One Young Fool in Dorset Read online

  My father stepped forward to shake hands, but the priest drew back, one hand on the doorknob, the other clutching the large crucifix dangling round his neck.

  “Welcome to me humble abode,” he said and waved us in.

  We trouped into the dark interior. The smell of stale cigarettes and cooked cabbage hung in the air. The windows were so nicotine-stained and filthy that very little light penetrated. Bare, low-wattage lightbulbs hung down in the centre of most rooms, but few of them worked. Great slices of yellowed wallpaper hung from the walls where they’d come unstuck.

  “Where’s the furniture?” I asked as we were taken from one room to another.

  “Shhh…” said my mother.

  One room was filled with potatoes. In another, a ramshackle bed leaned in the corner. The sheets were grey, the blankets peppered with round cigarette burns. Above it, a wooden crucifix was nailed to the wall, Jesus sporting a broken nose.

  “Me bedroom,” said the priest, and then stopped at another door. “And this room here is where me dogs sleep.”

  There was scratching of large claws on the door, and deep excited woofs.

  “That’s okay,” said my father hurriedly. “Don’t disturb them.”

  “Ye may be right,” chuckled our host. “There’s t’ree of ’em, Matthew, Mark and Luke. Used ter have four, y’know, praise the Lord, but John passed on. They’re big Oirish wolfhounds, so they are. They’ll probably be knockin’ yer yunguns over so we’ll leave ’em be.”

  “Mummy? Why isn’t there any carpet or lino on the floor?” I asked as we continued down the hall.

  “Shhh…” said my mother.

  “And why does it smell funny?”

  Exasperated, my mother turned to our guide.

  “Ach, Father, may we send the children outside into the garden to explore?” she asked. “We can join them later when we’ve been upstairs. If that’s okay with you, of course?”

  “Of course!” he said, bending down to my level. “Pr’aps ye’ll find some little people in the garden, so ye will.”

  “Little people?” I asked, wilting under the blast of foul breath directed straight into my face.

  “Leprechauns, fairies, you know…” said my sister, the clever one.

  Now, that was interesting! We exploded out of the back door into the bright light.

  The back garden was a tangled wilderness. Brambles and stinging nettles vied with each other and it was difficult to identify any boundaries. Ivy strangled trees and fences. The garden had no lawns and the paths were merely ones flattened by the priest’s feet. I could see it was the perfect place to build dens and hide with a book. Even at that age, I was the quiet one, the loner, the one who preferred to sit in a wardrobe looking at books rather than play with the others.

  “Mummy says the grounds are a third of an acre,” said my sister. “And I don’t believe in little people.”

  I didn’t care what size the grounds were and, whatever my big sister said, I was sure little people could be found, if one looked hard enough.

  I loved the garden and tiptoed around searching. I saw no fairies, no pixies, no little people, but I didn’t give up hope. There were so many places I could crouch unseen, watching insects while weaving stories in my mind. I climbed an apple tree.

  All too soon, my parents emerged from the house and called us.

  “Kids! Come on, we’re going home now.”

  They didn’t say a word until my father started the engine and the car drew away.

  “It’s a mess,” said my father.

  “It would take years to get that house straight,” said my mother.

  “All the electrics need stripping out completely. That place is a fire hazard.”

  “And the smell!”

  “Can you believe he has a room for potatoes and another for his dogs?”

  “Ach, and that kitchen! And did you see how overgrown the garden was?”

  They both paused, staring through the windscreen, lost in their thoughts.

  “I can see why it’s been on the market for so long,” said my father, but his eyes were gleaming.

  “I loved the garden!” I piped up, but nobody heard me.

  Even at the grand old age of six, I could read between the lines. The more my parents criticised and found fault with the house, the more sure I was that they were going to buy it. This strange house with the smelly rooms and tangled garden would be our new home.

  And I was right. Negotiations were soon completed and we prepared to move out of the rented, thatched, rat-ridden Corfe Castle cottage, and into the house that would be our home until all three of us children spread our adult wings and flew the nest.

  The end of the summer term approached, the last of my time at Corfe village school. I was presented with a prize. Was it for producing excellent schoolwork? I’m afraid not. I daydreamed all through my schooling then, and would continue to do so at all the centres of education I attended. No, the prize was for becoming fluent in English during the six months I was there. Hardly surprising really; nobody spoke German at Corfe Castle village school.

  “I want the bedroom that looks down on the apple trees and bluebells,” said my sister.

  Being the eldest, she was given her first choice. In fact, I ended up with the best room. My window overlooked the garden, and was the biggest bedroom, apart from that of my parents. In the next few years, the apple trees at the front of the house were chopped down, and the bluebells and primroses were paved over to create space for car parking, so the view from my sister’s bedroom window became very dull.

  That summer, I ran wild in the garden of our new house. Much of it was brambles, but before my parents had a chance to tame it, I made dens and secret hidey-holes where I could look at books in peace, without my annoying little brother finding me.

