A Good Education

Rosemary Fitch

1949

I was sent to school when I was three. It was called kindergarten and I think I learned to read there. Also to sit nicely at morning assembly with the big girls, and to understand big new concepts like Stealing, Owning up and Guilt.

It was quite a posh school I suppose. It would certainly have been the best that my parents thought they could afford. Both of them believed strongly in the value of a good education and our lives as children were shaped and determined at all times by this aspiration. So I was kitted out in my kilt, green blazer and green panama hat and despatched to school at the earliest possible opportunity.

I wasnt unhappy there, but I remember very little about it. Except the one thing. That dreadful day. The journey to the school meant walking round the corner from our tenement flat in Richmond Street and then up to the tram stop. Then get on the tram and sit in a row with the other children dressed like me, then change trams, then get off the tram and walk the rest of the way to school with a teacher who met us at the stop. I think my mother used to come with me at first, but by the time I was four (probably as a mark of how grown up I was) I went by myself. This was in 1949 and children did this.

One day I was on my way home, doing the journey in the opposite direction. I had got off the first tram, turned the corner at the tram junction, and was walking up the street to the next tram stop. There were nice big houses on this street, it was a good neighbourhood. They had front gardens bounded by low granite walls that just sparkled in the sun, and wrought iron gates to let you in. As I walked past one of these gardens I saw it. A beautiful yellow flower, standing up big and bold, shining, perfect. I was transfixed by it. In my memory it was a golden tulip, but that detail may have been added afterwards. I just had to have it. We didnt have any flowers in our back drying green, in fact we had precious little in that desolate patch of beaten earth. A few tufts of grass around the poles that held the washing lines, some old slates and sometimes a baleful cat which didnt respond to you when you tried to call it. I had been banned from the drying green just weeks before because I had been trying to dig a hole to Australia (there had been talk about emigrating in our house and Australia was, I knew, on the other side of the world), and Mrs Capes from upstairs had put her foot in it and twisted her ankle badly. So this flower was just irresistible. I walked through the gate, across the grass, and plucked it. I dont remember what I did with it on the way home. It probably got lost somehow on the tram journey.

The next day I went to school as usual and was gathered up with all the other little ones for the morning assembly. We sat at the front of the hall, cross-legged on the floor, with all the bigger girls filling the space behind us. The headmistress stood on a platform at the front with the teachers spread in a semi-circle around her. They always looked huge to me from my lowly position. She put her glasses on and looked round the hall. I have something very serious to say to you today she said. I have had a complaint that a girl from this school went into somebodys garden yesterday and stole some flowers. I wasnt sure what this meant but something told me I should pay attention. It was one of the younger girls, she went on and I dont need to tell you how embarrassed I was to hear this. It was a disgraceful thing to do, and reflects very badly on the school. I suddenly remembered my flower and wondered what had happened to it. Then she said I want the person responsible for this to own up now. Silence. Nobody owned up. I began to get a bad feeling about the whole business. I still didnt think it had anything to do with me, but why was nobody saying anything? Well girls? she said, and again there was silence. Was it me she meant? I sat up straight and kept very still. One of you has done this and you know who you are. I am waiting for you to own up. I realised at last that it was me, that what I had done was dreadful, that nobody else in the school would ever do such a bad thing. But I was four, and I hadnt known it was such a bad thing, and I couldnt understand why it was such a bad thing anyway. Even though she said it was, and even though nobody else in the school would have done it. So I continued to sit very still, cross-legged on the floor, my kilt spread over my knees, and kept my mouth firmly shut.

I remember feeling very bad about this for a long time. I am in my sixties now and still dont know if I did the right thing. I dont mean stealing the flower, stealing was an adult concept which didnt exist in my childs brain, and in any case the action was something that sprang from my heart which is a different thing entirely. No, I mean the not owning up bit. It was the first time I had to make a moral decision and it hurt. Guilt entered my life that day, that dreadful four year old day, and has followed me about ever since. But perhaps its all part and parcel of a good education.