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Kirsty returned to her primary school in September 1965. In her first year at her previous school she had only attended three full days. Mr Norman at the Great Ormond Street clinic wrote to the headmistress of the new school advising her not to send Kirsty out during inclement weather, but the advice of the top consultant in the country was apparently ignored. Kirsty, who had been very keen to go back to school, now became a very reluctant pupil. She seemed extremely nervous and during the car ride and walk to the school gates Horatio came to my aid once more. Again, I promised to carry on with the story on the return journey. When I saw the headmistress I asked her if she had taken note of Mr Norman’s letter. She laughed rather unsympathetically and said, ‘I know how to treat these children – they’re sent out with a coat on.’ I began to realise why Kirsty was so fearful, for she was clearly not ready for the rough and tumble of school life.
Leaving Hamish in charge one night, I attended a parents’ evening at the school. Chatting to her form teacher, a middle-aged woman, I found myself listening to her complaint that Kirsty was ‘always asking questions’. I sympathised with her, knowing that, if she had a large class, such behaviour might be difficult. I therefore suggested she might ask Kirsty to wait until the end of the lesson and have her questions answered then. I told Kirsty what the teacher had said. I knew she was used to having my complete attention at home, so I asked her if she expected the same from her teacher.
She looked me in the eye and said scathingly, ‘Certainly not! If she’d told me exactly what she wanted me to do, I’d do it – but she waffles! Also, if I’ve been away, she won’t give me the book the class is working from until the end of the lesson – so even when I am there I don’t have the right book!’ As far as I could see, Kirsty’s description caught the teacher’s attitude perfectly.
At the end of her second year in 1966, Kirsty’s attendance totalled three weeks. She didn’t return as I had lost all confidence in the establishment and it was obvious to me that her well-being was more important than anything else. Without the burden of getting an unwilling child to school I was now able to enjoy her company and introduce her to all sorts of stimuli. We would go into the garden and look at the wild flowers, discover slow worms, enormous snails and, miracle of miracles, at night we had glow worms in the garden near the front door. Kirsty wanted to know much more about these creatures than I was able to tell her, so we would go to bookshops and she was allowed to choose more or less any book that interested her.
She once chose a textbook which was meant for GCSE biology students. I asked her if she was sure that this was the book she really wanted. After all, she was only seven and it was written for 16-year-olds. But no, she assured me that this was the one she wanted. I’m not sure she could follow it all, but I know that it gave her a great deal of satisfaction and she used it for several years. Soon she was able to tell me about the habits and behaviour of slow worms.
Once when I was looking out of the window and saw Kirsty playing in the garden I was thrilled to see a little fox cub only a yard or two from her also playing with a piece of stick. They suddenly turned to face each other and I wished I had a camera to catch that moment of surprise before the little fox cub ran away. As I was writing this book, I read in the papers that a vixen had made a home of Kirsty’s memorial bench in Soho Square: the locals christened her Kirsty – ‘She’s even got the same colouring,’ said one of them.
In bad weather we had a lot of activities to keep her interested. She experimented with paint, gouache and watercolours; as I had never painted with oils, I thought we should try that too. She made collages and wrote her first little book and illustrated it (I still have it). When she heard that Arthur Ransome had died without finishing one of his books, Kirsty wrote a letter to his publishers volunteering to finish the book on his behalf – though I didn’t send it.
When she wasn’t feeling very well, there was a thunderstorm which seemed to be immediately overhead as it was deafeningly loud. I thought Kirsty might be rather apprehensive and so I told her what little I knew about forked and sheet lightning. This didn’t satisfy either of us and so I went upstairs to find an encyclopaedia and we sat in bed together and read all about the causes of thunderstorms and the difference between sheet and forked lightning. She was also interested to know if thunder preceded the lightning and became quite an authority in our household.
Life now slowly became a little easier. Kirsty had been promised a dog when she was able to look after it and the time seemed appropriate. Anya, a honey-coloured Labrador joined our family; Hamish’s black cat Solomon was not impressed and showed his superiority whenever he could. He would hide behind the ceiling-to-floor curtains and stick out a front paw as the unsuspecting Anya went by, making her yelp in surprise, or he would sit high up on a glass shelf above the fireplace and push ornaments over the edge when she passed below. She was sweet-natured dog, though, and never retaliated by growling or chasing her antagonist. With hindsight it seems surprising that the medical authorities didn’t warn me against allergies caused by the dander from animals, but Solomon hadn’t affected Kirsty and during our first visit to Poland we had been constantly accompanied by our hosts’ family dog with no problems at all.
What the specialist did recommend was that Kirsty, now six, would be better off if she went to a school for physically handicapped children. ‘Let the other schools wait for their bright child,’ she said. I thought this was a good idea, since Kirsty would have the companionship of other children. She seemed to settle into her new routine of school life quite well. A car collected and returned her each day, which took some pressure off me, and there was also the reassurance of knowing there was always a nurse on hand at the school itself. Each child’s health was tested weekly. I was also told that it was customary for every new child to have an IQ test, but their policy was not to advise parents of these results. When the child had been at the school for about a month, the head would invite the parents in.
On my day I was greeted by a smiling headmaster. ‘Kirsty is quite a character, isn’t she?’ he said. After my previous experience with school teachers I was not sure whether he looked upon this as a bonus or a hindrance. Fearing the worst, I started to apologise but he interrupted me by saying, ‘Oh no! If we could run the school exactly as she would wish it would be excellent, but we can’t. Her complaint is that they start a subject and get very interested in it, but then the bell goes and they have to change and do something quite different. Her idea would be to do the same lesson all day and make real progress.’ He understood that Kirsty would be a real asset, and not a problem. The only thing I was told about the IQ test was that her standard of reading was already up to that of a nine-and-a-half-year-old. I came home greatly reassured that people were friendly and that despite her long absences, her reading age was ahead of her peers. I was not entirely surprised at this, since I had seen Kirsty with my copy of Male and Female, Margaret Mead’s book about sexuality.
I felt confident enough in the summer of 1966 to arrange a summer holiday at Renvyle on the west coast of Ireland for Kirsty and my 77-year-old mother, while Hamish went camping with a friend. Our animals were looked after by friends. It was a great holiday, as Kirsty was completely healthy throughout the trip, which I put down to the clean air and outdoor activities. As it happened, no dogs were allowed in the hotel although she did play with one outside and I didn’t see any cats. We would go out in the hotel’s rowing boat and attempt some primitive fishing and other days were spent on the seashore collecting shells or touring the area. In the early evening Kirsty socialised a lot with the guests and told them about her granny’s forthcoming birthday. One evening, a cake with lighted candles was carried into the dining room and everyone sang ‘Happy Birthday’.
In 1967 I read in the Observer that they were holding a writing competition for children aged 11 to 19. The title was ‘The school that I’d like’: the children were encouraged to write about their own schools in a critical fashion and to make suggestions as to how things might be improved. Kirsty was under the age but entered just for fun. We did not expect to hear anything, but when she was nine her piece was published as part of a collection of the best. She even received a postal order for her contribution. When we bought the book, though, she was mortified to spot mis-spellings. I