SIX

My Protector

In our new Scottish world Fiona took the blame for me, comforted and protected me – drinking half my obligatory third of a pint of gag–making milk at break-time, even though it provoked in her the same reaction. When I was punished, she would come to find me, take my hand in hers and remind me of Ayah and Sunderaj and Mingo and sunshine and I would be transported back to a place where we both belonged.

In India, when Fiona was nearly six she was sent to the local nursery to learn her tables and her ABC from Hannah Tewson and Mrs Souter, our friend Alice Souter’s mother and wife to the general manager, George Souter. Each morning off she would go with her sunhat and a little case filled with pencils and crayons and her lunch – sandwiches and an orange and a banana. No apples in India. I was left behind. That abandonment I felt keenly. Each day I would lay out my small case beside hers with a banana and an orange and each day Ayah would say, “No, missy. Missy Fiona go; Missy Isla too small.”

I hated being too small. Where Fiona went, I went as well; being left behind was not any part of my comprehension. Each day this ritual persisted. Fiona’s case with orange and banana sat by the front door. Each day I put my case with my orange and banana beside it and I’d put my sunhat on top of them all as a sort of claim. Each day Fiona went alone and I’d watch as the little black car took her down the road, leaving behind a cloud of dust. Each time there was the same tight feeling in my chest and throat – the feeling with which I was to become so familiar. My chin felt all wrinkly and tight and a sort of choking feeling came upon me, as if I’d just swallowed a red gundamalley bead and it had lodged itself in my throat. Here was a little grief, a tiny bereavement. I learnt early what a suffocating pain it was. I was what? Two and a half? But the dull ache stayed with me until Fiona returned at teatime. Then we would sit together on the red earth amongst the canna lilies and she would tell me of her day and what she had learnt. Everything in the world was right, now that Fiona was beside me.

Everyone was surprised when she suddenly became ill. She had a very high temperature and complained of pains in her legs. I think she was actually sick, I mean vomited. She was showing signs of malaria, according to “Uncle Doc”, a large ageing highlander, with a gentle bedside manner and sweeties for the children. Doc said no one had had malaria in the High Range for years – in the temperate climate, the mosquitoes did not flourish – but after blood tests, it was confirmed that yes, Fiona had it and she was very ill indeed. She would sweat and fret and moan and then, within minutes, her teeth would chatter and she would shiver with cold, unable to speak as she huddled herself into a ball. Quinine became a force-fed imperative for her, no tablets, just liquid. This bitter brew was forced between her lips and gradually, very gradually, she got better. But malaria returns.

Much later at school in Scotland, when Fiona got sickly, I took the responsibility of telling people about it. “She’s had malaria, you know.”

I’d get a pat on the head for this information. “Yes, dear.”

But I would insist, “No, she really has had malaria, and sometimes it comes back.”

This, to Scottish doctors who had hardly ever heard of the illness. They would be nonplussed by this condition and were glad to know that there was an explanation for these inexplicable and unusual symptoms. I felt grown up that I could take responsibility for Fiona’s malaise, her medication and recovery. Sometimes she would know it was coming on. She would talk about her “malaria legs”, an ache that later spread to the rest of her. It was like being able to forecast a thunder storm; her malaria legs heralded a serious bout of sweating and delirium alternating with shivers and much teeth chattering, the bed piled high with blankets and eiderdowns. The bouts lessened the older she got, but they chased her well into adulthood.

* * * * *

We shared a small Scottie dog, Lassie by name; she was Fiona’s dog really and, like me, she became her shadow. She came with us on walks and was always rushing into the tea and occasionally she’d come out with a small snake that she would toss into the air like a circus juggler. We were afraid she would get bitten, but she survived to scamper in front of us or pad behind Fiona along the red tiled corridors, her nailed feet tap-tapping as she went. She was a sweet creature, with her comical square face and mischievous eyes and Fiona and I could swear, on occasion, she was smiling.

One day Lassie disappeared. We called and called for her, but we couldn’t find her anywhere. All day we called and Fiona was starting to get distraught. Day turned into late afternoon and soon it would be night. No dusky twilight, just the snap into darkness, like a light being turned off. Seeing Fiona’s distress, Matey was prevailed upon to go with one of the labourers into the fringes of the jungle carrying a hurricane lamp and a stick. It wasn’t long before he heard Lassie’s barking and found her in a wild boar trap, frightened but unhurt. He carried her back to the bungalow in a towel and placed her into the arms of a sobbingly grateful Fiona. Had Lassie stayed there, tethered, she would have been like a gift for a passing tiger or panther, a nice present of supper. She certainly would not have survived the night.

My mother’s black cocker spaniel, Hodge, wasn’t so lucky. My mother was fifteen and her sister Ailsa was fourteen when, calling for Hodge everywhere, they came across his black spaniel ears by the river bank, which was all that was left of him. Poor Hodge; no wonder the jungle was forbidden to us children.

We had a cat each; Samson was Fiona’s – Mingo was mine. They were black and semi-wild with no manners at all.

Mingo was pregnant. I watched her little black belly swell and was so excited I couldn’t stop picking her up to tell her so and say how much I was looking forward to her kittens. Mingo didn’t like it very much and occasionally struck out at me.

“Missy Isla, no. Mingo has kittens, if they are born dead it will be Missy Isla’s fault.” Every one of Mingo’s kittens was born dead and she carried them round in her mouth and meowed a lot, making such a sad sound that I was stricken that I had been their executioner. I was the murderer of Mingo’s babies. She disappeared after that. My crime and ensuing remorse cut me to the quick. I would go round seeking her everywhere. There was no sleeping Mingo on the window ledge outside the kitchen, no Mingo sitting on the porch, tail swishing as she watched the quarrelsome crows fighting in the garden. I was inconsolable, although Sunderaj tried to console me.

“Missy Isla, not your fault, Mingo belongs to the jungle, she is happier there. Do not be sad. We all belong somewhere. I belong here, you and Missy Fiona belong in UK and one day you will return there, as Mingo has gone back to the jungle.”

All this was said with Sunderaj’s nodding head and white smile (made whiter by the betel nut that stained his gums red). I was bewildered. I belonged here. Home was here not that other place they called “home”, the place I’d not seen. I belonged with the canna lilies and the jackals crying at night, and the swirr of the fan above my head and the plantains for breakfast and the mangoes eaten greedily in the bath, their juice dripping down our chins and arms – plopping into the water. Here was home.

One day I went to look for Sunderaj to tell him about some particularly large ants that were marching across the verandah carrying huge leaves and bits of bark like an army waving banners – Burnham Wood coming to Dunsinane. Fiona told me to hurry, as the ants might go before I got back, and I called for Sunderaj all the way. But Sunderaj was nowhere to be found. I called and called for him, and then Boy heard me and called me to the kitchen. “Missy Isla – Sunderaj has gone.”

“Gone? But this is his home, he told me.”

“No, Missy, Sunderaj has gone.”

I ran back to tell Fiona, who was as bewildered as I was, but even more crestfallen. I liked Sunderaj a lot, but he was Fiona’s special friend. He heard her tables and listened to her read and threaded marigold garlands and made eggs and coins and matchboxes disappear and appear again. We sought an explanation from our parents who sat us down and told us that Sunderaj had become ill and had to go to his family in the plains for them to look after him. It transpired that Sunderaj had syphilis (incurable in those days) and had made the decision himself to leave my father’s employ. My father paid him a severance sum and found him a post in Trivandrum until he got too ill to fill it. So Sunderaj was gone, leaving two disconsolate little girls behind him.

At Christmas time Fiona and I would sit in the lime tree, heavy with hard little green limes, and watch the procession of people come up the road to give my father and mother Christmas wishes and “the compliments of the season.” They would present my father with bottles of whisky and little bags of coins, my mother with cashmere scarves, fine enough to loop through a wedding ring, and gold bangles and earrings. My father, with grace and courtesy, refused all these gifts. He never, ever accepted any of them, as they were always bribes, and my father would have no truck with bribery. But he was polite, so that the present giver would not be offended. He did, however, accept small baskets of mangoes or oranges and sprays of orchids and gold tinseled garlands, but that was all – and he would always look at the bottom of the basket or box of fruit to see if there had been anything discreetly left there. Indeed, one Christmas at the bottom of a basket of oranges was a beautiful gold watch. My father at once got the chokra to run after the giver and ask him respectfully to take the watch back – he would keep the oranges, but would not accept the watch. My father stuck rigidly to this rule all his twenty-nine years in India.

The day came when Fiona was to go to “Big School” – Presentation Convent in Kodaikanal. This meant a whole term away from me. My life became aimless. It wasn’t fun chasing dragonflies on your own, or opening your mouth when it rained and swallowing as much rainwater as you could, giggling and spluttering. It wasn’t much fun being covered in almond oil by Ayah and running around at bath time (goosle kawasti) on your own, or looking at the long shadows on the nursery walls, the dressing gown on the back of the door transformed into a scary hooded man. Fiona and I would giggle in mock fear; without her, the fear was real. The sound of the jackals calling, a chilling sound at the best of times, in the dark lonely room all on my own froze my girlish blood.

Time passed and so miserable was I without Fiona, my parents agreed to send me to Kodai school too – just for one term. I was five years old and I was delighted to be going to “Big School”. I was proud of my uniform, even though the beret sat on my head like some huge flying saucer and everything was much too big. I felt grown up and I was going to join Fiona. It hadn’t occurred to me that it could be quite a responsibility for her to have this volatile little limpet clinging to her, a persistent little duckling strutting in her wake – and a responsibility I was. Fiona was a shy child, sensitive, and didn’t want to upset authority, break any rules or draw attention to herself in any way. Walking into a room of strangers was a trial for her, as she was convinced each eye was upon her. She had learnt already at Kodai that breaking the rules was not an option; you just did what you were told.

Being a Catholic school, fish was served on Fridays. I hadn’t had much fish before and I didn’t like it. I hated the little bendy bones and the fishy taste displeased my palate. I told the nuns I wasn’t allowed to eat meen (fish), as it made me sick. It wasn’t true, but the lie worked and I got off the obligatory Friday menu. That seemed easy enough. I was fascinated by everything. The nuns’ wimples and how they kept them on, the little phials of Holy water at the entrance to the Church and the big ballroom; lining up for classes, washing at the long line of basins with freezing cold water, making sure to use your soap from your sponge bag with your name on it and drying yourself with your name-taped towel. I was fascinated by the rows of little desks, each with their own pot of ink in the right hand corner.

I liked the look of the ink and the way it stained my finger and seeped its way under my nail. The taste was sweet and bitter at the same time. I thought I would try it properly and picked it up and drank it. My blue stained lips evoked squeals of horror. Fiona was summoned. Schooled in the knowledge that prayer to Jesus and the blessed Virgin cured all ills, she had all the children in my class on their knees with their rosaries out pleading with our Blessed Virgin that her stupid little sister may not be poisoned and only a few minutes away from death. Sister St John appeared and asked, “Whatever is going on here?”

“It’s Isla Blair-Hill, Sister. She has drunk ink and she is going to die. Any minute now she will die.”

“Stop this at once. Isla Blair-Hill, come this way with me.”

And I followed her to the Sick Bay where I was prevailed upon to drink a glass of salty water. Within minutes I was heartily sick. Not the sick that looked like vegetable soup, but what looked like the ink from an octopus that had been turned inside out by some business-like fisherman. There were no ill effects, just my notoriety and Fiona’s shame.

Above all, Fiona was nice. She seemed to have time for people, especially me, and showed me how to tie up my shoe laces, how to polish my brown shoes. “Polish on, rub it round and round, now the polishing off brush, brush, brush, brush until the shoes are shiny. Now wipe them all over with the cloth.”

She became not only my sister, but a surrogate mother and protector. And protect me she did – fiercely.

She kept things neatly and all in order, not all scrumpled and chaotic like me. Fiona let me play with her dolls, even with the knowledge that they would be returned to her with an arm missing or an eyeball stuck inside its plastic head with the somewhat disconcerting vision of straight, bristling eyelashes protruding from the eye socket. She would sigh in a very grown up way, she would even tell me off, she would weep with frustration but she always forgave me. Fiona has remained my confidante and closest friend and, on my sixtieth birthday, she gave me a glass bowl engraved with all the significant milestones in my life. Badges, names, quotes – and she gave me too a photograph of us together, aged ten and six, standing in our new school uniform of maroon and blue about to go to St Maray’s School in Dunblane. On this photo she has written, “Even at 60 you are still 6 to your sister.”

So here we were in Scotland, where the sun rarely shone, where instead of bright canna lilies, there was an abundance of rhododendron bushes and fir trees that looked different to the ones at the golf course in Munnar. The colours in India were bright, the women’s saris, the birds, the fruit, and the flowers; even the food was brightly coloured – turmeric and chilies, green “Ladies’ Fingers”, pineapples and mangoes. Here in Scotland, things seemed diluted or bleached out; the food: grey porridge, white pudding, grey tripe and onions, the white bread that stuck to the roof of your mouth – not like the charcoal baked chapattis, or the bread full of little seeds baked by the Boy. And it was dark most of the time. In Munnar I woke up to light that cut its way through our linen curtains, sunbeams with dust motes floating, suspended, and I would long to be up – legs out of bed, bang shoes together, put them on and call for Ayah, “Ayah, Ayah, where ARE you? I’m up.”

And I went to bed sometimes – well usually, really – when it was still light, before the jackals started howling.

But here in Scotland, it was dark most of the time. I got up when Matron turned the lights on and clapped her hands. “Up now all of you, time to get up.”

It was dark, certainly gloomy all day long, and when the white strip lights were put on, they gave me a headache and made everyone look a bit green, as if they were about to be sick. It was dark going to bed. After prayers in our beds, the light was snapped out and that was it. No moon, no chatting to Fiona, no good night. It always took me a while to go to sleep.

It was strange that although Fiona and I were here together, we saw so little of each other. We slept in different dormitories, sat at different tables at mealtimes, had different classrooms, of course – even at break time, Fiona had her own group of friends and I had mine. Except that they weren’t my friends yet. I felt that Fiona and I spoke a different language from the other girls and in truth we did. I came out with words that made no sense to them and they laughed in bewilderment – sometimes in mockery. Tapal (post), goosle (bath), lili (bed), cutcha (haphazard), pyti (mad). I spoke of my ayah, which made me sound like a posh girl when I tried to explain who she was and what she did. “Oh, you mean a nanny? Isla has a nanny. Did she make your bed and put your clothes on for you? Did she run your bath and get you ready for meals?” When I replied that yes she did, they were incredulous and started calling me “Lady Isla”. That I spoke English in what I later learnt was an RP accent, compounded this theory that I was from an aristocratic family that had fallen on hard times. This could not have been further from the truth. I was very un-posh indeed and there was nothing at all grand about being a tea planter’s daughter, but because they didn’t know anyone else whose father was not a bank manager, or a sweet shop owner, or a hotel manager, a doctor or a teacher, it made him, and therefore me, a bit exotic and odd. I very soon learned the Glasgow accent that was more acceptable and drew me closer to my contemporaries.

Part of me wanted to be like them so that they wouldn’t laugh at me, but another part wanted to keep the Indian side of me. I didn’t want to lose that thread that bound me to my memories of Sundaraj and Boy and Ayah and the sun and our chupplis and sand shoes, the silly topees we wore that felt heavy and wobbled. My parents were part of that Indian-Isla side and sometimes I felt that without that and them, I would stop being me. It was as if I was acting this Scottish school girl with scratchy socks and too-short hair and a fat liberty bodice and baggy pants and as if I’d left behind the lean, laughing me under the lime tree in our garden.

Every Monday morning a letter came to each of us from our mother and every Thursday we both got a blue air-letter card from Daddy. Fiona and I would arrange to meet outside the linen cupboard on the first floor landing at break time, just before prep, as there was no one around then and she would read the letters to me. I liked the sound of her voice. I memorised the words by heart. “Read that bit again, Fi,” and she would indulge me and I engraved the sentences in my memory.

I’ve always learned lines by hearing them. I am a quick study in that way. I can usually learn lines at rehearsal, but if not, I will record them, listen and learn them. Looking at a page of script means nothing to me unless I hear it too.

On Sundays, we were to write letters on an airmail lettercard home. Fiona would help me. Sometimes I’d copy her words. Often, because I was slow, she’d write them for me. They were just “all is well” kind of letters. We were told not to send grievances or moans home. “You don’t want to worry your parents when they are so far away. Besides when they get your letter, your problems will have resolved themselves” – which was probably true. So they never heard of my heartache when the one friend I had made, Linda Roselle, stopped being my friend. I had sought her out, only to find that she was avoiding me. What had happened? “I can’t be your friend any more, Isla. I am Peffy Shanks’ best friend now, and we have paired up in lots of things, so you will have to find someone else to walk in croc with, and everything.” Peffy Shanks had ginger hair and couldn’t pronounce her “Rs”. She came from Nottingham and Linda came, not just from America, but CALIFORNIA – the land of dreams and movie stars. With her accent alone, Linda held up a mirror of what I thought I wanted my future to be.

It was my first “dumping”, my first rejection and I felt rebuffed and hurt – but never a word of this was sent home. It seemed a bit trivial to write it down – besides, Fiona would say, “Do you really want to say that, Isla? It might worry them.” So I said I didn’t and she didn’t write it down.

I was good at signing my name. I’d write in block capitals ISLA JEAN SALUKI. I hoped it would make my mother smile.

What we knew to be true was that children had been sent away from their parents at home as evacuees during the war. Some of them were well looked after, some of them had a horrible time and others learned patience and acceptance and knew that one day the war would be over. We were like them and we learnt to just get on with it. There was a frightening moment when Fiona was told that the school was for orphans and we thought our parents were dead, but the moment passed; it was just a tease. We had to grow into ourselves faster because we were alone. There was no one to turn to, or ask, or hug, so we had to learn to ponder things, puzzle them out, be self-reliant. It wasn’t a bad thing.

St. Maray’s became Fiona’s security; her friends became her family, not at my expense – she always had time for me – but sometimes she was stricter with me. “Isla, you must be good.” “Be quiet, Isla.” “Isla, don’t.”

She was fearful that something would happen that would provoke the school into sending me (us) away and where would we go? There was no home to be sent home to; she was the one who had to be responsible for me.

She rebelled sometimes, too. She was naughty, as all children are, but she was not defiant. We both became aware that my hot temper, my looks of fury or disdain with a newly-perfected raised eyebrow, were maddening for those in charge of me. I was not sulky, but I looked at some of the staff with dumb insolence and was sent to stand in corners or got sent to bed more often than was comfortable and this caused Fiona anxiety. For me, it was a way of hanging on to who I was. Fiona was growing up fast; she was learning to be independent, but she was aware that I was dependent on her.

It was the same with the guardians my parents found for us in the holidays. Fiona was afraid that I would do something that they would disapprove of and we would be told to leave, with nowhere to go. Fiona would take me to one side and say,” Isla, we have to be good, we have to behave,” and I’d say, “I know,” but I didn’t know that I wasn’t being good, so I didn’t know how to be different. I was not naughty on purpose.

Even if people were kind to us – and they usually were – however well we were treated, we couldn’t lose the feeling that we were paying guests in their houses and because each home we went to was not ours, there was nowhere to put our “things”, somewhere that was our very own special place. Not that there was anything secret to hide; there was just nowhere to keep anything private. So your treasures, a bracelet with a four–leaf clover on it from Aunt Doris, the lace handkerchief of my mother’s, Ayah’s pressed marigold in the butterfly wing box, my scrapbook of film stars with pictures of pools and palm trees and smiling long-haired women and men with very short hair and very white teeth that I’d cut out from my film star magazines, my Debbie Reynolds doll that I could fit different dresses on – all these had to be carried backwards and forwards to school and holiday home, or they would have to be abandoned or thrown away every time I went to a new place.

That was always the question I dreaded. “Where is your home, Isla? Where do you come from?” I didn’t know. I’d say “India” and watch the look of surprise, disbelief or pity wash over their faces. It felt somehow shameful that I didn’t have a home. I’d hear songs of “homeland” – but where was mine? Was it India, or was it here in Scotland? “Going home” became a phrase I’d hear so often, but where was it? On “Going home days” at the end of term, most of the girls were lined up with their trunks and suitcases to be taken to the Glasgow Escort, the train that would deliver them to Glasgow’s Central Station, where their joyous parents would rush forward and scoop them into their arms and the girls would whoop with delight as their hats fell off in the tumble of hugs and kisses and they would walk off arm in arm with their mothers, as their fathers ruffled their hair and picked up the luggage.

Fiona and I would stand watching them go and once I saw Fiona looking stricken that there was no one to meet us, before she picked up the suitcase and asked a porter which platform we needed for the train to Prestwick, when we stayed the short time with our grandparents, or the train to Inverness, when we stayed with our parents’ friends, the Aitkens. That was a more complicated journey, because at Inverness we had to change and get on a small local train that would chuff its way through the Cairngorms to Kingussie and then onto Newtonmore.

Fiona and I belonged, were special, only to our parents. Our guardians had us out of duty, out of kindness, or because they were being paid, not necessarily because they wanted us, or because they loved us as “their girls”. But our parents weren’t there, so Fiona and I belonged, instead, to each other. We lived as guests in other people’s houses, trying to be inconspicuous, but wanting to be noticed and approved of by the two people who weren’t there.

Fiona and I have always been close. There is no-one who can make me laugh as she does and we seem, still, to have a kind of shorthand – we just need a look from each other and we understand. We have had some sad and worrying times in our adult lives, who has not, and the long distance phone calls we have made to each other to placate, cajole, reassure, have been legion.

It wasn’t nice not to be able to go out at weekends or not being met by anyone on Going Home days. It made me feel a bit lonely, but the really lonely-making thing was to have no one to report to. “Dad, Pamela Murdoch pulled my hair and bit me.” “I’ll tell my Mum on you.” “Mum, I’m scared of swimming. I hate the chlorine and I don’t like putting my head under the water.” “Mum, Mrs Dunsmuir says I can sing a solo.” I was nearly eight when the head mistress Mrs Dunsmuir asked me to sing “Christopher Robin” in a concert the school was giving that was to be held in the Hydro at Dunblane, where we had learnt to swim. My hair looked like Christopher Robin’s anyway, with my fringe and bob and I was dressed in boy’s striped pyjamas with a white cord that tied up around the waist. I practised the song lots of times and knew it backwards. But I was upset and annoyed that the chorus of little girls behind me, background humming, were out of tune. I kept turning round to scowl at them. If they couldn’t sing in tune why did they have to sing at all? I didn’t see why they needed to be there anyway. They weren’t in Christopher Robin’s bedroom humming; he was alone, as I should have been.

But there were other things that seemed to matter when neither of my parents were there. There was no one to complain to on a daily, even a weekly basis. “Do you know what Janet McClure called me?” Nor anyone just to chat with in a friendly, companionable way about school; about my scratchy socks and how I thought Irish stew made of sheep tasted like Afghan coats left out in the rain or the tapal coolie’s blanket. There was no one to feel my hurts as keenly as I did, no one to delight in my little triumphs with me – and because there was no one to share them, they felt diminished somehow.

We learned to swim at our parents’ insistence. It was a school extra, but they deemed it really important that we should at least be able to keep our heads above water. We went to the Hydro each Monday morning and were put under the supervision of Mr MacDonald, a gruff Glaswegian who took us through the routines and techniques. He had thick bottle glasses and very hairy arms. We clung to little floating blocks as we splashed our legs and tried to become confident enough to attempt a few strokes. I was rather scared of Mr MacDonald. He called us all “puddocks”. “Come you, ye great puddocks, let’s be having you.”

When he deemed the time was right to let us test ourselves with a full length, he took us to the deep end and presented a long bamboo pole. “Right, Blair-Hill puddock, let’s see what you can do. You start swimming like I’ve shown you and if you feel you can’t do any more reach out for this pole and I will pull you out. OK?”

I gingerly climbed down the deep end steps and started out. After a few strokes, I found myself sinking and sputtering and choking. I reached out for the pole, but Mr MacDonald pulled it away. This happened again and again, but I swam the full length, somewhat erratically, but I did it. I never trusted Mr Macdonald again, or forgave him for breaking that trust, even though there was some triumph in swimming the length. I still hate swimming, I hate the chlorine in swimming pools, and as for the sea – the thought of swimming through deep water terrifies me. I imagine unseen sea creatures looming up, catching me and pulling me down to the sea bed. Even a sea view doesn’t impress me much. The English seaside in winter positively depresses me.

One Monday afternoon, after swallowing too much chlorine and probably at the beginning of a cold, I foolishly complained to matron that I had a sore throat. She looked down it with a torch, found it to be red and decided I had mumps. I didn’t. But there was another girl in the school who did, so I was incarcerated in the sick room for five days with the infectious girl and inevitably picked up the bug some ten days later. This time, I was in the sick bay on my own, with a sore stiff neck, a swollen face and a throat so inflamed it was hard to swallow. I felt wretched. I stayed in bed, encouraged to drink lots of water and Lucozade which I liked, but drank with difficulty.

After a few days I began to feel better, but was bored and very, very lonely. It was early spring. I looked out of the window to see the little buds on the trees and watched as a pair of blackbirds flew about picking up twigs and grasses to make their nests. Matron, or one of the kitchen staff, would come up with my meals – otherwise I would be left entirely alone. Even Fiona was not allowed to visit me. There was one book with pictures in it, of Noddy and Big Ears, but no books for drawing, no crayons or pencils. I would breathe on the window panes and draw faces in the condensation.

