that the need to please my father and avoid antagonising my mother led me into a profession that offers many choices. A surgeon does not have to be brilliant with people, for his or her patients are asleep much of the time. Pathology is even further removed from interaction with livingpeople. On the other hand, general practice depends as much on the art of communication as on pure science. I enjoyed that field, and my good fortune led me to the niche of family planning and psychosexual medicine that fitted me particularly well. In addition I must admit that a well-paid job is useful, especially if one wants to work part time while raising a family.
The announcement of peace in Europe was expected on 7 May 1945. My mother’s account of that time forms the climax of her diary. She describes feeling drained of emotion, very different from her experience in 1918. Then she joined her father and roistered round the city, revelling with the crowds as the maroons went off and they all celebrated their belief that there would never be another war. But in 1945 she just felt numb, with no sense that civilisation was fundamentally decent. She was acutely aware of the state of Europe with its starvation and physical ruin, and the fact that we still had to fight the Japanese and Arthur would be involved in that battle.
At school someone had smuggled in a wireless and at 8 o’clock, when we were preparing for bed, we heard Churchill say that the next day would be a national holiday to celebrate VE day. Cheering broke out in the stateroom dormitories, five huge connected rooms with 15–20 beds in each. As the noise subsided Miss Williamson, the headmistress, stood in the sunken garden outside, and raised her voice in condemnation. She was disgusted by our unruly behaviour and we would not be allowed to take part in the national holiday but would have to work a normal day as a punishment. Even at that moment of national rejoicing we were kept isolated from the wider world. I can only think that she felt threatened by the noise, panicked into a fear that the mass of nubile femininity would become unmanageable. It is only now that I can see how challenging her job must have been, with a diminished staff, families uprooted and a camp of American servicemen nearby. The restrictions I found so irksome were prompted by understandable concerns for our safety.
5
Teenage Years
True to form, my results in the School Certificate (subsequently O levels and then GCSE) were mediocre. I only sat seven exams, a feeble effort compared to many children nowadays with ten or eleven subjects. I obtained six credits and a distinction in geography. My husband teased me about this as I was still muddling the East and West Indies when we got married. To my deep regret I had given up history when we reached Ur of the Caldees for my mother did not think it an important subject. My profound ignorance about the past added to my sense that I was stupid. Reading historical novels I just followed the romance, as I had no milestones around which to build the extra knowledge to be gleaned from such stories.
St Felix School moved back to Southwold in the autumn of 1945. The purpose-built red-brick buildings and well-marked playing fields lacked the private corners in the house and garden at Hinton St George, where I could find small but precious slivers of solitude. But I came to appreciate the romantic, windswept coast and undulating dunes of Suffolk, especially after I saw an unidentified bird flapping over the dykes, disappearing in the dips to emerge a few seconds later. Not long afterwards I spent a weekend at Flatford Mill, immortalised in Constable’s painting, but by then converted into a nature study centre. From my careful notes of the bird’s markings the tutor could identify it as a short-eared owl. Whenever I see a reproduction of
The Hay Wain
I am reminded that I slept in the room behind that window in Willy Lott’s cottage. It was
The announcement of peace in Europe was expected on 7 May 1945. My mother’s account of that time forms the climax of her diary. She describes feeling drained of emotion, very different from her experience in 1918. Then she joined her father and roistered round the city, revelling with the crowds as the maroons went off and they all celebrated their belief that there would never be another war. But in 1945 she just felt numb, with no sense that civilisation was fundamentally decent. She was acutely aware of the state of Europe with its starvation and physical ruin, and the fact that we still had to fight the Japanese and Arthur would be involved in that battle.
At school someone had smuggled in a wireless and at 8 o’clock, when we were preparing for bed, we heard Churchill say that the next day would be a national holiday to celebrate VE day. Cheering broke out in the stateroom dormitories, five huge connected rooms with 15–20 beds in each. As the noise subsided Miss Williamson, the headmistress, stood in the sunken garden outside, and raised her voice in condemnation. She was disgusted by our unruly behaviour and we would not be allowed to take part in the national holiday but would have to work a normal day as a punishment. Even at that moment of national rejoicing we were kept isolated from the wider world. I can only think that she felt threatened by the noise, panicked into a fear that the mass of nubile femininity would become unmanageable. It is only now that I can see how challenging her job must have been, with a diminished staff, families uprooted and a camp of American servicemen nearby. The restrictions I found so irksome were prompted by understandable concerns for our safety.
5
Teenage Years
True to form, my results in the School Certificate (subsequently O levels and then GCSE) were mediocre. I only sat seven exams, a feeble effort compared to many children nowadays with ten or eleven subjects. I obtained six credits and a distinction in geography. My husband teased me about this as I was still muddling the East and West Indies when we got married. To my deep regret I had given up history when we reached Ur of the Caldees for my mother did not think it an important subject. My profound ignorance about the past added to my sense that I was stupid. Reading historical novels I just followed the romance, as I had no milestones around which to build the extra knowledge to be gleaned from such stories.
St Felix School moved back to Southwold in the autumn of 1945. The purpose-built red-brick buildings and well-marked playing fields lacked the private corners in the house and garden at Hinton St George, where I could find small but precious slivers of solitude. But I came to appreciate the romantic, windswept coast and undulating dunes of Suffolk, especially after I saw an unidentified bird flapping over the dykes, disappearing in the dips to emerge a few seconds later. Not long afterwards I spent a weekend at Flatford Mill, immortalised in Constable’s painting, but by then converted into a nature study centre. From my careful notes of the bird’s markings the tutor could identify it as a short-eared owl. Whenever I see a reproduction of
The Hay Wain
I am reminded that I slept in the room behind that window in Willy Lott’s cottage. It was
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