One Young Fool in Dorset (17 page)

My sister, being four years older, was beginning to
date boys. She was a good tennis player, and like my mother before
her, began to meet boys at the Tennis Club.

“
Ach,
bring your boyfriends back home to meet
us any time,” my mother told her.

It was summertime, and my mother spent most of her
time in the garden and greenhouse, absorbed by seedlings, shrubs
and propagation projects. My father did the digging, built small
walls, erected fencing and took on any of the heavier jobs that
needed doing.

Both my parents loved the sun, and they were both,
unlike me, totally unselfconscious about their bodies. As soon as
the sun came out, they threw off their clothes and carried on with
their household and gardening chores completely naked. Our garden
was big, and the fences and hedges were high, so nobody could see
in.

I’m very glad I wasn’t home the time it happened,
but my sister told me all about it. She’d been playing tennis with
a boyfriend, and when he dropped her off at our house, she’d
invited him in.

“Come in and have a cold drink,” she said, “and I’ll
introduce you to my parents.”

He agreed, parked the car and the pair of them went
inside.

“I’m home! Anybody in?” she called, but nobody
answered.

Dumping her tennis racquet in a corner, my sister
poured them each a lemonade.

“Where are your parents?” asked the young man.

“I don’t know, probably outside working in the
garden. We’ll take them a lemonade.”

They stepped out of the French doors into the
garden. My sister looked around but could see neither of my
parents. Then she caught the sound of hedge shears.

“Oh, I think my father’s at the bottom, cutting the
hedge,” she said. “Follow me.”

They found my father standing on a stepladder,
clipping the hedge. Apart from shoes, he was completely
starkers.

“Um, I’ve brought Peter to meet you,” said my
sister, “and here’s some cold lemonade.”

My father climbed down the steps and gravely shook
hands with Peter.

“How do you do,” he said.

“Nice to meet you, sir,” said Peter, deadpan.

“Good game of tennis?”

“Oh, jolly good! We played doubles, and it was a
very close game.”

As Peter spoke, he looked neither left nor right,
and certainly not down.

“Oh good, who did you play with?”

“James Graham and his cousin, Susan, do you know
them?”

“I believe I do,” said my father, sipping his
lemonade. “Isn’t that the Grahams from Stoborough? Let me see,
Susan would be the oldest daughter?”

“Yes, Susan is the oldest, then there’s Katherine, I
think. Of course James has brothers and sisters, too. All members
of the Tennis Club.”

My sister, telling me all about this after the
event, was chuckling.

“Both of them were pretending there was nothing
abnormal about the situation at all,” she said. “They were both
being so
British!
”

I laughed like a drain at her description.

“And the really funny thing was, both of them were
so determined to act as though there was nothing unusual, neither
of them could find a way to finish the conversation. So they just
kept on talking about the Tennis Club, weather, politics,
everything!”

“Well,” I said, “it’s a good thing you didn’t decide
to introduce him to Mother too. I know she was planning to pull out
all the seed trays from under the bench in the potting shed for
sterilising. She didn’t have a stitch on either, and she’d have
probably been on all-fours when you and Peter went to find
her.”

We laughed until we had to hold our stomachs.

* * *

In 1969, I was fourteen years old when two momentous
things happened. Humans walked on the surface of the moon, and I
got my first part-time job.

The teachers at school were very excited.
Televisions (black and white, of course) were set up in various
places in the school building and some of the teachers allowed us
to watch. The moment was captured. Neil Armstrong stepped onto the
lunar surface, and the world gasped.

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for
mankind,” he said, and history was made.

Of course I was interested, but fourteen-year-olds
are very self-obsessed, and I’m sure I was no different. Getting a
job and making some money to pay for new loons was at the forefront
of my mind. My mother thought loons, brightly-coloured hipster
bell-bottom trousers, were hideous, but we loved them.

“
Ach,
you look like crazy carthorses,” she
said in disgust.

Later on, Levi or Wrangler jeans became the fashion.
We would wear them so tight that we’d need to lie back on our beds
and hook a coat-hanger in the zipper and pull hard to fasten them.
And to ensure they were moulded exactly to our bodies, we sat
wearing them in the bath. My mother rolled her eyes.

A vacancy for a chambermaid arose at a hotel on the
outskirts of Wareham. I went for an interview knowing there were
two applicants for the job. I was the second to arrive, just as the
first applicant was finishing her interview.

“Thank you, Janice,” said the hotel proprietor.
“I’ll let you know if you have been successful.”

Janice looked at me just at the same moment as I
looked at her. Our eyes locked in horror. It was Janice Parry from
the Youth Club, my rival in love. She left and the hotel owner
turned to me.

“Victoria? Come about the chambermaid job?”

“Yes.”

“So, you’re a student?” asked the proprietor,
glancing at my application form.

“Yes, I’m still at school actually.”

“But you’re available to work on Saturdays and
Sundays?”

“Oh, yes.”

“What experience do you have with housework?”

“Um, I always tidy my room.”

“Anything else?”

“I often clean the house.”
Blatant lie.

“And are you used to cleaning bathrooms?”

“Oh yes.”

My fingers were crossed behind my back.

“Beds?”

“Yes, I make my bed…” Inspiration suddenly hit me.
“Oh, and when I went to boarding school I learned how to make
hospital corners.”

I’m pretty sure it was the hospital corners that
landed me the job.

So although Janice won spotty Barry, I won the job.
I decided I had the much better deal and began to dream of the
loons I would buy.

It was only a small hotel, but it catered for a
steady stream of visitors who arrived to enjoy Dorset and its many
attractions. Wareham is an attractive market town surrounded by
Saxon walls and steeped in history. The walls still remain,
encircling the original town, and it is possible to walk almost the
entire circle.

