HOMAGE TO A MATRON

To her more intimate acquaintances she was Pillow

(the ‘Miss', for a time vestigial, had shrivelled and died,

and the ‘Gladys' was too sacred to utter like ‘Yahweh').

For most of us, though, she was Matron.

A tall, raw-boned woman, she was mostly

in a starched white coat and sandals.

Yet one is not born at that apex of the hierarchy,

and she began her distinguished career as my nanny:

I recall her relinquishing me at tea time

to that other functionary, the school principal

who doubled as my mother;

what I ate is altogether another matter.



In Matron's room we queued to have our nails cut -

fingers and toes shedding onto newspaper

beneath her stiff hem. In the war, though,

she volunteered to do her bit against Hitler

in the WRENS, and on one of her leaves

we saw her in navy blue looking very creditable.

There Petty Officer Pillow met Petty Officer Bolster,

so we were told, and we laughed at the real-life pun.

Having learned how to semaphore,

she returned to cut nails and line us up

by the medicine chest, taking temperatures

and dispensing glorious malt curled on a spoon.



Her extracurricular activity became folk dancing

under the aegis of Uncle Michael,

the homosexual head master.

On plantain-kicking lawns beneath

a lavender-breathing terrace and stone urns

we wedged wooden swords into a promenadable star

as Matron wound her gramophone, exhorting us

to greater effort, ever greater effort.

Or we danced against girls and the grain

in a Swindon school and won second prize.

From a discreet distance Matron supervised

our twice-weekly bath nights and fortnightly manicures.



Along with the cook, Kitty Butt, I guess Pillow

was a substitute mother for a while.

I recall in my early teens being invited

to the nail-paring room to listen to a Messiah

on the BBC. She gave me the score,

and through many arias and choruses I persevered

as migratory crochets and minims

hung onto stave-wires, chirping admirably,

my eyes tempted to relax in the brown-yellow rain-stains

above me.



When she retired at last to Horsham -

spoilt brat that I was - I never bothered

to visit her or later celebrate her death with so much as a sigh.