The Frances Garrood Collection

by Frances Garrood

  ‘Everyone!’ I wailed. ‘Everyone will see them. I’ll have to do gym in them. It says so on the list.’

  ‘Oh, gym!’ said Mum dismissively. ‘What does it matter what you wear for gym? It’s not as though you’re going out in them.’

  ‘The knickers are nice, I think?’ Greta, slicing carrots, was as usual trying to pour oil on troubled waters and, as usual, completely missing the point. Normally I could cope with her well-meaning interventions, but on this occasion I could cheerfully have strangled her.

  ‘I don’t want nice knickers. I want navy knickers!’ I raged. ‘Is it so much to ask? I’ve got the wrong colour or number of everything else. Can’t I even have the right knickers?’

  But Mum was adamant. She had paid good money for those knickers, there was nothing wrong with them, and she certainly wasn’t taking them back.

  And then there were the name tapes. I had wanted proper name tapes with my name embroidered on them in swirly blue writing. But no. Mine had to be hand-written with a laundry marker on pieces of tape. Mum, usually so generous, also loved a bargain, and home-made name tapes, she assured me, were a marvellous way of saving money. Some were in my writing, some in Mum’s, and a few in Greta’s strange foreign-looking script. Even Lucas did a couple (‘to remind you of me, because I’m not much good at writing letters’). Everyone complained about the length of my name.

  ‘Cassandra Fitzpatrick,’ grumbled Mum, writing it out for the umpteenth time. ‘Why couldn’t you have had a shorter name?’

  ‘You gave it to me,’ I pointed out. Personally, I would much prefer to have been called Jane. Even Susan would have been preferable to Cassandra.

  ‘I didn’t think. At the time.’ Mum reached for another piece of tape. ‘Besides, the Fitzpatrick bit wasn’t my idea.’

  ‘My father might have had a shorter name. He might have been Smith.’

  ‘I never slept with anyone called Smith,’ Mum said (fortunately we were alone together when this exchange was taking place). ‘There was a Jones once,’ she added thoughtfully.

  ‘Could it have been Jones?’

  ‘Too long ago.’ Mum sighed. ‘Oh dear. Isn’t life complicated, Cass?’

  I forbore to remind her that some of her life’s complications were of her own doing, since I knew she was only too aware of the fact. Besides, by this time I was beginning to realize that the idea of my going away was as disturbing for her as it was for me, and I didn’t want to risk upsetting her further. I myself was now resigned to my fate. It mightn’t be as bad as I imagined, and my mother could even be right. A change might do me good. After all, as she frequently pointed out, I wasn’t particularly happy at home these days.

  ‘Two terms, Cass. Give it a couple of terms,’ she’d told me. ‘If you really don’t like it after that, then you can come home.’

  ‘Promise?’ I wanted to make absolutely sure where I stood.

  ‘Promise.’

  ‘OK. I’ll give it a go. But I really need to know I can come home if I want to.’

  ‘Of course you can.’ Mum had kissed the top of my head. ‘This is where you belong. I’m just — well, I’m just lending you to boarding school. This will always be your home.’

  At last the preparations were over and I was ready for my new life, with my second-hand trunk, my four pairs of socks, the dreaded blue knickers and all the other impedimenta of a new boarding school pupil. Most of my uniform and other belongings were not quite regulation, since my mother seemed incapable of following what were, after all, fairly simple instructions. Thus, my shoes, though black (regulation) bore an interesting little motif on the sides; my hockey boots looked suspiciously like football boots; and my towels (‘two large, two small, white’) were three medium-sized and blue. But apart from the knickers (of which more later) I didn’t mind too much. I’d been raised as a non-conformist in matters of dress and habit, and there seemed no reason why boarding school should make any difference.

