Boarding school - affairs of the heart

There is one leisure pursuit – and here the word ‘pursuit’ achieves its full significance – which I have not mentioned so far, sensing that I should wish to devote a whole post to the subject. I am of course referring to boys.

The first boy with whom I developed a mutual tendresse was a little younger than me, and I cannot recall what drew us together initially. He was 13 and I must have been around 14. He was a very gentle young man, and was destined to die tragically at a very young age, from some blood disease as far as I can remember. Thinking back my memory of him is of a pale child, with an ethereal look already about him. We did no more than spend time alone together on the school field, and sometimes we held hands – such an innocent and yet meaningful touch, and one which has continued to hold great significance for me throughout my life. A. gave me my first love token – a small bone ring which he had made for me in his craft lessons. He had made it with a flat surface for part of the circumference, so that it might be engraved, and I have always been sad that he never actually did this. I still have the ring, and over the years I have often worn it, either on my finger, or as a scarf toggle. It won't fit over my nobbly knuckles any longer.

A's ring

My next admirer was B., a year older than me. He and I would take walks through the Hertfordshire countryside during the summer term, and the smell of May blossom, or of Queen Anne’s lace, or the stubble fields of harvest time under a sweltering sun, have always tended to raise the sap in my veins again, in recollection of those early stirrings. B. too made an offering for me in the craftshop, a beautifully turned wooden candlestick. This too I have kept, and it is brought out at Christmas with a red candle in it. My mother inadvertently caused me great distress, when I was still living at home, by washing the candlestick in an attempt to remove the wax spatterings. Unfortunately this destroyed the beautiful polish which it had been given, and it never looked quite the same again. I found it difficult to forgive her!

G. was the first boy I set my sights on and pursued unilaterally. Shamelessly, I would take every opportunity to talk to him, and would often plonk myself down beside him at one of the work tables in the library, and sit studying next to him. That must have been very annoying for him. I don’t think he was ever really interested in me, but showed remarkable patience for some time, even when I escaped from my dormitory one night to visit him in his sleeping hut in the school grounds. He put a good face on it, got out of bed and suggested we take a walk. We went across the school field and into the apple orchard. I think it must have been September, as the fruit was ripe on the trees and starting to fall. The scene was wreathed in mist, and lit by a gentle luminosity from the moon. Out of nothing more than this my romantic heart created an occasion of real magic, which glimmers imperishably in my memory. But soon after that he got me off his hands, apparently by asking another boy to take me on, though I didn’t find that out until much later.

And so I turned my attention to E., who had actually invited me to go for a walk with him. Another occasion of the utmost magic: an October night with a wild wind blowing, and copper coloured clouds scudding across a lurid moon. We took our romantic walk, believe it or not, along the Great North Road, which must have been a deal more rural around Letchworth in the 1940s than it is today. We cuddled a bit, and talked, and as far as I was concerned I was well and truly hooked. But alas, I didn’t hold his attention for very long either, although I yearned over him for the rest of my school days. Which reminds me that in my spare time I also wrote a great deal of soppy poetry, in both English and French! I will spare my readers that however.

B's candlestick

Footnote - Strange customs develop in a closed community: acknowledged pairs would exchange friendship pins, and the girl would wear her boy’s jacket over her shoulders. When she no longer wore it you knew the girl had been ‘dropped’! (Roll on Women's Lib!)