Remembering To Hate The Greeks

One Sunday afternoon a black taxi swung around the corner into York Road, scattering the big, rough boys like John Dyke and his cronies who were playing marbles in the gutter. The boys ran beside the car as it slowed and finally stopped outside our door, right in front of me sitting sedately on the doorstep reading a book, which was just about allowed by my mother on Sundays during her bouts of pursuing upward social mobility. There was to be `no racing the streets of a Sunday just like it was any old day of the week’. A car coming to our house? Surely not! Out of the taxi stepped three plump women in fur coats, impossibly high heels, and small velour hats each adorned with a feather and a veil. Two were old like my mother and the fattest one was very old like my grandmother. They shrieked at each other in a foreign language as the driver was paid dramatically, with a white five pound note, the first I had ever seen and much fuss was made about the change being handed over in notes. Then they checked the numbers on the doors either side of our house, now surrounded by the interested group of boys who had somehow been joined by a couple of mothers who tried to look nonchalant without much success. I kept my eyes as far as possible on The Further Adventures Of Worzel Gummidge whilst paying great attention to their shoes. A pair of puffy ankles in silk stockings wobbled towards me and I was tapped smartly on the head with a hand laden down with rings. Her nails were an unseemly length and colour for her age. My Nan never grew her nails and my mother’s were bitten to the bone. `And you must be dear little Jean….’ My name came out all wrong from her mouth and sounded more like John. A wonderful aroma pervaded the air around her; this old lady was so impossibly glamorous I was struck dumb and could only nod but by that time my mother had appeared on the doorstep behind me with `….I think you must have come to the wrong place – who are you looking for?’ They told her they were looking for `dear Bernard’ and as Nellie tried to narrow the door space, my father also appeared and then all three of them threw themselves forward and covered him with kisses. I had never seen such a public display of emotion and could only gawp, my mouth open. Later my mother was to describe this scene as disgusting and maintain that their behaviour `turned her stomach’ but at the time she, like me, simply stood and stared. By this time the three women were inside our front room, now suddenly made smaller by the sheer volume of their combined furs and the pervasive fragrance emanating from them was stronger than ever. Inside our house! Strangers simply did not come inside our house. Only family and the occasional close acquaintance were ever allowed over the threshold. Strangers were kept firmly on the doorstep but somehow or other these three alien women – foreigners to boot – were actually inside our front room, the older one by now had settled herself on the arm of the sofa with a kind of thud, her fur coat opening at the front to reveal a shiny red frock that seemed to me so beautiful it could have been a bridesmaid’s outfit made for a very stylish wedding. At some stage in the next few minutes my mother ushered me upstairs, pulled my grey skirt and pullover off me and out of the wardrobe came the lemon cotton summer dress recently bought at Gravesend Market that was supposed to be saved for going to church and for visiting. I was hastily re-dressed – clean white socks, hair brushed. She fluffed up her own hair, dabbed some Velouty for Beauty on her cheeks and pushed me downstairs again. The three women were still in the front room, now all seated with coats off, hats still on, the younger two also garbed in bright silk and adorned with strings of glittering beads. They perched on our drab and dreary 1930s three piece suite with easy self assurance like a clutch of exotic birds, filling the room with an unfamiliar thrill of excitement. I began to observe them with growing enthusiasm, already rehearsing the stories I was going to tell the girls at school about their glamorous lives. My father had recovered his composure and was talking animatedly. My mother’s mouth was set at a grim angle. One of the younger women hugged me and told me I was a `beautiful little girl’ and greatly heartened by this I asked her if she thought my new dress was pretty and added that I was wearing it because she was a very special visitor. My mother pinched my thigh painfully as I said this and told me to speak when I was spoken to and not to interrupt grown-up conversation. The woman who my father said was my new Aunt Philomena, told me that my dress was very lovely and she was humbled that I should wear it in her honour, and that of her sister (my new Aunt Mariella) and her mother who was not an aunt but a Madame Something Very Foreign. I became much more chatty at this stage and told my new Aunts that they were wearing the most beautiful dresses I had ever seen (except at weddings) and they must have come from very expensive shops and they all laughed and again said how truly sweet and clever I was. My mother then called me into the scullery to `help’ her make the tea and hissed: `…you just button your lip for once or I’ll give you what for after they’ve gone!’ So I reluctantly buttoned my lip and with very bad grace because there were so many questions I wanted to ask. Who were these extraordinary women and how could it be that they knew my father so well? Just how did he get to be on such obviously good terms with foreigners who dressed in silks and furs and paid their bills with five pound notes? Later in the afternoon I was sent across to Troke’s Corner Shop because they were the only people for miles around with a telephone, to ask them to telephone for a taxi to take us all into Gravesend to the Nelson Hotel where they were staying and where we were all going to have a cooked tea! Only my brother was to be left behind, with Mr. and Mrs. Bessant next door. The Trokes were very interested. Who are the three ladies? How do they know your Dad? Are they friends of your Mum as well or just your Dad? Did they write and tell you they were coming to visit or was it a lovely surprise? I was thrilled to provide information that was later to incense my mother and truly make her `blood boil’. `The three ladies come from a country called Greece and they’re my new aunts.. They met my Daddy during the war. They’re just Daddy’s friends – not Mummy’s. Their visit is a lovely surprise!’ For the very first time in my life I rode in a motor car. A huge black shiny taxi that had to make two trips to get us all to the hotel. The old lady with many dramatic gestures insisted on paying for it. The excitement mounted as we sat in the hotel lobby whilst one of the new aunts negotiated a table in the restaurant for us all and a chair with a booster cushion for me. My mother, by now changed into her Sunday best black taffeta dress, also worn for funerals, her black Cuban heeled shoes and wearing crystal beads, looked more and more miserable. My father in his demob suit looked somewhat overconfident and strutted a little saying he had heard the food at the Nelson was extremely good to which she responded in a loud stage whisper that she wasn’t hungry and anyway her stomach was churning and she wouldn’t be able to keep a thing down so to tell them not to waste their money on her. The restaurant was quite the most dazzling place I had ever been inside with tapestry wallpaper and glass chandeliers and a very sombre atmosphere. The narrow tables were covered in starched linen cloths and each place was set with a considerable amount of heavy silverware. There were napkins rolled up and secured with silver bracelets. I had never seen such glamour before and I was entranced. I was allowed to choose what I was going to eat and was urged to choose chicken because it was very special and only normally eaten at Christmas time. Then I ate something called a Peach Melba which was a tall glass filled with tinned peaches and ice cream covered in a delicious jam sauce. A bottle of wine somehow appeared on the table which the foreign women shared. My mother of course only drank lemonade and my father ordered beer. Poor Nellie looked more uncomfortable than ever and sat mostly in silence eating very little. After a while the new aunts stopped trying to draw her into the conversation and instead reminisced with my father about things that had happened during the war when he had apparently, been great friends with them. Sometimes they spoke in their own language – and sometimes even my father spoke some of this strange language! They began to bring photographs out of their lizard skin handbags and these were scrutinised with care over cups of Nescafe coffee. There was a lot of laughter and as it grew dark and the evening drew to a close, there was also a great deal of kissing and hugging and tears from the younger women. We did not go home in a taxi. We waited for the 496 bus and while we were waiting it began to rain a soft, seeping drizzle that relentlessly soaked through our Sunday best clothing. My mother kept up a non stop diatribe in a low voice, waiting at the bus stop, on the bus, on the walk down Springhead Road, all the way home. `I never thought I would live to witness the day you would show me up like that. Shown up I was in front of the `ole street, in front of all me neighbours. I’ll never be able to `old me `ead up again after wot you’ve done. Fancy `aving to put up with yer `usband’s fancy pieces coming and knocking on me door – and on a SUNDAY if yer don’t mind! And not just one of them – three fancy pieces- THREE! – three tarts all dolled up in fur coats and silk stockings. And the way they carry on! All this kissing and cuddling in front of people! `ow `ave they bin brought up that’s wot I’d like to know. You’d catch things from trollops like that. And the old girl as well – sixty if she’s a day and all dolled up like a spring chicken.. I’ve never seen the like of it in all my born days. And on a SUNDAY! I can’t get over the nerve of them – coming into my `ouse, stepping on all me mats, without so much as a please or thank you. Coming into me front room and sitting on all me chairs in their fur coats and their silk stockings and their painted fingers!’ After the visit of trio who came to be known as The Greeks and who never visited again, the relationship between my parents got much worse, the arguments and insults more frequent, my mother’s tears more or less constant. She never had to be reminded to hate the Greeks and as the months passed I often thought about the strange new aunts in their bright shiny frocks, their high heeled shoes and the heady, piquancy that wafted about them, a fragrance tantalisingly reminiscent of both bluebell woods after a violent rainstorm and heavily spiced bread pudding fresh from the oven. The neighbours asked me about them: Old Mrs. Bessant next door – `Has your Dad heard any more from those Greek friends of his dearie?` Mrs. Bedford from across the road – `When are your foreign relatives coming to visit again?` Mrs. Troke from the corner shop – `Has your mum had any news from those friends of your Dad?` And to each one of them I replied: `We get letters from them every week and next summer I’ll be going all the way to Greece for a holiday at their big house.` Whether they did send letters or not I cannot recall but I do know that my mother deftly steamed open a fair amount of mail before resealing it and placing it in front of the mantelpiece clock. Sometimes my parents did not speak to each other for days and my father would come back from his shift to be greeted with a vacuum of quiet. His dinner would be placed before him, eaten quickly, then he would wash and change and disappear `off for a walk’ and he stopped taking me, or even the dog, with him.

