1970s PRIVATE LIFE
0202 School Exchanges
Sarah had a couple
of exchanges, arranged by her school, with girls from other countries. One of
these was relatively straightforward, with a girl from a very similar background
to herself. We took her around the country, as I was visiting the various
hospitals on behalf of IBM Biomedical. Sarah went back with her to her
friend’s house in suburban France and enjoyed the stay there. All of this was
pretty much as might be expected.
In our garden, with Isobel on exchange
On the other hand, her main exchange was dramatically different. This other girl, when she came across from France, did not seem very different. Indeed, the main initial impact on the two of them was Sarah's guide camp. Unfortunately it was a week when it poured solidly every day with rain, and they came back absolutely soaked through. Even so, they seem to have enjoyed it, so it was still very much to a normal exchange. The difference came when they went back to France.
Thus Sarah travelled back with her new friend to the South of France, where her family had a house near Cap St Martin. Next to Monte Carlo, this is a very expensive part of the Riviera. Even more impressive, the house had a large garden which ran down to the most exclusive beach on the Riviera. It turned out that the girl's grandfather had been a famous opera singer, and the family was very, very well off!
I could almost name a specific time, even the particular hour, when Sarah's life changed. When she got to Cap St Martin she phoned us, a tearful young girl who was homesick. That was, however, the last we saw of that girl.
The life she led there was totally different to anything she'd been used to, or we had been used to. Thus, for example, she went to parties with Princess Caroline of Monaco and her set. By the time she came back to us she was changed. She just couldn't see how we could live the way we did, when she had seen how the beautiful people lived. I don't think she ever forgave us, then or since, for being so suburban
To compound matters, she went to their Parisian home for Christmas. That was perhaps more normal, but they also visited the grandmother who lived in a Chateau. What was perhaps the worst of all, was that they went round with the grandmother as she went to the couturiers to have her clothes made for her. Again Sarah couldn't cope with the fact we lived normal lives, and not the lives of the super rich.
Unfortunately, this was also the time when the rebel in her was emerging. To augment her pocket money, she used to go off to Oxford Street every Saturday to work in the shoe and fashion stores. She thought herself very grown-up. She also used to go to the first teen nightclub, at Walton, which was for genuinely for teenagers of her age -- though it later started to develop a bad name in terms of what went on at the dances.
Worst of all, she started to dress in a very tarty manner and wouldn't accept criticism about this. I was not especially worried that she looked tarty, but I was worried that she might expose herself to danger walking round London at night looking as she did. I suspect in later decades she might indeed have made herself a victim in one way or another.
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