School Sabotage and Survival

I’ve just read Back To My Beginnings by Paddy Staplehurst. It’s a memoir of growing up in St. Etheldreda’s in Bedford – a home for girls that was run by Anglican nuns.

Paddy and her younger sister Bille arrive in 1944 to join an older sister, Dawn, after being taken into care by Norfolk County Council because of persistent abuse. She is three years old. 

Paddy is an imaginative and contemplative child frustrated by the regimentation of life in the home where the routines are reliably monotonous.  Things disappear,  people leave without notice or explanation. There are night terrors, problems with food and punishments.  Paddy gets a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been a better life but cruel disappointment follows.

Walking in a regimented crocodile she longs to step out of line and catch a falling leaf.

An avid and precocious reader she escapes into books.  She overcomes setbacks and disappointments and finds ways to assert her independence against all the odds in spite of the lack of encouragement and recognition. She is resourceful and resilient.

Paddy likes to think things through and find solutions to the problems that trouble her.  She discovers that she has a middle name  – Marlene.

Paddy was deep in thought over the weekend; she believed she could use this information to solve her problem. If she was no longer called Paddy, then she would not be subjected to “Paddy, do this.” or “Paddy, don’t do that.”She had the glimmerings of a plan, but it required patience and courage. At church on Sunday, whilst the congregation were “ploughing fields and scattering”, she was thinking her plan through and when Monday morning came round, she felt she was ready. She went to school as normal, but when Miss Fyres took the register, Paddy nervously put her great plan into action.

“Paddy Gibbons?” Paddy didn’t acknowledge her name. “Paddy Gibbons!” shouted Miss Fyres once more and again Paddy was silent; she found something very interesting on her desktop and fixed her eyes firmly to it. There was a hush in the classroom. Miss Fyres loomed over her. “Paddy Gibbons!” The shout this time was accompanied by a hard slap round the head. Paddy again stayed dumb and quite still. The class was getting very excited now; Miss Fyres had never been so totally ignored before. She ordered Paddy to go to the Headmaster. 

With his intervention, the situation is resolved and Miss Fryes announces to the class,

“Marlene, go back to your seat. Yes class, Paddy has now decided to be Marlene!! Is there anyone else who wishes to change their name or anything else for that matter?”

It’s a victory for the little girl. Her plan had worked. Her obstinacy and determination had paid off.  But she is not triumphant.

Paddy had all unknowingly learnt that we might think we want something, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that we should have it or that if we accomplish it, it will make us happy. So Marlene it was for the next thirty-five years!

There’s a heart-wrenching scene a little later when the three sisters are tidied up because they have a visitor. Marlene and Bille do not remember their mother but Dawn does. For her – this one visit in all the years – is one of anguish.

The stranger called her, Paddy, but Marlene looked askance. She thought to herself, “She doesn’t even know my name,” and although she came a little closer, and suffered the hug, she turned away when it became apparent she was to be kissed too.

Marlene is in hospital for an operation when she learns that she is most likely to attend the very selective High School because of her exceptional test scores and the expectation that she would pass the 11+. This is huge and worrisome problem:

Marlene didn’t know what to do: the High School was sited close to the Home and the girls who attended the school took great delight in bullying the “Dirty Smelly Home Kids”. Many a time she had been pushed off the pavement by the girls with their strange hats and silly voices and now she was to go to the same school! She knew she couldn’t do it; she knew she wouldn’t have the right clothes. Even at their infant and junior schools they were sometimes called names. But the High School! What was she to do?

The operation came and went, but instead of getting back to normal, Marlene seemed to go into a decline. She seldom talked, seldom ate and seldom slept….

She kept having nightmares in which she was in the High School changing rooms, wearing second-hand, or even third-or fourth-hand clothes all of which were patently not the High School uniform; in the nightmares she was subjected to cruel laughter and bullying that she knew she couldn’t run away from. After three and a half weeks had passed, the answer came to her: she would go into the exam room and answer every question incorrectly. When Marlene knew the answer she would write down the opposite. She immediately began to get better and, after four weeks in hospital, she was finally well enough to go home.

Marlene had solved her problem by sabotaging her academic prospects. Such is the extraordinary power of bullying and humiliation. Social stigma kills. And anyone who has experienced even a touch of such fear knows exactly what this means. Social stigma deprived her of the educational opportunities her intellect and inclinations yearned for. 

The memoir is full of anecdotes of life in the home and the lessons learned along the way. Paddy is given tantalizing glimpses of what might have been. There are triumphs and joys and deep disappointments. There are interactions between the three sisters. Bille, the youngest emerges as an irrepressible character always ready to go off like a steam kettle and create a scene. These days she might well be diagnosed as having oppositional defiance disorder or some such, but really she is just doing what she has found works for survival. She knew how to have a meltdown and she knew how to pay back. On the last day of an unpleasant winter stay in Broadstairs, Bille plots her revenge on the staff who had treated her so badly. On the beach she leads them on a merry dance into the cold water and 

Teatime was a riot, with Bille pretending to be sick and making the most horrible noises that had all the other girls in hysterics. She was sent to bed early, but kept coming downstairs, causing even more laughter and confusion. Marlene and Dawn were delighted to see Bille back to normal and even Dawn, who would normally perform the big sister act, hadn’t the heart to remonstrate with her. The journey home passed without incident, and as Bille was so pleased to be going home, she forgot to annoy Sister Maud, who had come to collect them. The two older sisters would only understand why Bille was treated so badly many years later: they had never thought that the colour of Bille’s skin was any different than anyone else’s, never seen her as black, or, if not exactly black, then noticeably dark skinned. She was just their sister Bille, and in the Home was treated the same as everyone else.

It’s a painful story because you get to know three spirited, lovable, unloved little girls. And you wish that life could have given them a better chance. It’s certainly a reminder that children fail in school for all kinds of reasons. And then – when home does not give children the kind of emotional support and recognition they need to thrive – it is the school’s job to provide them. 

The book begins with Paddy and Bille’s arrival at the home where big sister Dawn already lives.  It ends with Paddy walking out of the home with her suitcase of meager belongings. She’s fifteen, alone, unprepared for life outside the institution. Scathed but unbroken, she is full of apprehension about all the problems she already knows lie ahead.  

Marlene reached the gate and slipped through it and, as she was shutting it, looked once more at the place that had been her home for the past twelve years: a home, a prison, a place to flee to from the jeers of derisive school children delighted to have someone more unfortunate than themselves to mock; a place to flee from to the freedom of academic work, such as it was. Now she had left and so, squaring her shoulders, she set out on the long journey to Mrs Stevens’ house and an unknown future.

Marlene – the avid reader who found solace in books, the mystical dreamer who longed, to catch a falling leaf, the lonely little girl who found heaven in a garden, the analytic problem solver who like to think things through and find solutions – was free at last.

What was the before and after St. Etheldreda’s (surely a name straight out of Dickens)? There’s another book in there.

Featured image: Detail from Children and Chalked Wall 3 by Joan Kathleen Harding Eardley (1921–1963)