Visiting The Corner Pub, A Very English Custom

There was a time decades ago when, young, impressionable and much in love, I sat enthralled at the feet of one Vidar L’Estrange and listened attentively to his many informative stories some of which concerned how he faced life as an eighteen year old newcomer from Germany after the war intent upon studying first English and then perhaps medicine. At least half of his edifying accounts involved episodes he thought I would find fascinating that occurred in his family such as how his mother’s first husband had regrettably died on the honeymoon and what led to his paternal grandmother to go to Paris to become a follower of nineteenth century magician Eliphas Levi. Others were directly personal accounts - how he starved himself out of the German Army the previous year or how he reacted to his initial introduction to the quintessential English Pub. Apparently Pubs as the English know them certainly did not exist in Germany in the nineteen thirties, forties and fifties. He had been in South East London for one week only and under strict instructions from his mother to always behave well, when the motherly Mrs Morrison with whom he boarded in Sunnydene Crescent said that her husband and oldest son would be visiting the local Pub after tea and added that she thought her young boarder might like to accompany them. Vidar’s English was still not entirely fluent and so he asked for clarification as to what exactly the `local Pub’ was. She said it was a Public House and was called The Star Tavern. Her Boarder was confused and not a little shocked at this further information and even more so upon hearing that the men in the family `usually visited the Public House on a Friday and Saturday evening after tea’. However, the men were by this time bundling themselves into their coats and caps and waiting politely for him so he felt he could do nothing else but join them. He felt compelled to tell them, however, that he would wait outside the establishment rather than go in with them. Mr. Morrison said, `Not even one drink then?’ but Vidar was firm and said he would rather not and was happy to simply wait. The reason for his reluctance to join them inside was not because he was completely averse to alcohol but rather because the term `Public House’ in direct German translation became `The Brothel’ and the fact that these Londoners so casually visited their local bordello on Friday and Saturday evenings after tea was immensely shocking to him. Furthermore, that there seemed to be such establishments conveniently placed on every corner scandalized him and he wondered how the decadent British could possibly have won the war. He stood outside and peered fearfully through the window at the bar where now more than a dozen men between the ages of twenty and seventy stood and ordered pints of beer. He imagined this would be to occupy them while they waited their turn and marveled at their nonchalant attitude, their casual banter, their jokes and their laughter. This could never happen in the suburbs of Berlin or Munich even under the worst excesses of Adolf Hitler. The crowd at the bar grew thicker but every few minutes one of the customers would leave his pint unattended and head up the stairs in the corner of the room where an arrow pointed the way to the WC which the watchful Vidar decided was something to do with where the wantonly degenerate and now very busy woman could be found in some room above and her services engaged. He noted that even the septuagenarians headed up the stairs and that their absence from the bar was longer than that of the younger men which he felt from his so far brief encounter with medicine, was only to be expected. To his continuing horror even though he had fully expected it, his landlady’s husband and son also mounted those stairs when their turn came. Later when they emerged from the Public House into the growing darkness of South East London they seemed to have not a hint of shame about them. Mr Morrison even slapped him on the back heartily and said that maybe next week Vidar would join them inside The Star Tavern rather than waiting without in the cold. And Vidar for politeness sake said perhaps he would but felt compelled to add that he would simply stay downstairs in the bar and drink a pint of beer. Mr Morrison nodded but looked confused so Vidar told him firmly, `I will not be going upstairs to the WC,’ then added by way of explanation, ` because my mother would be very unhappy if I did so.’ Years later when he told this story, Vidar was still discomfited by this youthful blunder with regard to the very English habit of regular visits to the Pub and in all the years of my devotion to him, never all that keen to patronize them.

Peas, Beans & Hop Gardens.....

In the 1940s the extended Constant family seemed to be involved in a great deal more agricultural activities than those around us. Topics of conversation between my various aunts for much of the time when they were not actually vilifying each other or the neighbours seemed to revolve around peas, beans, potatoes, fruit - and of course hops. When my grandmother and aunts were busily preoccupied with working the fields closer to Crayford and Dartford, we often went pea-picking with Aunt Lou and Cousin Connie who were from my father’s side of the family and for some reason treated with suspicion by the Constants. As an eight year old I thought this might be because she had a large family of rather aggressive boys who had all passed the Eleven Plus and actually been allowed to go to Grammar School never mind the cost of the uniform. This fact was truly shocking to Old Nan, my maternal grandmother. I liked Connie but I was rather surprised to find that whilst I was simply allowed to play all day in the pea fields, she was required to do almost as many hours picking as her mother and thus she turned out to be not much fun at all. In Northfleet at that time, there were those who did and those who did not do field work and the latter group definitely thought themselves a cut above the former. We, of course seemed to do as much as was available, getting up on what were to be bitterly cold mornings whilst it was still dark and riding to the farms on the back of a lorry. Decades later I fully appreciate that this was a world my mother understood and was not intimidated by whereas the kind of work sought by the more traditional, decent working class caused her to feel overawed and apprehensive because she failed to understand the structures involved. In the middle of a pea field my mother felt completely at home. All day long she would gather vegetables and deliver them into sacks to be weighed, and at the end of each day collect perhaps five or six shillings. There was no lorry available for the home journey so we had to walk the several miles back to York Road and this she did willingly, almost happily, on the hottest days even stopping off at Simms’ corner shop to buy an unexpected treat in the form of a new fangled Ice Lolly with a cream centre. She liked pea picking more than many of the similar possibilities because once you pulled a nicely vast heap of bines from the ground, you could sit in comfort and pick them into the bucket at your side, to be transferred into the sacks. Beans on the other hand were `back breaking’ and potatoes even more so. I greatly looked forward to fruit picking, particularly soft fruits like strawberries and raspberries, for obvious reasons. I liked cherries best of all and looked forward to the short season with hard to suppress excitement. Sadly it seemed that once the men were back from the war they seemed to take over much of the cherry picking once more and my greatly hated Cousin George told me with enormous satisfaction that it was because men were more reliable in trees, being better on ladders. To demonstrate this he then climbed halfway up the apple tree outside the kitchen window with me in hot pursuit. It was on this afternoon of the cherry argument that somehow or other George was pushed from the tree and broke his collar bone but that is really beside the point. Despite my enduring love of and loyalty to the Kentish cherry, all fruits and vegetables paled into insignificance alongside the annual hop picking event and it mattered little that the hops themselves were not traditionally consumed until they had been turned into beer. In early May we would make a trip to the gardens to appropriate quantities of young hop shoots. This was done surreptitiously, arriving just before dusk when the farm workers would be unlikely to be around. The young hops would be soaked overnight in salt water and next day drained and simmered until tender then eaten with salt, pepper and a lump of