Postcript

            POSTSCRIPT TO VIVA ESPAÑA

            These are a few extracts from my letters to my mother:  they show some of the difficulties I had on traveling with an Aliens Certificate, reflections on Franco’s Spain and some insights into the character of Allison Peers.

         “Pension Juanista, Sanchez Toca, S. Sebastian   July 1949

         This part of the journey was the worst because we just couldn’t sleep and of course the French kept up a chatter all night long.  We got to Hendaye about 12h  and here I had a nerve racking moment because the man kept my passport for ages,

and finally said I hadn’t got a visa, so I said ‘oui, oui’ and pointed to the Spanish visa, then he said I hadn’t got a French visa, so I shouted ‘oui’ again, which was all I could say, and pointed, then he said I couldn’ go back to France again, so I showed him my transit visa, at which he seemed to agree that I was all right.  By that time I was feeling quite weak.  It was certainly a blessing I went to Birmingham, or I would probably have been stranded.”  (What this refers to I do not know.)

From the same letter:

“The regime here is noticeably strict, there are a lot of soldiers on guard all over the place, they patrol the post office and look at what you’re writing, and there seem to be a lot of them lounging about with nothing to do. I believe

the people don’t like it at all, they have no freedom of

         speech and are repressed all the time.”

         In a later letter I wrote:

         “I think the Spaniards must be about the noisiest race on earth.  Every morning

          about 7 I get woken up by a noise which sounds as if ten thousand cans are

          being thrown onto the pavement.  This morning I investigated and found that

          they were emptying all the rubbish bins which people had left out on the 
           pavement.  How they made quite such a noise I don’t know.  When they talk 
          they absolutely shout, you think there’s a crowd of people outside your  
          window, you go out and see two old women having an amicable 
          conversation.”

         And in another letter:

         “Then on Friday, what do you think?  Franco arrived for his summer holiday.  Terrific preparations for his arrival.  Thousands of flags along the streets,

all red and yellow, and on the morning of his arrival a megaphone was set

up in the street, where we went and plonked ourselves about an hour before

so as to get a good view.  The megaphone was blaring away with popular

songs, and every now and then a voice would say Captain General Franco

is now at such and such a place;  he is approaching the outskirts of the city;

he is actually in the city.  It got quite exciting, like a horse race.  Then you’d

get a record of people shouting:  Franco!  Franco!  It was all designed to work

the people up, for although there were lots of people there they didn’t seeover enthusiastic.  In fact when Franco finally arrived we were more enthusiastic than they were.  Apart from a few half hearted shouts of ‘Franco, Franco’ nothing else happened, nothing like the roar that greets our Royal Family, so I don’t think he can be very popular.”

I was very politically innocent in those days.

In another letter I refer to the people in our class and Professor Allison Peers.

“There is one very odd couple, an old woman of about 70, who comes from Malvern, and her niece who is a little dwarf about 4ft high and exactly like a

monkey. She has a dry shriveled up face like a nut, and she seems to have a

malicious pleasure in annoying everybody. In class she acts as if the whole thing were being conducted for her sake, and as she doesn’t know a thing everyone else gets furious.  She has her match however in Allison Peers, the

other day he was saying something in Spanish and she asked him to translate

it;  he just bellowed ‘NO’ at her and cowed her into silence for the rest of the

lesson. We think that being so small she wants to be noticed and so makes

herself a nuisance.

We have found out a few things about Peers since we’ve been here. Apparently he’s a Catholic, for somebody saw him at Mass and he acts more

Spanish than the Spanish themselves.  We think he’s probably been out here

so much that he’s imbibed more of the Spanish spirit than the English.

Anyhow he’s completely different out here.” 

 (In what way I’m not quite sure now.)

         

Spanish Interlude

VIVA ESPAÑA –SPANISH INTERLUDE

         It is the 14^th July, 1949 and it is my twenty first birthday.  My mother has given me a wrist watch, the first one I’ve ever had.

         It is also the day on which Mair and I are traveling to Spain.  We have left Waterloo Station to catch the ferry to Calais.  We are both excited.  This is my first trip abroad since I visited my pen friend in Lille;  for Mair this is her first trip abroad ever.  We arrive at the Gare du Nord early in the afternoon and from there we take a coach to the Gare d’Austerlitz.  The coach takes us right through the centre of Paris.

