At school with Margaret Thatcher.

MARGARET Thatcher, or Margaret Roberts, as she then was, is stamped indelibly on my mind. It was September 1941, yet I can see her as clearly now as though I were studying a photograph. This is due to an accident of my positioning in the hall from the first day at my new school, Kesteven and Grantham Girls' Grammar School. As a new girl I was in the front row at assembly and the school choir was directly in front of me ranged in rows sideways on. Margaret was good at music and sang in the difficult alto section, very close to me and I must have studied her carefully every morning for the best part of my first year. Then the classes shifted back down the hall in order of seniority. I was self-conscious in my new uniform and in awe of my surroundings. It was, I knew, a great new stage in my life. My previous headmistress had said that winning the scholarship was as good as a hundred pounds in my pocket. I'm glad to say it has turned out to be a considerable underestimation. It was my passport to university and a career. Why did this particular girl fascinate me? She was virtually unremarkable in every way and, as I later discovered, not a school heroine or generally popular. The reason was the absolute perfection of her appearance and her air of invincible superiority.

Margaret's school uniform was impeccable. Mine was not. Her gymslip was neatly pleated over a well-developed bosom, which again was not the case with me. Her girdle was perfectly knotted, like a man's tie. The blue gingham blouse looked freshly ironed, every day. Her general build was womanly, plumpish even. Her hair was light brown with a side parting and curly. I thought it was permed. I had long plaits and was desperate for a perm, so I noticed such things. I suppose she would have been seventeen then. She had a rather broad face and a short neck with her head slightly tilted to one side. I thought that she had a wry neck, but that could have been the effect of her gazing soulfully upwards to her right towards the platform where our dragon headmistress, Miss D. J. C. Gillies, M.A. Edin., watched us with a gimlet Scot's eye.

The general effect of Margaret's expression was of rapt devotion like a Raphael Madonna, alternating with disdain for the third form ranged alongside her. Assembly was partly religious, with hymns, a reading and any other business such as who had been seen in town without the school hat. Mine was a dreadful affair with third-hand badges badly sewn on and once I was summoned to see Miss Gillies about it. While she was at it, she asked why I had small teeth--no answer to that, really. But, back to Margaret: if she had gone missing she would have been described as well-nourished. This was another difference between us. I was very skinny. This was wartime and rationing was cruel. Was it two ounces of butter a week? I was a country girl from a village outside Grantham and we did have a share in a pig and were given rabbits, but Margaret's sleekness could have had something to do with her father's two grocery shops.

In writing this I realise that I watched Margaret so closely because I recognised that she was almost a distinct species from myself, who represented a different way of life. I was pressing my nose against the window-pane of another, better world. She was my senior, one to be looked up to, but it was more than that. We really did come from opposite sides of the tracks, as the Americans have it. Margaret's family were respectability personified, Godfearing pillars of the chapel. Her father was then an Alderman and, later, Mayor of the town and Chairman of the Governors of the school. She came from a prosperous, ordered background with a mother who stayed at home and, as I have read many times since, cooked and cleaned and confined herself entirely to the domestic sphere. My mother was considered a bit racy at the time because she was divorced, which was rare then. We lived in a one-room bedsit, shared a kitchen, had no bathroom and used an outdoor earth closet adjoining the pigsty. Water came from the pump. My mother had a full-time job, since there was no child support then and money was short. I remember being cold and hungry a lot of the time. I have always been surprised to read in accounts of Margaret's life that she came from a humble background: to me she was a princess. Looking back I can understand why she turned her head away from me. I probably smelled.

I am sure that the school was a formative influence on both of us. Miss Gillies was an awe-inspiring woman with little understanding of Lincolnshire girls who knew no Latin and forgot to pull the chain because they were unused to water closets. Her background was so very different. I remember her telling me that she learnt bonus, bona, bonum from her father, King Gillies, a professor of Latin, when playing on the beach as a toddler, patting her sandcastles to the rhythm of the case endings. She confided this much to me some years later whilst beating me on the head with Lewis and Short (a very heavy Latin dictionary) for not knowing the Latin for lazy, and repeating piger, pigra, pigrum with a blow for each case ending. I gather that she had earlier refused to teach Margaret the Latin necessary for university entrance. She then had tuition from Head Girl Margaret Goodrich's father, Canon Goodrich and, I imagine, others arranged by her father. By the time I reached the sixth form the headmistress had mellowed and taught me and some others. We had to learn Latin to school certificate standard in two years. Margaret had told Miss Gillies that she was 'frustrating her ambition'. To argue with such a powerful personality as Miss Gillies in these terms shows that determined streak that was to earn her the description of 'the Iron Lady' in later years. She bore the grudge for some time, returning to the school to a ceremony when a larger assembly hall was named the Roberts Hall and publicly corrected her old headmistress's Latin. It also shows how firmly her ambitions were fixed and how early.