butter. They tasted a little like asparagus. During the stringing season we, with Old Nan accompanied by Little Violet took a train trip or sometimes several buses, to Mereworth to `our’ farm to observe the strangest of rural crafts for an afternoon. Armed with a picnic of bread and cheese and cold tea, we sat on the edge of the gardens to watch the stilt walkers traverse the alleys of hops deftly stringing the plants overhead. The stilt walkers like circus performers, impressive as they made their measured progress along the poles, exhibiting the outlandish and bizarre dexterity needed to train the plants’ next stage of growth. In late August the excitement mounted because in early September the hops would be ready for picking and as many members of the family not otherwise engaged on more urgent business would be ready and willing to pick them. There were usually about twenty of us. My grandmother together with Little Violet, Aunt Martha with Pat, Aunt Maud with June and Desmond, Aunt Mag and Uncle Harold with young Harold, Leslie, Margaret and Ann, Freda with baby Susan, Uncle Edgar and wife with daughter Daphne, and of course my mother and me and my brother – all could be found boarding the pickers’ train from Maidstone station for the six weeks of high adventure. We went to the same farm each year at West Malling near Mereworth and lived in pickers’ huts, our family taking a third of those available so that it was almost like a tribal village. It was through the efforts of such bodies as the Society for Conveyance and Improved Lodging of Hop Pickers that specially built huts had been constructed before the first world war. They were all the same and gave each family about 16 square feet to live in. Sacks and straw were available to make the bunks, constructed one above the other, more comfortable. At the end of each row of huts was a `cookhouse’ where huge fires were lit and the cooking done. The only toilet facilities were improvised long drops behind the huts where the queues were often so long that we children abandoned them and simply went behind the nearest bush. The farm with the best facilities was reputed to be Whitbreads at Beltring where there was hot and cold water for showers, proper lavatories and even a twice weekly doctor’s surgery. However we were disinclined to go there because you had to behave and drunkenness and swearing were reported to the manager who recorded the misdeeds in a black book. Three misdemeanours and you were expelled. This would clearly not have suited Old Nan. I no longer remember the name of `our’ farm but the memories surrounding the six weeks of rural freedom are still vivid. In the 1940s a family of two adults and two children could earn between three and four pounds a week which meant a grand total of perhaps twenty or thirty pounds by the end of the season. One of the conditions of employment was that the hoppers must remain for the full term of the harvest and to ensure this half the pay was kept back each week and paid as a lump sum at the end of September. Sometimes only tokens were distributed during the period of picking but these could be spent in the local village, both to purchase supplies from the shop and also, most particularly, supplies at the pub. The nearest pub was visited regularly by the adults on Friday and Saturday nights and by my uncles and my grandmother most nights. Sometimes the children would be sent off to purchase bottles of beer from the off licence and these were liberally consumed in the cookhouse after dinner. Beer or no beer, sitting in the cookhouse watching the firelight dance and flicker after the meal was eaten is not easily forgotten. Nobody minded how long the children stayed up, and even when we did drift off to bed, we could hear the singing of `Nellie Dean’, `My Old Dutch’ and `Waiting At the Church’ long into the night. But it was up at five the next morning when the picking began again and being a child did not automatically exclude you from the hard work; we were all expected to stand at the bin and pick despite the hop plant’s soporific effects. However, my mother and aunts were agreeable to letting us finish our contribution at lunchtime each day when the only child still required to continue working, much like cousin Connie of the peas, was Little Violet because my grandmother had different standards and consequently poor Little Violet sometimes picked all day and fell asleep exhausted at six pm each evening. But the afternoons were playtime for the rest of us and we roamed the local villages and woodland in a shabby, disparate group, gathering nuts and berries and daily becoming less and less popular with the villagers. The older boys were adept at purloining hop tokens from the adults and these we could exchange for treats at the village store. Even once the war was officially over the return of treats such as ice cream and sweets was slow but strange items were on sale specifically to attract the young – Liquorice Wood for example, and Locust Beans. Liquorice Wood just looked like slivers of kindling but did in fact taste surprisingly of liquorice. It could not be swallowed and had to be spat out once the flavour had disappeared. Locust Beans were rather like hard, dried figs but I later found out that the thousands of little seeds inside were insect eggs of some kind and from time to time they were crawling with little white grubs. I ate them nevertheless. As the picking season progressed, more and more signs would appear outside pubs and businesses - `No Hoppers, No Gypsies’, at which time Cousin Margaret would be sent in to make the treat purchases because she was the oldest girl, had a nice smile and spoke politely. She also, somehow or other always managed to look cleaner and tidier than the rest of us. One year Margaret had acquired a pair of jodhpurs from the daughter of one of Uncle Harold’s mates who worked at the Crayford dog track, and she wore them daily over the picking period, ensuring a gracious reception at the village store. Somehow or other she managed to ignore the jeering of a group of teenage boys from the East End - `hey darling where’s yer ‘orse’ – as she appeared in them each morning and I was filled with admiration. The story of my mother’s unconventional entry into the world was retold each year by my grandmother, and we all became familiar with the details. `Born right ‘ere in this very place my Nellie was – come early she did and oh she was a tiny little thing, no bigger than a milk jug. We wrapped ‘er up in a poke and I ‘ad to stop picking the rest of that day. I went back picking the next day like – and she came with me and lay in the bin all day nice and comfy on all them ‘ops’. And at this stage Nan, not generally known for her sentiment, could actually be seen to have a tear or two in her eyes. Tears or not there could be no doubting that she was never happier than in the hop gardens with her family all around her listening to tales of yesteryear as she deftly nipped the buds from garlands of bine into the bin. We, a larger group by far than those around us, always managed to pick more than other families moving rapidly enough along the drifts, or alleyways of plants, day after day to make the tally men wary and other pickers resentful. But hostility never worried Nan who simply maintained they were jealous and advised us to Bugger Them! Once or twice fights broke out and on one scandalous occasion Old Nan tore the hooped ear ring out of a woman’s ear, tearing the ear lobe so that she had to be treated at the Hoppers’ Hospital at Five Oak Green. The matter was also reported to the Police and the following morning a Constable searched us out in the Gardens and took a statement then warned Nan that she could find herself charged if she wasn’t careful. The whispering and rumour that swept through the pickers on this occasion was astonishing and managed to subdue my belligerent grandmother for several hours. It was in the hop gardens I first began to recognise that there was something distinctly different about our family.. We were not just working class poor; we were certainly not part of the respectable working class poor. We were not respectable or reputable in any way. Not a single one of us was highly regarded or even well thought of. We were the very opposite of decent, good and upright. As a bunch we were undoubtedly untrustworthy, unreliable and devious. When we cheerfully appeared, `mob-handed’ into any situation it was not long before mutterings of `riff raff’ and even `diddicais’ tripped from the tongues of the more traditionally decent poor. By the age of ten I think I completely understood what I viewed as this regrettable truth about the family. These days I simply find it delightfully colourful!

