Dear Fatty (13 page)

I imagined St Dunstan’s was going to be like ‘The Four Marys’ and that it would be one long round of midnight feasts and jolly hockey sticks with plenty of clandestine liaisons down the dingle thrown in. It wasn’t, of course. It was a small, traditional girls’ public school set in the grounds of a beautiful Gothic abbey, where staff and pupils rubbed along trying to do the education stuff the best way they could. Do you remember Hazel Abley, my headmistress, who I think you must have witnessed at speech days trying to rally the troops? She could be a fearsome sight, clacking up and down the long cobbled Hogwarts cloisters in her good shoes with her black gown flying up behind, like a giant bat with the sheer force of her speed and purpose. She was small and tough and extremely efficient. She taught us English with a special, inspirational interest in Chaucer and in the evenings she retired to her flat up many stairs in a tower at the far end of the chapel, from whence it felt like she could see into every single window of the school and directly into every single one of our souls. Miss Abley was everything a good school head was supposed to be – fair but austere, and very, very clever.

In the evenings after supper, some of us boarders used to volunteer to help out in the kitchen. It wasn’t quite as altruistic as it may sound, since this favour elicited two important returns: 1. big hugs from Lavinia the cook, who was huge and generous and loving and was a kind of temporary mum substitute in occasional, usually crepuscular moments of homesickness (I’m sure you remember those) and 2. Lavinia sometimes doled out goodies like biscuits and hot sweetened milk to accompany our task. Result.

Quite often Hazel Abley would pop in to the kitchen at this quieter vesperal time, and chat with Lavinia too. She might even
have
slippers on and be rinsing out a plate in the big industrial sinks. It was then that I saw her in a totally different, softer light. She too had come in to the kitchen to snatch a slice of homey warmth, to have a laugh and a cuddle and a biscuit from Lavinia. Perhaps sitting alone in a tower busying herself with omnipotence wasn’t quite as satisfying as we had imagined. I had to confront the bald fact, in these curiously intimate moments when I saw her in ‘civvies’, that she was, after all, human, and what’s more, I
really
liked her. I had to keep that to myself of course, I couldn’t possibly break rank and defect to the teacher side, I shouldn’t really even be speaking with the enemy, never mind sharing a tea towel.

Funny how we were all drawn to the kitchen, to some vestige of home life, of normality, at the back end of the day, to calm us all before sleeping. Are we all always looking for home? Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t the achingly sad and lonely type of boarder – I met plenty of those and their sorrow consumed them. I didn’t feel like that, partly, I think, because it was made so clear to us, wasn’t it, how difficult and strange it was for Mum and Dad to send us there in the first place. We don’t come from a posh long line of generations of public-school sprogs, of whom it is expected they will be shushed away like bothersome flies. Kids who have no say in the matter, kids whose fathers and forefathers had the same experience at most likely the same schools. No, our mum and dad did
not
get this kind of education and they were determined that you and I would benefit from everything they were convinced they’d missed out on. The RAF would provide most of the fees, so that made possible an opportunity they’d only ever dreamt of for us. However, they still had to find the
funds
for uniform, books, trips, trunks, name tags and all the other endless minutiae of a boarder’s requirements. In order to find this cash they gave up fags and holidays and treats. They made sacrifices so that we might have the privilege of what they considered to be an excellent education. You and I know of course that both of our schools were very minor public schools, and not really in that elite league of academically excellent establishments which afford an unspoken and mutually coded understanding among only themselves. An exclusive collusion which I only recognised later in life when I was constantly reminded that I
wasn’t
part of it, whatever
it
was. The gradually dawning realisation that there is an underground class network buzzing away in parallel to your life, of which you know only one thing – you ain’t invited.

I think, for both of us, the boarding-school experience was a challenge and a test of what was already a tenuous grasp on our sense of identity. We were kids from a working-class West Country background whose father’s job meant we travelled so we didn’t grow up where we belonged. Add to that a father who refused the chance of a commission out of the ranks because – why? – presumably he feared the judgement of those above him who he clearly knew to be from a different, higher class than his. He preferred to stay down, to be at the top of his game, in his ‘rightful’ place. He had no desire to prove himself to people he was
supposed
to, but often didn’t, respect. On top of that, Mum hailed from an even lower class than Dad, and boy didn’t she feel it when she first got together with him. She experienced plenty of snidery and even actual resistance to their marriage. I think it’s true that Grandma and Grandad French didn’t speak to her for a
year
or so when she married Dad and only relented when you, their first grandchild, came along and they couldn’t resist the chance to know you. So, we had parents who felt the weight of class and limitation on their shoulders and were determined to push up, push through that prejudice. For them, education was the answer. Boarding gave us stability; we wouldn’t have to keep moving from school to school every time Dad was posted elsewhere. It gave us an alliance and a connection to the family to board in Plymouth and to spend time in the heart of the kin as I did every weekend. It also gave us a stepping stone into a class they had not entered, the middle class, that objectionable but desirable mysterious new place they believed you had to visit in order to earn your wings so’s you could take off to wherever you wanted with your brand-spanking-new self-worth, unfettered by the ties they so clearly felt. They wanted us to become confident, brave people who would not be daunted by class or intellect or authority. In fact, they wanted us to achieve all three! As I see it, their intentions were honourable and sensible, they had no shame about their own personal histories, none at all, but they could see that there might be more opportunities for us if we opted for this route.

Of course, we experienced the other side of it too: it wasn’t easy being the first from our family ever to go through the public-school system. We were mixing with kids who were very different to us economically and socially. I stayed some weekends with girls who had
ponies
in
meadows
and
sinks
in the corner of their bedrooms. Whose houses had driveways and beige carpets where you had to take your shoes off, where the heating was on all the time in the whole house! Girls who were presented with a new
car
on their seventeenth birthday. Girls who went skiing. All unfamiliar, all exciting, all
so
middle class, all so new. While I was busy building myself up into a frenetic excitable hysteria about this amazing new ‘me’, the family were very quick to deflate any delusions of grandeur and to bring me crashing back to earth. Grandad French was especially keen that I wouldn’t forget who I was or where I was from. He teased me mercilessly about my awful swanky uniform and my newly posh turns of phrase. They would not hold with the slightest sniff of pretension or insincerity, thank goodness, because I certainly gave it a go. I tried on for size the mantle of public schoolgirl at ease with privilege and superiority, but I quickly realised it didn’t suit me, and anyway, I didn’t carry it off with enough flourish. Frankly, it was too fecking small! I regarded the whole confusing experience as fascinating drama – look how these people live, look how they think, look what they say, look what they wear, look what they love.

There were some girls who were much more familiar, some whose dads were in the forces like Nicky Varley, some who were on scholarships so were thrust in at the potato end of the pasty, some whose dads were butchers like Nikki Rowe, and some whose dads were the housemaster of your own brother’s school like Jane Veale, or salty Salcombe girls who were just wild and adventurous and naughty like Kirsty Lamont. I loved being with those girls and I never detected an iota of grandeur about any of them, but they were in the minority. The problem with a small public school is that it is crammed with wannabe-in-a-bigger-better-public-school kids and parents. For me, this school was the height of everything our parents wanted for us, so I found the
lofty
disapproval of snobs insufferable. I couldn’t fathom why it should trouble them so much that we were tiny and average.
This
was our school, our team, our tribe, our world, and my parents had made seismic sacrifices for me to be there and I loved it and felt proud to be part of it and I wasn’t having any pompous princess telling me or my folks otherwise. I wore my Downton House badge with unquestionable pride and used my hockey stick as a cudgel to defend the honour of my team against any snivelling enemy wing attack. Hockey, with all its runny snot and ponytailed puffy red-facedness and mottled white/red leggedness, was the sport of choice if you wanted to feel valiance coursing through your veins. We rarely won a match but we forged everlasting tribal bonds, and bore the scars of our many defeats with pride. I still have them. Inside and out.

I remember coming to watch you doing the same thing playing rugby. Donating your knees and ears and teeth for brief moments of glory, and a profound sense of belonging. Funny, isn’t it, how now that we are so much older, after both having lived in many different places, countries even, we have returned here, to the West Country, where we feel the strongest call. I don’t think it’s just the sea and the light and the green and the cream. I think there are echoes for both of us of those cold sports fields and those cold dormitories, of Mum’s tears and Dad’s brave face on the first day of term when she couldn’t face dropping us off, and even he had a shaky lip. Of what it cost us as a family. Of discovering our sibling glue and liking it, liking the security of having a brother inextricably linked to me. Of our filial relationship with that area. Of the cries and cheers from the Green Army at Home Park when Argyle are playing, of the Hoe, Ivor
Dewdney
, Dingles and Looe. Echoes of grandparents digging the ground for your roots to be secure. Knowing you’ll return, and we have, haven’t we? Not for the ghosts, but for the certainty of it all. For the familiar and the reminder.

YOU AND I
have often talked about our respective school lives, the friends, the teachers, the whole caboodle. In fact, over the years, we have plundered that rich seam for material for our show. It would seem that we went to different schools inhabited by the same people! Confounding many people’s perceptions of us, you went to the local grammar school and I went to public school, but when we have discussed our individual experiences, the difference is minimal, I think. So minimal that in one rather uncanny coincidence we even shared the exact same friend, but at different times. Her name was Camilla Leng. I think her dad was something impressive in the army and she lived for a short while in Plymouth and was in my class at school. She was a fantastic, larger-than-life character, a force of true naughtiness. It was Camilla who dared to attach notes declaring ‘I’m so sexy’ and ‘Kiss me now’ to the backs of the muted lavender cardigans of the most elderly teachers. It was Camilla who made loud rasping farting noises with her mouth while appearing totally innocent and straight-faced, thereby confusing teachers unable to apportion blame. It was Camilla who persuaded me to go into a long dark dripping cave by the river near Rock in Cornwall, where we were searching for dabs in the sand. She made scary noises – screeches and wails – using her natural ventriloquist skills, each time claiming she was not to blame. It took me hours to stop my heart beating too fast, making me giddy. I loved being around
her
, basking in the heat of her boldness and her humour. Then, years later, I think it was during an interview, you and I discovered that we had
both
known her, and that before she came to Plymouth, she had lived near you and been your chum also. I bet you loved the same things about her that I did. Perhaps on some deeper level, we saw the Camilla Leng in each other years later when we finally met …?

Both you and I also took care to judge the safest and most enjoyable route through the canyon of danger and death that is an all girls’ school. Keep your enemies close and beware bandits and fair-weather friends. Dodge the quicksand and use the oldest, tallest, widest trees for shelter and camouflage. Occasionally it is important to prove your colours as a leader and instigator in order to earn respect, but, equally, it’s vital to entertain and amuse your fellow troopers. Hence the clowning and the mimicry. Let’s all have a good laugh because it’s nigh impossible to laugh and hate simultaneously. I knew I could easily fulfil the job vacancy – ‘jester needed for part-time peacekeeping duties in perilous jungle of minor independent girls’ school’ – so permitting a little break from bitchery and witchery.

St Dunstan’s Abbey school in Plymouth was no longer a convent when I arrived in 1970, but it had all the trappings of one: cloisters and chapel and towers and neatly planted nun-ish gardens. One of our main play areas was an old graveyard with the uprooted tombstones stacked against the wall. It was grey and Gothic and ghostly. The floors creaked and the wind whistled through the covered cloisters to whip our calves. In stark contrast to the cheerless ash grey of the building, some ancient sadist unburdened with any sense of fashion or flair had decided that
dark
blue, light blue and yellow stripes would be a good idea for a school uniform. We wore ties and blazers in this awful gaudy pattern and looked like escapees from a glee club for dwarfs. The hats were the final insult. Dark blue bowlers with a ribbon in the school stripe around the brim in winter, and boaters with the same ribbon in the summer. We might as well have been branded with ‘twatty little toff’ on our foreheads. We certainly attracted plenty of unwanted attention when we were out and about. Perhaps that was the idea, a collusion between parents and school to ensure that as the most garish, noticeable creatures in town, we would be less likely to go missing or slope off for illicit purposes. To that end, it worked, I think. However, I don’t suppose whoever invented that uniform could have predicted what a thoroughly effective magnet it would prove to be for general abuse. There were some strange folk in town who regarded us as a kind of human coconut shy; they hurled verbal insults at us and, on some more frightening occasions, actual missiles – anything off the pavement would be fit for purpose to chuck at a precocious abbey girl.