by Isla Blair
But here in Scotland, it was dark most of the time. I got up when Matron turned the lights on and clapped her hands. “Up now all of you, time to get up.”
It was dark, certainly gloomy all day long, and when the white strip lights were put on, they gave me a headache and made everyone look a bit green, as if they were about to be sick. It was dark going to bed. After prayers in our beds, the light was snapped out and that was it. No moon, no chatting to Fiona, no good night. It always took me a while to go to sleep.
It was strange that although Fiona and I were here together, we saw so little of each other. We slept in different dormitories, sat at different tables at mealtimes, had different classrooms, of course – even at break time, Fiona had her own group of friends and I had mine. Except that they weren’t my friends yet. I felt that Fiona and I spoke a different language from the other girls and in truth we did. I came out with words that made no sense to them and they laughed in bewilderment – sometimes in mockery. Tapal (post), goosle (bath), lili (bed), cutcha (haphazard), pyti (mad). I spoke of my ayah, which made me sound like a posh girl when I tried to explain who she was and what she did. “Oh, you mean a nanny? Isla has a nanny. Did she make your bed and put your clothes on for you? Did she run your bath and get you ready for meals?” When I replied that yes she did, they were incredulous and started calling me “Lady Isla”. That I spoke English in what I later learnt was an RP accent, compounded this theory that I was from an aristocratic family that had fallen on hard times. This could not have been further from the truth. I was very un-posh indeed and there was nothing at all grand about being a tea planter’s daughter, but because they didn’t know anyone else whose father was not a bank manager, or a sweet shop owner, or a hotel manager, a doctor or a teacher, it made him, and therefore me, a bit exotic and odd. I very soon learned the Glasgow accent that was more acceptable and drew me closer to my contemporaries.
Part of me wanted to be like them so that they wouldn’t laugh at me, but another part wanted to keep the Indian side of me. I didn’t want to lose that thread that bound me to my memories of Sundaraj and Boy and Ayah and the sun and our chupplis and sand shoes, the silly topees we wore that felt heavy and wobbled. My parents were part of that Indian-Isla side and sometimes I felt that without that and them, I would stop being me. It was as if I was acting this Scottish school girl with scratchy socks and too-short hair and a fat liberty bodice and baggy pants and as if I’d left behind the lean, laughing me under the lime tree in our garden.
Every Monday morning a letter came to each of us from our mother and every Thursday we both got a blue air-letter card from Daddy. Fiona and I would arrange to meet outside the linen cupboard on the first floor landing at break time, just before prep, as there was no one around then and she would read the letters to me. I liked the sound of her voice. I memorised the words by heart. “Read that bit again, Fi,” and she would indulge me and I engraved the sentences in my memory.
I’ve always learned lines by hearing them. I am a quick study in that way. I can usually learn lines at rehearsal, but if not, I will record them, listen and learn them. Looking at a page of script means nothing to me unless I hear it too.
On Sundays, we were to write letters on an airmail lettercard home. Fiona would help me. Sometimes I’d copy her words. Often, because I was slow, she’d write them for me. They were just “all is well” kind of letters. We were told not to send grievances or moans home. “You don’t want to worry your parents when they are so far away. Besides when they get your letter, your problems will have resolved themselves” – which was probably true. So they never heard of my heartache when the one friend I had made, Linda Roselle, stopped being my friend. I had sought her out, only to find that she was avoiding me. What had happened? “I can’t be your friend any more, Isla. I am Peffy Shanks’ best friend now, and we have paired up in lots of things, so you will have to find someone else to walk in croc with, and everything.” Peffy Shanks had ginger hair and couldn’t pronounce her “Rs”. She came from Nottingham and Linda came, not just from America, but CALIFORNIA – the land of dreams and movie stars. With her accent alone, Linda held up a mirror of what I thought I wanted my future to be.
It was my first “dumping”, my first rejection and I felt rebuffed and hurt – but never a word of this was sent home. It seemed a bit trivial to write it down – besides, Fiona would say, “Do you really want to say that, Isla? It might worry them.” So I said I didn’t and she didn’t write it down.
