by Pam Weaver
Then there was Kelvin, who ate only the middle of his sandwich.
‘Kelvin,’ said Hilary, ‘Cook cut you some lovely sandwiches but you always leave the crusts.’
‘I know,’ he sighed. ‘She just doesn’t get it.’
I managed to get a day off on my seventeenth birthday in April. No one else was off so I had to spend the day alone. I went up to London and did some window shopping. At some point I walked past a cinema. It was showing High Society, starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra. It was by no means a new film, as it had been released in 1956, but I had never seen it. When I walked into the cinema, it was like walking into another world. The usherettes wore black uniforms with a frilly apron like a maid and in the interval, they actually served tea on a tray, with a teapot and china cups. I had no idea you could order it alongside your ticket, so I made do with the usual Lyons Maid ice cream! The Pathé News was full of stories about East Germans escaping the Berlin Wall. It had been built to prevent the massive defections of East Germans to West Germany. It was an horrific time but somehow it appealed to my sense of romance, with brave young men risking their lives and all that.
Being an institution, we were legally obliged to have regular fire drills. When the fire bell went off, the person in charge of the room had to make sure every child was taken to the assembly point. Matron or Sister would have a clipboard with everyone’s name on it and they had to be checked off. In this way, every person in the home was accounted for and safe. The nursery nurses and assistants helped with the children and Mary was given the job of making the 999 call. She took her responsibility very seriously.
‘When I was in the ’ospital,’ she used to say, ‘they told me that if I saw a fire, I was to grab one of the ’oses, and ‘ang out the winder and ’oller for ’elp.’
I held my hand to my face to surpass a giggle.
‘Well, there’s no need to do all that,’ said Matron sniffily. ‘Just make sure you’re in the cupboard under the stairs (where the telephone was housed) to ring for the fire brigade.’
One day we had a surprise fire drill. All the staff and children gathered at the assembly point and in due course we were checked off.
‘Are you in the cubby hole, Mary?’
‘I am Matron,’ came the reply.
Matron was pleased with the plan and we all started going back to work. But then we heard the sirens and the next minute two fire engines hurtled down the drive. In her enthusiasm to get it right, Mary had actually made the call.
When I got back from my long illness, nothing much had changed. Matron Thomas was still totally neurotic. She was always complaining of a ‘headache’ – at least it seemed that way whenever she appeared on one of her brief sorties to the nursery. In fact, she really didn’t need to put in much of an appearance because the day-to-day running of the place was such a well-oiled machine. Nobody questioned or altered anything. The mantra of the day was, ‘We do it this way because we’ve always done it this way.’
Hilary, my roommate, developed a huge sty on her eye. As soon as Matron saw it, she said all in the same breath, ‘Oh, Hilary, it’s huge! It’s as big as a shilling (about the same size as a five pence piece) but you can’t go off sick because we don’t have enough staff.’ Hilary soldiered on in great pain but was forced to go off sick a few days later when she not only had to contend with the enormous sty but had also developed yellow jaundice!
With Hilary off sick, I made a new friend. Evie Perryer, a pretty, bubbly girl, arrived. We hit it off straight away. She had a real joie de vivre and we were always laughing. Evie was the kind of girl all the boys fell over to be with. In fact, she was never without a boyfriend and the two of us started going to the International Friendship League meeting.
I think someone my mother worked for must have told us about the International Friendship League (IFL). The Sixties saw a big rise in the numbers of foreign students coming to Britain, especially from the African continent and India. The IFL had branches all over the country and was run along the lines of a church youth club. They promoted clean, healthy interaction between young people and the one we attended was held in a church hall. The meetings usually began with a ‘talk’ by someone who was an expert in his/her field and then, after a cup of tea, the rest of the evening was given over to a dance. The only talk I can remember was one given by an ex-policeman, who shared a story of how a murderer was caught by a spider’s web on the victim’s trouser leg. Using this, the police pin-pointed the spot where the murder had taken place and even found the exact spider who had made the web. Fascinating.
