PEAR DROPS, ROBOTS AND BUDGERIGARS
With a certain trepidation, almost sixty years after my birth, I sit pencil in hand, poised to draw a map of my childhood village. I close my eyes and within seconds I’m there, back in Shamley Green, the village that was virtually my entire world for the first decade of my life.
Now I’m back there, skipping across the village green. An elderly man with his sleeves rolled up walks slowly behind an enormous noisy lawnmower, painting lines of alternating light and dark. The smell of freshly cut grass holds promises of a long hot summer stretching before my three-year-old self. As my map evolves, new memories appear with each stroke.
Protecting the cricket pitch is a low chain fence, the perfect height to stand and wobble on, supported by a grown-up’s hand. The pitch is surrounded by benches, the resting place for those watching fiercely fought matches with the neighbouring villages, Shalford, Wonersh or Shere. Occasionally you hear a joyous ‘Howzat?’ but otherwise the players are silent and hardly seem to move.
I remember the two pubs, the Red Lion with its thick carpet, chintz curtains, dark stained furniture and wall lights, the bulbs covered with little lampshades trimmed with pompom braiding. The Red Lion was always empty, apart from someone propping up the bar on a stool, talking in low tones to the overly made-up barmaid as she polished the glasses. Up the hill, between the church and the garage, sits the Bricklayers, all scrubbed tables, dartboard, jukebox and the smell of beer and cigarette smoke. This was where the villagers went to drink.
I was born in June 1959, by caesarean section at Mount Alvernia Nursing Home in Guildford. It was an era when the grey years of rationing were receding, but still remained ever-present in people’s minds. Money was tight. My father, his dyslexia playing on his confidence, remained uncomfortable talking in public and was struggling as a barrister. The poor man hated commuting: he first took the train from Guildford to London, then queued for the long wooden escalators to take ‘the Drain’, the short, crowded tube line that linked Waterloo Station to the City. He would then be faced with the clerk of his chambers, Crown Office in Inner Temple, who would inevitably hand him less lucrative briefs than those his confident colleagues would receive.
Mum’s plans to supplement Dad’s meagre earnings by starting a workshop to make fancy goods in the back garden were coming to fruition. Granny Mona’s money had paid for the shed and bought the basic tools needed to get the business started. Dad used his practical skills to make the basic objects while Mum, having scoured local shops and markets for cheap remnants of materials, braiding and old prints, would decorate them.
My beleaguered father would get back from his crowded commute and go straight into the workshop to run multiple sheets of eight by four-foot hardboard through his noisy circular saw, transforming them into hundreds of rectangles. He would then glue them together, one on top of the other in a Heath Robinson-like contraption, to make the outer shells that Mum would then decorate and turn into tissue-box covers. Another winner at the Fancy Goods fairs were Mum’s tea trays. Dad would make hundreds of frames that would then be glazed. Mum bought job-lots of ‘antique’ prints that would give them an air of grandeur, the felt backs a feel of luxury and the little brass handles precariously screwed onto each side a suggestion of practicality.
Easteds, our workers’ cottage overlooking the village green, was wedged snugly between cottages belonging to two other young families, the Gows to one side and the Davises to the other. Despite our nagging money worries, there was always laughter and company, with the mums happy to care for each other’s children when needed and the dads helping with gardens and household jobs. My earliest memory is of being popped into a wastepaper basket and thrown thrillingly from one daddy to the next, my giggles encouraging the men to throw me ever higher.
At the end of the terrace was Mrs Avenal’s sweet shop, and her mere name makes the memories flood back. I must have been three when my big sister Lindy bet me two pennies’ worth of pear drops to go into the shop on my own, promising to follow me a few minutes later to come and pay. I remember entering that dismal shop, the doorbell tinkling, the light barely passing through the neglected window and walking across the expanse of cracked linoleum floor. And the smell of Mrs Avenal, a memorable mix of dried urine and sherbet, filled my nose with fear and disgust. I could hear her shuffling along a dark passage towards me. I saw her hand pushing the plastic curtain to one side before her warty, whiskery face peered down at me.
‘What can I get you, dear?’ she croaked.
