The Dun Cow Rib

by John Lister-Kaye

  Reading the copious notes and researching the late 1950s and ’60s history of cardiology, it’s clear that Wood and Brock (by then Sir Russell, soon to be Lord Brock of Wimbledon) were playing for time. In 1957 aortic valve replacement was still highly experimental and risky. Despite year on year advances, the technique was not reliably successful until 1960. Mother had already been one of their guinea pigs and got away with it – just. They were reluctant to make her one again. Paul Wood’s almost superhuman diagnostic skills led him to believe that with care and medication to control heart strain, she would survive long enough for aortic surgery to be a much safer bet. Once again his cautious, methodical skill had saved my mother’s life.

  * * *

  I was summoned to the headmaster’s study one morning after breakfast. Both Mr and Mrs Matthews were there. ‘M-m-m-m-Don’t worry, John, you’re not in any trouble,’ was Mathey’s greeting. ‘Your m-m-m-m-father is coming to collect you and take you up to London to see your mother.’ A huge wave of relief flooded over me. I knew what to expect and it had all turned out to be OK. ‘She might have to have another operation,’ was the only other insight they could offer. That was all right too. I had absolutely no concept that once again she was teetering at death’s door.

  This time she was in a small ward with only one other bed, occupied by a Mrs Maydwell who had a blue rinse hair perm and wore glasses with matching blue frames. She was a highly-strung woman who jabbered compulsively and nervously at both my father and me to a point that became an irritating intrusion. That evening in the hotel he told me that Dr Wood had asked whether they could move Mrs Maydwell in with my mother because ‘She’s got the heebie-jeebies about her operation and we urgently need her to calm down.’

  ‘How would moving her in with Mummy help?’

  There was a long silence before my father spoke. ‘John, your mother is a very remarkable person. She is very brave and very strong, even though she has had to put up with such a lot of pain. The doctors know that, and they think that Mummy will be a great help to Mrs Maydwell, who has to have a big operation on her heart very soon.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I see.’ But I didn’t. I didn’t care about the heebie-jeebie woman. I just wanted my mother home again.

  Years later I discovered in her private correspondence that she was also shoring up my father.

  Being a burden and worry to you has always been a hard cross for me to carry. Thank you for being so marvellous all these difficult years. Take good care of yourself; don’t sit alone feeling jolly sorry for yourself. Remember, smile and the world smiles with you – weep and you weep alone. When one sees the human suffering on all sides – a poor old soul here aged fifty dying from Parkinson’s disease – ours is not the worst of fate which life hands out. So have courage by continuing to encourage and support me and I can face up to whatever is necessary.

  Some time later Paul Wood wrote to my mother personally to thank her. ‘It is largely due to your great fortitude and kindness,’ he wrote, ‘that Mrs Maydwell has come through her ordeal so well. We could not have operated in the state of extreme anxiety she was in before we moved her in with you. I would even go so far as to say that she owes you her life.’

  Every week my mother wrote to me from hospital on pre-stamped folded letter-cards with a glued edge. To open them you had to tear off the perimeter strip. Written in a mature, flowing hand, her letters were always loving and emotionally charged, written the way she spoke, but never

  – I’m sure intentionally – revealing anything significant about her condition.

  I do hope you are being a good boy this term. Please try your best at lessons and have lots of fun, but try to stay out of trouble. I am being very well looked after and will be home again sometime soon. I am missing you all the time and I send you all my love, darling, as always.

  Hidden, tucked into a margin or sometimes even concealed within the date, always in tiny capital letters, was our private code, ILY, which she had faithfully maintained in every letter since Hampton House.

  My father, ever the pragmatist with no capacity for elaboration, penned his brief, perfunctory and almost formulaic letters on Sundays, always on blue Basildon Bond formally headed writing paper. He could summon neither verbal nor written expression.

  Dear John,

  I hope you are well and playing lots of games. I am very busy at work and away from home quite a lot. I am trying out a new car called a Ford Zephyr. It is black. We have a new Prime Minister called Mr Harold Macmillan. I am going to see Grandpa on Thursday. Mary is getting very good at netball. Mummy is doing well and sends her love.

  Your ever-loving father.

  * * *

  The boys at Hill Brow were a game lot. Older than the usual new boy intake, I entered the middle form and the middle dormitory, quickly progressing to the seniors. In that first dormitory a boy called Peter Gwyn was in the bed next to mine. He was small in stature and powerfully muscled with the barely contained energy of a wild animal ready to pounce. His father was a local gentleman farmer and Master of the Banwell Foxhounds, a country convention with which I was entirely familiar from the sporting traditions of the Manor House. Even at the age of eleven Peter was a bold and fearless horseman, his life’s passion and only topic of conversation while the clouds of a broader education swirled over his head.

  The Somerset Levels are flat meadow wetlands drained by deep ditches called rhynes (pronounced reens) at the field margins. The Banwell hounds and its unruly gang of mounted followers, mostly local farmers, stampeded harum-scarum across these flatlands, their horses and ponies leaping the rhynes with lunatic abandon. That Christmas holidays my father drove me to Banwell to join the hunt. Together Peter and I careered across field after field in some of the wildest riding I have ever done. If your pony mis-timed the leap and crashed into the stagnant rhyne, both the horse and rider would emerge drenched to the skin, spitting foul-smelling water, smothered in green duckweed, to scramble up the other side, remount and gallop off again without a thought. It was exhilarating beyond anything I had ever done before and I was determined that as soon as I was old enough I would own my own horses and become an ardent foxhunter. Peter’s ambition was to be a jockey, a profession for which he was ideally built. He lit a flame with his infectious dedication to the equestrian life and it is partly because of him that I have owned, loved and ridden horses of my own for more than forty years.

  My time at Hill Brow was not entirely trouble-free. There was one incident that brought me close to being expelled for a second time and, upon reflection now, perhaps should have done. On Sundays we were encouraged to engage in pastimes and hobbies. Mine was collecting stamps. For a recent birthday my father had bought me the heavy, red-bound Stanley Gibbons catalogue, the indispensable bible for all serious philatelists.

  One Sunday afternoon I sat down at a table beside the stove in the main classroom to sort out a large envelope of stamps my mother had sent me. Among them I hurried to find her coded inscription, always tucked in, a tiny cut square of plain blue writing paper the size of a stamp upon which she had drawn a smiling woman’s face and underneath were the initials I always searched for – ILY. These cyphers were fiercely important to me. They were tiny cherished signals from the most important person in my young life.

  Carefully I spread the stamps out, sorting them into countries and checking them against the catalogue. Soon the table was entirely covered, literally hundreds of them in little, carefully organised groups. Then, with delicate stamp hinges and special tweezers, I began painstakingly to stick them, one by one, into the large album given me for my birthday, carefully positioning my mother’s little blue square on the title page. I was totally and happily absorbed, just getting on with what we were supposed to be doing. Major Newbery was on duty, overseeing our activities in two adjoining rooms. A plume of cigarette smoke followed him as he wandered between the rooms, offering words of encouragement here and there.

  A boy of roughly my age – Dunc
an Wells is as good a pseudonym as any – wandered up to the table. ‘Stamps is a girl’s hobby,’ he pronounced with a sneer.

  ‘Clear off!’ I sniped back, scarcely bothering to look up. I was just attaching a hinge to the back of the blue square. He stood there for a moment in silence. Then, without any warning or provocation, he bent forward and blew noisily at the stamps laid out in front of me. They scattered before his spitefully gusted wind. He laughed loudly and blew some more, chasing them off the table and onto the floor. My mother’s square flew with the rest. It was too much. A white heat surged into my brain.

  I leapt up and grabbed him by the throat. He fell over backwards and the back of his head crashed against the sharp edge of a cast-iron surround to the stove. Rage utterly consumed me, blinding me to what was happening. I banged his head continuously against the metal edge, over and over again with all my might. A prefect ran to get Major Newbery, the whole room suddenly in uproar. Boys were shouting. Newbery dragged me off. Blood was gushing from the back of Wells’ head.

  There was a general mobbing kerfuffle as boys crowded round Wells, still lying on the floor, Newbery telling everyone to go to a desk and sit still, trying to calm everyone down. Blood was pooling across the floor and Wells was wailing loudly. Matron arrived and wrapped his head in a towel; he was led staggering away. Major Newbery then marched me off to the sick room, an upstairs room smelling of Dettol, with a single bed in it. The key turned in the lock. A few minutes later I looked out of the window just in time to see Wells being helped into the back of Mathey’s Daimler. His whole head was swathed in bandages. The car crunched away down the gravel drive and disappeared.

  I don’t know how long I stayed in that locked room – perhaps three hours, maybe four. But eventually the key turned and Mrs Matthews came in with a glass of orange cordial. Oddly, she didn’t look angry and she spoke softly. ‘You shouldn’t have done what you did, John. The headmaster has taken Duncan to the hospital in Taunton to get his head stitched up. He will want to see you as soon as he comes back.’ Then she left. Another hour passed before I heard the Daimler return. This time it was Major Newbery who came to the door. ‘Come along,’ he said, ‘the head wants you in his study.’ Oh God, I thought. I’m for it now. Up loomed the image of Bernie and his stinging cane. It all seemed so horribly familiar; I was convinced I was about to be caned and then expelled.

  I was completely wrong; my fear and misgivings were so entirely misplaced that confusion swamped me. Mathey was standing behind his large leather-topped desk, cigarette dangling, hands behind his back, Mrs Matthews perched on the arm of a sofa in the window. He spoke first. ‘M-m-m-m-Major Newbery has told me exactly what happened and m-m-m-I’ve just spoken to three boys who were very near where you were doing your stamps. I believe Duncan’s actions were entirely m-m-m-unprovoked. Is that correct, John?’

  ‘Yessir.’ I tried not to sound surprised.

  ‘M-m-m-I shall be talking to him when he comes back from hospital. But you must understand that I cannot have that sort of extreme violence happening at Hill Brow. M-m-m-provoked or not, you should not have attacked Duncan like you did. I’m assuming that you didn’t know he had hit his head on the fire surround. Am I right?’

  I thought for a moment before answering. ‘Yes, sir. Er – I mean no, sir. I didn’t know about the metal.’

  ‘M-m-m-but you did carry on banging his head?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  I thought this was a silly question. I thought it was obvious, so after a pause I said, ‘Because I was so angry, sir.’

  ‘M-m-m-m-I didn’t know you had a temper, John.’ I was still puzzled by the tone of this interrogation. He sounded calm, reasonable, even placatory – yes, he was being nice.

  ‘Sorry, sir. I was just very angry.’

  ‘But you still wanted to hurt him.’

  I looked down at the carpet. Its swirling floral pattern of gold and green seemed to reflect the emotions swirling in my head. Should I own up to that? I wondered. Is this a trick to get me to admit that I wanted to kill him? But things didn’t add up. No one seemed angry with me. My heart was still pounding, my head still fizzing with the electric discharge of things I didn’t understand, but something in his tone was calming me down and I began to breathe more easily. I glanced at Mrs Matthews and then at Major Newbery. There were no red faces, no snarling voices, nothing like Bernie at all. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Hmmm. I see.’ He walked to his desk and drew another cigarette from its box, lighting it from the tail end of the old one, which he stubbed out in a glass ashtray while he thought.

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘M-m-m-yes, John, I expect you are. So am I. I shall now have to decide what to say to Mr and Mrs Wells when I tell them that their son is in m-m-m-hospital with seven stitches in his head.’

  ‘Is he going to die?’

  ‘Humph!’ Mathey almost laughed. ‘No, he’s not, luckily for us all. Just a nasty m-m-m-cut. Oh, and by the way, John. Major Newbery has seen that all your stamps are carefully put away for you.’

  Then his wife spoke for the first time. ‘Is your mother still in hospital, John?’ Her voice was soft and conciliatory, almost affectionate.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Matthews, she is.’

  ‘I hope she’s getting better.’ I had no idea whether she was or she wasn’t, and it was puzzling that Mrs Matthews seemed to care. Very slowly I began to understand that both the Matthewses were on my side, that perhaps they had even understood why I attacked Wells. She turned to her husband, ‘I think it’s very important John’s mother doesn’t get to hear of this. We don’t want to cause her any worry.’

  Mathey thought for a moment, glancing first to me then back to his wife as though he didn’t quite know what to say. ‘M-m-m-m-yes, dear, quite right. Yes, I agree.’

  Good old Mum, I thought.

  17

  ‘Upon thy belly shalt thou go’

  An avenue of magnificent English elms lined the Hill Brow drive, now all so grievously beetle-purged from the Somerset landscape. I can see myself looking up into those lofty, cloud-raking trees while rooks circled and cawed against an ocean of high, softly winnowing cumulus. I ran there every day. Their constant rough music was to me a joyous symphony, transporting me straight back to where I really wanted to be, to the Manor House and its own rookery, embraced by the glorious, cloud-raking beeches of the graveyard.

  I was twelve years old and in my last year at prep school. For the moment life’s barometer was set fair. My mother was home again – not well, of course, but the crisis of her leaking aorta had been temporarily averted. Every week the loyal and diligent John Parker came to Bartonfield to adjust her medication and listen intently to her lumpy, dysrhythmic heartbeat. She looked forward to these visits, often told me that it wasn’t just that Dr Parker was a very good doctor and a friend, but that he inspired her with self-belief that she would be OK – that she would somehow scrape through. On rare occasions I would be allowed into her bedroom to sit on the end of her bed during these chatty consultations. I remember it as though it were yesterday: the sternly studied concentration on Dr Parker’s face, eyes tight shut, as he slid his stethoscope across her chest . . . side . . . back. Then he would smile broadly. ‘Still ticking,’ and she would laugh, the sunlight of everlasting hope dancing in her luminous grey-green eyes.

  I was no longer afraid or homesick. I had become comfortable with the familial ambiance of little Hill Brow School in the way that one enjoys a sloppy old pair of shoes. I had made friends: Roger Potter, Ian Cocks, Peter Bennett, Peter Gwyn, David McCaig, Goofy Isaacs . . . and, perhaps for the first time in my rather Byzantine school career, I’d begun to fit in, to lose myself in the conventional potage of uniformed boys around me. Yet one frustration continued to haunt me – no one else showed much inclination for or interest in nature.

  Very slowly a truth was dawning: that my years of unsupervised wanderings had thrust me into natural histo
ry in a way that was unusual – not the way that most boys grew up. Either by circumstance or parental intent, none of my Hill Brow contemporaries had experienced those freedoms or influences that had tipped me firmly into nature’s grip.

  Those rows of wonder-filled fusty old books in the Manor House library, the manuals on moths and butterflies full of delicate paintings and line drawings compiled by passionate amateur naturalists; the endless tomes on hunting, shooting and fishing written by gentry for gentry; the venerable bird books; guides to moths and butterflies and the uncounted volumes on gardening, trees, wild flowers, and even on fungi and injurious pests, had found their willing mark. Whether by inquisitive intent or simply because they were there, their splendid, heartening enlightenment and boundless intrigue had seeped in through the receptive pores of my boyhood.

  Day after day, week after week, holidays after holidays, those cloth-bound books with embossed board covers and such enticing titles had sent me out in search of wildlife. One of my favourites was The Feathered Tribes of the British Islands (1834) by Robert Mudie – it took me years to work out that the ‘screech owl’ was the same as the barn owl, that the ‘fern owl’ (nightjar) wasn’t an owl at all, and that the ‘greater pettichaps’ was a garden warbler – with its artificially posed, hand-painted illustrations and its exciting uncut pages that I had to slice carefully open with my knife, revealing images and written secrets that had never before seen the light of day.

  It never occurred to me that because so many of the books were so old they might be out of date, or even incorrect in their findings or speculations. To me they were the authority, and one I never thought to challenge any more than you would question a dictionary. By the simple virtue of being on the printed page and being on the Manor House shelves I believed every word. Only years later did I realise that some of the volumes I loved most had been presents to my great-grandfather, Arthur (1813–1910), or to my grandfather, born in 1873, when he was a boy, and therefore reflected the country values of their time. Knowing their birds and plants, and building collections of birds’ eggs, had been the way they were expected to spend their childhood. That I was now accidentally mirroring those same values had never crossed my mind.