The dances gave everyone the opportunity to meet boys from just about every country in the world. There were no English boys there and the people we met were polite and knew how to make a girl feel like a princess. One was an Italian boy, immaculately dressed in a suit with its own waistcoat and a camel coloured coat. He was good-looking and a brilliant dancer. The only trouble was, he was much, much less than five foot. I watched him going around the hall, asking the girls to dance and every one of them refused him. He finally got to me and I couldn’t bear to disappoint him. I said ‘yes’ and from that moment he kept coming back. Finally, he wanted to walk me home and tried to persuade me to come out on a date but that was a step too far for me. Nice as he was, I didn’t want to date him. Later, I met Chaw, a boy of Asian extraction who came from North Africa, Joe (I think he was called Joe because no one could pronounce his name) from the Yemen and Nafis from Pakistan. Evie met Coover. I don’t know where he was from but he was breathtakingly handsome and made me go weak at the knees. I fancied him like mad. No one had any money. Although their parents had sent them to England for an education, most of them had sacrificed everything they had to be there. Their meagre money covered the cost of their digs and the tuition fees so a date might be an evening at the pictures, or a walk in the park.
I was luckier than most. When Chaw asked me out, he had a Vespa scooter. It terrified me – it backfired all the way up the hill and it was a wonder it got us back to the nursery. When it came to knowing the facts of life, I was rather naive. At school we had studied the reproduction system of the frog. I could tell anybody about what frogs do but it wasn’t much help when it came to men. I understood that you had to be married before you could have a baby, but after the wedding night quite what the man did, I hadn’t a clue!
I enjoyed being kissed so when we arrived at the gate, Chaw politely asked if he could kiss me goodnight. I eagerly agreed but as he kissed me, he pushed himself against me. I can’t say I felt the earth move but something did and I fled. Chaw was my first-ever date, and so all the girls had waited up to hear about it. When I saw them, I was so upset I couldn’t speak. I raced to my room, threw myself across the bed and wept.
After a few minutes, Hilary came in and sat beside me. ‘Whatever’s wrong?’
‘He’s done it,’ I wept. ‘I didn’t want him to but he’s done it.’
She asked me to be more specific and so I told her everything. Hilary may have been a vicar’s daughter but everyone agreed she knew just about everything there was to know. She was a bit concerned but she said she felt sure I would be all right. Putting her arms around me she said quite seriously, ‘I know you can do it with your clothes on, but I don’t think you can do it with your coat on, especially when it’s still buttoned up.’
I was so relieved to have the benefit of her experience and she certainly reassured me that it would be all right but I was more than relieved when my period began a couple of days later. As for the coat that saved me, it was thick brown mohair with three coaster-size buttons down the front. Boy, was I glad I was wearing it!
Joe who came from the Middle East fell in love with me. A big man with dark skin and a ready smile, he was a student and although his parents were wealthy, he never seemed to have much money either. He was kind and loving and I have always regretted that I didn’t stop the relationship sooner. I’m afraid that I unwittingly hurt him deeply. He came hom
e and met my parents, which of course must have given him hope that our relationship would go further but he was a Muslim and I wasn’t prepared to change my culture or beliefs, something which would have been required of me. Joe’s father was a well-respected newspaper publisher, regularly commuting to New York and the UN, where he represented his country.
At the beginning of our relationship, Joe complained of the cold English winter, so I told him I would knit him a sweater. We chose some bright red wool and big needles and I began. When I decided that I wanted to break up the relationship I still had to knit the wretched jumper and because I knew it had cost him a lot of money, I felt honour bound to complete it. He was a big man and it took forever but eventually I’d finished. He was so proud of it, but then I dumped him. I was trying to do the right thing, but looking back I obviously sent out some very confusing messages.
