how to care for her new friends, and learned to ride. As the foal was broken in, there were tossings-off and bruises, but Frances was not easily beaten and the foal was gradually mastered. She would ride her pony to the blacksmith in Bovey Tracey to be shod, watching the sizzle on each hoof as its shoes were fitted. From this point in her life, Frances developed a keen interest in horses and in the equestrian world.
The family employed two staff, Mortimer the gardener, and his wife who helped in the kitchen. However Evelyn’s mother became concerned that Evelyn was too pressured, given the amount of work needing to be done in the home and garden. So within a short time of returning from Madeira, the Whiteheads engaged two Swiss au pairs to help ease the load.
The death of a child is always an enormous test for a marriage. Evelyn naturally wanted to talk about Pamela, but Claude mourned silently and deeply and did not want her name mentioned. Amid the activity of Beara life, tensions between Evelyn and Claude, two very different people, were soon to surface; however they took care not to argue in front of Frances.
It was around this time that Captain Whitehead and his wife first turned their minds to Frances’s formal education, deciding to hire a governess. This decision served to extend Frances’s rather solitary existence, as she had no children to play with. She recalls her governess cycling to Beara on an old pedal bike; a woman probably in her forties, whom the young girl perceived as ‘very old’.
One of the downstairs sitting rooms was designated as the schoolroom, and here Frances applied herself to her lessons. Claude Whitehead had already taught his daughter to write with the help of a copy book, where, as was the practice for decades, children copied row upon row of a single letter; then rows of another letter. Claude had also taught her to read. So when the governess arrived, he continued, not surprisingly, to retain a keen and active interest in Frances’s tutoring, and to complement it out of class-time. It was a particular frustration to Captain Whitehead that the method of teaching algebra had changed over one generation, and his systems and those of the governess were not in accord.
As well as mastering ‘the three Rs’, Frances learned to play the piano on the family’s baby grand. In addition, her parents wanted her to develop skills in arts and craft. Her father had a gift for painting and for sketching, and Pamela had shown early signs of artistic ability. So two sisters came regularly to teach Frances these skills. But she had no aptitude for art; indeed she never got past the stage of covering a cardboard box in fancy wrapping paper.
Claude Whitehead loved games of every kind. He was a good sportsman, and had competed as a hurdler at Cambridge. Despite his war injury, he continued to play golf with a handicap of par, and he and Evelyn were both active in the local tennis club, as well as playing on their own hard court at Beara.
Frances’s father was devoted to her, and took her with him whenever he was going out. At the age of 8 he gave her an air rifle and taught her to shoot at a bulls-eye set up on the lawn. From here she graduated to taking pot shots at birds. By the age of 9 she was handling a two-bore shotgun with cartridges, and shooting rabbits in the fields, which her Pekinese dog would run to retrieve. She and her father would sometimes go off rabbiting together in the woods accompanied by Mortimer, sending ferrets down the holes to chase out the rabbits. When Frances’s shots were not quite on target, Mortimer would finish the task. Claude loved the natural world and was widely knowledgeable. He would encourage Frances to identify flora and fauna, to listen to the birdsong and distinguish the bird species. He himself belonged to a pheasant shoot, went fishing, and was a good horseman, despite his war injury.
Father and daughter played endless card games at home too, of which Bezique was a favourite. These games would start straight after breakfast, before the Governess arrived, much to Evelyn’s disapproval. Claude Whitehead’s streak of fun and love of games and puzzles delighted his daughter; a trait she herself would retain.
Frances’s father was evidently viewed as a kindly man for in the years following the war, ex-soldiers, former members of his regiment, used to track him down and come to Beara to ask for money and help.
Claude Whitehead took Frances with him each Sunday to the local Anglican Church, where, to a child, the services seemed formal and a little arid. Her father, who evidently had a personal faith which mattered to him, would insist every week that she learn the Collect9 for the day by heart. Before he kissed Frances goodnight, he would sit with her while she said her prayers, always including the Lord’s Prayer; this she would race through. ‘Girlie, stop!’ he would often exclaim. ‘You haven’t thought about a single word you’ve said.’ In the same manner, Frances learned the Questions and Answers of the Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer, again schooled by her father.
After two years of being tutored at home, it was time to send Frances to school. Rather than sending her to the village school, her parents enrolled her in a small private school in Bovey with just six pupils. Her father drove her there each day. On summer afternoons she and her father would watch cricket in the field opposite the school before driving home. Claude Whitehead drove a roomy Fiat with a canvas hood which he would pull back in good weather. But by the time Frances was ten, there was a new daily pattern. Instead, they would travel to and from school in the second family car, an Austin Seven. It was at this young age that Frances now learned to drive. Each afternoon, as soon as Captain Whitehead turned off the main road from the village and into the lane leading up to Beara, he and Frances would get out of the car and change places. Kangaroo starts and crashing gears would, over the weeks, give way to smooth gear changes, and another skill mastered.
Her parents’ separation was now in the offing, but Frances’s mother resolved to remain until Frances left for boarding school when she was 11 years old.
8. Claude Whitehead had a distinguished military career. He served with the 4th Kings Own Royal Lancaster Regiment (Rifles), and was awarded a DSO and the Chevalier Legion of Honour for bravery and leadership at the final battle in the Struma Valley, Salonica, in which he was wounded. He was twice mentioned in despatches and received the Military Cross for skilful leadership in extricating his men after the battle of Doiran. He played an active interest in local affairs, and was Assistant Area Officer (Newton Abbott division) of the Devon Special Constabulary. (Obituary, The Paignton Observer, 23 March 1944.)
9. The prayer for the day, as set out in the Book of Common Prayer (1662) which was widely used in all Anglican churches for another fifty years.
CHAPTER THREE
Boarding school: 1936–43
September 1936. Frances and her parents packed her school trunk, and her father heaved it into the Fiat. Excitement and anticipation were mixed with uncertainties. As for any child leaving home for boarding school, there are many different emotions. For Frances this moment marked a watershed in all aspects of life. For in addition to a new school, new friends, and dorm life, the landscape at home was changing. Her mother would now be leaving Beara to live with her friend Sylvia Dunsford, whom she had met on board ship as the family sailed to Madeira four years earlier.
Lanherne school in Dawlish, on the south coast, was just twelve or thirteen miles away. After her rather solitary life at home since Pamela’s illness became serious, Frances was glad to have the company of girls her own age. She had inherited her father’s love of fun and of sport and enjoyed the camaraderie of boarding school life, as well as the chance to compete in tennis and netball. Each day would begin with a service in the chapel for the whole school, then a long crocodile of girls in green uniform would process along the Promenade, back to the main building. Continuing her father’s work ethic, and wanting to please him, Frances always aimed to be the best, in sport and in the classroom.
Following a sports injury at Lanherne, she found herself unable to play sport for several weeks. For those excluded from games lessons, a special curriculum was devised. This consisted mainly of Scripture, and focused almost exclusively on lessons from the Old Testament, in particular Kings and Chronicles. This was, as far as Frances could remember, the first time she had read the Bible herself. It would however be another twenty years before she grasped how the Bible storyline