mishaps, arguments or
wrong-doing on my part. Now, I think that she made efforts to love me, but she couldn’t do anything without criticism, and I suspect she experienced it herself from her mother. I felt
constantly on trial: her approval had to be earned and I wasn’t much good at earning it. A niece told merecently that my mother had once told her that she didn’t
really like little girls – ‘Of course I don’t mean you, Claire,’ she had added. From my earliest years, I was a disappointment to her. My shortcomings were magnified by her
disapproval; my anxiety about doing the wrong thing accelerated the likelihood.
The only times that were enjoyably Angst -free at home were when she read aloud to me while I was sewing. She was a very good reader; as Dr Manette in A Tale of Two Cities is asked
his name I can still hear her replying, in a ghostly, faraway voice, ‘One hundred and five North Tower.’ But I never felt I could confide in her – since any confidence would be a
kind of exposure that could only count against me. I could never tell her how horrible my day at school had been, or how afraid I was when she made me ride bareback and jump fences with folded
arms, or how I was terrified of putting my head under water, or how frightfully sick I felt in cars, or how embarrassed and ugly I felt when she made me go to parties in bottle-green silk with
bronze stockings and kid shoes to match. There was an ethos then that parents didn’t openly admire or extol their children’s behaviour and talent, and my mother certainly subscribed to
that.
There were other, more serious fears I dared not tell her, or indeed anyone. The worst one was the possibility of another war. Ever since I’d seen the photograph on my father’s
dressing-table and had been told that all his friends had been killed, I’d become steadily more and more terrified by the prospect of war. Nothing that people said about this was in the least
reassuring. Miss Cobham described the Great War as the war to end all wars. But almost at once, war broke out all over the world – in China, in Spain, in Abyssinia. My father had a book
called Vainglory in his bookcase, an anthology of his war, and reading it confirmed my worst fears. In the next war we’d all be bombed or gassed to death. Even if anyone survived, the
world would be a dreadful place. My being taken to see the film The War of the Worlds exacerbated this horror. The combination of H. G. Wells and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphonymade a deep, unbearable impression on me, and for years afterwards I couldn’t hear that music without tears. Sometimes it seemed extraordinary to me that people laughed and
joked, had parties, carried on their ordinary lives as though there was nothing to worry about.
But by then I’d begun to notice that grown-ups never did talk about anything that distressed or frightened them, or if they did, it was never in front of children like myself. Even
when my small brother, Colin, contracted pneumonia and was in serious danger of dying, my parents attempted to conceal the truth from me. It was eleven days before his temperature dropped, and I
was told afterwards that few babies survived so many days of high fever. I adored Colin, and if I’d known how near he came to dying I’d have been prostrated – mad with grief.
The other anxiety that haunted me for many years, although it decreased as I got older, was that I might be sent to boarding-school. My father sometimes threatened this, generally when he felt I
was leading a life of lazy intellectual isolation. He thought that everyone was better off being active in the open air in groups. It was all very well for him, I used to think: after his war,
leaving his home and family, and seeing all his friends killed, a boarding-school would be nothing to him, but to me it was a temporary equivalent of Hell. It was a recurring threat, which was
probably not serious, but it seemed real enough at the time
wrong-doing on my part. Now, I think that she made efforts to love me, but she couldn’t do anything without criticism, and I suspect she experienced it herself from her mother. I felt
constantly on trial: her approval had to be earned and I wasn’t much good at earning it. A niece told merecently that my mother had once told her that she didn’t
really like little girls – ‘Of course I don’t mean you, Claire,’ she had added. From my earliest years, I was a disappointment to her. My shortcomings were magnified by her
disapproval; my anxiety about doing the wrong thing accelerated the likelihood.
The only times that were enjoyably Angst -free at home were when she read aloud to me while I was sewing. She was a very good reader; as Dr Manette in A Tale of Two Cities is asked
his name I can still hear her replying, in a ghostly, faraway voice, ‘One hundred and five North Tower.’ But I never felt I could confide in her – since any confidence would be a
kind of exposure that could only count against me. I could never tell her how horrible my day at school had been, or how afraid I was when she made me ride bareback and jump fences with folded
arms, or how I was terrified of putting my head under water, or how frightfully sick I felt in cars, or how embarrassed and ugly I felt when she made me go to parties in bottle-green silk with
bronze stockings and kid shoes to match. There was an ethos then that parents didn’t openly admire or extol their children’s behaviour and talent, and my mother certainly subscribed to
that.
There were other, more serious fears I dared not tell her, or indeed anyone. The worst one was the possibility of another war. Ever since I’d seen the photograph on my father’s
dressing-table and had been told that all his friends had been killed, I’d become steadily more and more terrified by the prospect of war. Nothing that people said about this was in the least
reassuring. Miss Cobham described the Great War as the war to end all wars. But almost at once, war broke out all over the world – in China, in Spain, in Abyssinia. My father had a book
called Vainglory in his bookcase, an anthology of his war, and reading it confirmed my worst fears. In the next war we’d all be bombed or gassed to death. Even if anyone survived, the
world would be a dreadful place. My being taken to see the film The War of the Worlds exacerbated this horror. The combination of H. G. Wells and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphonymade a deep, unbearable impression on me, and for years afterwards I couldn’t hear that music without tears. Sometimes it seemed extraordinary to me that people laughed and
joked, had parties, carried on their ordinary lives as though there was nothing to worry about.
But by then I’d begun to notice that grown-ups never did talk about anything that distressed or frightened them, or if they did, it was never in front of children like myself. Even
when my small brother, Colin, contracted pneumonia and was in serious danger of dying, my parents attempted to conceal the truth from me. It was eleven days before his temperature dropped, and I
was told afterwards that few babies survived so many days of high fever. I adored Colin, and if I’d known how near he came to dying I’d have been prostrated – mad with grief.
The other anxiety that haunted me for many years, although it decreased as I got older, was that I might be sent to boarding-school. My father sometimes threatened this, generally when he felt I
was leading a life of lazy intellectual isolation. He thought that everyone was better off being active in the open air in groups. It was all very well for him, I used to think: after his war,
leaving his home and family, and seeing all his friends killed, a boarding-school would be nothing to him, but to me it was a temporary equivalent of Hell. It was a recurring threat, which was
probably not serious, but it seemed real enough at the time
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