I began to collect the things I’d need for my writer’s room. Fred Cooke gave me the old ledger style desk that his daughter, Lyn, had outgrown, and I snagged a chair from the dining room, which was fine because the only time we sat down at the table was at Christmas or when all the family came to visit and the kids were sequestered in there to eat their Sunday dinner with the door closed so the adults could talk in peace. Mrs. Croft gave me an ancient anglepoise lamp with an ornate copper shade that sent a shock through my arm the first time I plugged it in. Soon I was lobbying for a typewriter, and by the Christmas of my ninth year, Mum had saved enough of her Kensitas cigarette coupons to get me the blue-and-white Petite Junior Typewriter, designed especially for children. I would sit at that desk, set a cup of tea to my right, casually drape a cardigan across the back of the chair—just like the writer who lived by the bus stop in Pembury had done. I’d slip a sheet of paper into the platen, zing it back to the paragraph stop, and begin to tap away. Mum had been teaching me to touch-type.
I didn’t say anything more about my plans to become a writer—I knew I’d just get a lot of talk about second strings to my bow—though it was clear I loved composition at school, where we wrote our essays about what we’d done over the weekend, or were tasked with making up a story. I could get lost in books to the extent that I would hide so my mother couldn’t find me when I was deep into a novel—if she saw me, she would have a job for me. I had three favorite places to hide. One was in the big lilac tree outside the back door of the house, though that only worked in summer when the tree was in full leaf and blossom. My memory of Little Women, in particular, is laced with the sweet fragrance of lilac. I remember my mother coming to the back door to call me in, and watching her become more frustrated at my non-appearance.
“Jackie! Jackie! I’ve got a job for you.” Pause. “Jackie—I know you’re somewhere with your nose in a book. Where are you? If you don’t come in, I’m going to find you, and then you’ll know all about it.”
But I was already a Jo March and on that day I just kept very still and did not turn another page until she’d gone indoors, complaining to herself.
Another place was a space at the top of the stairs that led from the kitchen to the dining room. There was one shelf in that space, which was visible if the door to the dining room—to the left of the staircase—was closed. But if that door was open, you wouldn’t know the space was even there. I could snuggle into the cavern under the shelf, draw the door that led into the dining room back on itself and no one would guess I was tucked away in the small secret place. Not only could I read in peace, leaning to take advantage of light coming through the bannister from the kitchen, but I could listen to all manner of conversations, especially if someone had dropped by, a neighbor or someone my dad worked for.
Perhaps the darkest of my secret places was the hole in the wide privet hedge at the bottom of the garden. I could literally crawl inside the hedge and no one would see me there. Except the spiders, so I dragged in an old sack to sit on, leaning to one side to catch the shaft of sunlight illuminating the pages. That’s how I met the girl who was visiting her grandmother, who lived in the large house on the other side of the hedge. The girl’s name was Clarissa and we became great friends, playing together every time she came to stay with her grandmother—Clarissa’s father was in the army overseas, so she and her brother were at boarding school in England. They would come home to the grandmother’s house during school holidays and sometimes at weekends. Her grandfather lived in Ceylon—now Sri Lanka—managing the family’s tea plantation. I loved visiting Clarissa’s grandmother’s house, not least because she had a library—or at least shelves and shelves of books. One day I was leafing through the collection, waiting for Clarissa to come downstairs—she’d been sent to change into her old clothes as we were going down to the woods to play. Her grandmother allowed me to look at the books because she knew I handled them with care. When I picked up a book by Vita Sackville-West I read the inscription inside, which was in a firm hand and clearly indicated that this book was a personal gift from “Vita” to Clarissa’s grandmother. I already knew the famous writer had lived in Sissinghurst, on the other side of Cranbrook, so I was intrigued enough to ask about it.
“I was once her secretary,” said Clarissa’s grandmother.
I felt a shiver of excitement as I held the book in my hands. I was just a hair closer to my dream—I knew someone who knew someone who was a really famous author. If I’d known about “degrees of separation” in those days, I would have been jettisoned to the moon on the excitement building inside me.
One of the most intriguing elements about going to play at Clarissa’s grandmother’s house was her great aunt, or perhaps she was even a great-great-great aunt, a woman I’ll call Raven. She had that sort of name—one word, which wasn’t her real name, but the name she had been known by her entire life. And she was birdlike—very thin, with purple wrist bones that seemed as if they would detach from her liver-spotted hands if she so much as sneezed. Raven dressed in clothes more suited to Victorian times, in long skirts, high neck blouses with a shawl around her shoulders, and sometimes she wore a little cap on slate-grey hair pulled back into a bun. She was very old, or so it appeared to both Clarissa and me. She moved quietly through the house. The first time I was aware of her immediate presence, I was walking with Clarissa from the drawing room through the dining room and saw the hem of her long skirt as she closed the door that led from the kitchen into the part of the house that was her private domain. She fascinated me. I didn’t know anyone like her and I wanted to know more.
One day, Clarissa came round to ask if I could go out to play, and as we walked down the footpath toward Five Acres, she told me that, “Raven wants us to have tea with her this afternoon.” I felt a ripple of curiosity spiral into my chest and could not wait until three o’clock, the allotted hour when we would knock on the door alongside the dining room to be admitted to the small attached cottage that was Raven’s home.
That afternoon, dead on three o’clock, Clarissa knocked on Raven’s door. I was at her shoulder, taller than Clarissa and leaning in to listen.
“Come,” the voice instructed.
Clarissa pushed against the door and we stepped into a hallway that opened to a dark sitting room. Raven was seated on a sofa next to a cold fireplace. She was covered in newspapers and had just sat up from a sleeping position as we entered. A teapot, milk jug and three cups and saucers had been placed on a small table in front of the sofa by the housekeeper, who had probably returned to the main house by another door. There seemed to be nooks and crannies and doors everywhere.
“Sit down, Clarissa. And you, Jacqueline.”
The room was dark, a window at the far end offering little light—hardly surprising as the curtains were almost closed. Another window to the right provided a shaft of illumination, lighting up dust motes that seemed to dance as we took our seats. A staircase led upstairs, but apparently Raven did not sleep there—another ground floor room I could not see was her bedroom and somewhere there was a bathroom—at least I think there was; it was very dark in Raven’s domain.
I have no recollection of the conversation, apart from being asked about school, about what I liked to read and the sort of questions elders ask children. Then Clarissa asked if we could play in the attic and Raven, now becoming tired, said we could. I looked back as we made our way up a rickety staircase that narrowed as we reached the door to the attic, a large room in the eaves of the house. As soon as she’d dismissed us, Raven had pulled the newspapers up and around her, as if she were snuggling under a blanket. As I cast my eyes around the room, I realized that every single piece of furniture had a label on it bearing the name of the family member to whom the piece would be given when she died, which at that particular moment didn’t seem so far into the future. I ran up the stairs to catch up with Clarissa.
The attic was fascinating, and as time w
ent on Clarissa and I would venture up those stairs many times, often sneaking in while Raven was asleep and creeping out again before she realized we’d been there. Every single time I went into that attic, I felt as if I were walking back in history, almost as if I’d landed in another country. There were trunks of old clothes that a young woman might have worn decades earlier, at the turn of the century. We tried on calf-length lace-up boots in fine cream leather, silk blouses and taffeta skirts. There were hats with feathers, gloves with little buttons at the wrist, and wonderful dresses. And there were the letters tied with red ribbon, written to a young woman from her love—and all bearing South African stamps. I knew enough history to conclude that the love of Raven’s life had been lost in the Boer War, when she was probably in her late teens or early twenties. Clarissa wanted to undo the red ribbon and read each of the letters, but something stopped my growing curiosity in its tracks. Perhaps it was the single dried rose slipped underneath the crimson bow that secured the ribbon, but I felt that the letters were incredibly private, as a declaration of love between two people should be. A photograph of a young man in uniform was slipped under the bow of another clutch of letters, all bearing that same post mark. It was a studio photograph typical of the day, with the soldier standing alongside a large leafy plant on one side, and on the other a curtain draped behind him. I imagined he must have been a cavalry officer, given his uniform, tall boots and the crop he carried under his arm.
