ONE YOUNG FOOL
IN
DORSET
Victoria Twead
New York Times and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author
One Young Fool in Dorset is the prequel to the ‘Old Fools’ series.
Also available in Paperback and Large Print editions.
Dedication
In loving memory of Jean and Frank.
And with heartfelt thanks to Annabel
who shared her parents with me so unselfishly.
Contents
1. Knickers and Rats
2. Priests and Pets
3. Jeannie and Beach Days
4. Naked
5. Snowy and Snow
6. Things that go Bump
7. TH
8. Day by Day
9. A Tragic Ghost
10. Nelson’s Eye
11. Bad Boys
12. Summer Break
13. Robberies
14. Bras and Other Agonies
15. Youths and Cake
16. Wales
17. Fords
18. Money and Work
19. The Animal Sanctuary
20. Gordon the Gannet
21. Tony the Hippy
22. Cats
23. Gits and Goats
24. Surprising Visitors
25. Epilogue
Preview of Chickens, Mules and Two Old Fools
Childhood and Dorset Recipe Index
Acknowledgements
Contact the Author and Links
Books by Victoria Twead
1 Knickers and Rats
Dorset Apple Cake
Perhaps I’m two years old, maybe less. There is a garden, and two big strong legs. The legs belong to Lena, our German nanny. A wicker laundry basket sits beside me. I’m not interested in the legs. Neither do I care about the wicker basket. I’m far too busy marvelling at the perfectly spherical little balls I’m finding in the grass. I amuse myself by collecting a pile. I pick them up and drop them. They roll down the bank. I taste one. It isn’t nice.
“She’s playing with rabbit droppings,” pipes a voice above me. My big sister. “And now she’s eating them.”
Lena swipes the little balls from my chubby grasp. I howl, but not for long. There is always something else to explore.
* * *
Now I’m four and play in the front more than the back, sharing toys with neighbouring kids. We live in a leafy cul-de-sac lined with white houses, each identical to its neighbour. There are tall pine trees where red squirrels twitch and dance. Our quiet street opens onto a bigger, much busier road, noisy with traffic. Sometimes a big black limousine, with a Union Jack flag fixed to the bonnet, passes by. White motorcycles, ridden by men dressed in white uniforms, surround the limousine.
“There’s somebody important in that black car,” says my big sister.
My sister is four years older than me and already knows stuff. She is clever and her hair is straight and shiny. Mine is unruly and points in all directions.
“Wer?” I ask in German. “Who?”
“I don’t know, but those men on motorcycles are called the White Rats.”
I watch, fascinated, until the convoy passes.
It is Germany in the late 1950s and we are stationed in Bonn because my father is an officer in the Army.
“We’re going to help at the cocktail party tonight,” says my sister, when the convoy has passed. “We’ll wear our party dresses and carry trays. Lena says you can help, too.”
I like that idea. My sister has been helping at cocktail parties for ages, but I’m always told I’m too young. This will be my first cocktail party. I like my party dress. It is swishy and white with puffed sleeves, a blue sash and a stiff lacy petticoat.
Cocktail parties at our house happen often. I sense that my parents dislike them but they are necessary because of the Army. Days beforehand, Lena polishes the silver and sweeps the carpets until everything is spotless. My mother is distracted and edgy. It all has to be perfect. My father looks handsome, resplendent in his dress uniform, his moustache bristling.
Upstairs, Lena sponges us down and wipes our faces and hands.
“Just a lick and a promise today,” she says in German, “there’s so much to do. Now, go and make a start on getting dressed. Thank goodness your baby brother is asleep.”
Our clothes are laid out on our beds. My sister and I dress ourselves as far as we can, petticoat first, then dresses. I can’t manage the buckles on my party shoes or the many buttons down the back of my party dress. I toddle off to find Lena.
“You’ve done well,” she says, adjusting my white socks so that they are the right way round, buckling my shoes and buttoning the dress. “Now you can go downstairs and hand out nibbles when the guests arrive. Just for half an hour, mind. Now, out of my way, and don’t mess up your dress.”
I don’t follow her all the way down. I sit on the stairs and watch the final preparations through the bannisters. How pretty Mummy looks with lipstick! How the sherry decanters sparkle on the sideboard!
The doorbell rings, and Lena hurries away to open the door to the guests.
Gradually, the room fills up with ladies who screech with laughter and wear jewellery that flashes signals when the light catches it. Their husbands stand tall in their uniforms, deep in conversation with each other. My sister carries a tray and weaves in and out through the knots of people, pausing to offer dainty nibbles. My mother wears a painted-on lipstick smile. At first, I can hear her making conversation using her brittle telephone voice, then, as the room fills and the noise level rises to a continuous buzz, I can no longer make out individual voices.
“Victoria! There you are!” Lena grabs my arm and helps me down the stairs and into the throng. “Don’t be shy! Take this bowl and offer it to the guests. Just like your sister is doing.”