  My mother had always dreamed of having her own garden. Instead of books, she read seed merchants’ leaflets and every windowsill was crowded with little pots and emerging seedlings. Gardening books like The Art of Propagation and Growing Vegetables began to appear on the bookshelves. I know that she spent a great deal of time designing the layout of the garden and deciding what to plant. The bottom half was to be given over to vegetables, whilst the top part was going to be laid to lawn with a terrace for a table and chairs.

  In the early days, my mother nearly despaired of that garden because it wasn’t merely weeds she was digging up. As she forked the soil, the prongs clattered against glass.

  “Ach, not another one!” she said as she drew out a whiskey bottle and added it to the growing pile.

  The previous owner, the Roman Catholic priest, clearly had a problem. Because of his standing in the community, he probably felt it wise to keep evidence of his secret vice hidden. Instead of throwing his empty whiskey bottles out with the trash, he buried them in the garden. My mother unearthed so many that she lost count. Now we had inherited the problem of disposing of these bottles. Would the dustbin men think we were alcoholics and spread rumours around town?

  “Ach, I don’t care what people think of us,” said my mother, and for weeks the whiskey bottles clattered into our dustbin.

  Eventually she dug up the last one. I imagine the bin men thought we were miraculously cured because no more bottles filled our dustbin.

  Of course, summer couldn’t last for ever, although as a child one thinks it will. I had a new school to attend, and a difficult act to follow; my big sister.

  My sister was very bright and shone at all her school subjects without even trying. I wasn’t stupid, but I was lazy when it came to school work. I lived in a daydream and was happiest in my own company, reading books or writing my own stories. I still have my first masterpiece.

  the runaway tadel

  wunce there was a runaway tadel and when you put food on it it ran away the end.

  My sister already attended the little preparatory school in Dorchester, and it was decided that I should join her there.

  The school was in a res
idential street, a building several floors high, as I remember. There was a flight of steps and the headmistress, Mrs Pellow, stood at the top to welcome the new children. She was a big woman and I was terrified.

  “Ah,” she said, “I recognise the family resemblance! Do you have a big sister in the school? A very clever big sister?”

  I nodded, my eyes huge with fright. I was too scared to speak. She reached towards me and clasped me to her ample bosom. It felt like I had sunk into a vast feather pillow, and although it wasn’t unpleasant, I was afraid I might suffocate.

  “Hello Victoria, and welcome,” she said, eventually releasing me. “Did you know that the nicest things come in small parcels?”

  I didn’t. I greedily gulped in air.

  School was to be endured, a necessary evil that had to be sat through until the doors finally opened and we could escape. At break times we played in the small playground, boys one side, girls the other. The days were long because we had to catch the train from Wareham station, then walk to school in a group supervised by a teacher. The summer holidays seemed to be just out of reach.

  “Now,” said our teacher on the last day of term, “While you are away, I want you all to write a composition of what you did during the holidays. Bring it with you in September, when school starts again, and the best ones will receive prizes.”

  “Do we have to do it?” asked a classmate.

  “No, but you can’t win a prize if you don’t enter.”

  I knew I could never win, and I had no competitive spirit anyway, so I never did write that composition. Instead I spent the summer in the garden catching woodlice and trying to train them to do tricks.

  “Now, it’s only a little twig, I want you to jump it.”

  But the woodlouse simply stood stock still, or rolled into a ball like an armadillo.

  “Okay, just climb over it. If you do, I promise to find you some delicious rotten wood to eat.”

  However nicely I asked, it refused to obey my commands.

  I kept records of the birds that visited our garden, but it wasn’t enough. I desperately wanted a pet of my own, but my pleas fell on deaf ears.

  “Mummy, please, please, please, please, please can I have a pet?”

  “Ach, it’s out of the question.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  “Why can’t I have a pony?”

  “Ach, where would we keep a pony?”

  “Well, a dog, then? Just a little puppy?”

  “Puppies grow into dogs. They need looking after, and walks. And who would end up looking after it? Muggins here, of course.”

  “What about a kitten? They don’t need walks.”

  “Kittens grow into cats, and cats will chase all the birds out of our garden.”

  “I could train it not to.”

  “You can’t train cats not to catch birds.”

  “Well, what about a guinea pig? They don’t chase birds.”

  “You wouldn’t look after it.”

  “I would, I promise I would…”

  “No, it’s out of the question.”

  No amount of sulks, tears or pouting would change their minds.

  I dreamed of having a pony. I dreamed of having a puppy. Owning a pet filled my thoughts. I probably drove my family insane.

  Until one day, when I was given a box.

  “It’s a pet,” said my father. “We decided that because your school report wasn’t too bad, perhaps you deserve a pet.”

  My school report had just arrived in the post. It was probably the best one I ever received and I’m pretty sure my teachers were lenient because I’d only just joined the school.

  * * *

  School Report

  Reading: Victoria is making steady progress.

  Writing: Victoria is developing a good style.

  Oral Composition: Good, although shy.

  Written Composition: Victoria enjoys this and has made progress.

  Arithmetic: Could do better.

  Nature Study: Excellent.

  * * *

  Inside the cardboard box was a tortoise. In those days, tortoises were freely available in pet shops, and the fact that huge numbers died as they were shipped abroad, packed on top of each other without food and water, was of little consequence.