Any tourist visiting Dorset, as well as enjoying
more sunshine than most counties of England, will be spoilt for
choice for places to visit. Castles, prehistoric remains, ancient
monuments and hundreds of miles of spectacular coastline
beckon.

Of course, Dorset, or Wessex as it was known in
Medieval times, is Hardy country. Thanks to Mrs Hall’s English
lessons, I had a passion for Thomas Hardy’s books and poetry. I had
visited Hardy’s cottage in Bockhampton, and Max Gate, his former
home, many times. Hardy’s hometown of Dorchester is called
Casterbridge in his books, most famously in
The Mayor of
Casterbridge
.

Plenty of tourists came to the hotel intent on
viewing Hardy country, many of them American.

Max Gate,
the former home of author Thomas Hardy,

located in Dorchester, Dorset, England.

One Saturday, the hotel proprietor handed me some
keys.

“Morning, Vicky, could you start with Number 7
today, please? It’s that American couple. They’ve already checked
out, so it’ll need a complete change.”

I took the keys, gathered my cleaning products and
made my way to Room 7, stopping on the way to pick up clean sheets
and towels from the linen cupboard.

Inside Room 7, I stripped the bed and noticed that
the occupants had left a book behind on the bedside table. I picked
it up and read the title.
Hardy’s Dorset,
I believe it was
called.

Resisting the urge to flick through it, I cleaned
the bathroom, then opened the mini-fridge. On a plate in the fridge
sat perhaps two-thirds of a beautiful Dorset clotted cream
chocolate cake.

I stared at it for a moment, and it stared back.

Well, Cake, the occupants of Number 7 have already
gone, so I imagine it wouldn’t matter if I just had a little taste
of you?

As the cake didn’t reply, I guessed it was giving me
permission to eat it. I grabbed a knife, and took the plate with me
over to the bed. I sat down, cut myself a sliver, and munched
happily.

What do you think, Cake? It’d be okay to have
another slice, wouldn’t it?

No reply. Definitely no argument.

This time the slice of cake I cut was much more
generous. I swung my feet up onto the bed and picked up the book
from the bedside table. It looked interesting, so I leaned back on
the pillows.

I was absorbed in the book and munching happily on
the cake when the door handle turned

16
Wales

Welsh Rarebit (Cheese on Toast)

I
stared at the opening door in sheer horror.
My mouth was full of clotted cream chocolate cake but my jaws had
frozen, mid-chomp. The book fell into my lap.

In the doorway stood my boss, the hotel owner. Time
stood still.

Oh no, Janice Parry is going to get this job
after all
.

He stopped, and his mouth dropped open when he saw
what I was doing. I was supposed to be making up the bed with fresh
linen, not leaning back on the pillows of a guest bed, reading a
book, stuffing my face with chocolate cake.

But worse was to come. Behind him I could hear the
American couple, Mr and Mrs Matthews, approaching.

I dropped the book, jumped off the bed and swallowed
my mouthful of cake, all in one movement. My boss’s face had turned
an unhealthy shade of purple.

“I cannot believe…” he started, as Mrs Matthews
popped her head round the door, then came in.

“Gee! I sure am glad you’re eating that cake!” she
said, eyeing the much-reduced cake on the plate. “We hoped somebody
would eat it, didn’t we, Chuck? Too good to waste and we couldn’t
take that on the airplane with us really.”

My boss was still doing a codfish impression, but he
closed his mouth, although his eyes were still bulging
alarmingly.

“And y’all found our book on your Thomas Hardy!”
chimed in Mr Matthews. “That’s what we came back for. Wanted to
show the folks back home where we’d been.”

“Much obliged to y’all for cleaning our room and
finding our book,” said Mrs Matthews. “We’ve really enjoyed our
stay in your quaint little hotel. Now we must hurry or we’ll miss
that airplane.”

They bustled out, but not before Mr Matthews had
stuffed a crisp £5 note into my uniform pocket.

My boss shook his head, stared at me for a moment,
then hurried after them. Somehow I’d got away with it, and after
I’d been scolded by my boss, the matter was never mentioned again.
Janice Parry didn’t get my job after all, but I’d learned my
lesson.

* * *

I wasn’t very good at tennis, or any sport, but I
always wanted to ride a horse. Even the criminal New Forest ponies
hadn’t put me off. I continued to plead but my parents wouldn’t
allow it, saying that it was far too expensive. Although I now had
a job, I couldn’t afford regular lessons. However, another
opportunity to ride horses presented itself.

“Why don’t you go on this Youth Hostel holiday?”
asked my mother, waving a newspaper advertisement in my
direction.

“You know I didn’t like the Youth Club much.”

“
Ach,
this is completely different, nothing
to do with a Youth Club. Youth Hostels are a way of staying in
wonderful places in England and Wales. You can stay in a castle, or
mansion, or farm, all very cheap!”

My mother liked to save money.

“I don’t think…”

“Read it! It’s a pony trekking holiday in
Wales.”

“Oh!”

I read the details and decided it did look rather
appealing.

“Now that you have your new job, you can save up and
go if you want. Your father and I will help.”

I mentioned it to Annabel, and she rather liked the
idea too. Auntie Jean and Uncle Frank had no objections, so we both
booked.

The description ran something like this:

Enjoy six days riding our native Welsh cobs and
ponies on treks across the picturesque Black Mountains. Enjoy the
Brecon Beacons with its wonderful views, interesting riding trails
and mountain streams. We cater for riders of all abilities.

We would be staying at one particular Youth Hostel
in the Brecon Beacons national park. On one of the days, we’d trek
to another Youth Hostel and stay there the night. It sounded
perfect.