by Evie Twitchett
(Senior Mistress; Deputy Principal of South Island School)
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Memory plays funny tricks. Was Island School twenty years ago a golden era in my life? Surely Yes! In those gentle times before Jumbos, Hong Kong had an "other worldness" long since gone and Island School a charm long swallowed up in its sheer size.
Not that all was golden. In fact the school was conceived and born during the riots and bombings of 1967. The icy shivering of the London interview had, in due course, given way to the euphoria of the job offer (and I still maintain I got the job because I did not bother to ask Geoff Speak what the salary was). There followed a few weeks of delicious anticipation before the B.B.C. shattered my peace with daily reports of unrest, riots, disturbances and the carryings-on of the Red Guards in Hong Kong. These were mercifully brought to an abrupt halt by wars in the Middle East and Nigeria, at least as far as the B.B.C. was concerned, and Geoff Speak's letters were cheerful and put the situation in perspective, but it did not of course go away and by the time I arrived in Hong Kong bomb threats had become the order of the day. However through the months that led up to our first Christmas the only bomb which reached our area was one in the wall of the house at the end of Bowen Road, at that time the Commodore's home.
Being a pessimist by nature I was firmly convinced that at any moment Chairman Mao's followers would swarm over the border and strangle the ESF before it got truly under way. In fact I thought that it had happened the first night I arrived in the territory. We, the unmarried expat staff, were to have a communal kitchen and dining room in the back half of the gracious colonial building which was the Headmaster's house with our own bedrooms and sitting rooms in another building slightly higher up the hill but which, in the way of such things, was not quite ready for us. Geoff and his wife Christine very kindly therefore put us up in their "guest rooms" and it was through the window of my room that first night that I saw spectacular flashes which convinced me that my stay in Hong Kong was to be a very short one, but which turned out to be lightning and not artillery fire after all!
Earlier that day Neil Harding had collected me from the airport, he in colonial whites and I in white gloves(!!), and he had pointed to what appeared to be a building site as we sailed past to my new home. This, I was informed, was the School which had until very recently been the British Military Hospital, and which in two weeks would be transformed from the building site it now was, to the fully functional school it must eventually be. Again my pessimism got the better of me.
Our quarters were up the hill where the Government flats now stand and had been the nursing sisters' quarters. The fact that school and quarters were ex-military and medical meant that they were equipped with large water tanks, a boon during water shortages. Our quarters were high-ceilinged, cool and, if I am truthful about it, gloomy. We tried to improve the situation by renaming the whole thing "Shangri-La" and "Shangri-La" it remained until we all moved out four years later.
The first few days passed in a haze of picture-hanging, sheet-buying ($14 a pair in Mody Road) and staff meetings. These latter were very intimate affairs as there were only twelve of us, four of whom were old Hong Kong hands, Geoff himself and three "local" ladies, Beryl Fairey who had been teaching at KGV, Rosemarie Poland who had been at St. Paul's Girls, and Enyd Fletcher. The rest of us included Neil Harding, Mike Taylor, Barry Connelly and Nigel Ireland, all married with families, Tony Webb, Storm Williams and myself who lived in Shangri-La and Colin Goddard, a free spirit who taught Drama and took the ESF up on its generous offer of $300 per month allowance for single persons who chose to live "out" Even in those days one could not rent much for $300.
So we were in business! We had a delightful secretary called Sally Robertson who still returns to Hong Kong like a homing pigeon every so often, and an office helper who had to be shown the intricacies of the duplicating machine and of course a tea-amah. Gradually others joined us but during those first few days we were a rather select group, meeting in the Shangri-La dining room since the confusion down the hill had not yet resolved itself into anything resembling a working environment. One of our first jobs was to send out a letter to prospective parents postponing the start of term for a week when the Principal realised that if we tried to open on schedule it would be around piles of rubble, paint pots, ladders, scaffolding etc.
After a while Neil revealed his embryonic timetable which had alarming spaces in it. Geoff gathered us all together and set about persuading the reluctant to take on tasks they felt ill-equipped to tackle. It does not take much mathematical prowess to realise that if you intend to offer English, Maths, Drama, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, French, R.E., Music, Needlework, Woodwork, P.E., Geography, and History with ten full-time teachers, one part-time and a Principal, then some are going to be taught by teachers whose main subjects they are not. Thus (for instance) Neil. taught Maths and Woodwork and Rosemarie (Girls' P.E.) and I shared the Geography between us. It says much for the forbearance of Geoff's wife Chris, a Geographer of some repute, that I was allowed to teach her daughter Geography without getting the sack. Colin our Drama expert also started the Library and Storm Williams (R.E.) taught First Form Biology (she always maintained that it was with the help of a Ladybird book but...).
