Earlier this month I was invited to lunch at a lovely family home in Hampton Court being looked after by one of my fellow Thorntonians.
There were to be five of us gathering in the very English garden at what was apparently an annual event.
I did not think I was nervous until the morning dawned. Then I did something quite unlike me, I changed clothes several times despairing at my meagre wardrobe, unhappy with all my comfortable old favorites. I wasn’t even aware I wanted to make an impression until afterwards, when I was on my way home.
Catching sight of my reflection in the train window I realised I looked very prim and proper. Where was my familiar bohemian? Unwittingly I had captured the me of 30+ years ago when I’d last seen these four women as young girls of 16!
The day was lovely, everyone looked just the same except one, her girlish face of years gone by could not be reconciled to the woman I chatted with all afternoon. The four of them were still friends as they had been at school.
I ran with a different crowd, a bit of a rebel in my young age!
We shared our different memories, mine of sneaking out, meeting boys for coffee, getting to know the owners of a local eating establishment and being given illicit sips of wine and such before returning to school, my absence undetected. I am still not very good at being told what I can and cannot do!
They wished they had been my friend!
They told me they all would have passed me in the street. It was my hair I said, not wanting it to be the lines on my face, I’d worn it dark and long when they knew me. As the afternoon lingered certain mannerisms began to give me away. My prim and proper self was emerging,
It turns out we were all unhappy! Though none of us admitted to it back then! There were a lot of secrets which came out later, appearances to keep up, the stiff upper lip nonsense. I thought I was the only one who suffered from acute homesickness. I discovered we all did!
I also heard the similar regret that none of their parents bothered visiting. How I wish I had known then that I was not alone in my parental neglect.
Over tea we wondered out loud – since we could have been sent to school anywhere in England, unlike the local boarders and day girls who attended their local school, Thornton – why our parents had chosen The Convent of Jesus & Mary? None of us had satisfactory answers, we simply didn’t know!
I did a fair amount of asking, since I’d not seen anyone for donkey’s years, questions about what each had done since I’d last seen her? Curious about their lives, their husbands, their children. Their responses were short and to the point, no heart to hearts yet.
In essence we were strangers who had shared four or five childhood years many moons ago and then gone our separate ways. The candor was gently simmering, its bubbles not ready to rise and burst the amber glow cast by allusions to contented marriages, unremarkable parenthood and deserved retirement. Misplaced decades that were best forgotten for our few, short hours together.
On the slow train home I smiled that no-one had asked about me, what my husband did…through the old girl grapevine they knew I had homeschooled, he was American, no more.
That was enough for that summer’s day in Hampton.
Perhaps if we meet again we will repeat the lamentation one of us made about our miserable schooldays,
“If only we’d known how lonely we all were we could have been a comfort to one another.”
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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