Mother Knew Best (11 page)

The teachers were all strict, but many were sort of neutral, neither kind nor unkind, almost as if they didn't know we were there and would carry on teaching automatically even to an empty class. They were somewhere else at the time in their minds.

There was Miss Pepper. She looked like a standing-up baby hippopotamus, for her neck was so short her head seemed to join her shoulders. She had such a small snub nose that it was really only two nostril holes and her bosom was so huge and her legs so thin I could never make out at what part of her body the change took place and thought she must look like the drawings of people that tiny children did. She wore pince-nez spectacles on a chain which dangled over her bosom like a mountaineer's rope over a precipice. We could always send Miss Pepper to sleep on a hot summer's afternoon when droning away at tables, indeed we got tables-saying to such a singsong rhythm that we almost nodded off ourselves. We all knew our tables.

Miss Church was the teacher who played the piano and taught us to sing. Her pebble glasses were so thick that she seemed to have thousands of eyes in a tunnel and she was very good at netball. She wore brogue shoes and thick stockings on her thick legs. Miss Pepper wore black shoes with high heels which perched her bosom forward and made her take little running steps all through the hall, but Miss Church took strides like my sister, Winnie.

The head teacher, Mrs Russell, was the most frightening person in the school. She was not quite the headmistress, for the real headmistress, a Scottish lady with long green silk frocks and black flat-heeled shoes, who walked with her hands behind her back up and down the school hall all day, finally disappeared. I thought she must have walked on to another school by mistake. To my sister and my contemporaries, the head teacher
was
the school, her name, Mrs Russell, for ever on our lips. Little Tillie, a thin half-starved looking girl, was for ever dropping off in class and Mrs Russell would advance on her, shake her like a dog shaking a rat and march her up and down to wake her. One day she caught Tillie's head on the corner of the desk and Tillie passed out and had to be carried out of the class. Mrs Russell never shook Tillie after that. She was thin with the usual large bosom and would put her face almost on top of a girl's and hiss remarks so that we were forced to gaze into the large open pores on her face. When the girls had needlework lessons she would bring her husband's clothes up to be mended. I could understand this because my mother, a wonderful needlewoman always hated mending men's clothes. One day Winnie, not afraid even of Mrs R., decided to try on Mr R.'s long winter pants in the teacher's absence. Unfortunately she put two of her fat legs into one leg of the pants and was trapped amongst noisy and hysterical girls when Mrs R. returned and meted out justice. Winnie still laughed all the way home.

Mrs R. caught Agnes swinging on the blackboard. One of the girls pushing her let go when Mrs R. appeared and Agnes catapulted on to the teacher's desk upsetting the ink. Agnes nearly lost her chance of higher education then, because such a thing might have affected the character Mrs R. gave her. Agnes had been too young for the scholarship one year and the next year the date was altered and she became too old, and she went on to a new type of school which had sprung up, a central school called Thomas Street, near Limehouse. Limehouse was my favourite place, near the lovely river and ships, tall houses down narrow causeways, a churchyard all grey and dreamlike with a pond in the grounds full of beautifully coloured goldfish. I could have lived at Limehouse for ever.

Everyone was frightened of Mrs R. but she seemed to treat the Chegwidden girls very leniently, always praising my elder sisters to me, and seemed only to pick on the thin, not so clever girls, which upset me. When Amy was Rosalind in
As You Like It
, Mrs R. made her costume and sewed lovely pearls all over the cap for her head. One day the headmistress was in class talking to Mrs R. when there was a terrific bang. Mrs R. said, ‘There, headmistress, you see what I have to put up with, those boys have thrown stones against my window again.' I couldn't believe boys would be so daring, not at Mrs R's window. The headmistress said Mrs R. should go with her and look into the matter. Great joy from Mrs R., the light of battle shone in her eyes. Then my stupid friend Lizzie put up her hand. ‘Yes,' said Mrs R. in a bad temper at Lizzie delaying the execution. ‘Please Miss,' said Lizzie, ‘it wasn't them boys throwing stones at the window, it was my bladder what burst.' Silly Lizzie. Retribution for playing with her bladder in class, retribution for making Mrs R. in the wrong about the boys. Bladders were, of course, balloons, and Lizzie had an uncle who was always buying these for her. It was her life's joy to see how far she could blow up one of her bladders before it burst.

