36 Titwillow

Miss Owens seems quite pally with the teacher in charge of theatricals at our school. She has already intimated triumphantly that she will be taking a leading role in the all the Gilbert and Sullivan productions at the school. The next one is dues during following winter term. We are not usually regaled with a teacher, but these are exceptional circumstances, we are given to understand. I wonder how exceptional it all it. Has our excellent English teacher been brow-beaten into consenting to her participation?

Of course, Mr Brent may be glad that a teacher is actually taking an interest in the theatre group, for all I know. Suffice it to say that I with my deep voice and penchant for melodrama and she with her teacher status and conceit end up being double-cast, with her spending the whole of the rehearsal time either telling me what to do, or telling me I am doing it wrong. If I didn’t have so much self-assurance, I would probably throw in the sponge. I expect that is what she was waiting for. But I don’t do her the favour.

Miss Owens may be able to bully Mr Brent into letting her prance around in the school operatic society, but Owl was of sterner stuff. She is still smarting from that snub long after Owl has left. The success of that event has been the last straw as far as our relationship is concerned and a red rag to the fighting bull spirit of Miss Owens, the thwarted operatic singer, who now sees her chance to rectify the situation and is going to grab it.

For the rest of my school days there are no holds barred between us. The French lessons are purgatory. Every week we have one talking session, in which Miss Owens goes round the class asking everyone one question and soliciting one answer, or even two questions and two answers if it is one of the boys in the front row of desks. For the remaining four years of my French lessons she asks me the same question every time:

“Qu'est ce que tu vas faire après de l'école, Mademoiselle?” To which I invariably reply:

“Je vais chanter, Madame!” at which she snorts, tosses her head to one side and spits “Quel horreur!”

But sing I do. After the Fête Champètre, there are parents' open days, prize-givings, theatricals with especially composed songs and Christmas carol services. You name it, I sing it. So Miss Owens literally has to squeeze in her solo singing debut at our autumn school production of 'The Mikado', wearing a moth-ball kimono and her longest earrings. Mercifully, after initially being ‘reserved’ for the same role and exposed to her mobbing at rehearsals, I am rescued from that fate worse than death and recast as one of the three little maids. And the only memorable feature of that experience is my failed attempt to dye my hair black, which results in punk green that makes my hair feel like steel wool and has to grow out, so that I am forced to wear the unkempt wig from the theatrical costumiers after all.

Miss Owens's tactics were always cunning and graceless; my presence brought out the worst in her; I was a provocation just by my very existence. In time I became impervious to her constant verbal provocations and it was satisfying to know that everyone despised her, especially the boys, because she wore embarrassing horizontally striped jumpers with low-slung necklines and leant her low-slung bosoms provocatively over the low-slung school desks.

She was a menace, but she did me a service, really. Fighting her embittered sarcasm gave me clarity about what I really wanted. Listening to her denigrating accounts of music colleges rewarded me with exactly the information I needed to apply for one when the time came. Perhaps if she had kept her mouth shut I would have settled for a more 'worthwhile' career. But she didn't and my future was no longer in the stars, but definable, tangible, ready and waiting. By the time we really did share a part, as the Duchess of Plazatoro in another Savoy opera, The Gondoliers, I could cope with her antics and even laugh at them.

Thank you Miss Owens, wherever you are now.

Of one thing I'm sure. She's not an angel.