School days steeped in a lurking fear

By Julie Myerson, Financial Times

Published: Sep 08, 2007 

I lived in many different houses from birth to adulthood but a great chunk of that time was spent in one, much grander place: an enormous, late Victorian mansion in the dusty, leafy centre of Nottingham.

Hour upon hour, minute upon ticking minute, I sat in vast, high-ceilinged drawing rooms and once-elegant bedrooms or whispered and giggled in parquet-floored hallways or on creaky upstairs landings as I waited for the bell to go. I spent long afternoons staring out of the wide bay windows at summer rockeries or, in winter, the darkening purple trees of the arboretum.

Years and years of my life I lined up in that huge hallway, with its heavy atmosphere of grandeur and (though I didn't recognise it then) showy wealth. How many hours did I spend yawning up at those intricate, wedding-cake cornices instead of concentrating on sines and cosines and logarithms? And how many times, if no teacher was looking, did I jump the last two or three steps of the grand staircase with its curling balustrade?

The geography of Nottingham High School for Girls - which in fact comprised both this house and several neighbouring ones in the same street - is forever imprinted on my mind. I could, I think, still navigate its dusty corridors, halls and staircases in my sleep. I could still, with my eyes shut, go up the "A" staircase, cross a large landing (where the door of the staff room always ominously oozed cigarette smoke) and go up the narrow twisty stairs that led to a tiny, bright kitchen under the eaves where sixth formers were allowed to eat their sandwiches and boil the kettle to make instant soup. These must, of course, have been servants' quarters. The cramped attic rooms where, at 16 and 17, we gathered in small groups for German conversation, probably once housed a lonely maid-of-all-work of a similar age.

I was five when I first crept through those black wrought-iron gates to take the entrance exam, which I quickly failed. A crowd of happy children were playing in a sandpit and I refused to join in, preferring to stand on the edge and watch. At seven I returned to try again, this time sitting in a small room halfway up the stairs with a kind, grey-haired lady who asked me things such as: "What's wrong with this picture?"

"The lady has an umbrella up but it's not raining," I said scornfully, "though I suppose it could be a parasol," I added with a frown.

All my life, that school, those buildings, perpetually altered in size and shape - both bigger than me and far, far smaller, both heart-sinkingly familiar and terribly strange. I knew my way around, I knew the smells and sounds but it was a jumpy, dreading knowledge. I never really knew what would be around the next corner. And even now, in middle age, I'm startled to find there are whole rooms in that place that I return to frequently, whether I like it or not.

I've no idea, for instance, why I can be sitting at a set of traffic lights in the middle of London and suddenly find myself back in the little downstairs kitchen in prep block where we did art - powder paint and old milk bottles, the rough mauve of sugar paper, a murky window that never gave enough light, the smell of the hamster who lived by the sink, a tap that came on too suddenly and always splashed your overall. Or else I'm in the downstairs vestibule in "A" block where (irrationally) I never dared drink from the fountain because I had once heard a girl being bullied in there.

Most sinister of all, though, were the downstairs gym changing rooms, presumably once a cellar, with the sign that said "Mind Your Head" and the stairs that fell straight down into darkness. Down there was a labyrinth of low rooms with rows and rows of metal pegs. Some had clothes hanging on them and some didn't. The smell was of feet and sweat - and fear. If you weren't quick enough at getting changed, you could suddenly find yourself left alone among the dark shapes that seemed to move among the coats, choked by the certainty that you would be next.

But next for what?

I went back to my old school a few years ago while researching a little book I wrote about being hopeless at games. I was amazed - or maybe not so amazed - to find it exactly the same. Even though I was larger, it hadn't shrunk. In fact, if anything

I was surprised all over again by its lofty, elegant grandeur.

Back home in London, I got out my old copy of Call Back Yesterday - a book of reminiscences by former students, produced to celebrate the school's centenary in 1975. In there, I read what I must (surely?) once have known but had completely forgotten.

The main house with its grand entrance hall, sweeping staircase and elegant proportions had been sold to the school in 1880, after standing empty for a couple of years. Why had it stood empty? It was, in fact, commissioned by a local lace manufacturer, James Hartshorn, who fancied living in something resembling a French chateau. So he hired an architect from Lille who completed the house in 1875, when he moved in with his family. But Hartshorn's pleasure was short-lived because only two years later, having suffered from months of illness and depression, he was found dead in a downstairs washroom. He had cut his throat.