CHAPTER VII
PROBLEMS
Miss Leila was now in her eighties: she had visited Belgium and Greece, still went up to Scotland in her capacity as a Governor of Gordonstoun and still came back as disappointed as ever that the Community was not better than it was, or more like Gordonstoun.
The Community still lived as always with some 'crisis' or other, a major or minor one: and Miss Leila, although increasingly disliking change of pattern in the life of the Community, made up for this by her passion for changing the position of the furniture in her sitting-room: nothing in her rooms ever had a very long stay in one place, being subject to a change every Spring and Autumn.
You might go in to the sitting-room to put something on her desk only to find a chair or sofa had taken its place. Sometimes the Winter was not really over and Summer was very far ahead when the furniture was moved into place for its Summer quarters; the coal fire was given up and for some days she shivered over a small electric fire before having everything moved back again and the coal fire re-lit. The weather then got warmer and it was not long before the second move was taking place. It was quite probable that having at last got the room satisfactorily arranged for the Summer she was already re-planning for the Autumn.
She still got rid of anything she had grown tired of and bits and pieces of small furniture could still be rescued, propped up by the dustbins as they were. Hats were also discarded: perfectly good hats it seemed to us.
"I think, my dear", she would say to me, "I will let you drive me to Folkestone and I will see if I can get a hat".
"But Miss Leila", I would say, "you only had that new one a week or two ago and it is extremely nice".
"That one? Oh I've had that a long time and anyway I need a new one to go with my other dress".
Another hat was bought and it was at once on with the new and off with the old.
The lunch party to which Miss Leila was invited at Buckingham Palace was, as can be imagined, a tremendous occasion not only because of the honour, and the interest it engendered, but the question of what hat to wear.
Eventually she was driven up to London looking elegant and magnificent. On her return, asked how she had enjoyed it all, she said it had been interesting but the lunch itself left much to be desired as there was not enough "colour" in it; "it was all too "White", she said, "white chicken, white sauce and a white sweet course".
I suspect that few guests come away from a Buckingham Palace Luncheon contrasting its colour.
I took Miss Leila about in the school car a good deal. She was an ideal passenger and very generous to her chauffeurs. If we were out at lunchtime she always gave me an excellent meal. Even at her advanced age she was happy to be driven fast although she was not always aware of the speed. She sat in the front next to the driver on the outward journey but in the back on the return, where she slept.
We were once on the Ashford by-pass in quite a powerful car: Miss Leila was asleep at the back and I thought I would see what speed I could reach: the car touched eighty four miles an hour, the fastest I had ever driven at; proud of this, I said "Miss Leila, we've just done eighty-four miles an hour". "Have we my dear" she said, opening her eyes for a second. Then closing them, slept again.
Despite Miss Leila's remarkable qualities she did not possess a "road-sense". Where she wanted to get out of the car was the place at which the car must be stopped. Her favourite spot was at traffic-lights. When they turned red she would say, "Ah, this will do me nicely, my dear, I'll get out here." It was something of a feat to restrain her. Any double yellow lines drew her like a magnet and she would start to open the car door with "This will do me".
I used to drive her to Surrey occasionally to the Bethlem Mental Hospital which was part of the Maudsley Hospital in London: there was an adolescent block to which some of the Community girls had gone and we used to visit them. It was a very good hospital indeed and the girls were well cared for and a great deal of help was given them: I do not know though whether the more psychotic were ever cured: it was not always possible to keep in touch with them for very long once they had come out - unless of course they themselves wished it.
One of the most deeply disturbed girls we ever had at Mersham-le-Hatch went to Bethlem Hospital in the end but not before we had had some alarming experiences with her.
She was a very clever girl with a very high I.Q. She came to the Community when she was about twelve; she had a grammar school place and went to Ashford Girls Grammar School. She was deeply introverted, silent and ungettatable. By fifteen she was behaving very strangely at school and one day she disappeared early in the morning. We were worried about her as it was thought she had suicidal tendencies. The police were notified. She was missing all that day and night despite an intensive search. She was finally discovered the next morning sitting in a bus-shelter in a village some ten miles away.
Some nights later I was woken in the early hours of the morning by Miss Dave to say that the same girl had taken an overdose of aspirin and she must be taken to the hospital at once.
I took her with a colleague of mine and we waited at the hospital for the rest of the night.
The girl was kept there and later a place was found for her at Bethlem where she attempted to set fire to her bed.
We never saw her again and after she came out of Bethlem we lost touch with her, although for a time she answered letters.
