The Drying Rooms - Chapter Twenty Four

Maudie's Letter

I remember the rush of love and excitement on seeing my parents’ handwriting.

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Audio version of Chapter Twenty Four

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Extract from Maudie:

It was Sunday, two weeks after Kay had given her father the film from Maudie’s camera. Maudie and Buzz were sitting on the floor of the girls’ common room playing Jacks.

“It hasn’t worked,” said Buzz, deftly bouncing the ball and scooping up four Jacks.

“It will work,” said Maudie, “It’s got to!”

She could feel that churny crampy sensation in her tummy again. It had been happening a lot lately. Deep down, she feared Buzz was right. Their plan had failed. It would never be over. The bed-wetting, the punishments, the sudden unbearable bouts of homesickness.

“Your turn,” said Buzz.

Maudie scattered the Jacks and bounced the ball, but she bungled the scoop. She couldn’t concentrate this morning.

Why hadn’t Kay’s father done something? And why hadn’t her parents answered her letter? The thought they didn’t believe her was unbearable.

In Maudie, Kay commissions her important judge father not only to develop the photos showing evidence of the matron’s cruelty, but also to post a letter from Maudie addressed to her parents in Bahrain c/o the Foreign Office’s ‘diplomatic bag’ (this was how I sent letters to my parents).

In the letter, Maudie tells her parents the truth for the first time. She tells them about her desperate homesickness, her frequent bedwetting, the ‘sitting out’ in the drying rooms, and matron’s punishment of making her wash her sheets in front of the other girls.

Smuggling out an uncensored letter could have been a real scenario. We wrote letters on Sundays, under supervision in a classroom.

I’ve always used the word ‘censored’, but now, I pause to think. Censored. Really? Years-old anecdotal memories come with glib stock phrases. But ‘censored’ can’t mean that our letters arrived with blacked out lines. Yet ‘censored’ fits the feeling. Although, it’s now made shaky by another memory that keeps barging in – that of sitting up in bed in the dorm with my treasured blue leather writing case on my knees, writing letters with a fountain pen on a pad of thin air-mail paper. So, what does that mean? That we didn’t always write letters under supervision? And some of the letters were sent by air mail? Not by the diplomatic bag? And what about those blue prepaid all-in-one Air Letters? They featured large in my letter-writing life. I enjoyed the challenge of having to fit everything into the restricted space, which usually meant the handwriting being reduced in size to that written by an elf on the last available flap.

There may not have been blacked out lines, but our letters were heavily controlled, certainly in the first couple of years after arrival aged eight. The culture of not ‘sneaking’ and being coerced not to write anything that might upset our parents (the truth in other words) contributed to the onset of boarding school syndrome that has affected me ever since.

This muzzling of emotional outlet is reinforced by the image I have of Cruel Matron with her small, piercing blue eyes being the main letter-writing supervisor.

Extract from Maudie:

What Maudie didn’t know was that four thousand miles away, at the same time as she and Buzz were playing Jacks, her parents were sitting under the shade of an oleander tree in Bahrain about to open her letter.

They were sharing a plate of cool slices of watermelon. Beside the plate was a pile of letters.

“Diplomatic Bag has arrived at long last,” her father said, opening Maudie’s letter with a smile.

We wrote to our parents every week. And they wrote to us. At least mine did. Both of them were consummate letter writers. I remember the rush of love and excitement on seeing my parents’ handwriting. My father’s —competent, regular, with friendly open vowel shapes, in blue or black ink — the writing of someone accustomed to writing legible Foreign Office dispatches. My mother’s — less even, more rushed, her hand matching the speed of her descriptive thoughts, sometimes in biro, sometimes typed, usually undated.

Reading parents’ letters wasn’t a communal, tearing them open, sharing thing. It was treasured and private. Like a delicious slice of deferred cake to be savoured at the perfect moment. Letters were a piece of home. Sacrosanct. Comforting. But also disruptive. They left an aftertaste of longing.