We received a good education at K.G.G.S. from spinster ladies who stayed at the school for many years. At least three taught my mother before me and, after me, my half sister and then her daughter. It was a traditional school, where we admired the Empire and read Kipling. What was more we were at war and were fervently patriotic supporters of King and Country. I saw little of Margaret after my close scrutiny in those early days. She sometimes lined us up to progress to the dining room and supervised prep. Although we were quite a lively form, who liked to chatter, we did not cause her any trouble. There was something about the confidence of her demeanour and the eminence grise of her father which prevented it. There was a small library in the sixth form room. When you took out a book you entered the fact in an exercise book and signed for it. One of my rare exchanges with Margaret Roberts was when I was taking out a book. She suddenly said 'I suppose you've read all the books here'. I replied that I had, which was true. I read voraciously, without any aim in mind. I was interested to read, recently, that Margaret had been urged to read more widely in one of her school reports and that her father went to the library with her every week and they took out two serious books for themselves, on politics, and a novel for mother.

I remember there was another occasion in the sixth form room when Margaret was present to witness my punishment for bad behaviour. I had been caught finishing a chocolate sponge pudding in the kitchen. I helped the dinner ladies in order to earn this perk. As I have said, I was always hungry. My punishment was a witty one. It was to recite a piece from Milton's Comus, the Lady's speech rejecting Comus's temptation which ended: 'for swinish gluttony ne'er looks to heaven amidst his gorgeous feast. But with besotted base ingratitude crams and blasphemes his feeder'. They didn't know that I had eaten a whole rice pudding as well. I wish I could say that it was Margaret Roberts who chose the punishment, but I think that it was the other Margaret, Goodrich, who was head girl and got to Oxford first. But all the sixth form were there. I'm glad to say that I was word-perfect and that I enjoyed it.

I have mentioned Margaret's air of confidence and can add to the number of anecdotes about this. It was noted by a teacher at her junior school, Huntingtower Road. The teacher, Mrs Grimwood, told the class about a writing competition to be held in the town. She spent some time emphasising how well and neatly it had to be done. 'Oh yes' said young Margaret, 'I'll enter, and I'll win it'. And she did. Mrs Grimwood added that Margaret refused to use the school lavatories, but would control her bladder until she got home. I suppose this fits with her general fastidious nature and adds to the impression that in some way she felt, and actually was, above the common herd in her confidence and control.

I think that the 1939-1945 war had an enormous effect on all of us who lived through it. Grantham was bombed a good deal because it had a major munitions factory and we were surrounded by airfields in the flat lands of Lincolnshire. The Arnhem raids were planned from here and we saw the gliders practising every day and then suddenly, sadly, disappearing. Airmen and soldiers were present in large numbers and created a dashing and exciting experience for what was usually a dull town. The Americans in particular were very attractive. Their uniforms were of better material than the British and were better tailored to flatter the manly form. What is more, their wearers spoke in the accents of Hollywood. I am convinced that Margaret Thatcher's affection for Ronald Reagan stems from her visits to the cinemas in Grantham and that the glamour of film stars attached to all things American. The cinema was our window on another, more exotic, world and the war brought that world to us. Even the danger of the air raids was both frightening yet exhilarating. We were also convinced of the rightness of our cause and drawn into close bonds with each other and our allies. America and Russia were on our side and it is a fact that Thatcher's warmest relations internationally were with America and Russia--and with the persons of Reagan and Gorbachov. For her Germany was still a potential enemy. Margaret remains a person of fixed tastes and opinions which were formed very early. Wordsworth has a poem about the child being father to the man. The girl is certainly mother to the woman in this case. The young Margaret I saw showed all the characteristics which finally made her a force on the world stage.

Her appearance continued to be immaculate. She always knew that important messages were sent out by dress. I doubt if she ever had any leisure wear, but the uniform of power, the suit, was usually chosen. A Labour MP who was also careful about her dress, Barbara Castle remarked that on Mrs Thatcher's first day in the Commons she found Margaret pressing a blouse in some nook of the building, with a selection of suits on hangers. Many politicians were appreciative of her looks and she used her femininity to good effect--Alan Clark pays his leader many compliments in his Diaries, calling her 'The Lady'--it was a political weapon. The combination of womanly good looks and stylishness, together with a steely personality made her a powerful force. Once she misjudged dress badly when she arrived at a Lord Mayor's Banquet in an extravagant dress with a high face-framing collar, reminiscent of iconic portraits of Elizabeth the First, with a long train. But, this was late in her own reign, and maybe indicative of hubris setting in.

She entered the dictionary with 'handbagging' and 'Thatcherism'. The handbagging of opposition was foreshadowed in her battles with Miss Gillies. She handbagged on an international scale and Europe trembled. Her confidence and self-belief never wavered. Who can forget her fateful 'No! No! No!' speech in the Commons or her determination to commit George Bush Senior to war in the Gulf with 'now is not the time to go wobbly, George!'? She knew where she was going right from the start: scholarship, Oxford, politics, Parliament, a seat in the cabinet. Luck played some part in her final elevation to being the first woman Prime Minister, but she did have the guts and the self-belief to throw her hat in the ring while others wavered. As a London taxi driver once said to me 'Maggie? She's a star!' Indeed, an international star--and my old school's most famous Old Girl.

Joan Bridgman is a retired University Lecturer.