I doubt I’m the only one who has sat down with a pile of books recently, searching for the right one to read, only to find they are all probably the right books, just at the wrong time. In fact quite a lot of my projects seem to be wrong for the moment so there’s been a lot of juggling here.
You might recall I was very excited to settle down and start reading my Dad’s wartime letters to my Mum a while back, having been inspired by Gillian Tindall's The Pulse Glass . The path of true love did not run smooth in the early days of 1944, and things were very on-off-on and off again. My mum was in Liverpool, my dad was doing gunnery training in Kent and it was all quite intriguing (and largely unknown to me). I was also busy investigating what life might have been like for my mum in wartime Liverpool, had made contact with her old school and was really enjoying the whole thing. Then all ‘this’ happened and out of the blue and unexpectedly (though hardly surprisingly) it all made me very emotional. That is the very last thing my parents would have wanted for me...I could just imagine them telling me to ‘put them away’ and so I have. There will be a right moment but again, it isn’t now.
I had somehow thought that every available ounce of emotional energy was needed for the present rather than the past, none of which explains why the shelf that eventually won me over was my modest Girls Gone By collection. Republished girls’ fiction and I settled on Erica Wins Through by Josephine Elder written in 1924, because it sounded as if Erica, the semi-feral child from Dartmoor, is going to have a baptism of fire at her new boarding school but will emerge triumphant.
It's a theme I am assiduously applying to the here and now... that we will get through this 'thing'.
She really only has herself to blame, because Erica has basically gone on strike since being left at home with a governess, this after her brother John is sent off the boarding school. A bit of a protest ensues which culminates in Erica cutting off her long hair , at which point her despairing father relents and off she goes. There doesn’t seem to be a mother, which is an interesting angle left unexplored by Josephine Elder but open to all sorts of musings for the reader.
On arrival at boarding school all does not run smoothly as you might expect, but it does end happily, as you might also expect from the title. There will be a lot of beastliness towards Erica, who again doesn’t make life any easier for herself by being a bit of an enigma, as well as streets ahead in Latin, but ultimately this is a book about friendship and compromise and meeting friends half way. I'm thinking friendships are more precious than ever in people's lives right now and perhaps some of yours, like mine, do go back to school days.
When class horribles Betty and Joan go to Head of House Margaret to tell tales about Erica there is a moment of pure deliciousness as Margaret challenges them mercilessly. Margaret, who apparently plays hockey like a whirlwind and tennis like a daffodil fairy, is also very fair-minded and will have none of it, dismantling the flimsy evidence and sending the pair off with fleas in their respective ears. Sustained by Margaret's wise counsel Erica makes two very good friends in Pen and Evelyn and suddenly life improves. Whilst the story does descend into some jolly japes towards the end it really didn’t matter. I can only begin to imagine how cheering books like this must have been for young girls who were emerging from the devastation wrought by the First World War, and Josephine Elder is certainly instilling a bit of gumption and ambition into their lives.
There is also a wonderful hockey match which took me right back to my days as Centre Forward and sometime Captain of the First XI. I really can't believe how much I loved running up and down in a gym skirt in the freezing cold, pelted with rain, splattered with mud and nursing bruised shins. Orange boats at half time and tea afterwards with chocolate swiss roll. We'd play against all the local schools, Tiffins, Rosebery, Wimbledon High, James Allen's, City of London Freemen's, Sutton High, St Philomena's Convent, Wallington Girls, and us Nonsuch Girls were fearsome opponents. If any of you went to one of those maybe we first met on the hockey pitch, in which case I'll apologise now for that clout around the ankles.
With so much happening it's taken me an age to read this single book, but it's also been a wonderful retreat into a bygone era. I am unashamed to admit that its been a pleasant escape and I'll be doing more of it.
Meanwhile, if you have scored any reading or audio book successes please do share them in comments..
And were you a hockey fiend too...
Or netball, or gymnastics, or tennis, or athletics or anything else...
Or was hiding in the cloakroom more your thing (I've done that too).
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