To this minor confusion was added complete confusion in the form of a six day timetable for academic work but a normal five day timetable for activities. Geoff was quite adamant that activities must be taken seriously as our pupils, for all their wealth and privilege, were at a serious disadvantage socially. Many were left to the devices of amahs while parents travelled or socialised and even those who were carefully tended by their parents were often not allowed about by themselves because of the bombs. Activities therefore were to be compulsory. However Geoff had chosen his staff well and between us we managed to offer a wide variety of sporting and non-sporting activities for both eager and reluctant students. The activity programme has remained one of the strengths of the school ever since.
And so it was that on that certain Monday in September 1967 the last bamboo pole was removed, the last empty space was filled in on the timetable, the duplicator was installed in the general office and pupils and staff met for the first time. First impressions were favourable but it took us, the staff, a while to realise just how charming those children were. Most of them were in the first year (four forms) but we also had smaller numbers of 2nd and 3rd formers. There had originally been no intention of enrolling any form 3 students but the ESF had been approached by parents anxious that their children should not have to cross the harbour to KGV while the political unrest continued.
My memories of that first year tend to merge with memories of the following year or two but I do know that those were halcyon days when the twelve staff knew all 200 children and "rules" were virtually non-existent because unnecessary. I do however remember that on one occasion one of my form put his arm through the glass panel in the form room door and severed an artery. A delightful Danish boy in the same form rushed to the office with the news while others got staff to staunch the flow of blood. Sally, the secretary, phoned for an ambulance then turned her attention to the Danish messenger who was by this time looking shaky and green. She offered him a hot sweet drink only to be told firmly, "No, thank you. Miss Twitchett does not let us drink inside". So some rules existed!
Sally was forever phoning the hospital and on one occasion later she rallied quite an array of medical staff at the Queen Mary Hospital because one pupil had been bitten "by a red snake". Sally accompanied the child who was clutching her arm and refusing to let anyone see it. Doctors surrounded her waving the poisonous snake book and finally she admitted that it had not been really red and perhaps "snake" was a bit of an exaggeration, perhaps "caterpillar" was more to the point. Sally refrained from killing her but always referred to her thereafter as "Caterpillar Jane".
I also remember the occasion when I offered to do a Public Holiday zoo feed in the small zoo on the fourth floor which had been started by Mike Taylor and had to enter brandishing a broom to chase off the brown climbing rats who found it a delightful place for a free meal. I remember too the occasion when one wicked miscreant went up into the forbidden zone and fell through the ceiling of the old operating theatre. There was also the time when one of my chess club members broke his finger during what I had thought was a typical peaceful game. It took me a long time to live that one down and wags on the staff would warn the children not to join the Chess Club as it was too dangerous.
One of my activities from England which Geoff Speak had been interested in was Guiding and after a short time Storm and I set up a Guide Company as an evening activity inevitably the children who joined were delightful but were very unlike my tough little guides in England. Cooking a sausage on an open fire proved to be the first time most of them had ever done anything vaguely domestic for themselves and our first hike nearly proved our swan song. I had happily suggested we should travel to Quarry Bay by tram then walk round the hillside to Wong Nai Chung Gap, Black's Link and Bowen Road. Tram? Tram? They looked at me, eyes wide with horror, and expressed doubts, later confirmed, whether their parents would agree. However we did it and they were very proud of their achievement. For some it was their first glimpse of how squatters lived as we had to pass several encampments. This company eventually amalgamated with St. John's Company.
This idea of exclusiveness was not entirely the children's fault. In those days the Chinese made it difficult for "foreigners" to behave normally and any attempt on our behalf to do any physical task was met with disapproval. A made bed would be pointedly stripped and remade, a tea pot firmly taken from the hand and the potential tea-maker sent in disgrace to sit idle while the tea was brewed. We had discovered this in Shangri-La. During the first year we numbered seven, including three junior teachers from Beacon Hill School. The seven of us had a family of three looking after us, all three together earning the princely sum of $1000 per month. Father was the cook-boy, Mother the general amah and their beautiful but silent daughter the wash amah. Father presided over a vast and mean-spirited gas cooker which would produce superb food or disasters completely impartially but it was Mother, Ah Moi, who used to announce the disasters presumably to save Ah Mas "face". She always did this with a broad grin, the only sign of humour she ever displayed, and with a nononsense statement such as "Pudding burnt. You have fruit salad, yes? Five minutes!"
During the year our Beacon Hill colleagues moved out and Tony got married so our numbers fell to three and we had to say goodbye to Ah Moi's family. They were replaced eventually by Ah Tai and a wash amah but only after a lot of interviewing and abortive trial periods with other amahs, the religious one for example who sang hymns loudly and nonstop and that other good lady who interviewed me rather than the other way round, asked me how many children I had and on hearing that none of us was even married announced that we were "not proper missies". This tyranny prevailed in the school as well and woe betide the teacher who tried to make a surreptitious cup of coffee between lessons.
