Everything I Have Always Forgotten (8 page)

She had a large wooden barrel with a crank handle on a cradle. She poured the milk in and then started to turn the crank. I remember marvelling at those strong arms going round and round for what seemed like hours on end. She told me to try, but I could last only a few minutes before giving up in exhaustion. When she was satisfied with the consistency, she would pour off the whey, which some customers even preferred to whole milk (I suppose this buttermilk is more like low-fat milk) and put the butter into moulds and stamped them with her butter stamp in the form of a thistle. I was used to eating shop-bought butter which came from New Zealand at the time, it was bright yellow with food colouring rather than natural carotene, while the butter made by Mrs Lloyd Williams was pure white, white as lard or shortening. She did not salt it as the Bretons do, to help in preserving it and there were beads of sweated water on the surface.

Father, when he was lucky enough to buy a pound of her butter, would salt it himself… as for hers, the demand was such that she never had to worry about conserving it without refrigeration. By now, most of her clients had electricity and refrigerators and could thus keep the unsalted butter for weeks.

Of course, one problem in the equation that had been dealt with from time immemorial, was that there were no telephones in the Croesor Valley. She could not call clients to say the butter or the milk was ready, nor could they enquire. The only method of communication was to ‘stop by', which, if she was not too busy, entailed a cup of tea and the local news. Indeed, when my Parents wanted to invite a guest from the mountains to dinner, they had to send a telegram to the Post Office in Garreg and hope that someone would walk down the two or three miles from where they lived and then back up again, dropping off urgent messages such as telegrams on the way. If the telegram required a response, then the recipient would have to walk down to the Post Office where there was a telephone box and there they could make the call to us, accepting or declining. It was a most laborious form of bush telegraph. A few people now had cars, and that made the trip much easier, but ownership of a car entailed a good deal of community service as well… as in: “We'll be needing your car to take Gran to the doctor next Tuesday.” Wealth had its concomitant responsibilities.

The alternative to staying with Mrs Lloyd-Williams or in a local hotel was less appealing, because it bore with it far more solicitous care than I was accustomed to, besides more rules. That was going to stay with Uncles and Aunts. They all lived in England and their spouses had normal jobs such as banking or farming. I never went to stay with Mother's Brother until much later. He was a brilliant eccentric whose letters to
The Times
were regularly published. He was a pioneer in ecological farming and used some of the very first solar panels in Britain. His four children were younger than we and his beautiful Spanish wife (who had worked as a translator throughout the war) knew, I believe, her limits as to how many small children she could manage at any one time. Their house was always a delightful chaos, not unlike our own, yet very different in its muddle.

This uncle and aunt came to stay with us from time to time and if either was under the weather, they both retired to bed and ate nothing until they both felt better. She always had just the right tool in her handbag for any small repairs that might come up. We saved up broken twelve-volt table lights and egg timers for this aunt to repair when she came.

* * *

The Banker Uncle (by marriage, the one whose courtship caused my grandmother to call him ‘A counter-jumper'), on the other hand, was very tall and kind. He treated me as his equal – which left me swimming in completely unknown waters. The Farmer Uncle (also by marriage) was kind enough and jolly, though with him I was clearly a child. In both cases, I was bewildered by the regular, excessive meals, which seemed to take up the whole day, when one could have been off catching tadpoles or fishing for minnows in the stream.

There was always breakfast with cereal, eggs and bacon and sausages and fried tomatoes, and toast and marmalade… Then came luncheon with overcooked meat and overcooked vegetables and a bland salad and some pudding. Tea entailed little cups and saucers with milk jug and sugar bowl and little spoons and tiny sandwiches and scones and cakes. Dinner, included an
hors d'oeuvre
, more meat or fish and vegetables (forever, over-cooked), a salad and desert. The rhythm suffocated me, though I followed it politely.

The banker's hobby and expertise had led him to become Chairman of the British Numismatic Society. He never spoke of his business day. But he did show me a little ‘valueless' coin in his collection that amused him: it had been minted in the very village to which he had moved, by the local grocer or perhaps the general store. What amused him about it was that the merchant's family name was the same as his own. The fact that it was minted in about 1450 gave it no great value, he told me. In those days, the King minted sovereigns (and no one else might do the same), but there was no small change available. A sovereign was a year's pay for a labourer. So the local store minted their own change which was probably only viable at that store… the very origin of the ‘company store'. This uncle was very tall, slender and courtly.