Another boy I met was called Nafis, who came from Pakistan. One time when Nafis and I had a date, he was looking very sad. He kept shaking his head and saying, ‘I wish I hadn’t done it.’
‘Hadn’t done what?’
‘Last night Marilyn Monroe telephoned me from Hollywood,’ he said. ‘She begged me for a date but I said I was busy. I told her I was taking you to the pictures and now look what’s happened.’
It was a bit of a sick joke but I laughed from politeness. It was August 1962 and Marilyn Monroe, reputedly the sexiest girl in the world, had just been found dead. Nafis didn’t last very long as a boyfriend either. Not because of his bad taste jokes or the fact that his mouth tasted like an ashtray; the problem was that he was tiny. I thought I was overweight, although looking at photographs at the time, I wasn’t really. But I hated being made to feel big and Nafis made me feel like an elephant. He never knew why I dumped him.
Then there was Coover. He used to send Evie red roses. How I envied her, with all those lovely roses and Coover.
When she got back to nursery, Hilary decided Evie was too prudish for her own good and so when she was in the bath, Hilary rattled the bathroom door until the bolt slid back. She and I marched in while poor Evie struggled to cover her ample bosom with the smallest of flannels. We were being heartless really and I don’t think for one minute we thought we were going to change how Evie felt but the event was typical of the tactics Hilary enjoyed.
I became something of a dressmaker. One time Evie didn’t have a thing to wear and she was going on a date. I had a day off so I said I would make her something. In her morning off duty, she hurried into town and bought something which looked an awful lot like curtain material. I spent the afternoon making her a sack dress. It had three large sunflowers down the front, a scoop neckline and no sleeves. I finished it just as she came off duty and she wore it that night.
Now that I had a little money in my pocket, clothes became increasingly important. 1962 saw the rise of Carnaby Street in London. It was near Oxford Street in Soho and was full of fashion boutiques. Hilary and I were still stuck in the ‘everything to match’ era of the late 1950s but that didn’t stop me drooling over dresses which I couldn’t afford. My best outfit of the day was a patterned orange and brown blouse, worn with a brown pencil skirt and a big orange cardigan. Hilary looked very smart in her pink swagger coat over a navy dress. She had navy stilettos, matching handbag and long navy gloves. Contrast that with Mary Quant’s mini skirts and the sack dress and you can see how radically different the fashions were becoming. The bright bold colours were amazing.
There wasn’t a great opportunity to help the children develop a taste in dress and appearance although just like every other child, the children in care showed some interest in clothes. They liked nothing better than to see us in our ‘going-out clothes’ as they called them. Often a girl would promise the older children to come back into the nursery and show them her ‘party’ dress if she was going somewhere special. I remember going into the night nursery to show the children my new dress when I was on my way out. I did a couple of twirls in the middle of the room when Rosie climbed to the end of her bed. ‘What are those?’ she asked, as she patted my chest.
‘They’re my boobs,’ I said.
‘My daddy’s got some of those,’ she said gravely.
The only real way to foster a personal interest in what you wear is when you are given a choice. The children in the nursery had little of that. I do remember the odd occasion when a child hated a certain dress or pair of trousers and in that case we would change it for another item from central stores but that isn’t really choice. Even so, sometimes getting dressed could be fun. Cory was supposed to be getting dressed but instead he was fooling around. ‘Cory,’ I said, ‘would you like to put your socks on?’ ‘No thank you,’ came the reply. ‘I think I’ll wear my feet today!’
The one time when children did have choice about what to put on was when we got out the dressing-up box. It was interesting to note that sometimes the shy child seemed to come out of his or her shell when they had something different on. Our dressing-up boxes were really good. Sometimes when the children had chosen their outfits we would put on a record or switch on the radio and have music and movement as well. There were always a few items of dressing-up clothes in the Wendy house and an apron or a hat could transform any game into something much more exciting.
