The Two Miss Smiths Of Wombwell Hall

I felt completely at home the moment I walked over the threshold of Wombwell Hall in July 1953 for the Entrance Assessment Interview. It was as if I had a residual memory of a past association with the place. This was of course both fanciful and ludicrous depending upon your viewpoint. Nonetheless the very walls seemed to envelop me in security and warmth and I knew immediately that each and every part of the old house would become an invaluable aid to the various lives I lived in my imagination, most of which were in no way connected to everyday life and lacklustre reality. Daily I could immerse myself in the intricacies of a BBC historical drama or even a Rank Organisation mini epic, of that I had no doubt.

I was not an especially creative child, nor an original thinker and there was nothing I did particularly well but I was filled with an insatiable and secret desire to somehow escape from my place at the bottom of the Social Heap in the Victorian industrial terraces of Northfleet and Gravesend. My ambition was not to become overly rich but merely to excel in some aspect of the creative arts such as Drama, Dance or Music. Perhaps even write stories that others would read and be inspired by or possibly scripts for television or film. These aspirations, disconnected from reality though they were, did not diminish as time passed but grew ever stronger. To be fair they had been made a great deal worse by the Children’s Department of Northfleet Library and the obsessive reading and re-reading of Noel Streatfield books featuring troupes of child actors and dancers who all seemed to achieve celebrity with remarkable ease. Taking a break from Streatfield I became enthusiastically immersed in Pamela Brown’s Blue Door Theatre stories where neighbours living in an ordinary town in the South of England launched their own successful repertory theatre. If they could do it, why couldn’t I? The book characters were not particularly well off, the authors had gone to some pains to point this out but it was manifestly obvious that they were decidedly Middle Class and often their described Poverty could be firmly placed in the ranks of the One Servant Poor variety. In those years that followed the end of the War, coming from a Working Class background still held a great deal of stigma as far as progress through various career options. My own family circumstances made the Decent Working Classes look not only respectable and virtuous but also positively prosperous. I was very keen that my situation should at some stage, somehow or other change for the better. It might well be that Wombwell Hall could be the catalyst for this.

Happily it was being an Eleven Plus Failure that led to me finding myself there in the first place. When we got the good news that I had secured a place at The Local Technical School For Girls and my maternal grandmother, Old Nan Constant, had finished berating my mother for what she saw as the folly of Getting Involved With Yet Another Bleeding Senseless Highfaluting SCHOOL If You Don’t Mind, we went on the bus to Waterdales to visit Aunt Lou and Cousin Connie from my father’s side of the family. My cousin had been a Tech Girl for a year and would not only be able to fill me in with all the important details about the place but more importantly, be able to pass on her outgrown uniform.

When I finally began my first term in September that year I had firmed up considerably on my ideas about a career and sensibly decided that I needed to give more than cursory attention to shorthand and typing, not because I had any real intention of fulfilling my mother’s dream that I should become a shorthand typist which was a Nice, Clean Job where no hands became dirty in the execution of it, but because such skills might well prove useful to me if instead of actually starring on the West End stage I instead wrote the epics for others to star in. I wouldn’t be the first successful writer to master Shorthand. You only had to look at Charles Dickens and it probably wouldn’t have been beyond him to also become an accomplished typist which would have saved him a great deal of time, especially when you considered how long some of his novels were. I struggled to find other writers who could definitely write shorthand and type but this was long before Google and information was thin on the ground although I did stumble across Samuel Pepys briefly. At thirteen and a bit I found him boring and in any case decided it was doubtful if he was an aficionado of Isaac Pitman. Also he didn’t seem to quite be able to write Proper English which seemed odd to me at the time when you took into account how well known he seemed to be and how well regarded by some people who obviously didn’t mind being bored. More worrying to me was the fact that none of the characters created by Noel Streatfield and Pamela Brown seemed to go anywhere near a typewriter.

During my first few weeks at Wombwell Hall I was so completely captivated by the place that I spent a lot of time attempting to ensure that I would be the last student to leave a room in order to absorb as much of the the information from the past that still lingered in the walls as humanly possible. I trailed my fingers over windows and wondered if the glass panes were the very same as those one hundred years previously or if any had been replaced because someone was careless when playing Cricket. Sadly very little of this enormous enthusiasm I had for the house itself ever transferred into academic excellence of a general nature and I was for the most part a rather less than average student which my school reports, definitely indicated without any doubt whatsoever.