By the mid-sixties we had a number of girls who, coming as they did from backgrounds and homes that gave them little support or security and little parental affection, if there were parents, were a very disruptive force in their group. Girls were naturally not allowed out at night; they ignored this rule and went out, often meeting various boys, who were not at the Community. Actually these particular boys were in trouble themselves at times and the girls' choice was unfortunate.
We, and they, were extremely fortunate that nothing untoward occurred, although they spent many terms behaving in this manner and they set a pattern and standard of behaviour that was very hard to alter later.
And now, for the first time in thirty years, I found myself in disagreement with Miss Leila's policy: she thought particular girls should stay on in the Community, I thought it was time that those who had reached school-leaving age left. It seemed to me they had reached the end of the road as far as school life was concerned and they had become just tired and bored with it and they had all been at the Community for a long time.
In due course they did leave, having sown their wild oats early perhaps: the careers of one or two of them were subsequently not very happy.
Some might say that youth clubs and coffee bars would have been the answer but we were not near any of these, buses did not run late and Miss Leila was always very insistent that the Community itself must provide sufficient stimulus and interest to keep its adolescent population occupied and satisfied in their leisure time, and up till now I think it had succeeded and still did for the majority; certainly for the boys.
It was at this time that Miss Dave's genius came to fruition in her dealing with the adolescent girl: it had blossomed before, if I can put it that way. She could make a contact with the most intransigent and hardened young woman; she knew when to be absolutely firm and take a stand, when to compromise, when to be sympathetic and gentle, and when to be severe and stern in her criticism. She became too, much more sympathetic in her dealings with staff. She could take a large noisy crowded meal in the dining-room with complete confidence and she could master and control the unruly in an amazing manner.
During the last decade of my career at the Community I do not know what I should have done without her help.
The nocturnal jaunts of the young women finally came to an end but not before a climax, as it were, was reached in the disintegration and breakdown of a girl of fifteen who was at a Technical School. I use the word disintegration because it really did seem as if her whole personality broke up.
It would take far too much space to write of her life and our life, at the end of one term; suffice to say that she truanted from school day after day, spending the school-hours in coffee bars and cafes while the school thought she was absent because of illness, and we took it for granted that she was at school as she returned each evening at the right time; it was not until she was met in Folkestone one morning by one of the Community staff that we discovered what was happening.
She was a very intelligent girl, musical, likeable and a most pleasant companion. She was an adopted girl who had been at the Community for many years and was doing well at school.
She did not return to school; interviews with her adoptive parents took place, but there was still a great deal of friction between her and them.
She remained at the Community for a day or two then went off one morning and did not return that night at all; the police were notified and Miss Dave and I drove round and round Folkestone and the district visiting the cafes and coffee bars at a late hour but we did not find her. She returned the next day - was off again later and later that night was picked up by the police and I drove to the police station to fetch her.
After many anxious and worrying days and nights; as short of locking her up there was nothing to prevent her going, and go she did; she finally contracted a form of V.D. The end of term had fortunately come by now. We found a hostel for her and she was eventually put on probation and moved from one probation hostel to another but her life was not, I think, a happy one and, although Miss Dave kept in touch with her for some years, I think she eventually gave up answering any letters.
Miss Dave did a tremendous amount of excellent after-care work and during these years she was fully taken up with the affairs of the Community to the exclusion of almost everything else, and added to this was Miss Leila's increasing dependence upon her.
I shall always remember the skilful way in which Miss Dave managed Miss Leila's final move up to her own house where she and Miss Dave were to sleep at night - it was a kind of semi-retirement.
I was asked to drive Miss Leila over to Hatch Common House one day after lunch. On going up to her room I found her sitting by the fire and virtually refusing to move. I suggested to Miss Dave that I got them both some coffee as they always had this after lunch but Miss Dave said no; Miss Leila would have coffee when she had got to Hatch Common House. She was persuaded to go at last and I left her sitting quite comfortably by the fire with coffee and the "Times".
Up to the day of her accident in 1969, when she had a fall in her bedroom at Hatch Common House, she was brought down to the main house at eight o'clock every morning when she took the Junior breakfast, as she had always done. She went back to her own house after the mid-day meal and every evening prepared and cooked a supper for Miss Dave and herself. She was an extremely good cook and the skill never left her.
Although keeping a finger on the Community's pulse and aware of pretty well everything that went on, she was in her eighties by now and had slowed down a great deal of course. The question of meals was sometimes difficult as she took a very long time now to get downstairs; the bell for a meal would ring and she was still in her sitting room and she did not like anyone other than Miss Dave to say Grace and start the meal; and Miss Dave was out at times.
