‘Lindy,’ I whined. ‘I want to use the ironing-board now. Look, my dolly’s dress needs ironing. It’s my turn!’
Lindy had erected the board and plugged in the iron, keen to press the seam of a dress she was making. ‘Just let me get on, please, Nessie.’
‘No, no, it’s my turn now!’ I wailed.
She stopped. ‘Put your hand up here, flat on the board,’ she said.
I did as I was told, keen to please her. First, having tested that the iron was only lukewarm, she placed it on my hand, hard enough that I couldn’t wriggle out.
‘If you scream for Mummy, I’ll turn the knob up and then you’ll really learn to stop annoying me,’ she smiled, her hand hovering over the dial. I caught her eye, uncertain whether she was joking. I was beaten.
Our parents had strong ideas of good parenting and they had high expectations. They were tough on us, but we never felt a lack of love. They always made us aware that we were responsible for our own actions; this allowed them to give us untold freedoms, while knowing that we couldn’t let them down. They refused to get involved in our little sibling squabbles and instead told us to sort them out among ourselves. In fact, they’d be livid if we involved them – they were convinced that we would reconcile over our joint irritation at their lack of attention.
I really loved Lindy, I really did, even when she once grabbed me from behind while we were doing the washing up and held a carving knife to my throat, grinning like Jack Nicholson in The Shining and whispered in my ear, ‘You don’t know if I’ve gone mad, do you Nessie?’
I could never be quite sure.
***
By 1966 the menagerie at Tanyards was growing. Both my parents had a real empathy for animals and Mum, having been deprived of pets as a child, was determined to make up for it now. Snowy, a jet-black New Forest pony arrived for Lindy, followed by Tommy, a Welsh mountain pony for me, and Suki, a pudgy Labrador puppy, soon to be mated by many a lusty village mongrel. Dad built a dovecote for some white fantail doves, though they rapidly succumbed to a similar fate, attracting every wood pigeon in the area, and their piebald chicks became targets for our air rifles, as we tried to keep the flock white. By the summer of 1967, although our barns were already full of peacocks, bantams and silkies, Dad was sent to Guildford’s livestock market to buy four guinea fowl to complete the collection. Unfortunately, he left the auctioneer instructions to buy ‘four’ without realising that they came in batches of a dozen; his meek manner meant that, rather than cause embarrassment by admitting his mistake, he crammed all forty-eight birds into the back of his Vauxhall shooting brake and drove home with them squawking all around him.
One of our summer rituals was going to the Surrey County Show – I relished the moment of leaping out of the car and hearing the incomprehensible show commentary being carried over the breeze. Full of expectation, we’d follow other families walking towards the action, the smell of generators, horses, livestock and frying onions becoming stronger as we reached the crowds. There was so much to see, from sheepdog displays to show-jumping, from vintage tractors to day-old chicks, dyed all the colours of the rainbow.
One year, late in the afternoon, as the shadows grew long and the final rosettes were being awarded, Mum and I were walking back to the car, when she stopped still for a moment and then walked swiftly towards a brightly painted gypsy caravan. I was overcome with shyness, having spotted a number of scruffy children my own age, and was reluctant to follow her, but Mum pulled me along by the hand.
‘Oh, Mummy, what now?’ I whined.
‘Stop thinking about yourself, Vanessa,’ she said, her standard reply to any sign of self-consciousness. She, on the other hand, was in her element – she loved talking to people from different walks of life. A craggy-faced, long-skirted, elderly traveller was squatting on the bottom rung of the ladder that led up to the front of the caravan. She had very few teeth.
‘What a beautiful caravan you have,’ Mum said.
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ the lady wailed. ‘It’s just so sad.’
‘What’s going on?’ Mum replied, squeezing my hand and sensing a story.
‘A policeman has just been here – they’re going to kill our Humpty,’ the old lady replied, rocking back and forth.
‘Who’s Humpty?’ Mum asked, ever impatient.
‘He’s gone off to find someone from the RSPB and they’re going to kill him. He said we’re not allowed to keep wild birds in cages.’ On cue, the surrounding children began to wail.