The Brownie Uniform

My mother had for reasons best known to herself, decided I should join a local Brownie Pack when I was eight. She seemed to think there would be social advantages such as meeting and possibly becoming friendly with, a nicer class of girl than those living at the lower end of York Road, Northfleet. When I expressed a certain amount of dread, after all the whole idea sounded suspiciously like a weekly dose of compulsory team games and I was well aware from several years of school that I was not possessed of much team spirit, she added that all my Crayford cousins were currently enthusiastic Brownies. While I was reflecting that under normal circumstances she would not regard the cousins as being in any way helpful for social mobility, she assured me that I would love it once I got used to it. I had even more serious doubts when I saw her making the obligatory uniform from an offcut of fabric, quite the wrong shade of brown, purchased from a stall in Gravesend Market. My heart sank deeper as I contemplated the remarks that would unquestionably be made by my co-Brownies regarding colour blindness, all of them acceptably attired in uniforms purchased from Danby’s, with epaulettes and leather belts. She could never quite get the hang of epaulettes and the cost of a leather belt put it into the `out of the question’ category. I was right of course but following a most disagreeable and spiteful three weeks I solved the problem by simply not attending these intolerable every Tuesday after school sessions. Instead I hit upon the brilliant idea of taking Tuesday evening bus rides with the subs money. It was on one of these absconding Tuesdays that I boarded the 498 bus from the stop outside the Doctor’s surgery in London Road towards the Station and came face to face with my father who had presumably boarded in Gravesend. In fact I nearly tripped over his feet as we greeted each other somewhat uneasily. To my surprise he did not ask me why I was travelling in the opposite direction to that of the Brownie Pack Meeting, neither did he get off the bus at The Hill and head down Springhead Road towards home but instead stayed on chatting with the bus conductress whom he seemed to know well and addressed as `Sadie’. I studied her smart blue jacket , admiring the perfectly positioned epaulettes that my mother was simply not able to master no matter how hard she tried. A powerful woman in sole charge of the interior of the 498 route from Gravesend to Crayford. A woman in a uniform what’s more! She looked me up and down curiously, `Is this your girl then Bern?’ `Yes, this is my Jean – say hello to your Aunt Sadie Jean,’ He looked quite dapper and definitely pleased with himself, in his demob suit, a white silk scarf casually draped around his neck. I felt a deep unease; there was something quite wrong about the way they spoke to each other. I held out my bus fare and she shook her head. She was a small, slim woman with a tightly nipped in waist and a mop of unruly hair that was an improbable shade of red. She wore strappy sandals with her clippy’s uniform and her toenails were as vividly red as her hair. Instead of the narrow skirt normally worn by women on the buses she wore slacks. She had small gold studs in her ears and as she spoke I could see the occasional flash of gold in her mouth. She swayed up and down the bus taking a fare or two and my father’s eyes followed her progress with undisguised admiration and then she swayed back to where he sat on the treble seat at the end of the bus. She chatted to him in an animated and familiar way and both of them laughed far too much. From time to time she pushed his shoulder playfully and told him he made her split her sides. I sat opposite him and stared at this unfamiliar Aunt Sadie. After her initial appraisal she took little notice of me, her attention was primarily upon him. Occasionally as she leaned forward to allow a newly boarding passenger to pass up the bus, her knee pressed against his just a fraction too long for the contact to be accidental. I remained on the bus all through the three stops to Swanscombe, then two more to Greenhithe, one more to Stone – and I wondered where he was going. They began to speak together in low voices, her head bent forward, red tendrils of hair brushing against his forehead and then quite suddenly he decided to alight at the stop after Stone village. I got off with him and we crossed the road and stood in silence waiting for the bus back towards Northfleet Hill. `Thought you were going to Brownies tonight,’ he said at last. I shrugged, said nothing for a while then asked, `Does Mummy know Aunt Sadie?’ He was silent too then asked in a vague voice,`Does she know who?’ I spoke louder, slightly aggressive now, `Aunt Sadie – the clippie – does Mummy know her?’ He studied the timetable. It was a request stop and almost at once a bus appeared out of the early evening Stone Village mist. He signalled it far too vigorously. `Yes – your mother knows her,’ he told me as we both got on. `Does Mummy like her?’ His voice became sharper, `What kind of question is that?’ and he sat a little straighter and looked intently out of the window into the darkening evening seemingly engrossed in the river traffic heading towards the Pool of London. I did not find this sudden keen interest in the pilot boats and cargo vessels totally convincing. I thought he was waiting to see what I would say next so I said nothing and neither did he. The almost empty bus rumbled steadily along the high London Road above the quarries, through the village of Greenhithe, towards Swanscombe. The waterside buildings below became increasingly shrouded and obscured by dark shadows and one after another the little yellow lights were switched on inside the houses and studded the growing darkness. After we left the Swanscombe request stop I decided to speak. `I’m not going to go to Brownies any more,’ He sounded resigned and tired when he asked me why not. `I don’t like it and the other girls are snobs. One of them said my legs were dirty.’ He turned now and looked at me dispassionately, `Maybe it’s just not your cup of tea.’ I nodded, `And my legs are not dirty.’ He glanced at my clean legs and agreed, `Your legs are quite clean – I’ll tell your Mother you don’t want to go anymore.’ We both stared out into the rapidly darkening night. `What if she says I’ve got to go because of her specially making that uniform?’ He said I should not worry about that because he would deal with it. And he did so. Next day my mother hung the offending wrong shade of brown uniform into the back of the wardrobe. I watched in some relief and said, `Being a Brownie just wasn’t my cup of tea.’ She looked at me without comment. The subject of Brownies was not brought up again.

A Taste of Eccentricity at Wombwell Hall

Peggy likes long trans-globe chats at times when the cost is so negligible per two hour slot it barely demands a mention. She commented, not for the first time that I seemed to `hang out’ on line with some creepy people at times. I told her that not all of them were all that creepy and she said maybe she had meant sinister which when you think about it is actually worse. `Anyhow,’ she added, `I’m glad you’ve dumped them, especially the one who sees conspiracy in every corner.’ I said that to be fair I didn’t dump them – they dumped me and then she wanted to know why but I actually couldn’t think of a reason that made much sense so offered lamely that maybe I had been considered just as sinister, for clearly doubting so many of the more extreme allegations. `Not all Cabinet Ministers can be clandestine paedophiles or money launderers after all and I simply cannot believe that they are so concerned for each other’s welfare that they cover up crimes willy nilly for each other – in fact such loyalty is rare and I’m certain is not rife in the Halls of Power…..,’ I began to warm to my theme but she had clearly lost interest which was annoying because I had a great deal more to add on the topic. Instead I explained that some people were not creepy at all but very informative and I had learned a lot about Pike River from one on line friend. But Peggy knows little of Pike River and wanted to talk about buildings being torn down overnight, Wombwell Hall and The Battle of Britain Pub in particular. She reminded me that she had briefly been a Hall student a year or two after me before she was unceremoniously uprooted to Yorkshire with her family and deposited in a more modern and rather boring Technical School environment. The Hall had been far more to her liking and she loved the old kitchens just as much as I had. She now waxed lyrical about the beauty of the sweeping staircase. She even said that Downton Abbey reminded her of the place though Downton was obviously far more exclusive and upmarket and was never in danger of becoming a Girls’Technical School. We talked about the school staff and both agreed that the Headmistress, Miss Fuller, seemed to be aligning herself toward the male gender rather than the female with her severely cut tweed suits and her then most unfashionably short hair. Peggy recalled both Miss Hart and Miss K Smith with as much affection as I did. Miss Hart because she taught hockey, at which Peggy excelled and Miss K Smith because she had introduced her to the Shakespeare sonnets and taken a group of enthusiasts to the Old Vic. `Teachers were allowed to be far more eccentric in those days,’ she said, `The problem with today is that we fall over backwards to view even a trace of eccentricity as completely normal. You have to be almost deviant to be classified as an eccentric in this day and age.’ All things considered that is completely true and I felt compelled to say so which somehow or other brought us abruptly back to conspiracy theorists and whether or not they could be considered irrational. Peggy was cagey because we both knew we harboured favourite areas of intrigue – Princess Diana’s death for one and Peggy was even doubtful that there was ever a Moon landing though I can’t say I agree with her there. `Perhaps it has to do with faith in the background research…..’ I said at last, `When people simply claim they have absolute proof of the most astonishing contentions yet never produce the proof you cannot help but begin to doubt them.’ She agreed and as the line was becoming indistinct it was good to end the conversation at a point where we were in harmony.

A Funded Girl At Wombwell Hall!

