446. FROM MY ARCHIVES:Two Heads are Better than None
“TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN NONE”
Winner of
the 1998 “AMICUS” Writing Competition
 |
| St Mary's the Mount Walsall in the 1960s |
All my dreams were buried in that school. In those dreams I placed the kernel of my future and I nurtured them daily with hopes, clinging to that senseless determination that those bricks would shape them into reality.
As I watched the raw but contented faces of the fifty or so children in my class, I knew my dreams soared high above theirs. My class mates were satisfied with their lot, they didn't aspire to anything as I did, they had no need: they belonged. Each had a group or a circle that enveloped them. Each outstretched arm would quickly find another: each- except mine. That was my dream- to belong.
It wasn't that I was much different from them, or any poorer. Admittedly some had fathers who didn't come home full of the grime and dust of a copper works and some even had a shop; but they were the well-to-do group. You could tell they were well off because they wore clean, white socks and sometimes their shoes were polished. The posh girls' hair, the only ones in the class who had long hair, always wore it tied up in pony tails or entwined in plaits, never loose. But above all they distinguished themselves by possessing a real pen, a fountain pen. The rest of us had to make do with copper nibs attached to a wooden pen holder which we dipped every second word in the pot of black ink encased on the top of the wooden desk. I often thought that it would be like Paradise if I could write out my dreams on paper continuously because the ink in those wonderful creations flowed without stopping for a dip
I longed to belong to that group, but the possession of a
fountain pen was for me an inconceivable reality and every time I dipped my pen
in the ink-pot I would raise my eyes in envy and furtively scan the rows of
wooden desks to see if any new addition had been made. So I turned to the other
group.
If my father came home from work grimy, at least he had a job, a lot of their fathers didn't, if they had a father at all. I had clean clothes every week whilst the dark pinafore dresses, which those girls obviously got from the welfare, had the milk stains from the week before on them. The boys had holes at the back of their socks or the soles of their shoes unstuck at the toes. The hems of some of the girls were often unstitched or had seams undone. In those days a bathroom was out of the question, and a lot probably had never seen a water tap inside their home. As they danced around the Maypole there was a rank smell in the air when they twirled past. And they scratched their heads. How they scratched!
They were called the Headscratcher gang and they belonged to one another even more fiercely than those in the other group. In the playground they clung to one another in a circle, no one else was ever admitted inside that circle and as far as I could see no one ever attempted to enter it either. It was obviously a very exclusive gang which I certainly could not penetrate, since I belonged to another group of which I was the sole member- the Aliens.
I think it was religion that saved me from being the eternal outsider, a fate colder than any West Midlands' winter. Being a Roman Catholic school with its May processions, Stations of the Cross, Lent penances, Litanies of the Saints and Rosaries, it held a certain advantage for someone who came from Italy, which the children, not making too great a point on geographical precision equated with Rome. For some reason that I could not explain, all the children regarded me as something supernatural, something saintly, not quite human, untouchable. The children held prayer and worship in high esteem. Even the rude, bawdy and smelly Headscratcher gang closed their eyes firmly during prayers. Therefore someone who came from the headquarters of their religion, they imagined had to be, if not quite revered, not to be touched. However to me, coming from Venice, Rome could well have been in the moon for all I cared.
 |
| WALSALL Market- my home town- the building jutting out is the old police station and Guild Hall with Walsall School of Art which I attended in 1965 |
One evening as I was walking home, as we all did in those days, a couple of the Headscratcher gang walked on the other side of the road as usual, when three boys from another school began to push me first to one side then to the next chanting: "Rat catcher, rat catcher..." My English vocabulary had not yet been extended to comprise the word `rat' and was also blissfully ignorant that to those of other opinions `rat catcher' was synonymous with Roman Catholic; a fact that did not escape the two Headscratchers walking on the other side who promptly swooped on the three boys and sprawled them on the ground like flattened sardines.
The Headscratchers walked home with me every night
after that, pulled me inside
their circle in the playground, sat close beside me in class, picked me for
their team in rounders, chose me as their partner in country dancing. That was
the cosiest winter I can ever remember; I glowed with happiness, at last I
belonged! It wasn't however long after that, that I too scratched- which I
considered an insignificant price to pay for membership.
© 2007 Eva Ulian-
