Swimming with Cobras Read Online Free

of dip pens and inkwells and I always managed to let a blob of ink escape which I then inevitably smudged on the page. My elegant mother was exasperated by my clumsiness. When my teacher told her that I wrote like a chimney sweep, the letters “NPTD” appeared on the calendar and I was given pages from Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty to sit and copy out. How I hated that horse!
    When the usual shadows of adolescence began to creep into my blissful existence, they were compounded by my disappointing scholastic performance. This was something of a surprise to everyone because, although I was no good at arithmetic, I was an articulate child who devoured books. My father had read the Brontës and Austen to me while my friends were still on Enid Blyton. I had always been allowed to join in adult conversation and was considered somewhat quaint and precocious. I loved talking with my friends’ mothers or with a childless couple who lived on our road, and enjoyed conversing with my father’s colleagues when they came to dinner. My parents were keen for me to attend Merchant Taylors, the school where most of my friends would be going, so I sat their 11 Plus entrance exam as well as the one for the local high school. When I failed both, my father summoned me to his study.
    The room smelt of ink and Three Nuns tobacco. Several large official envelopes, some still closed with sealing wax, lay on the roll-top desk. In a glass-fronted pear wood bookcase were the leather-bound encyclopaedias in which I loved to pore over the etchings of my heroines, from Joan of Arc to World War One nurse and spy, Edith Cavell. My father looked at me over the top of his spectacles as I came in, long-legged and awkward.
    â€œWell, Rosemary,” he sighed, “what are we going to do?”
    I felt the sting of not being good enough when my friends had all made the grade, but I was determined to put on a brave face. I suspected that my maths marks had obliterated my prospects, but I also knew that the high school had been rather impressed with my command of English and had asked for an interview. So to the interview I went and I got into the school. But from the outset I was a fish out of water. The children around me were rougher, their houses smaller, their accents stronger. Suddenly it was clear just how middle class my life and mores were. Single-parent families had been exotic in the novels I’d read; fathers who deserted their children had presented intriguing mysteries. But in real life these situations appalled me. All my snobbish traits rose to the surface and I was unable to sense my adventure in such an alien place. My robust spirit deserted me and I was very unhappy.
    My parents removed me and I was sent instead to Trinity Hall, a Methodist private school where I stayed on as a boarder when eventually, they moved to Cornwall. I loved it and soon made friendships that have lasted for life. Maths remained a stumbling block but an English teacher from Dublin with flaming red hair and a rapier wit brought Shaw's St Joan to life as well as a string of Irish poets. We nicknamed her Peony after the red flowers in the school garden. Town was forbidden but its allure irresistible, and bunking out always involved climbing out of dormitory windows. Years later when I described these adventures to my own daughters they hooted with incredulous laughter. “It sounds just like St Trinian’s!” The boarding school students in the book and films of the same name were infamous for their flaunting of the rules.
    Boys, of course, were a forbidden species and when I encountered them later at university, life took a very exciting turn. My first year as a student in English and History at Birmingham passed in a haze of parties, dances, conversations and fun, and before long, failure loomed once more. Again I found myself facing my father.
    â€œAnd now what, Rosemary?” he asked.
    Different study, different house, but the same