Pat and Ken Leech were my saviors in many ways. I believe they understood how important they were in my life. They had only lived at Robin Cottage for a short time when we moved to The Terrace, and soon I was being invited round for tea, often with Paul from along the road. At that point Pat and Ken had no children, yet clearly loved young company. In time they would have a son, but I was always welcome in their house; indeed, they treated me as if I were a daughter.
Both were teachers at the local primary school, yet in our neighborhood they were also known as rescuers of wild animals. Visiting their home was magical, as there was always a recuperating baby squirrel or two in the specially constructed cage with runs that went up into the trees. The Leeches always returned abandoned or injured creatures to the wild as soon as was safely possible, so they made sure the animal in question became used to a wilder environment while it regained health and strength.
Ken had two owls, both brought to him as abandoned young. One was successfully repatriated to the woods, but the other preferred an easy life in Ken’s massive aviary and returned time and again, clamoring to be allowed back into his lair. Ken Leech was often upset when people brought animals to his door, explaining that you had to give the mother a chance to get a fallen owl back into the nest, or the opportunity to find her wayward baby squirrel. He was telling me this one day in the kitchen when it was time to prepare the owlet’s food. Ken explained every step to me, how it was important to try to replicate the way a mother would bring food to the nest, and to provide the young owl with a means to regurgitate fur from, say, a mouse, or a squirrel—it was part of the creature’s digestive process. He proceeded to cut up liver in pieces, and then poked small wads of cotton wool in and around the flesh, emulating the fur of a small woodland creature. Then we went out to the baby owl, who was waiting for Ken to come with his breakfast. I watched wide-eyed as the owl tucked into the mass of liver and fiber and then began to retch, finally upchucking the cotton wadding while looking very pleased with himself.
When I was fifteen I became their house-cleaner during the school holidays—they knew I needed extra money and not only was I happy to accept the work, but I enjoyed polishing their antique furniture and their lovely silver and brass. I felt at ease in the cottage and I loved the quiet it afforded me, so different from our boisterous household, where someone always seemed to be shouting, usually my mother. Mid-morning, Mrs. Leech—it took me until I was about forty to call them by their first names—would make fresh coffee and toast with her home-made strawberry jam. I wasn’t a coffee drinker when I first came to Robin Cottage to clean, but their fresh coffee was nothing like Mum’s instant coffee at home. They bought Santos coffee beans—Mr. Leech’s favorite coffee—from Importers coffeehouse in Tunbridge Wells—and then ground the beans at home each day before using a special filter to make the beverage. I had never seen anything like it—it was amazing to me. Sometimes Mrs. Leech would play the harpsichord for me, because she knew I loved the sound it made—she was our music teacher at the primary school, and an accomplished musician.
I was driving up to Los Olivos in California’s Santa Ynez Valley when Mum called to say that Ken had died, and I grieved for a long time. Several years later, Pat contacted my parents to break the news that she was dying of pancreatic cancer; she asked if they would let me know. I returned to England shortly after that call, heartbroken to hear the news, yet blessed to be able to spend precious time with her before she died.
Lennie Robertson played a significant part in my teenage life, though unlike the Leeches she never realized it. The Robertsons moved into a local manor house—a grand home close to The Terrace—when I was in my early teens. They were very wealthy, and not only from inherited money. Mr. Robertson was a lawyer in London for a very powerful man, the sort of business mogul you might see depicted in a television series. The Robertsons also had a flat “in Town” where he stayed during the week. They had two young daughters, Pammie and Ella.
Lennie Robertson—real name Leonora—was not universally liked when she arrived in the hamlet, and I’m not sure why. She was forthright, yes, and if truth be told, she might have found rural life just a bit tedious, though she certainly had a lot of friends, other “country set” mothers with children attending local private schools. She was in her early thirties and she was hip—that might not have gone down well with the neighbors, either; mothers were not supposed to be hip.
I was fifteen when the local shopkeeper passed on a message that Mrs. Robertson wanted to speak to me about looking after the girls, who were seven and four, during the summer months and other school holidays. He was quick to say, “As long as we don’t lose you,” because I was also working at the shop on Saturdays and I had to juggle any other work with cleaning at the Leeches’. I was instructed to go to the Robertson’s house at five o’clock on Friday.
I put on my best dress and knocked on the back door—no answer. I knocked on the front door, ambled around the garden and even took a look at the swimming pool, but the house seemed deserted. Now I remember why people didn’t like Lennie much—the manor’s previous owner had built a large walled rose garden in memory of his wife when she died following a diagnosis of cancer. There was an engraved plaque set into the wall in her memory. The Robertsons bought the house when the man moved away, and soon after had the rose garden ripped up, though they kept the wall as it provided a surround for their new swimming pool. People said it was disrespectful. I thought, well, they didn’t know the previous owners and they kept the wall and the plaque—why shouldn’t they have a swimming pool?
I tried knocking a second time and was walking away from the front door when Lennie pulled it open and called out to me. She was wearing a snug white blouse, pink jeans and gold flip-flops. A mass of dark curls framed her face.
“There you are!” she said. “Sorry—I was upstairs in the sewing room sorting out school uniforms, so didn’t hear you until the dogs started. The girls are at a party—come in.”
