My mother collected colorful old china plates and ornaments, bought for a penny or two as they went from farm to farm in Kent, stopping in junk shops and flea markets. She would hang her treasures around the caravan and in the tent, decorations to make the place more like home. One summer’s morning, it was getting late and my mother was languishing in bed. She hated getting up early, and it was probably a Sunday. My father, an early riser, had already been out with Bess and was cooking breakfast. He went into the tent and said, “Time to get up, Joyce.”
But she turned over and ignored him.
He went out, came back a little while later, and tried again.
She told him to get lost.
He tried once more, anxious to enjoy the best of the day. It was getting nigh on half past ten, after all.
She gave him the two-finger sign that in Britain means, “F-off.”
He crept outside, returning with a paraffin can, and said, “If you don’t get up, I’m going to burn you out of bed.”
She laughed.
So he began slopping paraffin around the bottom of the mattress.
She laughed again. “You wouldn’t dare,” she said.
Oh, but that’s the thing. My dad would dare. And he did—though he thought, when he lit the match, that there would just be a little fire, enough to scare her, and then he’d put it out. But the bed erupted, burning rapidly with flames almost to the ceiling. My mother rushed from the tent while my father extinguished the blaze, but she came back with a sledgehammer and chased Dad around the outside of the caravan until he and Bess ran off into the woods. Such was her temper that she lifted the sledgehammer and smashed every single plate she’d collected and hung with care in that tent. Then she sat down and laughed until she hurt. My father came back and they made breakfast together while working out what to do about the scorched mattress.
The truth of the matter is that my mother was always a creature of highs and lows. She had compassion and kindness, humor and a good line in hugs. But she had a temper and a cutting wit to go with it, a devastating combination if she had you in her sights and let loose a volley. If she wanted to burn you, she never had to pick up a can of paraffin, or light a match.
I’m not sure when Mum and Dad moved from the caravan into what they always referred to as “the little black hut”—but I know from their stories that it was uncomfortable, cold, damp and brought them to the edge of despair one Christmastime. I suspect their vardo had to be sold, or perhaps another traveler handed them an amount of folding money they could not ignore. Since they were now homeless, the farmer offered them a small wooden hut with no insulation. It was about twelve feet by twelve feet at most, but my father found some old planks and made a divider so there was a living space and a sleeping space. He put in a pot-bellied stove he’d found on a dump, and with some end-of-line wallpaper—he didn’t need more than one or two rolls —he made their new abode a little more pleasing. Despite the fact that it was only a hut, Dad did his best work, so no one could see where one length of wallpaper met the next, and the hut was kept spotless.
Even with the stove going full blast, the chill air would go right through them as winter set in. Life was far from “kushti”—the Romany word for “good” or “lovely.” At this point, after more than three years of farm living, my mother was down to a couple of dresses, a pair of men’s trousers worn on the farm and held up with a belt of string, her jacket and a pair of rubber boots.
“I was always afraid to take my feet out of my boots because they’d stink,” said Mum, recounting life in the hut.
Christmas came in with a severe cold snap that first year in the hut. Snow was on the ground and a wet vapor seemed to envelop every ounce of space. As they sat at the tiny table eating a meal that didn’t amount to much, my mother burst into tears.
“If I had the money,” she said, “I’d go back to London.”
“And if I had the money”—said my father, pushing aside his plate—“I’d bloody well send you back there.”
It was at that low point as my mother wept even more, that they heard a car in the distance. They opened the door and looked along the farm track through the driving snow. It was Auntie Dot and Uncle Pete in their small car, slowly making their way over the ruts and puddles, fishtailing to a halt outside the hut. Mum ran into her older sister’s arms.
“Come on, Joyce,” said the ever-doughty Auntie Dot, pushing my mother away. “Pull yourself together—we’ve come for Christmas.”
Uncle Pete brought in a box of food and soon a new festive feast was on the table.
“It turned out to be one of the best Christmases ever,” said Mum. “We had everything we needed, just the four of us.”
It was on one of our long walks on a summer evening when I was twelve and John eight that we ambled along the track toward Forge Farm. Mum and Dad were pointing out landmarks from the early years of their married life, when we came to an old dilapidated hut where the farm dogs were kept. Dad approached the hut, the dogs barking and growling as he came closer. He held up his hand as he reached the half-door and looked in, rendering the dogs silent, sitting on haunches and staring up at him as if waiting for his next command. Dogs always paid attention to my father, probably because he expected nothing less of them.
“Well, look at this, Joyce,” said Dad.
Reaching into the hut, Dad tore a strip of wallpaper from the slats of wood and held it up for us to see. I took the paper from his fingers and stared at the pattern of trellised red roses. My father reclaimed the paper from me, scrunching it up and throwing it back into the hut.
“Never be wed to the past, love,” he said. “Never be wed to the past.”
My parents smiled at each other, and we walked on.
