A Vicarage Family: A Biography of Myself

by Noel Streatfeild

  ‘That may be. But a sprained ankle scarcely seems an excuse for raising your voice.’

  Victoria never forgot those words. Years later in London, during the Second World War, she was in a house which the third of a stick of bombs was clearly likely to hit. Actually it just missed, but caused a lot of damage. When the dust, rubble and broken glass had settled Victoria heard herself say quietly: ‘You may nearly have been killed by a bomb, Victoria, but that scarcely seems an excuse for raising your voice.’

  But that morning had other effects than teaching Victoria not to scream. When, bandaged, she hobbled down to lunch and sat between two of her classmates, she said:

  ‘Well, I’ve spoken to Miss French at last – and I hate her.’

  11

  Settling Down

  The first meeting on their own between Miss French and Victoria was, of course, a disaster. Miss French knew this the moment it happened, and, much as she disliked a raised voice, because it was a sign of lack of control, on that one occasion she wished she had not scolded – or at least not so sharply. There is nothing that is so shattered as a fallen idol, and for Victoria Miss French was just that, for to her it seemed cruel to talk to someone with a sprained ankle in the way that she had.

  ‘It was worse than the pharisees passing by on the other side,’ she told Isobel later. ‘It was like kicking the injured.’

  It was true that, the reproof over, Miss French had knelt down to examine the ankle, and had then said in a voice which Victoria grudgingly admitted she supposed was meant to be kind: ‘You have indeed sprained it. I will send for matron, she will strap it for you.’

  But even if Miss French had looked after the ankle herself, it was too late for her to climb again to the pedestal on which Victoria had placed her. She was off that for good, and Victoria, scowling as she waited for Matron, was back at her favourite mutter: ‘She’s mean. She’s mean.’

  From that time onwards Victoria ceased to try to get on at school. If they were mean to her, she told herself, she would be mean to them. It was not that she was noticeably tiresome – she was not at that time in a position to lead the other girls, and it was a bore making a nuisance of yourself alone – but she made no effort to learn. Class after class she sat through, outwardly conforming, but actually trying to take in as little as possible.

  ‘It’s a stupid school,’ she wrote to John, ‘so I am not bothering with it. In class I pretend I am somewhere else.’

  John was a scholar so he loved learning, he gloried every time he felt he was really getting a grip on a subject. But, like many of his sex at that date, he did not think it mattered if girls were educated, and anyway, from what he could hear, all girls’ schools were crazy, so he wrote back:

  ‘As you have promised Uncle Jim you will write a play for the parish children, if you have nothing better to do during a class you might work on that. It will have to be one of those “enter a crowd of elves” affairs if you are to use all the children who will want to take part.’

  So Victoria dreamed up a play and when she could manage it without being noticed she wrote a page or two of dialogue.

  In the vicarage things were improving. Somehow the children’s mother had got through her calls, helped on a few afternoons by lifts in other people’s carriages. Cousin Alexander, after a last blazing row, had retired as churchwarden and the local chemist, a gentle man who had taken an instant liking to his new vicar, took his place. But there were still undercurrents in the parish, a kind of grudging unwillingness to believe that anything the children’s father did could be right.

  Isobel came up against this outlook; it was the Saturday of the Mothers’ Union tea for which Victoria had promised an entertainment. A helper who was cutting up bread and butter said in an unkind voice:

  ‘So we are to have a treat today. I understand it will be something quite new in amateur entertainment.’

  Isobel flushed and stammered.

  ‘Vicky can act and Louise plays the piano well for somebody of ten, but I’m no earthly good at acting so I’m afraid we won’t shine.’

  ‘That is hardly the impression your father has given us.’

  Isobel kept that conversation to herself, for she was subconsciously aware that such pinpricks were her parents’ general lot. But actually that first effort to entertain did help. The Mothers’ Union members, unaccustomed to being amused in any way, were delighted and grateful, apart from being interested to meet the new vicar’s family. And a cautious but friendly-toned report filtered round the parish.