The woman beckoned us up the ladder and towards the back of the chaotic caravan. There, in the gloom, was a magpie in a cage. He cocked his head to one side, scanning us for possibilities.
We looked out of the caravan door, there was no sign of the authorities. ‘Quick, give him to me,’ Mum said. ‘We’ll save Humpty!’
‘Let me cover him up,’ the old lady muttered, throwing a blanket over his cage. Down the ladder we went and off we set, weaving our way through the departing crowds, expectating at any moment to get a tap on the shoulder, before collapsing into the car in a fit of giggles.
Mum grew to love that wretched bird, and it loved her in return. They became inseparable. From the day he arrived at Tanyards he was free to fly away, and we all wished he would, but he never did. He took enormous pleasure in tormenting us; even our long-suffering dog wasn’t exempt. Suki would be lazily dozing in the sun, when Humpty would cock his head, hop forward and peck at the end of her tail. Suki would get up, turn around and settle down again, but Humpty would repeat the trick. The poor dog would once again calmly get up, turn around and go back to sleep, but Humpty would strike again and again until Suki eventually got up and walked away.
Humpty didn’t like men, especially those holding newspapers in front of their faces – the crazy bird would dive towards the paper at breakneck speed, making it impossible to carry on reading. All summer long he drove us to breaking point. Meals on the outdoor patio were challenging as he’d hop between our plates, taking a peck here and pooping there as we flapped him away. We all laughed at his antics, but you could never relax knowing he was waiting in the shadows.
None of us trusted Humpty, except for Mum. He would sit on her shoulder, and woe betide any of us who tried to get close to Mum or went to kiss her. Mum’s party piece was to feed him nuts from her mouth, until Dad told her about the dangers of psittacosis, a disease that humans can catch from parrots – it seemed far-fetched, but maybe Dad was displaying a rare moment of jealousy himself. Humpty’s end was never verified, but we all suspected that our neighbour Gary had quietly wrung his neck. After all, everyone has their limits.
Dad had exchanged the eight-acre lake of his childhood for an ornamental well, which was hidden under the steps leading to our front door. To most people it was just a miniature pond, but to my father it was the essence of life itself. He took such pleasure in getting the balance of nature right, explaining the need to keep the water oxygenated with Canadian pondweed and a small pump. He introduced freshwater snails, goldfish, stone islands for frogs and a lily or two. He marvelled at never having to feed the fish, loved seeing dragonflies appear in the spring and whooped with joy whenever he spotted a great crested newt that he’d christened Kinka in honour of King Canute, the ancient king who did or didn’t hold back the tide.
The pleasure my father took in nature was contagious. He taught me to look under nasturtium leaves, each one wriggling with caterpillars that would soon become peacock or red admiral butterflies. He showed me the greenfly on his roses and explained how encouraging ladybirds, which lived on the greenfly, reduced the need for pesticides. We plunged our arms deep into the compost heap, feeling how much heat is generated by decaying organic matter. Next to the roses was a wooden water butt where Dad would collect rainwater; every morning he’d rub it into his scalp, in the vain hope that it would restore his thinning hair.
Each spring Dad would notice the swallows arriving from their long migration north from South Africa. As the
y circled over the pool in the evening light, he would rush to open the doors of the barn and coo, ‘Welcome home, my lovelies – you need a long rest now,’ as they swooped into the eaves. He was also a horse whisperer. I was amazed to see him calm Snowy down after he was spooked one day, working his magic by gently stroking the distressed pony’s muzzle and breathing deeply into his ear until they were breathing in unison.
Dad had no problem reconciling his love of animals with his love of shooting them and always eagerly looked forward to autumn, when the shooting season began. He and Mum would set off for Blandford Forum in Dorset, where they ‘shared a gun’ on a large country estate. Mum took pride in Suki, who was the star dog of the shoot, having been trained to retrieve the previous summer.
They would return in the evening and lay the day’s bag on the dining room table: a brace of pheasant, a woodcock and maybe a hare or two. Dad would then pour himself a gin and tonic and light his pipe while happily contemplating their day, before setting to work dismantling his shotguns and cleaning their barrels. The smell of gun oil and gunpowder mingling with Dad’s Three Nuns tobacco, wood-smoke from the fire and the drying blood of the freshly shot beasts, still encapsulates these moments of utter contentment from my childhood.
