Dulcie

                                                       DULCIE 

       
          During my early days at Blackdown I had many problems with bed wetting and wetting my knickers.  Miss Lane, who was the housemistress, kept a weather eye out for me. Miss Lane was an albino.  She had snow white hair, beautifully waved, and clear blue eyes, with just a hint of red rims.  She had a natural love and understanding of children.  Often she would come up to me and lead me away, take me upstairs, remove my knickers, wash me and dry me, and put a clean pair of knickers on me.  All this was done without any fuss and bother.  There was no judgment, only kindness, and gradually these symptoms of my anxiety disappeared.

           I first encountered Dulcie when we were both in the sick room together with a mild case of chickenpox.   She was three years older than me and much bigger than I was.  I felt intimidated by her.  One day she suddenly jumped on top of me in bed, pulled down her pyjamas, and said:  “Lick my pussy."   I struggled and screamed, but there was nothing I could do.  Miss Lane, who slept next door, was not there.  Reluctantly, I did what she asked.

            After that she left me alone, and the incident was forgotten.  We found a common interest in comics, and soon we were immersed in Beano and Tiger Tim.  By the time we came out of the sick room we were firm friends:  she had just as suddenly taken a liking to me.

             From then on we became inseparable.  We did everything together:  we played together, we were naughty together:  she was the one who always led me on.  We both loved animals, particularly cats.  Dulcie was not bright and though older than me, we were in the same class.   She had a sweet nature.  She liked poetry and wrote little verses.  She had common sense, too, which I did not, and she remained a loyal friend throughout my life.

            Dulcie and her sister Maureen came from New Zealand.  Their father had owned  a tobacco plantation in Malaysia and their mother had been a native Malaysian woman.   Their father, on his return to New Zealand, had married a white woman  and had sent his two daughters to England to become educated and civilised.  Mrs Hastings told my mother that they had both been like little savages when they first came to England.

            Both Dulcie and her sister had round, freckled faces.  Maureen had black hair and brown eyes, but Dulcie’s hair was auburn and she had green eyes with flecks of gold in them.  Maureen was eighteen months older than Dulcie, so already a teenager.

More Poetry

This is a fill in till I write the next piece of my life.

                           
                              I?  What am I?

                                                A net of nerves, joints, sinews,

                                                Bound in a framework of bone and skin,

                                                A mouth to swallow meat and swill down slops –

                                                An eye to see and not perceive

                                               

                                                An ear to hear and to forget –

                                                In short a body – an object movable and

                                                Visible in space – breathing and expelling air,

                                                Endowed with senses and sensibilities –

                                                Ah – there’s the rub.  For you seem to have learnt

                                                The secret of living -  but I

                                                Slip up against the sores of the world.

                                                Yet there’s something within me, elusive

                                                And feather light – unseen – unfelt – unknowable

                                                Tender as a green shoot and shrinking

                                                As a snail without a shell – ready to die

                                                At will and always being born again –

                                                An insubstantial – inconsequential – timid, moody

                       

                                                thing,

                                                That I would willingly be rid of

                                                And yet might tell me what I am.

          I wrote this poem at some point when I was at University.

                                                             THE WAITRESS

                                   

                                    Her life was bounded by little things,

                                    By slops and coffee pots and breakfast trays.

                                    Her life was regulated, like the clock that rings

                                    The hours to mark the passing days.

                                    Her days passed by in meaningless content

                                    And little things of life made up her joys.

                                    On food to swell her body her eager eyes were bent

                                    And clothes to mask her body were her toys.

                                    She bore her body like a queen in June,

                                    Full bosomed, supple, graceful as a cat,

                                    And like a cat she loved to lie abed at noon,

                                    Crooning in sleep, dreaming of this and that.

                                    Within the stately powdered head her mind

                                                Was small and mean,

                                    She looked upon the stars and did not see.

                                    Beyond her small circumference she could not lean

                                    Or grope for truth, but sat and sipped her tea.

                                    Her life was bounded by little things,

                                    Her days were passed in old familiar ways,

                                    Her eyes were closed to the unknown which brings

                                    Life, death and rapture to our transient days.

          

          During the holidays whilst I was at University I used to work as a waitress at a hotel in

Stratford-on-Avon.  We used to call her Kent, and I'm sure she was a nice woman.  This is the 

poem of a very young person.

                                               

WE MOVE TO JERSEY AND ENGLAND

            It was some time in 1935  that my mother took me away from the Abbaye and we moved to Jersey.

            I was overjoyed to be with my mother again.  I do not remember if I felt sad at leaving the nuns.  I am sure they were sad to see me go.  I can imagine that the tender hearted Sister Yvonne must have cried at my leaving, and that I shed a tear on leaving her.  

            My mother had found a job as a cook-housekeeper to a wealthy family.  Their name was Helliwell and they lived in a large house just outside St. Helier in Jersey.  My mother had a bedroom, which I shared with her, and her own sitting room.