  It wasn’t quite the pet I had in mind. I couldn’t take this pet for walks on a leash. Nevertheless, I was delighted with Timmy the tortoise. My father built a run for him with a little hutch one end where he could retreat during inclement weather. I fed him pieces of tomato and banana which he crushed in his toothless mouth. I found him juicy dandelion leaves and sometimes lifted him out of the run and let him explore the garden.

  By now, my mother was getting to grips with the unruly garden and was no longer digging up whiskey bottles. Whilst creating lawns, new flowerbeds, laying paths and raising vegetables, she was slowly discovering the passion of her life: gardening.

  I couldn’t understand how a short stroll to drop some potato peelings on the compost heap at the bottom of the garden could take her half an hour. But it did because she had to pause to smell the buddleia flowers, or admire the cyclamen seedlings which unwound like springs, or check if baby lettuce had pushed through the soil overnight. I didn’t understand the attraction until twenty years later when I, too, had my first garden and my own passion for gardening was born.

  The garden was already unrecognisable, bearing no resemblance to the one we inherited. We now had a paved terrace on which I would later learn to roller skate. There was a little wall built from yellow Purbeck stone in front of which giant gaudy African marigolds stood in battalions. Clumps of lavender scented the air, edging a lawn big enough to put up a badminton net.

  As she forked, dug and planted, my mother would enter a kind of trance. This could be useful because it was the perfect opportunity should I want to raid the larder or get up to any mischief. I could time my misdeeds carefully, knowing that if she was busy gardening, she would never notice anything.

  As my mother laboured happily in the garden, she would often collect Timmy the tortoise and place him in the middle of the lawn. Timmy meandered around, munching contentedly on daisies. Tortoises aren’t known for their speed, but Timmy regularly surprised us by sprinting to the edge of the lawn and diving into a flowerbed when our backs were turned.

  “He’s gone again.”

  “Oh no, did you see which direction he was heading?”

  If we stood still and watched the flowerbeds, we’d see a clump of flowers shaking, or being roughly pushed aside.

  “Timmy! There you are!” I squealed.

  Usually he wasn’t difficult to find and we’d soon scoop him up and return him to the centre of the lawn.

  Of course it was bound to happen. One day, while my mother was absorbed in her garden, she forgot all about Timmy. By the time she remembered him, he’d vanished.

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Ach, I’m not sure… It was probably when I was planting the artichokes. Perhaps an hour ago…”

  “An hour?”

  At first we didn’t worry, but when he didn’t appear all afternoon, thorough searches were organised. It was a big garden, much of it still untamed. As we searched, our arms were scratched by brambles and our knees were muddied, but there was no sign of Timmy.

  Night fell, and Timmy was still missing.

  I cried myself to sleep.

  3 Jeannie and Beach Days

  My mother didn’t want us to have pets, and she didn’t like dogs much. When I asked her why, she said it was because her mother bred dogs. That sounded like a reason to like dogs, not dislike them. I really didn’t understand, but her mother and dogs were topics she refused to talk about, so I regretfully accepted the state of affairs.

  We children never met our grandmother or grandfather. It wasn’t until I was nearly sixty years old and living in Spain that we discovered the jaw-dropping secret my mother took to her grave. Until the
n, we didn’t know what became of our grandfather, or why my mother wouldn’t speak of our grandmother, or her own childhood. But that’s another story which I saved for the fourth Old Fools book.

  However, there were two canine exceptions to my mother’s rule. She actually liked two particular dogs. One was Sam, a border collie belonging to our friends, the Hale family, who owned a large country estate on the other side of Wareham. Sam was grumpy and known to bite, which terrified me, but I knew that he was astonishingly intelligent. He was a trained sheep dog and knew what was needed even before his master did. He could even open gates.

  The other exception was beautiful Jeannie.

  About six houses down the road from our house lived Mrs Cox, and her dog Jeannie. Mrs Cox was retired, but she used to be a professional photographer, and she had devoted much of her life to raising money for guide dogs for the blind. Jeannie was a golden retriever, and was being trained as a guide dog until she displayed a fear of manhole covers. Obviously her guide dog training couldn’t continue. She never made the grade and was adopted by Mrs Cox instead.

  Jeannie was friendly, happy, and obedient. She was gentle and loved everybody. Even my mother couldn’t help herself and was fond of Jeannie.

  At breakfast, the morning after we’d lost Timmy the tortoise, I was still miserable. My mother suddenly spoke up.

  “What about Jeannie?” she said.

  “Jeannie? Mrs Cox’s dog Jeannie?” asked my father. “What about her?”

  “You know how clever she is? And she’s a retriever, yes?”

  “Of course.”

  “Ach, why don’t we ask Mrs Cox to bring Jeannie round here and see if they can find Timmy?”

  “Worth a try, I suppose, but I don’t hold out much hope.”

  My father was doubtful but I was ecstatic. I was sure clever Jeannie would find Timmy.

  Later that morning, we all traipsed round to Mrs Cox’s house and my mother explained the situation.

  “I think Jeannie and I might be able to help,” said Mrs Cox, one hand on Jeannie’s soft head. “Let’s go round to your place and see what we can do.”