         It is a clear sunny day, with a cloudless blue sky.   It is Bastille Day, the day on which the French people stormed the Bastille in 1789, and started the French revolution.  The whole of Paris is en fête.  There are crowds in the streets waving their tricolor flags, bands are playing, planes are flying overhead.  Our coach takes us right through the centre of Paris.  Mair and I are sitting with our noses glued to the window. People are smiling and waving at us - we wave back.

 We are going down the Champs Elysees.  I am thrilled by the long, broad avenue, lined with trees, with its tall buildings on either side.  Everything is so different:  the lamp posts, the street signs, the tables outside on the wide pavements. 

Now we are crossing the Place de la Concorde;  it is a huge, wide open space.  The sun is sparkling on the fountains and there is a tall obelisk in the distance. In front of us we can see the Tuileries gardens, classically laid out with gravel paths and neat flower beds, and the Orangerie on the left.  This was later to become an art gallery housing the last paintings by Monet of his garden at Givenchy.  All these things we knew from reading about them and seeing photographs.  Now we are seeing them for the first time.

                     

                               ****   ****   ****

I fell in love with Paris on that day.  For me this was my very best twenty first birthday present.

When we arrived at the Gare d’Austerlitz, we decided to buy some orange juice to quench our thirst.  It was the most delicious juice we had ever tasted, with a real taste of oranges.

         We had ‘couchettes’ on the train for our long overnight journey to Spain. Everything was new and exciting.  Getting off the train at San Sebastian next day the heat and the smells hit us, pungent and sweet.

         San Sebastian was a very elegant seaside resort for wealthy Spaniards, with a wide, curving sandy beach and promenade.  The women, and especially the children, were beautifully dressed.  The little girls wore several layers of flounced skirt, their hair in ringlets and their finger nails painted scarlet.  The women, with their dark hair and flashing eyes, seemed exotic.

         By contrast, when we had to travel on a bus, we were wedged in to a heaving mass of humanity:  there were smells of cheap perfume mingled with garlic and body odours;  stout women, old men with mustaches that pricked one’s chin, small children, pressed up against us.  Very often there would be crates of farm animals, ducks quacking or the clucking of hens.  The  Spanish voices, particularly the women’s, were harsh and staccato, like the rat-tat-tat of gunfire.  All this created a pulsating sense of energy.

         I loved it all:  the heat, the noise, the different smells, the colours.  It was all so different from  England, with its muted colours and restraint and lazy speech.  I wrote long enthusiastic letters home to my mother.  I came across one recently and its youthful exuberance made me smile.

         We were lodged in a tall building on one of the dark, narrow side streets.  The houses were all built around a rectangle, and were six or seven storeys high.  We were on the fourth floor and we had to climb up the stairs to come out onto a corridor which ran right round the inner courtyard.  Here again there was a sense of teeming life.  There was washing hanging out on every balcony, pots of colourful flowers hung from the railings, and the smells of cooking permeated the whole area, strong smells of garlic and spices which we were not used to.  There were old people sitting on the balconies, and music streaming forth from the interiors.

         Mair and I kept grinning and exclaiming at each other in amusement and delight.  We felt the Spaniards knew how to live!

         One of the things that amused me the most was the ‘sereno’ or street guardian. The entry to every building was by a large studded, oak door which was always locked at night.  If we arrived back after the door was locked we had to stand and clap our hands till the ‘sereno’ came, sometimes after several minutes.  He would gravely unlock the door for us whilst we solemnly watched him.

         “Buenos noches, señoritas”,

         “Buenos noches, señor”.

         We both loved this little ritual.  Our ability to speak and understand Spanish was, by now, growing rapidly, and this new skill added to the fun of the whole course and living in Spain. 

         The weeks sped by.  In the mornings we would have classes with our Professor;  he was a charismatic and stimulating teacher.  Mair and I were both too shy to talk to him, but we admired him from afar.  In the afternoons we were free to go to the beach, swim and sunbathe, or explore the Spanish countryside.

         On one of these occasions we had decided to visit a church on the outskirts of the city, and we decided to walk.  We were soon both sweltering in the heat.  This was the era of Franco and his troops, called the Falangists, were very much in evidence.  Some of these soldiers came marching past, every head swiveling in our direction as they went by. Mair and I, red faced, looked straight ahead.  The church, when we reached it, was mercifully cool and very simple, and we sat there for some time.