The Farmer was a little more corpulent, and much shorter. He walked with a rolling limp from too many broken legs and hips as a horse trainer before the War. He was always in a good mood and had the fattest, the healthiest, the best pigs, sheep and cattle. He ran his farm with great efficiency and was always beamingly proud of his crops, his stock and his children. He was also a mine of child-friendly funny stories and anecdotes, which he recounted in his jolly fast voice and then laughed at with more gusto than did we. He was treasurer of his church and was once pounced upon after a service by a large lady of the congregation:

“Mr Treasurer, you have not sent me a receipt for my generous contribution.”

“Oh dear” he replied, “when did you send it? What kind of envelope was it in?”

“Three weeks ago in one of those small brown business envelopes.”

“Well, that explains it! I take quite a while to open brown envelopes, they usually contain bills.”

Both of these kind Uncles and Aunts had what Mother referred to as: ‘conventional homes', with lots of little tables piled with knickknacks, tiny china figurines and silver whatsits. They were what I would call, ‘overstuffed houses'. No place for toddlers, but I was a discreet boy by then, I wore a tie to dinner and attempted conversation with my neighbours at table. It was like being in prison for me… I far preferred to be out on the salt marshes with my dog or walking the hills.

These were just a sample of my general hosts, when my Parents could no longer put up with my existence… Mother once told me that, after a long luncheon with some relatives of their generation, Father said (as he turned the car out of their driveway): “Can you imagine? They have children! That means that they must have, at some time, disrobed and had intimate relations!” Yes, some of them were most definitely,
Formal!

If there was one thing Mother despised, it was conventionality – her greatest compliment was always: ‘original'. She loved her sisters, but it was despite their profound conventionality and really, they were much easier to deal with than her eccentric younger brother. They came when they said they would, they always had money in the bank and they could be counted upon to take in any of her children when she didn't know what to do with us. Our cousins often came to stay with us and loved the unstructured, barefoot chaos of our lives, but I am sure the logistics of arranging for them to come must have been quite terrifying to their regimented parents!

A pair of very young twin cousins were sent to stay with us alone by train. Their mother asked them if they would recognise the stop where they were supposed to get out. “Oh yes,” said one: “it's the station which has a tap with a notice saying ‘Not Drinking Water'!” All train stations in Britain had taps with that warning on them…

VII

GRANNY CADOGAN

T
hen there were the Christmases that we did not spend in London amongst ‘intellectuals', when we went to stay with Mother's mother (Granny Cadogan, née Howard, first married to Bazley, Mother's father) for the holiday. She no longer lived in the enormous Jacobean/Victorian mansion where she had brought up her own family, by now that had been converted into a girl's private school. She had moved to a much more modest old rectory… but modest? Oh how some country vicars had lived!

The house seemed to have a dozen bedrooms, huge living room, elegant dining room, besides vast kitchens and coach houses around a courtyard, all built of that warm, honeycoloured stone so typical of the Cotswolds. A lovely lazy river (right out of
The Wind In The Willows
) dozed brilliantly clear and full of water life, through the garden. Grandmother was old. She was virtually blind and wore a too-tidy white wig. She sat regally in her throne-like chairs and ran the household in its minutest detail. When she left one of her thrones and walked very slowly with two canes, then she became poignantly mortal. She was a staunch teetotaller, though she paid for her husband's pleasure in good wines and spirits, besides that of all her guests. She did not impose her beliefs.

On Christmas Day 1954, the enormous glass-like mahogany table had been set with her finest lace, cut crystal glasses and solid silver. Her second husband had carved the turkey with a textbook in front of him, counting out the enormous slices of over-cooked meat according to technical sketches in the book. We ate enormously, the grown-ups drank wine, but the festivity was muted, like a brewing storm that never bursts. We all knew that after lunch we would have to listen to the Queen's Speech on the wireless and not until that was over, might we open our presents. As coffee was served to the adults, liqueur chocolates were passed. No one noticed that the children all had one, and then she took one. With the first bite she knew her mistake as a teetotaller and spat it out with such force that the perfectly waxed solid mahogany table, the hand-laundered and ironed lace, the lovingly shined, sparkling silver were all splattered with wet chopped chocolate.

