. After a while, he realised I was unaccompanied and asked me if I needed anything. I handed him the list and the purse with the money in it and watched while he weighed tea and sugar and margarine on the scales and put them into paper bags.
‘How old are you, dear?’ asked a woman waiting to be served.
‘Four.’ I replied, flushing with discomfiture.
‘You’re far too young to be out on your own!’ she exclaimed and proceeded to discuss with the shopkeeper what was evidently the outrageous negligence of my parents. Still talking, he handed me the shopping, the ration books and the change but, just as I’d feared, not the list. I was so unnerved by the entire business that I was overcome with shyness and did not want them to know that I had to go to yet another shop. My next port of call was the greengrocers’ but what my mother wanted there, I’d no idea. I knew she liked tomatoes, so I thought that was what she’d probably written on the list and I asked the greengrocer for a bag of them.
‘How many do you need, love?’ asked the woman.’Half a pound?’
I had no idea, of course, and again I was tongue-tied. When I returned home with the purchases my mother was exasperated. She certainly had not wanted tomatoes, she grumbled. And what on earth was she going to do with many? She was so annoyed with me that I feared she might send me back to the shops. However, I think she saw my distress and a look of guilt flashed across her face. It was a great relief to me that I was never sent again on a shopping errand.
In September, I started school and found, after all, that my mother was right and that there was nothing to be scared about. I trotted off quite happily every morning, accompanied by her, to the school entrance. Although I hated numbers and counting, I enjoyed all the other things we did, especially looking at picture books and listening to the teacher reading aloud. My self-esteem was boosted by the fact that everyone - both teachers and children - admired my drawing skills and I had plenty of opportunities for showing off because we did a great deal of drawing and painting. I had my midday meal at school and couldn’t understand why so many of the other children detested the dinners which I enjoyed so much. I was too young to understand that my mother was an appallingly bad cook. After the War, when meat was a scarce commodity, rabbit was often on the menu at home. The saucepan would be rattling away on the stove, the contents boiling furiously, while a grey scum oozed out from under the lid. The smell of the stewing rabbit had a sweet sickliness about it which turned my stomach and I detested the unpleasant, rather bitter taste of it. For pudding, my mother often made suet roll. She’d mix the suet, coarsely grated from a big lump which she’d buy from the butcher, with flour and water, then roll the dough up in a cloth and tie the ends with string. When it had been boiled and removed from the cloth it looked like a giant, slimy maggot. Even the jam with which it was served couldn’t disguise the leaden texture and the cloying fattiness of it. The only things I really enjoyed at home were the National Health orange juice and Virol. I loved the sweet, malty, rather metallic taste of the syrupy mixture and while I’m sure it must have contained many beneficial minerals, it couldn’t have been very good for the teeth. As well as the orange juice, we also had cod-liver oil which was utterly detestable. Nothing seemed to take the taste away after the daily dose had been spooned into my mouth and the fishy smell seemed to linger for hours afterwards. My mother often served up sardines on toast and I hated the oily, bony things so much that it gave me a lifelong aversion to tinned sardines.
I used to feel sorry for my father because he wasn’t allowed to have the things he enjoyed, such as mushrooms on toast, pickled herrings or tinned pilchards in tomato sauce and if he happened to mention to my mother that he’d enjoyed something she’d cooked, she’d make sure she never served it up again.
Because my life at home was blighted by fear of my mother, starting school was probably the best thing to happen in my young life. My teacher was a young woman who praised, encouraged and enthused whereas my mother criticised, sneered and belittled. I soon found that it was better to keep all my small joys to myself, not to let her see that I had found delight in something. If I made the mistake of expressing pleasure in anything which wasn’t a result of her doing, she would tell me to go and pick up my toys or chide me for getting myself dirty and that she had better things to do than to clean up after me all the time.
After a while, I began to gain confidence. I was becoming less timid and my self-esteem had improved. But I had been going to school for only a few weeks when something happened to me which was to have a profoundly disturbing effect on my life.

CHAPTER ONE; The Post-War Years

2007-05-12T15:01:00.000+01:00

Because of the air raids, my mother used to tell me, it wasn’t safe for babies to be born in London during the War and so she had to go to Chelmsford, where there was less danger from the bombs, to have me. Later on, when I asked her if I was a Londoner like my cousins Maureen, Christine and Billy, she said no, you had to be born in London to be able to call yourself a Londoner. I had been born in Chelmsford which meant that I was an Essex girl.
