George Green,
Little Hallingbury,
Bishop’s Stortford,
Hertfordshire.
It impressed me so much that I wrote it inside the covers of all my books, on my wooden pencil case, my school bag and just about everything else that I possessed.
My father began working on the house immediately and the first thing that had to be tackled was the conversion of one of the bedrooms into a bathroom because the existing one was a very primitive affair stuck on to the side of the house. No sooner had it been completed than a tawny owl made its home under the thatch eaves and would sit on one of the oak beams gravely regarding anyone who happened to be using the bathroom. I was delighted and thrilled because I had only ever seen pictures of those mysterious birds - tawny owls featured strongly in my books of fairytales- and here was one, literally, under our very roof!
We had a large garden, part of which was an apple orchard, and behind the cottage was a mature walnut tree; even now, whenever I smell walnuts, I think of that tree and the nuts I tried to eat, even before they were ripe. A wire fence separated our garden from fields of wheat and barley and it was easy for me to crawl underneath it and hide in the tall crops. I would lie on my stomach and study the myriad, low-growing arable weeds such as scarlet pimpernels, fumitory and my favourites, wild pansies, that carpeted the ground. I discovered four-leaved clovers, too, and pressed them between the covers of books because my mother said they were lucky.
It is difficult to recall the time we lived in Little Hallingbury without a certain feeling of nostalgia, a hankering after a way of life which, of course, no longer exists. I was happy in our new surroundings and for the first time in my life I felt that we were, at last, settled. I felt proud when visitors to the village stopped to take photographs of our cottage and I couldn’t imagine my parents ever wanting to move house again; to me, it was idyllic and I was sure there was not a better place to live in the whole world.
The village parson called on us and introduced himself as Rudolph Walker. Walker was also our surname and my mother thought she was being very amusing when she referred to him behind his back as ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Rector.’ He invited me to join the church Sunday school and my mother made me go, despite my protestations. I had to endure an excruciatingly boring half-hour every Sunday afternoon while the rector told us about Jesus and made us say prayers. It was nothing less than torture to me because I couldn’t bear to be without anything to occupy my hands or my mind.
We had another visitor one day. I was amusing myself in the garden when a strange figure suddenly appeared at our front gate. That part of his face which was not shaded by a battered, floppy hat or concealed by a long, grizzled beard was very brown and deeply lined. He was clad in a crumpled, grimy coat which came down to his ankles and was tied around the middle by a piece of string and on his feet were dusty, leather boots which had obviously done good mileage. Tramps were not an uncommon sight in those days but it was the first time I’d ever seen one at such close quarters.
‘Could I trouble you for a glass of water?’ he asked.
Too alarmed to reply, I ran indoors to tell my mother that there was a tramp at the gate asking for a glass of water but, instead of storming out of the house in indignation, as I’d assumed she would, she took a clean glass from the cupboard, filled it with water and carried it to the waiting man. I stared, round-eyed, as he took the glass and drained it.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked as he handed back the empty glass.
‘Very kind of you,’ he replied, ‘but I’m not much of a tea-drinker, thanks all the same.’
They chatted for some moments and then, as he turned to go on his way, the tramp smiled at me and said:
‘A very pleasant woman, your mother!’
I was used to changing schools by now and felt quite confident about becoming a new pupil in the village school. In this small and intimate environment I quickly got to know all the other children and settled down happily. At dinner-time we had to walk in a crocodile down the road to a wooden hut where they served our meals. We had cheese pie once a week but it was considerably more palatable than the Beacon School version and I was very thankful that we weren’t given brawn. There was a greater availability of food and a much wider choice, as well as more sweet things on the menu now that sugar was no longer rationed. School children of my generation were given free milk, usually consumed in the mid-morning break; it came in little bottles with silver tops through which you poked your straw. I detested milk. It made me feel sick and I was glad when chocolate became more widely available so that I could at least have something to take the taste away.
My father had a shed in the garden, ostensibly for storing tools but in reality a refuge from my mother, who referred to it as ‘the woodshed’. One night, a feral cat gave birth in it to a single, ginger kitten. The cat fled whenever anyone went near but we left food for her. When she wasn’t there, I used to pick the kitten up and stroke it so that by the time it was old enough to be weaned it was quite tame. I named it Widdy because it came to me when I called ‘Widdywiddywiddy!’ When Auntie Frances came to stay with us some months later she said she’d never seen anything so pretty as our orchard all in blossom with Widdy padding across the grass under the trees in the early morning light.
