My Animals (and Other Family)

by Phyllida Barstow

  I don’t know whether Grandfather voiced his worries to my parents, but soon after I was told I had outgrown Mrs Bentley’s tuition, and other plans were afoot for me.

  In the course of a jolly lunch at the Garrick Club, Daddy had mentioned the problem of my schooling to his old Oxford friend Denny, whose wife Barbara had been a ‘Thirties Beauty who, like Zuleika Dobson, bowled over a generation of undergraduates. Daddy would pretend to sigh over a carefully-posed photographic portrait of Barbara in perfect profile, sidesaddle on her hunter, which she had sent to a select band of her admirers, but Mummy, who was not in the least vain herself, thought this bit of blatant self-promotion a bit off.

  ‘And then she went and married dull old Denny!’ Daddy would say with mock indignation, though he willingly agreed to stand godfather to their elder daughter.

  Now he heard from Denny that their younger daughter Tessa, who was my contemporary, was sharing a governess with two other girls in Leicestershire, and having a wonderful time. They did lessons in the morning and rode in the afternoon, and every Monday in winter they hunted with the Quorn. Perhaps they might like to add a fourth to the class. Why didn’t he put us all in touch?

  Letters were written, a visit arranged, an instant rapport established. When Mummy and Daddy returned from Leicestershire on Sunday night, it was all arranged, and at the start of the summer term 1948, Mummy drove me north to meet my new schoolfellows in a large and beautiful house near Melton Mowbray. A week later Taffy – very smart in a new blue rug with red edging – travelled up by train to join me.

  Polly and Hubert, who owned Old Dalby Hall, were the kind of people who give the English squirearchy a good name: friendly, generous, deeply and benevolently involved with local affairs, and devoted to outdoor sport, particularly those in which horses played a part. Since two of their four children had gone off to boarding-school, they had decided to make good use of the big house by importing companions to be educated with the younger two. Thus Cilla, who was nearly ten, would share her governess Miss Smith with Tessa, Joanna, and me; while Charles, a bonny, blue-eyed rosy-cheeked four-year-old, lived with his own small contemporaries and a staff of nannies and cooks in a nursery wing that operated as a completely self-contained unit behind the main building.

  It is a rare ten-year-old who interests herself in toddlers, and I wish now that I’d paid more attention to the logistics of life at Old Dalby Hall. I never knew exactly where all the children in the nursery wing came from, but my impression was that more were constantly trying to join them. Could they have been the offspring of unmarried mothers, or families displaced by the war? Or even the children of working women who paid to have them looked after?

  Polly was generous and open-hearted to a fault. Anyone down on his or her luck could be sure of her help, and that included animals. From the moment you pushed open the heavy oak door into the great hall, with its double-branched staircase at one end, long refectory table and mighty open fireplace at the other, you found animals in such abundance that our own menagerie at Much Hadham seemed sparsely populated in comparison. Most of them had some disability that made them worthy of special care.

  There was Mickey, the black-and-white mongrel with a paw missing; Maggie, a one-eyed magpie, and cats who had lost ears or tails before being taken in and nursed back to health. There were terriers and labradors and hound puppies at walk, and a beautiful conservatory opening off the hall, a jungle of exotic greenery with a floor-to-ceiling cage of canaries, doves, and budgerigars.

  In addition to our four ponies: Cilla’s wilful black Cinders; Tessa’s disillusioned grey Arctic, Taffy herself and Jo’s slab-sided Icelandic dun with a black stripe down his back who was known as Rikki, or Reykjavik, there was a stableyard full of hunters and broodmares, run like clockwork by tall, thin, trilby-hatted Mr Sandford and his staff of three.

  We fought a long-running war of attrition with Sandford, who quite rightly objected to our stealing the hunters’ oats, and went so far as to put a lock on the feed-shed. We saw where he hung the key on the back of the farm office door, and one sunny afternoon Jo and I sneaked in and stole it while Sandford was at lunch. Whether one of the stable-boys saw us and alerted him, I don’t know, but there we were, filling our pockets from the bin, when he loomed up in the doorway in vengeful fury.

