'Mummy, tell me another Freda story', was a nightly request from my daughter, Anna, when she was tiny, and when my repertoire of Freda stories was exhausted, I'd be asked to tell an old one again. As far as Anna was concerned, truth was far more exciting than fiction and for some unfathomable reason Freda stories fired her imagination. Let me share a sample of these stories with you, my reader.
Freda joined my class in boarding school the second year I was there. It wasn't long before we realised that for the next four years we boarders would live in a perpetual state of excitement.
It was wartime and food wasn't all that plentiful. On cookery days the day girls brought their own ingredients and took their culinary delights home to be proudly shared with the family for tea while the school, acting in loco parentis, provided the ingredients for the boarders. We, too, were allowed to share our creations with our table at teatime. Apple snow, macaroni cheese and egg custard were welcome additions to a dull diet. That is, until the school authorities, in their wisdom, decided to economise, decreeing that henceforth the dishes cooked by boarders should be served as staff supper.
This withdrawal of a privilege brought bitter disappointment and angry resentment, and Freda decided that we needed to show our disapproval in unmistakable terms. On the next cookery day we were making Welsh cheese cakes and Freda became exceedingly busy. One look at her should have warned us that she was hatching some sensational plot. Her customary expression of angelic innocence was heightened, as she did the rounds of the eight boarders who were working in pairs. Ours was a small school averaging 14 pupils per year. Freda added crushed eggshells to the whites and yolks in each bowl and a fistful of salt blended in with the caster sugar while a generous quantity of Persil was to become indistinguishable from the flour. We were a pliable, easily manipulated group, accepting her interference without protest!
When the cakes were taken from the oven, they looked and smelled delicious! What was that line from Shakespeare? 'Loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.' Our least loved teacher, Miss K, happened to be on duty that evening. We watched in silence as she sat down at the top table on her own to eat her supper while we, feigning nonchalance, sipped our nightly cocoa. One bite from the cakes sent her hurrying to the hatch to consult the kitchen staff.
Next morning we were summoned in pairs to appear before the head mistress, an awesome experience! For the remainder of term the domestic science room became our punishment cell where, on cookery days, we found ourselves, day girls as well as boarders, scrubbing tables for hours on end, an activity as pointless and sterile as writing lines.
VE night in school was memorable, not just because the war was over but also because we were about to leave school. It seemed as if, like the world at large, we were stepping out into a bright new future, full of hope and promise, with undreamed-of opportunities for new beginnings. That night also stood out because of the terrific thunderstorm which broke as we prepared for bed. We seniors had our own house, called 'Navarre', which was surrounded by tree-shaded gardens and bushes, away from the main school. There were eight of us in residence, including Freda.
That night Freda was in a tussle with the teacher on duty and was ordered to report to the senior disciplinarian in main school. She set off in the rain, wearing her dressing gown and slippers. She should have donned her raincoat and wellington boots, and taken an umbrella with her but, being Freda, she'd have contrived somehow to manipulate her punishment so that she would appear the aggrieved party. She hadn't come back by the time we fell asleep.
Around 2 am I jumped up in bed, terrified and screaming, as I became aware of someone shaking me. It was Miss K demanding to know where Freda was hiding. Then lights came on all over the school and for two hours every nook and corner inside and outside was searched but there was no trace of her. We seniors sat in a huddle in an upstairs bedroom, cussing her for keeping us from our sleep. Suddenly, we heard a light tap on the window and there she was, standing on the flat roof, asking to be let in. We could have lynched her as she stood there with her aggravating, quizzical look of innocence as she asked, 'What's going on? Why are the lights on everywhere? Why are you all sitting here in the middle of the night instead of being asleep in bed?'
We were too exhausted to exchange words with her. We fetched Miss K and were grateful for being allowed to go back to sleep.
More 'Rochelle' stories with Freda are outlined here:
http://www.patriciamccormack.com/irish-childhood/rochelle/gone-with-the-wind and here:
http://www.patriciamccormack.com/irish-childhood/rochelle/night-time-antics
Such stories are endless and what she got up to in Rochelle was nothing to her student escapades!
After leaving school Freda started to study medicine at Trinity University in 1945. There, her escapades continued to entertain those around her.
During her first year she stayed in Trinity Hall. I met up with her regularly having been in her class in Rochelle.
In her second year she had digs in Clontarf. One morning she didn’t get up and go to lectures and her landlady kept calling her till midday and then went into Freda’s room. Freda lay there, looking up at the ceiling, so the landlady called for an ambulance which took her to the Adelaide. My friend, June, who was studying Social Science went in to see her and June was wearing a green coat so Freda kept pointing at her and saying: ’There’s a green tree standing there. Take it away.’