When she brought me home from the hospital I was no bigger than a doll. Evidently, I had inherited from her the rare brittle bone condition which had affected members of her family for several generations. Sure enough, I had my first fracture - a broken arm - while I was still a baby. To the astonishment of the medical staff who treated me, I managed to pick off every bit of the plaster. It was unprecedented, they told my mother, for such a young child to do such a thing. I think it was the first manifestation of the powerful creative urge which was to become the most important thing in my life; by the time I was two years old I had already begun to draw prolifically.
Like many of those children who had been born in the Second World War, it was some time before my father, who was serving in the Royal Navy, set eyes on me. I was such a fragile, little thing that I must have been a big disappointment to him. Taking into account these factors, it is hardly surprising that there was no real attachment between us and he played very little part in my early upbringing, apart from occasionally being told by my mother to button my liberty bodice or do up my shoelaces. Like many other little girls, I was obliged to wear the hated liberty bodice; it was a tightly fitted, seamed garment fastened at the front by lots of minute buttons and my father’s clumsy fingers had great difficulty fitting them into the equally tiny buttonholes.
Once, during one of my parents’ frequent rows, I heard my mother say ‘You never did like her, did you?’ and I knew they were talking about me. Somehow, I never minded because I thought it was normal for a father not to have much of a role, other than that of provider, in the bringing up of a daughter and I used to feel embarrassed if I witnessed any display of affection between any other girl and her father.
After the War, when he was demobbed in 1946, my father resumed his job as manager of the export department in the family-owned leather goods factory near Theydon, in Essex, where we lived in a pleasant, rural location. Our address was 303, Morgan Crescent and our house had all the features of the typical, inter-war semi. For example, there was a deep front porch with a stained glass motif and large, bowed front windows; the woodwork was elaborate and there was a lot of decorative brickwork. There was a time when these houses were considered rather naff but nowadays they are recognised as having a place in the history of architecture.
My father was a clever, creative man and he had lots of hobbies which, now that the dark clouds of war had rolled away, he was able to take up again, to the displeasure of my mother who considered them a waste of time; I, however, found all these activities very interesting and they were the only occasions on which I took any real notice of my father. He was a passionate gardener and he had inherited from his father green fingers; even as a very young child, I was able to appreciate that we had the most beautiful garden in the area and it was from watching him and being amongst the flowers, studying the faces of the pansies and violas, squeezing the dragons’ mouths of the antirrhinums, enjoying the peppery scent of the lupins, the delicate fragrance of sweet-peas which, even today, evokes happy memories, that I, too, developed a lifelong love of flowers. The centrepiece of our garden was a series of ponds, each on a different level, connected by waterfalls which were operated by a pumping apparatus which forced water from the lowest level back into the top pool. My father had designed and made it himself and I spent many hours, totally absorbed, watching the fascinating process of the digging out of the soil, the mixing of the cement, and the laying of the surrounding crazy paving. To a child, a simple thing like mixing cement by hand is utterly mesmerizing: the sound of the cutting motion of the spade as it carefully combines the sand with the cement; the making of the well in the centre into which the water is poured, gradually, being careful not to add too much; and the final result: the lovely, sloppy mixture into which it is so difficult to resist putting small fingers.
At last, after the ponds had been lined with cement and allowed to dry, it was time to fill them with water. There are no words to describe the thrill I experienced as the hose was turned on. I crouched on the concrete slab which spanned one of the little waterfalls and watched, spellbound, as the water began to gush; at last, the pump was switched on and with much gurgling, the water flowed merrily. Bliss! Another of my father’s hobbies was making and flying model aircraft. In a room upstairs he stored all the interesting and mysterious things needed to make them: lengths of balsa wood, tissue paper, glue, paint; but the room was out of bounds to me because, also stored there, were sticks of explosives which, used with thick rubber bands, propelled the planes into the air. Sometimes, at weekends, my mother and I used to go with him to an open hillside where there were other model aircraft enthusiasts and I would enjoy watching the little planes gliding overhead, like dragonflies.