  He made us empty our pockets, then walloped us soundly, an action which no doubt relieved his feelings but nearly cost him his job when Polly got to hear of it. For several days the matter hung in the balance before Hubert came home and pointed out that sacking Sandford for a moment’s loss of self-control would have been grossly unfair, and besides, head grooms of his calibre didn’t grow on trees. So in the end, Jo and I were made to write him letters of apology, and the matter was somewhat uneasily smoothed over.

  On one side of the house, smooth lawns swept down to a wide-spreading cedar under which, in the best English tradition, we used to have tea on summer afternoons. An old pony pulled the clanking triple-mower, shuffling along in leather boots that prevented his hoofs marking the turf. Beyond the lawn lay a haha, and if you were lying on the grass you could often see the cattle’s long pink tongues licking upward at the lawn, which they evidently considered more delicious than the rough grass growing in the park. Hazy in the distance were the bulrushes surrounding the lake, and further off still a semi-circle of tall beech trees that blended into the thick, brambly woods where foxes were carefully preserved.

  The other side of the house was flanked by the rose garden, where we pony-mad children played our favourite game of ‘horsing.’ This involved trotting and cantering on all fours – very hard on the wrists if you did it properly – and from this position jumping over the rose-beds, landing on your hands. We preferred to do it wearing only our knickers, for maximum freedom, and were surprised by Miss Smith’s disapproval.

  ‘You girls are getting too old for that kind of silliness,’ she would say with a tremendous sniff.

  Polly, however, thought pretending to be a horse perfectly natural. She was immensely tolerant, indeed some might have thought her eccentric, but from our point of view this touch of wackiness was irresistible in a grown-up. Slight and elegantly bony in her checked shirts and faded corduroy trousers, she looked her very best on her bay thoroughbred, Cottage Pride. I can see him now in my mind’s eye cantering across the Park, with Polly gently swaying in rhythm to his long flowing stride, as much a part of her horse as a female centaur. Both her daughters, Sarah and Cilla, had her fair complexion and long serious face, but their striking deep blue eyes were just like Hubert’s.

  During the war, he had been badly wounded – losing a lung, I think –while rescuing his gunner from their blazing tank and was still convalescent, though well enough to run the farm, and would occasionally, in response to our nagging, take us joyriding in his four-seater Miles Messenger, which lived in an improvised hangar in the biggest flattest field on the estate.

  The little plane was so light and frail it could easily be pushed about by two men (and four excited ten-year-olds) and though we couldn’t all get in at once, Hubert was scrupulously fair about turns. It was the greatest thrill to bounce down one of the four long straight green runways mown through whatever crop happened to be growing, with the engine roaring ever louder until suddenly you saw the ground drop away beneath the plane, and you were tipped back steeply, heading for the clouds. I don’t remember any kind of helmet or intercom, just a seat-belt, and Hubert used to lean across, shouting in his hoarse, breathless voice, pointing out what we were seeing below. My sense of direction has never been strong, and the fields, woods, buildings and roads which we knew well were altered beyond recognition from a bird’s-eye viewpoint.

  Swooping down on the field at last, we would bounce and bump to a halt before the hangar’s concrete apron, and climb out of the plane with trembling legs and woozy heads, more exhausted and elated than if we’d galloped the same distance on our ponies, though delighted to have missed the morning’s lessons. />
  Miss Smith, who tried endlessly and largely unavailingly to impose order on the laissez faire chaos of the household, would be less than delighted. She was the quintessential maiden lady – late forties, I guess, spare, round-shouldered, thin-haired and with a naturally red nose which she kept well powdered, but she had a bewildering array of talents. She was a good pianist and skilful needlewoman, very well educated with beautiful handwriting, she corresponded with Oxford dons and read learned periodicals and, when suitably buttered up and begged to do so, cooked magnificent birthday cakes, light as air and layered with lemon cream. She tried to show me how to make one, but I was too slapdash about weighing the correct quantities and my cake was a pale shadow of her towering masterpiece.

