Growing Into Medicine (5 page)

Many years later she told me how appalled she had been to find the consulting room had no couch and the only place she could wash her hands was in the yard under a cold tap. Some filthy instruments were hidden in a dust-laden cupboard and she had found a washable, reusable condom hanging behind the door. The comparison with the surgery premises my parents had built in their own house was stark. My father had a curtained couch with washable towels, changed for each patient (there were no rolls of paper in those days). A dispensary was equipped not only with large glass stoppered bottles with their array of coloured medicines, but also with another couch, sterilising equipment, special antiseptic soap over the sink and constant hot water. I have learned from a recent paper that such inequality of services continued into the 1960s.

In addition to all the extra medical work, my parents took part in a fire-watching rota at an observation post nearby. Their experience of working in hospital, where nights on call were followed by a full day’s work, provided good training for their exhausting lives at that time. Without Daisy their situation would have been impossible. She was by this time their longest-serving maid and she was promoted to the essential job of cook/housekeeper. Apart from my mother’s one
brief visit each morning to the kitchen, when they stared into the fridge together deciding what we should all eat that day, Daisy ran the household.

Following the departure of our governess, my parents decided to send me to boarding school and Biz to a local day school. I went to Oldfeld, a school owned and run by my father’s mother. She was a forward-looking educationalist who had started the school when my grandfather failed in business, and had made it a great success. The buildings had been purpose built with the girls sleeping on one side, the boys on the other and communal rooms in the middle.

At ten years old I had never attended any sort of school, my only experience of mixing with children outside the family being those few who ‘came for tea’, and the occasional girl who joined us for lessons from time to time. Being related to the staff at Oldfeld, I was a natural target. After a few weeks it was decided that I was the one to be ‘beaten up’.

The attention was unremitting. No single child dared to stand against the crowd and take my side. In the classroom the ends of my plaits were dipped in full inkwells; in the playground they were tied round my neck in a noose; in the dining room boys snatched food from my plate or spilt gravy and peas down my front, then jeered at me for being a messy eater. In the corridors I was jostled and pushed against the walls.

The worst place of torture was the dormitory where each girl had a chamber pot under the bed. Again, my plaits were the first things to be forcefully dipped in as soon as any steaming urine was available. My cuddly toy, a dog that acted as a pyjama case, was immersed each night until he smelt so bad that I had to take him into the grounds and throw him behind a hedge. When I was sent a special pack of cards they were dropped ceremoniously, one by one into the liquid and I was made to fish them out so that they could be dropped in again. Once I collected a smooth stone from the field so that I had something to hold during the night – something that could not be permanently soiled – that I could wash and dry each morning.

Arthur had been at the school before and is unaware of any such organised bullying at that time. I wonder now why I couldn’t tell my parents. It might have been the certainty that I would not be believed, especially as they thought so highly of the school and my grandmother who had created it. My fantasy is that I would have been told I was a wimp and needed to toughen up. Perhaps the manners of the day did not encourage children to share their feelings, even where the parents were progressive. When I mentioned it to my mother fifty years later she was horrified. I never told her any details and only let myself remember them with my analyst. He suggested that the violence and terror being enacted across the channel was invading the microcosmic society of the school.

The school was in Swanage, on the south coast, and in those early months of 1940 an invasion was expected any day. The staff would watch for ships and planes from the roof. It is not surprising that they had no time to notice that tension and fears were being projected onto me in acts of cruelty.

At the beginning of the following term I managed to run a temperature for several weeks. At first this was genuine but I became adept at keeping it up artificially. First I rubbed the thermometer furiously with my tongue but that didn’t work. Then I put it under the hot tap in the bathroom but the glass broke and I had to scrabble on the floor to collect the evasive blobs of mercury. The best way was to take a mouthful of hot water when I heard my father’s step on the stairs and swallow it as he opened the door. Although he worried about the swinging readings for which he could find no cause, he never discovered what I was doing. After several weeks my parents decided to ignore the thermometer and return me to school.

‘Do I have to go?’ I asked as my father manoeuvred my trunk down the stairs.

‘It can’t be as bad as all that, can it?’

There was no way I could explain.

As I slunk into an empty desk at the back of the classroom I held myself rigid.

One of the boys looked up and saw me. ‘You’re back.’ He paused and looked from the top of my head to my newly polished house shoes. Slowly, his eyes came back to my face.

I gritted my teeth and waited for the torment to begin all over again.

‘We’ve decided not to beat you up this term.’

I put my elbows on the desk and let my head sink into my hands.

The girl next to me turned. ‘It’s because of the war you know. The state of the country.’

With that laconic announcement, delivered as if she was suggesting the rain might hold off that day, she returned to her exercise book and my world somersaulted back to normality.

The school closed before the end of the summer term. Several members of staff were to take the remaining children to Canada and both Biz and I were due to be evacuated with them. Two school trunks lay half packed on the floor of our bedroom. We could jump from the trunks, backwards and forwards, roll off, hide behind them. I would line my dolls up on top. Day after day we waited for the news of our departure date.

Each week Daisy made a Victoria sponge cake. She would allow me to clean out the bowl with my finger. A character in one of my unpublished novels, based in part on my memories of her, leaves a blob of the mixture on the wireless switch as she turns off the report of the sinking of the
City of Benares
. The ship had left Southampton with a cargo of children taking the route to Canada intended for us. The date was 17 September 1940 and we were due to sail any day.

That evening, as we were lying in bed, Biz and I heard our father’s soothing voice and sobs that must have been coming from our mother, a sound we had never heard before. We crept out of bed, down to the sitting room and into her arms on the sofa.