Granny's second husband (the first, grandson of the amazing industrialist, having died of complications from a routine appendectomy after giving her five children) was a delightful character. Known as ‘the Commander', he had run away to the navy as a teenager. On a four-masted training schooner he managed to fall, not just from the masthead to the deck, but right to the bottom of the empty hold, on his head. Or so it was said. Anyway, he remained frozen at the charming, lively age of sixteen throughout his life, though with a stocky old man's build and permanent whisky breath. He enjoyed telling the story of how he had met Granny (recently widowed) in 1912.

He was commander of a British battleship laying off Boulogne and was checking out the local talent through his powerful Navy-issue binoculars, when he “espied” (his own word) “a most handsome and stately lady promenading with her brood of five children, kept in check by plenty of nursemaids.” “Damn,” he would go on, in full hearing of his regal wife, “looked like a fine breeder to me, with that brood in her train. So, being a man of action, I called up the Quartermaster and ordered him to lower a longboat with eight oarsmen and take my card to the Lady. Upon presenting my compliments, he was to invite the little family for a full tour of the battleship.”

When the longboat returned, it was full of white lace and femininity, so while the children were amused, he made his honourable intentions clear. I gather that Grandmother was enchanted, for they married and she bore him two more children, a son who died in the Second World War – another of her older sons having already died while serving as Britain's youngest Member of Parliament at the time (he was twenty-six). The second child, a daughter (widowed during World War II), served as a lady-in-waiting to Princess, then Queen, Elizabeth for her lifetime. A very beautiful, cuttingly witty and hilarious aunt.

At some point in this second marriage she gave the Commander a brand-new Bugatti. It was delivered to the stables – now being converted more and more into garages (though the Head Coachman, whose title had become Head Chauffeur, never did quite master the art of driving a horseless carriage) and he was told to go and find it there. Delighted, he turned on the ignition, checked that it was in neutral, set the ignition advance/retard, the hand throttle, hand choke – and cranked it into life. He must have sat in it for a few minutes to warm it up, before letting off the choke, re-adjusting the spark timing and putting it into gear. He listened to the perfect little engine sing as he accelerated, shifted into gear and let in the clutch. He drove it full-tilt into the heavy stone wall at the end of the garage. I believe Bugatti rebuilt it for someone else.

Staying with Granny Cadogan was a regimented affair, with meals at precise times. I had to wear a jacket and tie for meals, though dinner jackets (or tuxedos) were only worn by older boys and for special dinners. Everything ran like clockwork, until the day when her husband (we never called him Grandfather, since he was our ‘step-' and anyway we had a more affectionate name for him: Duggy) came home to lunch an hour late. The household was upset, the kitchen staff out of humour, when Duggy came waltzing in, full of enthusiasm: “Driving back from Sisister (as locals pronounced Cirencester) when a great flight of Canada geese came over. Damn, if I didn't count up to twenty-seven of them before I went into the ditch!” A farmer eventually pulled him out of the ditch with his tractor and here he was, unscathed, but late for luncheon.

He was a breath of fresh air; forever an enthusiastic sixteen-year-old, he delighted us children with his puerile conjurer's tricks, fake turds and ink spills. For the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, in the summer of 1953, he spent days setting up a firework display using fireworks he had kept since before the war. He had nailed the fireworks to planks he had laid on a wheelbarrow, which naturally meant they were so close together that they ignited each other in one magnificent explosion which sent the wheelbarrow (rocket-propelled) into one of Granny's favourite bushes, setting it ablaze. My brother and Duggy were the only ones outside, we children and women were watching from behind a large window at a safe distance. I must have been looking away at the dramatic moment, so as far as I was concerned, the coronation celebration was a mere damp comedy of errors with barely a
bang
or a
pop
.