You may have noticed that there has been little talk of lessons so far. The reason is quite simple. With only Years One, Two and Three during that first year lessons were easy to prepare and marking not onerous. My memories are more of such things as sports days, activities and assemblies. Assemblies were daily affairs with lusty singing. Even in those early days we seemed crowded in our long narrow hall though we cannot have been because we continued to use the same place even when numbers increased dramatically. Little girls would fall senseless to the floor as the temperature rose and the oxygen level fell but we did not over react. After all we were having to create our school feeling, spirit, ambience (call it what you will) from nothing.
In those first few weeks we did not even have a uniform. Many people have. been bewildered by the fact that for the first 16 or so years of its life Island School had blue and red P. E. kit, yet a brown uniform. The explanation is not too complicated. Shortly after we opened a tailor brought us his samples of blue and white striped material for the girls' summer dresses but we soon found that it danced before the eyes to a quite unacceptable degree whereas the brown version didn't. Moreover of all the blue materials offered for the winter "pinafore dress" the only one we liked was almost identical to the one worn by the newly opened H.K.I.S. (Yes, the International School had a uniform in those days) so again we turned to brown but the P.E. kit remained blue and red.
Very gradually the school took shape. Classes increased in size, activities prospered and we all settled in to what had been the hospital wards. Concerts came and went, ties were created with other schools and the community and our first year drew to a close.
I think we were all aware that things would never be quite the same again. Next year there would be a whole new year group of students, a new intake of teachers, an opening up of a new storey of class rooms and never again would we automatically know every child in the school. However we were now able to ask taxi drivers for "Island School" and not for B.M.H..
Gradually over the next three years we expanded to fill the existing building. Eventually we used up every available space and it was no longer possible to consult everybody about everything or to know every child in the school. The former problem led to the bane of every school teacher's life - the problem of communication. Asked a few years ago what she remembered about the first year at Island School Enyd Fletcher said that she constantly seemed to find the Senior Master and Senior Mistress (i.e. Mike Taylor and myself) arguing in the Staff Room "in a gentlemanly and ladylike manner, of course". Yes, we all did a lot of arguing. After all we represented 12 different educational histories with no common tradition.
Mike Taylor and Evie Twitchett
There was not much we could do about the communication problem except to try harder but there was something we could do in the second year about not knowing all the children and that was to create a House system, another of the strengths of the present Island School. Since we were at that stage a four form entry school we started with four houses with two more in reserve. It was decided to name the Houses after people who had excelled in their given area and so it was that from a vast selection of suggestions from parents, teachers and pupils alike, we finally chose six men who possessed qualities we would like to be emulated by our students, six men of vastly differing achievements and from many lands though it was sad that there was no Oriental amongst them and no woman. The new House system gave each child a niche in our rapidly expanding community and added greatly to the work load of the staff. Several had to double as Heads of Departments and Heads of Houses.
In, it seemed, no time at all our tiny community was bursting at the seams and our final year in the old building was not in fact a very happy one. Some classes had to be taught in rooms too small for desks and we had long outgrown the staff room. In the smaller one we had often sat three to two chairs and in really crowded moments on the floor. I still have a glorious memory of one of our more elegant ladies sitting on the floor eating for her lunch caviar left over from a party the night before. Neither Government nor the ESF was prepared to spend money on maintaining a building we were due to vacate very soon and so tiles came adrift and the occasional rat could be seen scurrying down to those underground fastnesses where we rarely ventured. It was a shame because the building had seen us through many happy days. It had kept us cool in summer and freezing in winter, from its balconies we had watched Concorde come on a courtesy visit and had sadly watched the old Queen Elizabeth liner catch fire and sink in the harbour. It had seen our first fair (guest of honour Tommy Trinder) and our first batch of G.C.E. candidates. Fortunately up the hill the Science and Technical blocks were taking shape. But unfortunately the firm building them went bankrupt just as we were beginning to look forward to moving in and it was rumoured that we would have to take in a whole new year group of children with facilities which were already stretched beyond their limits by our existing population. For the only time in its history Island School came near to having its staff take industrial action! However, in that mysterious way of things in Hong Kong, work was resumed and we prepared to move on to the next phase of our history.
So many things which had been cramped would now be able to expand but I often wonder whether they were necessarily better. Some human endeavours rise above difficulties and actually gain from them. Certainly the two plays performed in the old building, especially "The Massacre at Peterloo", were of an excellence difficult to maintain and compared favourably with later more lavish productions. Concerts were joyous affairs that rose above the acoustical problems and enthusiasm made up for lack of facilities in many areas. There was certainly no lack of enthusiasm in the early endeavours of the P.T.A.. What a splendid set of parents they were and many of us had also enjoyed their hospitality when we first arrived with no established social circle of our own. Looking back now on those happy early years I am proud to have been part of it all.
For the last three years I have been the only one of the original 12 Island School staff still working full time for the ESF though Neil still lives in Hong Kong and occasionally helps out when we need a Maths teacher.
South Island School staff
Island School and more recently South Island School have accounted for two fifths of my life and three quarters of my teaching career but I can honestly say that I have never regretted for one moment saying yes twenty years ago.
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