‘Two pennies’ worth of pear drops please,’ I managed.
She turned and began to climb a wobbling A-frame ladder to retrieve the right jar. It seemed to take an age. My mind was racing. How was she going to get back down holding the heavy jar? And where was Lindy? I suddenly thought I was going to pee myself. What should I do? Lindy had sworn she would come.
Eventually, after much effort, Mrs Avenal poured the sweets into a tiny paper bag set on her scales and fiddled with the weights, scooping in more sweets and then taking one out. Still no sign of Lindy. I looked at the bag of sweets rattling in the old lady’s shaky hand as she held it out to me, before panicking and running for the door. I raced home, yelling at Lindy and pleading with her to tell me why she hadn’t turned up, but she just threw her hands up in the air and roared with laughter. ‘Only joking!’, she said. I never went into Mrs Avenal’s shop again. It was my first lesson in shame – the shop closed soon afterwards. Mrs Avenal was no more.
Richard was already away at his boarding prep school, Scaitcliffe, when I was born. Life became electric when he came home. His best friend was a boy called Nik Powell, who lived in a cottage at the end of the green. They were forever going off on adventures, losing their bikes in rivers and getting stuck up trees. Nowadays, hyperactive children are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and are considered somehow handicapped; but my parents, although stretched by their super-charged son, revelled in his enthusiasm and tried to channel his seemingly ceaseless energy.
Each hour of the school holidays revolved around setting Richard challenges.
‘Rick, please could you bike to the post office in Guildford to catch the last post with this brief?’
‘No worries, Dad.’
‘Can you go down to the river to catch some trout for supper, Rick?’
‘Will do, Mum.’
‘The Vicar asked to see you about helping Judge Jellyneck with his garden.’ And off he’d merrily go.
No one was safe if Richard wasn’t kept busy, especially his little sisters. Lindy and I would sleepily pad upstairs to bed, shouting last goodnights to Mum and Dad. And as we fumbled our way to turn on the light, Richard’s creepy hand would be waiting for us on the switch.
‘Aaarrrggghh!’ he would shout, the terror skinning us alive. I remember him reading us tales by Alfred Hitchcock as our bedtime story, loving the effect he had on us as he described chilling scenes of fiendish murder.
Poor Lindy. Being closer to Richard in age meant she bore the brunt of his practical jokes. Although never unkind, he just couldn’t resist pulling a leg if one was there to be pulled. Rather than get used to the teasing, Lindy became more and more sensitive to it. I don’t blame her for occasionally taking it out on me – I must have been a nuisance to have around, and I’m sure I deserved to be kept in order.
The winter of 1963 was bitter. Snow lay on the ground throughout December and January, and well into February. Richard spent the Christmas holidays building an igloo, complete with a tunnel entrance, and I was his little four-year-old elf helper.
The role of little helper was one I played throughout my early childhood. Lindy spotted that I was eager to please and turned me into her robot. ‘Robot, come here,’ she’d command.
‘Beep, beep,’ I would reply as I walked, stiffly, towards her. She would turn me around, press a few imaginary buttons on my back and then say, ‘Robot, go and make me a cup of tea.’
‘Beep, beep,’ I would happily say, and off I’d go to do her bidding.
I beeped around for months, doing her odd jobs – making her bed, fetching her homework and turning the oven off if she was cooking. Then, one day, reality dawned and I told her my batteries had run out. It was the end of an era – my innocence was slipping away. But I still had plenty of lessons to learn.
When I was nearly five years old, in the spring of 1964, our family moved across the green up Wood Lane, to Tanyard Farm. My father was reluctant, but Mum persuaded him that we should move, enticing him with the promise of outbuildings for his workshops and reassuring him that she would take on all responsibility for managing the house. He’d have been happy to remain at Easteds, but we children were growing – besides, Mum had vision. Dad’s beloved Uncle Bill had died, leaving him his fishing rods and a legacy of £4,000, and they managed to get a mortgage for the other £10,000 they needed. The timber-framed house stood on a small hill, fifty yards back from the lane. Like many English farmhouses, each generation had had a hand in building the odd extension, or raising ceilings and adding windows. Tanyard Farm was a hotchpotch with an Elizabethan heart and Edwardian wings, surrounded by a muddle of timbers, brick, stone and tile.
As soon as we moved in, Mum set Dad to work knocking down the wall between the dark dining room and the study; light soon began to pour in. And once he’d got started with his sledgehammer, Dad couldn’t stop.
‘Let’s take off all the modern rendering around the fireplace,’ he enthused. ‘The old stones behind it are so beautiful.’
Once he started, he couldn’t stop. He happily spent the whole weekend bashing away. Late on Sunday night and in a cloud of dust, he yelled with excitement as he exposed an ancient bread oven beside the inglenook fireplace.
‘Evie,’ he called, as his hands felt around inside the oven. ‘I’ve found treasure – some old manuscripts!’
‘What is it, Teddy?’ she whooped.
We all drew in our breath, as Dad carefully worked one of the books free and brushed off a thick layer of brick dust. ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he laughed. ‘I’ve broken through to the bookshelf in the study next door. It’s one of my old Halsbury’s Laws of England!’
Tanyard Farm was to be our home for twenty-five years. After an initial flurry of decorating, during which Dad developed tennis elbow from painting the walls, and the building of a conservatory, no more changes were ever made. Yards of velvet purchased from Mum’s business suppliers were enthusiastically pushed under the needle of her aged sewing machine and across the dining room table to make curtains. I watched in wonder as the headings were stitched on and the strings pulled tight, ruffling the fabric. She’d then ask me to help her thread the curtain hooks onto the heading and we’d hook the curtains on the metal hooks sliding along the rails. Mum then pinned up the hems, weighing them down with pennies. Once hung, the curtains were never hemmed and the pins slowly rusted into the fabric, while I’m sorry to say that the tempting pennies were removed by little hands and spent in the village shop.
The heavy oak front door, with sturdy bolts that my father would slide home with a reassuring thud each night, opened directly into the low-beamed dining room. One Edwardian extension was converted into a separate ‘flat’ and was soon occupied by tenants, in return for a number of hours of housekeeping per week. There were four other bedrooms, a family bathroom and my parents’ en suite, which was never used due to its dodgy plumbing.
My parents’ bedroom, which seemed like a world of its own, was dominated by a bed large enough for the entire family. Family snuggling-in-bed days were reserved for Christmas or the rare occasion when Dad had a blinding hangover and we’d all pile in asking him very loudly how he was. It was a sacred space, a private island of security. I rarely saw my parents in bed together; by the time Dad woke me with a ‘Wakey wakey – it’s another beautiful day,’ and I’d padded my way along the corridor to climb into bed beside Mum, Dad would be getting dressed. I’d watch him standing beside his mahogany dressing table, first lighting his pipe and then putting it to one side as he attached a stiff collar to his white shirt with collar studs. After buttoning up his shirt, he’d relight his pipe, tuck his shirt tails between his legs and somehow slip on his pinstripe trousers and hook his braces over his shoulders, without the tails coming out from under him.
Childhood diseases felt like a real treat; mumps, measles, whooping cough and scarlet fever meant that we were allowed to spend entire days in that bed. Being ill meant being singled out for Mum’s special attention, and she would bring me peeled and segmented oranges and bottles of warm Lucozade. It was the only time I remember her reading to me – and always the chapter on the Spartans from the children’s Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Once, when I was being driven to distraction with measles and feeling particularly sorry for myself, Mum comforted me by saying, ‘I’m going to let you in on a magic trick, Nessie. If ever you’re feeling ill or scared, imagine you’re in a boat, sailing towards the sunset.’ My parents’ bed became my galleon, a make-believe refuge.
Their musty walk-in wardrobe also provided hours of entertainment, and I loved rolling from Mum’s side to Dad’s. The chore of doing the laundry with our strange, primitive washing machine resulted in a practical approach to cleanliness: clothes were rarely washed, so smelt deliciously musty: a parent-y combination of tobacco, hairspray and wool.
