The Country Nurse Remembers Read online

  The men used to take Crib to the Works early in the morning and just let him loose in the stables and other buildings. They would troop back for a full breakfast at about nine a.m., and when Crib saw the preparations for the return home (perhaps he was to have his breakfast, too) he would gather the dead rats by their tails and jauntily trot back with them. I’m not sure what Grandma thought of this: she would have smelled them even though she could not see them.

  These were good times.

  Fun, Floods and Peter the Pup

  I know that I must have forgotten many, many things that happened in the ‘before time’—that is, before my mother died—because I was so young. But I certainly have not forgotten the celebrations in May 1937 for the Coronation of King George VI. Mummy and Daddy took me to Victoria Park in Bath to see the fireworks and hear the bands playing. I remember lots of people laughing and shouting and the darkness being split by swooshing rockets. We walked along a wide path, watching and listening to all the fun. I had never seen so many people, and Mummy and Daddy held my hands very tightly as I skipped excitedly. I felt quite grown-up because I was out in the dark. I was told that we had a new king, which would not have meant much to me, but none of that mattered—it was all such fun. I remember the bright lights shining on the underside of the leaves on the trees that lined the road. I thought that fairyland must be like this. Then Daddy bought some sparklers from a stall, lit one and handed it to me, telling me to hold it well away from my face. All was well for a while, but as it began to burn down I became frightened and tried to flick it away. It stuck to my woolly glove and flicked straight into my face. I recall being worried that this would mean that we would have to go home. I wasn’t bothered about the stinging sensation on my cheek. It could not have been very bad because after the inevitable fuss and an inspection of my face, Daddy picked me up so that I could see better and we stayed on until Mummy became tired.

  We must have been living in Bath at that stage because a few days later, I think, when we went to visit Grandma and Grandpa and Flossie at Meadow View, we had to go in the car. It would have been about five miles. As we began to go down the lane bordering the river, we had quite a shock. It was flooded! There were some gnarled old willow trees growing on the river bank beside the lane and these seemed to me to be floating, the water was so high.

  Daddy got out and walked to where the lane disappeared into the water. He returned, saying that it was not too deep and we would manage it. To me, peering from the back window as we drove slowly through the water, it was all very exciting—almost as good as the Coronation. But it was over too soon. When we reached the dry part of the lane, we seemed to be hopping along in a series of leaps and jumps, but that, too, was fun. Much later I was told that Daddy was drying the brakes. We must have done the same thing on our return, or perhaps the water had retreated, as I have no memory of it at all.

  Daddy called his car ‘Tin Lizzy’. It was an Austin 7, black with nice-smelling leather upholstery. I loved the smell of Tin Lizzy—and even liked the smell of the petrol. (Petrol was less than an ‘old’ shilling a gallon at the time, just fivepence!) We had lots of outings in Tin Lizzy in the ‘before’ time—and in the ‘just after’ time.

  My father must have sold her soon after my mother died because the next car was a blue Ford, which we called ‘Bluebird’.

  While we still had Tin Lizzy, we used to take Grandma out for rides. I used to wonder why she liked this because she couldn’t see anything. I think she just liked the company. One day we took her with us for a picnic. We ate jam sandwiches and had tea out of a thermos. Suddenly, Grandma cried out and Mummy and Daddy rushed to her. A wasp, which had landed on the jam in her sandwich, had stung her face. Daddy quickly sucked the poison out, spitting it onto the ground while Mummy held Grandma’s hand. Whether we had to go home or how bad Grandma was, I don’t recall, but I was very impressed with Daddy’s quick action in sucking out the poison. Even today, this is still the quickest way to relieve the pain of a wasp or bee sting.

  There are many other stories surrounding Tin Lizzy, but whether I actually recall these or whether others have told me, I don’t know. Sometimes people can tell such vivid tales that you could easily think that you remember the incident yourself.

