Matilda's Touch

Her hands working the dough, that's how I always think of her. Her long, strong fingers coaxing the dough into life, giving it the ability to swell and blossom in the oven. The first time I saw her hands at work in the kitchen I knew, instinctively, that her touch would be firm and sensitive.

Matilda's touch changed my life, but she led me to that touch slowly. She overcame my reluctance for human contact through an undemanding friendship, gentle and pure, and then she led me further.

It was 1961. I had just turned eighteen. My mother had sent me away from London to Fawcett-McLaughlin's—a finishing school for young ladies—after the trouble at home. She had taken sides against me with her latest boyfriend, Jack. He was one of several, since my father had left us when I was fourteen. She didn't really have time for a boyfriend—she was one of a rare breed in those days, a career woman.

Jack wasn't much older than me and acted even younger. He was wily and slick, with a nasty streak that he never showed when my mother was around. The trouble came when he started picking on me, teasing me for being such a tomboy and not having a boyfriend. I called him a spiv when he called me a scruffy tart. My mother walked into the kitchen just as I flicked a spoonful of porridge over his smarmy face, assumed I was having a tantrum for no good reason, and packed me off to the school for the summer.

Jack would soon be gone, I knew that, and I was bound for Art College in the autumn, but my mother's actions hurt. It was my last summer at home, and she had sent me away because she didn't know how else to deal with the predicament. I felt ugly. I felt betrayed. I traveled the length of the country in silence, sat in the taxi from the station and looked at the dreary gray school building feeling numb and indifferent toward it. I sighed and wondered why life had given me so many things that were beyond my control.

It wasn't a finishing school of the fancy type one might read about in Switzerland or on the French Riviera. It was on the Northeast coast of Yorkshire, England's bracing coast. Bleak and desolate for the most part, often gusty even in summertime, but with an eerie, gaunt beauty nonetheless. Fawcett-McLaughlin's was named after the two prim proprietors and was set in a decrepit old manor house with rambling gardens. Even in the early 1960s, it had that dusty post-war feeling of make-do about it. Alas, the same could be said of the prevailing attitude.

The other girls were mostly middle-class, their parents aspiring to make something special of their daughters. They sent them off for the summer to be taught how to act like a lady, how to run a home properly, and how to use a typewriter—the latter in case the requisite husband didn't appear and they had to support themselves. The 1960s had only just begun, but mercifully they were under way.

Arabella Fawcett, the senior tutor, soon realized my typing wasn't improving with any great haste. She called me to her room, where I had been deposited by the glum taxi driver two days earlier, and offered me some tea.

"Sally, dearest, are you settling in?" She gave a plump approving smile when I nodded. There seemed little point in saying otherwise or complaining about the lumpy dormitory bed.

"That's good. We like our girls to feel at home. But typing isn't really your strong point is it, Sally?"

I struggled with the urge to respond with monosyllabic answers. I had barely uttered a complete sentence since I'd left Ealing.

"I gave it up for woodwork at school," I managed.

She frowned, fingering the ruffle on her fuchsia blouse.

"They might let young ladies do things like that in London," she didn't look convinced, "but we don't, here at Fawcett-McLaughlin's."

I sighed. At least in the typing class, I had avoided communicating with the other girls. They had divided into cliques and were well ahead of the new girl in the set exercises. I didn't mind feeling like an outsider; it seemed easiest. Truth be told, I was still smarting from my mother's rejection.

"Don't worry, pet." She leaned forward and patted my knee. "Typing isn't the most important thing in life."

Well thank God for that, I thought. I hated it. I looked at the window behind Arabella's head. I wanted to be outside. I let my mind wander to some old wartime posters Mum had kept, recruiting women into the factories and fields. Mum was an illustrator and had designed some of the most famous land-worker images. Strong, proud women, working in the fields and mending tractors.

"Cookery is a much more important skill to learn," Arabella announced, and beamed at me, benevolently.

My heart sank. I noticed then how violently her sticky coral lipstick clashed with the pink blouse.

"We have a very good cook here, from Norway, and she can teach you."