CHAPTER V
ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY DAYS
For the first five years in Dorset the war was at all times a dark and sombre backcloth to our lives. It was an ever-present worry and anxiety: many of the staff had close relatives or friends in the Forces, many had their families in the bombing areas. We could hear air-raids over Poole at intervals and the sky was brilliant with search-lights on many a night. On D-Day we watched with amazement squadron after squadron of planes going over to the continent.
The staff had a day off a week; this began for some at one o'clock, earlier for others. There was Dorchester to go if you could get yourself to the nearest station which was five or six miles away at Wool. You could bicycle there or walk even or get a lift if any of the few remaining cars in the Community were going in that direction: or you could get to Bere Regis which was four miles distant and from there get a bus to Dorchester. It was also possible to get to Weymouth by train from Wareham. Bournemouth was another world with shops, restaurants, the sea-front deck chairs in the summer and a bandstand in the public garden where a band of sorts actually played: there were cinemas and a theatre and an occasional concert from a depleted Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
I went once to Bournemouth to spend some of my precious clothing coupons, for all clothes were rationed: I bought a coat, got a lift back to the end of the drive, walked down it on a damp dark autumn evening and near the back yard slipped and sat down on a manure heap, waiting to be put in the kitchen garden. I was in the new coat and my agony was great. "Not to worry" said Miss Syer, "coat's same colour as the manure, it'll dry off and won't show."
It did dry off and did not show and I wore that coat for years and it was always known as the "manure coat".
Now we clothed most of the boys and the girls, of all ages. This entailed buying a great deal at any local shops who could provide what we needed. Later all girls and boys over fourteen were given a clothing allowance and bought what they liked, but that was when there was no rationing and we lived nearer civilisation.
I used to go to Dorchester and buy vast quantities of vests, which in those days were still worn by girls, and further quantities of navy-blue knickers known as "passion-killers".
I came back one autumn afternoon after such an expedition and, walking from Wool, where I had got off the train, and coming off the heath and on to the small country road to Hyde, found it flooded to a depth of several feet. I was laden with large carrier-bags full of this redoubtable underwear and just preparing to wade through the water, hoping that vests and knickers would not float away when a man appeared. He was a local farm-labourer whom I had met before, with his small fat daughter, called, most improbably, Philomena.
He was Irish and with the well-known blarney and charm said, "I’ll, carry you over; you'll get wet."
"Oh, I'll manage," I said.
'"Oh, no," he said, "and you in that nice coat". It was no doubt my “manure” coat.
"Well, thank you," I started to say, when he put both arms round my waist and lifted me up, carrier-bags and all, and I was conveyed over the flood.
"There now, all safe and dry", he said.
I thanked him profusely and, more or less bowing to each other, we went on our respective ways.
It was during that autumn that we had Italian prisoners-of-war in a makeshift camp not far off. The Italians were employed in some sort of land drainage down the river and on Saturday mornings, when the girls were not at school, some of them met up with these unhappy looking men. Notes were passed eventually but nothing came of those “meet me after dark by the old oak"; probably the weather was so awful that both parties were unable to face the tryst.
I have said little about the boys at Hyde. Although much taken up with the exigencies of the young women at Hyde, I saw plenty of life among the boys, and upstairs, on the floor above, there were also problems as there were a number of boys sent by the Home Office with all the usual delinquency troubles. They absconded and truanted at times and came back again or were fetched back from wherever they had got to.
The best known and never forgotten boy was a nine year old; Walter Probyn by name. His photograph appeared in various newspapers a year or two ago as he was about to come out of prison, on parole; he had been interviewed and befriended by Lord Longford.
He came to Hyde House while we were there having already been in trouble; he was nine years old, delinquent and quite amoral. He stayed for some months and was at times almost uncontrollable. He seldom went to school and spent the days mooning round or sitting endlessly at the piano in the hall playing a song called "Love is All."
A Staff Meeting was held to discuss him and his unsatisfactory way of life. Miss Leila looked us over and said, after reflection,"All you grown women sitting here and none of you able to control one small boy."
There was no answer to this as the fact remained that no one was able to control him - only Miss Leila herself had an amazing effect on him: she would have him in her room for some time and he would leave it promising to go to school and remain there and do exactly what he was told, but he only stayed in school for a short while when he was out again; probably at the piano and we would hear that never-to-be-forgotten tune.
