One Young Fool in Dorset

by Victoria Twead

  And if that wasn’t bad enough, I was also taking part in the dance routine. It began with a country dance liberally sprinkled with ‘dozy-does’ and ‘under the arches’.

  For the dance, the boys would be wearing blue checked shirts, and the girls would wear blue checked dresses with petticoats. I loved my costume. I also loved the dance, but I struggled. I must have been Miss Gunson’s worst nightmare.

  “Victoria, peel off to the left, not right! Good. Now under the arch… No, under it, not round it… Take your partner, spin to the right… Right, not left! Now, skip-skip-skip… Victoria, apologise to Nigel, I think you skipped quite heavily on his toe...”

  I practised in my bedroom at home, determined to get it right before the big performance. Spin to the right, skip-skip-skip...

  “Ach! Victoria! What are you doing up there? You sound as if you are coming through the ceiling!”

  Before the day of the Extravaganza, I heard our telephone ring.

  “Wareham 297,” said my mother. In those days, all telephones were heavy, black, dial affairs, and telephone numbers were just three digits. “Yes, I’m sure that would be possible. Yes, we’ll bring her then. Thank you for admitting her. Goodbye.” She replaced the receiver with a clatter.

  “Victoria, that was Poole General Hospital. It seems they have an unexpected vacancy and they want to take you in next week to remove your adenoids. That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “But what about the Extravaganza?”

  “Ach, I’m afraid you’ll have to miss it.”

  “But I’m reciting my poem! And what about the Rustic Dance? Nigel won’t have a partner, and I can’t wear my costume…” My bottom lip was a-tremble.

  “I’m afraid the hospital won’t wait. You’ll have other chances to perform when you go to Talbot Heath.”

  So that was that. I never did perform at the Corn Exchange, and Miss Gunson probably celebrated when she heard I wouldn’t be there. I’m sure the performance went without a hitch.

  Now I had something new to worry about; the removal of my adenoids.

  7 TH

  Summer Pudding

  I didn’t even know what adenoids were, but it seemed that I was scheduled for a stay in hospital to have mine removed. From the 1930s through to the 1960s, tonsillectomies and adenoidectomies were routine operations and thousands were performed every year. Nowadays, doctors are more enlightened and know that most of those operations were unnecessary and probably unwise. But, when I was a child, they were extremely common procedures.

  “My brother had that,” said Nigel Harding enviously. “He was allowed to eat as much ice cream as he wanted for three days!”

  Suddenly the prospect of the operation didn’t seem quite so daunting. I was admitted to the hospital and my parents drove away. Parents were not allowed to stick around in those days.

  The hospital was built in 1907, and was largely demolished in the 1960s to make way for a new hospital of 500 beds. However, the Children’s Ward was still housed in an old wing. The ceilings were high and the floors were bare. Even the slightest noise echoed.

  Sure enough, after my operation, the nurses offered me ice cream. I had ice cream every day, sometimes with jelly. On the third day I was feeling much better and becoming accustomed to the hospital routine. In the evening, the radio and all the lights were switched off, and a night nurse sat working at a desk in the centre of the ward, a single lamp illuminating her. The ward was silent. The night nurse occasionally stood, yawned, and walked round the beds, shining a torch on each sleeping child in turn.

  “Aren’t you asleep yet?” she whispered when she reached me.

  I shook my head.

  “Not yet,” I whispered back.

  Suddenly, a female scream ripped through the night.

  “Aaaaaaagh!”

  The night nurse and I froze in shock, our mouths agape. What was happening? The scream wasn’t coming from our ward, but from somewhere along the corridor, and it was getting closer.

  “Aaaaaaagh!”

  The night nurse’s hand tightened on her torch. She trembled as she turned on her heel and trained the beam on the closed ward door, just as it burst open.

  “Aaaaaaagh!” screamed a nurse as she ran into the ward towards us. “Bats! BATS! The place is alive with bats!”

  The night nurse dropped her torch and jumped into my bed, pulling the blanket over her head. The screaming nurse ran for the door again, slamming it shut behind her.

