"till I end my song ..."

   LIFE IN LONDON

         Was my mother worried, I wonder?  She was a great worrier, and here I was going off to London on my own, without even having a job to go to.  I have no recollection of it, so it may be that she kept her worries to herself.  I was nearly twenty three years old and as green and callow as they come.

         I found a woman’s hostel in Bayswater, not far from Hyde Park, where I could board and get an evening meal.  There were mostly elder women living there, and one or two younger ones.  I never got to know them very well.  One was an alcoholic who, from to time, became drunk.  She would become garrulous and maudlin.  I felt very uncomfortable when this happened, and sad for her.

         I applied for several secretarial jobs in the publishing world.  I went to see a lady at the Publishers’ Association, which produced a weekly journal for booksellers.  I saw a grey haired, rather severe looking woman sitting behind a large desk, piles of publications lying everywhere, and shelves of large, forbidding reference books behind her.  My heart sank.

         “Tell me about yourself,” she said, in quite a kindly way.

         I froze.  I had no idea what to say. I had nothing to say.

         She dispatched me briefly and swiftly.

         I found a job, working for a company which published magazines dealing with mechanical engineering and related subjects.  I was in a large shorthand and typing pool.  I spent the first day copy typing a document, rather badly.  I hated it.  I had no idea what I was typing.  On the second day I was called to take some shorthand.  I realized straight away that my shorthand was inadequate, and I was unable to guess the technical language.  On the third day I was given the sack and told, quite kindly, that I should look for a typist’s job.

         I felt humiliated and deflated.  Here I was with a degree and it seemed that all I was good for was a job as a typist.

         Luckily for me, it was a time when jobs were plentiful.  I found another job, this time working in the Library of a Petrochemicals company, which was located on Piccadilly.  Not ideal, but at least it was in a nice part of London and easy to get to from my hostel.

         The job consisted of making card indexes for the books in the Library.  I had to type out several cards for each book, so that they could be filed in the appropriate box.  The Librarian was an Austrian Jewess.  She was a formidable lady who completely terrified me.  The cards had to be typed with meticulous accuracy, every dot and comma and capital letter in the right place.  Nothing in my entire life had prepared me for this.  My mind seemed to turn to jelly.  Time and again the cards were thrown back at me, incorrectly typed, I never seemed to get them right.  My working days became a nightmare.

         I endured it for about six months and then gave in my notice before I was sacked.  The other staff, who were always very nice to me, told me when I left they had been afraid I was going to have a nervous breakdown. 

         I can’t remember whether I confided at all in my mother about my problems.  We never seemed to talk very much about intimate things, so I probably kept it all from her.  She must have worried, I’m sure.  She was a great worrier.

         So I struggled on, and I soon found another job, this time working for a large wholesale bookseller called Simpkin Marshall, owned by the notorious Robert Maxwell.  I was to be a secretary to the Publicity Manager, Mr. Brown.  This seemed like a step in the right direction.

         Mr. Brown was a mild mannered man, quite laid back, with large, gentle brown eyes, and not at all intimidating.  I began to relax in this undemanding atmosphere.  I had been going to evening classes in shorthand, so had slightly improved this skill.  Fortunately for me, Mr. Brown dictated at such a pace that I could get most of it down in longhand.  Every month we published a list of new publications, mostly fiction, much more in my line.  Mr. Brown allowed me to write the captions for these books.  This was not very difficult, but I was pleased and felt that at last I was getting onto the path I had planned for myself.

         Quite early on, whilst I was at Petrochemicals on Piccadilly, I had met an artist called Michael and this relationship probably helped to sustain me during my ups and downs in the working world.  I will talk about Michael in the next chapter                                                      

"till I end my song ..."

                   
                                                    TRANSITION

                      

            My mother was still working in Stratford-on-Avon and after university I joined her at the Arden Hotel.  Miss Watney offered me a part-time job working in the office as a receptionist.

         I had decided that I would try to find work in the publishing world, with the aim of becoming an editor.  To gain entry into that world, I would need some secretarial skills.  I would still need those skills if I wanted to use my languages.

