The Rain Before it Falls (7 page)

They were coming to find us.

Picture number four: Warden Farm itself.

I am guessing – from the colours, and the quality of the image – that this photograph was taken some time in the 1950s, more than a decade after the events I’m talking about. But the house did not change, in the intervening years.

It’s a good picture, one which captures the house just as I remember it: handsome, solid, impressive. There are three storeys, in red brick, although most of the brickwork, on the first two storeys, can barely be glimpsed beneath the thick tendrils of ivy coiled and tangled around the sash windows. The house was built in the 1830s, and in style, as this picture shows, it was symmetrical and rather plain. On the ground floor you have a mock-Grecian portico flanked by two arched windows of the same height; above that, on the first floor, are three rectangular sash windows, and above them, on the second floor, three smaller, square windows. That’s the main body of the building. Then, on either side, continuing the symmetry, two further rooms were added at ground-floor level, some time later. Both, again, have large arched and latticed windows, surrounded by dense, dark green ivy. This green is slightly darker than the green of the lawn, but not as dark as the shadows cast upon the lawn by the ancient and massive oak tree which grew at the front of the house. The branches of this tree overhang the front of the picture – the photographer must have been standing underneath the tree itself – and obscure the windows on the top floor of the house.

Two of these top-floor windows belonged to the playroom. It was a wide, low-ceilinged attic room, equipped with dolls and tin soldiers and board games which even then were in a state of some decrepitude. There was a ping-pong table, too, and an elaborate train set, laid out on a table top amidst a papier mâché landscape upon which someone, at some time, must have lavished a fair amount of energy. All of these things held a certain fascination. But no attempt had ever been made to make the room welcoming. There were no bookshelves, and the wallpaper was faded and peeling, and no fire ever seemed to be burning in the grate. For this reason, it was rarely visited. The boys never came up here, and Beatrix and I only seldom. Our domain was next door, in the crooked, oddly shaped bedroom, tucked among the eaves. Aunt Ivy and Uncle Owen slept on the first floor: so did their two sons. Their rooms were airy, regular, full of a sense of space. Ours was gloomy and enigmatic. The roof sloped at wild, erratic angles and my own bed was wedged into a tiny alcove that made it invisible from most parts of the room. I was completely screened off from the window, from the warmth of the morning sun and, at night, from the moonlight in which Beatrix would bathe as she drifted in and out of sleep. Mine was a realm of ever deeper and darker shadows.

You would think that I would have a clear recollection of what happened in the wake of our escape attempt, but I don’t. It is my suspicion, now, that Ivy and Owen did not even tell my parents about it. Certainly, many years later, when I mentioned to my mother the night that Beatrix and I had attempted to run away from Warden Farm and walk all the way to Birmingham, she said it was the first she had heard of it. Were we even punished, in any way? I stayed at the farmhouse for another six months, at least, and in that time I don’t remember any of the repercussions one might have expected: no being locked in our bedroom, or having to live on bread and dripping for a week; nothing worse, in fact, than a mild dressing-down from Aunt Ivy the next morning, couched not so much in terms of reproof as tremulous concern for our own safety and happiness.

And yet she did not forget the incident, or indeed forgive it. Of course, the whole village must have talked about it, for some time afterwards, and that must have embarrassed her. But I think that Ivy and Owen were enraged, more than that, by the sheer
inconvenience
to which we had put them that night. Beatrix’s duty, you see, was to remain invisible, as was mine, for that matter, once I had arrived at the house. Ivy’s world revolved around herself, around her position in the village, around her social life, her bridge and tennis, and also, more than any of these, around her beloved sons and dogs. Beatrix did not show up on her radar. That is what Beatrix must have meant, I think, when she told me that her mother was ‘cruel to her’. Ivy’s was the cruelty of indifference.

Perhaps that makes what your grandmother went through as a child seem rather trivial. Certainly there are children, all over the world, who experience much, much worse things at the hands of their parents: naturally, I am aware of that. Even so, it seems to me important – crucially important – that one should never underestimate what it must feel like to know that you are not wanted by your mother. By your mother, of all people – the very person who brought you into existence! Such knowledge eats away at your sense of self-worth, and destroys the very foundations of your being. It is very hard to be a whole person, after that.

