If truth be told, my silence regarding this future I felt pushed into was due to the fact that I was still smarting from something that happened when I was close to leaving the girls’ secondary school. They only offered education to O level at Mary Sheafe School for Girls, but I wanted to do my A levels, too. If you wanted to go on to higher education at college or university, you needed passes at A level that reflected your intended course of future study. Mum had done some of her “reckoning” and decreed that it would better for Dad’s taxes if I did just that—remained at school to do my A levels and then go to college.
I was gearing up to apply to Tunbridge Wells Girls Grammar School when we discovered that Cranbrook School, a semi-private boys’ secondary school referred to locally as “Cranbrook Grammar,” would be taking a small number of girls into their sixth form as part of a gradual coeducational process. Because the school had partial government funding, it had to step into line with plans to develop coeducation in all schools receiving public money. Several girls from my school were applying, including Anne-Marie, and I must admit I liked the idea of not having to travel by bus to Tunbridge Wells each day—any mysterious anti-nausea powers in the magic penny had long ago worn off.
As soon as I applied to Cranbrook Grammar—and the application amounted to a letter to the headmaster, along with a listing of O-level results expected, plus an interview with a parent present—Miss Nelson summoned my mother to a meeting where she expressed her concern that going to Cranbrook Grammar might be a mistake for me, because I would be at a “social disadvantage” given that other pupils at the school came from wealthy families. That was definitely the wrong thing to say to my mother, who had prepared for the interview and was wearing a couture black suit with a fitted jacket and a pencil skirt that skimmed her calves. She’d handed over just a few pounds for the suit with its eye-watering price tag still attached—the bargain came via a friend of a friend, and it was cheap because it had “fallen off the back of a lorry” as the saying went. On the day she went to see Miss Nelson, the new suit was set off by her best black court shoes polished to a shine by my father, and her hair was swept back in an elegant French twist. Mum was a good eight inches taller than Miss Nelson, who was probably sorry she had ever thought to “express concern” and was now wondering if it might have been better to just let me go without a word. Which is effectively what happened after that visit. I can still hear my mother saying, “She’s concerned about you fitting in socially? I’ll give her something to be concerned about.” Mum had just won her first promotion and she was working in a sensitive government department, a prison no less, so she wasn’t going to take lip from anyone, especially a headmistress whom Mum always said could do with an afternoon in a field with a dirty old man. I know—it’s a terrible thing to say, but she said it.
In many ways I had a good time at the grammar school, I suppose because I made new friends who were a lot of fun. Our house always seemed to be full of teenage boys who were less interested in being my friend, I think, than in my father’s massive egg, bacon, sausage and baked beans fry-ups—for kids who board at school, having home-cooked food was a treat.
However, I didn’t care for my education there. At Mary Sheafe, whether I liked them or not—and mostly I liked them—the teachers knew how to teach their subject. At the grammar it seemed as if we were just given information and had to take it from there. Or maybe that was what growing up academically was all about, and I just wasn’t really ready. Admittedly, I’d also made an error with my subjects, but I’d had no real advice on how to proceed and my parents didn’t discuss it with me because it was outside their experience of education. English was an easy first choice—it had been my best subject from primary school onward—but as much as I loved history, I realized too late that the kind of history I enjoyed was not being taught. Our lessons were focused more toward British political history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whereas my loves were social and modern history. Talk to me about dates and laws in the 1600s and my eyes glaze over, but tell me that Elizabeth I had black teeth, and I am all ears. I was interested in what happened to ordinary people as a result of those big political decisions, not the names of leaders and what they said at every last meeting of Parliament. I was getting bored stiff with Thomas Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell, and who was stabbing who else in the back (it’s probably why I cannot bring myself to read the novels by Hilary Mantel) though I loved the fact that Oliver Cromwell said, “I can tell you, sirs, what I would not have, though I cannot what I would.” I knew exactly how he must have felt.
