Child from Home Page 7

  We snapped off icicles and sucked them and sometimes used them as swords and had mock fights until someone, inevitably, got hurt. Bursting into tears they had to be comforted by the staff. We made slides on the frozen puddles and played out until the frost nipped at our fingers and made our noses red. After crunching through the deep snow, we kicked the verandah steps to remove the thick chunks from the soles of our wellies. Taken inside, we were given hot soup and steaming mugs of cocoa or Bovril as we sat in front of the fire. The tops of my wellies had chafed my legs, so Kitty gently smeared the red, raw places with a soothing salve. Later that month the worst storms of the century swept the country, with several trees being blown down, and the becks were frozen so solid that we could walk and jump up and down on them with no danger of falling through.

  Winter dragged on and it often grew dark, making it seem later than it really was as snow fell softly and silently. Large flakes floated and spun in the air as the snow hid our deep footprints, and the dense forest was hushed as the house lights came on in the gathering gloom. When Jack Frost bit at our noses and the icy air hurt our lungs, Kitty ushered us inside. The blackout curtains were drawn and the rooms were flooded in golden light and we warmed ourselves at a fireplace built not for coal but for a raging log fire. At bedtime Kitty rubbed our chests with Vicks or camphorated oil, and the pungent, soothing vapours crept up from under our wincyette pyjamas to clear our clogged-up nostrils. She always gave each of us a kiss after tucking us into our beds, which had been warmed by means of glazed, earthenware ginger-beer flasks filled with hot water. There was much human warmth and loving kindness in that isolated place so far from home and it helped to make the disruption a little more bearable.

  Those northern winters were harsh indeed and in February the countryside lay asleep under a creased and rumpled white sheet. A wan winter sun reflected back from the freshly fallen snow that thickly blanketed the grounds as Kitty dressed us warmly to go outside following a long spell indoors. We wore thick socks under our wellies, and our woollen balaclavas were pulled over our heads to keep our ears warm. Long knitted scarves were crossed over our chests and pinned at the back, and we had thick coats and warm mittens on as we excitedly ventured out, squinting into the blinding glare. Kitty brought out the Stancliffe’s beautiful, highly polished, wooden sledge, named ‘The Yankee Clipper’ after a fast nineteenth-century Royal Navy cutter that had won the Blue Riband in sailing schooner races across the Atlantic. She sat on it with two excited, giggling children at a time sitting between her legs and, starting slowly, it picked up speed as it slid down the long, snow-covered forest drive. Kitty tugged on the rope and dug in her heel to make it shoot round the sharp right-hand bend at the bottom and this was repeated over and over again, until every one had had at least one turn. It was a long hard trudge for her as she repeatedly dragged the heavy sledge back to the top of the track that was like a long white gash as it cut through the avenue of dark-green trees. Giant spruce trees with their distinctive greyish-brown trunks lined the sides of the woodland path in their serried ranks, towering above us like majestic, sylvan gods. Masses of glossy, waxy-leafed rhododendron shrubs crowded the sides of the track beneath them. It was great fun, and in between our turns we threw snowballs at each other, waiting for Kitty to trudge back to the top where we clamoured impatiently for another go.

  4

  Kitty

  Kitty was an attractive young woman who always kept herself neat and well groomed, and she liked to varnish her toes and fingernails in bright colours when she could get it. She was always cheerful, but around that time she seemed to be happier than usual and she positively glowed. It seems that she had been going out for some weeks with a chap called Alan Brown who was a Forestry Commission worker, and the first time she came across him she had been taking us for a walk in the forest. After hearing someone whistling a happy tune, she had caught sight of Alan up a tree. She learned that he was living with his parents in one of four rented red-brick cottages that had been built by the Forestry Commision in 1930. It was officially called Sutherland Beck Bungalow, but the locals always called it Peep o’ Day Bungalow as ‘Peep o’ Day’ meant dawn. It stood at the edge of the forest about a mile west of Sutherland Lodge and to get there you had to walk down a gradually descending grassy track. The walk, a right of way used by the postman and local tradesmen, involved the opening and closing of five wooden field gates.

  In the fields next to it was Peep o’ Day Farm, the home of old Willie Hammond; a little, wiry man with a bushy moustache who usually wore a flat cap, a dark three-piece suit of thick, hardwearing fustian and on his feet he had hobnailed boots. His leather gaiters only served to emphasise the bandiness of his legs. Born at Levisham seventy years earlier, he had run this small farmstead for more than forty years. Nearby there were other farmsteads called ‘Rising Sun’, ‘Flowers o’ May’ and ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’. These lovely poetic names had given rise to a local song called ‘Spring in Ryedale’, the chorus of which went something like:

  The rising sun brings the flowers of May

  See the cuckoo’s nest at peep o’ day.

  We learned that Kitty, one of life’s givers, had been going to the threepenny (1¼p) hop (dance) at Cropton village hall on her evenings off and she had grown fond of Alan. She and Miss Waters would get us bathed and tucked into bed before they set off along the track to Peep o’ Day Bungalow to meet him. They then took the short steep path down from the bungalow to the beck, where Alan and his dad often fished, crossing a narrow wooden bridge before walking up the hill into Cropton; which took about thirty minutes. They enjoyed and keenly looked forward to the dances on those dark winter nights as snow lay thick on the ground. Glad to be out of the cold and the darkness, she would change her shoes and leave her favourite green coat in the warmth and brightness of the cloakroom. It was at the Saturday night hop that Kitty, after mingling with the locals, had first spoken to Alan. She had been wearing a home-made, checked, cotton frock with puffed out, leg-of-mutton sleeves, and on her feet she had blue Cuban-heeled court shoes. The young people were dressed in their best clothes, with most of the girls wearing floral-patterned frocks and peep-toed shoes. The youngsters enjoyed the high-spirited fun in the cosy atmosphere of the small hall, but many were obliged to dance together as there was an acute shortage of males, with most of the men away in the forces. Footloose and fancy-free, they performed the popular sequence dances of the time, including the lively Gay Gordon’s; the Valeta; the St Bernard Waltz; the robust and regimented Military Two Step and the energetic Dashing White Sergeant. In between there were various old-time Viennese waltzes, foxtrots and quick steps.

  Alan was a good dancer and had a passion for it and, during the strict tempo quicksteps, he would throw in a few twiddly bits, chasses and fleckles. Kitty was not so good but she enjoyed the soft, sentimental, romantic dance tunes, such as the haunting Laura and the recent hit A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. The music issued from an upright piano in the corner of the wooden-floored room, played by a middleaged lady reading from sheet music. The village hall was on the main street and was known locally as the Reading Room, and the pianist’s husband, who had a motorbike, brought his wife over on the pillion seat every week.

  Kitty and Alan held each other very close, moving as one in a slow foxtrot to the tune of Falling in Love with Love. The atmosphere was romantic under the dimmed lights and in the warm, intimate and cosy setting they let the music take them. He even gave her a peck on the cheek, which was looked on as quite daring in those days. The last waltz was always danced to the tune of Who’s Taking You Home Tonight, and whoever was chosen as a partner for this was generally recognised as your best girl. Alan chose Kitty. Just before midnight everyone stood to attention while the National Anthem was played, as Sunday was still observed as a day of rest. Everyone knew almost everyone else and the hops were always pleasant and friendly occasions. They were a much-needed antidote to the social isolation of the big house in the forest
, and they helped folk to forget their wartime anxieties for a little while.

  Kitty was pleased to learn that Alan’s work was considered important to the war effort and his job was – like that of the farmhands – a reserved occupation that exempted him from military service. Whenever they had time off work they would meet up. Alan, who was ten years older than Catherine, was a strong, but smallish (5 feet 5 inches) man with straight brown hair that had gingery flecks in it. He was a rugged, tough and resourceful man, like most of the miners and steelworkers of the North-East who were reputed to be as hard as that which they produced. His friends called him Geordie, and Kitty soon learned that he had a quick and fiery temper when aroused. His teeth and fingers were stained brown with nicotine from the Robin and Player’s Weights cigarettes that were his favoured smokes. He had come down here from the mining village of Chopwell, a typical County Durham pit village, in 1930 during the Slump, when droves of young men were desperate for work and prospects in forestry looked promising.

  Alan’s father, an ex-miner called Joe, was a small, jolly, placid man who was, like many another at that time, unemployed. His mother, Minnie, was an outspoken Geordie with a broad accent who was inclined to speak her mind, even if it sometimes hurt the people around her. Alan was her favourite; his older brother Fred was still working in a coal mine in Durham. Alan and his father had been glad to take any employment, especially when it included a cottage and a bit of land. The bungalow, and the smallholding that went with it, consisted of three fields at the front and one at the rear and it had a large garden where they could grow vegetables and keep a few pigs and hens.

  Kitty told Mary that ‘a woodman never works in the forest alone’. They worked in gangs for safety reasons as a man could easily wound himself in some isolated spot and lie there for hours before being found. Two men would use a long saw with a wooden handle at each end to fell the great softwood trees when they reached maturity, and the job was essential to the war effort as timber was in great demand for making pit props, telegraph poles, railway sleepers and such. The small side branches were used for fencing and for rustic work. The men also had to know how to handle the big, powerfully muscled Shire horses that were used to drag the felled trunks out of the forest. Harnesses and chains were attached to a long timber shaft fixed between two huge wooden wheels and the straight, newly felled giants were slung beneath this contraption which was then pulled along by the horses. It was a tough and often dangerous job.

  Often completely shut off from the outside world, the roads and forest tracks had just been reopened by soldiers stationed in Pickering. With the wind whipping the snow into their faces, they had dug through the deep drifts in the more exposed areas. The powdery snowdrifts, blown through gaps in the hedges by the easterly winds, were known locally as ‘stowerings’. Squads of soldiers were also sent out to help the local farmers to dig out buried sheep that had been sniffed out by the hard-working Border collies. At times the snow on the surface of the drifts froze so hard that the soldiers were able to walk over them. They said it felt really strange to be walking on top of buried hedges and stone walls. It was said to be the coldest winter of the century.

  When a slight thaw set in Mam visited us again, and the taxi had great difficulty in getting through the slushy lanes and the snowbound forest tracks. She had come down on the train with her friend Winnie Ward, Eric’s mother, who she had known since The Settlement days. Winnie showed Mam a nice letter she had recently received from Miss Thorne, in which she had written, ‘I’m pleased that you sent Eric such warm and sensible clothing for this time of the year. He was delighted with the skittles, the comics and the sweets. He asks such intelligent questions about everything he sees.’ Eric had shared some of his sweets with me and we had great fun playing with the skittles in the bothy.

  By this time I was getting a feel for the countryside and was slowly but surely changing from a child of the town into a child of the forest. Like many children of my age, I seemed able to identify with the intangible forces of nature, feeling as much as I saw. It would appear that the developing child is often open to influences that adults are not and I would sometimes sense that ‘other’ spirit world that lies just beyond this one. Young children, at times, have an uncanny intuition about such things and I believed that all natural things had good or evil spirits within them. I felt that the tall green giants were my friends spreading out their long arms to protect me. It may be that the young child retains fleeting recollections of their soul’s early origins and this may enable them to peep through a tiny chink in the door to see things older folk are blind to. I seemed to dwell at times in a private, secret and mystical world of my own; a world that, sadly, becomes buried and lost forever as we grow up. There are many psychic things that can never be explained and it may be this that causes young children to behave so unpredictably at times. It seems that I had several invisible friends that I openly talked to and played with.

  On Shrove Tuesday it was still dark as we got out of bed to be washed and dressed, and the thickly forested countryside was still snow covered and the cold thin air was crisp, clear and bracing. It was just getting light as we sat down to our breakfast of cornflakes with hot milk and toast and marmalade in the day-room. The Robertson’s marmalade jar had a golliwog on the label, which led to arguments as to who should have it, so Kitty devised an alphabetical rota of our surnames. This, of course, meant that I was last on the list to get one, which was to be the case throughout my schooldays.