  ‘Nice young ladies. That Vicky is a card. Little Louise played the piano ever so nice. Their mother was pleasant, talking to everybody. Having a real job getting that garden straight, poor thing,’

  Taking the children to the Mothers’ Union entertainment was the first chance the children’s mother had to get to know the poorer parishioners, and the poor parishioners were the ones whom she understood the best. She had learnt this when her husband was given his first parish – a country village. At that time Isobel and Victoria were toddlers, Louise a baby, and Dick was expected. In those days there was so little money every penny had to be counted but, believing it the vicar’s wife’s duty, she had made some broth for a woman recovering from pneumonia and left it at her cottage. When the woman was on her feet again she came round to the vicarage carrying a basket of vegetables.

  ‘Don’t you try to give things to the likes of us,’ she said, thrusting the basket into the children’s mother’s arms. ‘You’ve got all you can do to fill the bellies of your own.’

  The children’s mother, who was not at that time twenty-one, had been brought up to know herself to be a gentlewoman and, therefore, set apart from the poor. Because of this the woman’s remark and the gift of the vegetables was a shock. For in those days the hymn which stated: ‘The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them, high or lowly, And order’d their estate’ was believed by almost everybody. The children’s mother might not belong to a castle, but she had believed, however poor they were, that they did not qualify for ‘The poor man at his gate’. But after the gift of the vegetables she was no longer so sure. If not quite at the gate they were pretty near it.

  That they were not only poor but were accepted as such by the parishioners, was something which, in the few years they remained in that country parish, the children’s mother had come to accept, and this altered her outlook. She was as fond – or even fonder – of her poor neighbours than ever, but now almost as an equal for she never again offered to give them anything, in fact, she became a receiver of gifts, especially of advice.

  Probably the parishioners felt motherly about their vicar’s young wife, thinking her rather helpless, with a husband, bless him, who must make life difficult when you were hard up, for he would give away the coat off his back.

  The whole family would have eaten better if the children’s mother had treasured half the advice handed to her, but she was never a good caterer. ‘With all the mouths you have to feed,’ a farm worker’s wife told her, ‘you want to do what I do. Every Sunday I give mine a chicken which, with my man and six growing boys, would not go far, surely. But I cook a gurt big suet roll and serves it with a right big jug of gravy. Then I says there’s not a bite of chicken for the one of you till that roll’s eaten. The chicken goes round fine after they be stuffed with suet roll.’

  Another woman, finding the children’s mother buying a packet of jelly, said:

  ‘You don’t want to buy that stuff, you want to make your own, something their teeth have to work on. Do you know, ma’am, my jellies sit so firm and so sweet you can throw one against a wall and it won’t break, but will bounce right back at you.’

  In that parish she also learned that even had she wished to give, only certain forms of giving were permitted; certain lesser gifts might be considered an insult. A not-much-liked vicar of a nearby parish had given, after his Sunday School treat, each child a bun. That evening a half-eaten bun with a note
had been delivered to him. The note said: ‘Buns is common food. Mrs Brown says if she wants them for her children she can get them for herself respectfully Mrs Brown.’

  By the time the children’s father was appointed to a town parish the children’s mother, educated by her country friends, had a clear view of herself and her family. They were poor, but poor in their own way. She would visit and make friends with her neighbours, but she would not give them anything, except perhaps a little at Christmas, because she had nothing to give. That parish at St Leonard’s-on-Sea was full of desperately poor people, for many were out of work and, in those days, there was no unemployment pay. But also in those days there were many anxious to help.

  Remembering the offence given by the bun the children’s mother, first establishing it would be acceptable, started what was called a soup kitchen which was open three days a week all through the winter. The butchers gave bones and meat, the greengrocers vegetables, the grocers such things as barley, and the bakers stale bread. The children’s mother collected a group of workers and together they made the soup, boiling it for hours in a copper. Then at twelve every other morning the doors would be opened and women and children would pour in, everyone carrying jugs, basins and mugs. A full jug and enough bread for the whole family’s dinner cost a few pence, but always the children’s mother was watching, and frequently she would whisper ‘Extra bread, and only take a penny’, or sometimes ‘No charge.’

