Chpater 13 Teenager

 Chapter 13   Teenager

I passed the eleven plus and went to the grammar school, facing daily

the dangers of passing the secondary modern girls as their school was

on my way, but I set out early and returned late to miss most

confrontations. I hated my uniform, horrid uncomfortable white shirt and

a tie. All I liked was the blue and white woolly scarf and the velour hat.

Rules abounded at the new school and skirt lengths were measured

with a ruler., early on to make them not too long and later not too short.

Even the number of gathers at the waist was monitored. Mine had too

many and had been made by a dress maker as my mother lacked

sewing skills. I couldn’t even therefore thread a sewing machine and the

sewing teacher thought this was beyond the pale and wouldn’t explain

how to do it so I always had to wait and use one someone else had

threaded. It took me almost a year to sew up a gym bag and embroider

my name on it in red chainstitch.

 
The next year was spent on a hideous pinafore to use in cookery, where

we made an upsidedown cake and stuffed eggs, which are a very small

thing to stuff. The third year brought the indignity of Mrs Arter measuring

us for blouses, shouting out the shaming small number of inches round

the bust. I never wore the blouse.

I also hated games and gymnastics, couldn’t do forward rolls over a bar

and only ran quickly to get to the showers at the end before the games

teacher, who lived with the latin teacher, arrived to look us over. I learnt

all about periods and the facts of life from a girl who whispered it all in

my ear one games lesson when we couldn’t go out because of snow on

the pitch. Luckily her facts were correct.

Otherwise lessons were o.k., I was good at a lot of things and was

placed in the top of the three streams and usually came third in the

class.

I was however very afraid of being shown up in French as having no

bathroom.  I prayed for 3 years, successfully, not to be asked in oral

anything that would reveal that we lived in a house with no bathroom. I

didn’t think of lying.

I made friends with another clever girl and we became an inseparable

pair, Her father was a manic depressive known as ‘the big one’ by her 

her

mother and brother. Eventually he went off to Northern Ireland and

became an Orangeman. The family moved to lose touch with him and

ignored attempts to find them that he made through the Salvation Army.

In about the third form the art teacher started to admire my work, told

me I painted like Bonnard and really encouraged me. The English

teacher was also trying to recruit me to study English at University. The

art teacher, Mrs Roberts , was the least conventional member of staff in

the place. She didn’t wear make up and was very tall with bare feet and

sandals. She had a yellow board and blue chalk unlike everyone else

and she let me stay in at lunchtimes to paint, and I made a 6 foot wide

 abstract collage with paint added.

I worked very hard and was one of 6 girls who missed out the fifth form,

taking 5 O levels in the fourth form and going into the sixth form early. I

wasn’t made a prefect at first, which was upsetting as most girls were

Perhaps I was seen as too small, too shy or too arty.

My periods didn’t start until I was about 14 when I woke up in a pool of

blood. My mother said she’d been waiting for this and went and went

and got the necessary equipment which she had ready.


I studied singing with a teacher and did well in a competition before I 

started to feel that I didn’t want my voice to be trained operatically. I

prefered to sound like a young Joan Baez and I stoppped the lessons.

Competitions made me nervous anyway, though later I found Joan

Baez had been sick before going on stage for years I went on playing

the piano, passing exams with my mother teaching me.

I went to Bible class for a while and played the piano for the hearty

choruses and went to Holy Communion, but I was starting to feel doubt

about it all and felt very uneasy reciting the creed. My mother told me

she of course did mot believe in the virgin birth and this made a big

impression on me.

I didn’t go out much and met no boys and doubted I ever would. I felt too

thin and unattractive in this pre Twiggy era.

When I was 14 my Mum and Dad and I went to France for a holiday.

Dad was very bad tempered. At one point he roared from downstairs in

a cottage we stayed in that I’d never make a teacher. Another day he

walked off and left us in the car for ages until he came back. One day he

said he’d like to push both of us off the sea wall to drown. I never found

what this was about. I thought he must be unfaithful and about to leave.

Before this I had been very ill with a mystery virus that meant I had

severe nose bleeds and was taken into hospital for a lot of tests. I hated 

being there and promptly recovered. Now I think this illness came to

remove me from the bad atmosphere at home. Dad was very easily mde

furious, then he’d shout at me and I’d cry a lot. When I came home from

the hospital everyone was careful around me, gentler and nicer. Did it

have anything to do with questions my sister had asked them?

I didn’t go away from home at all, unlike my sister who had stayed at

Nana’s sometimess. I wanted at all costs to avoid the Horrible Uncle.

The school had annual days out in the sixth form, to Cambridge one

year, and then ours was the first year they let a trip to London go ahead.

We also went to see the York mystery plays and to see international

hockey at Wembley. The girls were told not to shout or wave scarves

during the match and not to exchange scarf tassles with other schools.

Those that did had the multicoloured taslles removed when we got back

and rumour had it that the deputy head burnt them by the long jump pit.

Our head mistress was a remote figure who spoke of the horror of

finding an applecore ‘jettisoned’ on a window sill and told us never to put

our scarves round our heads like mill girls.
 

I’d go into town on a Saturday and mooch around and go in the art

gallery, whereas my cousin Jane was told never to go in as strange men

might be in there, The result was that Jane was on her own outside 

waiting for me to return from being inside on my own. I examined the

rather frightening Joseph Wright of tomb robbers and the sad one of an

Indian, red indian, widow. There were other shows. I remember noting

down that I liked a painting called ‘brownskin sugarplum’ by Ian

Breakwell., much later discovered to be a fellow flaneur.

When the family went on holiday I began to drag them into galleries

especially in St.Ives.

One week end we went to see David Warner as Hamlet in Stratford and

my father was so completely captivated that he sprang to his feet and

shouted ‘Bravo’ at the end. I’d never seen him so excited.

Generally we saw plays locally and concerts and the ballet, but often

Dad did not come with us. It was before they stopped playing the

National Anthem at the end of the show and I wanted to refiuse to stand

as a protest against the monarchy. Once I saw a woman who didn’t

stand, but it turned out she couldn’t so I felt ashamed.

I joined Derby ‘young playgoers’ and did theatrical exercises at Saturday

classes and spoke to one or two boys briefly.

Helen and I continued our friendship and took ages walking home,

loitering on the corner and calling in to chat to a middle aged man in the

bric a brac shop. He was called Maurice and lived with his mother. This 

must have scared my mother but she never said anything.

We moved when I was 14 to a better house, with a bathroom. My father

bought it at an auction without telling us after what seemed to be years

of them house hunting every weekend.

My sister married an earnest young man and now I got a big room to

myself. I’d been the bridesmaid, wearing a rather old fashioned subtle

blue grosgrain dress. I kept calm and sewed her into the dress when the

zip failed. Then I  cut her out of it afterwards when she changed into a

little scrambled egg yellow suit with an edge to edge jacket.

I wore a green corduroy coat and a beret and look very sweet in some

photos taken in a booth in Woolworths before we went to France.

I was slim, had my hair cut like Sandy Shaw, played the guitar a lot in

my room and longed for life to start. I applied to University and went off

to Straford on my own initiative to see backstage in case I’d like to do

theatre design. I did well in my A levels.


 I made a mustard smock dress and a shiny blue shift and knitted a

purple skinny rib jumper a la Mary Quant and I was all ready to leave

home.