At this point I find that I do not want, necessarily, to write of the girls I was at school with. Most of the memories are happy and the friendships certainly have lasted many years, unless sadly cut short in a few instances. Having worked with the mentally ill and with difficult children and their families, I count myself extremely lucky with the people who became my closest friends at boarding school. The occasional snide remarks and teenage quarrelling are mild by comparison with my later professional experience. Rest easy, Maggie, Mary, Barbara, Anna, Joan, Hester, Philippa—and so many others—my memories of you are all so good as to be boring to a reader, and that is how it should be.

The teachers were all—looking back—remarkable women. Like my mother, they may have grown up with expectations of marrying conventionally and having children as well as a career. The First World War put an end to that for so many of the ‘five million superfluous women’, as my Aunty Joyce used to say, though I gather the number was at least nine million active servicemen lost. We mourn with respect—and rightly—for the men who died, but what about the women left behind who never had any choice, but often made such positive goodness of their lives?

Miss Hackman, plain, small and lively, who shook her head sadly at my mangling of the Latin language, but brightened up when she gave us little classical plays in the language to act. “Your Latin is dreadful!” she exclaimed, and then her face brightened into the loveliest of smiles. “But!” she cried, “You can ACT!!” and I was involved for the rest of my time with the delight of school and house plays. I loved her very much, though never realised till after I left. I did keep in touch with her, though.

Mrs Moore and Miss Third, the teachers who did my happiest subject, English Literature. Miss White, French teacher, who shook her head sadly at my struggles with the grammar, but was never less than gentle and kind and got us all quickly into French romantic and avant-garde poetry.

Miss Mitchell, an awe-inspiring disciplinarian, but a profoundly thinking Quaker and an excellent General Science teacher. Even the other Science teacher, who we mocked, was kind and gentle and I apologise to her in my heart. Miss Deed, who tried unsuccessfully to teach me needlework—I wish I could have shown her my BA in Textile Art so many decades later!

And Miss Emmeline Blackburn, Headmistress, keeping a close discipline and definitely a careful eye on me. Any fondness for me—as the daughter and niece of her dear school friends—was not in evidence until my calmer, more mature sixth form days when we older girls shared collective time with her at weekends. She did her best to curb my wayward undisciplined spirit with strictness and no favouritism, but fairness with it. It dawned on me, after I left, that she had almost certainly loved me very much. She and Miss Mitchell and Miss Deed retired together to Littlehaven in Pembrokeshire, West Wales, and were always happy to see ‘Old Girls’ and their families, so when I was living in Cardiff I was able to go there on occasion.

I think this care and interest they took in us is shown by an incident just after my darling husband Ken died, in 1992. They were by this time very elderly indeed, and they had a little separate cottage which they let out as a small source of income, often cheaply. I must have contacted them during Ken’s prolonged last illness.

The morning after a funeral is often one of the worst times. All purpose, meaning and busy-ness have gone out of your life. I woke up on that Saturday morning the 2nd May, desperately wanting, needing, to get away. Anywhere! Anyhow!

In my morning post was a letter from Miss Blackburn, offering me the cottage free for this very week. It was all decided within the hour: Rupert opted to stay in Cardiff and field any letters and enquiries, and Amanda and I phoned the ladies, threw some things into a suitcase and were paddling in the Bay by teatime! We found the cottage tactfully deserted but with all immediate necessaries in place and a salad supper and dessert waiting for us! Amanda, at 14, had stood bravely with her father and I throughout his last weeks. This peaceful holiday was magic, kicking up sand, building castles, exploring rock pools— and reconnecting with each other, mother and daughter, in the loveliest possible way. That is the sort of kindness that is beyond price, and never to be forgotten.

A good deal later, remembering that time and all my teachers, official or not, I wrote a prose poem, which I print here:

Homage to my teachers

When I was young we mocked the science teacher
Because she was gentle and fat
And looked, we said, like a bus.
The young are sharp and bright like hunting knives
And clot together in packs,
Against the dark of the centuries.
In the dawn time of my civilisation
Compassion stirred for her, and was stifled
Lest I too be thrust from the tribe.

Others we loved and held up as totems,
But secretly knew we chose other paths.
Warm salty ways of fantasy and desire,
Despising the sunlit spinster way they trod.
Manless and barren, they had no children,
We thought, in our ignorance and conceit.
Oh surely, as Job said, we were the people!
Wisdom and knowledge would perish with us!
The promise of life crowded our loins.

Now at the end of life, so-called maturity,
Learning at last—with Blake—to bear the beams of love,
How changed is the historical perspective!
Knowing the best that I can hope for
On my deathbed—tomorrow or at ninety two—
That someone will say, “This promising piece of dust.”
I look back and I see the riches poured by you
On a stone-age tribe, who hardly knew how to begin,
Yet grew the centuries in a few short years.

I look back too at the secret paths, and the sunlit road,
Looking perhaps to find what makes a mother?
Now a mother myself, of two grown children
And one small grave, and a great many other people
Who each share a piece of the maternal love
And fury and indifference—now I can answer that!

You who did more than teach, forgive me, I was blind.
Oh mothers of my soul, my heart, my mind.