  But Eastbourne seemed to have no poor, at least not poor as the children’s mother meant poor – not soup kitchen poor. The truth was, the town was full of boarding schools, all of which needed servants. The schools shopped locally so the tradesmen prospered and they too needed workers. In the summer it was a popular holiday resort, so the hotels were always full and required staff. Many of the schools were let for the summer and the guests not only needed waiting on but again the shops prospered.

  The public gardens were magnificently laid out, which took a small army of gardeners. The roads were beautifully kept and washed, which meant employment. In fact nobody who had their health and strength, and was prepared to take what work was going, needed to be unemployed in Eastbourne.

  So much was this so that until the Mothers’ Union party the children’s mother had seen the new parish as a well-kept lawn. It was hard to know where to burrow to look for weeds. It had not been the intention of those who ran the meeting that she should have burrowed; they had intended she should appear as an honoured guest and then depart, but they reckoned without their vicar’s wife. In no time she was talking gardening and, unashamed of a hard-luck story, was admitting how much space she had and how few plants to fill it. Soon the offers were pouring in.

  ‘You come up and see me, dear, I’ve some lovely seedlings you can have.’

  Or:

  ‘You wait till the autumn, my husband can give you some cuttings.’

  In other ways the vicarage was shaking down. The cook and the house parlourmaid, who had worked for them in the last parish, had not come with them to Eastbourne, as they were local women and did not want to move far from their homes. They had started at Eastbourne vicarage with an enormously stout cook called Mona, who seemed a perfect choice, for she was always laughing. The house parlourmaid, who preferred to be called Hodges, would have been a jewel anywhere else but she was out of place in the vicarage, for she was used to first-class service and was worthy of it, having been highly trained in every branch of her work.

  ‘Oh, why did she come to us?’ the children’s mother would moan. ‘And why did I take her? She terrifies me.’

  But the children’s father rather liked Hodges for she understood valeting a gentleman. All the same, he hated to see his wife upset.

  ‘If you don’t like her give her notice.’

  ‘But what for? She doesn’t do anything wrong. The only thing I could possibly say is, she won’t come to morning prayers.’

  From the beginning Hodges had made a stand about this.

  ‘I do not attend prayers, madam,’ she had stated the morning after she arrived, and when asked why, she had said: ‘I don’t hold with attending.’

  ‘If you don’t like her you must get rid of her,’ the children’s father advised. ‘No good having somebody, however good, who makes you unhappy.’

  Then something happened which changed the whole situation. Every day at seven o’clock Hodges came to call the children’s parents with a tray of tea and thin bread and butter. Having placed the tea tray on a table by the bed, she drew the curtains before going out to fetch in the two copper jugs of hot water for washing and shaving. On this morning, as she drew the curtains, she remarked quietly: ‘Cook is ill, madam.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ said the children’s mother sleepily. ‘What’s the matter with her?’

  Hodges drew back the other curtain.

  ‘I should say she was in advanced labour, madam.’

  In no time the doctor was sent for, and the children who, at that date, were not supposed to know anything about babies, were hurried through breakfast and off to school. When they returned that evening Mona was gone.

  ‘What do you suppose Mona did?’ Isobel asked Victoria.

  It had been understood without being put into words, that their mother did not want Mona talked about.

  ‘Why shouldn’t Mona leave?’ she had asked in a shutting-out voice when the girls expressed surprise that Miss Herbert was cooking the supper.

  Isobel and Victoria had exchanged looks which meant ‘Wait until bedtime’.

  Now, as they undressed, Victoria came to Isobel’s door.

  ‘I think it’s a deep, dark mystery – because I know something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Doctor Gay came.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Victoria came into Isobel’s room and swung on the end of her bed.

