My Secret Diary (9 page)

However, I didn't
always
feel that way. I read
Kathleen Betterton's chapter on 'Writing for
Children' and felt disheartened. Kathleen states
dogmatically that 'the writer for children must not
attempt subtlety of character in which good and
evil are blended'. That was precisely what I found
disappointing in many children's books. The
children just didn't seem
real
. She suggests that
children like to read fantasy or adventure or school
stories. I hadn't especially enjoyed
any
of these
genres. I decided the fault lay with me. I'd simply
been a very weird child.

I wrote in my diary:

I have been reading Enid Blyton's autobiography
again, but this time far more cynically. She doles
out advice again and again to would-be writers –
yet surely her books are not all that great. If I ever
write I won't write for children. I can't understand
how Enid Blyton can write all day, yet leave out
everything about real life. Her families don't
quarrel, her parents don't nag, her teenagers aren't
interested in lipstick and boys, her children never
listen to dirty stories or wet themselves, and she
ignores babies and pregnancy and sex. Surely all
these things must have some part in her life. I just
don't see how she can go on about little Noddy and
the Famous Five, etc., etc.

I
hated
school. I didn't mind Latchmere, my
primary school, but I couldn't bear my five years
at Coombe County Secondary School for Girls. I've
been back to Coombe quite a few times to give talks
to the girls. I've even presented the prizes at the
end of term. I've talked about my school days and
I've been polite and tactful, because Coombe now
is a very different school. It's warm and relaxed
and all the girls (and now there are even
boys
in
the sixth form) seem cheerful. They get excellent
exam results and they're very sensitive to any girl
with special needs. They tick every box and get ten
out of ten, full marks for a fine school.

Coombe way back in 1960 was a very different
sort of school.
All
schools were different then.
There were pointless rules, fierce regulations
about uniform, a strict standard of behaviour. You
were expected to
conform
. I've never been very good
at that.

I loathed most of the lessons too. I disliked PE
most of all. Every Friday morning I'd wake up and
stick my head out from under my eiderdown,
straining my ears. What total joy if I heard rain
pattering against the window! Friday was double
hockey in our yellow shirts and green shorts –
'
G-r-e-e-n and yellow, G-r-e-e-n and yellow, oh Mum
be quick, I'm going to be sick, just lay me down to
die
,' we sang in the changing rooms.

I had no idea how to play hockey. Miss French,
the formidable new PE teacher, had told us the
rules, but I'd never listened properly. I simply
ran when she blew the whistle –
away
from the
ball and the likely whacks from everyone else's
hockey sticks. Then she'd blow the whistle again
and shout, 'Jacqueline Aitken! What are you
playing
at?'

I didn't want to play at anything. If it poured
with rain, making the playing fields too muddy, we
couldn't have double hockey. We had country
dancing instead, and I adored any kind of dancing.

Hockey was the worst torture, but netball was
almost as bad, shivering on the court in the middle
of winter, our bare legs beetroot red. I couldn't see
the ball until it practically knocked my head off.
One day it caught the side of my glasses and sent
them skew-whiff, so I went around looking lopsided
for weeks.

The scariest ball of all was the hard little
rounders ball. Miss French became fed up with me
lurking way out on the edge of the pitch as a deep
fielder. For one terrible term she insisted I man
first post at every game. This was a key position.
It was vital that you caught the ball to get the
batter out. Miss French was such a sadist. She
knew
I couldn't catch the ball to save my life.

'Come on, Jacqueline Aitken, wake up, watch
that ball, catch it, catch it,
catch it
!' she screamed.

I dropped it. I dropped it. I dropped it.

The batting girl hared round second post, third
post and was home with a rounder before I'd
stopped fumbling. Then Miss French would scream
some more, and the other girls on my team would
yell at me too. I'd stand there, trying to hold
my head high, acting like I couldn't care
tuppence whether I caught the stupid ball or not
– but I'd be trembling, sometimes dangerously
near tears.

Then there was gym. For some inexplicable
reason we weren't allowed to wear our green shorts
and plimsolls in the gymnasium. We had to run
round in our bare feet in just our ugly yellow
blouses and our grim grey knickers. We were all
shapes and sizes – fat, skinny, wobbly, hairy – so
this was bad enough. But in those long-ago days
none of us yet used tampons when we had our
period. We used sanitary towels hooked onto belts
– awful pads like nappies, so of course the shape
of them showed right through your knickers.