We hadn’t been living very long in Little Hallingbury when I made friends with a neighbour’s daughter who was the same age as I. My mother approved of her because her parents were both professional people and therefore, in her eyes, respectable. My new friend was called Mavis, an unusual name even then; so many girls were called Margaret or Elizabeth after the royal princesses. There was another girl, Patricia, who seemed keen to be my friend but there was a great deal about her of which, I knew, My mother would certainly not approve. She was one of those girls who develop prematurely and are far too knowing for their age; she whispered things to me which I didn’t understand and thought I should not know about.
‘I lie on the bed and do myself sometimes,’ she whispered. ‘It’s nice. Do you do yourself?’
I didn’t know how to reply because I had no idea what she was talking about. I asked her what she meant by do.
‘You know! It’s what they do - grown-ups. They do each other. I’ve seen them. I can show you if you like and we can do each other.’
My instinct warned me that my mother would be displeased if she knew I was having this conversation and I told Patricia that I had to go home. Afterwards, she called round to my house often but, wisely, I always made sure my mother was within earshot when we were together. One day, however, when my mother was preoccupied with hanging out the washing, Patricia pulled me down on to the ground, lifted up her skirt, positioned herself on top of me and ground her pubic bone into mine so hard that it hurt.
‘There! she cried, triumphantly. ’ That’s what doing someone is like!’
I was embarrassed and ashamed and after that avoided Patricia as best I could. My mother asked me if I had fallen out with her and when I went bright red she immediately became suspicious.
‘Have you been playing rude games?’ she demanded.
I shook my head and went redder still. ‘I don’t want you playing with that girl again!’ she said, angrily. ‘What have you been doing?’
‘She lifted her skirt up,’ I mumbled. Surprisingly,my mother seemed satisfied with that feeble answer and she didn’t press me further. She made me feel, as she always did, that I had done something dreadfully wrong even though I was innocent. I never attempted to defend myself when she made accusations of that nature because, quite simply, I didn’t understand what she was talking about. On a later occasion, my mother discovered some drawings which had been done by my sister who was then about five years old. They were only childish scribbles but they were, nevertheless, startlingly explicit representations of naked human bodies; how Jean had acquired such detailed knowledge of the human fundament I cannot imagine. Anyway, my mother was extremely angry and waved them in my face.
‘What are these?’ she demanded. ‘What do you mean by drawing such disgusting things?’
I stared at them in blank astonishment. Did she really believe I could have done such stupid, babyish drawings? I was deeply offended.
‘I didn’t do these!’ I cried, indignantly. ‘My drawings are much better than that!’
It was one of the very few instances that I actually did defend myself before my mother.
Every Saturday, my mother, my sister and I walked the three-quarters of a mile to the end of the lane where we lived and caught the Green Line bus to London in order to spend the day with my grandmother. I liked the walk because we had to go across a level-crossing and it was always a big thrill for me if we had to wait for a train to pass. On the other side of the crossing was a gypsy encampment separated from the road by a wire fence. As we walked past, groups of dirty, ragged children would stare, gravely, and I would stare back, with great interest.
‘Don’t look at them!’ my mother would hiss.
Just before we reached the main road we passed a pub called The Three Horseshoes; my father sometimes stopped there for a drink and one day he came home and told us that he’d just met the well-known comedian, Jimmy Edwards. I was delighted because I was a great fan of the radio family, ‘The Glums’, and I always used to laugh when he burst in on Eth and Ron with his famous line, ‘’ello! ‘ello! ‘ello!’, constantly thwarting poor Ron’s attempts to court Eth.
Although I enjoyed the company of my cousins, I didn’t like my grandmother very much. She nagged a lot and was always arguing with my mother. Sometimes, though, she took me to the theatre at a place called Coronation Gardens to see matinée performances of variety acts. I had been to the cinema on a number of occasions but live entertainment was a new experience. Some of the acts were boring but, one afternoon, the curtain parted to reveal a ballet dancer wearing a short, green tutu with a glittery, black bodice and a black tiara. To me, this was something new and wonderful; I gazed with rapt attention as she spun around the stage, fascinated by the black, satin pointe shoes on which she balanced, incredibly, on the very tips of her toes. I was spellbound, captivated, and from that day ballet dancers were the inspiration for all my drawings.
By the time our Saturday visits were over and we had walked the length of Peterborough Road to the bus stop, my sister and I were always very tired. Jean would fall into a deep slumber as soon as she had climbed on to her seat but I would try to fight sleep because I knew I’d only have to wake up again when we reached the end of our journey. But the motion of the bus, the comfortable warmth and the steaminess of the atmosphere would never fail to make my head begin to nod, no matter how hard I tried to resist, and I’d drop off, only to be shaken by my mother telling me we had arrived. How I hated those awakenings! To me, the bus was like a warm, cosy bed and I could hardly bear to be dragged out of it into the cold, sharp, night air. I was very irritable but after a few moments of whining I would suddenly find myself wide awake and begin to enjoy the walk. In the post-war years, there was no light pollution in the English countryside and the night skies were a wonderful spectacle. I asked my father what stars were and he explained that they were suns, just like our own sun. Some of them were so far away, he told me, that it took many millions of years for the light from them to reach Earth and for that reason, many of them didn’t even exist any more. I didn’t really understand all this but the stars continued to fascinate me and eventually I discovered the inspirational books of Patrick Moore so that by the time I’d reached my teens I’d become a keen amateur astronomer.