7
Moving Back the Veils
When I was a child I used to have a recurring dream that came to me as if it were an otherworldly visitation. The dream became less frequent as I entered my teen years, though to this day I have occasionally woken in the night in the midst of that same dream. The dream begins as I enter what at first seems like a tunnel, but is really a series of arches—it’s akin to an edifice constructed for a deity, although sometimes it’s like being in a long tent, a never-ending marquee. Before me are a series of drapes made from thin gossamer-like fabric hung on either side of the tunnel. The ground is not firm, but instead strewn with vibrant silk cloths. I’m searching for something, or I’m on a journey—it feels like some sort of quest. I touch first one of those drapes, pushing it aside to pass through, then the other, and then another—from right to left I am pressing aside veil after veil, almost as if I am swimming through silk. I know I will keep going in this way until I arrive—but I never get to the end and I don’t find what I’m looking for. I have seen such arches in places where the Moors left their mark—in Portugal, Morocco, Gibraltar, Spain—and I have wondered if I might find the dream’s purpose in the Middle East. In Oman, in the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, I stepped into a corridor of arches and had to take a photograph—I felt almost as if I were walking into my dream. Now I find that writing memoir is so much like that quest into the tunnel of veils, drawing back one after the other, peeling back the years as I wonder, “Is this how it happened?” “Is this how I felt?” And more recently, “Have I clutched that memory to my heart long past a time when it should have been cast aside?” I’ll let that thought sit for now, because it’s time to go to Black Bush Cottage, a tied dwelling on Forge Farm, near Goudhurst in Kent. It’s the address listed on my birth certificate.
It is only since beginning to write this memoir that I’ve wondered how my parents thought they could bring a newborn babe home to that tiny hut. There was barely enough room for them, let alone a growing child. My mother had already suffered a miscarriage a year earlier—and no, there was no hospital, no visit to the doctor. It was just what happened, and like many women in similar circumstances
before her and to follow, she had the miscarriage and got on with what came next—though in later life she talked about that lost child, whom she identified as a tiny, tiny boy.
When the farmer learned that Mum was “expecting,” he came to the hut to speak to my parents. “This is no place to bring a baby,” he told them, in no uncertain terms. He offered them Black Bush Cottage, a tied dwelling that had just become available—accommodation tied to the job and the land, as had been the way of farming for centuries. My father was given the job of managing the livestock in place of a retiring worker, and my mother’s bookkeeping responsibilities soon encompassed all four farms under the farmer’s tenancy.
Imagine this—a thirteenth-century cottage set on a hill above the farm it served, with the railway line running along the edge of the property, surrounded by fields and woodland. This is the world I was born into. My mother was admitted to the maternity ward at Pembury Hospital before she began her long labor and my father went back to work having accompanied her there on the bus. This was the same hospital I would be rushed to some fifteen months later, screaming as my skin peeled away from my body.
At about four o’clock on a spring morning, the farmer woke my father by throwing stones up at the bedroom window of Black Bush Cottage, and when my Dad, still with sleep-filled eyes, threw open the window and looked down, the farmer shouted up to him.
“You’ve got a girl, Albert. The hospital just phoned. You’d better get down to the bus.”
As the telling goes, when he walked into the ward the nurses knew exactly whose father he was. The very same thing happened when Dad was admitted to the Conquest Hospital in Hastings, following a relapse during his final illness. I arrived at the nurses’ station and was about to ask where I could find Mr. Winspear—he’d been moved to another room that morning—but before I could speak, the nurse said, “Well, no prizes for guessing who you’re here to see—Albert’s in a room along the corridor, to the right.” It’s a memory I hold close to my heart.
Black Bush Cottage had no electricity, no indoor WC, no bathtub and certainly no shower. There was an “earth closet” at the end of the garden, which meant my father had to dig a new trench on a regular basis, then move the shed-like structure atop the trench, along with the wooden “throne” inside. When that was done, the old trench was filled in. That is how these things worked. To compare, my cousins in London all had upstairs bathrooms and indoor toilets, plus hot and cold running water, though my cousin Sue can remember the hissing of gas lamps in the flat where they lived when she was a child. Our water was heated in a cauldron atop an ancient black cast-iron stove and poured into a tin bath set in front of the fire. Lighting was by oil lamps.
As I grew from a baby to a toddler, the farm was my whole world. I would run on unsteady legs into the garden each morning to choose my breakfast—I was a small child who knew exactly where to look for a big brown egg. My mother continued to keep the farm accounts in good order, and while Dad loved his work in charge of livestock, at certain times of year it was all hands on deck to bring in the harvest, chiefly hops, apples and barley.
What do I remember about Black Bush Cottage, apart from the accident and that frustrating moment with the sparrow? I remember going with my mother to meet my father as he came across the fields from work during the lighter months. I remember seeing his silhouette crest the hill by the two big plane trees and then his arms stretch out ready for me to run to him.
Years later, long after I’d emigrated to the United States, I was staying with my parents at their home in Sussex. Having spent the afternoon in a neighboring village visiting a friend, I had to return my rental car to the local garage. I’d called my mother to let her know that I would walk home across the fields, declining her offer to pick me up. In truth, I wanted this walk alone, because the following day I would be boarding a flight bound for San Francisco.
It was late afternoon on a warm May day as I set off, taking the path that led from the road, through a wood, then onto the farmland that ran close to my parents’ house. I had just leaped over the stile from one field to another when I saw my father in the distance walking to meet me. As he caught sight of me, he held out his arms wide, and in that moment I felt my heart swell. I began to run, waving to him, and as I caught up and put my arm through his, he spoke my name—his special name for me, the only one he ever used. There are times when I would give anything to hear his voice say my name just once more.
Later, I told a friend about that day, and he said, “Your dad gave you a moment, Jack—one of those very special moments.”
Much of the fuel for the stove at Black Bush Cottage came from the railway lines. We’d go for walks along the tracks whenever our supplies of coal ran low. Buckets in hand—mine was a small rubber pail—we’d collect coal dropped from the steam trains as they passed. Later, after my mother had saved a good part of the forest from a fire sparked by a train, not only was she given a reward of fifty pounds for her swift action in raising the alarm—akin to winning the lottery when set against their income—but from then on, as trains passed the house the engineer would throw a bag of coal over the fence at the bottom of the long, steep garden. The railway’s management was very grateful not to have to forfeit a large sum in compensation to the landowners, so, heated by Welsh boiler fuel powerful enough to drive a steam engine up a hill, the cottage was always toasty to the point of tropical.
Our rural idyll, this world where I chose my own egg for breakfast, where I would toddle boldly through a field of cattle, swatting them away with my little hand so I could pass, where I ran into my father’s arms as he came over the hill by the plane trees, came to an abrupt end. I was about two years old when my parents arrived at the sudden decision to move from Kent back to London. They made the journey in their old car—probably another Morris, and probably a model from, oh, I think 1937. My dad liked a Morris. This one was dark red with a big radiator at the front and running boards along each side. If they had kept it, they would have made a fortune loaning it out for gangster movies. This Morris had a string bag on the underside of the roof where you could store additional luggage during the journey—a blanket, or your picnic. The root cause of that pilgrimage back to London, late at night, was a blazing row my father had had with the farmer. “I’ve had enough,” he said, “we’re going back to London.” So, like the Beverly Hillbillies, they packed up the car with the belongings they could move, and set off late at night.
Dad ran every traffic light because the car had no brakes—this was the car he had bought after my accident because I had almost died for want of immediate transport. When we arrived at my grandmother’s house, my mother set me on the ground and I keeled over. She had been gripping my little legs so tight that she had cut off the blood supply to my feet. Mind you, she had left all the furniture behind, everything they owned except clothing and immediate necessities. Those were the days when my father—my kind, calm father—could still be a bit hot-headed when asserting his independence. In later years, I asked my mother about that evening, when she’d left the cottage she had come to love. She just shrugged and said, “Well, it was a laugh, really.” In truth, I don’t think it was a laugh, because I think going back to London was the last thing she wanted.
Living in an urban area turned me into a child who screamed with joy and relief as soon as my mother came home from work and took me straight to the small park close to my grandparents’ house. I would douse my head in the water fountain and run around like a banshee, screaming inside and outside with the sheer frustration of being where there were no green fields, only old bombsites and noise, my pent-up country girl energy so at odds with what had come to pass. Both my parents knew this and it was my mother who finally called the farmer—at this point she was once again working for the government telephone exchanges in London, so making the odd personal telephone call wasn’t out of the question.
In addition to the fact that neither parent was
happy living in London—and with my father’s parents because accommodation for a young family was still hard to find—two things happened to hasten their departure. The first involved me and my grandfather—Jack Winspear, my namesake.
My father and mother left for work early in the morning, and I was left with my grandparents until my mother came home at about five o’clock. I know my mother hated leaving me, because as soon as she left the house she would walk to the confectioners on the corner and buy me a Milkybar, a small bar of white chocolate, or perhaps a handful of sweets, and as she passed the house again on the way to the bus stop, she would push the treats through the letterbox for me to catch. The minute the door closed behind her in the morning, I would sit underneath that letter box, my hands cupped and at the ready. She always made sure I could touch her fingers as she called out, “I love you” before going on her way.
On this day, after we’d had lunch, I asked my grandmother if I could leave the table. As soon as she nodded, I clambered down from my chair and began running around and around the table, squealing and then screaming as I waved my doll in the air. She was my favorite, not really a doll but a stuffed toy with a soft red body and a head made of some sort of hard material onto which was painted a face, with dark eyes, long lashes and a sweet red tulip mouth. Round and round I went, and I remember not being able to stop, even though I saw Grandad becoming agitated, his whole body shaking while his eyes widened and began to water. Then it happened. He grabbed the knife from his plate, pulled the doll from my hand and repeatedly stabbed her in the forehead, uttering a cry that seemed to come from deep inside his body. Then he threw her along the passageway that led to the front door.
I remember running to pick up the doll, turning to look at him, and feeling a great weight in my chest. I wanted to go to him, throw my arms around him and take away the pain, because that’s what I could see—someone I loved in pain. My grandmother acted quickly, taking my hand to lead me into the kitchen, where she opened a box of Elastoplast and made much of poking the white stuffing back into the doll and then sticking the adhesive patch across her forehead to make her “all better.” Then she returned to my weeping grandfather, who I so wanted to see all better.
This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing Page 7