Setting aside the numerous litters of mongrel puppies that my poor father had to place reluctantly in weighted sacks and drown, Dad’s rule was that you have to eat what you kill. Thanks to him, by the age of eight I could skin and gut rabbits, pluck pheasants and cut the breasts off pigeons with the alacrity of a farmer’s wife.
As a family, we weren’t cut out for the horsey world of gymkhanas, hunting or show-jumping; we were more the hacking-the-ponies-on-the-heath-behind-the-house-and-setting-obstacle-courses type of family. Goodness knows what we were doing with poor Snowy when Richard fell off him one year, but I fear he was showing off to Lindy’s friend, Sally Franklin. As the pony bolted away, Richard was left lying on the ground, laughing. We all ran up to him as he pleaded he was injured.
‘Get up, Rick,’ we giggled.
‘Honestly, I can’t,’ he spluttered through intakes of breath, but we didn’t believe him.
‘I really can’t move,’ he insisted, a grin still on his face.
Thinking the game was going on a bit, Lindy gave him a sisterly kick in the side. We were getting mixed messages from him, but decided to play along with the game. We found a plank that would stand in for a stretcher, laid it down and rolled our hooting brother onto it, before carrying him down to the house to find Mum and Dad. He went off to hospital in an ambulance, insisting that the crew left the back doors open so he could wave to people as they went past. Richard had broken his pelvis. He was on crutches for the rest of the summer.
Without being able to send Richard on long errands, the entire family was once again at the mercy of his practical jokes. Mum, Lindy and I being so trusting meant he had a field day.
One day, in a moment of remorse at never reading to me, Mum suggested that I join the travelling library – a van laden with books that came to the village every fortnight. Her plan was that we would go there and pick books to read together. We went once to take some books out but somehow didn’t find the time to return them. Some months later, a brown envelope landed on the doormat with my name written on it and Richard came into the kitchen, brandishing the letter in the air.
‘Nessie, a letter to you from the library,’ he said. ‘Shall I open it for you?’
How exciting – my first-ever letter!
‘Yes please, Ricky,’ I grinned.
‘Dear Vanessa Branson,’ he read in a serious voice, ‘your library books are now two months overdue.’ I felt the smile slip from my face. ‘We are sorry to tell you that this is a very serious offence and you will have to go to prison for one whole year.’ Rick was thrilled at the success of his joke but somewhat disconcerted when I fell to the ground, pretending to faint.
Mum and Dad’s approach to health and well-being was pretty much aligned: they had faith in the human body’s natural power of recovery and believed you should push it to its limit. They understood that when you were exhausted you had a reserve tank of energy to call on. Complaining of being tired was not on the agenda; a good night’s sleep would replenish empty batteries. Whingeing about feeling hot or cold was considered bad form, too.
‘It won’t kill you’ was Mum’s response if we complained it was too cold to be sent outside to play, despite our chattering teeth and knocking knees. In my mother’s world, bodies were self-healing and self-cleaning. We had a bath once a week, and she thought that soap was unnecessary because it dried out the skin. I didn’t own my own toothbrush until I went to boarding school, aged ten, and until then, if I did brush my teeth, I used the family toothbrush that we all shared. No tubes of sweet Signal for the Branson family; rather a pot of Eucryl Smokers Toothpowder. Our parents were firm believers in the power of fresh air, green vegetables and mind over matter. We didn’t have any need for bathroom scales; the subject of weight just didn’t come up.
Aspirins or antibiotics were reserved for close encounters with mortality. I can’t remember ever going to the doctor, though I do remember the agony of having my tonsils out. It was a fairly routine operation in the 1960s, but after the nodules were snipped out, your throat was eye-wateringly painful. The only palliative offered by the nurses was the promise of jelly and ice-cream for supper, a rare treat that was never on offer at home. Looking back at my last fifty years of work, childbirth and adventures, I am eternally grateful to my parents for imbuing us with an enduring confidence in our bodies from such a young age. To be free of fears of illness and food obsessions is a gift for which I will be always be grateful.