A question that I’m often asked and that I ask myself is - did you tell your parents?

Did I tell my parents? I don’t know. I don’t think so. But if I did, what did I tell them?

They knew I was homesick, but being homesick was considered normal, part of the deal. Something you get over.

I’ve convinced myself it isn’t just Maudie, but me, who wrote the lines I hate it here. Please take me away. But I’ll never know if, like Maudie, I told the full truth about Cruel Matron in my letters. Out of the 180 or so letters that I would have written between the ages of eight and twelve, the only one that is extant doesn’t contain anything about Cruel Matron.

So assuming I didn’t tell my parents, why didn’t I? Because it was reality. Particularly when I was little; I didn’t know there was another version of reality. It just … was.

Or maybe I didn’t tell because ‘sneaking’ on others, whether it was pupils or teachers, was simply not done. It was a code of honour between us, planted and nurtured by our parents and teachers. Sneaks were somehow lesser beings — slightly pathetic, unresilient and not to be trusted.

This was coupled with the stranglehold of fear; telling would make it worse. Cruel Matron was the only adult behind the reinforced glass-mesh swing doors that divided G-Block from the rest of the school.

But what about in the holidays? Did I tell then? Well, no. I don’t think so. I saw my parents for a total of about twelve weeks a year: during the Christmas, Easter and Summer holidays. I was close to my parents. They were talkable to. But just as school was a here and now reality, so was home. And home, of course, was the instant cure for homesickness.

Extract from Maudie:

Two days later, Maudie woke up to a soft sing-song voice saying “Good morning. Time to wake up.”

It was Miss Dipper, the eurythmics teacher! Maudie sat bolt upright in bed. Buzz was also sitting up, wide-eyed.

From her bed by the door, Kay flashed them both a look of triumph, “Where’s Axe?” she said.

“Miss Axminster has gone. She won’t be returning,” said Miss Dipper.

The dorm erupted into a frenzy of cheering and questions. Why?” “What happened?” “Where she’s gone?” “Has she been sacked?” Maudie’s heart was banging in her ribs. It had worked! They’d done it! Axe had gone!

“Calm down, girls!” shouted Miss Dipper, “Enough! Please! That’s all you need to know.”

Miss Dipper was clearly flustered. “Kay, Buzz, get dressed quickly please. Straight to the headmaster’s study. Your parents are here.” Kay and Buzz yelped and hugged each other, jumping up and down on the spot.

“And mine too?” said Maudie.

“Not yours, Maudie,” said Miss Dipper gently as she left the dorm.

Maudie’s elation crashed. She still hadn’t heard anything from her parents. They had ignored her letter! They didn’t believe her!

She couldn’t control herself any longer. She lay face down on her bed and burst into tears.

A hand landed gently on her back, “Maudie? What’s wrong?” It was Buzz. “We’ve done it! Are you ok? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” said Maudie, gulping back her sobs, “It’s amazing. Honestly, it is. I just … I don’t know. I can’t explain. You go. I’ll come in a minute … your parents are here! It’s wonderful.”

Maudie lay on her bed in the empty dorm, hugging her knees and staring at the wall. The high, intermittent chirrup of a bird outside made the room seem even more silent.

After lying there for what seemed like hours, the silence was broken by a man’s voice in the corridor. “In here?” said the voice.

Surely not! Could it be? The voice was followed by the faint, familiar smell of lavender.

“Mummy?” she whispered.

And there they were. Mummy and Daddy. Standing in the doorway. She wasn’t even aware of getting out of bed and running across the room. All she knew was that she was immediately enfolded in the warm, safe strength of their arms.

Half an hour later, Maudie was snuggled up between her mother and father in the back of a taxi driving out of the school gates. She twisted round and took one last look at G-Block and Cruel Matron’s window on the first floor.

“Tell me again. Where are we going?” she said. She knew the answer but she wanted to hear it once more.

“We’re going straight back to the airport,” replied her father. “We’ve come to take you home.”

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