One day, my father took my mother and me to an airfield where there were real planes. He asked me if I would like to go for a ride in one of them and, thinking he was joking, I shook my head and laughed. But it was not a joke: he had actually booked a flight! I pleaded with my mother not to let him make me go with him but she told me not to be so silly: I would enjoy it, she said. I looked up and saw a couple of planes buzzing overhead and the very idea of being airborne terrified me. When I saw the machine in which my father intended to fly, my terror turned to panic: it was a tiger moth and to me it looked no more substantial than the flimsy models he made out of balsa wood and tissue paper. Ignoring my screams, he picked me up and carried me into the plane. The pilot tried in vain to placate me but by now I was beside myself. Struggling with all my might as my father held me down onto his lap, we trundled along the runway, bumping and shaking; as we left the ground my stomach gave a great lurch and my screams became hysterical. The flight could have lasted only a few minutes but to me it seemed an eternity; when, to my immeasurable relief, we touched down and the plane came to a halt, I had screamed myself hoarse. I never forgave my father for the ordeal to which he had subjected me and I had nightmares about flying for years afterwards. As for him, when he arranged the flight he must have hoped that I would share his enjoyment of such an exciting adventure: probably, if I had been born a boy, I would have been more enthusiastic. As ever, I was a disappointment to him.
When I was still very young, my mother enrolled me in a ballet class. I don’t know whether it was because the doctors had told her ballet lessons would be good for my bones or whether it was because nice girls from good famillies always went to ballet class: knowing my mother, the latter probably applied. Anyway, once a week I joined a lot of other little girls and we skipped and pranced about under the direction of a harrassed, elderly female. After some weeks, our teacher told us we were going to give a performance on a real stage; I received this information with indifference but my mother was excited. For the great event we were to have dresses specially made up, all in different colours. The fabric was a stiff organdie, flocked with little white flowers; mine was a pale blue and I liked the way the skirt, gathered at the waist with a frilled petticoat underneath, stuck right out.
On the afternoon of the performance my mother dressed me in my blue frock, tied a blue ribbon in my hair, dabbed on a little lipstick and rubbed some more into my cheeks to make them pink. Rustling in our stiff organdie dresses, giggling nervously, we arranged ourselves in a circle on the stage, arms aloft, toes pointed, ready to begin our dance, and the curtains parted. When I saw all those people staring up at us, I froze: while all the other little girls skipped around me, dutifully performing our rehearsed routine,I remained immobile, paralysed with shyness. The audience tittered and the teacher grabbed me and pulled me off the stage. ‘Never mind’, she told my mother afterwards, we’ve got the second performance to come and she’ll have got over her stage fright by then.
Sure enough, by the time we were to give our second performance, I felt positively blasé, having been bribed with sweeties, cajoled, and finally convinced that there was really nothing to be nervous about and none of the other little girls had been to shy to dance, had they. So, when the curtains parted and the audience looked up, I began to skip along with the rest, full of new-found confidence. But we were only a few seconds into our routine when I suddenly became aware of a discomfort: there was a blockage in my nose which needed urgent attention. So, in mid-skip, I came to a halt and began an investigation of the offending nostril. With my finger up my nose, I gazed down at the audience, indifferent to their titters. Once again, the teacher rushed onto the stage and whisked me off.
Undaunted, my mother continued to take me to ballet classes. By this time, I was growing bored and my attention began to wander. There was one girl in particular who interested me
greatly because she had the most extraordinary bottom I had ever seen: it stuck right out, like a Victorian bustle, a shelf of a bottom, which you could surely put things on. I was convinced that such a bottom couldn’t possibly be real. One day, while we were skipping around in a circle, as usual, I found myself directly behind this girl. Overcome with curiosity, I was unable to control myself; I bent down, out of sight of the teacher, and sank my teeth into the quivering flesh. There was a deafening screech, followed by equally deafening howls and the circle came to a halt, the little girls almost falling over one another in their surprise. The girl’s mother was outraged. ‘Look!’ she said to my mother, lifting up her daughter’s skirt and pulling down her knickers, ‘Toothmarks!’ I regarded the result of my impulsive action with satisfaction; there was no doubt about it: the firm, fat, fleshy, white bottom, the indentations of my teeth clearly visible, was real.

