Secret Places

I first read Janice Elliott’s Secret Places when I was thirteen. It is a 1981 novel about the romantic friendship of two girls at school together in England during the war. One girl is English, the other is a refugee from Germany.

There was a film version of the book made in 1984, with Jenny Agutter playing one of the teachers at the school.

I believe I saw the film and then sought out the book, but cannot say for certain about the order. I remember the book more clearly than the film, to the point of recalling specific words I learned from it. One of the girls at the school (a minor character) suffers from chilblains because the school was so poorly heated, and I had to look up what that was. More significantly, the book also used the slang word “pash” instead of “crush,” which I had never heard before.

The main character, Patience, has a pash for Laura, the refugee girl, who speaks beautiful French and is generally the most exotic and glamorous person Patience has ever met. They become friends, but Patience’s circle is aware that her feelings qualify as a pash, and tease her about it. From Patience’s perspective, we see Laura receive her prize for French:

As a teenager, I responded to the careful handling of this adolescent crush, especially the way it captured contradictory feelings and setbacks. For instance, Patience recognizes that Laura’s mother is also glamorous, but knows that she doesn’t like her - and she picks up on the slight satirical quality in Laura’s treatment of her mother.

The novel is in some ways similar to A Long Way from Verona, which also takes place at a girls’ school during the war. However, in that book, the adolescent romance is played for laughs, capturing how ridiculously over the top—and divorced from reality—a lover’s image of the love object can be. Secret Places is much more reverent about its characters’ feelings.

I had forgotten that, in Secret Places, the refugee family isn’t Jewish. Laura’s father was denounced by her brother, who was in the Hitler Youth, for political reasons. He spent some time in prison or in a camp before leaving the country. The brother is still in Germany, most likely in the army, as the story opens in spring 1940. The mystery around Laura’s fractured family adds to her appeal. Their story is not as straightforward as that of most refugees. Her mother is Russian, and speaks fluent French at home in the way of Russian aristocrats, suggesting she was already an exile before the family had to flee Berlin.

I had also forgotten that the story is not entirely from Patience’s point of view. The reader does get glimpses of Laura’s perspective as well as that of some of the adults in the tableau. The chatter among the teachers creates most of the sense of expectation or dread in the narrative, because they keep predicting that Laura will become a “disruptive element,” though it is not clear what they mean by this. Since the teachers also spend time talking about how the school is not a democracy, what they view as disruptive may simply be an egalitarianism or an exposure of their faults, or England’s. Patience is already disturbed by the fact that Laura’s father is sent to a camp for enemy aliens near Birmingham. She has trouble accepting that her country treats refugees this way. Laura is also expected to stay quiet at school and refuse to tattle when other girls single her out for being different. In these ways, the school clearly operates as a microcosm of the wider society.

I remembered Secret Places as a boarding school story, but it is not. The girls go home to their families as the end of the day, and the mothers in particular figure in the relations between the girls. Patience tries to hide her mother from Laura, for reasons she doesn’t quite understand—possibly because of her own mixed feelings about her friend’s mother. It seems she does not want to give Laura any reason to dislike her.

I had a real fascination with this book when I was younger, and I can see why, even if it no longer has quite the same pull. It captures something real and intense, but in a naturalistic way. It allows for dreaming and distance at the same time. Patience’s affection for Laura has its mysteries and unknowns, but it is built on a foundation of mutual interest and affection. The story of what goes on between them occurs right at that place where friendship might turn to something else.