         Just down the road from the Arden there lived an elderly lady who was teaching shorthand and typing from her own home.  To call it a school would be a bit of a misnomer.  The typing classes were held in the garden in a greenhouse, large enough to hold several desks, chairs and typewriters, and this was where I would go every morning for the next few months. For our shorthand lessons we had to go up to Mrs. Ellis’s bedroom as she was bedridden and we would sit by her bedside with our notebook and pencil.

         I cannot say that I found this an ideal arrangement.  It was all so haphazard and there was no discipline at all.  Miss Palmer, who taught us typing, was a woman without any authority.  The other students were all school leavers around sixteen, keen enough to learn, as this was to be their livelihood.  I had no motivation as I was not interested and I did not apply myself.  So I never learnt to touch type, though I did eventually pass a test at sixty words per minute, and I never got a shorthand qualification.

         In the afternoons I helped out in the office, usually on my own.  To begin with I was very nervous, but gradually I got used to it and found that I could cope quite well.  I took phone calls, made reservations and dealt with the guests;  it was largely a matter of commons sense.  The variety of the guests made the job interesting.  I remember hearing Kenneth Tynan, the theatre and film critic, complaining bitterly as he was coming downstairs, that he had not been on the scene when the Scone of Scotland had been stolen.  Miss Watney would come fussing in from time to time and this always made me nervous.  Fortunately, she did not take a fancy to me, as she did one of the other girls, whom she tried to embrace in the stationery cupboard.

         In the evenings I sometimes helped the other waitresses in the dining room.  I always enjoyed this job:  the physical activity, calling out the orders, waiting for my mother and Miss Watney to dish up the plates, Miss Watney always painfully slow, but she was the boss and we had to curb our impatience.

         I got to know the other staff again, who were always nice to me.  I was particularly fascinated by Snow.  She was a widow in her fifties, a very intelligent woman with a sardonic wit.  She had short, crinkly grey hair and her face was creased with laughter lines.  She talked to me as her equal, which I liked and I longed to be like her.  There was another widow called Beck. She was kind and gentle, but there was something very sad about her, and I learned later that she ended up in a mental home. The only real waitress was a woman called Kent. She was tall, with a large bosom, and a beautiful, upright posture. She had snow white hair which she wore piled up like a meringue. I think she rather looked down upon the rest of us.  In my callow youth I looked down on her.

         Time passed, Christmas came and went, and at some point early in 1951 I decided that it was time for me to look for a proper job.  Armed with my flimsy secretarial skills and a first class degree I moved to London.  I had no-one to advise me about the realities of life.  They say that ignorance is bliss.  I was certainly blissfully unaware of what lay ahead.

         .

Last year at Liverpool

            LAST YEAR AT LIVERPOOL

            My mother had a new job working in a hotel at Stratford-on-Avon.   She must have had another row with Miss Barrows.  So that is where I went on my return from Spain.

            The Arden Hotel was a very pleasant, old fashioned hotel right opposite the theatre, down by the river.  It belonged to Miss Watney, a somewhat vague and elderly spinster in her seventies. Miss Watney was a lesbian and it was her partner, called Swoff, who was several years younger, who really ran the place.  Miss Watney liked to have what she called ‘lady’ staff.  All the waitresses were ‘lady waitresses’ and my mother was the ‘lady cook housekeeper.’  I do not think this policy extended to the chambermaids.

            I was going to earn my keep by working part time as a waitress.  I was quite used to doing holiday work.   Like most of the university students I had found jobs working at the till in a restaurant, making cardboard boxes in an ice cream factory, or slicing vast quantities of bread in a mental home.

            Waiting was rather more fun.  I enjoyed the work, which was varied and active and I soon got to know the other waitresses, who were a disparate group of middle aged women, mostly on their uppers, who had taken on the work as a temporary measure.  They were all known  by their surnames:  Snow, Beck, Kent,  Dixon and Fraser.  Fraser, whose name was also Daphne, was only three years older than I was, so we became friends and I know her to this day.

            There were many interesting guests.  One or two of the actors stayed there:  Leon Quartermaine, well known then, no longer so today;  Tanya Moiseiwitsch, a stage designer and her assistant;   theatre critics and University professors came for two or three nights.  The actors John Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft often came over for lunch.  I remember the thrill of handing Gielgud his coffee.  They became the focus of much gossip amongst us and we lived vicariously in the light of their celebrity. 

