A Vicarage Family: A Biography of Myself

by Noel Streatfeild

  The form mistresses concerned had a private meeting to discuss Victoria. ‘I would not mind,’ Miss Brown said, ‘if she were a stupid child; but she’s not, it’s just that she won’t work.’

  Isobel’s form mistress, Miss Grey, was dreading the day when she would be given Victoria.

  ‘I can’t understand it. Isobel’s a dear girl. I tell you what, Brown, why don’t you keep Victoria after Louise has moved up? That might shame her into working harder. She surely wouldn’t allow her little sister to pass her.’

  Miss Brown was doubtful.

  ‘The decision will be Miss French’s of course. She’s got an idea Victoria needs special handling.’

  Louise’s form mistress, Miss Black, had more spirit than the other two.

  ‘I’d handle her if she was in my form. You’re getting white hairs over that girl, Brown.’

  Miss Grey was afraid of Miss French’s decision. Of course some day she must have Victoria – but not yet, surely not yet.

  ‘I should wait as long as possible before going to Miss French. See how Victoria does in the end of term examinations. If she gets bad marks, however strongly Miss French feels she really cannot permit Victoria to move up. She has got the rest of the school to think about.’

  So, for the time being, things rested as they were, and were not quite so bad as they looked. For though Victoria appeared to fritter away her days and truly did spend as little time as possible on her school lessons, she was becoming a bookworm. Urged on by John she had read since the beginning of the year all of Jane Austen that was in the school library, Vanity Fair, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, Dombey and Son, The Mill on the Floss – and was struggling with Wuthering Heights. The perverse streak in her would not allow her to talk to anyone, even to Isobel, about her reading. Instead she would hide away to read where no eyes were on her and, when asked what she had been doing, being deliberately aggravating, she would say, ‘Just playing’. During prep she became a past mistress at appearing deep in arithmetic or geometry, while she devoured page after page of her current book.

  Probably the effect of her reading would have shown in at least some of her examination papers had not events piled up which made of Victoria an even more complete rebel. During the spring Granny and Grandfather with, of course, Aunt Sophie, had taken rooms on Eastbourne sea front. On the Saturday afternoon of their visit tickets were bought by Aunt Sophie for the theatre on the pier, and she and the girls went to a matinée. To visit a theatre was an unheard-of treat. Once, to make up to Isobel for a bad time at the dentist, the children’s mother had taken her and Victoria to see Alice in Wonderland. And one Christmas some friends had invited the whole family to see Aladdin. But that was the sum total of the children’s theatre-going. So the matinée on the pier with Aunt Sophie would in any case have been an event, but the type of entertainment made it memorable, for the performers were all children. It was called Lila Field’s Little Wonders. It was a sort of review, partly ballet, a few songs and a short play.

  The girls were spellbound and utterly absorbed. For days afterwards Isobel and Victoria had discussed little else. From where did those extraordinary children come who led such different lives from their own? In every spare minute Isobel drew ballet dresses, which excited her for she had never seen one before. As for Victoria, those child dancers stimulated her imagination as nothing had ever done. Where did they come from? Who taught them to dance? Where did they do their lessons? Did they earn money? Did their mothers travel with them, or perhaps someone like Miss Herbert? Victoria wove endless stories round that fabulous dancing troupe – sometimes including herself among them. Those lucky, lucky children, so miraculously free from the boring life led by other girls, especially girls whose home was a vicarage.

  At the beginning of the summer term there had been a holiday for the Coronation. Almost all the boarders, and a large number of the day girls, were taken to London to watch the procession. It would have been lovely to see the Coronation, in the same way as it would be lovely to have a fairy godmother who sent you in a coach to a ball – it was outside possibility. Instead, on the day of the Coronation, the girls helped run the sports and games organized for children in the parish, and received Coronation mugs and watched the fireworks. Also, to mark the occasion, their summer hats were of royal blue straw trimmed with cerise ribbon, which for some reason their mother believed to be Queen Mary’s favourite colours.

  Probably not going to the Coronation rankled slightly in Victoria’s mind – in a nothing-nice-ever-happens-to-us way; but there was no sense of grievance: it was something else which gave her that. Suddenly everybody was talking about a man. His name was Diaghilev. Not Mr Diaghilev, like an ordinary man – just Diaghilev.

  Even in the vicarage it was known that the Russian ballet was in London. Miss French had seen the ballet in Paris the previous year and had determined then and there that as many of her girls as possible must see the company when they visited London. So she booked tickets, and all who could afford it were taken to London for three nights. Again, it was a Cinderella type of thing; it never crossed the girls’ minds that they could see the Russians, but Victoria, still enthralled by dancers, determined to learn all about them at second-hand. They were ballet dancers so they would, she supposed, stand on their toes as the children on the pier had done. They would wear the same ballet skirts – perhaps with feathers on them like the little girl who had danced as a dying swan.

  But what was extra about the Russians? Why did everybody talk about them? Even John’s letters were full of them and his longing to see them.