  I stood by my bed and looked up. Two or three bats were flitting high up in the rafters. They didn’t scare me at all.

  A muffled voice emerged from the depths of my bed.

  “Have they gone?”

  “The other nurse has gone,” I said. “But the bats are still here. They are very high up. They won’t hurt you, you know.”

  The night nurse’s face peeped out from under my bedclothes, her face as white as my sheets.

  “You stay here,” she said at last. “I’m going to get help.”

  With as much dignity as she could muster with a hospital blanket over her head, the nurse strode to the door and let herself out. I was alone with the bats and a ward full of sleeping children.

  A caretaker came in next, armed with a big net. I watched, fascinated, as he attempted to catch the bats. He failed, but successfully shooed the little creatures out of the ward and into the corridor. The night nurse returned, smoothing down her apron and pushing escaped tendrils of hair back into her cap.

  “Still not asleep?” she whispered. “Let me sort your bed out for you.”

  She replaced my blanket and I snuggled down, tired now. None of the other children had wakened. I closed my eyes and slept. My dreams were filled with bats and country dancing.

  I learned later that a colony of bats had inhabited the old hospital. They had been disturbed by the ongoing demolition works, and some had entered the hospital, visiting several wards, including ours. I hoped that they moved on without too much trauma and found a safe new home.

  It was also time for me to move on. I never saw Mrs Pellow, Nigel Harding or Dorchester Preparatory School again. I would now move on to Talbot Heath (TH), following in my big sister’s footsteps. I only hoped that Enid Blyton had been telling the truth about boarding school life.

  * * *

  School Report

  Reading: Victoria reads well although shyness holds her back.

  Writing: Careless, although she has a good command of words.

  Written Composition: Victoria enjoys this and has made progress.

  Mathematics: Has the impression that this subject is too difficult for her.

  What a pity Victoria wastes so much time because she has ample ability. She has given up with mathematics which is silly and pointless. She must do the Arithmetic and English Progress Papers I have given her during the holidays. Please ensure she does them daily, not in a rush just before the TH term starts!

  Joan Pellow (headteacher)

  * * *

  Before school term started, there was a lot to do. Apart from the awful Progress Papers that I had to wrestle with every day, there was packing. My father heaved a huge trunk into my bedroom. There it remained, like a giant open coffin, slowly filling up in readiness for the new term. TH had provided us with an inventory, and every tiny thing on that list had to be checked off, right down to colour of shoe polish. Astonishingly, the particular brown required was called by a word that was soon to be banned, a word that rhymes with ‘bigger’. We had no idea the word was so insulting or controversial. Of course this particular shade has been renamed now.

  There were the summer and uniforms. In winter we wore navy blue pinafore dresses with white blouses underneath. We had to wear stockings and suspenders because tights hadn’t been invented yet. The stockings were usually a disgusting shade called ‘American Tan’ and had to be 60-90 denier, making them virtually bullet-proof. We also had to wear gloves and navy blue felt hats. In summer, we wore gingham dresses and white socks
with blazers and straw boaters.

  Then there was mufti, or non-uniform clothes. We were allowed a couple of summer dresses, a pair of trousers, a pair of shorts, and some tops.

  Sports equipment, such as hockey sticks and tennis racquets, needed to be packed. Black swimming costumes, and culottes (short trousers that looked like skirts) were included. We also needed bed sheets, towels, dressing gown, slippers and wash stuff.

  Then there were some puzzling items that needed explaining, like the 6 pairs of white cotton linings. And 3 pairs of navies with pocket.

  “Ach,” said my mother, already familiar with this requirement because of my sister’s packing in previous years. “Linings just means underpants. And navies are navy blue knickers to go over the top.”

  “What’s the pocket for?”

  “I don’t know. A hanky maybe?”

  Every pupil also needed to bring a sanitary belt and two packs of Dr White’s sanitary towels. These were enormous pads with loops either end, not like the neat, flat, self-adhesive pads that are available nowadays.

  “What are these?” asked my brother, waving one at me.