People who have never been to Essex probably don’t realise what a beautiful county it is. When I was a child, motoring was a pleasant, relaxing pastime and my parents were in the habit of driving out into the countryside on fine Sunday afternoons; we passed through flowery lanes and pretty villages such as Thaxted, Saffron Walden and Finchingfield and often we would stop at a country pub in some pleasant, leafy setting. My parents would leave my sister and me in the car with a bottle each of Stone’s ginger beer and a packet of crisps. Sometimes, I would sit outside with my drawing book and pencil and people would stop to admire my sketches. Once, a woman asked me to draw her little dog and was so pleased with the result that she gave me money for it. It was my first ever sale! I felt very proud but my mother said the woman was just a drunken old tart.
Not only was there the countryside of Essex to explore but also its popular seaside resorts such as Southend, Clacton and Brightlingsea, where people enjoyed themselves without restraint. There were donkeys on the beach, Punch and Judy shows, shops selling pink, peppermint rock, ice-cream and tacky souvenirs, winkle stalls, walks along the pier or promenade and all manner of amusements and entertainments. Once, as a special treat, I was taken to Southend to see the lights. I admired them politely but, in actual fact, I thought they were very artificial and much preferred looking at the stars from my garden at home. I had a much better time when I went to Brightlingsea one day with my friend, Mavis, and her parents; to me, this resort was the very last word in seaside fantasy and we returned home tired and sunburnt, our hair stiff with salt water and sand, but blissfully content.
My grandmother had a lifelong friend, Ethel, who became, in time, my mother’s friend also. Once you saw through her rather gruff exterior, you realised that she was a good-hearted soul and over the years I became fond of her. She had a dry, very Cockney, sense of humour and a way of addressing people which amused me greatly. For example, once on a crowded railway platform, a young soldier, with his kit on his back, accidentally bumped into her.
‘’Ere!’ she exclaimed. ‘Watch where your’e going, you khaki-clad sod!’ Afterwards, whenever I thought of that incident and recalled the look of surprise on the soldier’s face, I burst out laughing.
Ethel was married to Harry and they had two daughters, Betty and Judy. I never saw much of Betty, a temperamental and volatile young woman of whom I was rather afraid, but when they came to visit us they would always bring Judy. She was a tall, gawky girl with over-large hands and feet; her dark hair was tightly braided into two long plaits secured at the ends with ribbons and her eyes, which were large and brown, were not unlike those of a benign cow. Indeed, there was something about her that was slightly bovine, both in her slow, rather langourous way of moving and her slow speech. She drove my mother mad with her infuriating habit of answering ‘I don’t mind’ whenever she was asked anything. She was at least three years older than I but she was unable to express herself and so slow-witted that it was like being with someone much younger; I found her company tedious and was glad when the visit was over so that I was no longer obliged to entertain her.
One day, when Ethel and Harry were paying us a visit, Judy wandered into the shed where my father was working. As she sauntered out again, in her dreamy, cow-like way, my mother spotted her. She said nothing but, later that evening, when the visitors had gone home, she confronted my father.
‘What the hell was going on with you and that Judy in the woodshed?’
The blank expression with which he regarded her served only to inflame her even more. He gaped at her, speechless, while she spat out shocking accusations. Vainly, he attempted to defend himself against her tirade of abuse. The row went on into the night and in the morning, dragging us with her, my mother stormed out of the house.
‘When I leave him.........’ she began. Whenever they had a row, she would expect us to side with her and she would speak to me confidingly: ’When I leave him......’
I was terrified the first time she said that to me, following one of their violent rows; my sister was in her pram and we were walking the streets, aimlessly, after she had flung out of the house in a furious rage. If she left him, where would we go? What would happen to us? She knew we were frightened and upset when she quarrelled with our father but she made no attempt to control her temper. In the normal course of events their rows would subside and be forgotten; the row over Judy and the woodshed, however, simmered on for years and would be brought up again whenever a fresh argument erupted.