Sometimes if Miss French was in a very good
mood you might whisper to her that you had a very
heavy period and then she
might
let you wear your
shorts, but not always. You
could
get out of showers
if you said you had a period, and that was a relief.
Who wants to parade around stark naked so that
all your enemies can nudge each other and giggle
at your sticky-out tummy or your non-existent
chest? We huddled under our towels, and Miss
French would shout, 'Get those towels
off
, girls,
and get in the showers. Don't be so ridiculous!'

Did Miss French whip her cosy tracksuit off and
gambol naked in the showers in front of everyone?
No, she did not.

Biddy once suggested that if I was frightened of
a teacher I should imagine them naked. I was
frightened of our Latin teacher, Miss Cambridge.
She looked comical standing pink and plumply bare
in my mind's eye, but I was still frightened of her
in real life – and oh, how I hated Latin. I never got
to grips with it. If we'd been taught about ancient
Rome as an introduction I might have become
interested. If we'd had a simple conversation book
it might even have been fun. (When my daughter
learned Latin, the first two words she was taught
were 'Hello, sailor!' which made all her class
collapse laughing, though they all remembered
Salve nauta
for evermore.)

Miss Cambridge went straight into those
bewildering grammatical declensions and
conjugations, giving us long lists to learn almost
every night. Then we started translating a very
long text about Hannibal and his elephants
crossing the Alps, and that
should
have been
interesting too, but as I understood one word in
fifty (probably just Hannibal, elephant and Alp!) I
never mentally joined them on their journey. I
doodled in the margin, I daydreamed, I made up
the next part of my story, I thought about the boy
on the bus that morning – and then jumped
violently when Miss Cambridge yelled, 'Jacqueline
Aitken, are you sure you're paying attention?
Translate the last four lines!'

Although I hated Latin I rather liked Miss
Cambridge, even though I was scared of her. She
used to be funny in a highly sarcastic way, and if
she was in a mellow mood she didn't mind if we
tried to be funny too.

On Monday 18 January I wrote:

In Latin we had 28 vocabs to learn! Not homework,
mind you, but just to be done in our spare time!
Honestly, isn't it ridiculous? I'm just dying to leave
school. Miss C was complaining that we ought
to read more literature, and someone said 'How
can we when you give us all this homework?'
We, including Miss C, roared with laughter.

But you had to judge her mood very carefully.
She could squash you flat if she wanted. She had
the ability to march into the rowdiest classroom in
her sensible polished shoes and get instant
respectful silence. She didn't shout or clap her
hands, she just
looked
– and every girl shut her
mouth and sat up straight.

The only way we could get the better of Miss
Cambridge was to sigh and say, 'I wish I knew what
the Colosseum really looked like,' and then Miss
Cambridge would be
off
, telling us about her many
holidays in Rome. Her eyes went dreamy and her
cheeks would flush as she talked, sitting on the
edge of her teacher's table, her large legs planted
on the desk in front, talking away half the lesson
while we sat back happily in our seats. Maybe we
weren't getting the better of her at all: she was
probably as bored with the lesson as we were and
was happy to stride back down Memory Lane to
all those carefree Italian summers.

I hated maths too, but again I liked Miss
Rashbrook. She wasn't fierce like Miss Cambridge,
she was sweet and softly spoken with curly red hair.
She was very pretty, though she was disfigured with
a hunchback. This made her look lopsided and she
walked with a little limp. With unusual delicacy we
never once referred to this, even amongst ourselves,
and anyone imitating her would have been
ostracized.

However, we could be hateful to some of the
teachers. There was poor Mrs T, who couldn't keep
control at all: 'Every time Mrs T turned her back
for us to write on the blackboard we slung
dishcloths at each other. Soon five or six dishcloths
were in orbit!'

We thought we were so funny. I expect she
wanted to stuff the dishcloths down our stupid
throats.

I did enjoy
some
lessons though. I was always
happy in history lessons, especially with a new
teacher.

Thursday 7 January

We had Mr Stokes for History for the first time
today. He's quite nice but a bit Welsh, look you. He's
young, but already he's going a bit bald. I sit next
to Jill right in the front. She can be ever so funny.
For instance she put on a gruff voice and proceeded
to relate to me how she hated Parliament, and was
a strong Charles supporter, and how she wanted to
throw a brick through the window of 10 Downing
Street at the Mackintosh person. I couldn't help
laughing at the 'Mackintosh' and Mr Stokes looked
at us two and grinned.

I loved art. I struggled to make my line drawings
as delicate and beautiful as Mr Jeziewski's. He had
the knack of pressing firmly at the point of a leaf,
the turn of an elbow, the corner of a table,
that made everything look three-dimensional. I
struggled with shading. Sometimes my drawings
worked, sometimes they didn't.