June told her to quit behaving stupidly but could make no sense of it. The nurses at mealtimes brought a tray to her bed but later the tray would be removed untouched. After a week of this they noticed that although she had seemingly eaten nothing she was putting on weight so the doctors thought up a plan. The nurse would, as usual, take in the full tray and in due course go in to remove it by which time the doctors would lie in wait outside the door. After a set time they opened the door and rushed in to find Freda sitting up in bed devouring a whole roast chicken! Her parents were summoned from Limerick and ordered to take her home. Their reaction was to brand all her friends as callous and uncaring, when their darling daughter had been traumatised by cutting up bodies in College and no one understood!
In her 4th year she joined my friend, Beryl, and me to share the house we were renting. Housework was allocated by rota but, when Freda's turn to clean the stairs came, she ordered me to do it for her and I refused. That night I hopped into bed only to jump out again pretty smartly, yelling that there was a skeleton in my bed! What poor 'Yorick' lay there as my momentary bedfellow and Freda's partner in crime? To my shame, I have to admit that I meekly agreed to clean the stairs, simply to ensure that the skeleton made its way back to the pathology lab in College thereafter to be chained firmly to its base!
On another occassion, Garda Smith was directing traffic on College....Freda wanted to cross the road into Trinity but she got tired waiting so she simply went to cross through the moving traffic. Garda Smith caught her bike by the saddle so she hopped off and grabbed her gown from the basket in front and ran into the college.
At lunch, she crossed the road and in the centre, saw her bike chained to the railings. She went up to the Garda and demanded it back. Finally, the porters at the front gate went across and pleaded with the Garda. About 15 years later, Mike was in Trinity with Garda Smith's son who lived on the same road that they lived at first, when Pat and Mike were tennants in Rathgar. The son invited Mike to tea to meet his parents. His dad began telling a tale about a medical student who, so many years previously, had left him standing, holding her bicycle.
Another time Freda was in a lecture room in Trinity in a room with tiered seats and she had a marble and she would drop it so that it would plop from one level to the next, making a huge noise as it descended. She joined our Biblical Diploma lectures so as to have an easy subject for her BA (which even medics had to take). Ours were taken by Reverend Jenkins on Friday afternoons. He had a habit of putting his spectacles down his nose and squinting his eyes. She chose one day to sit up front to his left where she could be seen by each of us and there she sat mimicing him with his glasses.
There are dozens more Freda stories like these. Anna never grew tired of listening to them. She found them a lot more interesting and exciting than, say, 'The Little Red Hen' or 'The Big Bad Wolf' or 'Don Quixote' as bedtime stories. Of course, I told them in childish language!
In the summer of 2000 my friend Hazel from Dublin rang to say, 'Guess whom I met at church on Sunday - Freda. She's home from Australia and will be visiting another old school friend, Ellis, in Surrey before returning to Australia.'
I discovered Ellis' married name and her address from College records and her phone number from my local library. I rang her and she was astonished to hear from me after 55 years. We chatted for ages, and discovered a mutual passion for bridge. She invited me to visit her in Redhill while Freda was there. Anna's Canadian friend, Brian, was in London at the time and they drove to Redhill while I was there, as Anna was really excited at the prospect of meeting the heroine of her childhood bedtime stories. She greeted Freda with the words: 'I grew up listening to all these stories about you.'
To my utter consternation, Freda replied, 'Your Mum made all those stories up. I never did those things.'
Anna's face fell. Her life's illusions about her Mum flew out the window in a split second while Brian's face registered a detached amusement as he glanced from mother to daughter.
'I always guessed my Mum was a weaver of fairy tales', Anna said.
There I sat, shattered in a mighty fall from my pedestal, branded a liar! I guess Anna was wondering why she had taken Brian on that journey only to discover that her Mum was a fraud. She may also have felt let down, humiliated in front of Brian. What was he thinking? Was he wondering why he'd memorised and rehearsed that long American ballad to recite to Anna's parents in an effort to impress them at their first meeting?
Later, Anna realised that all the stories were true, when Hazel, her godmother, confirmed them. Freda, for some reason, has blotted much of the past from her memory. I hope Anna enlightened Brian. In the past, whenever she brought a young man home, he'd recite poetry or play the piano, violin, guitar or saxophone brilliantly. One young man sang his old school song in Latin to his own piano accompaniment. Little did they know that being chosen friends of Anna's was sufficient for Mum. Why must we be so concerned about first impressions? Why can't we just be ourselves instead of feeling we have to put on an act?
Anna's friends over the past year have been reading my Real life Stories and I wouldn't want them to think I was weaving fairy tales. There may be the occasional, unintentional inaccuracy like where in Reactions to Real Life Stories I called Sir William Tritton 'Sir Charles', an error pointed out to me by a reader, but I know and Anna knows that I can still tell my Freda stories and be believed.