            There were three boys in the family, all older than me and bigger.  I was terrified of them.  I spent hours reading in my mother’s sitting room and I became a regular bookworm.  I had somehow managed to teach  myself how to read in English. 

            For my eighth birthday I was given a book called The Water Babies, by Charles Kingsley, by my mother’s friend, Walter Tuck, who was still around.  I loved this book and the story of Tom, the chimney sweep -  his adventures in the river, meeting Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby and Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid and, of course, Ellie.  Looking at this book now it seems a very difficult book for an eight year old, with lots of long words, but I remember reading them all religiously even though I did not understand them.  This was probably the start of my love of words, the longer the better.

            I went to School, which I did not enjoy very much.  I had to walk two miles along country lanes to get there.  Once on my way I passed a Fair.  I loved fairs.  My mother had given me some money to buy a School tie.  I was drawn in to the Fair by the music, I saw the roundabout going round and round, and small children riding on brightly coloured horses.  I was tempted and held out my coin.  I was lifted onto one of the horses.  It was Heaven!  Rising up and down with the music, I never wanted to get off.  I never got a School tie, and I was roundly scolded by my mother.

            At Easter time the Helliwells organized an Easter egg hunt in the garden, and I was invited to join in.  This was a lot of fun;  they had a large garden and there were plenty of  dark places, shrubs, bushes, and flower beds in which to look for eggs, and of course we all found one.

            My mother became friendly with Colonel Helliwell, who had been in the Indian Army.  He taught her how to make a real Indian curry, which was very hot and spicy.  This became one of her accomplishments for many years afterwards.

            Although we were quite happy there, my mother had been thinking about my future education, and so in 1937 we moved to England.  My mother was to work as a cook-housekeeper in a small boarding school called Blackdown, in the small town of Wellington in Somerset.  My education was to be included as part of her salary.

            I had by now become a very shy, retiring child. 

          My mother was constantly saying:  “Daphne’s such a nervous child.”   My relationship with my mother had changed.  She was no longer the comfortable, relaxed presence I had known in France, and I was no longer the prattling child who told her everything.  I had got used to my own company, and my mother was frequently tired, preoccupied or busy.  She was also becoming deaf. She was still a comforting presence and she was always there, but we each now lived in our own world.  I lived in a world of books and my mother was occupied with her work and her worries.

            I hated England.  

          There had still been enough that was French in Jersey for the transition not to be so marked, but England was very different.  People seemed to me to be cold and unemotional, and unfriendly.  The French often say that the English are hypocritical, and from their point of view there may be some truth in this.  French people are very frank and say what they think outright to a person’s face, whereas the English will bend over backward so as not to hurt someone’s feelings, which I used to find very irritating.  The English are reserved, the French are much more extrovert and outgoing.  

          However, this was 1937, and it has to be said that the English character has radically changed since that time, now that we are living in a multi-cultural society, and a much more global world.

            Blackdown School, where we now lived, was a very happy-go-lucky, small private girls’ school.  It was run by Mrs. Hastings, the wife of Commander Hastings, a retired naval officer.  He had always wanted to have a chicken farm and she had wanted a school, so they had managed to combine the two.  There were two school houses, the farm and an orchard.  In many ways it was a lovely place for children.

            Wellington was a small country town.  The School took in boarders and day pupils, who mostly came from the surrounding farms.  There were also girls whose parents lived abroad and who stayed there during the holidays.

            At first I was very lonely and unhappy.  I no longer saw very much of my mother.  I slept in a dormitory, and I was in School whilst she was working.  I found it hard to make friends, having come from such a different background.  After the extrovert and voluble French, the English girls seemed undemonstrative, cold and without feelings.

            I did in the end make a friend.  Her name was Dulcie.

Photo Session

Photos

ART THERAPY (1990)

       

       When I retired in 1989 and came back to England, I started going to many different courses of an exploratory and therapeutic nature. No such thing existed on the Continent.

       One of the courses I attended, soon after I came back, was a weekend Art Therapy course in Totnes. It was a three day course from Friday to Sunday. The art therapist was, I believe, a good one, though I cannot remember her name. She came from an aristocratic family and her birth had been induced so that her mother, a Society beauty, would be able to participate in all the social events over Christmas. She was brought up by a nanny and saw little of her parents.

       We were given large sheets of paper and various exercises designed to help us relax and open up to our subconscious minds. I still have all my drawings and I recently decided to look at them all again. I had not looked at them for many years and was surprised and shocked by them, probably as much as when I first drew them.

       There were several drawings. The first one is of an old woman bending over a child. She is a witch like figure, dressed in black, with a hooked nose and a prominent chin from which two black hairs are protruding. She has a look of glee as she bathes a naked baby in a tin tub. The baby is screaming, red lines coming out of her mouth, and tears rolling down her face. Behind the woman there are big, black bars and there are thick, red lines behind the bars. The child seems to be struggling.