We were occasionally taken on sketching parties,
which were great fun, but not necessarily
productive: 'This afternoon we went sketching to
Hampton Court. I drew the ducks most of the time
on the pond – I think they're sweet.'

I could have been sketching those fantastic
twisty Tudor chimneys, the sculptured yew trees,
the gnarled Great Vine, the white classical
statues, the fountains, the knot garden . . . and I
drew the
ducks
!

I drew a lot at home too, making up my own
imaginary people, drawing them in a long line,
sometimes muttering to them as I coloured them
in. No wonder Biddy sighed over me.

I loved English lessons the most of course,
though I could be scathing at times:

Then we had English in which we read a babyish
play. I wish we could do a really modern play like
'A Taste of Honey', 'The Grass Is Greener', etc., etc.
Even Shakespeare would be better. Last term all our
group went to see 'As You Like It'. I enjoyed it very
much. I also enjoyed the train ride going home when
we poked a comb into the adjoining carriage in
which there was a highly amused boy.

Now what would I call
that
behaviour?
Babyish!
And how irritating of me not to write
more about the play and who was playing
Rosalind. It was heroic of Miss Pierce and her
colleagues to shepherd us silly giggly girls up to
London to the Old Vic. We sat right up in the
gods in four-shilling seats, which were really
just like big wooden steps. Your back ached
unbearably and your bottom got pins and needles,
and if you were short-sighted like me the little
figures down on the stage were just a blur. But in
spite of all this we found those performances
thrilling. I was lucky enough to see the young
Judi Dench playing Juliet, and that time going
home on the train we didn't play silly games with
combs and boys, we discussed her brilliant,
passionate performance and tried to talk in the
same soft sexy voice.

Miss Pierce didn't just take us to plays – she had
us perform them too. She ran a drama club on
Monday nights. Anyone could join. She chose plays
with very large casts to make sure everyone could
have a part. They weren't all speaking parts of course.

I secretly hoped I'd get chosen for a main part.
I loved English and I was good at reading aloud,
but I don't think Miss Pierce thought I was
extrovert enough to rise to the occasion. I was
always Village Girl or Courtier or Extra Child. It
wasn't too taxing standing about on stage, laughing
or gasping as required. We generally had a little
dance too, and at least we could wear stage makeup
and a proper costume.

Monday 11 January

After school I went to Drama Club. At Easter we
are going to do a Chinese play, and I saw my
costume material today. It is a nice silky pink, far
better than my last costume which I had to make
out of old brown curtains. But actually the brown
didn't look too bad as I wore a lime-green sash and
ribbon so it brightened it up.

We rehearsed every Monday evening, but as
Easter drew nearer we needed to make more time.

Wednesday 16 March

After school I had to stay for 45 minutes for a Drama
rehearsal. Honestly, Miss Pierce is the limit, she
had told us that we would only need to stay for 10
minutes. The play is coming on slowly but surely.
We have a lovely silver cage and a stuffed
nightingale as props. For the nightingale's voice
Geraldine Taylor blows (behind stage) a sort of
whistle filled with water. It sounds beautiful.

The two performances of
The Imperial
Nightingale
took place on 5 and 6 April.

Tuesday 5 April

THE PLAY!

All the drama club were let off the last lesson so
they could get home, have their tea, and get back to
school in time. I got off at Norbiton with Cherry
and went home. Mum (she's got a stinking cold)
got me some scrambled egg on toast, some tomatoes
and some currant slices, and then after a good wash
I was ready. I cut through the back of our flats and
down Crescent Road and called for Cherry. Her
house is very untidy but has a nice lived-in feeling,
and I like the way that even if she's in on her own
there's always the television blaring, the budgie
cheeping, and the cat providing company as well
as noisy miaows. She got ready quickly although
she was very nervous as she had quite a big part,
and then we set off, two little girls neat and tidy in
grey uniform. On the way we met Mrs Eldridge and
saw Roger Foulds twice. On the bus we met Mary
Todd and Susan Wooldridge. We enabled them to
smuggle Miss Pierce's fifteen-shilling bouquet into
school without her seeing it. Then we went upstairs
and got dressed in our costumes. I wore my pink
oriental dress and my pink Alice band with a pink
flower on each side. (I was told I looked pretty.)
Then we were made up. It was fascinating watching
ordinary schoolgirl faces turn into startling Chinese
courtiers or suspicious old men, etc. Actually the
play didn't go as well as we thought it would, and
quite a few girls forgot their lines. But it didn't
matter so much today, so long as we are okay
tomorrow when the Mayor etc. and the 'Surrey
Comet' come.