‘Don’t worry darlings, I won’t let you go.’ She never called us darling. ‘Whatever happens we’ll stay together,’ she said. ‘We shall keep the family together, and die – if necessary – together.’

Once my parents had decided to keep us in this country, my mother arranged for me to go to her old school, St Felix, which had
been evacuated from Southwold in Suffolk to a large mansion house in Somerset. Hinton House, Hinton St George was the seat of the Poulett family. The Earl at that time was distraught that his home had been commandeered for a horde of schoolgirls. Stories of his fury were retold from one girl to another with glee. A load of coal had been dumped in his beautiful courtyard and he was said to be demanding that each cobble be taken up, scrubbed and replaced in the same place. Needless to say, this did not happen and the rumour probably had no basis in fact.

I loved that house. For many years afterwards I could have led you through the attics or into the byways of the long avenues with my eyes closed. I did not need to go ‘out of bounds’ to find my own private places where I could stretch my eyes or contemplate the details of a leaf. My favourite spot was at the top of a bank behind thick rhododendron bushes with a view out over fields of flax and sugar beet. I remember thinking that if I ever lost the lift of spirit and sense of wonder produced by a distant horizon, or yellow lichen on a log, I would kill myself.

I never shone academically, my marks hovering just above or below the centre of the class. I learned little and consider myself ill educated. I have blamed poor teaching, believing that all the good teachers had left to do more important work for the war. In retrospect, my ignorance probably had as much to do with my temperament as with the quality of the lessons. There was little space for facts in the territory of my inner world, occupied as it was by emotion.

Most of the time I was in the throes of being ‘gone on’ some older girl. I would trail round after her, waiting in corners and behind doors to bump into her ‘accidentally’. My greatest love of that time eventually got annoyed and told me, quite gently, to stop following her around. My world collapsed and I wrote home saying I was so unhappy I would run away.

Petrol was scarce, so my mother, despite intense fatigue, struggled onto a train. She had to stand in the corridor, squashed between servicemen and their kit bags, from Chippenham to Crewkerne. Then she took a taxi, a luxury to be indulged only in the most
extreme emergency, arriving at the Poulett Arms in Lopen Head in time for me to join her for supper. This pub was used by parents on their rare visits and boasted a bowling alley which we enjoyed on happier occasions.

We talked of small things while I worked through a plate of meat and vegetables followed by treacle pudding, expecting her to ask questions at any moment. Instead she told me about the animals at home, the flowers she would plant for next year, the potatoes they planned to grow on the land designated for a tennis court after the war. Gradually, a sense of foolishness replaced my misery. After the meal we sat alone in a small sitting room in front of a wood fire. Only then did she ask, ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

I could not find any sufficient reason for putting her to so much trouble. I had not broken up with my best friend, or been hit by a member of staff or even found worms wriggling in the toilet after I had used it. My only problem was that some girl had told me to stop following her around.

‘No. I don’t think so. I’m all right how.’

My mother was silent. Then nodded her head and changed the subject. She never mentioned it again.

I appreciated her forbearance. I was deeply ashamed that my stupid heart had caused her so much trouble: at the same time, her concern sustained me – and does so still.

Petrol rationing was introduced in 1942. At first there was a small basic allowance for social purposes but later this was removed and only essential workers were able to use their cars. Doctors were of course essential, but the police were strict if they thought the doctor was cheating. The only way my parents could get away from the house was by visiting their caravan, which they had parked in a field belonging to a successful farmer and patient. My father could drive the three miles and leave the car in his yard on the pretext of making a medical visit to the family. The van was parked down by the river Avon, an idyllic spot where they could seize a few hours’ peace away from the constant ringing of the telephone and its demands.

Arthur had a small tent of his own while Biz and I lay down on mattresses in the canvas lean-to attached to the side of the van where our parents slept. One night during the Easter holidays we were all in bed when we heard thunder, though it was a clear night with stars and searchlights scanning the sky. We ran out in our pyjamas and bare feet to stand and watch the flashes of light, which preceded the worst of the explosions. My parents and Arthur realised that bombs were dropping, probably on Bath. I thought the lights were pretty but something in the tense way the adults turned from side to side made me cling to my father. At one particularly loud crash my mother also threw her arms around him, perhaps wondering if our own house had been hit. In the morning we learned that one stick of bombs had dropped on Chippenham, killing two of my father’s patients.

As soon as it was light we packed everything away and went home. Back in my own bed I slept through a second night of noise. By the Monday morning it became clear to my parents that the rumours were true and Bath had been the target.

In her diary, which has now been published under the title
Carry on Coping
, my mother gives a vivid description of driving round Bath with thermoses of coffee and two spirit stoves in the back – looking for distressed doctors. She was trying to get to the Eye Infirmary on Lansdown Hill where she still worked. There was glass and debris all over the road. She passed many fire engines with hoses. Her journey goes on, constantly diverted and
still in streams of traffic unable to stop – no one asking for a lift and everyone following their own business grimly
. Many fires raged, including one church.

After two hours she reached her goal. The infirmary had no windows and there was blood on the steps, for it had been turned into a first aid station. She went in and found the matron rendering first aid and the waiting hall full of beds.
Dirt, dust, broken glass and mess indescribable. Cooking on open fires
. After a while, when my mother could not find anything medical to do, she went home.

As I read her account of that day I remember her standing in the hall on her return. She was grey and monosyllabic with dust and
fatigue. Daisy came out of the kitchen to tell her that the Colley family, two parents and three children, were leaving Bath and their damaged house and due to arrive at any moment. My mother was of course welcoming but she writes that Arthur and I were cross at having to give up our single rooms, though we tried to be good about it. For me, the day feels like a vacuum, filled with waiting and not understanding.