I was good at signing my name. I’d write in block capitals ISLA JEAN SALUKI. I hoped it would make my mother smile.
What we knew to be true was that children had been sent away from their parents at home as evacuees during the war. Some of them were well looked after, some of them had a horrible time and others learned patience and acceptance and knew that one day the war would be over. We were like them and we learnt to just get on with it. There was a frightening moment when Fiona was told that the school was for orphans and we thought our parents were dead, but the moment passed; it was just a tease. We had to grow into ourselves faster because we were alone. There was no one to turn to, or ask, or hug, so we had to learn to ponder things, puzzle them out, be self-reliant. It wasn’t a bad thing.
St. Maray’s became Fiona’s security; her friends became her family, not at my expense – she always had time for me – but sometimes she was stricter with me. “Isla, you must be good.” “Be quiet, Isla.” “Isla, don’t.”
She was fearful that something would happen that would provoke the school into sending me (us) away and where would we go? There was no home to be sent home to; she was the one who had to be responsible for me.
She rebelled sometimes, too. She was naughty, as all children are, but she was not defiant. We both became aware that my hot temper, my looks of fury or disdain with a newly-perfected raised eyebrow, were maddening for those in charge of me. I was not sulky, but I looked at some of the staff with dumb insolence and was sent to stand in corners or got sent to bed more often than was comfortable and this caused Fiona anxiety. For me, it was a way of hanging on to who I was. Fiona was growing up fast; she was learning to be independent, but she was aware that I was dependent on her.
It was the same with the guardians my parents found for us in the holidays. Fiona was afraid that I would do something that they would disapprove of and we would be told to leave, with nowhere to go. Fiona would take me to one side and say,” Isla, we have to be good, we have to behave,” and I’d say, “I know,” but I didn’t know that I wasn’t being good, so I didn’t know how to be different. I was not naughty on purpose.
Even if people were kind to us – and they usually were – however well we were treated, we couldn’t lose the feeling that we were paying guests in their houses and because each home we went to was not ours, there was nowhere to put our “things”, somewhere that was our very own special place. Not that there was anything secret to hide; there was just nowhere to keep anything private. So your treasures, a bracelet with a four–leaf clover on it from Aunt Doris, the lace handkerchief of my mother’s, Ayah’s pressed marigold in the butterfly wing box, my scrapbook of film stars with pictures of pools and palm trees and smiling long-haired women and men with very short hair and very white teeth that I’d cut out from my film star magazines, my Debbie Reynolds doll that I could fit different dresses on – all these had to be carried backwards and forwards to school and holiday home, or they would have to be abandoned or thrown away every time I went to a new place.
That was always the question I dreaded. “Where is your home, Isla? Where do you come from?” I didn’t know. I’d say “India” and watch the look of surprise, disbelief or pity wash over their faces. It felt somehow shameful that I didn’t have a home. I’d hear songs of “homeland” – but where was mine? Was it India, or was it here in Scotland? “Going home” became a phrase I’d hear so often, but where was it? On “Going home days” at the end of term, most of the girls were lined up wit
h their trunks and suitcases to be taken to the Glasgow Escort, the train that would deliver them to Glasgow’s Central Station, where their joyous parents would rush forward and scoop them into their arms and the girls would whoop with delight as their hats fell off in the tumble of hugs and kisses and they would walk off arm in arm with their mothers, as their fathers ruffled their hair and picked up the luggage.
Fiona and I would stand watching them go and once I saw Fiona looking stricken that there was no one to meet us, before she picked up the suitcase and asked a porter which platform we needed for the train to Prestwick, when we stayed the short time with our grandparents, or the train to Inverness, when we stayed with our parents’ friends, the Aitkens. That was a more complicated journey, because at Inverness we had to change and get on a small local train that would chuff its way through the Cairngorms to Kingussie and then onto Newtonmore.
Fiona and I belonged, were special, only to our parents. Our guardians had us out of duty, out of kindness, or because they were being paid, not necessarily because they wanted us, or because they loved us as “their girls”. But our parents weren’t there, so Fiona and I belonged, instead, to each other. We lived as guests in other people’s houses, trying to be inconspicuous, but wanting to be noticed and approved of by the two people who weren’t there.
Fiona and I have always been close. There is no-one who can make me laugh as she does and we seem, still, to have a kind of shorthand – we just need a look from each other and we understand. We have had some sad and worrying times in our adult lives, who has not, and the long distance phone calls we have made to each other to placate, cajole, reassure, have been legion.
It wasn’t nice not to be able to go out at weekends or not being met by anyone on Going Home days. It made me feel a bit lonely, but the really lonely-making thing was to have no one to report to. “Dad, Pamela Murdoch pulled my hair and bit me.” “I’ll tell my Mum on you.” “Mum, I’m scared of swimming. I hate the chlorine and I don’t like putting my head under the water.” “Mum, Mrs Dunsmuir says I can sing a solo.” I was nearly eight when the head mistress Mrs Dunsmuir asked me to sing “Christopher Robin” in a concert the school was giving that was to be held in the Hydro at Dunblane, where we had learnt to swim. My hair looked like Christopher Robin’s anyway, with my fringe and bob and I was dressed in boy’s striped pyjamas with a white cord that tied up around the waist. I practised the song lots of times and knew it backwards. But I was upset and annoyed that the chorus of little girls behind me, background humming, were out of tune. I kept turning round to scowl at them. If they couldn’t sing in tune why did they have to sing at all? I didn’t see why they needed to be there anyway. They weren’t in Christopher Robin’s bedroom humming; he was alone, as I should have been.
But there were other things that seemed to matter when neither of my parents were there. There was no one to complain to on a daily, even a weekly basis. “Do you know what Janet McClure called me?” Nor anyone just to chat with in a friendly, companionable way about school; about my scratchy socks and how I thought Irish stew made of sheep tasted like Afghan coats left out in the rain or the tapal coolie’s blanket. There was no one to feel my hurts as keenly as I did, no one to delight in my little triumphs with me – and because there was no one to share them, they felt diminished somehow.
We learned to swim at our parents’ insistence. It was a school extra, but they deemed it really important that we should at least be able to keep our heads above water. We went to the Hydro each Monday morning and were put under the supervision of Mr MacDonald, a gruff Glaswegian who took us through the routines and techniques. He had thick bottle glasses and very hairy arms. We clung to little floating blocks as we splashed our legs and tried to become confident enough to attempt a few strokes. I was rather scared of Mr MacDonald. He called us all “puddocks”. “Come you, ye great puddocks, let’s be having you.”
When he deemed the time was right to let us test ourselves with a full length, he took us to the deep end and presented a long bamboo pole. “Right, Blair-Hill puddock, let’s see what you can do. You start swimming like I’ve shown you and if you feel you can’t do any more reach out for this pole and I will pull you out. OK?”
I gingerly climbed down the deep end steps and started out. After a few strokes, I found myself sinking and sputtering and choking. I reached out for the pole, but Mr MacDonald pulled it away. This happened again and again, but I swam the full length, somewhat erratically, but I did it. I never trusted Mr Macdonald again, or forgave him for breaking that trust, even though there was some triumph in swimming the length. I still hate swimming, I hate the chlorine in swimming pools, and as for the sea – the thought of swimming through deep water terrifies me. I imagine unseen sea creatures looming up, catching me and pulling me down to the sea bed. Even a sea view doesn’t impress me much. The English seaside in winter positively depresses me.
One Monday afternoon, after swallowing too much chlorine and probably at the beginning of a cold, I foolishly complained to matron that I had a sore throat. She looked down it with a torch, found it to be red and decided I had mumps. I didn’t. But there was another girl in the school who did, so I was incarcerated in the sick room for five days with the infectious girl and inevitably picked up the bug some ten days later. This time, I was in the sick bay on my own, with a sore stiff neck, a swollen face and a throat so inflamed it was hard to swallow. I felt wretched. I stayed in bed, encouraged to drink lots of water and Lucozade which I liked, but drank with difficulty.