I loved going to Clarissa’s house. Everything seemed so genteel. The children had their tea in the late afternoon—it was called a “nursery tea.” I have vivid memories of one occasion when John and I were invited to join them—by now my brother had struck up a friendship with Clarissa’s younger brother, Adam. It was summer and we were seated outside at a wicker table on Lloyd Loom chairs. Then we were given cold baked beans in bowls with brown bread and butter, and orange squash to drink. Both John and I were a little surprised, but whereas I wouldn’t have said a word, my brother piped up.
“These beans are cold—they haven’t even been cooked. And where’s the proper tea?”
“What do you have for tea, John?” asked Clarissa’s grandmother, setting a glass of orange squash in front of him.
“We have it cooked—meat and potatoes. Not cold beans.”
She smiled and, I think, suppressed a giggle.
“I daresay you’ll get some hot food when you get home.”
I was mortified, so I kicked my brother under the table to keep quiet, but he yelped and said, “You kicked me!” I was only nine years old, but I knew that our tea was not their tea. We might all have been friends, yet I understood Clarissa and Adam were different. For a start they went to boarding schools. At that time I would have given anything to go to a boarding school, to live in a dormitory with other girls even if it meant cold showers in the morning—I’d never seen a shower anyway, so how bad could it be?
Whatever school held for me in the future, I was becoming more sure that one day I wanted to be a writer, and I knew the direction I would take. At school one day, when I was about nine years of age, the teacher began a lesson by asking each child what they wanted to be when they grew up. There were the usual firemen and policemen, soldiers and teachers, and secretaries, doctors and nurses, and one or two odd ones—a boy called Ronald wanted to race motorbikes and another boy wanted to be a Formula One mechanic at Brands Hatch. I think a few boys changed their minds when they heard those ambitions voiced, because we all knew who Jim Clark was, and if that boy became his mechanic, it would be something to talk about. Then the teacher pointed at me.
“Journalist,” I said. “I want to be a reporter.”
Jenny nudged me and giggled. She’d claimed “air hostess” and I was beginning to wish I had, too. Everyone was staring at me.
“Well I never,” said the teacher. “A journalist, eh?”
I nodded. “I want to write about important things in the news.”
She laughed. “You’ll never get that with the Kent Messenger!”
And I remember thinking, Kent Messenger? I had my eye on Fleet Street. I knew my grandfather had worked for the Daily Express. However, some five years later, by the time I’d reached the age of fourteen, I would have given anything to get a job at the Kent Messenger, if I could. My ambition did not waver, though my future seemed set in stone when I reached sixteen, and a compulsory vocation test taken at school, designed to guide you in the direction of your ideal career path, indicated that I would be best suited to teaching.
Clarissa’s grandmother moved away when I was about twelve and I never saw my friend again. However, it’s probably true to say that those hours spent in Raven’s attic—the immersion into an age gone by—gave me a mound of material for the writing that came later in my life. The hamlet seemed to be mainly old people in those days. An odd smattering of children moved into the neighborhood when I was in my early teens, though I didn’t really know them because they were closer to my brother in age. I became friendly with the daughter of the pub’s new landlord, but they moved after a couple of years and we lost touch, and then a boy a year older than me came to live in the house with orchards and paddocks that was situated on the other side of the footpath next to our end of terrace home, so we became friends, even an “item” for a while, before going our separate ways.