The Eleven Plus had most definitely been something of a major failure as far as I was concerned and when all the ensuing dramas were over I could not have been happier to finally be returned to the Girls’ Secondary Modern School in Colyer Road, Northfleet. The good news for my ever hopeful father was that in those long gone days, after the first two years of secondary school, students could take something sometimes called The Thirteen Plus, a further chance to `better themselves’. Sadly he did not live to witness my eventual success in this regard. Passing the examination meant transferring to a Technical School for the remainder of the school years. Again I did not pass the examination as smoothly as I fully expected I would, but I did earn the opportunity to `get in on interview’. I enjoyed the interview process and remember smugly telling the Headmistress that I was either going to be an actress or a writer or perhaps both once I was a few years older but that in the interim it would do no harm at all to learn shorthand and typing or cooking and dressmaking. I was then asked to spell some difficult words which luckily I managed. When we got the good news that I had secured a place, my mother first of all cried and said how proud of me my poor dead father would now be and then we immediately went to Waterdales to visit Aunt Lou and Cousin Connie. My cousin had already been a Tech Girl for a year and she began to tell me all I would need to know about the place. `You get to choose the course you do. You can either do Domestic or Commercial. I’m doing Domestic so I do mostly cooking and dress making. It’s quite a lot of fun and we made Toad in the Hole last week and took it home for tea. My Dad said that cooking would be the best thing for me for when I get married…..and I’ll need to be able to make clothes for my family too…’ `What’s Commercial then?’ I wanted to know. Connie sat opposite me importantly, `When you do Commercial you learn typing and shorthand and book keeping and so when you leave school you can get a job as a shorthand typist and work in an office instead of a factory. The shorthand part of it is very hard and a lot of the girls drop out of that course but they can still be copy typists because the typing is dead easy and the book keeping is quite simple too’ When I said that Book Keeping sounded dangerously like maths to me she reassured me and told me that I was wrong and all you had to do was put figures in the correct columns in an accounts ledger – it couldn’t be more simple. She added that if she had been allowed to choose for herself she would have chosen Commercial but Uncle Walter had felt it would be a waste of time because within a few years of leaving school she would be married anyhow and what good would shorthand and typing be to her then? Cooking on the other hand was a skill that would always be useful. Nevertheless Connie maintained she would have liked a job in an office, maybe in the offices of the factory where her Dad worked. The pay was good, she maintained knowledgeably. As at this stage, although my heart lay firmly with the theatre as a primary career, I was also half planning to enter a convent and I wondered briefly what use Commercial was going to be when put alongside Domestic in that particular situation. However, the idea of cooking for fifty other nuns and sewing habit after habit into the night did not appeal either so I said I would probably be choosing Commercial. Despite Connie’s reassurances I still had considerable doubts about Book Keeping which definitely sounded like maths in disguise, but I would cross that bridge when I came to it. Uncle Walter did his very best to influence my mother sufficiently to prevent my choice coming to fruition. `With any luck Nellie a fine, strong girl like your Jean will be hitched by the time she’s eighteen so what will she want with typing? No, what she wants to be able to do is cook good meals for her husband and make decent clothes for her kiddies….’ And to her credit although Nellie nodded in agreement she said to me later on that she too thought I would be much better off doing shorthand and typing and being able to get a bloody good job in an office in Gravesend where I would earn a decent wage. So instead of going into Form Three with my friends from the Secondary Modern in Colyer Road, in September of that year I went with just a little trepidation into the first stage of the Commercial course at Wombwell Hall, a dilapidated Victorian mansion in Hall Road, Northfleet and the former home of the Colyer-Fergusson family. Before the term started we had collected Connie’s outgrown uniform from the previous year: green serge skirt, two cream cotton blouses, a green and gold striped tie and green blazer. All were much too big for me and I knew that there would be only a slim chance of me growing out of them before the three years at Tech concluded and I left the school for ever. Before the first week of term was over I had to report myself to the headmistress for a uniform breach: shoes the wrong colour and style. My mother’s interpretation of brown, laced up walking shoes had somehow included light tan wedge heel sandals. Miss Fuller, the Headmistress, looked at me sternly. `Why are you not wearing regulation school shoes?’ I remember looking down at my feet and somehow seeing the offending sandals for the first time. I shrugged and said nothing. She sifted through a pile of papers before her, `Now, you are one of the funded girls are you not?’ I just stood there helplessly. What on earth was a `funded girl.’ `You are orphaned are you not?’ `No I’m not,’ I said although I suddenly liked the idea of being orphaned. `My father died, but my mother is still alive,’ I explained truthfully. She rather unexpectedly smiled and said kindly, `My dear child, if your mother is a widow then technically that makes you an orphan because you are fatherless.’ A most interesting piece of information. She went on to explain that because I was funded I got all kinds of privileges that other students did not get such as free dinners, and a uniform subsidy to cover the cost of expensive items such as the missing brown lace-up shoes. My mother, she told me, should have received a voucher for Danby’s the Uniform Shop to cover the initial cost. As well as shoes I needed a proper leather satchel, not to mention a regulation green woolen cardigan for the winter months ahead and also a gabardine raincoat. These were costly items, she told me. I did not need to be told that because Betty Haddon had regaled me with the exact cost of the gabardine raincoat her mother had to buy before she had been allowed through the gates of Gravesend Girls’ Grammar School two years previously. Miss Fuller looked uncertainly at Connie’s cast off uniform, slightly shook her head and said that she would write a note for me to take home. When I got home my grandmother was ensconced at the kitchen table drinking tea with my mother and when the contents of the note were revealed she told Nellie that it was her own fault for even considering sending me to toffee-nosed schools that put unnecessary demands on families - ` like brown lace-up shoes and gawd almighty, gabardine raincoats if yer don’t mind!.’ A great lump of a girl like me apparently should be thinking of going out working, `not sitting around in a school all day on yer fat arse in yer gabardine raincoat’. Some hours later when she had finally left to catch the bus back to Crayford I demanded to know what had happened to my Danby’s Funding Voucher. Nellie blustered and folded her arms across her chest, `What bloody voucher are you talking about?’ `My funding voucher – you know what I’m talking about. I’m supposed to have a proper uniform – a new one from a shop, and proper brown shoes. Why didn’t you tell me about the voucher?’ But she simply shook her head and continued to lie, though added that as I was making such a fuss, on Saturday morning she would take me to Danby’s to buy the shoes. This promise was a small success but I still felt humiliated and indignant. The uniform shop was at that time situated in the Regency crescent directly adjacent to the Gravesend Clock Tower and was a place I had only rarely entered. We pushed our way through the heavy glass door and mounted the softly carpeted stairs to the first floor. It felt a little bit, and even smelled a little bit, like being in church. The rows of school clothes swung ever so slightly in ghostly unison on their hangers as we passed, dark blue gymslips, dark green skirts, grey shorts, blazers of every colour imaginable, and a blissful row of gabardine raincoats, some navy and some green. The tall male assistant had a superior air and looked us up and down two or three times before enquiring if he could help us. My mother did a lot of whispering about vouchers and he looked us up in a register and rather surprisingly found that we were already `customers’ and furthermore, that quite recently a boy`s winter shoes and coat had been purchased, presumably these items had been for my brother, a co-orphan, who my mother in her wisdom had decided was to have a share in my orphans’ voucher. Luckily there was still enough credit left for the brown lace-ups and as I was not prepared to leave without the much vaunted rainwear, a dark green gabardine raincoat that I was still growing into three years later. There was not enough left for a leather satchel but I was so delirious with delight about the raincoat that I barely noticed. The first thing I did when we got home was search for the boy’s shoes and winter coat which I found hanging in the back of my mother’s wardrobe waiting for the first chill of November when undoubtedly Bernard would climb into them. I remained resentful for weeks. However, I was to enjoy my time at Wombwell Hall and this was primarily because I fell in love with the house and found the history of the place totally fascinating for some reason. I learned that there had been three Wombwell Halls, the first being built in the early 1400s. The Wombwells owned the Hall until the sixteen hundreds, when the local branch of the family died out and a certain John Forterie, a Huguenot refugee from Lille, purchased the estate. He and his descendants occupied it until 1774, when they too died out. During their time there the family pulled down the original Hall and built a very fine red brick mansion faced with white stone to take its place. This house was acknowledged by many as being one of the loveliest country mansions in the country, and great was the consternation when in 1860 the new owner, Thomas Colyer, had it pulled down and erected his own Victorian hall which was the one now occupied by the school. Although the old mansion had been acclaimed for its beauty, it did have its dark side. In the early 1800s, one of the servants, a young maid, said to have been strikingly beautiful was murdered by a man called Farmer. Having shot the girl, he attempted to commit suicide by cutting his own throat. A Miss Brabazon, who was a keen history and travel writer, in her book entitled A Month in Gravesend reports with relish 'the blood of murdered and murderer mingled together on the floor'. However, Farmer did not do a very good job and did not die. At his trial he claimed that his pistol had gone off accidentally and he was finally not convicted. Later he was transported to Australia for a subsequent crime. At the time they acquired the Hall and estate the Colyer-Fergussons were already very large landowners and had property and land as far away as Farningham and Crayford. The estate began to prosper but sadly for them this was at the time of the rapid industrialization of Gravesend and Northfleet and almost as they watched, artisan housing began to creep across the once green pastures towards them. By the end of the first World War the worker housing and amenities were almost on their doorstep so the family finally moved out in disgust. During the Second World War the Hall served as a hospital for wounded anti aircraft gunners from the Tollgate and Green Street batteries and after the war the family finally sold up to the Kent Education Authority, who turned it into a Girls Technical School where I now happily daydreamed on a daily basis, placing my ever more elaborate mythical families within its walls. My favourite part of the place was the huge former kitchen, dairy and utility rooms where the bells to call those who served to Dining Room, Morning Room, Ballroom, Blue Bedroom, etc, were still in evidence. None of my enthusiasm for the Hall transferred into academic excellence of a general nature, however, and overall the only subjects I did consistently well in were shorthand and typing. At times I showed potential and what was termed `originality’ in English but this was primarily because I had fallen wildly in love with one of the English teachers, Miss K. Smith. Decades later I learned that Miss K. Smith had influenced a number of her students in exactly the same way. I was not alone in my adoration of her. At the end of my first year I actually got the highest mark in the Religious Instruction class, not because of any crush on the teacher but rather because the whole idea of religion fascinated me and clearly bored the rest of the class. But it was Pitmans Shorthand where I really excelled. As Connie had warned, it was difficult to master and this made it exciting. I loved being able to write in a secret language of complicated squiggles that I could later, with a modicum of luck, decipher. During the first term Chicken Pox followed by Mumps ensured I was absent for six weeks but desperate not to fall behind I practiced shorthand forms diligently throughout this time and was largely unhindered by my absence. About a third of the girls who started the shorthand course, dropped out after the first two terms and decided that being Copy Typists in a Pool was an acceptable option. A few even dropped out of the typing class because they found the grinding determination of Miss Hart, who had somehow or other flown planes during The War, to not allow them to look at their hands as they worked, too draining. She stood at the front of the room in her tweed suit, armed with a heavy ruler which she drummed on the desks of the front row. Her iron grey hair flew in all directions and her voice was huge. `Right Girls are we ready to begin? We will begin: DO NOT LOOK AT YOUR HANDS………asdf ;lkj – and again, asdf ;lkj do NOT look at your hands…..’ I found it exhilarating and could manage it all quite easily – and I did not look at my hands. When we all needed a break or to allow the slow ones to catch up we would ask her a question about planes. `Oh I thought I heard a plane go across Miss Hart. What kind of plane do you think it might have been?’ Then she would stop drumming, stop shouting, perch on her table and talk about Spitfires and Hurricanes and Lancaster Bombers as well as Focke Wolfes and Messerschmitts. She would talk for so long and we became so bored that we then longed to return to asdf ;lkj and the ongoing demands that we should NOT look at our hands. Suddenly being good at something was a strange feeling, especially when so many others struggled with the commercial subjects. Maybe in the end it is all to do with aptitude rather than academic ability; some of the strugglers after all, had not needed to pass the interview process in order to secure their place at Wombwell Hall. Later I learned to my very great satisfaction that both Ruby Benfield and Betty Haddon of the dreaded eleven plus episode in my life, went on to commercial college at sixteen and neither were able to satisfactorily absorb the intricacies of Pitman’s Shorthand. This fact was later not lost on my mother. `Both them two, that Benfield and that Hadden girl `ad to go to college to learn to do typing and shorthand – and there was you able to learn it at school, years before they did. That Grammar School didn’t do them much good in the end did it?’ She actually seemed to be suddenly proud of me. And indeed I was more than a little bit proud of myself. I have never forgotten those Wombwell Hall years.