  At tea time we watched wide-eyed as Dinner Lady expertly tossed pancakes high in the air and flipped them over before we ate them steaming hot and covered in sweet, sticky golden syrup, spooned from a large yellow tin with the word ‘Tate’s’ enclosed within a red diamond shape. Miss Thorne told us that, ‘In Pickering it is the custom to ring the pancake bell at 11 a.m. on this day and on hearing it all the shops close and the children have a day off school.’

  For parents wishing to visit their children the L.N.E.R (London and North-Eastern Railway) had started to provide cheap day returns at weekends and Mam – sometimes with Dad when he could get leave – took advantage of these special offers. They visited us as often as they could afford to, which was not as often as they would have liked. It was such a long and difficult journey to get to and from Sutherland Lodge and they had to set off very early in the morning to catch the train from Middlesbrough to Pickering. The trains were slow and stopped at every station and they then had to catch the Helmsley bus and travel the two and a half miles west to Wrelton village. It was four miles on shank’s pony through Cropton to Sutherland Lodge but occasionally, if they were in luck, they managed to hitch a lift on a passing farm wagon. On bitter raw days, as rain swept across the fields and forest, they arrived bitterly cold with the wet penetrating to their very bones and they were glad to dry out by the flames of a nice log fire. They then had to face the long walk back or share a taxi with other visitors, which they could seldom afford to do, and taxis were getting harder to find due to the petrol rationing. In the hard winter months this was often the case and Mrs Stancliffe would sometimes ask Spaven to take them to Pickering station in the pony and trap. The Lodge was in an ideal setting for us but it was far from ideal for our parents who often arrived back at Middlesbrough railway station well after midnight.

  In the early part of the year catkins hung on certain trees and shrubs. The willow catkins were soft and fluffy, like a rabbit’s paw; the alder catkins were dark and hard while the hazel catkins were long and pendulous with a dusting of yellow pollen when they first appeared in late January. They reminded us of lambs’ tails, as they shook in the gentle, chill breeze and, as the winter days passed and the severe weather eased its icy grip, the birds began to sing. New life began to stir as the cold earth started to warm up and we noticed the first hints of spring. Green shoots of snowdrops pushed through their icy blanket to hang their white, droplet-shaped heads and Spaven said, ‘They’re known as Fair-Maids of February round these part
s.’ Soon after yellow, mauve, white and lilac crocuses thrust their way through the slowly yielding earth.

  On Palm Sunday, at the start of Holy Week, we were presented with small raffia crosses and Spaven said, ‘If yer keep ’em till this time next yeer, yer’l ’ave good luck.’ On Good Friday we ate home-made hot cross buns and on Easter Sunday Miss Waters hid hard-boiled ‘pace’ eggs that had been dyed in bright colours around the grounds and we had to search for them. We then re-enacted the age-old custom of rolling them down the grassy slope at the edge of the paddock to see who could get the farthest. We loved seeing the fluffy, yellow chicks that were hatching out in the warmth of the incubators.

  On Carling Sunday we ate the delicious, brown-skinned peas known as carlings. Dinner Lady had soaked them in water overnight and then fried them in butter and we called them sheep droppings, because that’s what they looked like to us. Miss Thorne, who hailed from South Shields, told Kitty, ‘It is an old northern custom which stems from a time of severe famine. It seems that many, many years back the River Tyne was frozen over and no ships could get in with food. The first one to get through was laden with these peas. They had a great public feast to feed the starving people and the story lives on in folk memory.’

  In their due time, the green daffodil shoots budded, burgeoned and bloomed and there were large clusters of them around the stout, stone walls of the old house. They nodded their bright yellow trumpets and rocked in the wind as Spaven said to Kitty, ‘Don’t bring yon snowdrops or daffy-down-dillies in t’house. Flowers that ’ang their ’eads are unlucky indoors and they stop t’ens eggs from ’atchin out.’ Pale yellow primroses and deep yellow celandine broke through and peeped from under the hedgerows around the paddock where the horses would soon be put out to graze.