There was another setback to deal with. As my studies advanced, the increased reading required revealed that the eye surgery I’d had as a child had not “held” sufficiently. Soon my wandering lazy eye was causing double vision and migraines, and I was finding it difficult to keep up with my work. Two more surgeries to correct my vision followed when I was sixteen and seventeen, and it was a challenge to bounce back and catch up.
In truth, though, the main problem was within me, because Miss Nelson’s words echoed in my ears every single day. I became almost mute in class, afraid to speak, afraid that I was socially unacceptable. I remember in one class I was asked to describe James I of England, who was also James VI of Scotland, and in my response, I commented that being “ostentatious” contributed to his downfall because James—“the wisest fool in Christendom”—thought he was inheriting a land of riches when he acceded the throne following the death of Elizabeth I. Frankly, I was bored stiff with the words of yet another centuries-old king. I was beginning to think it would have been better had I chosen geography, a subject I had always been really good at. The teacher interrupted me with, “Do you know what ‘ostentatious’ means?” I gave him the correct definition and he simply said, “Continue . . .” as if disappointed that he hadn’t caught out the girl who had no right to be there. Funny, the things you remember. I wish I’d had the courage to say, “Of course I know what the bloody hell it means—why else would I use the word?” That would have had me kicked out of school, which might not have been such a bad thing.
The question about my social status lingered on, affecting my time at the new school both academically and socially. My confidence was at a low ebb, further undermined by the number of times I was asked “What does your father do?” by teachers, parents of friends, parents of acquaintances and indeed by a few of my new friends. I knew very well what was at the heart of the question, and that was a process of putting a person in a specific box. It was akin to a swift assessment to discover where I really belonged, to establish the station in life where I had started my journey. Your father’s job dictated the way you were seen in terms of socioeconomic class, future potential, or whether you were worth knowing at all. I had several problems with that question. First, although both my parents left school at fourteen, I knew how hard they worked. My father was a master craftsman in the home improvement business. I objected to the fact that no one asked what my mother did for a living; by that time she was an “Executive Officer” in the Civil Service. More than anything, I hated the fact that someone was willing to make a judgment about me based upon my father’s job. It also grieved me that my father was worried about attending parents’ meetings with my mother because he thought his Cockney accent would let me down. My mother could put on any accent, and when she went along to meet the teachers, she sounded like Maggie Smith. Dad had an accent like Michael Caine in his early films. Knowing how he felt, that was the year I chose a Father’s Day card with “I don’t tell everyone you’re my Dad” on the front, and inside, “Just the people I want to impress.” He loved it.
Years later, I was in London and in the midst of an interview for an article about my novels that was scheduled to appear in an old established magazine, when I was taken aback by the journalist’s first question.
“And what does your father do?” she asked.
“Really?” I said, feeling as if someone had
just hit me. “I am fifty years old and here to talk about my books, and you want to know what my father does?” I could feel my adolescent intimidation laced with fear coming back to haunt me, but this time I wasn’t going to let it have the upper hand. “My father is seventy-eight years of age. He loves dancing, reading and cooking. He also makes really good wine and he hikes and does all the things a retired man of his age enjoys.”
“Oh,” she said.
Yes, oh indeed. At the end of the interview, I left her with a final thought, one that probably tormented her a bit.
“You should have asked about my mum,” I said. “Now there’s a story for you!”
Since coming to live in the United States I’ve been asked that question several times, yet only by a certain kind of British ex-pat. But my brother and I are like our father in so many ways—on the other side of that river pitching our tents so we don’t get wet. And though we might once have cared, it’s been water off a duck’s back for a long time.
23
Neighbors and Other People
When we moved into our house at the end of The Terrace there was just one other young family on the street and they were only there for about a year or two. They had a son, Paul, who was a little older than me, and a daughter, Anne, who was about John’s age. Mr. Martin took me to Sunday school at the Hawkhurst Baptist church each week, and when they moved I went with Miss Jenner, who lived along the main road in a large Victorian terrace house with her older sister and brother, who was in a wheelchair. I believe Miss Jenner’s sister had lost her young husband in the Great War—the same war in which their brother was wounded. Miss Jenner was one of the two million women considered “surplus” following that war, given the sheer number of young men of marriageable age who had been killed in the years 1914–1918. Though there were a few children around, I felt that it was very much us and the old people—there certainly seemed to be a lot of elderly folk on our street.