The Eleven Plus - A Tale of Woe.

The Eleven Plus examination loomed large in my young life from the beginning of 1951. It was talked about all the time at school as the staff began to prepare those of us who might conceivably pass this terrifying hurdle with `mock’ tests. Passing this examination was in those days all important because `it sorted the wheat from the chaff’, we were informed, those who were `intellectually able’ would have the opportunity to go on to greater things via Gravesend Grammar School For Girls (or Boys) where we would be taught French, German and Latin as well as Classics and Calculus. The world would open up to us, we would get excellent jobs upon leaving the Grammar School and an elite few might perhaps even go on to a University where we could work towards a Degree! The rest of us were destined for the Secondary Modern and jobs on the factory floor or behind the counter in Woolworths followed by simple lives amongst the decent poor. As I was still years away from a job of any description, an excellent one was not an objective high on my agenda of things I must strive for. I had absolutely no idea what a University or a Degree was. My father talked to me very seriously about the upcoming examination. `You have to do your very best to pass and then you’ll get into the Grammar School and have a whole raft of opportunities in life – so you must try as hard as possible and if you do pass, I’ll buy you a bike!’ I was impressed. I was not used to being promised expensive gifts. My parents were not in the habit of buying toys for me and where other children regularly had sweets and comics such as `Dandy’, `Beano’, `Comic Cuts’ and `Film Fun’ I rarely had access to these delights. It was quite unusual for me to be given pocket money and I was very envious of others who were given money regularly on a weekly basis. Owning a bike was certainly something worth aiming for. For months my father practised times tables and capitals of countries with me and told my mother he was confident I would pass. I became positive about it myself and more and more convinced of certain success. Ruby Benfield told me she was not going to even try to pass because if you did happen to succeed then it meant years of effort ahead of you in the form of homework such as French and German. Why would any sane person, Ruby maintained, put themselves in that position? I was impressed and repeated the conversation to my father who looked alarmed - `Don’t you be influenced by what she says – you try hard to pass, d’you hear me? Then you’ll get a brand new bike.’ I fervently agreed to try my very hardest. On the day of the examination I sat between Ruby Benfield and Betty Haddon, throat dry, palms sweaty and ready to give it my all. `I’m not going to even try,’ Ruby still maintained loudly, `I really don’t want to pass because I don’t want all that homework.’ `Neither do I,’ Betty echoed, `I’m not going to try either.’ The terrifying examination turned out to be much easier than I had expected although some of the mathematics section was tricky and seemed to revolve around engine drivers whose trains passed each other at different speeds. All this was incomprehensible to me but I loved the story writing section where we had half an hour to write something creative. I wrote a highly fanciful story, mostly lifted directly from my latest library book about a girl who was fortunate enough to be shipwrecked on a Pacific Island with her dog and had to exist on coconuts and pineapples until rescued. I was very pleased with this story and thought it was certain to impress the examiners. My father met me from the exam room and asked if I had tried my hardest and if any of it had been too difficult for me. I reassured him, dismissing the event as `so EASY!’ He was obviously relieved and uncharacteristically bought me a chocolate ice cream on the way home. It seemed months before we heard the outcome of the exam. The new Headmaster handed out envelopes for us to give to our parents. I was given mine without comment and ran home to joyfully hand it to my mother, telling her I thought it was the eleven plus result. I had failed. My mother seemed as surprised as I was, `You didn’t pass….oh dear your poor father…. You didn’t pass.’ I was totally taken aback. I would not be a bicycle owner after all. I wondered if I might even be punished. My mother seemed very apprehensive about my father’s reaction and after a while turned on me accusingly. `I told you NOT to listen to that Ruby Benfield didn’t I? When she said she wasn’t going to try. That’s your trouble, you’re easily led by others – you just follow on like a silly sheep – you were TOLD not to take no notice of Ruby Benfield, but you never bloody listen do you?’ But I had not taken any notice of Ruby or Betty either. I had tried as hard as I could. When my father came home later that evening I was already in bed and strained nervously to hear their conversation. I heard him saying that he had been sure I would pass and wondering if you could still pay to send a child to the Grammar school. But even she knew that you couldn’t and even if it was found to be possible they were not in any position to do so. Next day he told me he was very disappointed and feared that now I would probably have to go to the Secondary Modern in September unless he could think of a viable alternative. At school the next day I learned that only two children from our school had passed that year; those two were Ruby Benfield and Betty Haddon. `I thought you two said you weren’t going to even try,’ I commented reproachfully to Ruby. `Well I didn’t try,’ Ruby maintained, somewhat smugly, `Mummy said I didn’t have to try because she doesn’t believe in pushing me. I just passed anyhow – without trying’ `So did I,’ Betty agreed. `Well I didn’t try either,’ I lied. Once I got used to the fact that I would not shortly be the proud owner of a new bicycle and I would not be wearing the dark blue uniform after all, I began to feel more cheerful. After all Milly had failed the eleven plus in the previous year and had been attending the Secondary Modern for several months. She loved it and during her first week had excitedly told me just how much it was like going to Boarding School. `There are lots of rules and you have to walk on the left in the corridors at all times – you don’t stay with the same teacher all day – you go to different rooms for different subjects. There are PREFECTS – can you imagine? It’s just like boarding school only without the sleeping there. There are school dinners and you have to eat everything on your plate or you sit there until you do – BUT you can ask for a small portion if you like….and if you are really well behaved and set a good example you have the chance to become a prefect yourself! There’s a Head Girl! Her name is Elspeth! Isn’t that a lovely boarding school kind of name?’ Milly, it seemed, felt just as if she was part of an Angela Brazil school story or at the very least an Enid Blyton school story. School was fun when you went to the Secondary Modern and now I would be able to join in that fun. I was particularly interested in the idea of prefects and head girls, and school dinners sounded like much more fun, even for a fussy eater like me, than going home for midday dinner as we primary school children did. Things were looking up! He did try not to show it but my failure had been a huge disappointment to my father although my mother soon adjusted to it once she had discussed it with Aunt Mag, Aunt Martha and Nan. Aunt Mag thought that you couldn’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and I clearly wasn’t `up to it’ academically and after all Secondary Modern had been perfectly alright for her Harold, Leslie and Margaret and she didn’t expect for one moment that her Ann would pass. Harold and Leslie both had good jobs at Vickers where there was plenty of overtime if they wanted it and Margaret had a lovely little job in Dolcis Shoes in Dartford. Aunt Martha’s Pat had just failed also and it had been a relief to both of them because once you start getting involved with fancy schools there were never ending demands for uniforms not to mention the extra bus fares. Nan was frankly incredulous that anybody would be upset about such matters - `Never `ad a day’s schooling in me life an` look at me – I’m right as rain! When Little Violet gets to that exam age I’ll keep `er `ome that day – bugger them! ’ The latter was not an empty threat because Nan was already in the habit of withdrawing Little Violet from school on a whim, and most especially when she needed her to run errands on the days when she felt a little under the weather herself. As a group they viewed my father’s reaction as unnecessarily emotional and certainly unhealthy and so my mother’s initial attitude changed to one of watchful cheerfulness as she waited confidently for the fuss to die down. Aunt Martha came to visit with Pat when my father was on an afternoon Sunday shift and Pat told me she was `gobsmacked’ to hear that I had actually tried to pass the eleven plus. `Only the dopey brain boxes go to Grammar and they don’t get no time to do nothing after school with all that homework. They don’t have no mates at all for years.’ She assured me that Secondary Modern was a much better option and when I offered that I thought a lot of the problem was due to the fact that everybody thought I had been influenced by Ruby Benfield she suggested we write Ruby a letter to `pay her back rotten’ outlining what a bitch she was and perhaps even threatening her with some kind of retribution via violence. I had never really liked Ruby and Pat’s plan sounded reasonable so paper and pen in hand I settled down to write at her dictation. `Dear Friend,’ she began, pausing now and again to find the best possible word, and to check with me for spelling conventions, `I write this for your own good. You are a real bitch and yet you think you are somebody special just because you can pass exams. You will have no mates at the Grammar when you go there and you will soon regret it. Be careful that you don’t get hurt because we are watching you – from a well meaning friend.’ She confided that her Mum had sometimes been forced to write similar letters to neighbours because they put their rubbish bins in the wrong place for instance or had late night male visitors. Without a qualm I followed her up York Road and, giggling, we pushed the note under the Benfield door and before the eyes of the Benfield grandmother who lived opposite and was on her doorstep idling away the Sunday afternoon and eyeing us curiously. The explosive reaction over the next day or two was bigger by far than anything I had previously experienced. Exchanging my brother for Judy Stewart was a mere token in comparison. First the two Mrs. Benfields, the older and the younger, at the garden gate waving the `Dear Friend’ letter in the air and ranting in unison. The younger stopping for breath, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, the older repeating again and again, `Under my very eyes, right in front of me she was – bold as brass – no shame at all in her!’ Then my mother, grimly grey-faced in front of me her head shaking in disbelief, `Why?’ Even I, who had a habit of denying most misdemeanours, knew that there was no point in refuting the fact. Perhaps I could moderate the crime a little. I explained that it had been Pat’s idea. `Don’t go blaming Pat. You just do what anyone tells you to don’t you? If Pat told you to eat shit would you do it? Just you wait til your father gets home!’ His fury matched my mother’s embarrassment and he outlined a list of penalties involving early bedtimes, withdrawal of any food treats like canned peaches with Sunday tea, certainly no sweets or ice cream ever again, no playing out in the street with Milly for what seemed like a year or two, and I might have to be `put away’.Putting Away was serious because sometimes it actually happened, although I was unclear where children were actually put when they were `put away’. I knew that two of the older Smith boys had been `put away’ for two years for offences that involved stealing and episodes of violence, and according to my mother it was not overlooked that they had also been `mouthy’ to their mother. They had been rather more subdued when they returned but even so all the `decent’ local children were advised to `steer clear’ of them. Then the Benfields descended again, this time Ruby’s father in place of her grandmother and they were actually asked into our front room! The front room with the best mats in that my mother did not hold with others walking all over. This time the meeting took place without anger or raised voices and, sitting on the stairs in the dark with my ear close to the wall, I could hear nothing at all. Next day I was told that I would have to write Ruby a letter of apology and that her family had forbidden her to have anything further to do with me. They had warned other families about me it seemed and intended to continue to do so. They, like Mrs. Stewart before them, felt something ought to be done about me. I might still have to be Put Away. For a week or two very little was said to me. We sat totally taciturn at the meal table, my brother looking curiously and fearfully at each of the strained faces around him and not daring to say anything but wondering if he could have jam on his bread. I was sent to bed with no books to read immediately after my plain bread and butter tea where I lay feeling sorry for myself and planning revenge. It was summertime and over several lonely hours I could hear the voices of other children playing. Never the Benfields of course because Donald and Ruby were rarely allowed to play on the street with other children but always in their own back yard where from time to time the privileged few might be allowed to join them. I had never been among the few and neither had Milly. We knew that the Dawson children had sometimes been there to play and had once actually been invited to tea, just like in a book. As late afternoon turned to evening mothers began calling the children from the street one after the other. First the cosseted children. Mrs. Stewart always leading the charge at seven o’clock on the dot calling for Brenda and Judy who responded obediently, immediately. Mrs. Bedford seeking Joan, Mrs. Draper for Katy and Brian, Mrs. Berryman for Jennifer. None of these with such impressive, instant result. A lull as shadows lengthened along the wall of my room and the less protected and confined played on for another hour. Then both Mrs. Brents began to gather their offspring, Vera and Audrey to York Road, Kenny, Alan and Colin, the latter now dutifully joining the football game, to Buckingham Road. It would be nearly ten o’clock by the time Milly and Georgie Foreman would be called and well and truly dark before Mrs. Robbins ventured to the door to recall her brood even though Sonja-Kim and Jeremy were still pre-schoolers. And then only the Smiths of Shepherd Street remained, the younger ones still fighting Indians on The Old Green, the adolescents lolling against the wall of Troke’s shop practising smoking Woodbine `dog-ends’ retrieved from the gutter and laughing a lot. And as the British Volunteer tipped its clientele noisily into Buckingham Road at eleven, even they would have to `go in’ and help their mother put their father to bed. At last the final human sound of the summer night would be George Foreman senior wending his way home from The Prince Albert singing `Nellie Dean’. And only then could I fall uneasily asleep. During the long summer holiday where I was to go to school next was from time to time debated between my parents with my father still maintaining that I should have passed that examination. He went to Maidstone on one occasion to the Kent Country Education Offices to see if he could look at my examination paper but this he found to be out of the question. As September neared I was thankful to find that after all I was going to be allowed to go to the Secondary Modern where most of the local girls would also be going and I began to look forward to it with excitement. My mother even took me to Danby’s Uniform Shop and at first I thought I was going to get a brand new uniform but to my disappointment it was to the `Used Uniforms’ section she firmly steered me. My father spent any spare pound or two on his precious motor bike and we were not accustomed to new clothes but I had hoped that this would be one of the rare occasions when the strict fiscal rules would be broken. Never mind, on the first day of school I headed off with Milly, by now a seasoned second year, dressed like everyone else in green gymslip, white blouse and green and yellow striped tie. I was filled with excited anticipation. I took to the Secondary Modern like a duck to water and could not have been happier. On the first day we all went into the Hall and were lectured by Miss Dennis the Headmistress who was tall, thin and angular and looked as if she had just stepped from one of Angela Brazil’s pages and would fold herself up cosily into the book again at three thirty. She talked of being happy at work and at play, striving for success, looking to a bright future and growing into confident young women. She urged us all not to let her down. I was certainly ready to do my best and anxious indeed never, ever to be the sort of pupil who would be singled out as letting Miss Dennis down. Then we sat what she described as a `Qualifying Test’ which would be used to sort us in streams. Milly had already warned me about the Test and had herself been placed in the A Stream. Anxious to follow in her footsteps, to dazzle my father with my newly acquired brilliance, and above all not let Miss Dennis down, I worked feverishly at my test paper and breathed a hearty sigh of relief when this enthusiastic attack did in fact do the trick. I was now a fully fledged Form One A Stream Student and what was more I was to be in Keller House – just like Milly, and would be allowed to wear the coveted yellow sash during netball games. We First Years were sorted into four houses inspired by Helen Keller, Laura Knight, Marie Curie and Florence Nightingale whose illustrious lives it was presumably hoped were going to continue to inspire us over the next few years. Despite my mother’s gloomy mantra that my behaviour would undoubtedly ensure that I would go through life without any friends: `…the way you behave nobody’s going to want to `ave nothing to do with you…’ I quickly found myself part of a group of the girls who sat importantly in the front row of our form class. Pat, Pamela, Pauline, Marjorie, Shirley and I were the undisputed academic leaders although I fell down badly in all aspects of Mathematics no matter how hard I tried. We spent playtimes together, gossiping about the inadequacies of lesser mortals and shared a table together at lunchtime under the watchful eye of a Table Prefect called Monica. The excitement of School Dinners was enormous as I threw myself frenetically into this school-story period of my life. I was both fascinated and fearful each day as I waited to see what was going to be