         In the evenings we went out, sampled the Spanish food or went to concerts to listen to flamenco music and watch the Spanish dancing.  We learnt about that mysterious word “duende’ which encapsulates the essence of flamenco: part ecstasy, part desperation.  This seemed to fit in very well with my feelings at that time.  I still love the music when I hear it now.

         Mair and I got on well together.  She was also on a scholarship and came from a small village in Wales.  We were both about as “green” as each other, so we supported each other in our vulnerability.  She was a sweet and gentle girl who sadly died quite young.

         The five weeks were over and Mair and I returned to England and Wales.  We would meet up in September for our final year at Liverpool.

More photos

                                           Mair                        Daphne

                                                 Rag day at Liverpool    

        

        

     

Photo shoot

Daphne and John at the Abbaye

Daphne and John in garden, Abbaye

Daphne and Tom, Abbaye

Daphne with two small friends

Daphne and mother in Jersey

Portrait of mother aged 17

Mother in Canada

Nora and Arthur  11 and 5

Lowther and Liverpool University

                              LOWTHER AND LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY

            My last year at Lowther passed by rapidly.  Most of my friends had left.  There was one girl called Mary Thomas, who was studying Geography, who had also stayed on and so we were thrown together.  One day she called me a pedant, which annoyed me.  I did not feel like one, but perhaps I was.  I thought she was a bit of a pedant herself, but I did not say so.

            In the summer, at half term, there was always a Parents’ Day.  Prizes were distributed;  there might be a display of Greek dancing by some of the girls, and tea and cakes were served on the lawn.  My mother would usually come up for these, although it was a long journey for her.  I always  received one or two prizes,  French or English.  I felt embarrassed when she came. The other girls’ mothers were smartly dressed, well made up and with stylish hairdos.  My mother looked shabby and tired, with straggling hair.  To my shame now, I was always relieved when it was all over and she went home.

            My School Reports were usually quite good:  “Daphne is industrious and works hard at her subject.”  “Daphne is doing well with her Latin grammar.”  On one report during this last year Miss Sayers had written at the end, under General Comments:  “Daphne must realize that she does not live on a desert island.”    This was  an unusually blunt comment, and I was quite startled by it.  I do not think I deliberately set out to be unfriendly, but I had no idea how to get on with other people, and I was immersed in my own inner world.  This observation nevertheless planted a seed in my mind.

            Another comment Miss Sayers made was:  “Daphne has plenty of common sense when she cares to use it.”  I can recognize the truth of this now.

            I found the Latin lessons boring, but I worked at them conscientiously, and I managed to scrape a Pass when I took my School Certificate exam.  This was all I needed.

            The next hurdle was to sit the entrance exam for Oxford University and try for a scholarship.  One of the books I had picked off the Library shelves was The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence, and I decided to write an essay on it, hoping this would make a good impression.  It did not help me, however.  At that time, in 1947, priority treatment was being given to the forces returning from the war, leaving fewer places for the rest of us.

            Once again Miss Barrows came to the rescue.  She suggested that I try for Liverpool University and sit the exam at Lawnside, giving it as my place of residence.  It worked and I won the sought after scholarship.

            In September 1947 I set off for Liverpool.  I was going to live in one the residential Halls on the outskirts of the city.  My scholarship was going to cover all my tutorial fees, exam fees and the cost of all my books.  I had not been long in the Hall when I met a girl called Wendy Appleby.  She was one of those girls who know all the ropes, and she advised me to apply to a charity which looked after ‘impoverished gentlefolk’.  Back in those days there was such a charity!  I followed her advice and I got a grant which covered all my residential fees.  This meant that my mother only had to supply me with pocket money from then on.

            At first I shared a room with a girl called Betty, who was training to be a vet.  She was a tall, gangling girl, with short curly hair, and an open friendly face.  She belonged to the “jolly hockey sticks” brigade, but we got on well enough without having much in common.  She introduced me to beagling.  We would get a bus into the country, meet up with a lot more jolly, outdoor, fresh faced types, and away we went, running over muddy fields, clambering through hedges, following the hounds.  Although being in no way sporty, I seem to have enjoyed the exercise and fresh air.  I even wrote a poem about it, in the style of John Masefield, which I called “Beagling.”

            “The day awakes, and in the fields

              The farmer comes to count his yields.

              ………………………………………

              ………………………………………

              On a lovely autumn day,

              When the sky is pearl and grey,

              Try running in the fields and air,

              With the wind upon your hair,

              And the sky within your eyes,

              ……………………………………….”