  At Laughton House the girls did not sit with their forms at meals, but the whole school was mixed up and moved their seats at table weekly. The week after the school visited the ballet Victoria was sitting at the top of the table near Miss French. Around her were several sixth-formers, all of whom had been in the ballet party. Looking round at them, Victoria could see that they and Miss French looked what she called to herself ‘shiny eyed’ as they talked. Victoria listened eagerly, trying to catch some of the magic from what they said.

  ‘I could have watched the Polovtsian Dancers forever,’ one girl stated. ‘Those jumps!’

  ‘What about Spectre de la Rose?’ sighed another.

  ‘Wasn’t Nijinsky wonderful?’ gasped a third.

  Miss French’s precise voice cut through these eulogies.

  ‘For myself the ballet I must see again is Schéhérazade. The colour! The exquisitely balanced whole!’

  Victoria meant only to listen but there was so much she wanted to know. She leaned across the table to the sixth-former who had raved about Nijinsky.

  ‘What was the ballet about the rose? Was someone dressed as a rose? Did they dance on their toes?’

  Probably Miss French was tired after three exhausting days. Certainly to someone who had seen the Russians, Victoria’s questions sounded puerile. Did they dance on their toes! Such a question to ask of those who had seen Schéhérazade! What did the child imagine they had taken time off from school to see? A music-hall turn?

  ‘If you have nothing more sensible than that to ask, Victoria, I should say nothing at all.’

  Victoria was indignant, but also deeply hurt. She had so desperately wanted to know what the dancers were like. How could anyone be so mean after three lovely days in London seeing ballets as to refuse to describe them to someone who was too poor to go and see them for herself? Scarlet of face, blinking back tears, she shut her ears to the talk and went on eating her lunch. But a thought was chasing round in her head.

  ‘I don’t know how I’ll do it, but when I grow up, somehow I’ll have enough money to do all the things other people do – Coronation, ballet, everything … You wait, all of you, and see.’

  It was accepted that Isobel would want to know all about the ballets, and many souvenirs had been brought back for her to see. As a result she came home dizzy with descriptions of colour.

  ‘It must be the most glorious sight,’
she said to her sisters as they walked home from school. ‘All colours splashed together – just as I’ve always wanted them to be.’

  Louise’s form had been considered too young to join the party, but they had heard the ravings of those who had.

  On the way home Louise said: ‘The man who dances the part of a rose wears nothing but rose petals. Could you draw him, Isobel?’

  Victoria said nothing. She did not want talking to her sisters to take her mind off her grievance. She was not going to forgive Miss French. She intended to remain aloof and bitter.

  As a result of her public snubbing over the ballet Victoria decided to do what to herself she described as ‘paying Miss French back’. This she would do by writing deliberately disgraceful examination papers.

  There were two outcomes of this: so bad a report for Victoria that she was sent for to the study to discuss it, and something Victoria knew nothing about – a talk between Miss French and her father. Summoned to her father’s study, Victoria, though cold inside for her report really was a horror, came in with an air of truculence. Her father was not at his desk but by his window, Victoria’s report in his hand.

  Victoria stood beside him and gazed, without seeing them, at his special bed of geraniums, calceolarias and lobelias. Her father did not speak at once. Instead he re-read the report. At last he said:

  ‘“Could do better” is the best that anyone has found to say about you, Vicky. Why?’

  ‘That’s the sort of thing they always say.’

  Her father put a hand on Victoria’s shoulder and turned her round to face him.

  ‘That’s not true, there is nothing like that in Isobel’s or Louise’s report. There I read “Greatly improved”, “Works hard” and sometimes “Excellent”.’

  Victoria had no real answer so she said grumpily:

  ‘I can’t help it if they’re better than me, can I?’

  Her father went on as if she had not spoken. ‘Your examination marks are a disgrace. Look at this. English literature two out of a hundred.’

  Victoria could have done fairly well in this subject, so it had been difficult to answer everything wrong.

  ‘Two! I wonder what I got two for?’

  For once, her father could feel the aggravation which Victoria’s mother so often felt when dealing with her.

  ‘I don’t know what to do with you, Vicky. What gets into you that you are always in trouble over something? You are such a disappointment to me and to Mummy.’

  This brought a lump into Victoria’s throat. It really did hurt her to hurt her father. She struggled to explain.

  ‘Miss French has never been fair. She was beastly when I sprained my ankle, and just because we haven’t got enough money to do what other girls do you would think she’d be nice, not nasty. If people are hateful to me I’m hateful back. Why should I work to please her? And she’s not the only one; Miss Brown was mean on purpose about my violin practice, I know she was.’

  Her father gazed over Victoria’s head to his front gate. How was he to help this difficult daughter? In what way had they failed her? She had a troublesome nature, but why was she always so resentful? She seemed to have a permanent chip on her shoulder.

  ‘Every school cannot be at fault, Vicky. What you are saying now about Miss French you said once about Miss Dean. I should not blame Miss French if she too asked me to send you to another school.’

  ‘I could go to that boarding school for the daughters of poor clergy,’ Vicky suggested, trying and succeeding in keeping a note of hope out of her voice.

  Her father went to his desk and there, his head bowed in his hands, he let out a sort of groan. Victoria was appalled. She followed him and laid a hand on his arm.