  Peter the Pup, however, was real enough. I can’t picture where we were living at the time—in the house by the stream or the house with the grass in front—and I do not even remember Daddy actually bringing Peter the Pup home. He was just there one day. A small, slim short-haired mongrel, I loved him as soon as I saw him.

  I once got cross when he knocked down my carefully built tower of bricks, but I was allowed to play with them on the table, and Peter the Pup was back in favour.

  We used to chase about outside, and up and down the stairs and in and out of the table legs. But we never took him with us when we went to see Grandma and Grandpa! ‘You don’t want to let Crib see him,’ Daddy said. ‘He might think he is a rat!’ Crib’s great prowess with rats and his bad reputation with cats might have extended to small dogs, it seemed.

  Peter the Pup had a bad habit of wandering off, and he wasted a lot of Daddy’s time, trying to locate him. Some local lads offered to help on several occasions, and Daddy gave them sixpence every time.

  One day I heard Daddy say, ‘I think those boys are enticing that dog away so as to get sixpence for bringing him back. I’ll have to see these scallywags.’ ‘Scallywag’ was a favourite word of Daddy’s.

  Peter the Pup did not go missing as often after that.

  We often took Peter the Pup on picnics with us, when we’d all sit on the ground on rugs. One hot day, Uncle Jake and Auntie Aggie and their four children were with us. They had one car, and Daddy took Grandma and Grandpa, Mummy and me.

  We pulled off the road into the shade of a sort of wood with big open spaces in a place called Burrington Combe. There was some joking because one of my cousins was picking some flowers and the grown-ups pretended that a policeman would come and tell him off. (Actually, the picking of wild flowers was allowed at that time.)

  At that moment, a policeman did appear, and, after a bit of banter, he ‘booked’ (Daddy’s word) Daddy and Uncle Jake for parking more than fifteen yards from the highway. I had never heard the road called ‘the highway’ before. It made it sound very grand, but it was only a lane. I was a bit scared, thinking that they would be sent to prison, but they all had a laugh with ‘that copper’, telling him about the flower-picking joke.

  About a week later, they were both fined, and Daddy said that it was very unfair as it was the first time that he had ever been ‘had up’. I can still remember the two cars, in the clearing with the dappled sunlight and lots of moss and green logs. We jumped off these and ran about playing hide-and-seek while the grown-ups did boring things like smoking and chatting.

  There is a warm feeling as I remember that day, partly because my two girl cousins were still children in the way that I was—wearing much the same type of clothes as I did, so I felt the same as them. When we were a few years older, after my mother’s death and things were very different, I felt silly and embarrassed when I was with them, as they were allowed to wear more grown-up clothes but I was still made to wear childish dresses, lace-up shoes and knickers with elastic round the legs. My hair was kept very short and straight, while they grew theirs and had plaits or loose curls.

  But my cousins had never had a dog and I had Peter the Pup! I loved that dog, but I have no idea what happened to him. Like so much in that time after Mummy died, no one was there to explain it to me. He was just not there anymore.

  The Shire Horses and Crib—Again

  Before mummy died, and afterwards, when I lived at Meadow View, I was able to see quite a lot of the horses. They were three big Shires: Punch, Charlie and Old Bob.

  Old Bob was a tall, black horse who was getting very old and no longer worked. He had been ‘retired’, said Daddy, and just stood about and munched grass. He was always ready to come to th
e fence for a carrot. Daddy used to lift me up to give this to him, as he was so tall.

  Punch and Charlie were brown and not quite so tall but had very big, lovely hairy feet. They still had to work. They made hay, they ploughed, they dragged various things about the Works and generally farmed the land that formed part of the whole waste-water treatment plant area. They were placid and friendly. They had a sort of stable for the cold weather and several fields for the summer.

  Before my mother died, Grandpa or Daddy used to take me along to the blacksmith. There was no farrier, apparently (although I would not have known what one was), so the blacksmith did the shoeing. This was usually the way for working horses in the countryside in those days: farriers were mostly used for racehorses or by rich people who rode horses about for fun.

