大象传媒

I grew up the day I saw a teacher crying. Not any old day but a September day in 1939. Not any ordinary teacher but the tall well-built Miss Rutland. Headmistress of the school from which we were being evacuated, she was, until that day, the nearest in my seven-year old eyes to the Almighty God.
What a glorious morning it'd promised to be as we walked in the bright sunshine to school. The roas was transformed with piles of sandbags. The gardens were all dug up and huge mounds of earth concealed the Anderson shelters. The bright red pillar-boxes sported a new livery in squares on yellow detector paint.
There was excitement in the air. An errand-boy who cycled past whistled the latest `Oh Ma, Ma. The Butcher-boy For Me.'
We felt quite important. With our snout-nosed gas-masks in their ssquare boxes slung over our shoulders, we strode along swinging our small brown suitcases.
At school, no lesons, not even a visit to our classroom. Instead, we were to march to the station for a train bound for somewhere in the country. To heighten the sense of mystery, it was explained that we'd never know exactly where we were going. The names of the stations were all blacked out. What a marvellous adventure.
And then to see Miss Rutland. Dressed in her best Dickens and Jones tea-gown, she stood there, not ordering us about. Just weeping.
Like our mums. Well. You'd expect it of them. They were crying even when they were making our sandwiches that morning.
Or like the refugees.
The word `refugee' had entered our vocabulary the year before. It was applied to a group of pale frightened-looking children from
Czechoslovakia who appeared in our class. To begin with, they were all distressed, huddled together for comfort in the playground. They refused to play with us even though we tried to include them. As Headmistress had asked. Had commanded really.
We grew impatient. We felt it was really selfish of them not to appreciate how nice we were being.
Moreover. The shoes they wore. They were coloured beige. Beige. Beige! Nobody in the school had ever seen, much less worn such a colour. Black or brown, yes. But beige, never. It set them apart.
Even as they sat in the classroom, they maintained that lost faraway look. Gradually, though, their English improved and they joined in our games and were becoming one of us. That is, until the Boat-race.
All the week leading up to it, an intense rivalry prevailes. Who'd support the light-blues and wear the badge for Cambridge or sport the dark-blues for Oxford.
No matter that as city children, we'd never seen a real boat in our lives. Once, on a classroom visit, Miss Rutland promised that if we worked hard we'd win a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge. We assumed that the `ship' part of the scholarship was in some way connected with the Boat-race.
To these poor Czechs, it was all anathema. They couldn't begin to decide between the blues. Worse still, one of them, a very cheeky boy, actually told me that he didn't care who won. Such ingratitude. After all the trouble we'd taken. A coolness set in.
When you think about it. So remote from our lives were Oxford and Cambridge that they could've been situated in faraway Timbuktu. And what my Irish mother must've made of my enthusiasm for the race and of the proud displaying of the light-blue badge. How she kept patient when I arrived home scratched and bruised after fights with those who reckoned (rightly) that Cambridge hadn't a hope of winning.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.