After a few days, which felt like several months, Miss Scott, the assistant matron, came up to get me dressed and said we could go for a short walk round the grounds, up to the Pineapple (a folly built in the grounds of Dunmore Park, to where the school had been moved from Kilbryde Castle). My legs felt surprisingly wobbly as we walked through the watery spring sunshine, but I was delighted by the pussy–willows and the dangly catkins that puffed out pollen if you shook them. I’d never seen them before.

Miss Scott was a kind young woman with red hair and she pointed out where she thought some birds had made a nest in the hollow of a tree and where the wild daffodils were starting to push green sprouts through the grass. We came across a rabbit with bulging eyes that didn’t move on our approach but lay panting shallowly, clearly in some distress. “Oh poor wee thing, it has this horrible Myxomitosis. I must get Ray (the handyman) to come and put it out of its misery.” I didn’t like to think what Ray would do – bang it on the head, wring its neck? I backed away in squeamish horror and Miss Scott decided it was time to walk back to school.

The next day I was allowed back in circulation. Fiona came to find me and as we met, I burst into tears of relief and she cried too, that I was once more where she could cheer me, speak to me, keep an eye on me, put her arms around me and hug me.

I tried to make up for the days I had been confined in the schoolwork that was set for me, but none of the teachers seemed to be troubled that I had fallen even further behind in just about everything. I went to find Fiona whenever I could, but she uncharacteristically got impatient, “Isla, I can’t now. I am going with Ursula and Margie.” It flashed through my mind that I would burden Fiona with my small hurts and troubles, but who would Fiona go to with hers?

“Going out” days, half term and holidays were another problem. Where could we go? There were four “going out” days a term. Parents would collect their children and take them home for the day, out for a picnic in summer to Pitlochry or the Lake of Menteith, or out for lunch at a local hotel if they lived far away. To begin with, Fiona and I stayed at school, which conjured up feelings of shame and envy in us, as the other girls felt pity for us, and we would watch them getting excited as the day approached. There was one occasion when a friend of Fiona’s, Janet Gordon, asked us both out for lunch with her parents. It was a treat much looked forward to and Fiona and I were spick and span as we went with shining faces with Janet towards her car after church on Sunday. The problem was that Janet’s generosity of heart had failed to reach her parents. They were mortified and utterly sweet to us, but very regretful that we couldn’t go with them as they were visiting relatives who were not expecting us. I don’t know who was more embarrassed – Janet, her parents or Fiona and me. Back to school we went, tails drooping between legs and a long Sunday stretched ahead of us as the only girls remaining in the silent school.

But not on all going out days did we feel quite so sorry for ourselves. Occasionally, Aunt Doris would come over from Glasgow and not really know what to say to us; it was a trial for us and a torment for her, as she struggled to entertain us and we tried and failed to behave well and not be bored.

My parents hated the notion of our being left behind and arranged for the Hendersons to take us out (for a remuneration of course). The Hendersons, who were the parents of two girls our ages at school, owned a small hotel in East Kilbride So we spent every fourth Sunday in the Golden Lion Hotel in Stirling. The day followed a pattern. Lunch in the dining room, with white damask dining cloths and crisp napkins, candles on the table and melba toast (I loved melba toast – still do) and menus the size of blackboards, or so it seemed to me, bound in green leather. A pianist tinkled on the piano and five minutes into lunch, Mrs Henderson – Betty – requested that “Charmaine” be played. It was always “Charmaine”.

The afternoon was spent running round the hotel (what nightmares we must have been) and usually I found my way to the long silent ballroom. On a small stage was a grand piano. I would open it and feel the keys and play, tunelessly, as if I were a concert pianist, longing to make the sound I knew should come from it, but not having the knowledge or the skill to produce it. It wasn’t long before a member of staff, alerted by the dreadful racket, came in and scolded me. I was not put off, however, and crept into the ballroom every “going-out” day.

Holidays were more problematic, with our parents in India anxiously making decisions that they felt were the best for us.

Besides, there were the children in upper class houses in England, brought up by a nanny and sent to boarding school, who during the holidays saw little of their parents. Fiona and I knew we were loved and that made the separation from our parents bearable.