I have a feeling I have written about this before, but I can’t find it and I don’t know how to use the searches, so here we go again. I wonder how similar this account will be, if I ever find the first one!

Now this is a memory that seems to have stayed with me. I was looking forward to going to boarding school. I had lived on a diet of Enid Blyton – St Claire’s, Mallory Towers etc and on the Chalet School stories set in Switzerland. I didn’t really expect it to be anything like the latter, but I did imagine it would have some similarities with the former.

Reader, it did not!

My mother was asked to bring me to the school on the Sunday afternoon before term started on the Monday. Maybe it was because she couldn’t take time off work on Monday morning. I don’t know. I had recently had my eleventh birthday and been given the Complete Works of Shakespeare, so that took pride of place in my suitcase. Also my teddy bear. I had to take sheets and underwear and toiletries and everything necessary for the week. Presumably I did. My father had given me a huge Slazenger sports bag, replete with tennis racquet and balls. I took that too. And a briefcase. I was ready. I knew how to tie my tie. I hated the blazer and hat, but liked the white gloves.

I was ready to have fun.

We were met at the front door of the convent by the Reverend Mother, who soon got rid of my mother (she was persona non grata, as a divorcee – this was 1964) and led me up to my room. Identical to a nun’s cell in everyway, except that it had two beds and a mirror. She told me to make my bed and unpack my clothes and put them in the chest of drawers.But not to leave anything on top. Now I can’t remember if anyone was occupying the other bed that evening. I don’t think so.

While I was unpacking another nun, possibly Mother Mary Emmanuel, came to lead me downstairs to have supper. There, in the enormous, as I thought, refectory, (pronounced reffertry) was a table laid with three plates etc. One place was free, so I sat down. I was pretty bemused by now. Where were all the other girls that I was going to have so much fun with? I was quite shy then, but about to become much shyer over the next few years. I looked up and saw that the other two places were occupied by a very old woman dressed in black and a Chinese girl who was about 17 or 18. My companions for the evening.

Fanny Chow had come over for sixth form from Hong Kong. She was as delighted at the prospect of my companionship as I was of hers. Now come to think of it we did share the room. I remember trying to engage her in conversation about Hong Kong and she gave me a very horrid salty tasting sweet, to shut me up, probably.

But anyway, back to supper. A serving platter with three very thin slices of boiled ham stretched out on it. Some bread and butter. And tea. Madam Caroca, for such was the old lady’s name, took the initiative, and said grace. That was a very new experience for me. I had no idea what to do. Then we were allowed to eat. I was very curious about my elderly companion, but it was only years later that I discovered that she was a widow, her husband being a victim of the Spanish Civil War, which had ended in 1939. I believe she had lived in the convent as a laywoman since then. She was also the school Spanish teacher, and taught from a book which was already in its sixtieth edition in 1932! But that’s a story for another time.

On this first evening she was intimidating, frightening, terrifying even.

We ate in silence and then had to say grace again. Then Fanny and I went up to our room. I have never felt so awkward in my life. There was nothing for it but to go to bed. I had my Complete Works of Shakespeare but nothing else to read. I was eleven, and lonely and terribly disappointed. At eight o’clock MM Emmanuel came to say night prayers with us and to switch the light off. Fanny did not want to talk. She was probably, with hindsight, as unhappy as I was. We had to wait for the next day.

It was Madam Caroca’s turn to wake us up with a rat tat at the door and a barked out prayer. Fanny and I didn’t answer, so she barked it again, this time putting her head round the door and telling us what to reply. Nothing like this ever happened in Mallory Towers! Or anywhere else.

I knew this was going to be my life for the next seven years. Luckily things changed a bit, eventually!