During those early years, I had - apart from drawing - one very great passion: trains. In those days, the railway network was extensive and everyone travelled by train. Every Saturday, I accompanied my mother to London, where she went to visit my grandmother, and it was in this way that I became interested in locomotives. To me, it seemed impossible that there could be in the world anything more exciting than those great London termini; even the names had a magical quality: King’s Cross, Paddington, Waterloo....... How I loved to watch the huge engines gliding into the station! I thrilled to the hiss of the escaping steam, the clanking of metal upon metal, the sulphurous smell of water on burning coal. I was in awe of their massive bulk yet at the same time enthralled. Travelling, I could never sit still and would press my face to the window so that I might get a glimpse of the engine whenever it rounded a bend; besides, the scratchy, plush seats rubbed against the backs of my bare legs and there was nothing to look at if you sat down apart from the panoramic, monochrome photographs of railway destinations which adorned each compartment.
One day, on one of these customary trips to London,we were getting out of our compartment when my mother dropped one of her gloves on to the track between the platform and the carriage. She was inordinately proud of those gloves; they were of black leather and, she was in the habit of telling me, you could always tell a real lady by the quality of the gloves she wore: obviously, she considered hers to be terribly smart. At once, she began to panic and frantically looked around for help. I had a reverential respect for any official connected with the railway and I was aghast when, seeing one in the distance, she waved her arm and called him over. Other passengers were looking at us with curiousity and I curled up with embarrassment as she explained her predicament. The man went off and a few minutes later another man appeared carrying a long pole with a prong on the end of it. Nimbly, he lowered himself onto the track, fished about underneath the carriage and emerged at last with my mother’s glove dangling on the end of the prong. I watched the process with wide-eyed wonderment; to think that anyone could be brave enough to go underneath a train just like that! Supposing it began to move? But the man was smiling as he handed the glove back to my mother. ‘I won’t say thank-you,’ she said, ‘because it’s bad luck to thank a person for handing back a dropped glove.’ The man laughed. ‘She’ll break someone’s heart one day,’ he said, beaming at me, ‘with them eyes!’
Although I never had any great fondness for my grandmother, I looked forward to our weekly visits because she lived in the same house as my cousins Maureen, Christine and Billy and even though they were older than I was, I enjoyed their company and we all got on very well together. The house belonged to my mother’s brother, Bill, and his wife, Marie. When my grandfather was killed in the Great War, my grandmother was left homeless: her husband’s family had never liked her and I think it was because they had done rather well for themselves and they considered their son to be too good for her. My mother and my grandmother were always falling out and having rows so that was probably why she hadn’t come to live with us.
I loved my Auntie Marie. She was warm-hearted and generous and I always looked to her for comfort rather than to my mother. She had an irrepressible sense of humour and could make anyone laugh. My uncle Bill, on the other hand, even though I liked him, was very quiet. ‘It’s a wonder we ever got married,’ Auntie Marie used to say. ‘When we were courting, he’d invite me round to his house for tea and I’d have to sit there twiddling my thumbs and staring at the wall while he, your mum and their mum finished reading their books.’
Auntie Marie had a wonderful talent for recounting events. Often, I’d say to her ‘Tell me about
the War, Auntie!’ and I would sit, spellbound, as she related her experiences. The one which impressed and moved me most was her description of a train leaving the station, full of men going off to fight. ‘The men were all hanging out of the windows,’ she said ‘ and the wives, the mums and the girlfriends were still clinging on to them even as the train was gathering speed. They never knew, of course, if they’d ever see them again.’
Athough it had only begun to recover from the devastating effects of the Blitz, London was still a thrilling place to be in as far as I was concerned. I loved the big shops, especially those which had funicular systems for handling money. When a purchase was made, the assistant would put the cash into a globe which was then sent by means of an overhead system of cables to the cashier sitting in a kiosk. The cashier would unscrew the globe, remove the money then send back a receipt together with the change. I would stand, mesmerized, my neck aching, watching all the globes whizzing to and fro. But my soul knew no greater bliss than to visit Gamages ( to my ears the very name, like those London stations, sounded magical) to look at the toys. It was here that they displayed the most wonderful model railway layouts and train sets and no amount of threats or bribes could drag me away from this empyrean.
After we’d been to the shops, my mother would take me to Lyon’s for lunch. I liked the warm, steamy atmosphere, the clink of china and cutlery and the comforting smells. Generally, my lunch consisted of a bread roll and a bowl of rather unpleasant, watery, tomato soup. Sometimes, if my mother was in a good mood, I was allowed an ice-cream; it was served in a tall glass with a long-handled spoon and I had to stand up in order to scoop it out .