Elsie lived next door to us with her aging mother. Elsie was a lovely lady with a broad smile who spent much time in her garden. I think she might have been about ten years older than my mother. Sometimes when I was playing in our garden she would lean over the fence and give me a flower. Her gentle kindness was magnetic and I would often go to play outside if I saw her tending her flowers and vegetables. If something went wrong in their house, Dad would go round to fix it. One day, when I was out in the garden, Elsie called out to me and asked me to come round to the front door—she had something for me. I was about seven years old and I had never set foot in Elsie’s house, so I was very excited by the invitation—especially as I was asked to enter by the front door and not the back door. Only official people went into a house by the front door. Elsie and her mother met me at the door as soon as I knocked, and I was ushered into the sitting room. It was as neat as a pin. There was a desk to the right, with a series of drawers, like a roll-top bureau without the roll top. Elsie said she had something for me. Her mother stood behind her as she took a powder compact from one of the drawers. She seemed sad and turned to her mother, who nodded, as if to encourage her. Elsie smiled at me and handed me the compact, which I studied in the palm of my hand. It was silver with an insignia on the front: HMS Hood. It was a gift that a young navy man would give to his wife or sweetheart, a shipboard memento, a reminder that he would soon be home. HMS Hood was sunk in 1941 during the Battle of Denmark Strait. Only three of the almost 1,500 men on board survived. I never asked, but I believe Elsie’s fiancé was one of those lost and relinquishing the compact to the little girl next door signified a final letting go. Definitely, the air in the room seemed to change when she handed me the compact. I suspect she may have wept in her mother’s arms when I left, running home to show my mother my new treasure.
Mum was very quiet when I handed her the compact, telling her that Elsie had given it to me. She shook her head.
“I wondered why she’d never married,” said Mum. “She lost her love on the Hood.”
Mum told me to put it somewhere safe, pointing out that it was a very, very special gift, though I already knew that. I wish I could say I still have that compact, but sadly I didn’t hide it well enough. My very curious brother found it and just had to take it apart, pulling away the transparent cover protecting the insignia and then dismantling the compact in such a way that, try as he might, my father could not repair it. I saved the constituent parts for a long time, but at some point must have given up and discarded the pieces. It breaks my heart just thinking about it, remembering holding the broken pieces of compact in my hand. Even the insignia was shattered.
There were two old ladies on the street, sisters who were always quibbling over something or other, and they lived next door to each other. Mrs. P had her grown son living with her, a bachelor in his forties—or maybe thirties and he just looked older. The other sister, Mrs. C, had a gentleman lodger. It’s funny thinking about the lodger—today it would be assumed they were a couple, and maybe they had been. But we always referred to him as her lodger. The sisters were both quite nosy, to the extent that my mother said their curtains would end up in shreds given the number of times they were tweaked as soon as anyone walked by, or a car was heard coming down the street. The older of the two—or she may have been the younger, because they both claimed to be the oldest or the youngest, dependent on what was at stake—was particularly nosy, and she also had subscriptions at the shop for about three different weekly women’s magazines. If Jennifer came over while my mother was at work, we’d deliberately make a lot of noise—laughing and dancing to Radio Caroline or another pirate radio station—so that Mrs. P would just have to find out what was going on, and on the pretext of bringing a pile of magazines for my mother, she would make her way to the front door to poke her nose in. Jennifer and I would then spend hours leafing through magazines, usually reading out loud entries in the problem pages and coming up with solutions to women’s dilemmas, especially the ones involving men or sex.
Polly Norris lived in a house on a street of older houses that ran along the back of The Terrace, most of which had been built in the 1700s. Polly was a very strange woman and quite unhinged. She was short, pushing seventy, and wore loud clothing—well, loud for the hamlet—and bright red lipstick. It wasn’t unusual to see her making her way to the shop wearing a lurid orange beret, a color-clashing housecoat and a pair of dirty orange open-toe shoes. It was the open-toe shoes that fascinated me, because Polly Norris had a nail on one big toe that was misshapen, curling around and looking for all the world as if a large snail had taken up residence on her foot.