And so it went on and on.  There was some humour in it,  and clear observation of the people who were there, and a feeling of joy in being part of it all.  There was little questioning in those days of the merits, or otherwise, of hunting animals.  The poem ends:

            “And since God made the hare and rabbit,

              Well, dogs and men must chase them, dash it!”

            I decided not to do an Honours degree, which would take four years, but a General Honours degree which would only take three years.  This meant studying four subjects, and I chose French, Spanish (rather than German which I did not like), English and Political Philosophy. 

            I met and became friendly with two Welsh girls, Jean Williams and Mair Harrison.  They were both doing English and Mair was studying Spanish as well, so we saw quite a lot of each other.  Jean was a very pretty girl, confident and outgoing, so she soon acquired a series of boyfriends.  Mair was shyer and more reserved.  She was a nice looking girl but took no interest in her personal appearance,  dressing in shapeless skirts and old jumpers.

            After the first term, we were all given our own study bedrooms.  I was immensely proud of my little room, with my own desk, an easy chair, bed, shelves for all my books and a gas fire.  This really was a ‘room of my own’ where I could read, study, and dream.  The three of us would meet up after supper, usually in Jean’s room, with a cup of cocoa to review the day.  Jean would entertain us with stories about her current boyfriend, with Mair and myself hanging avidly on her words.

            Like Mair, I did not take much interest in my appearance.  My mother made all my clothes, but I would ruin the effect with an old cardigan which I wrapped round myself.  I was still quite self conscious about my body.

 It was now at University that I began to feel there was something wrong with me.  I did not relate in an easy way with the other girls.  I felt stiff and uncomfortable, shy and anxious.  I started reading books on psychology, Freud, Jung and Adler.  I came to the conclusion that my problems stemmed from my childhood.  And that was where it rested.  There was no counseling available in those days.  If I had even thought of  seeing a psychiatrist, the cost would have been prohibitive.  I never talked to my mother of these problems and do not know if she was aware of them.  Her deafness had created a barrier between us, and we talked very little.

            My letters to her were always cheerful.  When I was eighteen she wrote me a letter telling me about my father.  We had never broached the subject and I had never, surprisingly, been at all curious about it.  Now she told me how she had met my father when studying art in Toronto and he was teaching at the college.  He was already married.  She had come to France to get away from him,  and had then found she was pregnant.  When I was born she had written to tell him and he had replied asking her not to tell anyone as it would ruin his career.  She had never heard from him again.  She asked for my forgiveness.

            I wrote back saying there was nothing to forgive and that it was not always the woman’s fault.  I think my mother had been afraid that I might judge her, but this was far from my thoughts. At that age it seemed to me rather romantic.  I did, however, judge my father and looked on him as a ‘bastard.’  We never spoke about it again, but of course this knowledge lodged  itself in my mind, creating new psychological problems.

            I continued with my studies, which I enjoyed, as I was very studious and serious.  Perhaps I was a pedant, after all.  I was quite competitive about exams, and would sit up all night with black coffee and chocolate, swotting.  I always did well, as I had a retentive memory and would simply regurgitate all the information which I had absorbed, and I could write fluently.

            Life for me still seemed like a great tragedy;  I was of a melancholy cast and seldom found anything to laugh about.  It was hardly surprising that I made few friends.

            Joy did break through from time to time.  There were the annual University ‘rag’ days, when we all dressed up and went round collecting money for charity.  I remember dressing up as a ‘golliwog’, a forbidden word nowadays.  I blacked my face, reddened my lips, brushed my hair till it stood up all round my head.  I wore blue trousers and a red jacket with a floppy black and white tie and I got on the bus into town with my charity tin.  I felt quite different in this disguise and I enjoyed the comments;  soon my tin was rattling with coins.  I still have a photo somewhere.

            There were visits to the cinema, and we went to concerts at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, conducted by Malcolm Sargent, not yet a Sir.  I was not very musical, but it seemed important to listen to and know about classical music.  I usually found my mind wandering during the music.  My tastes were limited: Tales of the Vienna Woods by Strauss, Bizet’s Carmen, Gilbert and Sullivan.  Round about that time I read The Diary of a Nobody by Barbellion.  I was fascinated by his reactions to Beethoven and realised I still had a great deal to learn in my response to music.