  ‘You know Alice Gay’s in my form. Well, she told me. She said: “Daddy tore up to the vicarage before breakfast”.’

  Isobel was amazed.

  ‘But if Mona was ill, why wouldn’t Mummy tell us?’

  Victoria gazed at Isobel, her eyes glittered with excitement.

  ‘I think Alice knew something; she didn’t tell me, she asked in a funny voice if anything was wrong.’

  Isobel and Victoria, if they knew nothing for sure, knew there were things they did not know – things to do with wombs, as mentioned in the Bible.

  ‘Oh!’ said Isobel. ‘Something like that. Then we shan’t be told, at least not yet.’

  And though both girls probed for the truth they at last forgot about Mona, so it was not until they were grown up that they heard what Hodges had said that morning.

  Mona’s departure meant that Annie arrived in the house. Annie came from an orphanage. She was a skinny, tough, black-haired little creature of immense strength, who had been well trained as a plain cook. Never having known a home of her own, her ambition was to acquire one, and the moment she stepped into the vicarage she knew she had found it.

  ‘This will just do me nicely,’ she said to Hodges.

  Hodges looked at Annie with disgust. Mona may have slipped up and had a baby, but she did know what was what. But this chit from an orphanage she could never work with. The very next morning immediately after breakfast she gave her notice.

  ‘I do not think Annie and I will get on, so if she is staying I wish to leave, madam.’

  The children’s mother tried to sound dismayed.

  ‘Oh dear! But I am afraid Annie is staying. I think she will suit splendidly.’

  ‘Very good, madam,’ said Hodges, correct to the end, ‘I will leave when you are suited.’

  Nothing like Hodges replaced her; instead, a simple creature, willing though not well-trained, but a strong churchwoman, arrived. Her name was Hester. It was understood her husband had died, for she had two children who lived with their grandmother. Over a first cup of tea she said to Annie very much what Annie herself had said.

  ‘I like this place.
I think I could settle.’

  Annie, telling the story later, said:

  ‘I gave my tea a stir and then I said: “There’s only one fly in the ointment, and that’s that Miss Herbert; neither drawing room nor kitchen, if you get me”.’

  It was not long after Annie and Hester had settled in that Annie made the remark which made her ‘family’. The children’s mother had gone to the kitchen to order the day’s food and discuss plans.

  ‘It will soon be August and we always go away then. This year we are going near Canterbury so that I can see something of my father. We’ve taken a house. It would be convenient if you and Hester came too.’

  Annie raised herself to the full height of her five-foot-two.

  ‘Convenient! That’s a funny way to talk. I can’t see you managing on your own. Of course we’re coming.’

  12

  Summer Holiday

  St Margaret’s Bay remained for always a mountain top of a holiday; one by which all others could be measured. Afterwards the family all knew what was meant by ‘Nearly as good as St Margaret’s Bay’.

  Every year in the spring the children’s father would look up from a letter and announce as if it was an award he had won: ‘This year we are going to …’ and then would follow the name of some minute village in Wales, Devonshire, Essex, Derbyshire or wherever he had rented a cheap house for the month of August. Later snippets of information would come out in letters to the boys, and by word of mouth to the girls. First, the historical background of the place to be visited and later, bits culled from tourist guides. ‘The part of Essex where we are staying is called “Poppy-land”.’ ‘In North Wales on Sunday nights choirs sing hymns on the beach.’ ‘In Derbyshire they eat cheese with cake.’

  To the children’s father, whose day started at seven, except on Sundays, Saints’ days and special occasions, when he was never up later than six; who seldom got to bed before two in the morning; who never sat down between these hours except in church, at a meeting or for hurried meals; who went everywhere on foot so that anyone could waylay him; that distant holiday must have looked an oasis indeed. But his family, though they had enjoyed the holiday when they were small, were now outgrowing it. They never said so in so many words, but there were occasional slips. After the holiday spent in an exceptionally dreary house on a bleak spot on the Essex coast Dick was heard to say: