My Animals (and Other Family)

by Phyllida Barstow

  Furious with Mrs Moore for putting us on the spot, we consulted Sue’s Guerrilla’s Handbook (such a curious publication to be doing the rounds in a girls’ boarding school) for ways to disable the smart little car she kept in the garage outside the classrooms, and found what seemed to be a perfect method, requiring no special mechanical knowledge. By putting sugar in the tank, we could block up the filter and prevent petrol reaching the engine – or so the author claimed. Like butter, sugar was still rationed, and we each collected our personal allowance before breakfast and tea, carefully hoarding it through six days and mashing up the remains into a delicious extravagant spread to eat neat on the seventh when the pots were due to be refilled.

  All those who had smarted under the lash of Brag’s tongue were eager to contribute sugar to the fund, and there must have been well over a pound in the bag that Sally, Sue and I carried into the garage half an hour after lights out, after making sure that Mrs Moore was in her sitting room, puffing smoke over our clean clothes as she checked the laundry lists and listening to the late night news. Without some kind of funnel, however, it was difficult to introduce sugar into the petrol tank, and a good deal got spilt on the garage floor as we tipped it in, replaced the cap, and tiptoed away.

  Breathlessly we waited at the windows next day as Mrs Moore, brightly lipsticked and high-heeled, got into her car ready for her day off. The engine started perfectly. With growing chagrin we watched her reverse smartly out of the garage and turn in a scrunching circle before driving out of the Lodge gates. No choke, not so much as a hiccough from the car.

  ‘Must have been the wrong sort of sugar,’ Sue suggested lamely. We regretted the waste of our rations and felt very much let down.

  Our attempt to make cherry wine in the summer wasn’t much more successful. After half-term, which had been timed to coincide with the Fourth of June at Eton because so many girls had brothers there, I salvaged from our al-fresco picnic two big screw-top bottles that had contained Bulmer’s Cider. These we crammed with carefully-stoned cherries, added water and sugar, and screwed the tops on tight.

  Unsure how long it would take the wine to develop into the delicious alcoholic brew we needed for our end-of-term midnight feast, I hid the bottles under an upturned waste-paper basket and forgot about them until about a fortnight later, when I walked into our form-room to collect books from my desk and found everyone staring in consternation at shards of thick brown glass on the lino. In the night the bottles had exploded, showering the walls and ceiling with pinkish gunge, but in this instance Mrs Moore was thoroughly supportive, saying it was an interesting experiment and helping us clear up the mess – just one more proof that it was impossible to know how adults would react in any situation.

  I don’t know how Mummy managed to persuade Brag to let me keep my hamster at school that year, since all pets were banned, but in Mr Ham’s case she made an exception and he spent much of his time that winter and spring running round my waist between my shirt and tunic, firmly supported by the yellow girdle which gave even the most lissom schoolgirl figure a cottage-loaf outline, and occasionally popping his head with its bright buttons of eyes out for a breath of air.

  Apart from shredding the kipper end of my school tie for nesting material, he behaved very well, though I spent one night in tortures of guilt and anxiety when I let him stray too near the steps leading up to The Grove, and he vanished into a crack between the stones.

  It was a sunny afternoon and several of us were sprawling on the grass and chatting under the cool umbrella of the mulberry tree after tea, while Mr Ham ran about between us taking his daily outdoor exercise, and I didn’t actually see him pop into the unnoticed hole, but Zinnia suddenly gasped, ‘Look out!’ and when I looked round, he was gone. Everyone blamed everyone else and I was in despair. Someone ran and fetched a torch, but you could only see a couple of inches into the crack, and there was no way of telling how far he had gone.

  The bell rang for prep and we had to leave him, but I persuaded Nanny P, who was then our house mistress, to let me go out again to search for him between supper and bedtime. Back and forth I went, up and down the steps, looking for a sleek golden ball curled up in the tufts of grass that grew in the cracks, but it was hopeless. At last I gave up, certain that he had gone for ever, and in what seemed an entirely futile gesture left his open cage at the foot of the steps where he had last been seen.

  I prayed, everyone in the dorm prayed, the whole house fairly pulsated with prayers for Mr Ham’s return… and the miracle happened. When I looked into the sleeping compartment of his cage early next morning, there he was, tightly curled, exhausted by his nocturnal exertions. It was a copybook example of divine intercession that impressed me deeply.

  In the School Certificate form, the tempo of work gathered pace and we were constantly nagged to revise by our teachers. Mammy was particularly gloomy about our prospects.

  ‘Eef you do not know ze sobjonctive, zair ees no ’ope for you!’ she would declare in doom-laden tones.

  Relying on memory, as usual, I committed various algebraic formulae and geometric theorems to heart, but since I didn’t properly understand Pythagoras, let alone anything more complicated, the chance of getting through O-level Maths seemed daily more remote. In other subjects I felt confident enough, because although being aware of the danger of hubris I joined in the fashionable complaints about the terrors of exams, in fact I enjoyed them. It made one feel proud and important to file out of prayers early, like gladiators marching to their doom, while everyone murmured, ‘Good luck, good luck!’ sounding just like a flock of hens.

  Then the brisk, preoccupied walk to the big, flint-faced exam hall near the Abbey, eyeing groups of girls from other schools as we were ushered to our well-separated desks, each provided with a glass of water, a sheaf of paper, pens, blotting-paper, all fresh and crisp and enticing, while the invigilator stalked round dispensing the Oxford and Cambridge exam-board’s small printed paper face down on each desk before retiring to her rostrum, barking out a few last instructions and warnings, then saying portentously, ‘You may now turn over your papers!’

  When one emerged into the sunlight after concentrating furiously and writing frenziedly for one or two hours, one felt at first dazed and then delirious with excitement and relief. In a gabbling cacophony of giggles, moans and shrieks, the disorderly crocodile would tumble back downhill to school, probably attracting a few sharp remarks from Brag if she happened to notice, though in general she turned a blind eye to most misdemeanours committed by those engaged in exams.

  Sure enough, I failed O-level maths that term, and again the following spring, despite Mrs Brown the nice maths mistress’ heroic efforts to bring me up to scratch with extra coaching, after which my parents agreed there was no further point in flogging a dead horse and, to my great relief, let the matter rest.

  Towards the end of my second term in the Sixth Form, I began to wonder why Brag had not yet suggested that I should become a prefect. Could she have forgotten? Prefects wore no distinguishing badge and were not given much in the way of special privileges, but nevertheless it was regarded as an honour to be invited to join their ranks and by this time most of my Sixth Form contemporaries and even a few notably worthy characters from the School Certificates had been quietly elevated. So why hadn’t I?

  It wasn’t the kind of thing one could discuss with anyone else. Guiltily I searched my conscience but couldn’t think of any particular wickedness. In fact, I had been making quite an effort to be good since arriving in the top form. It was a pity no-one seemed to have noticed. Brag liked me, I was sure of it. Had I, perhaps, a secret enemy in the Staff Room, that smoke-filled retreat – forbidden territory even to the Head Girl – where our teachers congregated to mark homework, let down their hair and blackguard their charges to their hearts’ content?

  Or could this mysterious failure to raise me to the ranks of the great and good be connected with those long-running complaints about my ‘attitude’
that still dogged my school reports? Recent phrases nagged at me. Phyllida must develop more maturity and stability of character… she has powers of leadership but could make better use of them… I hope she will be a more positive influence next term… occasionally evades her duty… her manner has been casual of late… she should lead courageously rather than being led… take matters more seriously… individualistic attitude tends to make her unco-operative… Oh, that wretched unpinnable-down ‘attitude’! I couldn’t see how to change what was essentially part of my make-up, but recognised that these were hardly ringing endorsements of my suitability for prefectship. Most of my friends already belonged to this select band, and Jane was also Captain of Games. Despite my inclination to mock authority and resist any manifestation of bossiness, I began to feel undervalued and left out.

  Prefect or not, I still had access to the Sixth Form study, a small cluttered room under the stairs of The Grove, with a mains-powered wireless and comfortably sagging armchairs and sofa on which we rolled about, in paroxysms of laughter, at Hancock’s Half Hour and Take It From Here, so much funnier in my view than The Goon Show, which reduced Gerry and David to the same state.

  Here, too, amid gales of giggles, we minutely evaluated the looks, charm, intelligence or lack of it of our partners from Malvern Boys’ College, with whom we were to give a display of Folk Dancing at the Winter Gardens towards the end of the summer term. It wasn’t quite Morris Dancing – no bells – but not far off it, and I don’t know how much pressure had been applied to the dozen or so boys detailed to prance and cavort with us once a week on the grass tennis court at the bottom of Lawnside garden, though possibly the lure of actually touching the hands of real live girls had overcome their natural reluctance to make fools of themselves.

  Apart from David Willcocks and Sarge, who took Gym, Lawnside had no male teachers, and boys were generally regarded with curiosity and suspicion, alien creatures, possibly dangerous, to be treated with extreme caution. Brag used to tell us how lucky we were to have so much more freedom than the school’s first pupils, who had to be escorted from room to room, and describe with more than a hint of approval how the headmistress would ride a white pony to church at the head of the school crocodile, and whenever they passed a man or boy she would hold up her hand and avert her head – a signal for all the young ladies to do likewise, so the fact that she had agreed to mixed-sex dancing was a bit of a turn-up for the books, and we were all keen to participate.

  No question of choosing our own partners, of course. We were paired off briskly in height order by Miss Sherwood, who had an Egyptian profile and strong, thick black hair cut in a square fringe across her forehead. Her speciality was Greek dancing as pioneered by Isadora Duncan, whose pupil she had been, and instructing heavy-footed lads and lasses how to lumber their way through country dances was, she made clear, not quite her style. However, it would have been considered even more infra dig by Miss Parsons, the grandest of our dancing teachers, who wore a turban and flowing sleeveless robes, an unfortunate choice of garb that displayed more than was advisable of her sagging, crepey underarms, and was summoned over from Cheltenham only to solve the trickiest bits of choreography in the Prize-giving Day plays which involved every girl in the school.

  Even at that age I recognised her skill in manipulating and balancing the large, unwieldy cast on those occasions, arranging entrances and exits and showing us just how to back up the principal players without distracting attention from them. She never seemed to shout, yet her voice was audible all over the garden, unlike poor Miss Sherwood, who was often quite hoarse by the end of a rehearsal.

  Fortune smiled on me in the country dancing: to general jealousy I was allocated dark, hawk-featured Dai, whom everyone’s feminine instinct had instantly identified as the best-looking of the bunch, which made me the target of much enjoyable teasing and innuendo.

  ‘Never say Die,’ people would whisper in my ear as we skipped and gallumphed about the smooth mown grass, linking arms and weaving chains to Miss Sherwood’s orders. (It happened to be the name of that year’s Derby winner.) ‘He’s Dai-ing for love of you,’ and other such nonsense.

  Good-looking he may have been, but his conversation was so banal as to be virtually non-existent. I suppose those poor boys had been so savagely browbeaten into good behaviour, so threatened with dire consequences if they stepped out of line, that they hardly dared speak. Until, that was, their headmaster and our headmistress decided to celebrate the success of the joint endeavour with an end-of-term party which I described in a breathless letter home.

  ‘Last night we had the dancing with the Boys’ College and although it was wet so we could not have it on the lawn here, and it had to take place in the College gym, it was a great success. We were the hostesses although they were on their own ground as it was supposed to be Lawnside’s dance, so Brag was in her element, dancing with the headmaster, arranging the refreshments (and jolly good they were, strawberries and cream, sausage rolls, ice creams and meringues and samwiches) and generally carrying on.

  The bishop of Portsmouth, who is very keen on country dancing, said that he would turn up in his kilt, so I was looking forward to seeing if he would wear his gaiters as well. Unfortunately he funked it at the last moment and only came in ordinary clothes. He behaved ordinarily, too, except for one moment when he knelt down and started to say his prayers out loud: I believe he is a bit of an eccentric.

  There was lots to eat but as the seventh hell in Dante’s Inferno would have seemed like a deep freeze beside the atmosphere in that gym, I did not get very hungry in spite of all the energetic dances, and as no-one else did either. Priscilla – who is a provident sort of girl – put all the food she could find into a large box, covered it with newspaper, and gave it to me to smuggle out to Lawnside under my coat… No doubt the usual flood of correspondence between the two schools will now begin again. We have to censor it and stop them from posting letters illegally, and this is a very boring job.’

  That ‘we’ reflected my new status. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh month – or, more accurately, in the second half of my last term – the tap on the shoulder had finally come and I finished my schooldays as a prefect. The words Serious and Responsible which I had avoided and mocked for so long suddenly seemed to fit me like a glove, and I revelled in the opportunity to boss others around and censor their love-letters.

  Not that the censorship was very effective. Once the ice had been broken between us and the Boys’ Coll, inter-school fraternisation took hold like wildfire. Rather to my disappointment, Dai was far too much of a goody-goody to follow up our dance-floor relationship, and I heard never another peep from him, but it was generally agreed that luscious, lollipop-eyed Rosemary had overstepped the mark by several yards when she was surprised in the coal-hole, sitting on the Head Boy’s knee, and there were other small scandals and declarations of undying love to be stamped on by Brag before single-sex calm was restored at Lawnside.

  ‘We say goodbye to Phyllida with real regret… I only wish she could be Lawnside’s Head Girl next term,’ declared Brag on my final report, which delighted my parents and made me both pleased and proud, though I have always wondered if she wrote the last words with her fingers crossed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Farm Life

  MEANTIME, BACK AT the Fforest, matters had not been standing still while I was preoccupied with school. For a start, the family had expanded. It seems incredible now that I should have failed to notice during our summer camp in the spinney in 1949 that Mummy was going to have another baby. I suppose she never mentioned it or thought I already knew, but I was extremely unobservant so it was a great surprise to me when, during the Christmas holidays, my brother George was born.

  Being fourteen years younger than Gerry, and my junior by twelve years, all his needs and pastimes were out of step with ours and we regarded this new addition to the family with a certain detachment, like a toy, to be played with and then put away in his box whil
e we got on with our busy lives. I have no doubt that this rather casual treatment contributed to his extreme adaptability and equable nature in later life, so different from me and Gerry who had been brought up to consider ourselves the hubs of the universe and reacted badly when we discovered we were nothing of the kind.

  George – and to a lesser degree Miranda, then four – was expected to fit in with everyone else’s arrangements without much consideration paid to his own wishes. Now Mummy had the farm she had always wanted, she was determined to make a go of it, and George was brought up a proper farmer’s child, lugged here and there in his Moses basket, kept up late, dumped in odd corners and fed at odd times. He had a few narrow squeaks, as when he crawled into the bull-pen and was spotted by the tractor-driver heading for the manger, with old Heygrove, the Hereford bull, eyeing him suspiciously. He was knocked flying by a skittish foal, bitten by a jealous bitch when he tried to pick up a puppy, and spent so long aboard the tractor that by the age of six or seven he could probably have driven it.

  Soon after George’s birth we left Much Hadham for good and squashed into the side of Fforest Farm not occupied by the new bailiff, Ron Weale – compact and ruddy, with bright blue eyes and an open, direct manner – his slight, dark, elfin-faced wife, Milly, and their small daughter, Sylvia. As a family, they were friendly and accommodating, a different kettle of fish from the Wattses, but even so we were obliged to live at closer quarters both indoor and out than was comfortable for either side.