  When the time came, I was given quite a send-off. Lucas lent me Blind Bear, his treasured childhood companion (its eyes had been removed by a vicious little boy in his class at infant school, a crime which Lucas had never quite managed to forgive); Greta contributed two of her favourite bars of Swiss chocolate to my tuck box (Mum’s contribution was a jar of peanut butter, two packets of rich tea biscuits and an enormous box of Turkish Delight); and the Lodger pressed a ten-shilling note into my willing hand. As for the nice man from the chemist (we had now been invited to ‘call me Bill’ — inevitably, the name had stuck, and he was Call Me Bill until our acquaintance ended many years later), he presented me with a pretty little box of toiletries. I suspected that these were left over from last Christmas, since the soap smelled musty and the talcum powder refused to sprinkle, but it was a kind thought. Even Richard turned up with a battered copy of an Agatha Christie novel (‘to take your mind off things’) and Ben (who was, in his words, ‘on location’ filming an advertisement for socks) sent a card to wish me luck.

  My transport consisted of a battered white van loaned for the occasion by an ex-Lodger. My driver was Mum.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked anxiously, when this arrangement was explained to me. ‘Are you sure you know how to drive a van?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ Mum laughed merrily. ‘Car, van — what’s the difference? Just gears and brakes and a steering wheel. They’re all the same when it comes down to it.’

  But I wasn’t so sure. My mother was an occasional and erratic driver (she had never actually owned a car) with — as in other areas of her life — her own rules. I was an unwilling passenger at the best of times when she was in the driving seat, and to my unpractised eye the van didn’t look at all the same as a car.

  ‘You can’t see out of the back,’ I objected. ‘There’s no window.’

  ‘Wing mirror,’ said Mum. ‘That’s all you need, really. A wing mirror. We’ll be fine, Cass. Trust me.’

  I longed for Call Me Bill and his Rover, but the Rover was out of commission with engine trouble, and in any case, my mother was evidently eager to chauffeur me herself.

  ‘It’s the least I can do, Cass,’ she said. ‘We’ll take a picnic, like last time, and The Dog can come too. It will make a change for him.’

  In the event, it made an unwelcome and terrifying change for all of us. The van rattled and bounced all over the road, ricocheting off kerbs and verges; Mum, trying to drive and map-read at the same time, cursed and fumed; and The Dog whimpered miserably in the back as he scrabbled back and forth in his attempts to avoid the wildly slithering and very heavy trunk. As for me, I clung to the edges of my seat and closed my eyes, praying for this horrible journey to end as soon as possible.

  We were too late to have our picnic, and in any case, I doubt whether either of us could have eaten anything; and when we eventually arrived at the school, the skies opened up as though on cue and welcomed us with a spectacular thunderstorm.

  Seven

  It is hard now to recount my initial experiences of boarding school. Everything was so new, and so entirely different from anything I had ever known, that my memories of those first few weeks are a jumble of mixed-up impressions and emotions, all of them tinged with an appalling homesickness.

  I had never in my life been homesick simply because I had never been away from home. Very occasionally I had stayed overnight with a friend, but I much preferred my friends to come to me, and in this they were more than happy to concur. For my friends adored Mum. No one had a mother like mine, apparently; a mother who appeared unshockable and one to whom they could talk about anything (frequently, inevitably, sex — my friends had a voracious curiosity when it came to matters sexual, and my mother was always happy to answer their questions; no question ever fazed her, and if she didn’t know the answer she would make one up). My mother would also allow us all to stay up half the night eating unsuitable food and giggling and listening to Radio Luxembourg (‘turn out the lights, when you’re done, Cass, and try not to make too much noi
se’). Even in her more depressed moments, Mum was unfailingly hospitable and kind, and would put herself out to make sure we all had a good time.

  So homesickness was an entirely new experience. Of course I had expected to miss my home and family, but nothing had prepared me for the physical pain and the sheer wrenching grief which overwhelmed me, usually at bedtime, but often suddenly, unexpectedly, during the day. Some little thing — a word, an image, a small imagined unkindness — would set me off, and the pain would surge up through my chest, threatening to choke me. I tried not to cry, and usually succeeded, but I shall never forget how it felt. At night in bed, I would hug Blind Bear to me, chewing on his ears (one eventually came off altogether) to stifle the ache in my throat, thinking of Mum and Lucas and everyone else carrying on with their lives without me. I would imagine Mum bending over to kiss me goodnight, ruffling my hair as she pulled the blankets up under my chin; the pencil of light from the passage shining under my bedroom door; the cosy familiar sounds of someone running a bath, milk bottles being put out on the doorstep and The Dog being let out for a final run (three times round the lawn, a quick pee against the gate post, a triumphant yap and back in again).

  From my initial impression of the school on that first visit, I had half expected it to incorporate the combined elements of a horror film and Tom Brown’s Schooldays (a story I loved, but not one in which I would like to have taken part), but in fact it was not unpleasant. The teachers were kind on the whole, and my fellow-pupils reasonably friendly. My name blended in perfectly with the Fionas and the Camillas and the double-barrelled daughters of the higher echelons (I think it was the first time in my life that it hadn’t been singled out for censure and accusations of snobbery), and I was enough of a chameleon to be able to disguise the hint of Norfolk lilt which was part of my heritage. Of course, by no means all my peers were either posh or wealthy — and some, like me, had earned their places through scholarships and bursaries — but they were in such contrast to the girls in my previous school that at times it felt as though I were living with the combined female offspring of the entire aristocracy.

  Next to the homesickness, my biggest problem was having to conform to set rules. Of course my previous school had had its rules, but the classes were large, the pupils a disparate lot and discipline a problem, so most of us managed to get away with all kinds of deviations. Thus, our uniform varied considerably from girl to girl, badly executed (or hastily copied) homework was often overlooked, and our meals (most of us took packed lunches) were of our own choosing. Besides, we were only at school between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. After that, our day was our own.

  Not so boarding school. Every minute of every day was regulated. Apart from a few brief hours at the weekend, we had little time to ourselves. Ruled by the clock and the school bell, we were shunted from one activity to another; from bed to breakfast, from supper to prep, from piano practice to PE; we were like army recruits scurrying round a barracks, always under pressure and often (in my case) late.

  Bedtime was particularly hard for me (in bed by 8.30, lights out at 9) as I had never in my life had a bedtime. Of course I had heard of bedtimes — most of my friends had bedtimes — but I had never had to abide by them myself. My mother reasoned that if we were tired, we would go to bed, and in this Lucas and I were fairly sensible. It may have been because we had never had a bedtime to conform to that we had no reason to rebel, and in fact we were usually in bed in good time. To be told to go to bed at a particular time was a different matter altogether, and seemed a terrible infringement of my freedom. Deprived of my customary hour of reading, I was often unable to sleep, and would lie in the dark listening to the regular breathing of my companions, clutching Blind Bear and longing for home.

  Likewise, meal times. In our household, these were rare, not least because my mother was often at work. There was always food around, and we were encouraged to help ourselves when we were hungry. Sometimes Mum cooked for us, but often we (or whoever else happened to be around) prepared our food. Lucas and I were quite accomplished cooks, used to combining whatever ingredients we found in the larder, and we both enjoyed experimenting with new dishes. Some of these may have seemed odd to an outsider (Lucas’s sardine omelette was a favourite), but to us it was just the way things were done. If you were hungry, you prepared yourself something to eat. It was as simple as that.

  At school, the meals were regular, overcooked and bland. From the breakfast toast (limp and leathery) through lunch (usually some kind of meat, always liberally anointed with the same lumpy gravy and accompanied by sad-looking boiled-to-death vegetables) to supper (something on toast followed by cake or biscuits from our tuck boxes; mine was empty by the end of the second week) there was a sameness in our diet which took away all the pleasant anticipation I had hitherto associated with food.

  Throughout all this, although thoughts of Uncle Rupert himself were mercifully beginning to fade, I was often haunted by fears and nightmares. Sleeping in an unlocked dormitory with seven other girls I felt exposed, but I tried to console myself with the thought that perhaps there was safety in numbers. I might not be able to secure the door, but should an intruder strike, there were more of us to choose from, and my bed was furthest from the door.