I like the way my party dress rustles and swishes. I walk though the haze of perfume and forest of legs, then stop and hold my bowl up. Perhaps my sister has already done her job too well, because nobody takes any. I move on. Even when I tap on legs, the guests barely notice me.
I set the bowl carefully back on the sideboard. Now I just meander between the clusters of people, listening to the buzz, the sudden brays of laughter, hypnotised by the rustle of my own skirts. I lift my party dress to see the lacy petticoat beneath. Then I lift that, too.
“Lena! Victoria has no knickers on! And she’s showing everybody!”
Strong German arms whisk me away and I am put to bed. The party is over for me and Lena resolves to supervise my dressing more closely in future.
* * *
I was born in 1955, in Dorchester in the UK, the nearest hospital to Bovington Army Camp where my father was stationed. The hospital, built in 1841 from local Portland stone, has now been converted to flats, but still looks much the same as it always did. I only just managed to be born on British soil because six months later our family was sent to Bonn. My sister was already four years old and my brother was destined to be born two years later. I was the peanut butter in the middle of the sandwich.
My mother, big sister and me at Bovington
Only ghosts of memories stay with me when I think of those first five years in Germany. Being Austrian, my mother’s first language was German, although she was fluent in English, too. Lena, our nanny, spoke only German. My father, although English, spoke good German. I grew up knowing only German, but my sister, who was now at the army school, was already bilingual.
I remember there were monkeys at the petrol station. I always begged Lena to walk that way so that we could see the monkeys in the cage. As we passed, the monkeys leapt from one side to the other, making the cage rattle alarmingly.
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bsp; I remember walking beside Lena as she pushed my newborn brother in a huge pram alongside the river Rhine. The water was brown and the river was so big I could hardly see the other side. Dirty waves lapped at the bank. I licked at my ice cream until, horror, the cone crumbled in my hand and the ice cream splatted on the cement path. I opened my mouth to howl, but stopped when a dachshund popped up from nowhere and lapped the path clean with a few deft licks from his pink tongue.
I recall taking a ferry across the Rhine to go to kindergarten. At Christmas, I remember a wonderful cardboard structure on a table in the classroom. It was like a church but with turrets, battlements and windows with arched shutters. Each little window was numbered and we children took it in turns to open a set of cardboard shutters every day to reveal a stained-glass window made from coloured tissue paper. Candles had been lit inside the structure. It was the first Advent calendar I had ever seen, and still remains the most beautiful. I suspect it must have been a huge fire hazard and would certainly have never passed today’s stringent health and safety rules.
Later, I think I was also sent for a short time to an army-organised preschool group, where only English was spoken. I understood very little that the teacher said. I wasn’t happy because one of the rules was that you had to ask permission to leave the room if you were going to sneeze. I was terrified that a sneeze might sneak up on me, unannounced, before I had time to ask permission to leave the room. And what was the point of saying ‘Present’ when my name was called in the morning? That present never materialised.
Our car was a black Rover 90 and my sister said it belonged to the Queen. Apparently we were just borrowing it.
Most of my memories of Germany are mere snatches. Like the terrifying person called Schwarz Peter (Black Peter) who carried a small whip and followed St. Nicholas (Father Christmas) looking for bad children to punish; eating yoghurt from glass jars with long spoons; the children’s book Der Struwwelpeter (Shockheaded Peter) which showed a boy who never cut his hair or nails, a cautionary tale to scare young children; and staring curiously at the floppy thing the boy next door kept in his underpants and insisted on showing me whenever he had the opportunity.
When I was five, the family returned to Dorset, England, leaving Lena behind. But my parents refused to stay in Army quarters this time, and the search began for ‘the perfect house’.
Throughout their lives, my parents never decided anything in a hurry. They researched, discussed and deliberated over every decision. So when it came to buying a house, they were cautious. They refused to rush into a purchase, and wisely decided to rent a property until the perfect house came along.
“Ach, I’ve always dreamed of living in a little olde worlde English cottage, with a thatched roof and cottage garden,” said my mother with stars in her eyes.
And that’s exactly what they found.
The picturesque village of Corfe Castle is dominated by the ruined thousand-year-old castle built by William the Conquerer, a magnet to visitors who gasp as they snap pictures with their cameras. The castle stands on a hill, with the village in its shadow.
Corfe Castle
If one walks along East Street from the Greyhound pub at the village centre, before one reaches the Purbeck stone-built village school, there is a row of thatched cottages on the left. The houses are terraced, shouldering each other like square beads on a necklace. One of them was available to rent.
“Well, it’s certainly olde worlde,” said my father.
“I love it!” said my mother. “I wonder how old it is?”
“Very handy for the school,” said my father. “It’s just steps away. Not even a road to cross.”
“Ach, this is exactly the kind of house I’d like us to find for ourselves to buy,” my mother trilled, in raptures. “Very old, with heaps of character.”
We moved in, but we weren’t the only residents. We were sharing the house with spiders, mice and rats, all of whom regarded the thatched roof and its surrounds as their home. Very quickly, my mother decided she didn’t want to live in an olde worlde property after all.
