Child from Home Read online

  At that moment, to my vast and utter relief, Kitty found me! Suddenly the voices were gone and a deep hush descended on the forest. It was like the deathly silence that followed the firing of the gamekeeper’s gun and you could have heard a pin drop. All of the evil lurking things had fled at Kitty’s approach. As she gave me a big hug and a cuddle, she tenderly wiped away the tears that burst forth to stream down my cheeks with the corner of her housecoat. I sobbed uncontrollably; trembling like an aspen on legs that had turned to jelly and they were still rubbery when we rejoined the others. Had the fire gone out at the Saltergate Inn letting the devil loose? Was it the voices of lost souls in limbo that I heard; an evil spirit of the woods; the old tramp; the gypsies (who were said to steal and sell children) or just a figment of my highly vivid imagination?

  Adults tend to forget the wealth of a child’s imagination: they often have the capacity to feel extremes of fear and excitement in response to what adults consider mere trifles. The world of childhood can be a place of frightening fantasy and strange happenings, and to a child unseen forces are still strong and readily accessible. They know the allure of witchcraft and magic and understand the eternal themes of love, truth, power and death, and some are able to see things that adults cannot. There are some things that can’t be logically explained and, for a while after that terrifying experience, I did not sleep well and had bad dreams, peopled by ghosts, witches, hobgoblins, dryads and evil ogres. On future walks in the ‘enchanted forest’ I made sure that I stayed close to Kitty and I never wandered off the beaten track alone.

  On those late spring mornings the newly risen sun gently warmed and gilded the mellow old stones of the big house. When the blackout blinds were removed and the shutters were opened its rays warmed my bed and formed golden rectangles on the wall. I would lie watching as they crept, almost imperceptibly, across the flowery patterns on the expensive, embossed wallpaper, sedately measuring the relentless passage of time. I remember thinking that, because the sun could move by itself and did not have to be pushed like Eric’s tricycle, it must be alive. It seemed to me that it must be intelligent because it wanted to do good things like making us warm and helping things to grow. I knew that God must have been controlling it.

  Colourful chaffinches twittered as they decorated their nest with bark and lichen after building them from moss, feathers, grass and sheep’s wool. As the sunny days lengthened and warmed up, the cows and horses were left out to graze overnight in the fields. In what seemed a never-ending task, little birds flitted back and forth with grubs and worms to repeatedly fill the gaping maws of their tiny, naked offspring. On one of our morning walks, we were upset to find speckled, broken eggshells in lovely pastel shades of grey and blue. Close by were the wrinkly-pink, featherless bodies of two tiny nestlings, their heads with their pale yellow beaks looked far too big for their scraggy necks. The poor things lay broken on the ground having fallen from the nest. We called all newly hatched birds ‘gollies’.

  The breath of summer was touching the budding trees as the twigs of the ash trees belatedly opened their black leaf buds to put forth fresh, lime-green foliage. These and the red-leaved oaks were usually the last of the trees to do so. Soon, pendulous bunches of tiny single-winged seedcases, which we called keys, would form. The verges beside the lane became crowded with the tall, stemmed umbrellas of white-flowered cow parsley, and Spaven showed us how to dig out the soft white pith from their thick stems to make peashooters. As spring gently eased into early summer, the ‘owld gadgie’ said, ‘Yer must never ’andle yon ’emlocks, or t’deadly nightshade that we call Devil’s flowers. Yer see them giant ’ogweeds towerin’ above t’others over yonder. Well, they ’ave tiny white ’air-like spines on t’stems that carry poisonous sap. Don’t touch ’em, or yer skin’ll cum out in ’uge blisters.’

  On the following Sunday the mothers came out again and Eric’s mother told my Mam that Miss Thorne had written to her again, asking, ‘Could you bring him a pair of leather, crêpe-soled sandals as sandshoes are no good on the rough, stony forest roads. Sandals are light and cool and protect the feet. The weather is simply lovely out here and the children are outside a lot of the time. They roam the fields gathering flowers and are as happy as kings. Could you bring Eric some cool summer clothes?’ adding, ‘He was sick one day after his tea. Possibly the heat had upset him, as he has not ailed otherwise. He is a most intelligent boy and asks hundreds of questions like, Where does lightning come from? Why doesn’t it strike trees? Why does God make the sun shine? and so on.’