            Mair and I were lucky to have a very good Spanish tutor, Professor Allison Peers.  He was an authority on the Spanish language and literature at that time, and had written several books on the Spanish mystics, Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.  We were more interested in the adventures of Don Quixote and his servant Sancho Panza by Cervantes.  I also found a poet called Unamuno who suited my melancholy nature at that time.  I liked the Spanish language, and I have always been more attracted to the Latin languages.

            In 1949 we were told about a five week Spanish course to be held in San Sebastian, a seaside resort in Northern Spain, starting on 14^th July.  Mair and I both eagerly signed up for it.

             

Final years at Lowther

                        FINAL YEARS AT LOWTHER

            I was now in the Sixth Form.  I was studying French with Valerie, a very friendly, rather giggly girl, and we were together a lot.  Valerie invited two of her French pen friends to come and visit Lowther, and she asked me along to meet them as well.  I was quite upset when they told Valerie  afterwards that they found me “sinistre.”  I don’t think we either of us understood what the word meant.  Sinister didn’t make any sense.  I looked it up in the dictionary, hoping to find a more favourable meaning.  It probably meant dismal or gloomy!

            I studied German with a girl called Mary.  She was very tall and rather imposing, with a strong hooked nose.  She was a kind, friendly girl and I felt comfortable with her.  We would laugh together at our German teacher, a most unfortunate looking woman, tall and flat chested, with a sallow skin and enormous feet.  She was extremely prudish, and whenever we had to translate the word “Brust”, meaning breast, a word which seemed to occur frequently in German literature, we would translate it as chest, usually very inappropriately.

            All the other sixth form girls were now prefects.  Evidently it was felt that I should have some role and I was made President of the Literary and Debating Society.  When the first  debate came, I had no idea what to do.  I had not thought to ask. The English mistress hissed at me, feeding me the words I had to say.  I sat back thankfully after that for the rest of the evening, with nothing more to do.  I felt I had humiliated myself very publicly, and I hated attention of any kind.

            I used to write a lot during these final years.  I wrote poems and short stories, translated French poetry into English,  and tried my hand at writing sonnets and poems in the Miltonic style.  I copied all these out very neatly into a large, stiff covered notebook, rather like a ledger. I also copied out bits of writing that appealed to me, and wrote reviews of films that I had seen.   I still have this book.  I think they used to be called ‘Commonplace’ books.

            Looking at this book now shows me someone very different to the one I presented to the outside world.  This girl has a lively, curious mind;  she has a love of beauty;  she is full of enthusiasms;  she is idealistic;  she has a sense of social justice, and a sense of humour.  But I never shared or showed this book to anyone.  I was able to express myself in writing and on the page, but never in words.  When with others, I was often tongue tied and usually only found the words I needed when the subject had moved on, and by then it was too late.

            I have often wondered whether this inability to express myself stemmed from the fact that I had been forced to write with my right hand in those early days in France.  Just as some people can develop a stammer for the same reason, so some vital connection in my brain had been disrupted.  Added to this the fact that I lived in a state of almost permanent anxiety.

            A poem dated December 1946 is called:  “My Aim”.

            “My aim is to

            Sing a song of beauty,
            To gather loveliness
            Out of the wind's caress,
            To bring pain
            Into the heart of youth,
            To draw out passion
            From the budding rose
            And make it live again
            In some throbbing breast.

            To pierce the bud of jessamine

            And bring forth scents and sounds

            Excelling all those ever smelt or heard on earth before.

            That is my aim.”

            A tall order!  At eighteen such vaulting ambition is allowed.

          In a review about a film called Viva Zapata I described Marlon Brando:   “a man with a most remarkable face.  He has a profile like St John in Leonarda’s Last Supper – front face he has little triangular eyes with glowing pupils, full lips ….”. 

 Another extract which I copied is from Rilke, the German poet, written in 1904  in which he described with great prophetic vision how the roles of men and women would change in the future, and how they would become equals.  I do not think that has entirely come about, even now.

  I loved poetry,  and I used to read the St. James’ Bible, mostly the New Testament.  I had a small bible given to me when I was eleven, by my music teacher at Blackdown.  I think she suspected, rightly, that I was not going to get much religious education from my mother.  On the flyleaf was written “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever.”

 One morning on waking, I heard two girls talking. At that time we were sleeping in cubicles separated by a curtain.  One of them was saying:

“I had a dream last night about God. But all I could see were these enormous feet.”

“How did you know it was God?”

“I just did.”

I had given up any belief in God, and yet I was very intrigued by this conversation.  I must have filed it away somewhere in my mind, as I have never forgotten it.