  My favourite moment of the week was the hour on Sundays that was allocated for us to write our letters home. Most of my schoolfellows found this a terrible chore, and sat chewing their pencils and gazing out of the window, but for me this was the nearest I got to talking to Mum, and I made full use of it.

  My own post (given out at breakfast) was meagre. Mum, it is true, endeavoured to write to me once a week, but often these letters were short and scrappy, written in odd moments at work or while waiting for potatoes to boil or a cake to be cooked, sometimes scrawled on the backs of envelopes or bills (on one occasion I received my news from home on the back of a bloodstained butcher’s bill; not an epistle I felt tempted to cherish for long). What she wrote was often entertaining, but I felt cheated that she didn’t devote more effort to her correspondence with her exiled daughter; that I obviously wasn’t the priority I had expected to be. Lucas, true to his word, rarely wrote, and although Greta made an effort, her written English was so much worse than the English she spoke that her letters were often very difficult to understand.

  Myra sent me the occasional note, but I think she was probably dyslexic (no one had heard of dyslexia in those days) and it would sometimes take me days to unscramble the hotchpotch of blots and characters her letters comprised. Altogether, my post bag tended to be a disappointment, and a disappointment at breakfast is not a good start to the day.

  I kept all my letters in a box in my bedside locker, and together with my letters home, which Mum saved and which I still have in my possession, they make poignant, even nostalgic reading. Going through them now, I recall the pains I went to to avoid too much mention of the homesickness which dominated those early weeks, as I knew how much distress it would have caused. I was not an especially stoical child, but I recognized my mother’s vulnerability, and tried my best to avoid adding to her problems. Yet when I read those letters now, and remember how I felt when I was writing them, I feel that pain almost as fiercely as I did then; and in spite of the many trials and tragedies that were to take place in the years which followed, I still think that the aching, solitary suffering of homesickness was one of the hardest things I have ever had to endure.

  Eight

  St Andrew’s School

  10th Sept. 1961

  Dear Mum,

  This place is all right but not as nice as home. My bed is a bit like a hospital bed, with a locker, but no flowers of course. I sleep next to someone called Susannah who actually snores (I thought only men snored) although she says she doesn’t. There are only nineteen girls in my class, so the teacher always knows what’s going on, and no one is allowed to sit at the back (Myra and I always sat at the back so that we could write each other notes during class). We play a most peculiar ga
me called lacrosse, and I’ve got to have my own lacrosse stick (it looks just like a fishing net) and I’m very bad at it.

  I think I’ve got a best friend, although I’m not sure how she feels about me. Anyway, we get on well and make each other laugh. Her name is Helena (quite a sensible name for this school) and she lives in a big house in Derbyshire. She is new too, which helps, but she is much better at lacrosse than I am.

  The blue knickers are a disaster. I told you they would be. Our PE teacher is an enormous woman in a green tracksuit, and she has a very loud voice.

  ‘What colour do you call those knickers, Cassandra?’ she bellowed at me the first time we did PE, and I thought that was a pretty silly question, so I said ‘red’, and she put me in detention for being cheeky. But I really really do need navy ones, Mum. I’m not being fussy, and I don’t mind looking a bit different, but those knickers make me look very different indeed. Helena calls them ‘blue-mers’, which she thinks is very funny, but then she’s got navy ones so it’s OK for her to laugh.

  The other girls are quite nice on the whole, although there’s a gang who are a bit stand-offish and stay with each other in the holidays and make private jokes and tease poor little Monica, who is fat with sticky-out teeth and red hair. I try to be nice to her, but she’s an awful wimp and very greedy. I offered her my biscuits and she took three.

  Work is fine. I came second in a maths test, and my last essay was read out in class, but I got into trouble for setting fire to my lab coat when we were doing chemistry. I can’t see the point in boiling things up in test tubes, although some of the colours are interesting.

  Must go. Supper time.

  Love from Cass xxx

  PS Please ask Lucas to write to me. I wrote to him every day when he was in hospital.

  Hazelwood House

  13th Sept.