  He was preparing to go to boarding school too, and Dr White’s were certainly not on his list of requirements.

  “Oh, they’re in case you get a nosebleed,” I said. “You hook those loops over your ears.”

  He seemed satisfied with that, and left me to carry on packing.

  Every item had to be labelled with our name and laundry number (mine was SY16) if it was to be sent to the laundry. My mother never claimed to be a domestic goddess, and sewing on those endless Cash’s name-tapes must have driven her crazy.

  I was to be in St Mary’s, one of three houses set in pine woodlands some distance from the school. St Mary’s was three floors high and had long stone-floored corridors. The ground floor was given over to the kitchen, dining room, Matron’s office, prefects’ rooms and two common rooms: one for the seniors and the other for juniors. Upstairs were the dormitories (or dorms), bathrooms and the Housemistress’s suite.

  St Mary’s today

  The dormitories already felt quite familiar to me as I had previously visited them with my sister. There were eight high metal beds, each with a metal locker beside it. No curtains, no privacy, but it never occurred to me at that age that I needed it.

  On that first day, I was the last to arrive. The dorm was buzzing with noise and chaotic with half-unpacked trunks. Parents milled around, helping their daughters settle in. My father was in the doorway, dragging my trunk inside. Overcome with shyness, I looked around. Every bed seemed to be taken.

  “Ach, I can’t see a spare bed,” said my mother.

  A girl with straight blonde hair looked up from the locker she was filling. She and I stared at each other for a moment. There was a naughty glint in her eye which I liked immediately.

  “This bed next to me is empty,” she said, and her smile lit up her face.

  I found myself smiling back at her, and in that moment I knew I had a friend.

  Soon, the parents had to leave but I scarcely noticed mine go. Helen and I had finished our unpacking and were sitting side by side on her bed, swinging our legs and chattering about whatever eleven-year-olds chatter about.

  Our dorm was on the first floor, and below it was the junior common room. The common room was fitted out with mismatching tables and chairs and some threadbare comfy chairs. We had an old-fashioned record player with a needle that scratched our records if we jogged it, but only a few records. The strains of Homeward Bound by Simon and Garfunkel even now immediately transports me back to the common room. That and the taste of butterscotch sweets, which were my tuck item of choice. After lunch every day, Matron unlocked the tuck cupboard and we were permitted just two of the sweets we had stashed.

  I fitted into boarding school life fairly happily. I didn’t see much of my sister as she was already in the upper school and used a different common room. But I made friends quite easily, especially after my housemates realised that my initial silence was due to shyness. As soon as I felt comfortable, I was as lively as the others. In fact, I was usually in more trouble than most, except perhaps for my best friend Helen.

  To exit the building, one had to walk along a lengthy corridor, past the locker room where we kept our coats and outside shoes, and out of the back door. It was just my luck that I bumped into Matron just after I’d taken a shortcut.

  “Victoria! Did I just see you jumping out of the common room window?”

  “Yes, Matron.”

  “Good heavens! You know we can’t allow our gels to jump out of windows! Whatever next?” Matron tried hard to sound cultured, and girls were always ‘gels’.

  “It’s not very high.”

  “Nevertheless, I shall require you to write me two hundred lines, I must not jump out of the window.”

  My heart sank.

  “Yes, Matron.”

  “By chapel this evening.”

  “Yes, Matron.”

  As if our nightly visits to chapel weren’t bad enough, now I had to waste time writing lines as well. I enlisted the help of Helen and some other friends, and luckily Matron never noticed the sudden changes of handwriting styles. This was common practice, and I learned always to offer help with other people’s lines, in readiness for when I was given my own to complete.

  Matron was a formidable lady. She wore a white starched uniform and white cap perched squarely on her red hair which was rolled up into some sort of pleat. The white lace-up shoes she wore were utterly silent, allowing her to prowl around without a sound. Her footsteps may have been silent, but Matron’s booming voice could be heard from the other side of the building.

  “Gels! Gels! You are not permitted into the dining room except at meal times!”

