Blazoned Days

On returning from Salzburg in the summer of 1959, my sister, Stella, and I spent some time at Mrs. Harris’s boarding house then started at the new school, Charters Towers, that my mother had selected for us.   Our arrival at Bexhill-on-Sea was somewhat less portentous than our arrival in Malvern.   It was a sunny day and the school was housed in relatively modern buildings rather than in an old monastery.    It was made up of four large brick and wood houses connected to each other by breezeways. The head mistress, Miss McGarry looked chic in her tailored dress and fashionable shoes, as she greeted students at the school.   These visuals made me feel more optimistic than I had felt upon arriving at St. James's, hopeful that we were embarking on a less dispiriting future.   Appearances aside, the protocols at Charters Towers were not very different than those at St. James’s.   We had a strict daily schedule, starting with a 7:00 o’clock bell that rousted us from bed, followed

Look out of the window on the second floor landing, and the man is sitting in his pajamas on a banquette, looking like he just woke up from his nap.   He is supposed to be an important man, but he looks like any other. No uniform with gilded epaulettes, no medals, no pomp.   Just a man in pajamas sitting in his garden.   A man servant brings him tea. In my family, we referred to events by indexing them to the house we lived in at the time.  This was the Mossadegh house, because he was our next door neighbor.  My parents were new refugees to Iran in the 1940s and somehow ended up renting a house next door to the man who would become the prime minister of Iran under the Shah. While we were neighbors, Mohammad Mossadegh was a member of parliament.  At the end of our cul de sac was the Soviet embassy, and several times a day, black cars with red flags flapping on each side of the windshield would pass by and disappear behind a large iron gate.  When it opened to admit the cars,

A few days into our time at St. James’s, Mademoiselle, the assistant matron on assignment for a year from France, took us into Great Malvern to shop for the essentials that we hadn’t purchased in London when we got our uniforms.  We got brown lace-up shoes, which were to be used for dress-up occasions and walking, and button-strapped shoes for every day.  We got woolen underwear, including undershirts and navy wool bloomers, a garment that was archaic, itchy, and puzzling, to be worn over our regular underpants.  Mademoiselle was also instructed to get us dressing gowns, eider down quilts, and tartan blankets which were called “rugs” in England. Once we were back in school we had to sew name tags into every item that we owned, since everyone in the school had essentially the same clothes, and ownership could be confusing.  I still have my blanket with my name tag sewn on.  It was clear that in the badly heated school, we would need supplemental warmth. There were about 200 gi