       The second drawing is a maze of black lines which looks like stick figures walking in all directions and in the midst of them is a small, naked child with yellow hair and bright blue eyes. There are words in red along the side:  I FEEL TRAPPED  -  FRIGHTENED  -   HOPELESS  -   HELPLESS. I WANT TO GET OUT OF THE MAZE.

       The next drawing again shows a naked child with yellow hair and blue eyes, and a blue blob in her middle. She seems to be leaning against what looks like a black trouser leg and black boot. She is screaming. The word “Mummy” is coming out of her mouth. There is a black figure floating in the air, again rather witchlike, and the words:   “Go away. I hate you you!!”  in black. Next to this figure is a perpendicular line of links creating a barrier, and beyond this a woman in blue is walking away, her back turned.  In the middle of the picture, written in blue, are the words:  HELP   LOVE PROTECTION   SECURITY   CUDDLES.

        Where are you? Why aren’t you here?

       The following picture is a large drawing of a small girl - she is dressed in a yellow tunic with a green belt – she has yellow hair and blue eyes and tears are flowing down her face. She has blue hands and blue feet. She is surrounded by grey.

       The next picture shows a rather terrifying image of what looks like the child’s descent into the underworld. The child, now brown with brown hair, blue eyes, and still some bits of yellow, appears to be falling down a long chute against a background of dark red flames. Down below are various kinds of devils:  one is black, with glowing red eyes and a long, forked tail -  a trio, black with horns and red faces and a curious figure with a huge head, looking like some kind of underwater monster.

       From now on the drawings begin to change. In the next picture we see a landscape:  mountains, trees, rivers, valleys and a path.  A small figure stands at the beginning of the path – sturdy, with brown hair, a buttoned up coat and leggings. The caption reads:  “I want to find my Mummy.”  It looks like the hero’s journey – there are dangers on the path:  green monsters, a menacing figure in red, castles, a big black spider and another black figure at the end of the path with red hands.

       The next image shows a large blue bottle with a yellow figure popping out of it and then being split apart. There are body parts, arms, legs, feet, a torso, a head and a heart all flying round the page, and a blue bowl, waiting perhaps to put them together again.

       In the following drawing we are back to the brown figure landing on what looks like the seabed:  there is sand, swimming fish and waving seaweed.  On the child’s face is a smile of triumph and the caption says:

“I’M HERE!”

       Next we see the yellow child again, with yellow hair, leaping out of a deep blue sea onto the beach, and a huge red sun pouring its rays down on the scene.

       There is one final picture, of the child again, naked, yellow, with a blue eye. She is holding out her arms to a figure in blue. It is a nun dressed in a long blue robe, with a veil and benevolent expression on her face. The background is yellow, green and pale blue.

       It looks as though there has been a wonderful reconciliation and resolution of all these events.

       On the last day of the course I had woken up that Sunday morning, feeling very peaceful and at one with everything. I had been dreaming of the nuns and they were all wearing, not black, but long white robes.

       I was talking recently to someone who had undergone a lot of therapy. I told her about these images and she asked me if I had ever had shamanic healing, which I have not.  She had, and she was struck by the similarities between her own healing process and my own.  One of the aspects of shamanic healing is the splitting up of the personality into its myriad parts and then reassembling them.

       It seems that my subconscious mind had intuitively worked this out. The weekend had proved not only to be a profound healing experience for me, but it had also shown me how we can carry these feelings deep inside us without our being aware of them, and of how they are affecting us.

        During that time in my life I must have learnt to build a shell around myself, so that nothing could get in and nothing could get out either. It was my own way of protecting myself.

GREAT KATE

Kate died peacefully in her sleep on the night of 24th February, 2012. She was 99. I have known her for 60 years, a long span of time. I was looking at a photograph of the two of us together some years ago, and these words came into my mind. They wrote themselves really.

GREAT KATE (A poem inspired by a photograph}

Every moment is a death

A death and a beginning.

Times past are gone for ever

We cannot resurrect them.

They live on only in our memories.

One moment snapped in time,

The two of us together

Laughing into the camera.

Now you are gone.

I will remember you as you were,

Vibrant and full of life,

Laughing, enjoying the good things,

Good cooking and good company.

You were kind and caring,

Always looking after others.

You were a life enhancer.

You were a bit mad sometimes,

Infuriating even,

But we always forgave you.

You wanted people to know, you said,

What it meant to be bi-polar

And the things it made you do.

We. who were your friends, forgave you

For we understood it was not the real you.

You had a heart as big as the universe

And we were all warmed by it.

Great Kate, Eia in Mousehole called you long ago.

For me you are and always will be,

GREAT KATE.

Copyright 2012 Daphne Radenhurst