  The blacksmith lived in the village on the hill, on the opposite side of the river, so there was a special ferry to take the horses across the water. It was a big, old flat-bottomed, almost square, sort of boat—almost like a floating bridge. It was made of old planks that had the scuff marks of generations of horses’ hooves. One end could be let down to form a ramp from the bank for the horses to board. There was no engine, and one of the chaps usually poled it across a shallow part of the river and then walked the horse up through the fields to the forge. Daddy would drive us up there by road. It was a very long way round, as we had to go to the next village before there was a bridge, or all the way into Bath in the other direction. This is why there was a horse ferry.

  I loved the forge. It was always warm, with its fire and the bellows. Then there were all the things that the blacksmith made apart from horseshoes, such as gates and fancy things for rich people’s gardens. He was a big man with a very bushy black beard, a red face and a loud, gurgling laugh. He always gave me a sweet from the blackest hands that I ever saw, but I was told that they were not really dirty: it was just the soot from the fire. There was a sort of stone seat against the wall, and I would be told to sit there and watch.

  The horse, perhaps Punch, would be led in. Mr. Blacksmith would talk to him and pat his neck and then lift his feet one at a time, take off the old shoes and scrape the hooves. ‘Paring the hooves’, I was told. Then the blacksmith would work the bellows with one foot, while making the new shoe, or altering the old one. The shoe would be red hot—I could feel the heat from my seat by the wall—and then there would be much hissing and steam (or perhaps it was smoke), and the shoe would be placed against the hoof that Punch so quietly offered. I took a lot of convincing that the hot shoe did not hurt him as it was pressed onto his hoof. Then the nails, each one held in the blacksmith’s mouth, were banged in. Again, I winced with every bang until I was shown that the horse did not feel any pain because the hoof was ‘dead’ just like my fingernails.

  During all this, there was much grown-up talk about the weather, something called ‘the corporation’ and something else called ‘income tax’. I don’t know why I remember little things like that, for I had no idea what it was all about: I just sat and watched and was happy. I didn’t know that I should have treasured those times—as they would stop all too soon.

  When the shoeing was done, Daddy and I would go into the house for a cup of tea with Mrs. Blacksmith while ‘the chap’ took Punch back across the fields to the horse ferry and across the river in his new shoes.

  Just as my days of visiting the blacksmith stopped, so too did those of the heavy horse. Thankfully, we were behind the times and carried on using our horses for years, because when the war came and people had problems getting fuel for tractors and lorries, many people wished that they had kept their animals.

  Old Bob, however, must have reached the end of his life at about the beginning of the war. Grandpa and Daddy decided that it was best to have him put to sleep, and the vet was sent for with his gun. I remember Daddy had tears in his eyes as he told me that the old fellow had gone. I was very sad too and cried at the thought that I would not see Old Bob again.

  Punch and Charlie lived into the time of the war and beyond, though I do not remember what happened to them (I had probably left home by the time their end came).

  So the shoeing at the blacksmith went on for some years, but later on I was not allowed to go to the forge. Why? Like so much else, I don’t know.

  I missed the times with Daddy, and I missed Punch and Charlie.

  I think Crib, however, was my favourite animal. But how he hated cats! To him, they were probably just another sort of rat or rabbit, and everyone praised him for catching those. And because of where we lived—with few neighbours and surrounded by fields with haystacks (and haystacks attract mice and cats love to catch mice …)—there were quite a few semi-feral cats around, in addition to some pet cats belonging to a nearby farm.

  While Mummy was still with us and we stayed at Meadow View, I would sometimes wake early to hear Daddy in the garden as he dug yet another grave to bury someone’s cat before they missed it. I know now that none of these cats were real pets, but I worried then in case someone was sad. But Daddy was protecting Crib from irate farmers, I think.