Polly Norris had no boundaries. If Mum was in the telephone box, perhaps calling the doctor or one of her sisters—and she only called if there was something amiss in the family, never to chat—it wasn’t unusual for Polly to open the door and ask if Mum was going to be long. I remember her shoving Polly out once, and telling her to bugger off and leave her alone.
But she was obviously popular. I sometimes saw George, one of the farm workers, leaving her house—I was often over at Robin Cottage visiting Mr. and Mrs. Leech; Robin Cottage was one of the houses on the same street. And I saw others leaving Polly’s house, so I imagined she must be friendly with a few of the farmworkers in the area. Years later, after Mum and Dad had moved to Sussex, to Three Oaks, a hamlet between Hastings and Rye, we were reminiscing about those years living at the house at the end of The Terrace, and I said something about old Polly Norris and how we might not have liked her much, but she clearly had friends. Mum and Dad started to laugh.
“What?” I said. Even my brother was giggling.
“Jackie,” said Mum. “Polly was on the game—she was a prostitute.”
I almost fell off my chair. “Never!” I said.
“Oh yes she was,” said Mum. “Those men weren’t going in there for a cup of tea and a chat, you know.”
It was clear I didn’t know and I wondered what else I’d missed.
The story I had been told in childhood was that Uncle Bryn had known Marion and her family—perhaps her husband had worked on the railway too—but she endured such tragedy in the war, when her husband died young and both sons, who were in the army, had been killed in action. Marion stopped eating, trying to end her life by starvation. But Uncle Bryn, who was probably ten years older and a bachelor, saved her when he told her he needed help with his elderly mother and asked if she would come to the house and live in to give him a hand. Seeing that help was indeed required, Marion moved into Bryn’s house and cared for the old lady until she died. Uncle Bryn never asked her to leave as they had become companions, someone to rub along with for the rest of their lives.
Aunt Marion always had a handful of sweets in her pockets, so when she saw children in the neighborhood she would never fail to give them a treat. But it was Bryn who fascinated me with his stories. On one occasion I was walking with one of my friends not far from the old station, so I decided to gather a posy of wildflowers for Aunt Marion. They loved it when people, especially children, popped by to see them, so we were treated to a wonderful welcome with tea and cakes laid out on the table. Large portraits of the two lost sons were in pride of place in the parlor and seemed to loom large over the conversation. Uncle Bryn began to tell us about his life working on the railway and then recounted a wartime story I will never forget. He had received a call from a government office in London to inform him that two trains would be coming into the station from opposite directions—one from London and one from Devon—and he was given the train numbers. As soon as the trains were drawing near, he was to close down the line so that all up and down trains were halted for as long as the two trains were at the station. Each of the two special trains comprised only one carriage behind the locomotive. All staff except the signalman in his box along the line and Bryn were to be dismissed as soon as the message was received that the trains had passed the signal box and were approaching the station. He was reminded that in a time of war, any talk of the event would be considered treasonous. As posters on every train warned: Careless Talk Costs Lives. The two trains approached the station as described and Bryn shut down the lines in each direction. The staff had already been sent out to the windowless train sheds where engine and carriage repairs were carried out, and no passengers were allowed to enter the station gates. He waited on the platform to ensure the security of the station, the only person present until Winston Churchill alighted from the London train, and General “Ike” Eisenhower emerged from the other. The two visitors stood on the platform deep in conversation for over half an hour, then boarded their trains, which then left the station to return to London and Devon respectively. Bryn opened the station after their departure and no one was ever any the wiser—I suppose with the exception of a certain young girl who walked away from a cottage in Kent that afternoon knowing that she would never forget the image of Ike and Winston during the war, at a deserted railway station somewhere in deepest England, in the early summer of 1944, just before D-Day.
This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing Page 22