Only occasionally did it appear to me that Ivy was not just indifferent towards Beatrix but actually hated her. There is one incident, in particular, that stays in my mind. It was only a small thing, but it has stayed with me, over the years. It concerned a dog called Bonaparte. The family had many dogs, as I have said. There were three full-grown ones while I was there, three over-affectionate Springer spaniels. I soon came to love them, especially a Welsh Springer called Ambrose, who was also Beatrix’s favourite. He had great intelligence, and great loyalty – you can’t ask for much more than that, in an animal or even a human being. But Ivy for some reason was far more interested in Bonaparte. He was a black, wire-haired toy poodle, one of the most unattractive breeds. He was very stupid, and unreliable, but full of energy – I suppose that could be said of him at least. If Ivy herself was not present, he could be guaranteed to scamper around in a kind of directionless frenzy, always chasing imaginary objects, in a perpetual state of neurotic excitement. It was exhausting trying to keep him on a lead. But indoors, with Ivy for company, he only ever wanted to sit at her feet or, preferably, on her lap. He would lie there for hours, staring up at her with the glaze of unconditional love in his little round eyes. Ivy would stroke his hair and feed him little favours from her box of Cadbury’s chocolates (of which she seemed to have an inexhaustible supply, even during wartime).

Now Beatrix, by and large, kept well away from this animal. It was not that she wanted nothing to do with him, but that he wanted nothing to do with her. She would have liked nothing more than to pet him, I imagine, if only because it would have made her feel closer to her mother and might have won her approval. But Bonaparte, perhaps in imitation of his beloved mistress, treated Beatrix with utter disdain. The only exceptions to this rule were at meal times, when he would occasionally deign to interest himself in some little titbit that she might offer him from her plate. The incident that I am thinking of took place, I believe, in the spring of 1942, towards the end of my stay at Warden Farm. The whole family was having dinner in the kitchen. The cook had roasted two large chickens, and Beatrix broke off a piece of one wing and tossed it to Bonaparte, who as usual was crouched beneath the table, his tongue hanging out greedily. Well, after chewing on the wing for a few seconds, he began to make the most horrific noises: a kind of anguished cough, from somewhere deep in his body, accompanied at the same time by a fearsome whine. It was obvious that a small bone had become lodged in his throat and he was choking. For a few seconds everyone just stared at him in horror. Then Aunt Ivy began to wail, her voice rising to a scream, to a pitch I had never heard before and would never have believed her capable of; no words were emerging and she was not doing anything as practical as asking someone to intervene, but all the same, Beatrix leaped forward, threw herself at Bonaparte, who was squatting in the middle of the room by now, and seized him by the jaw, attempting to force his mouth open. This didn’t seem to do any good at all. In fact, Bonaparte’s coughing and whining became even more distressed, until Ivy recovered her power of speech and screeched at her daughter something that sounded like, ‘Stop that, you fool! You’re strangling him, you’re strangling him!’, at which point Raymond (inevitably) leaped to his feet, grabbed the wretched creature from Beatrix’s arms, and did…
something,
I don’t know exactly what – something that involved an almighty slap on the back – the canine equivalent of the Heimlich manoeuvre, I suppose – so that the little bone
shot
out of the dog’s mouth and landed on the other side of the kitchen floor.