A sort of climax was reached when he went out one night with a wheelbarrow which he took from the gardening shed: it was packed tight with every and any object and possession that he found in the children's lockers, any odd bit of property and food that he could lay his hands on and a dozen or so candles which were stuck in jam-jars or in objects in the wheelbarrow that would hold them: they were all alight.
It must have been a truly amazing sight as he trudged through the night up on the high road which went to Bovington Camp, pushing a flaming candle-lit wheelbarrow.
After this he left and we heard of him in Approved Schools, Borstal and finally prison.
Although travelling could be very difficult Desiree Martin managed to get down to Hyde but regular Eurhythmic classes became impossible; we had for a short time another Eurhythmics teacher but she finally gave it up. A Music Teacher then came on the staff and she gave invaluable help in all sorts of ways. We had the annual Nativity Play and Party at Christmas and the Senior boys, under the adult who ran the group, once gave a truly memorable production of Julius Caesar. It was much enjoyed by an audience who also appreciated the unconscious humour of the production, in fact someone was heard to say as they left the boys' playroom where it had been performed, that they hadn't had such a good laugh for years.
Another memorable event took place in October; this was the annual "Potato Picking". Throughout the war the children in many of the Dorset state schools were given about fourteen days off school to help with the potato harvest as the usual labour was non-existent.
At Hyde every morning after breakfast a lorry collected large numbers of the Senior boys and girls with two or three adults who accompanied them and with packed lunches we rattled away up to the potato fields. These were some way from the heath in the upland country; huge fields with fine views.
Behind the tractor, up and down the potato rows we went, putting the potatoes in sacks. Everyone worked well and at twelve o'clock we stopped for lunch and although everyone could no doubt have eaten more, Marmite sandwiches and an apple were very acceptable. We were paid for this work, not very much, but it helped towards the pocket money the Seniors had.
To this day if I ever see potatoes being hand-picked I am back in those Dorset fields smelling that earth, the trodden in old hulms and a kind of pungent weedy unforgettable smell that pervaded the whole air.
The Dorset country was beautiful at all times, but in summer it could be incomparable as there were almost no insecticides on the land and wild flowers were everywhere; rare orchids could be found and there were gentians on the heath: the magnificent cliffs of Lulworth were blue with bugloss.
These summer terms were far easier of course; if fine the children were out all the evening, there was swimming in the river, croquet on the lawn and cricket and rounders on the rough park grass and at week-ends there were expeditions to the sea, although how we all got there I cannot think. Miss Dave had developed a great interest and liking for botany and she would take similarly interested girls out on botanising expeditions and sometimes those who thought they were not interested could be persuaded to go and sometimes they came back aware of a new aspect of life they had never dreamed of before in the flowers, plants, woods and water they had seen.
A large and motley collection of dogs lived happily with the rest of the Community and the old pony, Puff, who lived to be over twenty, was still there for riding.
So, life at Hyde went on, so too did the war, but somehow we all went away three times a year for holidays, came back and went on living with quite severe food, clothes and petrol rationing.
The key staff at Hyde remained constant; those in charge of groups did not leave, the matrons remained and the Junior School Staff stayed on, the young women in charge of the dining rooms and pantry were still there: the cook was always at her post and the faithful Kathleen Syer at her various posts, the garden, the hens and the weaving: and of course, at the top, as it were, were always Miss Leila and Miss Dave, whose time was seldom their own and who gave unstintingly.
All this made for a security and stability which the Community had always known and was not lost now.
But the tide was turning and after the Allies' foothold and steady advance on the continent of Europe it was obvious that the end of the war was coming in the not too distant future, and we at Hyde House wondered not only about the country but what the future of the Community was to be too: were we staying on at Hyde or would we be packing up and moving again?
I think our feelings were mixed: personally I had always found life there interesting and although hard and difficult at times it had held much enjoyment too. The disruptive element among the girls was sometimes in abeyance and the rest were pleasant and agreeable to live with; many of them, boys and girls alike, were very able and talented. I was also getting to know Miss Dave now and found many of her interests akin to my own and she was beginning to show signs of the genius she became in her dealings with adolescent girls, particularly the disturbed and unhappy.
During those years the feeling of unity, which I think was experienced by the adults, was greater than it had ever been, or was ever to be again. This was no doubt partly due to the sense of unity felt by the whole country and partly because of the total unity and common aim of Miss Leila and Miss Dave, whose example seeped through the whole household, sometimes touching even the least sensitive.