But the language and history of those old people remained with me. There were the women of a certain age who were still “Miss” because a young man they might have married had been lost in the 1914–1918 war. Following the war, in 1921, a government survey revealed that there were two million “surplus women” in Britain. They were women of marriageable age for whom there would never be a husband and children, because so many young men had perished on the battlefields. There were newspaper articles written about the “problem of the surplus women” who would become mad without the calming hand of a man upon them. Hartley House, the home for old people where my friend Jenny’s dad had been the superintendent, was called the “old ladies’ home” by the locals, because many of the residents were elderly women who had never married due to that terrible war. There were only a few men. The home itself was housed in the former workhouse for the area, a forbidding building with a big chimney in the center. Jenny and I used to hang out in an old air raid shelter in the grounds—I’m not sure that many people even knew it was there. Much of the old Hartley House has been demolished now and that which remains is a more upscale home for seniors, its history as a former workhouse now a selling point.
Of all the elderly people in the area, it’s two brothers who come to mind so often, old men who had both lost their sight in the Great War. It wasn’t just that they could not see—they had no eyes in their sockets, which wasn’t an uncommon wound in that terrible conflict. They walked to the shop several times each week, one with his hand on the shoulder of the other, who tapped a white cane from side to side in front of him as he led them down the hill toward the shop. Years later, while visiting the Imperial War Museum in London, I stood before the painting Gassed by John Singer Sargent, studying his depiction of a line of men blinded by gas in the Great War as they were led away from the bodies of wounded and dying—and I thought of the two old men making their way along to the shop. When I was a little girl, if I was in the shop they’d ask my mother if I could sing and dance for them, so I did—I’d dance and belt out a song, twirling around until I was dizzy, making sure two elderly men enchanted by a child in a most innocent way could hear my feet tapping the floor. Now the memory of it breaks my heart, though those wounded men and lonely elderly women gave me images I would come back to time and again in later years.
16
Saturday’s Child
One of the first things I remember my mother telling me about myself was that I was Saturday’s Child, and she pointed out that according to the rhyme, “Saturday’s Child works hard for her living.” I think I must have been preordained for the
role, because photographs taken when I was young reveal not childish, soft hands, but large hands, with no dimples, and long fingers where clumsily endearing digits should be. And in a few of those photographs what I am doing is significant, because I am working. No, not pretend working, with a child’s typewriter or even miniature garden implements—although I already had the latter, along with the necessary size-appropriate tools to clean a house from top to bottom. In one I am standing with my own personal basket into which I am picking hops, alongside the wood and sackcloth bin that my mother and grandmother are using for the same task. You can’t see all this, but we are collectively trying to pick as many hops as we can, because hop-picking is paid on piece work, which means not by the hour, but by the amount picked. Children often worked alongside their parents out in the hop gardens, sometimes picking into an old laundry basket, or a shopping bag—when full, those hops would be thrown into the bin, ready for the farmer when he came round for the counting. It was like a game, and kept the children close at hand. The peppery, spicy hops stained my hands for weeks to come, and the bines cut my skin. Later, as my mother rubbed a flannel with soap and hot water up and down my arms before I could sit at the table for my tea, I squealed with the stinging, so she rubbed Nivea into the welts left by my endeavors.
I was six years old when I learned something about work that would remain with me my entire life. I learned that you could get something you wanted if you were only prepared to work for it. And I so wanted a Cinderella watch.
The Cinderella watch was linked to the Disney Cinderella movie, though I wouldn’t have known about that because we didn’t go to the pictures, as a rule. Though the animated film came out in 1950, the watch was probably still doing well because it was for sale in the jeweler’s shop in Cranbrook. Or perhaps it had been sitting there for ten years. I’d seen the watch as we walked past one Saturday, and I thought it was the loveliest thing I’d ever laid eyes on. I would rush around to the jeweler’s every day after school just to look at it in the shop window. In the process I almost missed the bus home on several occasions, running after it along Stone Street as it rumbled toward the bus stop outside the Congregational church on the High Street. The Cinderella watch had the heroine of the tale on the dial, which was white and mother-of-pearl. The band was pale blue, and the watch came presented in a crystal shoe. Really, it must have been glass, but to me it was crystal. I wanted that watch and I really, really wanted that shoe.
This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing Page 15