The crisis had passed. Momentarily. Bonaparte was perfectly all right, of course. It was Ivy who had to be carried upstairs (I’m not exaggerating – Raymond and Owen took one end each) and was not seen afterwards for about two days, except by Beatrix. Yes, the poor girl received a maternal summons the next day. We were playing in the caravan together, at the time, and together we trooped into the house and up the stairs to Ivy’s bedroom, but Beatrix went in alone, while I lurked outside, my ear at the door. What I heard was very disturbing. It was not the words that disturbed me so much – indeed, I could hardly hear any of them – but Ivy’s tone of voice. She didn’t raise it, not at all. If she had, it might have been less upsetting. Throughout the five minutes or so that Beatrix was inside, she spoke in a low monotone which I can only describe – trying to choose my words carefully, here, without exaggeration – as murderous. I have never forgotten the controlled, deadly edge in her voice as she practically accused Beatrix (this was what I was told afterwards) of trying to kill the adored poodle – who lay, needless to say, stretched out across her feet at the bottom of the bed all this time, panting and hot with devotion. At the end of Ivy’s monologue there was a curious noise. Not so much a slap, exactly, as a sudden
whooshing
sound, followed by a kind of snap, as if a bone had been wrenched out of shape, and then a scream of distress from Beatrix. After that there was a long period of intense silence. When Beatrix finally emerged, she was nursing her wrist, and her eyes were red and her cheeks grimy with tears. We went up to the playroom together, and after a while I asked her what had happened, but she never told me. She just sat there in silence, rubbing her wrist, but to me what has always been horrible about this episode is not the thought of what Ivy might have done to her, but the way that she spoke. It was the first time I had ever heard a mother speaking to her child in a voice so icy with hate. Sadly, it was not to be the last.

The story of Bonaparte did not have a happy conclusion. In fact it had a rather odd, not to say baffling conclusion. I shall explain what I mean by that shortly. In the meantime, I realize that I have digressed from my task of describing this photograph. Let me return to it.

The little brick wall which ran the length of the lawn, at a height of about eighteen inches, dividing it into two different levels, is what is known as a ha-ha. Whoever took this photograph was standing on the lower level, adopting a deferential position towards the house, which therefore looms over the viewer, commanding respect. But because of the angle at which the picture was taken, the house’s gaze is directed obliquely, away from the camera and into the distance. The viewer remains insignificant, beneath notice, and Warden Farm instead directs its attention proudly, unruffled, over the lawns and pastures which lie obediently at its feet. Although I do not remember the house being quite as
unfriendly
as it appears here, I suppose that this chimes, figuratively speaking, with what I have been telling you about Aunt Ivy and Uncle Owen and their attitude towards Beatrix and myself. Beneath the cold glaze of their indifference Beatrix and I became allies, sisters, and the bond between us was not to be severed for a long, long time. Oh, there were to be many interruptions, many periods of separation, but they made no material difference. I always knew that would be the case. For this reason, there was sadness, but no sense of finality, when the time came to say goodbye to her, on the day the telephone rang in the stone-flagged hallway, and minutes later I found myself recalled to my parents’ house – as abruptly and as arbitrarily, it seemed to me, as I had first been sent away from it all those months before.

The fifth picture for you now, Imogen. A winter scene. The recreation ground at Row Heath, in Bournville, some time in the bitterly cold early months of 1945.

I find this a hard photograph to look at. It was taken by my father, with his box camera, one Sunday afternoon. The pool which stands at the centre of the park has frozen over, and dozens of people are skating on it. In the foreground, sporting thick coats and woollen hats, looking straight into the camera, stand two figures: myself, aged eleven, and Beatrix, aged fourteen. Beatrix is holding a dog lead in her left hand, and at the end of it, sitting impatiently at her feet, is Bonaparte. Both girls are smiling, broadly and happily, with no intimation of the disaster that is about to befall them.

My father could take a good photograph: this one has been composed quite carefully. There are four distinct ‘layers’ to the picture, if that is the correct term, and I shall try to describe them to you one by one. First of all, in the far background, beneath a white, snow-heavy sky, you have the distant outline of the pavilion. This building loomed large in my youth: it was here that dances were held – out on the terrace in the summer, if the weather was kind – and these rather terrifying but exhilarating events used to form the backbone of what little I had in the way of a social life. It was a stylish black and white building, with high arches framing its tall French windows. You can see three of them in this picture: the remainder are obscured by trees, as is the van selling mugs of hot chocolate which was permanently stationed beside the pavilion, and the small twin bandstands which stood on the lawn beneath the terrace. It’s a shame those aren’t in the photograph. They would have looked festive and eccentric in the snow.