  With a rustle of uniform, she bore down on us.

  “Gels! Out you go, unless you want to write some lines for me?”

  No, we didn’t. We exited swiftly.

  Matron had her favourites, and I wasn’t one of them. You knew if Matron liked you because on Sunday evenings, which were hair-wash days, Matron let a small group of girls into her room to dry their hair in front of the two-bar electric fire she had there. I don’t think any of us had heard of hair dryers then, and we certainly didn’t own one. Matron’s door would close and we’d hear the sound of laughter as her favourites dried their hair and helped themselves to Matron’s tin of Scottish shortbread.

  Of course, anybody who courted trouble, as I and my friend Helen did, would never get to dry her hair in Matron’s room.

  It was Matron who ran St Mary’s House, but it was Mrs Driver who was officially in charge. Mrs Driver, the Housemistress, was a mannish, secretive person who spent most of her time in her suite of rooms on the top floor. She had grey hair that she scraped back from her face and stuck down flat to her skull with water, or perhaps Brylcreem. Half-moon glasses hung from a chain around her neck, bouncing on her ample bosom as she walked.

  Mrs Driver owned a pop-eyed Chihuahua called Brandy. Twice a day, Mrs Driver and Brandy would emerge from their rooms and descend the stairs. Mrs Driver smelled the same as the Roman Catholic priest from whom we bought our house in Wareham. Her eyes were glazed over, and she looked at nobody, neither did she speak as she walked down the steps.

  On the other hand, Brandy, the Chihuahua, had something important on his mind. As Mrs Driver continued down the stairs, Brandy searched in vain for a mate. He charged into our dorm, and finding no lady dog to cool his ardour, was forced instead to make do with a slipper, or teddy, or pile of clothes on the floor.

  “Brandy!” called Mrs Driver from the bottom of the stairs, and away he scampered to join his mistress.

  “She should have called that bloody dog Randy,” I once heard Matron mutter after Brandy had assaulted an unsuspecting wastepaper basket in her office.

  “Pardon, Matron?”

  “Nothing. Helen, Victoria, haven’t you gels got anything to do? Run along and do some schoolw
ork or something.”

  Boarding school culture was fascinating. For a start, there was a whole new language to learn. Luckily I didn’t have a problem with that, as my big sister had already taught me many of the words. For instance, a wastepaper basket was a ‘wagger’, and a petticoat was a ‘charlie’. If a girl’s petticoat happened to show beneath the hemline of her skirt, one had to sidle up to her and quietly hiss, “Charlie’s dead!” thus alerting her to the petticoat calamity.

  Nobody was called by her real name. We didn’t resort to surnames, as happened in most boys’ boarding schools, but each girl was given a nickname. My best friend Helen was called Snort because of the one time she snorted in her sleep. I was named Dusty because somebody said my eyes were as big as dustbin lids.

  There were other strange rituals that had become traditional at TH. For example, the mysterious Nelson’s Eye which filled us youngsters with fear.

  8 Day by Day

  “We’ve been here a week,” said Snort, “and they haven’t made us do Nelson’s Eye yet.”

  “I know,” I said, shivering. “It’ll probably be this weekend. I’m dreading it.”

  The week had been packed with activities and we had begun to learn the routine we would follow for the next few years. It’s possible that I haven’t remembered the times correctly, or have left out huge gaps, but this is roughly how I remember a typical day’s routine.

  6.55 Wake-up bell.

  A bell to be ignored.

  7.00 Get-out-of-bed bell.

  “Gels! Up you get!” called Matron. “Come on, you gels, hurry up, get washed. Victoria, make sure you tidy the top of your locker, it’s a disgrace.”

  Out she rustled, making her way to the next dorm to continue spreading her cheer.

  Snort and I dragged ourselves out of bed, grabbed our towels and wash things and trudged towards the bathroom. There were no showers, just cubicles with a washbasin in each. There were two baths, in separate cubicles, but we were only allowed a bath once a week. The bathrooms were unheated and every sound echoed. We splashed water on our faces and cleaned our teeth.