Mum and Dad’s approach to parenting was aligned, too. They wanted their children to be ‘radiators, not drains’ and would often remind us that no one likes a sulky child. If our faces ever fell into a relaxed expression, one of them would catch our eye and give us a grin to remind us of our lapse. Richard had a hanging bottom lip, which gave him a perpetually gormless look. I think most other parents would have accepted that it was just how their child was, but not Mum and Dad. It didn’t take many hisses of ‘BL’ to remind Rick to pull up his bottom lip at all times. It may have been irritating for him when he was young, but I’m sure he’s grateful for it now.
Dad told us that when we were barely able to walk and were eager to sit on his lap, he wouldn’t stoop down to lift us up but would instead encourage us to climb up ourselves. He also explained that crying is a primitive mechanism to attract attention; if we fell and hurt ourselves, he would expect us to stop as soon as he picked us up and inspected our grazed knees. If we didn’t, he would put us down again until we’d stopped making a noise.
I remember the thrill of learning to ride a bike, shouting at my parents to come and watch as I whizzed down the hill from the orchard to the driveway, before misjudging the difficulty of riding on loose gravel and falling off. Blood was pouring from my forehead. Dad picked me up and inspected the wound while Mum ran into the house to get a plaster. Well, I presumed it was going to be a plaster but in fact she returned with the cine camera.
Lindy had also learned the importance of being stoical – even though she was far more sensitive to teasing than I was, she could be quite tough on me. One time we were in the bath together, cutting the squeaker out of a plastic toy so we could squirt water at each other from the hole, when I managed to stab myself in the hand. The pain made me take a sharp intake of breath. Lindy looked at the bathwater, which was turning red with blood, and laughed, ‘Don’t cry Nessie! Laughing is just the same as crying. Look, laugh like me!’
I started to giggle through my tears as we placed towels on the gushing wound, laughing uncontrollably at the mess we were making of the bathroom. The awful truth is that even now, if anyone tells me a story of woe, the more appalling it is, the more I laugh. This usually results in the poor person laughing along with me, too – but not always.
My parent
s abhorred laziness, and the only time there was the suggestion of a slap from my father was when, as a teenager, I dragged my feet over helping Mum with the hoovering. He shocked himself, and me, by sort of smacking me up the stairs, while emitting the chastising noise that he used to make when rubbing puppies’ noses in a puddle they’d made on the carpet.
I must have been about eight when our home menagerie became really exciting. Mum had met someone who ran a children’s zoo, and he’d asked if we would take in any animals that were struggling. ‘Animals,’ he said, ‘who needed extra love.’ How could Mum say no? Anyway, I came home from school one day to find a bundle of red blanket on Mum’s lap with a tiny hand sticking out from one end of it, clinging on to her shirt.
‘Shh,’ she whispered, as I blundered into the room. The hand was clenching and unclenching and I stared in wonder at its minuscule fingernails.
‘Guess what I’ve got here, Nessie?’ Mum asked, raising the little bundle to her shoulder. My mind raced. Could it be a little brother or sister? If it was, it had pretty strange hands!
‘Go on, guess!’ said Mum, enjoying my confusion. I stood there, my mouth agape as she slid the red blanket from a miniature marmoset monkey.
‘Say hello to Minette,’ said Mum. ‘She’s not very well, but we’ll make her better again.’
How we loved that little monkey! She had a few happy times wreaking havoc around the house, but her default position was to lie in a box on the kitchen floor, looking mournful. Our local vet in Cranleigh, having failed to think what might be wrong with her, suggested that Mum took her to see the chief vet at London Zoo. Later that night, Mum returned home with a resigned sadness in her eyes. Minette, she learned, had suffered from rickets caused by a lack of vitamin D and calcium in her diet, and her bones were soft and liable to fracture. Mum conceded that no amount of love was going to improve her condition and agreed with the vet’s advice. Little Minette was put down there and then, and Mum returned empty-handed.
One Hundred Summers Page 10