For me, the discovery of boys was a welcome distraction but we still worked incredibly hard. Matron would move us around, especially if she thought we were making what she called ‘an attachment’. Every day began at 6.30 a.m. when the ‘duty girl’ came round with a cup of tea. Everyone had to be on duty at 7 a.m. so the scramble for the bathroom was pretty hectic and you had to be quick. No time for a bath of course, as there was a queue of girls behind you, all rushing to be on duty at the same time. We all took it in turns to be the ‘duty girl’. The night nurse would bring a large teapot to your room and leave it. Then the duty girl had to pour the tea and make sure everyone else in the house was awake.
The decorators were in and Hilary’s and my room was top of the list. While it was being done, we both had to move. I think I got the better deal because Hilary’s bed was squashed into a room with two other girls while I was asked to share with Christine.
Christine’s room was on the ground floor in the ‘cottage’. The room had once been part of the stables of the big house. I was duty girl for the morning, so the night before I had laid out the cups and saucers on a tray and put them on the floor in between our beds. That night we had a fierce summer storm, which was highly atmospheric. During a brief lull, we heard the distinct rattle of cups.
‘What was that?’ I said into the darkness.
‘I don’t know.’ Christine’s voice was little more than a strained whisper.
The sound of rattling cups echoed through the room.
By now my heart was bumping with fear. Neither of us had a bedside light. The only light was from the light switch by the door. ‘Get out and put on the light.’
‘I’m not getting out of bed,’ said Christine. ‘I’m too scared. You get out.’
I couldn’t do it either, so the pair of us lay in bed utterly terrified and unable to sleep. Who or what was in our room we hadn’t a clue, but we were both thoroughly spooked up. I imagined it to be a snake or a rat or a ghost. Daylight was painfully slow to come and it was first light before we finally dropped off. But when the night nurse switched on the light as she brought in the teapot, we couldn’t believe our eyes. Rolled in a neat little ball in the middle of the tray, spilled cups of milk all around him, lay a very sleepy hedgehog!
Hilary and I moved back into our newly painted room. It was much better although not quite as wonderful as we had been led to believe. The wallpaper was the same all around the room, which was a blessing, but it was large turquoise blue poppies. We had new curtains in turquoise, although not the same shade of colour and we still had the same mismatched purple counterpanes. As we still hadn’t reached the psychedelic atmosphere of the 1970s, it seemed rather odd.
There were a few
girls who never did make it to do their training. Isolde, the girl who laughed in the sitting when Nurse Adams missed her date, left a couple of weeks after the event. Another girl was Laura Duncan. She was older than me, about nineteen, and had lived a very sheltered life. She became the butt of comment and jokes and for a time, I joined in, but then I could see that she was really struggling. I remembered my own struggles with homesickness and the sheer relentless hard work and I began to feel ashamed. As a result, when we worked together I tried to help her whenever I could. She was a plain-Jane who looked a lot like Joyce Grenfell, with big teeth and a long face. She was gawky and awkward in her movements and although obviously well educated, she was totally impractical. One morning we were assigned to sweep up one of the playrooms and Laura almost fell over the long-handled brush. I actually had to show her how to use it!
Because I was kind to her, she stuck to me like a limpet. I liked her but we had little in common. Her parents were very over-protective and would come to the nursery to spend her off-duty with her. They never gave the poor girl a chance to be her own person. Sometimes they would take her into town for a coffee and a look around the shops but if it was raining, they would simply sit in the car together on the driveway. It wasn’t her fault but it was little wonder that people laughed at her. A couple of times, when we shared the same off duty, she would come with me into town or to the pictures. That’s why her mother invited me to their house. Laura was on holiday and I had a day off so I caught the Green Line bus to Dorking, where she lived. I had asked for the name of her road and the driver called it out as we arrived. To my dismay, Laura wasn’t there waiting for me as she had promised. I didn’t realise but the road was in the shape of a large horseshoe; I had got off at one end and she was waiting at the other.