This Much Is True

Despite this, my parents often had to visit the school and apologise for me. I was a very naughty schoolgirl — more of which later — and I was always being dismissed from class and sent to stand outside Miss Stack’s office. Vera Stack was tall and buck-toothed, with a huge but controlled bust. We would say, ‘Ms Stack was stacked.’ Her efficient brassiere held her gigantic bosom in check — once encased, it didn’t budge. She wore severe, tailored suits rather than dresses. I doubt she ever had a boyfriend in her life; she was born to be a teacher and she knew it. Miss Stack had been the head of studies at Holloway Prison and she brought some of that penal institution’s techniques back to Oxford High School. She was stern, and had genuine authority — you felt that you were in the presence of a general. She didn’t chat to us, but she knew the name of every child in the school. Her sister, Peggy Stack, had been one of the founders of the League of Health and Beauty — one of the first mass keep-fit systems to be devised and used in the UK. (Mummy was a member and I think it was from there that she got the idea of nude housework. ‘This «skin-airing» should be practised daily with nothing on — in private,’ wrote Mollie Bagot Stack, the leading light of the League.)

Peggy Stack used to give concerts at the school, singing songs like ‘There’s a Hole in My Bucket’ and ‘A Frog He Would a-Wooing Go’ (‘with a rowley, powley, gammon and spinach’), her fingers clasped in front of her, both thumbs and index fingers lightly touching. But Miss Stack’s true passion was for Robert Browning; on her retirement she wrote an excellent book on the letters of Robert and Elizabeth Browning. I was quite frightened of her, but not frightened enough to be well-behaved — Miss Stack had grey hair by the time I left. When Mummy died, she wrote me a most beautiful letter in her immaculate, immediately recognisable handwriting.

Many years later I was highly entertained to read my own mock obituary in our OHS form magazine of the time.^[5]

And now we must say our goodbyes to M*R**M who has inflicted the school with her presence since she was a happy member of the lower kindergarten. She has offered the school many proofs of her abounding energy and versatility. Her name has always been the first one entered in the Report Book since she was eligible for reports; her familiar face, framed in that flowing aura of raven locks greeted the Detention Mistress on countless Thursday afternoons and I myself have often had the pleasure of calling her to my room. She was School Boxing Champion from 1953–1955 during which time three of her challengers were sent to the Churchill [hospital]. Her merry voice booming along the corridors has cheered many a despairing examinee and enlivened many a flagging Hockey team, often at the same time. We send our best wishes and love to M*R**M in her new career as Probation Officer and hope she will often come and see us again in her official capacity.

I can’t imagine why the authors asked to remain anonymous.

I wanted to stand out, to be odd and talked about. It worries me now that my behaviour may just have been a therapy for my insecurities, but no such introspection deterred me then. I carried a collection of stones around with me for a while and would spend a long time, dramatically arranging them on my desk at the start of lessons and loudly introducing them to the class. ‘This [half-brick] is Methuselah, he’s sensitive, please don’t upset him.’ I had become the form wag, and people laughed at my exploits; even at sports — indeed, especially at sports — where I was spectacularly inadequate; if a team were being chosen, I would always be the last to be picked. I realised early on that making people laugh was as useful as athletic skill. The only way I could score at hockey (I played in the left inner position) would be to run in a funny way or shout out rude things. My opponents would be forced to stop because they were in paroxysms of laughter and then I’d be off with the ball, dribbling clumsily in the direction of the goal. I didn’t have to engage in the unseemly hurly burly of a tackle and I was quite fast. I’ve always seen myself as a little, darting thing but now, alas, I have to admit that vision is wholly incorrect.

I realised then, I suppose, that laughter was like love and, then as now, I can’t get enough of it. When I asked Liz Hodgkin, still one of my closest friends, what I was like at school, she said I was always asking: ‘Do you like me?’ I desperately wanted to be liked. I’d do almost anything to be liked.

I haven’t changed.

Oh, Miriam!