Non-cooperation and breaking the rules was a strategy I learnt in order to survive boarding school, and I was still hooked into that same survival strategy after school. The year after I left school in July 1964, I forged my father’s signature to obtain a passport and disappeared from home for three months.
I was sent to boarding school in 1957 aged ten, first to a prep school: and, at the age of thirteen, to secondary school. My school was deep in the countryside, surrounded by acres of private parkland, and a far cry from my family home in London where we lived in a street in a middle-class residential area. Many of the girls at my school were from a more elite background than my own, and many were aspiring debutantes and socialites. Academic achievement was not highly rated at this school. This was a strange choice of school for my parents, who valued academic and professional achievement.
In this remote and isolated corner of the English countryside, I encountered a housemistress who would have been equally at home in the Ice Palace of the Snow Queen. ‘Frozen’ described her well. She singled me out and bullied me throughout my time at this school. My response was rebellion, and I dug my heels in: detentions and punishments did not deter me or make me succumb to her rules or abide by her protocols. I did little work, and I deliberately failed exams. My parents were aware there was a problem, and eventually, when I was fifteen, my father offered me the chance to leave. However, with one year to go before taking ‘O’ levels it did not seem worth it (yes, I did do some work in the end), and I left after ‘O’ levels.
After school, I considered training as a nurse. However, my school did not give me a good reference. I was turned down at four London teaching hospitals. I then found short-term work in shops and hotels and started living independently away from home. I made new friends, who I enjoyed getting to know as they were from different social backgrounds to my own. One day they invited me to travel to Italy with them for a few weeks in their old converted bus. I relished the idea of this, however my parents were against the idea. I was determined to go, and I went against their wishes.
I was eighteen years old and, in those days, the age of consent for a passport was twenty-one. I had a passport that my parents kept locked away, and I had no access to it. So when they said I should not go on this trip, I took the law into my own hands and forged my father’s signature to obtain a new temporary passport. I did not return home for three months, during which time I left no contact address or phone number with my parents, although sent them a postcard. My illegal passport was never discussed when I returned home. I handed it over to my father and all evidence vanished, and no one talked about it. My behaviour caused my parents and family considerable pain and distress, and I also felt extremely guilty and felt alienated from the world. However, good relationships were gradually rebuilt again in the end.
I started going for therapy some years later, but I felt that the therapists I saw did not take the issue of my forged passport very seriously, and seemed to brush off the significance. Other issues from boarding school were taken more seriously, although it took me a long time to acknowledge boarding school trauma. However, I still wanted someone to acknowledge that forging a signature to obtain a passport is against the law.
One therapist suggested I was holding up a sign saying, “I’m here, please notice me”. However, I do not think the problem was not being noticed at home. My parents were attentive. They had little experience themselves of foreign travel, and they were concerned that I was not focusing on my future. However, at the time I saw no future ahead of me. I had left school with very little personal identity. I had not been an academic success at school, and I was very unlikely to be a social success, and I had been rejected as unsuitable for training as a nurse. (I did in fact gain access to training a few years later.)
During some more recent therapy sessions I talked again about this episode, and the observation made by this therapist was that I was “courageous and determined” when I decided to join these friends travelling and illegally obtain a passport. At first, I could hardly believe these words “courageous and determined”. Was someone actually praising me for what I did? I went away digesting what I felt to be a newly found insight that had eluded me for years. However, as much as this insight was helpful and encouraging, I was still left in doubt.
I recently read an interview with the psychotherapist Philippa Perry who was asked the question “What has been your closest brush with the law?” She replied, “Due to my privilege, upbringing and subsequent luck, I’ve never been caught”.
I appreciate such honesty. I would say the same thing about myself. Forging a signature is fraud, and a maximum sentence for forgery is ten years. I got away with it because you are less likely to get caught with a forged passport if you are white, middle or upper class, and not a refugee. Cultural capital keeps you distant from being seen or thought of as a criminal.
Although I appreciate the loving kindness and humanity that my various therapists have shown me, one thing I would say is that it is a necessary part of therapy to acknowledge someone has committed a criminal offence, and it does not help if therapists collude with the “privilege, upbringing and subsequent luck” that meant you never got caught. The law applies to you, and to think or act as if it does not, or as if you are above the rules (Boris Johnson comes to mind here), is unhelpful and ultimately damaging.