            My holidays were still spent in Malvern.  Sometimes the terms overlapped and my mother would  be working.  At these times I would help her in the kitchen:  I learnt how to make pastry, using six pounds of flour and four pounds of fat, and mixing them together with my hands.  I enjoyed doing this. My mother made very good pastry and she told me the secret lay in the lightness of the handling.  Another time I would have to beat up sixty egg whites in the electric mixer until they became stiff.  This was then mixed with apple puree to make Apple Snow.

 Occasionally I would prepare the breakfast on my own, so that my mother could have a lie-in.  I would lay out bacon and tomato halves on large trays and pop them into the Aga ovens to cook.  There was a kitchen maid there as well, who would prepare the tea and coffee and make the toast.

            I usually got on well with the kitchen maids.  I felt more comfortable with them than I did with most people. They were cheerful and easygoing and called me  ‘lovey.’  Somehow there were no demands made on me, and I could be myself.  My mother always treated them well, but she was much more conscious of her class and status.  She always insisted on being called the lady cook housekeeper.

            It was one of these times when I was helping my mother in the kitchen, that I became aware of something else.  The gardener, who was called King, used to come into the kitchen to find out what was needed in the way of vegetables. He was a cheerful, sturdy man with the healthy complexion of someone who lives outdoors, with reddish sandy hair.  He was probably in his late forties.  I remember standing by the kitchen table, watching them talking.  My mother was flushed from her cooking, with tendrils of hair  escaping onto her face.  She stood with her hands clasped behind her head, and she was smiling.  There was something about her posture which I found disturbing.  Why was she standing like that, I wondered.

            During the summer holidays we would sometimes go to Hove, staying in a bed sitting room, and making our meals on a couple of gas rings.  There were plenty of things to do: we visited Brighton, which was a very stylish resort in those days,  we made bus trips onto the Downs, we went to a very pretty village called Rottingdean, and of course,  there was  always the beach, swimming and sun bathing.

            This was the time when the fact that we were at war really impinged on me.  The sirens would go and I waited for the ‘doodlebugs’  to start flying over.  When they stopped, my heart would start thudding.  My mother, who could not hear them, remained calm and this helped me not to be afraid.  Fortunately, they never dropped near us.  Finally the All Clear would sound and we could relax.

            Once, when we were in Hove, my mother’s friend, Walter Tuck, came to visit us.  This was   when I was about twelve.  I had not seen him since I was a small child in France, so they must have kept in touch.   Some years older than my mother, he was a tall, austere, rather detached figure.  Whilst I sat on one bed, they sat and chatted on the other one. 

“She has rather fat legs”  he commented at one point, which did not please me at all, especially as they were talking as though I were not there. I think he tried to befriend me, but I  remained very aloof.

            My mother had one other friend whom she had met when we were living at St-Jacut.  Her name was Eleanor Robertson and she was a Canadian. She was an independent and quite remarkable woman.    She had trained as a dietician and worked in a hospital in Japan for many years.  When my mother met her in Dinard she owned her own tearoom.  She  moved to England shortly before the war in 1939, and started a tearoom in Kingsbridge in South Devon.

            She was always very kind to us.  We used to stay in Kingsbridge and visit her in the tearoom.  She made the most delicious scones and chocolate cake and she always allowed me to listen to Children’s Hour on the wireless, which was a great treat, as we did not have one.  She became, in a way, like a maiden aunt.

            When Miss Robertson gave up the tearoom, she bought a bungalow on the outskirts of Kingsbridge and we used to go and stay with her.   She must have been about ten years older than my mother.  Looking back, I do not feel that she and my mother had a great deal in common.  She  was a cleverer woman than my mother.  She was not religious, but I think she felt compassion for us both.

I began to develop the very bizarre notion that she wished my mother ill and was going to poison her.  Did I have the sense that in some way she disapproved of my mother?  Was this some kind of mistaken loyalty on my part?  Whatever the reason, I became very suspicious of her.  I never said anything, of course, but I always felt very uncomfortable during our visits to her.

             With hindsight, I regret this, as I think she liked me and she left me some money when she died.

            In 1946 I took my Higher Certificate exams.  In the summer holidays, I received the much anticipated postcard from Miss Sayers  congratulating me on my successful results.  My mother was delighted and I was pleased too.  At least I had proved myself worthy of a scholarship.

