Yes, Really! - Kate Turkington

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their boutiques. At first I was disappointed at the tiny windows that displayed one hat, or one Louis XIV chair with a blouse thrown negligently over it, realising only later that this was the consummate taste and elegance of the French.

      But most days I would go out alone and wander the streets. I spent many mornings in the Louvre, sketching works of Old Masters. I fed the bold sparrows outside of Notre-Dame Cathedral with crumbs saved from my breakfast croissant, or I would amble along the Seine sorting among the old books and junk of the little barrows lining the banks.

      I went to parties at the Sorbonne with Georges, learned to jive in the rather mechanical French manner and endured an unintelligible evening at the Comédie Française that was playing the French version of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. (The Blanchards had mistakenly believed it was one of my matric set-works.) I didn’t dare display my ignorance and laughed and scowled when everybody else did.

      I returned to 69 Firwood Avenue supremely confident, speaking reasonably good French, with a jaunty tilt to my beret and convinced I had fully drunk of the cup of human experience.

      And are you surprised that from that time on my love of travelling and the unknown has never left me?

      My last days at school were transformed by the Hon Gwen, the new English teacher, just down from Oxford and a friend of (gasp!) Ken Tynan, the foremost, witty theatre critic of the day and a celebrity before celebrities were even invented.

      The Hon Gwen regaled us with anecdotes and daring tales of university life and once took me and my best friend Vicki to a party in Oxford, where we tried to look ultra-sophisticated and come across with some witty repartee. She also taught me how to do the Daily Telegraph cryptic crossword, which I still do to this day.

      But the Hon Gwen’s attentions to the glories of English literature were not all that her devout employers might have wished for.

      One hot day in June we sat in the Lower XI classroom listening to the Derby, England’s most famous horse race, on Vicki’s portable radio. A group of workmen repairing the veranda had gathered at the French doors to listen in. Just as the race reached the final furlong, I noticed the door handle turning.

      I slammed the desk lid down.

      ‘I think Shelley has less to offer than Gerald Manley Hopkins,’ I said wildly as the Mother Superior entered with a party of visiting priests.

      Muffled cheers could be heard from beneath the desk lid as we all stood dutifully and said good afternoon. The workmen suddenly became frantically busy and examined the French doors for cracks, gazing at them as fixedly as if they expected to find the secret of eternal life there. Mother Superior had come to show the visitors the beautiful Adam fireplace in the room our Sixth Form inhabited, which was in an old manor house away from the main school buildings.

      Suddenly loud cheers broke the uneasy silence.

      Mother Superior rose to the occasion. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘it’s the Fifth Form hockey period.’ Some of us nodded fervent confirmation. ‘Hockey is a very excitable game,’ she added apologetically as she swept out of the room followed by a cluster of clerical collars and long black robes.

      As the last priest left he winked at me.

      I’ve had a soft spot for priests ever since.

      Convent schooldays were sometimes enlivened by movies (‘films’ in those days) and the nuns introduced us to the classics with films like Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice. Always having our spiritual welfare firmly at heart, at the least sign of physical contact between hero and heroine, the plump white hand of Mother Xavier, who worked the not very reliable projector, would be placed over the lens. This resulted in an inky blackness on the screen punctuated by a soundtrack of heavy breathing. We never knew if this was from Mother Xavier or our hero and heroine. Sometimes she would take her hand away too soon and get pink and flustered. Vicki and I observed these ruses to protect our innocence with scorn. We were fourteen years old and spent all our pocket money on going to the theatre and watching films. We were experienced and knowledgeable about the ways of the world.

      But not really. Not in any form of practice.

      3

      Back to My Roots

      The intrepid and ever opportunistic Doris had amazingly somehow made contact with some of Grandfather Ahlquist’s distant relatives, friends and former sailing mates in Sweden. None of his immediate family was still alive, but she had tracked down two Swedish sea captains, an old flame, and some second cousins who lived on the island of Götland.

      This was no mean feat considering that airmail letters and an expensive, unreliable and scratchy international telephone service were the only communication tools of the day. Nevertheless, with Hercule Poirot sleuthing skills and the steely determination that made sure Rita and I went to a private school and subsequently produced a large dynasty of educated family members, she had arranged for her daughters to spend a summer in Sweden with Grandad’s distant family and friends.

      And so it was that Rita, aged seventeen, and I, aged fifteen (feeling very experienced and blasé after my previous summer of French travel), set off to another unknown land, to unknown people, having no idea of the final destination.

      These were to be the hallmarks of all my travelling. How often have I taken the roads less travelled, or not known at all, embarking on journeys to far-flung places – Tibet, India, Patagonia, Guatemala – with no firm idea of where I was going or what was on the agenda but always expecting it all to turn out well.

      This was how Rita and I, while other girls of our age and background either never left their villages or married the boy next door, or both, went off happily and, as very young brides, respectively, to the wilds of New Guinea and the impenetrable interior of Nigeria.

      We had been well trained by Doris.

      It also helped to have had a trusting nature, a positive attitude and a sense of wonder.

      And, do you know, mostly things have always turned out for the best.

      In late July 1948 my sister and I boarded the boat at Tilbury for the infamous crossing from England to Sweden via the Skagerrak, a strait that runs between Norway, Sweden and the Jutland peninsula of Denmark. It leads into the Baltic Sea and is reputedly one of the roughest potential crossings in the world.

      It lived up to its reputation. I have never been so desperately ill before or since, and would gladly give birth to another four children rather than relive that awful experience.

      We shared a cabin with two Norwegian students who kept open house, so that any time of the day or night, as Rita and I tossed, unkempt, retching and wretched, any number of beautiful blond young men would come up to our bunks, click their heels politely together, wish us good day, and then drink beer with their friends.

      Only on the last night of the horrendous three-day trip, when the storm had abated, did we make it up to deck to join a riotous student farewell party. The ship was riding smoothly on the dark sea. Overhead the stars shone brightly and suddenly the world was fine again. We danced the night away until we docked the next morning at Gothenburg, known as the Venice of the North for its small canals spanned by bridges. After wartime Britain, it seemed fresh, clean and bright, as if some giant hand had been busy early in the morning scrubbing all the streets and buildings. We met some of our grandfather’s friends, were fêted and pampered, shown around the city and then, two days later, were put on a train to Stockholm.

      Sweden in those days was a land of trees and water, forests and lakes, and as the train clattered along we could see mile after mile of tall pines and firs, green and erect, like sentinels guarding the great expanses of pale water lying at their feet. As the sun rose higher and higher, the lakes clad in silver veils of shimmering mist danced and flirted with their stern guardians. And so it was, trees and lakes, green and silver, an eternal combination of sky, forest and water, until we reached Stockholm.

      It is probably hard

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