2. Joyce Murdin and the Junior Study
I have set down my musical memories of Miss Murdin. She had charge of the Junior Study and the Junior Study boys’ dormitory. This was the next group up after the Nursery and, like the Nursery, it was mixed-gender except, of course, for the dormitories. The Junior Study playroom was on the second floor (the last reached by the great staircase). Turning right after the staircase, a doorway led to a section of the house that contained the Junior Study playroom, the Senior Girls’ common room and the Junior Study boys’ dormitory with attached bathroom. When bedtime came, the Junior Study girls were herded to the other side of the stairwell where their dormitory was under the care of Miss Ruhl.
The playroom contained various toys of a more or less educational nature. I particularly remember a chest of wooden bricks that were sufficiently numerous to allow the construction of a tower that nearly reached the ceiling. Also some jig-saw puzzles. There was a picture of a tiger on the wall, but what I most remember is sitting in a semi-circle round the fireplace on Sunday afternoons, listening to suitably chosen programmes on the radio – “Dixon of Dock Green” and “Jennings” were among them – and doing raffia or knitting. Yes, knitting for both sexes. When I came to live in male-chauvinist Italy, I found it something of a showstopper to announce casually that I learnt to knit at school. After all these years, though, if challenged to prove I could really knit, I doubt if I would pass the test. My knitting reached its apogee with Miss Joan Watson, but my first timid stitches were undertaken with Miss Murdin, under whose guidance I managed a plausible egg cosy and maybe a scarf.
More than the playroom, though, I remember Miss Murdin for long walks, or sometimes shorter ones where we simply stopped and played word games. There was a clearing just a little way down from the gate to the Deer Park, about half way towards the Heron Pond, on the right. It contained a tree with a branch on which you could swing and another that even the most junior climbers could tackle. There was usually a log pile, too, on which we could clamber. Miss Murdin called this the “Parson’s Cat Wood”, a name given it by a former Junior Study boy because Miss Murdin’s little party invariably stopped there to play “the Parson’s Cat”. Another favourite game was “Towns and Countries”.
The walk ended, if it was a Saturday afternoon, at the sweet shop, where we could spend our rather meagre pocket money, provided it had not been fined out of existence during the week. This brings us to an essential part of Miss Murdin’s punishment system. These were fixed fines so, if you felt like it, you could calculate your week’s misdemeanours in advance. Some were for going where you should not. For example, there was a gravel path round the house from the back door by the kitchen, past what became the Kings’ flat. Beside it was a lawn, and if you walked on the lawn, you got a fine. I forget the amount. But it was untoward language that revealed the intricacies of the system, since the different insults were carefully graded according to their gravity. You could get away with just a penny for “shut up” – rated then as foul language rather than just unpleasant manners. A sliding scale gradually worked upwards. I rather think the b-word was beyond price and merited a hearty slap and as for the f-word, we scarcely dared breathe it amongst ourselves.
“Shut up”, then, should have cost a mere penny, but on one occasion my vowels were evidently not of the purest. Miss Murdin’s reaction was extraordinary. She seized me by one hand and, with her free hand, slapped me again and again on the arm, almost leaving the ground by the force of her efforts. When she got tired, she changed hands and started on my other arm, all the time shouting at the top of her voice, “YOU … MUST … NOT … SAY … SHIT”. Indeed I should not – and I had not.
Generally, however, we reached the sweet shop with a reasonable balance of pocket money left. Fortunately, prices were low. Sweets in those days were as environment-friendly as they were unhygienic. No plastic bags, just loose, unwrapped, luridly coloured objects extracted by the shopkeeper’s bare hands from a glass bottle, priced a halfpenny each. Here, my mother’s early training separated me from the rest. Her maxim “Don’t eat between meals” combined with a refusal to give me sweets. Such schoolmates as I remember from pre-Caldecott days seemed to live from one gobstopper to the next and their mothers continually reprimanded mine for her cruelty. Sometimes, when my mother’s back was turned, a kind lady would whip a brightly coloured thing into my mouth, but I was my mother’s son and sweets never held any attraction for me. As a result, I reached a fairly good age before my teeth required serious intervention.
I preferred, therefore, to spend my pocket money on more serious matters. One of these was an exercise book with handsome yellow covers. As a fan of the Famous Five and the Find-Outers, I decided to convene a group for a detection work. After writing “MYSTERIES” in big capital letters on the cover, I proudly entered our first assignment: “Who wet the lavatory floor?” This was a longstanding issue between us and Miss Murdin and of course “no one” had done it. We decided to get to the bottom of the matter and methodically accumulated evidence until we solved the question to our own satisfaction. Miss Murdin was unimpressed by our findings.
The second part of Miss Murdin’s punishment system was reserved for the dormitory and consisted of stars. I forget now what the rewards and punishments were, but the principal reason for losing your star was talking after lights out. Reading after lights out was a further temptation during the long summer nights and some of us smuggled in torches. “That you should have the audacity to read! …” exclaimed Miss Murdin indignantly. A new word for our vocabularies. Lights out, by the way, were preceded by a brief prayer and the Lord’s Prayer. I think this was Miss Murdin’s initiative – I do not remember it in any other dormitory. On a more superstitious level, Miss Murdin never failed to pronounce the phrase “white rabbits” when she entered the dormitory to wake us up on the first day of each month.
Sleep did not come easily for another reason. Adjoining our dormitory, the other side of a locked door, was the common room of the “Senior-Senior Girls”, whose evening entertainment depended on a radio tuned into one of the pirate stations that were springing up. I seem to remember Radio Caroline, but Wikipedia tells me it began in 1964, so perhaps it was Radio Luxembourg. Miss Murdin protested with Miss Elizabeth and Miss Elizabeth’s voice could sometimes be heard ordering them to turn the volume down, but it soon crept up again. The morning would begin with a star-awarding/withholding ceremony. The trouble was that, except where Miss Murdin had detected noises and investigated personally, the system depended on a combination of personal honesty and tell-tale-tits, though Miss Murdin was usually fair in disregarding malicious tale bearing. At a certain point in the evening Miss Murdin disappeared, since her sleeping quarters were in a cottage on the Ridgeway, but Miss Elizabeth’s room was in the vicinity. If she had to intervene, all stars were lost.
As I have shown, Miss Murdin could be roused, and none roused her more than Donald Swarthington. This enterprising young man liked organizing us in military-style groups (war memories were still recent in the early 1960s). He would then turn on his collaborators one by one, shouting, “You’re fired!” Some took this incredibly to heart, almost as though it were a real job and a real firing. Miss Murdin grew increasingly irritated, but we acted first. One afternoon in the playground, when Donald had fired the lot of us, we stripped him to the waist and dragged him through the stinging nettles. Miss Murdin not only did not stop us but, when we had finished, she stormed upon him, shouting repeatedly, “YOU’RE FIRED! YOU’RE FIRED!”
I have mentioned some uncomfortable moments with Miss Murdin but I think she had the right balance between firmness and kindness. I would be surprised if anybody has really unpleasant memories of Junior Study days under her care.
Miss Murdin had a string of assistants. One was a Miss Sheila, but none left any lasting impression.