  It had been decided that I should try for University.  At that time though, it was still necessary to have Latin to qualify for entrance.  As I had not studied this subject, Miss Sayers very generously extended my scholarship for a further year.  This was mainly due, I now think, to her admiration for my mother. 

I returned to Lowther for my last year.           

            

Life goes on and a new problem

LIFE GOES ON AND A NEW PROBLEM

            I had become very self conscious about my body.  At Lawnside I had become aware of my breasts beginning to form.  I would hug myself trying to hide them and wear shapeless cardigans, which I would wrap round myself.  This must have been a residue of the years with the nuns and my unconscious belief that the body was a shameful thing.

            By the time I got to Lowther my personal appearance began to be important to me.  I was small, about 5 feet tall, with a long body and short, sturdy legs, with quite a large behind.  I used to roll from side to side on the floor several times a day, in order to reduce this part of my anatomy, not, I think, with very much result.  I had thick, rather unruly hair which I never knew what to do with.  My features were regular and probably marred by my gloomy expression.  Photos of me at that time show me with my mouth turned down or else looking very serious.  I certainly did not think I was pretty.

            Boys, another preoccupation of our teenage years, were not around.  There was a boys’ school nearby and we sometimes got a glimpse of them when walking outside the grounds in a crocodile.  Some of the girls did have boyfriends and we would listen to their tales with keen interest.  I had a great curiosity about the opposite sex, but my knowledge of them came purely from books and films.  My hero at the time was Laurence Olivier and his dark, saturnine features   looked out from the signed photograph which I had by my bed.  I told everyone he was my uncle.

            My head was filled with romantic notions based on fairy stories and novels of a handsome prince who would one day sweep me off my feet and bear me off to “live happily ever after.”  I held on to this notion for quite a long time. 

            Apart from lessons and games, there was ballroom dancing, drama and singing.  My inner tensions made me unable to let go and follow the rhythm of the music when trying to do the foxtrot, the quickstep or the waltz.  These sessions were an ordeal for me as I clumsily trod on my partner’s toes and missed the beat.  In drama I fared no better as my early talent in this direction seemed to have gone for ever.  I tried to get into the choir, but again my voice dried up when I went for an audition.

            I was no good at art either and was certainly not inspired by the jugs, bowls and busts we were asked to draw.  I did, however, like drawing faces and would often scribble in my exercise books whenever I was bored in class.  I liked copying pictures too and, during the holidays, would happily spend hours with brushes and a box of watercolours.

            Of the teachers, I remember the headmistress, Miss Sayers, best.  She was a tall, rather masculine figure with cropped white hair, a florid complexion and strong features, formidably intelligent, with a double First from Cambridge.  I was in awe of her but not afraid, as she was essentially kindly.  Her best friend was the mathematics mistress, Miss Prentice, who was the complete opposite.  She was small and rather timid.  She had no authority and, as children will, we played her up.  I remember a girl creeping up behind her dangling a large black spider.  On another occasion some girls started up a fire at the back of the classroom.  I wrote to my mother complaining that I was learning no maths.  My mother wrote to Miss Sayers, to my dismay, and I was summoned to her office and roundly told off for my disrespect.

            It was wartime, but we were hardly aware of it.  Although there were newspapers which we could read, I never looked at them.  The only way in which we were affected was the  food;  raw, tasteless shredded cabbage took the place of salads;  on Sundays we had lemon tarts as hard as concrete.  We were often hungry and to compensate we had midnight feasts in the dormitory.  I remember eating concoctions of cocoa powder mixed with condensed milk which we ate on the ends of our rulers, blackened by ink stains, and once devouring a whole jar of plum jam from my tuck box.

            One of my favourite memories is of Saturday nights when we were allowed a treat.  We would gather in the corridor, wrapped up in blankets and with our pillows, to listen to the Man in Black, a popular radio programme.  Sitting in the dark felt deliciously spooky as the deep, velvet voice of Valentine Dyall told us a ghost story.  I still loved reading ghost stories and I was still telling them in the ‘dorm’ at night.  One of my favourites was called The Beast with Five Fingers. all about a bodiless hand which could move about with great rapidity and was seeking vengeance.

            During these years at Lowther my mother was working in Malvern at Lawnside School.  Lawnside was a small private school with a very eccentric headmistress.  The school was her own, a gift to her from her father, and so she could do very much as she pleased.  She was a great patron of the arts, and the school curriculum was weighted heavily on the side of music, literature and language and art, with very little attention being given to scientific subjects.

