Dining Hall at Betteshanger School (now called Northbourne Park School)
The panels on the far wall lists student leaders and scholarship recipients
The Head Table (not visible) is at the opposite end (image source)
The Head Table
All the prefects, and the head girl and head boy, sat at the head table. There were no other staff other than Mr. Peacock, the head staff himself, the headmaster.
As Head Girl, I sat on the right hand of Mr. Peacock. My co-ruler. the Head Boy. sat on his left.
There was no conversation on the Head Table, not even when the dining room was murmuring with the conversations of the young diners (what
could they be talking about?). We, at the Head Table, sat stoically still, unobtrusively moving our hands to eat our meals, which we did in an exemplary manner. We were well-educated by patient teachers determined to civilize us, which they certainly had succeeded by the time we were appointed as the leaders of the school. Even the handling of cutlery had it own peculiar protocol, peculiar that is, to the English. One cuts the food with fork in left hand and knife in right, then switches the fork over to the right to pick the meat and the potatoes with the knife in the left gently pushing the food onto the fork. For dessert, if it some solid food like cake, trifle or pie, then the fork is in the right hand nudging the food onto the spoon in the left. There is no switching of utensils required here. There was of course the golden rule of no talking while chewing (or eating), which kept one's mouth tightly shut, otherwise exposing unsightly half-eaten food.
The dearth of conversation at our silent head-post helped us to concentrate on chewing and eating, relieving us from the errors of exposing half-eaten food while attempting to talk at the same time. Those of our very young proteges out in the plebeians' sections had to follow the same rules of decorum and of proper chewing and eating. But they were not so lucky, not having built mechanism to ensure that they kept quiet, and mouths closed, as they chewed. Our Headmaster would occasionally shout into the dining room at some poor junior who neglected a rule, or a mischievous senior who thought he could get away with it, not that they were they only miscreants, rather they served as examples for all the others to try harder at being civilized. But Mr. Peacock was not all about punishments and reprimands. He would occasionally emit a deep guffaw at some prankish youngster, a future comic who, is inadvertently auditioning for a part in the next school production of a Shakespearean comedy.
But the silent Head Table was strangely comforting. We knew our Headmaster was actually protecting us with this code of silence from emitting odd sounds, as children are wont to do, and we were 13-year-old children still, or disclosing undisclosable stories and events: "Did you now that Carruthers rode his bike all the way down the hill without holding the handles?" Which would result in said boy having his bike confiscated for a whole week!
And how does one converse with a Headmaster anyway?
We were being trained fit to be at Her Royal Highness’ Table, or any other Highness' for that matter, and that was the point: perfection with the highest goal in mind. That was the meaning of the "preparatory school," to prepare these pupils to be civilized, cultured AND educated adults.
But before we started the mundane activity of eating our meal, there were thanks to be made. And as Head Girl, I had the heavy responsibility of Thanking our Saviour "for what we are about to receive."
"May the Lord make us truly thankful,” I would finish off the blessing.
But I was also ready to forestall this blessing if I felt not all the students came to the required attention, a privilege I rarely used. But one meal time, I made the decision of telling an especially irritating senior student, who regularly disrupted meals, often with minor misbehavior requiring a simple "Tamara that's enough," try her luck at disrupting my Grace.
I waited for her to come to attention. But she didn't, she wouldn't. With no prior warning, I said: "Tamara, please leave the dining room." All heads and prefects are constantly being tested by students. This particular one got angry, then apologetic, then loud. I talked over her and repeated "Please leave the room." She left the dining room and waited outside until the end of the meal when she received hers in the empty dining hall. She had no choice, else a heavy punishment. I had won, not just that battle, but a possible prolonged war. She never disturbed
my Grace again.
Once the Grace was over, this very short but very important part of the meal signaled the permission to "go ahead, eat and be merry" for this roomful of robust, rambunctious school children, mostly boys, and though the girls were quieter they no less devious. And they certainly knew how to eat, and even be merry, under the watchful eyes of the silent table at the far end of the hall, at the Head Table.
I left a tangible legacy in this Great Room, not just floating memories of reprimanded pupils. My name is engraved in gold letters on two beautiful boards of red-brown wood hanging on one of the dark oak-paneled walls: on one as head girl (along with the head boy with whom I ruled), and on the other as an "Astor Student" named after the scholarship I would receive to attend my secondary school, Dover College, only an hour's drive away, by the famed White Cliffs and the turbulent waters of the English Channel, and daunting for a young girl about to return to the bottom rungs of the scholastic and social ladder.
But I had my years of training and education at my Great Hall, a true student of Mr. Peacock. I knew I would handle my new adventure.