The school was very handy for me, although I remember almost nothing about it. My sister, however, was attending a preparatory school in Dorchester, and needed to catch a train. The train station backed onto our cottage garden and my father, ever ingenious, constructed a ladder for my sister to scale the wall at the bottom of the garden. Every day, dressed in her school uniform with her satchel on her back, she would climb the ladder and catch the huffing steam train waiting at the platform. The stationmaster was fully aware of this arrangement, which suited everybody.
My sister must have been a familiar little figure, because one day, she was late and the train had already drawn away from the platform, leaving her behind. But the engine driver must have caught sight of her, because he stopped the train, then shunted back to pick her up.
Corfe Castle railway station
Corfe had its own railway station until 1972 when British Rail closed both station and the line. Luckily there were plenty of passionate railway enthusiasts around, and the station and line reopened in August 1995 as a heritage line. The old steam trains puff in and out once more, this time carrying tourists instead of taking children to school and folks to work.
Meanwhile, my parents drove us around the countryside, estate agents’ details in hand, as they scoured the towns and villages of Dorset for the perfect home.
They had a check list which included a decent-sized garden, enough bedrooms for all of us, and a location not too far from Bovington Army Camp where my father would be working. Houses with thatched roofs, which before might have sent my mother swooning, were now firmly struck off the viewing list.
Weekends were spent house hunting, and all the towns and villages within a twenty-five mile radius were explored. During the week, my father would spread a map on the floor and, armed with the latest estate agents’ blurbs, he and my mother would plan the route.
“There’s one here,” said my father, tapping the town marked ‘Wareham’ on the map.
My mother squinted at one of the estate agent papers in her hand.
“Ach, I saw that one,” she said, “but that house looked very dilapidated.”
“But Wareham is a nice town,” my father insisted. “Look, it’s right on the river, in fact it has a quay. And I know the Saxon walls still stand. I’ll talk to the estate agent. I think this house might be worth a visit.”
My mother, who loved history, added the house to the viewing list but pencilled in a question mark.
The village of Corfe Castle is exactly halfway between the bustling market town of Wareham and the popular seaside resort of Swanage, so it wasn’t too far to drive to Wareham that weekend. We sailed over the pretty white bridge that spanned the river and admired the quay. Two swans glided on the river, followed by their family of cygnets.
“Can we stop here?” we begged, but my father ignored our pleas.
“Slow down, this is it,” said my mother, peering out of the window.
“Do we have to go and look at another house?” we children moaned.
By now, even my parents had almost despaired of finding the perfect property, and they didn’t hold out much hope for this particular house either.
My father parked, and we all stared out of the car windows. The For Sale sign had lurched drunkenly sideways and was choked by weeds, sending the message that the house had been on the market for a long time. The house itself was big, rather ugly, square and solid.
“Ach, I don’t hold out much hope for this one,” said my mother.
The front of the house might have looked even worse, but being springtime, it was softened by a cluster of apple trees in full blossom, their roots obscured by long grass and bluebells. Already crazy about animals and wildlife, I imagined what birds I might see, and whether dormice would come and nibble the fallen apples in autumn.
“Well, this is definitely the house,” said my father. “I don’t know why, but the estate
agent was reluctant for us to see this one, he didn’t think it would suit us at all. The owner should be expecting us. Let’s knock on the door.”
We climbed out of the car and walked up the weed-choked drive. The house was pebble-dashed, although many of the pebbles had fallen away leaving bald yellow patches. The drainpipes and guttering hung at crazy angles.
My mother and we three children stood back as my father pushed through the overgrown bushes to reach the peeling front door.
He knocked.
2 Priests and Pets
Dorset Herby Potato Salad
“Sssh,” said my father, listening.
I could hear little birds, and bees busy in the apple blossom, but nobody came to the door. He tried knocking again, but there was no response.
“Ach, this door doesn’t look as though it’s been used for a long time,” said my mother. “Shall we try the back door?”
We all traipsed round to the back door, and my father tried again.
Dogs barked within. The birds in the apple trees sang as we stood stock still, listening. At last, somebody fumbled with locks.
“Curse this door! Be’jeesus if the blessed thing ain’t banjaxed...”
Even at the age of six, I knew the man behind the door spoke in a strange way.
“Mummy, why does he talk all funny?” I piped up.
“Sssh, he’s Irish, a Roman Catholic priest.”
That meant nothing to me.
The door finally swung back, revealing the occupier of the house.
“Ah, an’ ye’ll be the family come to see me house?”
The man framed in the doorway had tufts of unruly white hair attached to an otherwise bald head. His shapeless ears seemed huge, and his face was as red as the tomatoes Lena used to chop. Several day’s growth of white bristles sprouted from his mottled skin. His nose was bulbous and as shapeless as a potato. He wore a threadbare cassock, once black, now blotched with food stains down the front, the fabric grey with age. I stared at him, then into the house behind him, but it was too dark to make out anything.
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