Mrs R. left when Miss Wilkie became the new headmistress. Life, for me then it became the best it ever could be. Although only twelve I had been in the top class for some time and there was nothing else I could learn. I could read, write, and do the sums taught in that school, so I was chosen (an innovation of Miss Wilkie's) as her prefect. She pinned on my dress a shield-shaped leather badge in the middle of which was a large ‘P' in black. I was to see to Miss Wilkie's needs, open the high windows with a screw-like key every morning, collect the registers and give out the stationery. All this going to my head, I volunteered to wash up the teachers' dinner plates. The caretaker's wife cooked the dinners for the teachers. My teacher, Miss White, cooked her own, always steamed fish on an enamel plate. Since I had only the little hand basin in the cloakroom, with cold water and no tools, when I came to this enamel plate with grey fish skin left on it I got very bad-tempered. After I had stopped the sink up twice with fat and bones, I was allowed to boil a kettle of water in the teachers' sitting-room, but I hated this, afraid I should drop scalding water on one of them or myself.

Miss Wilkie gave a party to the teachers to introduce herself to them and I was despatched to the shops for the best salmon, tinned fruit, cream and brown bread and butter. The girls' mouths all watered.

I adored Miss Wilkie. I think she had M.A. after her name. She inaugurated a school choir, insisting I should be in it when we entered into competition with other London schools. She realised I couldn't sing, ‘Let's hope the judges will be struck deaf on the day,' my brothers said. ‘For their sakes,' added my father, but she said my lovely smile would appeal to the judges, and so I was placed in the centre of the front row and I learned to mime. Of course, we won the shield for our rendering of ‘Little seed, oh little brown brother', and went everywhere singing this.

We had school plays and I was always the villain. Once I had an enormous stye on my eye and Miss Wilkie gave me an eyeshade. During the performance the stye burst and my legs went down between the tables forming our stage. The audience cheered at the downfall of the villain, and kept booing me when I came on. Miss Wilkie said I was a real trouper to carry on and extricate myself without faltering in my words, but I limped home bruised and bleeding and wondered who really liked being famous.

Miss White was my teacher and I often felt she was jealous because I was the prefect, for she always seemed to get at me and make me feel I was nothing really. Perhaps I was getting too big for my boots. Not one of my friends liked Miss White, she was so sarcastic. She would call a girl to her desk and for ages go on shouting, ‘You gem, you beauty, you star,' etc. She could make us squirm. My needlework was the worst she had ever seen and because the teachers were worried when the inspectors came round, I was not allowed to work on the tucked and gathered chemises we were making out of unbleached calico. Mine was always filthy, according to Miss White, and I pricked my fingers so much there were always bloodstains in the gathers. I was then put in charge of cutting the cotton. The cotton was wound round the short side of a book and cut so that the pieces were very short. As fast as I had ‘threadled' one piece, I would require another piece. One day Miss Smith was called away and to gain popularity with the class I wound the cotton round the long side of the book and the girls were delighted with the longer threads. When Miss White arrived back she was so angry at what I had done, I was not allowed to cut the cotton any more and she set me sums to do instead. I detested arithmetic and chewed my pencil down to the lead. I ate the wood to save the mess.

We sat for the scholarship before Miss W. became head-mistress and for this purpose were required to bring our birth certificates to school. About half a dozen of us kept forgetting these and Miss W. announced that any girl, forgetting her birth certificate that dinner time and saying, ‘Please, Miss, I forgot it,' would be caned. I had escaped this punishment so far, and determined to carry on unmarked, I put the ‘sustifikit' in the pocket of my dress at dinner-time. Miss Cook, our dressmaker, came in with a new dress she had made out of an old one of Winnie's. It was so lovely Mother said I could wear it to school, and so I arrived back at school covered in glory and it was not until the bell went that I remembered the certificate in my other pocket. I wanted to die and racked my brains to try to avoid the word ‘forgot' which would bring down the cane on my hand. I dallied about so that I was last in the line of criminals.

There were five of us waiting for execution. Four times Miss W. asked each girl the question, and four times down came the cane. ‘Well, Chegwidden,' said Miss W., ‘and I suppose you are going to tell me you forgot too.' ‘No, Miss White,' I said brightly, ‘I failed to remember.' ‘You gem, you star, you beauty,' said Miss W., but she didn't cane me, and nobody thought it was unfair for we always took Miss W. literally. Perhaps she realised this fact, or perhaps Miss Cook's frock dazzled her. It was navy blue serge and across the yoke Miss Cook had embroidered it with narrow green and gold braid in a long squiggle. Miss W. sent me all round the school to show it to the other teachers.