Although I was doing reasonably well in the commercial subjects in that I managed to hover around the middle of the class, I cannot honestly say I enjoyed what I was doing and the same went for most other subjects. History and Geography were both more than dull and Science was arduous and for me, difficult. I was absolutely no good at any kind of sports and generally quite frightened of taking risks and getting hurt although I could just about tolerate an occasional gentle game of hockey as long as I was allowed to play Right Wing. Mathematics remained a much hated mystery and French followed very closely behind, always threatening to overtake. Both subjects kept me awake at night as I fearfully contemplated how I could make myself invisible in the following day’s classes.

I remember very few of the teachers with any clarity. Miss Hart who reigned over Commercial Subjects still stands out because she was an eccentric character and hard to dislike. Furthermore she had an interesting wartime career in which she flew planes. I recall a little about Miss Springate whose subject was Geography and who always looked old and careworn except that she clearly didn’t like me and this might have had something to do with me being rude to her. I remember more about Miss Eatch, a History Teacher, because when she first came to the school she was so nervous I brutally manipulated a spiteful campaign to make her cry by the end of each lesson and rejoiced when she became our Form Teacher and could be further persecuted. Miss Norman, who taught Science, was also our Form Teacher for a year but I recall nothing about her except she may have had a Northern accent and she was appalled that we seemed to know nothing about Famous Romney Marsh Sheep – Our Very Own Kentish Variety. I did in fact know something about them from my reading of Monica Edwards books where Romney Marsh children had one adventure after another involving horses. It did not seem sensible to bring this up, however.

There were two members of the staff who still stand out with extraordinary clarity: the Miss Smiths! Miss S and Miss K who appeared to rapidly develop a close friendship demonstrated by their frequent walks around the grounds together during the lunch breaks, sometimes with arms linked, heads down and always deep in conversation. Valerie Goldsack who was definitely less naïve than the rest of us sniggered and said they were Women In Love. I, along with the majority of Form 2SC, had absolutely no idea what she meant. Miss S Smith was already at the school when I arrived in September 1953 and in fact was my 1SC Form Teacher for the first two terms. She taught both Games and French and because I found the former unbearably threatening and the latter unbearably challenging I tried as far as possible to make myself invisible within her classes and speak as little as possible. On my school reports she seems to have regarded me as lacking in confidence which I probably was and even if I wasn’t to be thought so was fine with me. The rather more wonderful Miss K Smith suddenly turned up at Wombwell Hall in the September of my second year and she taught only English. She was a quite superb and inspirational English teacher. That’s not to say that my marks in the subject suddenly rocketed sky high under her mentorship because they seem to have hovered perpetually around B minus which I still find disappointing. But despite my poor performance there was no doubt that Miss K Smith opened the door for me into a world of words I had not previously appreciated. She even gave me advice regarding having one of my short stories published but I now cannot remember what her advice was. In her class I did not hide among the sea of desks hoping not to be noticed but instead generally paid attention, was even industrious and actually tried to please her by producing commendable work.

My ambition at the age of fourteen had crystallised yet further and manifested itself by a secret burning desire to become famous. If I had to achieve that renown by producing Best Sellers then that’s what I would do, especially if it meant the approval of Miss K Smith, but it didn’t mean I had completely abandoned the desperate longing to also reach the dizzy heights of celebrity via Stage or Screen. As an ideal I tried to model myself on the Great Sarah Bernhardt followed by Dame Edith Evans but because my only experience of Live Theatre had been a single visit to the Christmas Pantomime at Chatham Empire, to keep the fantasy alive I was often reduced to lesser mortals such as Doris Day, Grace Kelly or Kim Novak all of whom I was much more familiar with from occasional cinema visits with Molly from 31 York Road.

Overall I decided that Acting would be in the long run more satisfying than Writing, though there seemed no real reason why I should not attempt to do both. Furthermore a career on the stage would undoubtedly prove less intensive than all that writing late at night. From what I could gather from the monthly Film Magazines purchased by Molly’s older sister Pam, once you achieved a certain level of Screen Stardom and became a household name, there was also a great deal of wining, dining and general socialising with other celebrities that took place not just in London but also in Paris, New York and Los Angeles. I was certainly keen on the idea of all this and during French Double Periods even planned my required wardrobe for these glittering occasions.

Because of my reading diet I still daydreamed constantly of somehow enrolling in a Stage School such as the Italia Conti school in Soho which I was sure would not only act as a launch pad for my stage or film career but also allow me to tap dance into the footlights via West End Musical Comedy productions. I was not entirely averse to the occasional Classical Ballet performance at Covent Garden also. I was completely undeterred by the fact that I had never attended a single dance class of any description and convinced that I would easily pick up the necessary skills when the time came. In the interim and to be on the safe side I did borrow a book from the library concerning basic ballet steps and positions and from time to time practised them in the privacy of my bedroom.

