As retirement looms Anne Wheelhouse has to come to terms with 27 years worth of memories. How will she cope without her pupils?
As Anne Wheelhouse, veteran headmistress of 27 years, prepares to retire she wanders the halls of Bedgebury Lower School for Girls in Kent and recalls interesting times. Of the 2,300 girls who passed through the portals, sleeping 6 to a dorm, some were real characters, such as Rebecca "with all her furry animals... more furry animals than anybody I've ever met" and the trombonist who always played at three o'clock in the morning on the last day of term.
The 53 rooms all have a memories of their own but the Golden Landing, with its enormous, beautiful mirror for ballet practice, caused some consternation when it was covered with handprints. However, along with her memories of Christmas lights reflecting in the mirror she feels that this room is most redolent of the children. The room was always used to gather everyone together at the end of term and the room echoed wonderfully with the children's cheers. Anne will miss the children's exuberance but is sure "what they remember is me roaring down the corridor saying 'Be quiet NOW...'" As a self-confessed dysfunctional adult she recognises that she is now institutionalised. "It still feels very odd to sit down and eat something without first having heard the bell."
Certain rooms are associated with specific pupils. One girl, Edith Gerard, "stood on the window sill... with her nose pressed up against the glass pane. And she didn't know that she is standing over a glass roof. That is one occasion when you become very calm and you just open the window and say 'Hello Edith. Would you like to come inside?". Not all memories are happy however. When a child died "we never really used her room again but there's a beautiful pear tree out in the grounds in her memory."
After a year of adjusting to her retirement, Anne still feels like she is leaving the echoes of the children behind and while it is time to go she feels "going out of the front door for the last time will be hard. I still can't quite imagine it...leaving them."