She had never forgiven me for not ‘winning' the scholarship, for the Monday the results were announced she said, ‘Oh, and what happened to you, Chegwidden? Were you dreaming instead of concentrating?'

My sister, Winnie, had won the scholarship and gone to George Green's School amongst the paid scholars and received a grant for her uniform. Her name was in the school hall at Woolmore Street in gold letters on a shiny black board, and Miss W. seemed to think I had let Winnie and the school down in some way, but I knew why I had failed, because of my cowardice.

The scholarship was held on a Saturday morning at another school across the main road from the docks. Only the girls who had passed the prelim, were allowed to sit, and we all met on a freezing cold day in the strange playground of the enormous school. Mother said I must not worry about it for my fear would make me ill, I already felt sick, and she packed me some rich tea biscuits in sandwiches. I could think of nothing else but these buttered biscuits, longing for playtime so I could eat them, for the scholarship took all morning.

As the bell went for us to start, the girl in front fainted and was carried out. I was so engrossed in this, a teacher came up and ordered me to get on with my sums. The first sum told me I should not win the scholarship, for it was about men digging a trench in a certain time and I had to find out how many men and a half could dig it in another number of days. I'd never heard of half a man in my life. I felt in my pockets, yes, my biscuits were still intact. I didn't want to get them broken, anyway it was composition after playtime, I would write one that was marvellous. After playtime when the bell went the girl behind me was sick and the school caretaker came in with a bucket of sand. I looked at the list of subjects for the composition. Oh, lovely, there was one, ‘Describe your favourite park or public building.' That was easy. I had done a whole paragraph before I realised I was describing the Poplar Recreation Ground. I couldn't do that, I might mention the nasty soldier, and I tried to turn the essay into a description of Tunnel Gardens. Then I knew I was describing too many parks instead of my favourite, and suddenly I thought, well what did a scholarship matter and I became quite happy having reached that decision. But I could have told Miss W. the result before she told me.

I was captain of the netball team. ‘No one,' said Miss W., ‘can get on to the ball so quickly as Chegwidden. It is really amazing.' We played other schools and I shone in Miss W.'s eyes. At netball only, I fear, for once in the absence of other teachers she took the whole school and when my hand shot up eagerly to answer a question she said, ‘All right, Chegwidden, we all know that you know,' laughter from the girls, ‘except at the time of the scholarship.' More laughter. I never answered a question of hers again.

Miss Wilkie decided to enter some of our compositions for an all London County Council contest and gave us the whole week-end to find a subject. After a sleepless week-end I was no nearer to a solution. I couldn't think of anything to write about. We had experienced the worst thunderstorm in living memory on Sunday night and tired and dejected I left for school. Passing the church grounds I was shocked at the sight that met my eyes. The enormous oak tree which stood in the grounds was the home for thousands of sparrows; the tree almost moved, mighty though it was, with the noise of their singing at evening time. We all loved the tree. This morning it was sad and wet-looking, for the ground beneath it was covered with hundreds of dead birds, all with caul-like eyes. They had been drowned.

I was feeling more miserable than ever when behind me in the distance I heard a jolly sort of music, and turning, I saw some elephants approaching! Leading them was a young man on a pony. He was carrying a placard advertising a forthcoming circus. The music cheered me up and the sight of the lovely elephants was an unusual treat. Across the road, Mr Samuels was just finishing polishing his fruits. He kept a stall outside his shop and the fruit, which he arranged on green grass cloth, was always red and shiny. Mr Samuels was a very well dressed Jewish gentleman with shiny shoes and a gold chain across his waistcoat. Everything about him shone. He was looking surprised at the music and the elephants, when suddenly the elephants wheeled left instead of going on down the road. They began to break into a sort of run towards Mr Samuels' stall; Mr Samuels dived under the green grass curtain of the stall into his shop and slammed the door just as the elephants reached his stall, where they demolished the fruit in no time at all and just ignored Mr Samuels' screaming and banging on the window. My brothers went to school in the opposite direction but they had come along to watch the parade and one of them was holding on to the station wall as though his legs wouldn't hold him up, laughing helplessly.