After a few days I began to feel better, but was bored and very, very lonely. It was early spring. I looked out of the window to see the little buds on the trees and watched as a pair of blackbirds flew about picking up twigs and grasses to make their nests. Matron, or one of the kitchen staff, would come up with my meals – otherwise I would be left entirely alone. Even Fiona was not allowed to visit me. There was one book with pictures in it, of Noddy and Big Ears, but no books for drawing, no crayons or pencils. I would breathe on the window panes and draw faces in the condensation.
After a few days, which felt like several months, Miss Scott, the assistant matron, came up to get me dressed and said we could go for a short walk round the grounds, up to the Pineapple (a folly built in the grounds of Dunmore Park, to where the school had been moved from Kilbryde Castle). My legs felt surprisingly wobbly as we walked through the watery spring sunshine, but I was delighted by the pussy–willows and the dangly catkins that puffed out pollen if you shook them. I’d never seen them before.
Miss Scott was a kind young woman with red hair and she pointed out where she thought some birds had made a nest in the hollow of a tree and where the wild daffodils were starting to push green sprouts through the grass. We came across a rabbit with bulging eyes that didn’t move on our approach but lay panting shallowly, clearly in some distress. “Oh poor wee thing, it has this horrible Myxomitosis. I must get Ray (the handyman) to come and put it out of its misery.” I didn’t like to think what Ray would do – bang it on the head, wring its neck? I backed away in squeamish horror and Miss Scott decided it was time to walk back to school.
The next day I was allowed back in circulation. Fiona came to find me and as we met, I burst into tears of relief and she cried too, that I was once more where she could cheer me, speak to me, keep an eye on me, put her arms around me and hug me.
I tried to make up for the days I had been confined in the schoolwork that was set for me, but none of the teachers seemed to be troubled that I had fallen even further behind in just about everything. I went to find Fiona whenever I could, but she uncharacteristically got impatient, “Isla, I can’t now. I am going with Ursula and Margie.” It flashed through my mind that I would burden Fiona with my small hurts and troubles, but who would Fiona go to with hers?
“Going out” days, half term and holidays were another problem. Where could we go? There were four “going out” days a term. Parents would collect their children and take them home
for the day, out for a picnic in summer to Pitlochry or the Lake of Menteith, or out for lunch at a local hotel if they lived far away. To begin with, Fiona and I stayed at school, which conjured up feelings of shame and envy in us, as the other girls felt pity for us, and we would watch them getting excited as the day approached. There was one occasion when a friend of Fiona’s, Janet Gordon, asked us both out for lunch with her parents. It was a treat much looked forward to and Fiona and I were spick and span as we went with shining faces with Janet towards her car after church on Sunday. The problem was that Janet’s generosity of heart had failed to reach her parents. They were mortified and utterly sweet to us, but very regretful that we couldn’t go with them as they were visiting relatives who were not expecting us. I don’t know who was more embarrassed – Janet, her parents or Fiona and me. Back to school we went, tails drooping between legs and a long Sunday stretched ahead of us as the only girls remaining in the silent school.
But not on all going out days did we feel quite so sorry for ourselves. Occasionally, Aunt Doris would come over from Glasgow and not really know what to say to us; it was a trial for us and a torment for her, as she struggled to entertain us and we tried and failed to behave well and not be bored.
My parents hated the notion of our being left behind and arranged for the Hendersons to take us out (for a remuneration of course). The Hendersons, who were the parents of two girls our ages at school, owned a small hotel in East Kilbride So we spent every fourth Sunday in the Golden Lion Hotel in Stirling. The day followed a pattern. Lunch in the dining room, with white damask dining cloths and crisp napkins, candles on the table and melba toast (I loved melba toast – still do) and menus the size of blackboards, or so it seemed to me, bound in green leather. A pianist tinkled on the piano and five minutes into lunch, Mrs Henderson – Betty – requested that “Charmaine” be played. It was always “Charmaine”.