Above the rails of clothes was a deep shelf sagging with dried foods, candles, tins of beans and jars of slowly solidifying Nescafe. The recent Cuban Missile Crisis had reminded my parents of the war, and this time they were certain they weren’t going to be caught short.
At the back of the cupboard, behind the coats, was a cast-iron dark-green safe. When we were older, Mum used to give us ‘a little something from the safe’ for Christmas: a pair of family cufflinks, say, or some Maundy money collected by Granny Mona. She would then insist on taking the precious gifts back for safe-keeping, and much to our amusement, we would often be given the same present again the following year. Hidden in a box behind the shoe rack was Dad’s collection of Health and Efficiency magazines, a strange little publication apparently aimed at naturists. As an inquisitive six-year-old I puzzled over the wholesome photographs of men and women playing badminton, and of women standing next to a caravan, one foot on the plastic doorstep, smiling directly at the camera. All, without exception, covered in nothing but goose pimples.
Jobs were the only activity I remember the whole family participating in. Tanyards boasted four acres of land and an abundance of ancient farm buildings. There was a vegetable garden and a herbaceous border to maintain, an orchard to mow and endless fences to restore. In what would have been the old barn’s courtyard there was an enormous swimming pool that had been dug by soldiers returning from the First World War to the humiliation of unemployment during the recession of the 1920s.
My parents would have been overwhelmed by the maintenance of such a sprawling property if it hadn’t been for Mum’s knack of getting people to work. She could turn the most mundane chore into an adventure. From the minute we woke up, she’d be marshalling her work party, which included everyone staying in the house that day. Over breakfast (always something eggy on workdays), she would explain the challenge ahead, drawing us in by asking for suggestions of how we should go about the project. After tying up our hair in tea towels, like ‘land girls’ during the Second World War, we’d gather assorted brooms, scythes, wheelbarrows and trowels, and off we’d troop.
One of our jobs was scrubbing the pool each spring, a task that entailed lying on our tummies, our sleeves rolled up and brushes in hand, scrubbing for our lives as the water drained away. If you scrubbed before the algae dried, it would save hours of work. Once the pool had been emptied, scrubbed and dried, drums of powdered Snowcem cement paint appeared and we would be supplied with brooms. We would mix the Snowcem with water before tipping it out at the pool’s shallow end and running along with our brooms, spreading the paint like players polishing the ice in a game of curling.
Other jobs included cutting down trees, chopping up logs and stacking them to dry for the following season. We’d also sweep the barns of cobwebs and restack the hay bales, and we’d squeal as mice – or, as once happened, a family of rats – ran around our feet. Mum worked harder than anyone, leading the charge with tales of finding treasure behind the ancient beams and with stories from her childhood.
At lunchtime, noticing that her army was flagging, Mum would melt away, returning via the vegetable garden to pull up a few lettuces, with a bag of sliced brown Sunblest bread, butter and a jar of Marmite. I see now that she realised we would lose our momentum if we went back to the house to eat, so she’d find a makeshift table and get to work wherever we happened to be, spreading lumps of butter onto the bread, followed by a dollop of Marmite and after casually flicking the slugs off the gritty leaves she would fold everything together and hey presto, heaven on earth. Dad would admire the morning’s work while sucking on his pipe. ‘Jolly good,’ he’d purr. ‘Jolly good.’
By this time, having failed his Common Entrance exam first time around, Richard had finally been accepted by Stowe School, and returned for the holidays full of frustration. No boarding school could cater for his challenging ideas and extraordinary energy, and he found traditional teaching methods agonising. He couldn’t bear to waste time watching team sports, attending chapel or queuing for everything from food to showers. At fourteen, he was already trying to disrupt the system. My parents encouraged him to play by the rules, but Richard would have none of it. He had survived prep school because of his love of sport, but early on at Stowe he had damaged a cartilage in his knee and was left climbing the walls in frustration.
Mum encouraged him to write. He entered and won an essay competition judged by Gavin Maxwell, the writer best known for Ring of Bright Water, a memoir about befriending an otter on the west coast of Scotland while coming to terms with his homosexuality. Richard was euphoric when he received a letter from Maxwell inviting him to stay for a weekend, but Mum made her blond, blue-eyed young son decline the kind invitation.