Very occasionally I foolishly brought up the subject of a stage career with my mother who simply looked at me in amazement and told me not to be So Bloody Daft. Once when the topic was spoken of in the presence of my grandmother I was advised that No Bugger Would Pay Tuppence To Watch a Great Nora Like Me, which was disheartening to say the least. But the desire for fame and fortune via the Arts did not diminish and was still burning as fiercely as ever when I reached my fifteenth birthday, although the threat of approaching mid year assessments concerning Pitmans and Typing Speeds meant a modicum of attention had to be paid to these skills. Miss Hart thumped the desk and with her Warning Boom Voice alerted us to the dire possibility of Not Being Good Enough for a Gravesend Office so we all knuckled down.

I drifted through the upper floors of Wombwell Hall during lunch breaks pretending I was taking part in a BBC production of Wuthering Heights, staring out of windows and turning the school gardener into Heathcliff with ease, feeling ever more alienated from my peers, all of whom seemed to accept the office future that was neatly mapped out for them. Increasingly desperate to confide in someone who might not only be helpful but also be impressed with my hopes for the future I at last decided to make Miss K Smith the recipient of my confidence. She often spoke about the theatre, told us how wonderful it was to go to performances at The Old Vic, urging us never ever to overlook William Shakespeare. Anxious for her approbation I had already learned half a dozen of his sonnets by heart desperately hoping she might ask the class if Anyone Was Familiar With Them. Had she done so I would have gladly forsaken Musical Comedy and Ballet for ever for a place in the Old Vic Company. So far she had disappointed me but surely once I fully acquainted her with my lofty ambitions she would undoubtedly see me as a kindred spirit and take me under her wing. Who knows I might even get to know her well enough to share a Saturday morning assignation over cups of Nescafe at The Copper Kettle, the stylish teashop in Cobham Village where Valerie Goldsack and her mother had noticed her one weekend. That’s if Valerie could actually be believed of course and you could not always depend on her.
I waylaid Miss K after a Double English Period when the rest of 2SC were rushing off for a Wednesday pre-lunch game of hockey. She and I were all at once alone together in the room that had been the Library of the old house. She wore a beautifully ironed white shirt under a beige Pringle cardigan. I had noticed the label in the cardigan a few days previously when she took it off and threw it carelessly over the back of a chair. I made a note then that at some stage I would somehow or other acquire a similar garment. It was a cardigan that those familiar with Shakespeare Sonnets might wear after all, with not a whiff of Marks & Spencers or British Home Stores about it.

She smiled kindly and asked what she could help me with. Verging on tears I said I was going to tell her an Important Secret and would she please never discuss it with others. I implored her for advice. How could I become an actress because that was what I wanted to do more than anything else in the world? And she didn’t laugh and tell me I was Dreaming, didn’t advise me to Pull Myself Together and Stop Behaving like a Twelve Year Old. Instead she sat half on the desktop beside me and listened, saying little but giving comforting little nods and was impressed when I told her about the six sonnets. She said that anything was possible and didn’t add Even for a Girl Like You. She warned it would mean a great deal of hard work. Twenty minutes later I adored her just a little more and felt abuzz with a new confidence knowing that I was definitely going to give Office Work a Huge Miss. I even tackled the Nile Delta in Geography after lunch with an enthusiasm that caused Miss Springate to glance at me oddly and ask if I was All Right. Next day at lunchtime when passing the two Miss Smiths on their linked arm stroll around the park I gave them both a dazzling smile and Miss K even smiled back. My regard for her could only increase with that momentary recognition of the Most Important Secret I had recently shared with her.

French was now indisputably my most hated subject but it was several days before the Deluge of Sadness and Desperation that I have never quite forgotten. It was my habit to always sit close to the corner in the second row from the back of the class and spend most of the lesson gazing over the heads of the other girls and through the tall windows of the Morning Room to the expanse of park beyond. It was also my habit to mutter an answer if called upon to respond to any question put to me in the much detested language. On the day in question at twenty minutes to three exactly Miss S Smith required a response to a query regarding buying what was needed for a picnic by some French River in some French Town. After a few seconds of shock, I mumbled as inaudibly as humanly possible.

Miss S rose from her seat at the desk at the front of the room and grew alarmingly in height. Her short black hair swung around her ears and she was unblinking as she looked at me in silence for at least thirty seconds. Then, with the faintest glimpse of a smile, she said very clearly and precisely: I understand you are the girl who thinks she is going to go on the stage, who in fact believes she might become a famous actress – well you’re certainly going to have to work on improving your diction before that can happen aren’t you?
The greatly despised Valerie Goldsack was the first to half cover her mouth and titter, followed by her faithful acolyte Julia Waghorn. The rest of them, nineteen girls in total, rapidly joined in the merriment.