  There was one story about Crib that was told for years. Daddy smoked in those days and used to walk up the lane with Crib to have a last smoke before bedtime. One night, a small black dog appeared from our neighbour’s wooden bungalow (they didn’t have a dog—perhaps someone was visiting with this Scottie). Crib saw him and gave chase. He caught him in no time and started to bite him round the neck. Daddy said ‘he meant business’. There was a lot of snarling and growling, he said, and then Crib would not let go. Daddy hauled him back, even kicked him—he did everything to try to separate the two fighting dogs.

  ‘The little ’un didn’t stand a chance,’ said Daddy.

  Eventually, he caught them both by the scruff of their necks and, with his big, strong arms, swung them round and round, releasing them when they were high enough to sail over the hedge into the field with the haystacks.

  ‘Crib is bound to let go as they land,’ he thought.

  But Crib did not let go. Daddy was amazed to hear the snarling continue on the other side of the hedge. He pushed his way through and again attempted to part them by getting between them—a dangerous thing to do! He was bitten and shouted in pain. Immediately, Crib let the small dog go and skulked on his tummy towards Daddy because he thought he had bitten his master. Luckily, it was the other dog that had bitten, and the wound was not as deep as it would have been had Crib’s big teeth done the damage. The little dog ran off, a bit bloodied but not badly hurt.

  Daddy wore a large bandage for several days, and Crib was tied up at the kennel until the little dog and his owners left. I used to love hearing this story, imagining Daddy swinging the two dogs round and round at shoulder height and then letting them sail over the hedge.

  Understanding

  All these good times changed on the day that my father told me of my mother’s death.

  We were at the home of my grandmother and grandfather Radford, Mummy’s parents. My father took me into the hallway (I think there were people in the parlour) and told me while we sat on the plush red-carpeted stairs. I already knew that something was wrong because Grandmother had red eyes and Grandfather had suddenly seemed to shrink. Father held me tightly after he told me about Mummy ‘going to see Jesus’. It was lovely to have him cuddling me, but I was crying and I wanted to blow my nose, so I had to wriggle away to get my hankie. I was full of questions: ‘Is she coming back?’, ‘Can we go to meet her?’, ‘Why?’, ‘How long?’ … But because I voiced none of these my father thought that I understood. He went back to the adults, and Grandmother called me into the kitchen to have my tea. So far as they were concerned, I had been told and that was that.

  In the kitchen, another person whom I called Aunt but who was not a ‘real’ aunt put bread and butter before me, and as she stroked my hair she started to cry. She talked to me, but I wished she wouldn’t. Later I learned that she was totally deaf, which explains why she spoke with such a l
oud voice and why it was often hard for me to understand her. I thought she was kind, but I always worried in case I seemed rude. On this occasion, Grandmother came in and instructed her: ‘Dry your eyes and pull yourself together.’

  My aunt—I think her name was Daphne—immediately ran from the room and left me with Grandmother. She talked to me about my tea, my toys and so on in her clear, kind but rather clipped tones. The rest of the day, in fact the next few days, was a blur. I just remember missing Mummy.

  I gradually came to realise that she was dead, dead, dead.

  The blur must have lasted through the funeral, but no one told me that there was one. I just stayed with Grandmother, played with my dolls and ate my food, and was probably taken for walks in the park.

  Then suddenly I became a pupil at a ‘dame school’ on the outskirts of Bath. It was not far from Grandmother’s house, so she took me there each day. The school was in a big Victorian house and was run by two elderly ladies. Or perhaps they were only 30 or so; they just seemed old to me. It was rather posh, so I think it was Grandmother’s choice, and I always felt that Daddy did not really approve of the school. Perhaps his in-laws were paying for it. I don’t remember anything specific but just a certain grim look on his face on the occasions that he delivered or collected me.

  I do remember being rather unhappy at first, as I started there so soon after losing my mother, but I made friends with two sisters, who must have been twins, who mothered me. There were only about six little girls, all aged within a few years of my five years old, but I remember the two sisters were eight. They had just obtained something called a scholarship to another school and seemed very grand and grown-up to me. I was comforted by their friendship.