THE P.N.E.U. SCHOOL
We
had to go to school, of course, and I suppose that public kindergarten
education was unavailable during the war because my parents decided to open our
own P.N.E.U. school in the Rectory. The initials stand for Parents’ National
Education Union, and the approach I believe is a little like that of the
Montessori Schools. I was surprised to find online, as I write about it, that
these schools still exist in the United Kingdom. I was surprised, too, to
discover that they have been active since the late 1890s, following the
practice and philosophy of one Charlotte Mason, who believed in a broad liberal
education and promoted this motto for her students: “I am, I can, I ought, I
will.” Which suggests, to me, a blend of self-knowledge and self-discipline—a
blend that is still a significant part of who I am today.
Our
P.N.E.U. school was very small. There were myself and Flora; Charles and
Caroline Allen from the family who lived in a large mansion just down the hill
from the church; Hillary and Elizabeth; and Robert John. That was it. Robert
John was the son of the police inspector from the neighboring town of Woburn.
Elizabeth’s father was a high-ranking officer in the Royal Air Force. And
Charles and Caroline’s parents were of significant social standing; their
father was later knighted by the Queen, I think for his contribution to British
industry. As a very young man, years later, I was invited to accompany Caroline
to a Hunt Ball—an annual social event sponsored by the fox-hunting crowd in
counties throughout the kingdom—and appeared in white tie and tails in a
photograph with her on the front page of the Tatler, the journal of record of
British high society. For some reason I can picture Hillary’s mother with great
clarity, more clearly than Hillary herself; but I have no memory of her father
or what he did. The vagaries of memory…
But
again I get ahead of myself.
Our P.N.E.U. school had its daily
sessions in the Rectory drawing room with its duck-egg green walls and the
heavy velvet curtains by the windows. They must have pulled the couch and
armchairs aside to make room for our activities. Each of us had a big box with
our name on it, made by my father in his workshop. They were painted in glossy
blue and glossy yellow, and they had a hand hole on either side to make it
possible to easily pick them up and carry them to wherever they were needed.
Inside, they provided space for our school supplies—pencils and crayons,
exercise books, etcetera. Closed up, they were stools for each of us to sit on
for our class work.
The
school must have lasted for a couple of years or more, before we all went off
to our subsequent destinations. And we had at least two teachers that I still
remember. One of them, probably the second, was Miss Thom, the WREN I mentioned
earlier. I think I must have been in love with her. The other was Mrs. Smith, a
stern, rather withered woman as I recall, who marched us out on nature walks
around the house and garden. She wore plain brown suits and plain brown hats
with pins in them, and she was—to my father’s considerable dismay—a vegetarian.
Vegetarians, in those days, were
considered very odd people indeed, not just eccentric but somehow
psychologically unsound and socially suspect. Worse than this, however—and what
led to her scandalous dismissal as our teacher—was that she was discovered to
be a certifiable kleptomaniac. My parents and their guests began to notice that
things were disappearing. Nothing particularly valuable or significant—a pair
of gloves here, a piece of costume jewelry there—but things were noticeably
disappearing. It took a while before the household concluded that so many
things were disappearing that they could no longer be considered simply
accidental or forgetful losses. I don’t know how it was determined that Mrs.
Smith was the perpetrator, but a surreptitious search of her room revealed a
stash of the stolen items and my father was delegated to confront the
miscreant. It must have been an awkward meeting, but the upshot was that one
day Mrs. Smith was in the classroom and the next day she wasn’t. Our teacher
vanished from our lives as well as from our classroom, never to return. It was
only much later, clearly, that we learned the truth behind her abrupt
disappearance.
We were generally a happy bunch of
children, and well behaved, as children in those days were taught to be. But I
have one painful and embarrassing episode from those early school days that
must be told. Well, actually two, both of them involving myself and Robert
John, but the second is less embarrassing and more painful. So we’ll start with
the first.
I don’t know what possessed me. Was
it a dare from the other children? Intimidation? Bravado on my part? A stupid,
misguided act of showing off? I don’t know. But the dreadful truth is that I
drank Robert John’s pee.
I know. Disgusting. But it happens
to be the truth. It was in the downstairs loo, off the back porch, where we
kept our mackintoshes and our wellington boots. Were we getting ready to go out
for our walk? Coming back from one? Again, I don’t know, but there we all were,
giggling, crowding the back porch around the loo, and somehow the idea came up
that Peter—I think I was the youngest—should drink Robert John’s pee. And
Robert John was goaded into peeing in a mug and… well, I took a sip. Just
because. And everyone thought it was very funny except me. The taste was
horrible.
Robert John was a big, tall,
doe-eyed, soft-haired boy, much taller than I was. We used to make fun of him
because he seemed a little bit slow on the uptake. But the last laugh, in that
case, was his. The other episode was less disgusting, but also much less funny.
There was a bus stop down on the village square between the horse trough and a
big, redbrick building that was once, I think, before the war, a hotel. The
building was separated from the square by a wall, perhaps six feet in height
from the outside but easily accessible to sit on from the rise in the land
behind. It happened that I was sitting there, waiting for the bus, when Robert
John came up behind and for no reason pushed me off into the street.
It was, as I say, a six-foot fall,
and I crashed into the pavement head first, knocking myself momentarily
senseless. How they got me back to the Rectory I have no idea, but I came to in
the drawing room with its duck-egg green walls, throwing up profusely into the
chamber pot my mother had brought in for that purpose. I have never since seen
that duck-egg green without feeling faintly nauseous. The doctor was
called—doctors would come on call in those days, with, yes, a black doctor’s
bag—and took my vitals before patching up my bloody head. There was great
concern all around, with serious grown-up faces gathering like balloons above
my head and clucking with anxiety.
It turned out alright. I recovered
speedily, as children do, and there were no lasting effects that I’m aware of.
Unless there’s truth to that old joke about being dropped on your head as a
baby…
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