When my father had finished doing up the cottage, he got a job as storekeeper for a firm of aeronautical engineers at Stansted Airport. My mother had the idea of doing afternoon teas and applied for planning permission to do so. It was granted, but there had been two objections, one from the landlord of the pub across the road and the other from a neighbour: after that, she went out of her way to snub both parties and would make cutting remarks in a loud voice if ever one of them was within earshot. My parents went to auction sales in their spare time to look for suitable furniture for the tea-room. They had good taste and by the time everything was ready and there was a sign outside saying ‘Afternoon Teas’, it all looked very cottagy, comfortable and welcoming. I had been helping my mother to practice cake-making: we baked Dundee cakes, fairy cakes, coconut cakes, iced buns, coconut pyramids and butter-cream sponges; wisely, she didn’t attempt anything too fancy. Things got off to a good start and on fine afternoons we were quite busy. Often, we would run out of eggs so my sister and I would be sent to a nearby farm to buy some more. It was quite a long walk down a lonely lane: so lonely, in fact, that we never encountered another soul. In summer, on very hot days, the tarmac along the lane would blister and we would spend minutes of intense enjoyment stamping on the glistening, black bubbles to pop them. It was worth the telling-off we received from our mother when we arrived home, late, with the eggs.
One day, a group of cyclists turned up for afternoon tea and they were so impressed that they told my mother they were going to recommend her to the Cyclists’ Touring Club and in due course a metal sign arrived with ‘C.T.C. Recommended’ painted on it in black and yellow. It was hung up next to the sign announcing ‘Afternoon Teas’ and she was very proud.
In the orchard were several different varieties of English apples and when autumn came I used to bag up the windfalls and sit outside on the green with a cardboard sign advertising eating apples for sale. I did very well and with the proceeds I used to go to the shop in the village and buy sweets. My friend, Mavis, also had an orchard but their fruit trees were mostly plums and we used to gorge ourselves on juicy, golden greengages and sweet, fat Victoria plums.
My sister and I caught whooping cough and we were very poorly. Any parent with doubts about allowing their child to have the vaccine should think again: it is a most horrible, frightening illness. When the coughing spasms occur, you are utterly unable to breathe; your arms flail as you gasp, whoop and turn blue in your desperation to get air. The attacks leave you feeling shaky and exhausted and even when you have recovered, your chest is weakened and you are far more prone to respiratory viruses than you were before. Later, we went down with mumps and that, too, is unpleasant. I was due to attend a birthday party on the day I became ill; I woke up with a high temperature and severe neck pain and felt so sick that I wasn’t even able to feel disappointment about missing the party.The family who had invited me very kindly sent round some birthday cake and other goodies afterwards but I was too poorly to eat them.
There was sickness, too, in the countryside. Myxomatosis had arrived and rabbits were dropping dead in great numbers. I was appalled and grief-stricken by what I saw; it seemed to me a cruel and terrible thing deliberately to let loose such a virulent and lethal disease upon innocent creatures and I longed to wreak revenge upon those responsible. Even the most hardened and unsentimental were sickened by the sight of all those dead and dying animals.
I had a great love of the countryside and would wander off by myself to explore without my mother ever noticing my absence. There was a farmyard not very far from our cottage with a footpath through it leading to a wood which was carpeted with bluebells in the spring. Later, there were fields of cowslips and once, on a grassy hillside, I discovered harebells which were the same shade of pale cobalt as the sky overhead. One lovely May morning, while I was sitting quietly on a branch of some ancient tree, a cuckoo alighted above me and called, twice. The bird was unaware of my presence and I held my breath, enthralled, hoping that it would call again but eventually it flew off and I heard it in the far distance. I raced home, desperate to share my experience. But whom to tell? My sister was too young to appreciate such a thing and my mother would only make some sneering remark or tell me off for climbing trees.
In school one day our teacher told us that she wanted each of us to prepare a little talk to be given in front of the class. The subject was: ‘The Happiest Day of My Life.’ I thought for a long time, trying to decide which occasion had given me the greatest happiness. I would have liked to talk about my walks in the country and my encounter with the cuckoo in the tree but I knew the rest of the class wouldn’t understand how such simple things could bring such joy; then there was the day I went to Brightlingsea with my friend, Mavis, but I knew my mother would be offended if she thought that my happiest day had been spent in the company of someone other than herself.
‘What about the time you were a bridesmaid?’ she suggested. ‘Surely that must have been the happiest day of your life?’
I thought back to that day. Ethel and Harry’s elder daughter, Betty, had got married and Judy and I were the bridesmaids. We both wore very plain, long dresses of pink satin with high waists and short, puffed sleeves. We carried little posies of flowers and had to stand about in a chilly wind for a long time while the photographer took pictures. The ceremony had bored me and I had fidgeted. Afterwards, we all went to the reception and I made myself sick by gorging on too many sweet things. Did my mother know so little about me that she imagined Betty’s wedding had been the happiest day of my life? All the same, to please her I chose the occasion as my subject and the ‘little talk’ I gave was, as a consequence, undeserving of much praise.
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