  Even in those austere times, hard-pressed working-class mothers, like ours, tried to maintain the old traditions. Although she was finding it hard to make ends meet, Mam still managed to bring us at least one item of new clothing at this time. It was a long-established Yorkshire custom to wear something new, and preferably white, in honour of Whitsuntide and that Monday, as the dreaming valley lay warm, calm and hushed, was to be no exception. Mam brought George and me a new white shirt. The sun beat down from a blue and cloudless sky that formed a perfect backdrop to the vivid, green foliage of the trees. The stillness and beauty of the place were overwhelming and on days like that it was hard to believe that there was a war on.

  In the sunny dining room the windows were wide open and Miss Thorne had placed bunches of yellow-flowering broom in there. Yet another Whitsuntide custom in these parts, it was believed to bring good luck. We were served delicious roast lamb with freshly picked home-grown vegetables and the first, sweet-tasting, new potatoes of the year, all smothered in rich, brown gravy. This was followed by thick and steaming, creamy custard poured over a slice of hot, tangy, ‘goose-gog’ pie that was two inches deep. ‘I have used only freshly picked, early fruits and have baked it specially for you little ones, so be good bairns and eat it all up,’ Dinner Lady said. She maintained that gooseberries were good for the liver and stomach.

  5

  Grove House

  By late May, the rhododendron shrubs were coming into full flower beside the forest tracks, and the mauve and pink blooms were the size of my face. It had been decided that Sutherland Lodge, being so close to the newly opened army camp, might become a target for enemy aircraft. It was also too far off the beaten track making it difficult for our relatives to visit. As Mam had remarked, ‘It’s a beautiful spot but it’s too out of the way.’ Plans were made to move us out.

  On a fine, sunny day Robinson’s motor coach and a pantechnicon arrived and took everything and everyone to the newly set-up nursery school at Grove House. This was about three miles east as the crow flies, but seventeen miles by coach along the winding country roads. Our journey took us south along forest tracks and narrow lanes to the main Pickering road. From there we travelled up the A169 Whitby road as far as the Lockton turn-off, where a narrow road dropped down from the wide sweep of the moors, descending into a valley and crossed a narrow stone bridge beside an old watermill. The coach then climbed the steep hill into the isolated hamlet of Levisham with its quaint stone houses, farms and wide grass verges.

  From here we travelled along a narrow sunken lane between high earthen banks topped with thorn hedgerows and dry-stone walls, before traversing an open, unfenced grassy area where cattle grazed. Here the road swung sharply to the left and down a steep incline, becoming a leafy lane that emerged at a little railway station. We had passed this spot on the train eight months earlier. Grove House stood about a hundred yards to the east of the level crossing. It was tucked away in a beautiful wooded valley on the southern edge of the rugged North Yorkshire Moors. One elderly local, when asked, ‘Why was the station built so far from the village?’, replied with laconic country logic, ‘Ah suppose they wanted it close t’ t’railway line.’

  The large, stone-built house was said to have been converted from an old farmhouse around the year 1856, the work being done on the orders of the Reverend Robert Skelton who was the Rector of Levisham and the Vicar of Rosedale. The house was built with locally quarried, golden sands
tone, which had become blackened by the smoke from the steam trains that had passed close by for more than a century. The reverend gentleman had been obliged to sell his former residence, Levisham Hall, and most of his local properties to pay off his debts on becoming bankrupt. James Walker, an entrepreneur from Leeds, bought his former estate and by 1859 he, his wife and their six children were in residence at the Hall.

  By 1881 Grove House had become the home of Robert Hansell, a local iron ore proprietor from Rosedale, who was married to Hannah, the daughter of the Reverend Skelton. At the time of the 1891 census the house was unoccupied, standing silent and sadly neglected. After it was reoccupied, a large two-storey extension was added at the eastern side and, at a later date, a female member of the Rowntrees of York bought it and used it as an occasional holiday home.

  The gravelled lane crossed the railway line close to a brick signal box and the station buildings could be clearly seen from the house, as there were no trees to block the view at that time and we were able to watch the steam trains coming and going. There were two old, semi-detached, stone cottages almost opposite the booking office, which were set back behind small front gardens on the far side of the line. Jack Pickering, the junior signalman, lived in one of them, and a short distance north of his signal cabin there was another narrow, gated level crossing linking two farm tracks.

  On arrival we followed the spare and sprightly figure of Miss Thorne from the coach, which had pulled up under the luxuriant, green foliage of a towering beech tree. Kitty held open the heavy, five-barred gate and we skipped up the gravelled drive that was edged with neatly trimmed lawns and flowerbeds. A lovely, variegated holly shrub, with white-edged leaves, stood on the lawn near the station goods yard. In the borders the last few spikes of grey-green leaved, purple-flowered

  honesty were going over and flat, round, green seedcases were forming. In time these would become large and opaque and we called them silver pennies. In the borders tulips and primulas were still in flower.

  Grove House, a solid, thick-walled, seven-bedroomed residence within twelve acres of gardens and shrubbery, nestled in the lee of a steep wooded hillside deep in the valley amidst the peace and quiet of lovely countryside. It was a wonderful old Victorian gentleman’s house and its grandeur and scale was in stark contrast with our working-class house that could have fitted into one corner of it. There were only fourteen children – aged from two to six years – in the nursery when the war started, but that number had grown to twenty-four as the bombing raids on Middlesbrough had increased.

  Our little band of infants and toddlers entered the house through an oak door that led into a square, stone-built porch with a crenellated parapet. The side windows had wooden shutters on the outside and above the inner door was a rectangular stained-glass window. When the sun shone it cast red and orange-coloured patterns onto the plush carpet below the intricately wrought-iron chandelier that hung over the long corridor. Passing dark brown wainscoting, we came to the foot of the wide staircase with its intricately carved newel post. Its risers and treads were thickly carpeted and the banisters were made of pitch pine. Turning right we passed through a finely carved, panelled door into a large private lounge, which was to become our play room.

  The long room had two wide, large-paned sash windows with wood-panelled reveals. The thick walls were wood-panelled and the windows looked out onto a wide, paved verandah with a glass roof that was supported on square wooden posts. It formed an open-sided portico and French doors led on to it. On the far side four stone steps led down to a gravelled area, beyond which were more well-tended lawns and colourful flowerbeds. The large, square windows were not blast-taped as they had blackout screens and sturdy wooden shutters to protect us from the battering rain and howling gales. Carved, forward-facing lion heads adorned the top corners of the fluted architraves of the windows. Apparently, lions’ heads featured prominently on the Rowntree family crest. The high-ceilinged room had beautifully moulded medallions and cornices, and on the south wall was a wide, stone chimneybreast with a magnificent marble fireplace built to hold a blazing log fire. In front of it was a wire-mesh fireguard to ensure that we did not come to any harm.

  Behind the play room lay the dining room, which also had a fine but smaller fireplace. A doorway led from it into a wide, stone-built, glass-windowed porch that faced south onto the grassy garden at the rear of the house. Ten yards away from the porch was a smooth-barked Locust tree, also known as Silver Chain or White Laburnum – a tree of light and graceful proportions which had long slender branches, and two feet up from its base it forked and its leaning trunk made it easy for agile youngsters such as us to climb it. It was just one of the many exotic and beautiful ornamental trees and shrubs in the spacious surroundings of the grand old house that we were to come to know every inch of. Some were rare species brought from foreign lands by wealthy owners, which was apparently the fashionable thing to do in Victorian times.

  To the left of the front hallway was a large cloakroom, and behind it lay a stone-flagged kitchen with low beams that had large metal hooks in them. In the centre stood a heavy wooden table scrubbed almost white, and a deep, vitreous china sink stood under the blast-taped window of the scullery next door. It was a much smaller kitchen than the one at Sutherland Lodge but this time we had the whole house to ourselves. Behind the kitchen there was a large larder that kept the food cool.

  The grand staircase had a gracefully curving balustrade and there were beautiful-stained glass windows above the landing halfway up. At the top there was a large bathroom and our metal-framed beds had been set up in the dormitory. Five large bedrooms, in which the nursery staff were to sleep, led off a long corridor. The rooms had a small wrought-iron, black-leaded fireplace with a mantle-shelf supported on delicately fluted, wooden columns, and there was a fender with a brass rail around each hearth. The bedrooms were directly above the kitchen and larder and their small-paned windows were all blast-taped.

  At the southern end of the garden there was an overgrown pond, where we saw white-billed coots that dived and stayed under the water for so long that we thought they must have drowned. We were not allowed down there on our own but Kitty took us to see the small brown, chestnut-cheeked little grebes, commonly called dabchicks, with the female carrying three fluffy chicks on her back. She had a small whitish patch on each cheek where the beak joined it and her nest actually floated on the water amongst the reeds. There were small furtive waterhens with white-streaked flanks and red beaks tipped with yellow that looked as if they were wearing red garters on their green legs. They are, more correctly, called moorhens and we watched them as they dived for food. Emerging mayflies performed their strange up-and-down dance above the placid, pearly sheen of the water, and hundreds of gnats formed smoky clouds. A long rustic fence separated the garden from the station goods yard. The wooded slopes above the house were clothed in a mixture of conifers and deciduous trees.

  The large, three-bedroom, stone-built station house stood just south of the pair of cottages and its gable end abutted the northbound platform. The door of the paved yard at the back of the house led directly onto this ‘up’ platform. Near it was a cast-iron, Rowntree’s one penny chocolate dispensing machine and close by stood a bench. The gable end of the house had a clock let into it at about shoulder height. It had a round, white dial faced with black Roman numerals. Late tulips were in flower in its little front garden where the door to the kitchen was set within a rectangular stone porch. The front windows overlooked the fields beside the railway line.

  The kind and good-natured senior signalman, Mr Walter Artley, lived here, and on rising his first job was to wind up the platform clock. A door from the first sitting room led into the kitchen where a wooden clothes maiden, that was raised and lowered by means of cords and pulleys, hung from the ceiling above a gleaming black-leaded fire range.

  The stairs led from the kitchen to the bedrooms where ceramic pitchers and ewers were used for washing. Walter lived here wit
h his wife and their four children, aged from two to twelve years old. Mrs Artley, a friendly and caring lady, played the organ in Levisham Chapel-of-Ease every Sunday, and also played for the services held in the tiny valley church in the summer months.

  There was a neatly cultivated flower and vegetable garden behind the station house, and it had an outside brick coalhouse and a privy with a flush toilet. A narrow beck ran past the bottom of their long garden before it swung west to drain into Pickering Beck. In dry, calm weather the beck could be heard babbling quietly over the water-worn pebbles of its stony bed. The Artleys kept a few black-faced Masham sheep and we would often hear the lowing of their black and brown Holstein cows as they grazed in the meadow. The smelly cow byre and the stables were situated in a range of wooden buildings at the far end of the field. The excess milk was carried across to Grove House in two-gallon, white-enamelled jugs to be sold to Dinner Lady.

  On balmy early summer evenings we could hear Mrs Artley calling the cows in, as sound carried a long way in the quietness of that deep valley. The animals would amble along with their distended udders leaking milk and after we got to know her eldest daughter Monica, she would occasionally take us into the warm, cosy atmosphere of the byre. We liked to watch Mrs Artley as she sat on a three-legged stool with her head resting against the cow’s side calmly milking them by hand. The milk from the limpid-eyed cows would squirt noisily into the white-enamelled pails. The cows seemed like huge beasts to us but they had a nice warm, sweet smell close up. Occasionally, as a special treat, we would be given a glass of the warm, creamy milk, which was now at its richest and most plentiful as the meadow grass was lush and green. Mrs Artley used to separate the lumpy curds from the thin watery whey to make cheese in an old contraption that had a wooden barrel fixed to a cast-iron wheel. She rotated it by turning the handle on the side and the whey was given to the pigs.