            My mother was an excellent cook and a very clever housekeeper.  In spite of the wartime restrictions she managed to give the girls balanced and nourishing, as well as tasty, meals. In fact, the girls used to say they had better meals at school than they did at home!  Miss Barrows was delighted and admired my mother’s talents greatly.  She also admired the way my mother was bringing me up single-handedly.  She was very generous to us and during the school holidays kept one of the school houses open so that we could both live there.

            All my holidays were spent in Malvern.  I loved it there.  We had a whole house to ourselves and  a garden.  Malvern in those days was an old fashioned town which sprawled up the hill.  It had a pleasant park and there was a cinema.  I would spend most of my time reading, or going to the ‘pictures.’  The films were gentle and sentimental:  Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, Deanna Durbin, even Shirley Temple, and there was George Formby for laughs.

          I would go for long walks on the Malvern hills, taking a packed lunch and a book.  Sometimes my mother and I took the bus and had tea at The Singing Kettle high up on West Malvern hill.  There were dark, round oak tables, blue and white Indian Tree china, light fluffy scones with jam.  Sitting on the terrace, on a clear day, we were able to see over five counties.

          Many years later my mother wrote a cookbook, called Better Cooking for Large Numbers.  She asked Miss Barrows if she would write a Foreword for it, which she did, in typically generous fashion.  She wrote:  “ ‘The Principal’s chief pre-occupation is the food.’  Not until Mrs Radenhurst loomed on the School’s horizon did this ‘chief pre-occupation’ of mine give me any sort of satisfaction, but at the end of her first week in the kitchen I began to realise that with the same food bills we were getting really exciting meals that were reminiscent of the bouillons of France, entrées such as one sits over in the Tour d’Argent in Paris, and cakes like the best of Doney’s in Florence.” Slightly over the top, but this was Miss Barrows all over.

           Miss Barrows was a great headhunter and used to invite celebrities of the day, such as Bernard Shaw and Elgar to the school, and a great viola player of that time, Lionel Tertis.  She liked to show off my mother’s cooking, and my mother was invited to cook dinner for them.  Miss Barrows was a highly volatile and autocratic woman and my mother could also be temperamental. I remember these occasions used to produce great rows between them, which usually quickly blew over.  Once my mother gave in her notice and went away for a term, only to return after Miss Barrows’ entreaties.  I used to hate these rows and seeing my mother upset, probably because it made me feel so insecure.

           Looking back now, I wonder if my mother was lonely.  With her increasing deafness she did not make friends easily.  She did have two good friends who were devoted to her.  One was her assistant in the kitchen, and the other was a junior matron.  They both remained her friends till she died.  My mother was an educated and well read woman and I think she thought it would be interesting to be with teachers, but she told me once that they never talked anything but ‘shop’.  I was certainly no company for her, as I was wrapped up in my own thoughts and dreams.

          The war was over.  I was invited by my French pen friend to stay with her in Lille in northern France.  This was when my mother and I discovered that we had a problem.  I had no nationality as my birth had never been registered.  How was I going to get to France?

          Without a nationality, how was I going to get a passport?   My mother went to see a solicitor, who was unable to help us.  It seemed I had fallen between three stools:  I could not be French, I could not be Canadian and nor could I be British as my birth had never been registered. I remember I even wrote a letter to Sir Anthony Eden and received a  noncommittal reply.  In the end our problem was solved, I suspect with the help of Miss Barrows.  I was to be considered as an alien subject and I was given an Aliens certificate, which enabled me to travel.  I also had to report to the police every time I changed my address.

            How I felt about this at the time I do not recall, except that it must have reinforced my feelings about being an outsider.  At least I was now able to get to France.

            I was seventeen and in the summer holidays I took the ferry and train to go to Lille with some trepidation.  My French pen friend was called Lucille, she was the same age but she was much more sophisticated than I was, and very well dressed in a chic French manner.  My mother was still making my dresses and I felt very much the “country cousin” beside her.  I was very tongue tied and had no idea what to say to her;   I had no social graces.  I remember overhearing her parents saying, in a puzzled way, “elle est très jolie.”    I felt surprised but mollified.  We continued corresponding for a little while, but we had not become great friends and we stopped writing.

            Back at Lowther.  I was now going to study for my Higher Certificate exams in French, English and German.  What I was going to do after that I did not know, as I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.