***
Whether it was a result of his genes, the era he was born into, witnessing our parents’ struggle to make ends meet or a love of beating us all at his favourite board game, Monopoly, Richard was determined to make his fortune, and my earliest memories of him revolve around his focus on business success.
One summer holiday, Dad was thrilled to see that Richard wanted to follow in his footsteps and open a museum of curiosities. The two of them spent hours in Swallow Barn dusting off Dad’s childhood collection, setting up trestle tables and arranging the display. Unlike Dad’s museum, Richard had painted a big poster in red paint, which read, ‘Entry fee 2/6p.’ By the end of the holiday, the tobacco tin by the poster contained just three half-crowns: one from my father, one my mother and one from Auntie Joyce, who had come to stay one weekend. A lesson had been learned: no business sells itself, and promotion is essential.
When Richard came home for Christmas, he decided that his next venture was going to be breeding budgerigars. The sheets of hardboard used to make the tissue-box covers came in handy, as he and Dad spent days building stacks of interconnecting hutches, each with its own little nesting box. I watched in wonder as a budgie battery farm evolved in front of my eyes, and was excited when the first fluffy arrivals were introduced to their new homes. Richard had done his sums: each budgie cost two shillings and was expected to produce six chicks per year. Seed for each bird would cost two shillings, giving Richard a profit of ten shillings per budgie. My labour would be free, an economy he would soon live to regret.
Richard went back to school, expecting to witness his growing fortune at exeat three weeks later. I had loved the little birds and felt very grown-up when Richard told me that feeding and watering them was my responsibility. Though I was determined not to let my big brother down, my curious friends and I were drawn to the prohibited nesting boxes, playing mummies and daddies with them and counting their tiny eggs. It was sadly inevitable that one day, in our excitement, we would forget to close the cage door, and when we did, not one budgie failed to make a bid for freedom.
Richard’s third childhood attempt at business was sadly no more successful. We’d grown up with tales of a distant relative who had planted trees in Burma and watched his fortune grow. This story appealed to Richard, who bought two hundred Christmas tree saplings, all under six inches tall but with a potential to grow by a foot per year, with each foot representing a pound in profit. Our Easter holiday was spent digging holes and tucking these nuggets of potential gold into the soil. It was a whole-family task, and my role was to run up and down the rows with a small tin watering can. Again, Richard returned to Stowe at the start of the Easter term and returned to financial ruin: rabbits had entered the enclosure and nibbled the top of every single tree.
Down a single-track lane, next to the blacksmith’s forge and beyond the wooden bus shelter and the ancient oak tree with a hollowed-out trunk that was big enough to conceal at least three smoking teenagers, was the post office, a treasure trove of felt tip pens, glues with squidgy rubber stoppers, packets of rubber bands, boxes of drawing pins, balls of string and parcel tags of all sizes. Mum was keen to teach us the lesson of her childhood: that we should save for a rainy day. I relished being taken to the post office every Saturday morning, my pocket money held tightly in one hand and my post office savings book in the other. I’d stand on tippy-toes and slide the book towards the lady behind the grille.
‘Could you put one shilling into the book please, and give me one shilling change?’ I would squeak self-consciously. My father would then stand patiently by as I agonised over the choice of sweets. Twelve pennies to spend and so much choice! I could buy eight Black Jacks for a penny to get my money’s worth, though I wasn’t so keen on them, or a Cadbury’s Curly Wurly and a Mars Bar. A gobstopper could last weeks if I sucked it for an hour or two and saved it for the next day.
Ten years later, that rainy day did arrive – a torrentially stormy day, in fact. When I scrabbled around in my bedroom cupboard, desperate to find my long-forgotten savings book, page after page stamped with tiny deposits. With a heavy heart I took it back to the post office, now standing eye to eye with the postmistress, and made a withdrawal of £34, emptying the account.
‘I hope you’re going to treat yourself to something special, dear,’ she said, while counting out the money.
‘Sort of, thanks,’ I managed, stuffing the notes into my pocket and walking out the door.