My Animals (and Other Family) by Phyllida Barstow

Author:Phyllida Barstow [Phyllida Barstow]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910723678
Publisher: Merlin Unwin Books Limited
Published: 2017-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

As we inched our way up the school, Priscilla, whose powerful brain was beginning to flex its muscles, Jane, the good all-rounder, and I rotated top marks in whichever form we happened to be. I was usually second or third, seldom achieving first place, partly because of my Achilles heel in maths, and partly because I hated to be seen to try hard at anything. This was unfortunately part of the Lawnside ethos of the time. It was OK to win through natural brilliance but very infra dig to do it by making an effort – an attitude that led to endless complications, denials, and studying by torchlight under the bedclothes.

Our passage through the Fifth Form was scarred in traditional fashion with scandals and naughtiness, punishments and recriminations. Everything we did seemed to get us into trouble, whether it was walking on the hills and getting back late, sitting on radiators (guaranteed to give us piles), breaking things, losing things, forgetting things – there was no good in us. My ‘attitude’ was constantly criticised but I couldn’t see what was wrong with it. Nor did I understand why Brag flew into a truly terrifying rage when two girls – yes, Leesa was one of them – were found in the same bed.

The whole house was summoned from the dormitories to sit on the stairs and listen to a lengthy harangue about their wicked behaviour and why it must never, ever happen again, but Brag didn’t actually tell us why not and unless you happened to have heard of lesbians, The Well of Loneliness and related matters (which none of us had) the whole tirade was thoroughly puzzling.

Worrying, too, since it meant it would now be more dangerous than ever to creep into bed with Sally, who slept next door to me, to listen to Saturday Night Theatre on her tiny wireless, turned very low. This was a weekly treat I much enjoyed and increased my annoyance with Brag for making such a fuss about nothing.

Easter happened to be unusually early that year, and feeling ourselves hard done by because of spending it at school, we melted a lot of chocolate bars on the single form-room radiator, meaning to pour the resulting mess into the shells of our breakfast boiled eggs. Unfortunately several slipped between the radiator and the wall and began to drip slowly on to the floor.

We wiped up the spreading pool as best we could, but the chocolate burned on to the radiator bars was impossible to get at. The cleaner complained to our house mistress, a spiky, chain-smoking ex-policewoman called Mrs Moore, and she in turn sent us for a bollocking in Brag’s study, an over-heated den dominated by a huge picture of St Sebastian looking like an agonised pin-cushion with arrows protruding from every limb, and full of small tables loaded with knick-knacks. You could hardly move without knocking something over, which did nothing to increase our confidence and was, I think, a deliberate weapon employed by Brag to keep pupils in their place.

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