  ‘I’m sorry about the report, Daddy. When I was doing the exams, I didn’t think about you – only about Miss French and Miss Brown.’

  Her father raised his head and there were tears in his eyes.

  ‘Why had you to think about anything except the paper in front of you?’

  Victoria tried not to sound impatient, but she had told him.

  ‘I had to pay Miss French out for being mean.’

  Her father’s eyes widened in amazement.

  ‘You deliberately wrote bad papers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Her father’s breath was literally taken away. Presently he said:

  ‘But what I can’t get at is, why? I know you have talked about imagined unfairness from Miss French and your form mistress. But why do you feel these things? Isobel and Louise seem perfectly happy.’

  Why her? How could Victoria explain that? Her resentment at living in a vicarage where she felt all eyes were on her; her consciousness of always being badly dressed in Isobel’s old clothes; her longing just once to have new text books like the others in her form, instead of second-hand ones. (‘We don’t want to cost your father more than we must.’) Her knowledge that to the school – though they were all poor and shabby and only day girls – Isobel was admired as an artist, and Louise for her looks and her cleverness, but she had nothing. She was the plain one, the one without talent.

  ‘They both shine at things – I’ve got nothing. The only things I can do, like write plays and act, we don’t do.’ A sob long held back burst out of her. ‘It’s an awful feeling, to be despised.’

  Her father put an arm round her.

  ‘I don’t despise you, Vicky, and neither does God. I think truly nobody does; you are imagining it. But one thing is certain – there is never to be another report like this one.’ He hesitated, trying to find the right words to explain what he meant. ‘I do see that in many ways things are easier for Isobel and Louise. But that is because they use the talents God has given them. You have talents too, Vicky, but you are burying them as the bad steward did in the parable.’

  ‘But I told you, they don’t do my things at school.’

  Her father pulled Victoria down to sit on the arm of his chair.

  ‘There is something we all have called personality, Vicky. You have a strong one – the strongest I believe of all my children. A strong personality properly used is a talent, for it is people who have it who make leaders. So if you cannot make your mark at school as an artist, like Isobel, or have the retentive memory of Louise, you could be an influence when you are older – an influence for good.’

  Victoria thought how little her father knew about girls’ schools.

  ‘We don’t have people like that in Laughton House.’

  ‘You have a head girl, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh her! But I could never be that, only boarders are.’

  Her father sighed. He hoped Victoria was not doing it deliberately, but she was obstructing everything he said. But he knew he was tired; a few days before his annual holiday he was always conscious he was not at his best. Nevertheless he was thinking clearly enough to know that such a report could not be allowed to pass without punishment.

  ‘I don’t like our lovely August holiday spoiled so you will not be punished until we come home …’

  Victoria looked anxiously at him. What was he thinking about? (‘Please, God, don’t let Daddy and me pray together.’)

  ‘Yes, Daddy?’

  ‘Your punishment will be to get up half an hour earlier each day next term: you can saw logs for the winter.’

  The girls never knew if what their mother said was deliberate or an accident. When asked, years later, she appeared to have forgotten the conversation. It happened the following Sunday. They had finished singing hymns and Louise was having her supper of cocoa and biscuits. Cocoa made with water, and one biscuit – an inadequate, ill-thought-out meal, as were most meals in the vicarage. Suddenly the children’s mother said:

  ‘If we are still here when you leave school, Isobel, we must see if we could build a temporary studio for you in the field.’

  Isobel looked like a startled faun. It was a big step from being ‘good at art’ to having a studio built. But if a studio was built, would it mean that th
e chance of her being sent to an art school was further away than ever?

  ‘You mean, to keep my paints and things in?’

  ‘I mean to work in,’ said her mother dryly. ‘All you girls will have to earn your own livings, you know.’

  It was an earth-shaking statement. Always they had understood they were to live at home until they married. That is what Daddy’s sister Aunt Hetty had done. Nobody before had mentioned earning anything, though actually Isobel hoped, if she got to an art school, to sell her pictures some day.

  Louise pretended to give Jackie a sip of cocoa – not that she played with him when alone in that way, but she knew how it maddened her sisters.

  ‘I shan’t earn my own living. I shall marry just as soon as I’m old enough, and have lots and lots of children.’

  Almost as if she could see into the future her mother replied:

  ‘Quite likely that is what will happen. But you will have to marry very young, if it’s to happen before you are trained for a career.’

  ‘What sort of a career?’ Louise asked.

  Her mother gave a slight shrug.

  ‘Nothing very exciting. You might teach perhaps, or I believe you can earn a good wage if you can use a typewriter. But it will only be a temporary career – if you have one at all – for I can see you marrying early.’

  Victoria did not want to ask about her future. Too well she could guess the snubbing reply she would get. Perhaps Isobel sensed this, for she asked: ‘What about Vicky?’

  There was a long pause before the children’s mother answered.

  ‘I don’t know. But it will be nothing ordinary for you, Vicky. I think you will be the one to surprise us all.’

  Years later when Victoria’s first book was published Isobel sent her a postcard. On it was written: