This Much Is True

I liked going to school; I have always needed other people around me. We walked in a crocodile; I’d never heard that word, either. Greycotes has receded from my mind, but there is still a Cunliffe Close off Banbury Road. I think Mrs Cunliffe would be delighted about that.

Later that year, Mummy removed me from Greycotes, as she had heard there was a vacancy in the preparatory department of Oxford High School. The war had just ended and times were hard, but somehow my parents found the money to pay my school fees, first in the preparatory department, which was in St Margaret’s Road; and then in the junior school in another building; and then later I moved into the ‘big school’ on Banbury Road.

The preparatory department of Oxford High School comprised three forms: lower kindergarten (Miss Franklin), upper kindergarten (Miss Farrands), and transition (Miss Fuller). Miss Franklin was a dear woman. She had white hair and a broken nose; she always wore a thick, blue tweed suit and seemed capable. Afterwards, we discovered her lover was Miss West, the senior school games mistress. They retired at the same time and stayed together until they died.

We had a Swiss student supply teacher, with plaits wrapped around her head like Heidi. Her grasp of English was insecure: I giggled at her pronunciation of oven — ‘OFF-VEN,’ she said over and over again. I was helpless with laughter. I’ve always loved accents. There were only two boys in the prep department: Mark Turner, who was ginger with big teeth, and very tall Robin Houghton. I saw Mark having a pee when I opened a loo door once, thinking it was empty, and was AMAZED to see him standing up with his back to me. ‘Boys are odd,’ I thought.

The Prep. Dep (as it was known) was a happy place; they were excellent teachers and took care of us. There was milk in little bottles — we could have it hot or cold. The only drawback was that every day after lunch, we had ‘rest’. We lay on the floor under blankets and were supposed to sleep. I hated it. I couldn’t sleep — I’ve always been a bad sleeper and we were boisterous and noisy, pinching each other and sniggering.

In the transition year, we had a concert. I recited, ‘Some one came knocking/At my wee, small door. ’^[4] Apparently, I was rather good, showing off at an early age.

In autumn 1948, my form moved to the junior school in Bardwell Road, near the famous Dragon School. Miss Temple was the first-form mistress. Her worn, lined face topped with iron-grey hair could have been formidable, but she was the sweetest soul; clearly, she loved teaching and my memories of her are entirely positive. However, Miss Chase, who took the lower second, was the one I loved. I don’t know why I loved her so much. I can’t remember anything about her, or any reason why I should have felt so desperately, passionately involved, other than she had golden hair, a white face and red cheeks, like an apple. It was Miss Chase who was responsible for my first orgasm, when I was eight. I was walking past her house in Banbury Road with my mother and as I approached it, I felt this overpowering heat in my loins that was deeply pleasant and rather exhausting. She wasn’t even in sight! There was no friction — it was simply the power of longing and desire. I don’t think you ever know why you feel such passion for people. It is inexplicable. It’s been like that ever since.

Miss Plummer taught Scripture. I stayed for the Old Testament lessons only, at my parents’ request. Everyone in her class remembers Miss Plummer going up and down the rows of desks intoning: ‘The Assyrian is the Lord’s rod, the Assyrian is the Lord’s rod’ over and over again. Drama was part of her teaching method, and she would re-enact the Covenant between God and Man, clasping her hands tightly together; then to show how the Covenant was severed, she pulled her clasped hands violently apart. I still remember that the sign of the First Covenant is circumcision (but Miss Plummer avoided any re-enactment of that).

The teacher I hated, truly loathed — and I suspect it was mutual — was Miss Palser. Ugly, with a mouth too full of teeth and slightly overweight, she was a cruel sniper of a woman. My parents suspected she was an antisemite, although she treated my non-Jewish form-mate, Valerie Rowe, with the same cutting sarcasm. Valerie left after a term of Miss Palser. She took every opportunity to make me feel small and inadequate, doled out frequent bad reports and detentions, and often reduced me to tears. When I was asked to donate to a retirement present for her, long after I’d left the school, I refused.