One Young Fool in Dorset (3 page)

“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 residential 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

M
y 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 then, 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.