After lunch, we caught the trolley bus to Leytonstone, where my grandmother lived. Sometimes, floating in the sky above our heads, like trunkless, tethered elephants, were dirigible balloons; the sinister, black shapes frightened me, yet at the same time fascinated me, and although I kept my gaze deliberately fixed to the pavement, I couldn’t resist glancing up at them every now and again. I was rather afraid, too, of the trolley buses; when they were in motion, the long, metal rods which made contact with the overhead cables sparked and flashed alarmingly. We disembarked by a pub called ‘The Baker’s Arms’ and crossed the road and we had to pass a church outside which, every Saturday, when there were continuous weddings, groups of women gathered to see the succession of brides emerging. My mothered also lingered to watch and while the other women commented favourably on a bride’s appearance, she would invariably make some scathing remark.
Peterborough Road, our destination, is a very long road indeed and we had to walk almost to the end of it. After a while, I would begin to drag my feet and grizzle; the walk seemed interminable but I was generally distracted by the sight of the colourful, hand-made rag-rugs which housewives used to hang on their front walls- ostensibly to air but in reality to show them off. During the War, when not a scrap of fabric was wasted, women used to tear rags into strips and, using sacking or similar fabric as backing, they would pull the strips of material through holes in the base fabric and tie them, thus creating a tufted effect. The Board of Trade published a booklet in the War called ‘Make Do and Mend’ advising women on how to make clothes last longer and how to renovate old ones. Even knitted garments were unravelled and made up into new ones.There was even advice on how to look after corsets. It began: ‘Now that rubber is so scarce your corset is one of your most precious possessions.’ How I laughed when, years later, I discovered my mother’s copy of the booklet and read that paragraph!
The house next door to the one in which my grandmother, uncle, aunt and cousins lived was one of the very first to be hit by a dreaded, flying V2 bomb. On the day it happened, Auntie Marie had been to the hairdresser’s to get the latest ‘bubble-cut’. Back home, she wound her hair up with pipe-cleaners and rags and set about cleaning the grate. Then the bomb landed. My cousins, Maureen and Christine, (Billy hadn’t yet been born) were still babies, and shared a big pram which was parked in the garden at the time. Prams were heavy, solid, built-to-last contraptions in trhose times and even though the force of the explosion propelled it to the end of the garden it remained upright and undamaged so that the children were unharmed. Poor Auntie Marie, covered in soot and blood, was carried out on a stretcher, looking a sight worse than she actually was. Even then, her sense of humour never failed her and she chuckled when she heard an onlooker say, aghast, ‘Just look at that poor woman!’
At the back of my cousins’ house was a long, narrow garden beyond which was an expanse of bomb-damaged land which at one time must have been a rather splendid garden, full of fruit trees. Now that it was neglected and overgrown, it provided us with an exciting place to
play so we used to trespass there regularly and in autumn we’d steal the fruit. Beyond this, in the distance, was Whipp’s Cross Hospital, a big, imposing, red-bricked building.
Peterborough Road is very close to the edge of Epping Forest and common grazing rights meant that cattle would sometimes come wandering past the houses.The East End of London had been badly bombed and many people had been left homeless. I often used to wonder about the curious, corrugated metal buildings which were a common sight in that area, always in neat rows; they were tubular in shape and had doors and windows but I could not imagine that people actually lived in them. It was some time before I learned that they were, of course, temporary homes for people who had lost their houses in the War.
In my cousin’s’ house, an upstairs bedroom had been converted into a bedsit for my grandmother and it was there that we had our tea on Saturday afternoons. The meal consisted of tinned meat - I think it was Spam - and a salad of tomatoes and cucumber, drowned in vinegar. Later, as a greater variety of food became available, we would have corned beef, cold tongue or even tinned salmon. Afterwards, there would be tinned fruit and Libby’s evaporated milk. Sometimes, my Auntie Marie would buy winkles and I’d watch in horror as they picked the winkles out of their shells with pins, dipped them in vinegar and ate them. To me, it seemed as disgusting as eating snails.