served, fervently praying to God to ensure it was something I would be able to eat. They followed a predictable, ongoing pattern starting with Irish Stew and Gypsy Tart on Monday and ending with Fish cakes and Banana Custard on Friday, and most of the time caused me no problems in fact proving to be infinitely more edible than most of my mother’s food . Things could only get better. In fact I was quite wrong because my life was about to take a nose dive as my father’s Catholicism got the better of him and he made a decision that would prove to be very traumatic for me. I do not think that he made the decision to again uproot me from a non-Catholic school lightly or that he realised the disturbing effect it would have on me. He acted in my best interests I am sure but when I was told one Friday evening in October 1951 that on Monday morning I would be going to Gravesend to St. John’s Catholic High School instead of Northfleet Secondary Modern I was thrown into total emotional turmoil. `I like it where I am – please don’t make me go – please, please don’t make me,’ I begged, ready to promise almost anything to be left where I was in a school situation I was definitely enjoying. `You’ll have an opportunity to improve your maths,’ He promised, `and learn French – you’ll get a much better education’ I didn’t want a much better education; I wanted to be left alone. I pointed out that at Secondary Modern we would start French in Term Two after Christmas but he was implacable. His mind was made up and he would take me there himself on Monday morning. `You’ll make much nicer friends,’ My mother promised, `And think about it – when those Benfields see you going off up the road to get the Gravesend bus they’ll wonder where on earth you’re going to school – but it won’t be the Secondary Modern so it’ll be one in the eye for them won’t it?’ It was the first time the `Benfield Business’ had been mentioned for weeks and I had put it to the back of my mind ready to be almost forgotten like the baby exchange incident. It was clearly still very much to the forefront of hers. `I don’t care WHAT they think, I just want to stay where I am. I like it there.’ My mother continued to cajole. `It’s a lovely school St. John’s is and all the children have birthday parties. You’ll get invited to all kinds of parties, go to all kinds of places.’ The only birthday party giving family in York Road was the Benfields. I had never attended or been given a birthday party of my own in my life to date and I was sensible enough to realise that this situation was unlikely to change. `I don’t want to go to parties….’ And I didn’t. `You will do what we want,’ my father advised me, `Not what you want. The trouble with you is that you get altogether too much of what YOU want. Now you are going to do what WE want for a change.’ He refused to enter into any more discussion and over the weekend we went back to eating meals in silence and I contemplated running away but was too despondent to do so. He took me to Mass on Sunday and we walked without speaking, our polished Sunday shoes clattering against the paving stones. After Mass one of the Primary School nuns, Sister Camilla, stopped to talk to us and told me that the Holy Sisters at St. John’s were so looking forward to having me at their school and that she was confident I was going to do very well there. Father O’Mara who rarely looked in our direction, nodded toward us approvingly and my father stood a little taller and straightened his tie. I wondered how many of them were party to the conspiracy. On Monday morning I woke very early, before the birds had begun to stir, and lay listening to the sounds of my father snoring, and the thunder of the first Gravesend to London Express as it emerged from the tunnel at Northfleet. I fantasised that I should have got up earlier, crept from the house, through the darkness just before dawn and played one last but fatal game of `First One Across Is a Sissy’ all by myself. I wondered if they would mourn me when they finally found my mangled body on the tracks or if my father would be philosophical and simply say, `Her problem was always that she wouldn’t be told….I knew she’d come to a bad end eventually.’ He took me on the bus to St. John’s which was on the Denton side of Gravesend and in those days quite a walk from the bus stop. We were greeted by a tall, unsmiling Reverend Mother, softly spoken, detached, who did not look at me. My father said he would meet me after school and to cheer up because he was sure I would love it once I gave it a chance. As he walked away I began to cry and Reverend Mother said nothing at all but guided me along corridors, keys jingling on her belt, flat sensible shoes echoing starkly, and pushed me into a classroom filled with alien faces. I sat at the back of the room and continued to cry. The class teacher, plump and jolly, with red curly hair escaping across her face and neck, was called Sister Delphine. She patted me on the shoulder kindly and said I was to cheer up. I shed huge tears down onto my hands until the desk was so wet the piece of paper handed to me to write my composition of three paragraphs on Child Labour In The Nineteenth Century was saturated and unusable. She gave me another piece and said I must cheer up at once or the other children would start crying too. The other girls were looking at me in surprise and a couple of them laughed. I cried harder and my nose began to run. Sister Delphine gave me her hanky and I soaked it in minutes and continued to cry. In fact I wept throughout that class, and the next, all through playtime and I was still crying so hard at lunch time I was told that I would not be allowed into the dining room. A small girl with glasses called Maureen had been detailed to stay with me and be my friend. She collected some food for both of us but mine congealed on the plate as I blubbered on. I was still sobbing when my father collected me and Reverend Mother took him aside and suggested that when we got home he should explain to me firmly that my behaviour was not acceptable for `a great girl of eleven’ and that tomorrow there must be no repeat of it.. The next day Maureen with the glasses was still my official friend but I maintained almost a full day of tears and was unable to manage more than a coherent sentence or two in response to her sympathetic questions. On Day Three Reverend Mother took a much firmer stance and as a punishment for my copious weeping, took me into the Boys’ Department where I was made to sit through two woodwork classes with two different groups of not unfriendly but certainly curious boys, none of whom would sit too close to me presumably because they feared what I might do next. They need not have worried. I had simply come to cry. On Day Four Reverend Mother hauled me into her office roughly by the shoulder and said that until I stopped crying I would have to stay all day every day in the Boys Department and do all my lessons with the boys. I said nothing at all, just stood in front of her, tears tumbling down my face, half nodding. I was put into a class of boys slightly older than myself. I had to sit in the front row between Peter and Michael for Mathematics, History, French and Music. I sobbed quietly throughout each lesson. The young music teacher asked me if I could explain why I was crying so much and there was a hush while the boys waited, wooden recorders half raised, tense, to find out. But by now I could say nothing at all and simply folded my arms across my chest, rocked back and forth and continued whimpering. They learned to play `Greensleeves’ without me. On Day Five we went to Mass in the morning and I was snivelling so noisily I was made to sit at the back of the church between two Sisters. One offered me a toffee but by now the inside of my mouth felt odd, unreal with all the crying so I declined and wept on. My father came earlier than usual that afternoon for a meeting with Reverend Mother. I waited outside her office on a bench sobbing softly. Much of their conversation was muffled. Reverend Mother, it appeared, had never in forty one years of teaching come across a child who did so much crying. I had been quite unco-operative and they had found it totally impossible to ascertain what I could or could not do. They were not even sure if I could read. She had never before, apparently, had to place a girl of my age in with the boys for days on end. Usually half an hour was enough to make a normal girl buck up and buckle down. And in any event, she could not leave me in with the boys ad infinitum could she? She had, she told him, toyed with the idea of caning me for all this nonsense – but then that would have given me something to cry for wouldn’t it? She was rapidly running out of patience. My father had to see it from her point of view and her view was that I was not a suitable pupil for St. Johns. St. Johns, it appeared, had a reputation to uphold. On the bus going home my father did not say a single word to me but seemed to be engrossed in the newspaper. I rocked slightly back and forth and miserably stared out at the late October lights as they came on in the town, a winter darkness already settling over the rainy streets. I had cried so much that week I could barely see out of eyes that were puffed almost beyond recognition. After tea my mother said that since it seemed that I was not getting on as well as everyone had hoped at St. John’s I would be able to return to the Secondary Modern on Monday. My father said nothing at all but continued to study the newspaper he had already read from cover to cover.