In the Summer of 1967 the question of Half Term began to arise in everyone's mind. The Senior boys were going off to a camp in the New Forest and I decided that I would see if enough money was available for me to take some half dozen girls to North Wales where my family rented a small old farmhouse up in the hills which we used for holidays.
Miss Leila said that money could come from a Fund she had for such purposes: I rather think it was money given by Mary Stocks: and after intensive concentrated planning as there were only ten days before the holiday started, everyone and everything was fixed.
There was the pertinent question of course of who was to go. I could only take six girls as the house would not hold any more. I chose the six, among whom was a very responsible eighteen year old. I saw no reason why those who consistently broke the Community rules should be considered. I did not want the house set on fire by those who smoked illicitly nor did I want the Community given a bad name.
We left at half past seven on the Saturday morning for Ashford station, having waited for some time for A., who was found washing her hair.
Since it was Bank holiday weekend it was necessary to take a good deal and we travelled as if going on a month's safari with rucksacks, sleeping bags, a huge frying-pan, an equally huge tea-pot and a very large cooked leg of mutton wrapped in brown paper: I also took my dog.
Nowadays of course the girls would have worn jeans and jerseys and I should have been in trousers suitable for my age but then, not so, and one girl came dressed from head to foot in white although I had suggested to her the night before that white was not really suitable for the train journey; she had a white skirt, white jersey, white socks and a large gold cross hung from her neck.
We drove across London in two taxis and as I was expounding the beauties and interests between Charing Cross and Euston, C. looked out of the taxi window and said, "I just look out for Pop-singers".
At Euston a very big girl got stuck in the taxi door with her enormous rucksack and I thought we should miss the train. She was finally wrenched out by the taxi-driver.
We reached Abergele safely where I was thankful to see Mrs Jones' taxi and Mr. Pierce's taxi waiting for us, wondering why they had both been ordered to meet us: when they saw the number no explanation was necessary and we were driven up into the hills.
On arriving at the house I was equally thankful to see the kitchen table loaded with provisions that I had ordered; the girls' appetites were enormous and we got through a loaf a meal.
We stayed there a week; according to American statistics I had just read, the British consume 23,000 tons of baked beans per year; after that week I thought the figures could be even higher.
The weather was perfect and the girls were free to roam those beautiful hills and valleys as much as they liked; they sunbathed in the small garden and on Bank holiday Monday we went for an amazing expedition to a small town on the Conway river: it was fifteen miles away and we walked the three miles to the bus-stop and somehow got on to the small country bus where my dog bit a Corgi that it took a dislike to.
I made some rather startling discoveries on that first trip to Wales. All except two of the girls slept alone and one sixteen year old said it was the first time in her life she had ever slept by herself. One eighteen year old confessed she had never been further north in the British Isles than Clacton-on-Sea and to her, as to the others, Liverpool was merely the home of the Beatles: only one girl had any idea that Wales was divided up into Counties and another sixteen year old who had never been out of London except to come to Kent said she was pleased to see something higher than the North Downs.
Personally, I was so very glad that I had not had to see the Downs from the windows of a Youth Hostel.
I felt that this Welsh visit was a success and the following year I took another six girls, who I think enjoyed it equally well.
It was a change from Canterbury and Rye, delightful as they are to visit: after that of course everyone went further and further afield; the boys to Scotland and now everyone goes as a matter of course to any country in Europe.
I could perhaps tell the short rather sad tale here of two eighteen year old girls at the Community at this time who went off to France on their own one August: they managed to raise the money for the fare across the Channel but were doubtful about having enough to feed themselves so they took with them a large polythene bag of porridge oats and numerous tins of baked beans and spaghetti.
They suffered from over-crowding in the French Youth Hostels: the heat was great, one of them became ill and they returned much sooner than was expected. What the French thought of porridge in that torrid heat was never divulged.
Clarence Wollen, the Psychotherapist who had originally been at the New House Reception Centre, came fairly frequently now to the Community. He gave, I thought, much valuable advice to Miss Leila and saw a good many of the adolescents. I always appreciated it when he came to Staff Meetings, which were, by their very nature perhaps, somewhat tedious at times, as we debated mundane domestic affairs. Miss Leila also allowed him to speak in Chapel on an occasional Sunday morning: he was a member of the Society of Friends so perhaps Miss Leila felt he would be safe in the Community's pulpit.