My grandmother suffered from arthritic fingers and to keep them mobile, she knitted. But the only things she ever made were gloves - dozens and dozens of them. They were always the same: plain colours with contrasting, tuck-stitch patterns on the knuckle of each finger. Every member of the family owned several pairs of my grandmother’s hand-knitted gloves yet still she carried on knitting. She, too, suffered from the brittle bone condition which affected my mother and me and she had a brother, Uncle Albert, who had broken so many bones in his life that they’d told him at the hospital he must have had more fractures than anyone else in England.
When I was very young, I was confused by the great number of female relations - all elderly - we seemed to have. They always had old-fashioned names like Flo, Cissy or Connie and lived in gloomy houses full of funny ornaments and china and old photographs. I was obliged to accompany my mother when she visited them and though I was under orders to be on my best behaviour I would soon start to fidget and then I’d be sent out into the garden to play. But the gardens were boring, full of dreary, flowerless shrubs and there was no scope for imagination. I liked gardens with trees and lawns and secret places where I could pretend there were winding tracks along which I could ride in an imaginary miniature train. The main topic of conversation during these hated visits was, invariably, the War. As I grew older I came to realise that although many people had endured long years of terrible suffering, for others it had been the most exciting time of their lives. This was certainly the case as far as my mother was concerned; in 1943 she enrolled in the Women’s Royal Naval Service and, according to her Certificate of Service, did very well. She was probably sorry that she had to be discharged a few months later because she was pregnant with me.
My family would not infrequently talk about a certain Uncle George who had been among the very first of the British soldiers who liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Later that day he sent a letter home. It began ‘If you saw what I have seen today........’ Letters were censored, of course, so he was unable to go into detail. All he was permitted to say was that although England had endured terrible losses and great hardship because of the War, it was nothing compared to the unimaginable suffering of the inmates of Belsen. I was too young to understand what these conversations were about but whenever I refused to eat my food or became finicky I would be told it was wicked to waste food when others had starved to death in concentration camps.
My father had two brothers. Strangely, all three called each other by their second names; my father, whose first name was Basil, had always been called Roy; Richard was called Albie and Hugh had been known by that name for so long that nobody could even remember his first name. My mother was jealous of Hugh’s wife, Claire, and said she was a snooty cow. They lived in a nice house in Harlow, in Essex, and my mother was resentful because he’d done well for himself and my father hadn’t.
‘You’re useless!’ she used to complain. ‘If you had more go in you you’d have been a success, like your brother!’
Once, when we were on our way to Harlow to visit Hugh, my parents had such a dreadful row that my father turned the car around and drove straight back home. He accused my mother of having ‘carried on’ with his brother during the War while he was serving in the Navy and
suggested that I was Hugh’s child and not his. I shrank into my seat in the back of the car, frightened and bewildered. I did not understand these adult matters and as always the ferocity of their frequent slanging matches, which could last for hours, upset and worried me.
Albie’s wife, Lal, was also exasperated by what she referred to as the ‘curse of the Walkers’. ‘They’re all the same,’ she would complain. ‘Dreamers. They never get on.’’
According to her, the last words of one of their antecedents had been ‘ I’ve been a fool!’
‘That just about sums them up,’ she said. ‘The whole lot of them.’
My uncle and aunt lived in Brixham, in Devon, and sometimes we would go by train to visit them and stay for a few days. They had two children: a boy, Tony, who was several years my senior and a girl, Stephanie, who was exactly the same age as I was. To be precise, I was the elder by one day. Uncle Hugh was a photographer and he had a shop, with living quarters above, near the harbour. It was a large, rambling building with lots of stairs and the smell of photographic chemicals permeated every part. The living room overlooked the street below and opposite there was a shop on which was displayed a figurehead from an old ship. She had a large, barely concealed bosom, big blue eyes, outlined in black, and very red lips; her dress was bright blue and she fascinated me so much that I could not take my eyes off her.
I was captivated, too,by the hundreds of gulls which continually wheeled and squawked overhead. Their cries and the pattering of their feet on the roof were the first thing you heard every morning. After breakfast, Uncle Albie used to open the window and put breadcrusts on the sill; they’d come swooping down, squabbling loudly, and seize the bread. There was one bird which would hop right into the room and take food from my uncle’s hand. Nothing would induce me to do the same because I was afraid of its vicious, snatching beak.