Fraser developed a crush on Gielgud and fantasized that it was reciprocated.  We did not know then of his sexual orientation, of course.  Fraser was very proud of the fact that she was a descendant of Sarah Siddons, the 18^th century actress, painted by Thomas Gainsborough and many others.  She did, in fact, bear a resemblance to her and was a striking looking girl, with dark brows, an aquiline nose and a cupid’s bow mouth.  She  had also inherited her acting skills as she was a very  good mimic, and often made us laugh repeating the conversations she overheard.

            Another guest for a short while was Christopher Fry, the poet and playwright.  I was fascinated to hear him say, at breakfast one morning, that he could never work when his mother was around.  All these things fed into my growing aspirations.

            My mother was not enjoying her job very much.  The work was demanding, and she did not get on well with her assistant, a rather sour faced woman with a Domestic Science degree who did everything by the book.  They often clashed, and my mother would become very upset.  I hated these occasions as they made me feel very uncomfortable and I never knew what to say to her.  Fortunately, Miss Watney appreciated my mother’s cooking, as she received many compliments about the food and so she usually took her side.

            Another of the perks we received for working at the Arden was free tickets to the theatre productions, and  I saw John Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft  several times in King Lear and The Taming of the Shrew. Another play I remember was Measure for Measure, with Barbara Jefford.           

I had not liked Shakespeare much when I was at school, but seeing these great actors really made me appreciate him.

                                                -------------

            The summer was over and it was time to go back to Liverpool for our final year.

            I did not believe in a God or in any religion.  My philosophy at this time was that life was all about developing oneself and whatever talents one had to their full extent.

 I was still trying to write:  I had embarked on a short story correspondence course for magazines, but found this did not fire my imagination and I gave it up. I had thoughts about journalism, but realized I did not have the confidence to succeed in that cut throat profession.  I was still writing poetry.  It was round this time that I wrote an introspective poem:

                        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 with 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 in 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 be willingly be rid of

                        And yet might tell me what I am.

            I never showed this to anybody.  Who was ‘you?’  I think I was probably thinking of Jean, who was going through life so light heartedly.  Her attitude to life was creative and imaginative.

            During all the years at Liverpool I had scarcely had any contact with any of the men, apart from our tutors.  I remember a bearded, intellectual looking man trying to get into conversation by

asking me what I was reading, but after my monosyllabic replies he soon gave up and retreated. Men almost seemed to come from another planet.   I still felt very self conscious and unsure, which made me very uptight and stiff, and totally unable to have a relaxed conversation.  I was only at ease when I was by myself.  I could always write what I was feeling, but talk about it, never.  Probably, to most people, I appeared very standoffish and unfriendly, but it was entirely due to fear.  Our knowledge of psychology is so much greater nowadays.   I must have used an enormous amount of energy to keep up this front, but it was a matter of self preservation and the only way I knew.

            The year sped by and it was time to take our final exams.  After all the hard work we could relax.  Both Mair and Jean had decided to be teachers and were going to do a teacher training course.  I knew I did not want to teach, I was quite sure I would never be able to keep order in class.  I remembered some of my own teachers, those who could and who could not keep order.  For those who could not it was a joyless task.  Apart from teaching, there were very few alternatives other than taking a secretarial course.   There was no Careers advisor in those days and very little help of any kind.

            The word went round like wildfire:  “Results are up.”  We all raced down to the main college Hall where the results were posted on a large board.  There at the top of the board I saw my name, the only one:  Daphne Radenhurst – First class General Honours BA degree.  I think I was as surprised as everyone else.

 Then came Second class, 1 and 2.  Mair got a 2.1 and Jean had a 2.2.  We were all relieved and delighted to have got through.  I felt that Jean should have got a higher grade, as she had real originality, but that didn’t necessarily give you good exam results.

I wrote at once to my mother who, naturally, was thrilled and very proud.  She came up to Liverpool to see me receive my degree, dressed in a hired black robe and a mortarboard.  It was a proud moment.

It  really seemed now that the world was my oyster.  How little did I know!

                                   

                       

            

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.