MY seminal English teacher had a global intolerance
of childish women, which was unfortunate as my peers and I were all of the perfumed variety and exceptionally immature. She told me I had unusual ability in English, although I was a lazy sod and giggled too much. There was nothing more she hated than sentimental splurges of chipmunk tittering. To her we were all ninnies, but her disdain was worth its weight in love.
The women in charge of my intellectual development were wild and liberal and somewhat crazy. I remember them keenly and gratefully. Looking back, there was no lightning, no thunderbolt of desire to write, just the culmination of a few brutal lessons, of being taught the language of literature by the larger-than-life. Nothing sells a subject like personality. The major league players were feisty with a degree of self-loathing, enough to keep them on the side of the rebel, and suggestible to the rogue thought. Attending their lessons, day-in, day-out, was like watching the film reels of an ageing star finally losing her marbles.
Ava, as she shall be known to you, and her brand of ritual contempt was a source of irritation and pain to those pupils who did not understand glamour, to the practical Sloanes whose imagination was taxed solely when purchasing cushion covers with mumsy. Her aim was to exercise that part of our brains previously reserved for accessorising fashion outfits and creating recipes. Breaking the mould into which most girls are born cannot be done with fairness or tact. It was a mere casualty of her charisma when the odd pupil had to be removed from class in neurotic tears. I, of course, understood that her glamour was the off-cut of the blacker recesses of her mind, that as an imposing character, she had to be given full rein and a few whips too, to perform in her element. It would have been fatal to stop up the bad in her, as this would have constipated the good. Glamour is hard and selfish, and
nice people don't have it. If Ava had not been so prepossessing, so deep and dangerous, frankly, I might not have paid attention to anything she said at all.
''Do you think a poor man has better morals than a rich?'' she would suddenly stop and look out of the window to ask, in her sandpaper voice, playing with a pair of reading glasses and curving a lock of dark, wiry hair around her chin. I would learn that it was cool to have angst, to talk about passion and society in sweepingly theatrical terms, to write with the flourish and eagerness of a young debutante coming out at her first ball. Ava would pause for breath, in a haze, tasting the rarefied air of the exotic land, like some airborne spy, she regularly and wilfully managed to parachute into. She liked being lost. It was especially glamorous to be lost. The seconds would tick by in silence before we resumed our reading of something infinitely tedious, such as the woeful Waiting for Godot. We much preferred the Greta Garbo tableau. It was like having an audience with the Queen.
I was spotted fairly early on, and reared on a diet of abuse and
little praise, and never once felt that I was without attention. My opinion on short stories was duly asked for and noted, and as grudgingly as she could without spoiling the chance of my fulfilling any talent, Ava would throw crumbs of tribute my way without ever compromising the unequal balance of power between us. She was, how-ever, given to flashes of spectacular rage. Routinely charged with some horrific offence, such as smoking in disused and abandoned school areas, I was often the victim of
her martyred and fitful hysteria. ''I am sick of standing up for you, and I will do so no more!'' were often the first words with which she addressed the class, slogans of loyalty which immediately conveyed that my latest adventure, and that of my immediate coven, had been the talk of the lunchtime staff room. She would bellow and puff like an asthmatic ox and spit like a serpent-tongued Hydra until she was satisfied that I understood I was special enough for her to even bother defending. When studying the Jewish diarist, I felt for Anne Frank in her cramped annexe, fighting for room at the table to write. Aware of my interest, Ava casually informed me that to the very serious scribes ''a day unrecorded is a day never lived''. And so, finding the right words began to appear to me to be less than magician's work, and more of a statement of immortality.
My teacher was as over-the-top in convincing us of the importance of letters as the specs making a guest appearance as sunglasses on the top of her head. She made me believe that unless you are published you don't exist. The sun sets and the moon rises on this very sorry fact. She was wrong, though, about one thing. A day spent writing is a day never truly lived at all, as Anne Frank knew too well.
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