Great Meadow (23 page)

My sister said she didn't know what an auction was, so I told her the one who paid the most money would get the house or cottage, and that was worrying because our father kept saying he hadn't a bean.

Our mother was sitting under the apple trees in the little orchard when we got over the fence, and put her finger to her lips because the baby was asleep just behind her in its pram. But she whispered that she didn't know about the auction, but that she'd speak to our father when he came back next week.

Lally was in the kitchen lining a pudding bowl with slices of white bread for the summer pudding, and beside her there was a big bowl of gooseberries, blackcurrants and loganberries. And I knew jolly well what that meant. Topping and tailing, which was terribly boring and fiddly. And of course I was quite right. She took the milk and the eggs and told us to sit down and get to work while she started on the fish pie. It was all a bit annoying, because it was hot and sunny outside, and we had to sit topping and tailing. Anyway, you just couldn't argue.

‘You want summer pudding, you have to work for it. Won't get a single thing in this life, not unless you do a bit of work. Won't enjoy it if it hasn't cost you labour.'

But I didn't say anything except about the auction and that really made her stop. It worried her, you could see that easily by the way she started to skin the chunk of cod. She was quite rough with it, and the knife was stabbing
about. She pulled the skin off in strips and dumped them on a tin plate.

‘Well, you got that much out of the lady. Vancouver. Fancy. Almost halfway to Japan or as near as makes no difference. So that'll be that. Give me a couple of old eggs from the lean-to, I can't boil the fresh ones for the fish pie . . . and while I boil them, you might go down and pump me a couple of buckets for the washing-up.'

So I said, ‘What about the gooseberries?' and she said Miss Fernackerpan could carry on with those.
She'd
need the hot water as soon as she'd got the fish on to boil. So I clonked down with the two buckets feeling a bit funny inside. The idea of the cottage going up for the auction was very frightening, especially with no money. And then I'd be up in awful school in Scotland, and perhaps I'd never know what had happened. I felt really mouldy.

In the kitchen Lally was banging about and things were boiling and she said ‘Drat' once or twice, and my sister said she'd finished the fruits and she'd like to see the baby. If it was awake.

‘If it's awake I reckon you'd know. It's a proper little crier. Enough tears he sheds to float that Cunarder. You might be able to see that? Biggest ship in the world? September up in Scotland. That's something to look forward to – Out of my way, this is a pan of boiling water!' My sister just went off into the orchard. Lally set the boiled eggs on a saucer to cool. ‘This cottage needs a lot doing to it. A lot. No water, no taps, no electric light, no heat nor what we supply by logs, no telephone, and with a baby in the place you
have
to have those things. And that privy! I ask you! How ever is your mother going to
manage if I have to leave . . . which I will one day, you know? Mrs Jane is really frail and Mr Jane as deaf as a post. They will need me one of these days.'

‘But you wouldn't go? Leave us? You couldn't!'

‘I would, my boy, if I
had
to. That privy, no light, no water, and, bye the bye, tonight I'll thank you to take your spade up to the top and dig the hole for you-know-what!'

‘Already! I did it three days ago. Something like that.'

‘It's
nothing
like that. Five people in the place now! Different when we are just three. Very different . . . But if my own flesh and blood need me, what do I do? You are going away, and you're grown up now, you don't need me. Your sister is getting on, too. And she's got the baby to tend. I wouldn't leave you until we had everything nicely settled here. But I do hope your father gives it a lot of thought when the auction comes up. He should get this place for sixpence with all that's wrong with it. It's a hovel, a real hovel, if you think about it. Now then, if the eggs are cool enough, peel them, in a bowl of water, can't abide bits of shell all over my sink. Clogs the drains . . . And that's just
another
thing! Drains!'

But I didn't listen, she was making everything sound so terrible. It was like the end of the world.

It felt a bit better sitting round the table all together in the kitchen at dinner. The baby had been fed and was asleep in its basket, the windows were open, and the smell of the nicotiana was really strong, even though we had eaten fish pie. Our mother had a little half-bottle of white wine on the table, and it was very nice all being together, which is
what made thinking about
not
being together make me feel so miserable. It came and went away like toothache. Lally and our mother were talking about all the things wrong with the place and what it was like in summer and in winter and now with the baby . . . They just didn't say anything cheerful. My sister had a second helping of summer pudding and said she simply loved the baby and wasn't it awful that they had to grow up? Lally said, in a jokey voice, well, only if they grew up to be as wilful and spoiled as me. But even if she didn't mean it really, I felt it was perhaps what she actually meant. And my mother put her hand on mine, across the table, and said she loved me anyway. After all I had got the Second Chance now in Scotland, and she was sure I'd be sensible and please our father. Lally asked that
if
I had got my strength back, having eaten so much, to remember the spade was in the lean-to, and it was cool enough now. She would do the washing-up as soon as the kettles boiled. My sister said could she be excused from the Bindie Bucket this time, because she wanted to keep an eye on the baby. But Lally said that our mother and she had four perfectly good eyes, thank you very much, and ears too, and that boiling kettles was
another
thing that was wrong with the cottage. Drain, privies, boiling kettles and steeping nappies! It was getting to her quick as a dart. And our mother laughed, finished her glass of wine and started clearing the table.

So I thought I'd better go and dig the hole. I could get away from them all for a bit, but I wouldn't be able to have a real think, because you can't when you are digging a hole and the earth is dry, and there are tangly roots, and you have to be careful that the ground isn't squashy where you had dug before. (That was a terrible bad mark.)

In the lean-to I heard our mother telling Lally that things had to change really. A growing family now, and that she was pretty fed up with going down to the Star to telephone and up the garden to sit in a hut with a view of the orchard and an inquisitive hare. And they both laughed together, and I heard the clatter and chink of the plates and forks, and wandered up to the top of the garden myself. With the spade.

After I had dug the hole, not very far away from the privy on account of all the carrying, I got the big pole ready and marked the place with a branch, so we'd be able to see it in the light of the hurricane lamp when it was dark, and then I wandered back to the cottage with the spade over my shoulder.

It was no good trying to have a think at that time. I was all a bit muddled anyway, and then suddenly, flickering through the high hedge running along Great Meadow on the lane side I saw something blue. Bright blue, with bits of silver twinkling in the last of the light. You hardly ever saw a car going up our lane. Only carts, or the reaper. But this was a very fast blue car!

I ran down the path and when I got to the little chalkpit place where the Riley had been I saw Ted Deakin coming up from the lane. He waved a piece of paper over his head. ‘A message, for your mother. On the telephone. Half-hour ago. Mrs Fry at the Star wrote it down. I was in the yard and she knew I were running in my motor. You want to see it? Blue. Very smart. Austin Ten. So she said nip up the top and give them this message. So I did. You want to have a look? I'm going to give Ron Daukes a ride down to the Magpie . . . If there is any answer . . .'

I said it was very kind of him, and I'd get our mother and if there was an answer I'd come back. He'd said he'd be at the Daukeses' for ten minutes because Ron was very slow in his movements. In the kitchen Lally was drying her hands on a towel, our mother had stacked the washing-up bowls in the sink, and she took the message in its envelope and said, ‘Whatever can this be? It must be from
The Times.
It's Daddy.' She started to read the note, shook her head, put her hand to her face, and said, ‘Oh! Dear Lord!'

‘Is there an answer for Mr Deakin?' I said. She said no, no answer, so I ran to the Daukeses' and shouted through their gate (the front door was open), and Mrs Daukes came out with a basket of greenstuff for her rabbits. When I said, ‘No reply, thank you very much,' she just called over her shoulder, ‘No answer, Ted,' and I ran away and she went off down the garden. Didn't even look at me. She really was a bit rude, but I didn't care.

Our mother was sitting quite still at the table, and Lally and my sister were standing by her looking anxious. She seemed a bit funny, and when I said, ‘Is it about our father?' she just said yes. And then she read the note aloud.

‘Arriving tomorrow about 10 a.m. Amy in Brighton with pneumonia. Stable but ill. News when I see you.' Then she laid the pieces of paper on the table.

‘Do you know what it means?' I said, and Lally nearly raised her hand to give me a bit of a cuff for rudeness, but I was too far away, and our mother said that she
thought
she knew. But that Mrs Fry had got the name wrong. She had spelled it ‘A-M-Y' like a girl, but it should have been ‘A-I-M-E', which was a man's name. And my sister said
but we don't know anyone with that name, and our mother said that we didn't at present, but we would pretty soon, because that was our grandfather's name.

‘But we haven't got a grandfather in England!' I said.

Our mother said, with a tired sort of voice, ‘Well, I rather think that you have now. Brighton! I ask you. After all these years. Ill with pneumonia and everyone thought he was long dead somewhere in Brazil. Poor Ulric! My poor darling . . .'

She got up slowly, with the pieces of paper scrunched up in her hand, and went out into the vegetable garden, and Lally said to let her be, it had been a bit of a shock for her, as it had for us all. Who'd have thought it? Let's just go on as before, and have you dug that hole, I would like to know? And there was a bit of wick-trimming to do before dark. She was being pretty bossy again, but it was quite good to have something to do this time.

A bit later, after we had washed the chimneys and trimmed the oily wicks with nail scissors, I was able to go out just as it was starting to get dusk and the swallows were swooping about after the midges and gnats. Then our mother came back to the cottage and she said that she'd probably have to go to Brighton tomorrow, and she didn't know how long for but we were to be helpful and not tear about because Lally had the baby to look after. And Lally said she'd deal with its feeds, and she was sure we'd behave. Usually, she said, it was as dangerous as boiling milk with us two. Turn your back for a second and it was trouble. And my sister said it was very exciting to have a real kith and kin grandfather that we never expected, and our mother just nodded, smiling in a very sad sort of way, and went upstairs to the baby.

In the garden the shadows were growing long, and the light was orangy-gold, but far away, right above High-And-Over, there was a long line of dark cloud, quite flat like a cover, drifting in from the sea, and the evening star was burning just on the edge, and then a little breeze came riffling through the sweet-pea canes and jostled the big leaves of the rhubarb clump, and the swallows spun and dived, making screaming and mewing sounds, and I went down to the Daukeses' hedge to the same place where I had seen Minnehaha all that time ago, and the old flowerpot was still there, cracked, in the long grass. So I sat there. To have a bit of a think.

Up at the cottage I heard a door shut. My sister laughed suddenly, and called ‘Coming!', and then Lally went past a window singing her new song, ‘. . . a thin golden ring on her finger, dum de dum dum the Isle of Caprieeee . . .' and it got cut off then, because, I suppose, she went off upstairs. Someone shut a window quite hard, with a bang. And then everything was still.

But I just sat where I was with the shadows getting long.

Having a think.

D.v.d.B

London, 14.3.92

An evocation, this, of the happiest days of my childhood: 1930–34. The world was gradually falling apart all around me, but I was serenely unaware. I was not, alas, the only ostrich.

I have altered some of the names and amalgamated many of their characteristics, so no single person existed exactly as I have written them to be: they are all part of the evocation. Except, that is, for my own family and that of Lally. The dialogue, of course, is reconstructed to as near the original as I can remember. Events have been slightly rearranged to make the spread of four years containable. But this is how it was sixty years ago. For those who have forgotten, or those who never knew, here is a modest list which might be helpful.