  ‘Wash as you go,’ she insisted. ‘Muddle makes more muddle,’ but where Polly was concerned, this advice fell on deaf ears. At times it seemed to me that she took a mischievous pleasure in shocking our governess, and there were occasions when – although I adored Polly – I found myself on Miss Smith’s side. For instance I found it disturbing – what I called, ‘Yerk!’ – to see Cilla in bed with Mrs Purr, her white cat, ecstatically sucking her nipples, but Polly simply said that if they both enjoyed it, why not?

  On the cookery front, Polly had been brought up with a houseful of servants, so, like Mummy, had learned by trial and error during the war. Like Mummy, too, her cuisine ranged from the inspired to the absolutely disgusting. Her Yorkshire puddings, for instance, were marvellous, crisp billows of golden batter which we ate as pudding, rather than with roast beef, slathering them in golden syrup and Guernsey cream, but basic hygiene had a low priority in her kitchen.

  I remember once when visitors were coming to Sunday lunch and I was lackadaisically helping to lay the dining-room table, drifting in and out of the kitchen collecting plates and cutlery, seeing Maggie, the one-eyed magpie who liked to perch on the plate-rack, deposit a copious yellow-white dropping into the fresh pea soup which Polly had left on the draining-board.

  ‘Look what Maggie’s done!’ I said, pointing.

  She turned, frowned and, without missing a beat, seized a ladle and scooped most of the mess into the sink. Then she plonked a large spoonful of cream into the soup, swirled it round and put it back on top of the stove.

  ‘You can’t give them that!’ said Miss Smith.

  But she did. When it came to my turn to be helped, I shook my head and Polly’s mischievous smile flickered down the table at me.

  ‘Just a taste,’ she urged. ‘You’ll like it.’

  ‘Delicious,’ confirmed the Vicar’s wife. ‘Fresh peas – such a treat.’

  But neither Miss Smith or I could bring ourselves to swallow a mouthful. She was very much an indoor person, intensely private, and quite how she came to be living in an environment which was about as alien to her interests and inclination as one could imagine is a mystery I have never resolved. Nor did I ever know what her first name was. Did M stand for Mary, Margaret, Muriel? Although Polly and Hubert were unusually modern in encouraging children to call them by their Christian names, Miss Smith insisted on formality between herself and her employers and always addressed them as Major and Mrs. She had her own room at the top of the right-hand branch of the double staircase, next to the schoolroom, and there she led a self-contained, rather lonely existence, it being clearly understood that when she retired to her room she was off-duty and any child disturbed her at its peril.

  In addition to teaching us everything from History to Needlework, Piano to Latin, she was expected to keep track of all our clothes and equipment within the house (though she drew the line at saddlery), and the concluding Conduct paragraph of my reports always seemed to end with a lament for returning my underclothes in such poor condition.

  I have always been lucky in having a blotting-paper memory, which made me teacher’s pet in every subject except the dreaded maths. Jo, too, was a quick learner, but Tessa and Cilla were painfully slow, and in the horrid manner of little girls I used to mock and taunt their stupidity, a practice which eventually proved my undoing.

  Miss Smith loved poetry herself, the more dramatic the better, and encouraged us to learn it by heart. I still reel off Lepanto, or The Pied Piper of Hamelin, or even Alfred Noyes’s Highwayman when walking uphill, because the flow of words takes my mind off the boredom and exertion, but for me Miss Smith’s most enduring legacy was her doggerel verses on British monarchs. These, when combined with the well-known Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee aide-memoire, gave us a useful historical framework for every major upheaval between the Romans and Queen Victoria.

  Julius Caesar first arrived

  From Gaul in BC 55

  Hengist and Horsa, covered in brine,

  Landed at Thanet, 449

  Alfred of the toasted bun,

  His reign began 871

  We may not know our dates too well,

  But one we all can fix.

  It is the Norman Conquest in

  The year 1066…

  And so it went on, crisp, succinct, easy to remember. Historically speaking, Miss Smith was by no means even-handed. Monarchs she approved of were allocated four or even six lines, whereas baddies got two at most. After Henry I, King Stephen was briskly dismissed.

  His nephew Stephen seized the throne in 1135,

  And all the land was in a brawl when Stephen was alive.