Brixham Harbour was a place of sheer enchantment with its wonderfully exciting medley of colour, noise and bustle. I loved all the strange smells, too - the tarry ropes, the fish, the deisel oil and the sea itself. When the fishing boats were in, there was a forest of wooden masts and drying sails; their catches were unloaded into containers which ran on metal tracks and I was convinced that somewhere there must be a little engine to pull them along and was bitterly disappointed not to see it. The fish was auctioned in a big building at the entrance to the harbour and it was thrilling to witness the bidding and the unintelligible shouting of the auctioneer.
Behind my uncle’s house was a long flight of stone steps at the top of which were some cottages and it was in one of these that my grandfather came to live after the death of his wife. I was fond of my grandfather but, strangely, I remember absolutely nothing about my grandmother other than the fact that she suffered from car sickness. Every journey would require several stops; she’d fall out of the car, retch noisily, then climb back in, all smiles. ‘I feel like a new woman now!’ she’d say, every time. To me, who never suffered from travel sickness, it was all rather strange and interesting.
She died while I was very young but my grandfather lived on into his eighties. He was a kind, good-natured man and he took it upon himself to teach me the names of all the wild flowers we came across so that even before I started school I was familiar with plant names such as bird’s-foot trefoil, kidney vetch and fumitory. He also loved birds and I think it was his interest in them that sparked the same enthusiasm in me. At one time, he told me, he had tamed a jackdaw which used to fly to him when he whistled to it and would sit on his shoulder. I didn’t believe him until I saw a photograph. In fact, the same photograph is in the family album today and, although I didn’t appreciate it then, it is a very beautiful picture, full of mood and atmosphere. It depicts my grandfather and one of his sons, their backs turned to the camera, absorbed with the lighting of a bonfire; sure enough, sitting on his shoulder is the jackdaw.
Although I never had much to do with my older cousin, Tony, I always loved the company of my other cousin, Stephanie. Apart from being the same age as each other, we had lots of things in common and we would play happily together for hours. We both loved the beach and we’d spend blissful times among the rock pools, our baggy knickers drooping with wet sand and sea water.
During these vacations, our two families, joined by some relations of Auntie Lal, would make excursions into the Devon countryside. We crowded into two cars which we’d have to vacate every time it was necessary to negotiate one of the very steep hills which are typical of that county. I always fell asleep in the car so I must have missed a good deal; I liked it when we got out and walked around, though. Dartmoor delighted and terrified me. I listened, round-eyed with awe, as they told me about the treacherous boggy places which, if you walked on them, would trap you and suck you under the ground. Tony scared me with stories of ghosts
and monsters and giant, black dogs which came out at night to chase people across the moor and rip their throats out.
Because it was impossible for my mother not to fall out and have a row with somebody, our holidays were inevitably cut short and our journeys home would be ruined by the unpleasant atmosphere she had created. Whatever the argument - even if she was blatantly in the wrong - my mother always had the upper hand. Her command of the English language and the extent of her vocabulary were such that she could render any opponent speechless. People soon learned that to attempt to reason with her was futile. She had, too, a way of putting the blame on someone else even when she knew perfectly well that she was at fault and her phraseology was so skillfully executed, so quick and razor-sharp, that a poor victim would end up believing that they had, after all, been the one to blame.
I learned, at a very early age, to fear my mother. I learned how to discern her moods, how to avoid incurring her wrath, how to go out of my way to avoid trouble. Years later, when as an adult I tried to explain to people what it was about my mother that could make even the strongest spirit quail, I found myself unable to do so. In the end, it was Auntie Marie, in her simple and honest way, who provided the definitive description of my mother’s extraordinary personality. She and I had been reminiscing about the past and I confessed to her that I had always been afraid of my mother. She recounted to me then how, on the day war was declared, after she and everyone else had listened in silence to the wireless and the grave voice of Chamberlain telling them that Germany had not withdrawn its troops from Poland ‘.....and that consequently this country is at war with Germany’ she had imagined that the bombs were going to start raining with immediate effect. With those famous words stlill echoing in her head she decided to take herself and the babies out of London and spend the duration of the war in the country, where it would be safer, with my mother. So she pushed the big pram to the shops at the end of the road, filled it with groceries, hurriedly packed some suitcases and caught the bus.
‘Well, ‘ she said, ‘I stuck it out for three days. After that, I realised I couldn’t stand it any more. I decided I’d rather put up with Hitler and his bombs than your mother.’