  That whole chaotic period encapsulated in a couple of lines. After all, what else do you need to know Stephen? But Henry II was definitely a goodie.

  Henry Two –One one five four,

  Wed Aquitainian Eleanor

  And thus his pennants braved the breeze

  From Scotland to the Pyrenees.

  The Church was proud. He tried to check it

  Which led to all that fuss with Becket.

  She regarded the Hanoverians as a dull lot and some got particularly short shrift. So:

  George the Fourth in 1820

  Reigned ten years, and that was plenty

  Miss Smith noted crisply, but she went to town with her particular heroine:

  Victoria had a long, long run

  From ’37 to 1901.

  She died. It seemed so strange to sing

  No more The Queen. ‘God Save the King!’

  Alas, there her verses ended abruptly, with the result that the dates of the last five sovereigns have never fully registered in my mind.

  When morning lessons ended, we were free for the rest of the day, and on afternoons when it was too hot and flyey to ride, we used to gravitate to the lake.

  The shallow water covered a layer of vile-smelling mud at least waist-deep, so it wasn’t really a bathing practicality, but with enormous labour we constructed a rickety raft out of planks and empty petrol cans, and poled this about the reed-fringed margins trying to catch minnows in jam jars.

  We discovered a whole colony of mud-dwelling clams, great sullen lumps weighing a couple of pounds each, which we located by probing the mud with a stick, at grave danger of falling in. As the others hung on to your legs, you thrust an arm deep into the ooze, squidging it through your fingers until they touched the hidden treasure, then eased it into an old trout-net to bring it to the surface.

  Loading them into a wheelbarrow, we brought them back to the house in triumph. What should we do with them? we asked Polly.

  She was busy that afternoon and suggested vaguely that people in the village might like to buy them, but this proved optimistic. Although Polly and Hubert were well-liked locally and tremendous benefactors as well as employers, not a single household was prepared to shell out hard cash for our smelly and unprepossessing wares. Nobody went so far as to set the dogs on us, but there was a good deal of door-slamming and half-heard remarks about dratted children.

  Finally, tired and disillusioned, we wheeled the whole load back to the lake and threw them in. It was a disheartening venture into commerce.

  Considering her many commitments, it was extraordinary how much time Polly used to spend p
laying with us.

  ‘What shall we do today?’ was a favourite question, immediately followed by: ‘I know, let’s have a gymkhana/treasure hunt/paperchase/picnic by the lake.’ Sometimes she wrote little plays in very loosely-rhyming couplets for us to act, or inspired us to dramatised versions of How We Brought the Good News From Aix to Ghent, and Young Lochinvar (I was delighted that she cast Taffy as the best steed in all the wide Border). Whatever she organised was bound to be fun – with one exception: her dreaded musical rides.

  I suppose that with a quartet of pig-tailed ten-year-olds, all reasonably well mounted, at your command, and an instinct for showmanship, a horsy mum’s thoughts are liable to turn in that direction, but Polly’s enthusiastic, ‘I know! We’ll rehearse the musical ride,’ would evoke from me at least a suppressed groan and the knowledge that aeons of tedium and criticism lay ahead.

  I had never learnt to school a pony properly, nor did Taffy enjoy working on a circle. For a while she would co-operate, but as she grew bored she would start to lean on the bit, stick out her nose in an ugly line and, in response to my increasingly frantic aids, simply hammer round at an ever-faster trot, refusing to break into a canter. Orders to ‘Collect her,’ and ‘Use your legs’ had not the slightest effect, and I always ended the session hot, tired and humiliated.

  Besides, the old grass tennis-court where we rehearsed was not only the wrong shape but too small for the kind of ambitious mounted manoeuvres Polly remembered from watching performances by the King’s Troop. The corners came up too quickly on the short ends, and it was difficult to time diagonal cross-overs unless all the ponies reached the turning point at the same time. So we sweated away in the hot fly-buzzing afternoons with Polly, standing on a chair in the middle of the court, shouting herself hoarse as she changed or muddled the sequence of movements, and the ponies grew fractious and sullen, and I longed to be reading quietly in the shade.