Sewing room? Lennie Robertson looked as if she had never threaded a needle in her life.
I went in and very quickly accepted the summer job offered. I would be looking after her daughters, Pammie and Ella, three days a week, nine to four, and two days noon to four, so I could keep the job cleaning for Mr. and Mrs. Leech. I worked for Lennie Robertson until I went away to college and occasionally until I was twenty-one and about to start my first full-time job. The path was not always a smooth one, though not in terms of my relationship with Lennie, because I really liked her and we got along very well. But I had to be careful what I said at home about Lennie, because my mother didn’t care for her, and although Mum liked me having a job, she would rather I made up my working hours with someone else. It took a while to realize that my mother was probably jealous of Lennie and hated the fact that I looked up to her.
Caring for the girls was easy, even though the younger could be a bit of a drama queen. I was pretty much free to keep them occupied in any way I saw fit, as long as they were entertained. I took them on the bus to other villages, I took them to their parties, and to the cinema—always on the bus, which they really liked because it was different for them, until I learned to drive. When I turned up for work that first summer with a driving license, Lennie threw her car keys at me to catch and said, “Be a dear and take the girls over to Benenden, to this address—it’s easy to find. Drop them off for the party, and then could you run some errands for me in Cranbrook?”
No problem, except that my parents would not let me drive their car, though I was allowed to drive Dad’s ancient blue van to my job at the local doctor’s office, where I was the evening receptionist two nights a week. Lennie had a brand spanking new posh car. So, off I went, dropped the girls at their friend’s house in Benenden, and then went into Cranbrook to pick up dry cleaning, collect a meat order from the butcher and do some grocery shopping—Lennie had pushed a good amount of folding money into my hand as I left
the house. I was driving back to the manor when I passed my father in his van, so I waved out to him. And as I looked in the rearview mirror, I saw him almost careen into a ditch, such was the shock of seeing his seventeen-year-old daughter in a new flash car blithely driving in the opposite direction. My mother was snippy that evening at home, after she learned that Dad had seen me driving a very, very nice car. I didn’t care, because in a way driving that car made up for what had happened the previous summer.
I was sixteen and looking forward to leaving the Mary Sheafe School for Girls and starting my A-level studies at Cranbrook Grammar, when Lennie left a message at the shop for me to go around to the house to talk about plans for the summer. I had been working for her for a year by this time and I was looking forward to another summer’s work keeping an eye on the girls—I’d become fond of them and Lennie paid me well and on time. Lennie opened my world in many ways. She treated me like an adult, telling me stories about her life as an airline stewardess with British United Airways, a job she gave up when she married—oh, the places she had been. She had grown up overseas because her father was a diplomat. When she left finishing school, Lennie’s father landed her a job as a messenger—for the CIA. She took small packages and envelopes from one Asian city to another, her travel paid for by the US government. Lennie whetted my appetite for travel, because she’d been everywhere and she took time to tell me about all those places. She was so fashionable and had lovely expensive clothes.
One afternoon she was scheduled to meet her husband in London and would be staying at their Chelsea flat, so I was going to sleep overnight at the house to look after the girls. Lennie was running behind when I arrived in the afternoon, and was in a hurry to get to the station. She had showered and was dressed in a bathrobe as I entered by the kitchen door, wrangling my way in past the Old English Mastiff puppy and the elderly spaniel. Lennie was holding a crumpled wad of navy blue silk in one hand, which she threw across the kitchen to me.
“Be a dear and put the iron over that for me—I’m incredibly late, and I must get something on my face.”
I set up the ironing board and plugged in the iron, moving the dial to “silk” before double-checking the label. The word “Chanel” seemed to leap out at me. I sweated buckets ironing that cocktail dress, making sure the pleats were just so and that there was not a single crease. Fortunately, I had been trained by years of having to iron clothes at home, and more recently by Mrs. Musgrave, the new needlework teacher at school who had previously worked in “couture.” I don’t think I took a breath until I had that dress on a hanger outside Lennie’s dressing room, ready for her to wear to an important event in London. I wish she’d gone to London a lot more, because by that time her husband was having an affair with his secretary.
But on this occasion, the summer after I’d turned sixteen, Lennie had a proposition for me. I’d start work for her when school ended and then after two weeks the Robertsons would be driving down to the south of France, to Antibes, to meet another family at their villa. Lennie showed me photos of a massive property overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Now I knew why it was known as the “azure” Mediterranean Sea. The image of the house could have made a stunning a postcard, if billionaires had their own postcards. The two families would be staying at the villa for a month. Lennie wanted me to come, too, so I could look after the children if the adults wanted an evening out, or to take the kids to the beach. I wouldn’t have to do the journey by car because I would join their friends who were flying to Antibes on their private jet.
I had never been abroad and I had never been on a plane. I was beside myself. In fact I am sure my heart stopped beating for a while because I remember feeling a bit dizzy, but with a calm voice I said I would love to come, what a wonderful opportunity, though I would have to ask my parents. Lennie said that if they had questions, she would be happy to answer all of them—and I would be paid double time. After all, there would be four children and the other family would be contributing to my employment, and of course I would have days to myself. Oh my goodness, I think my feet hovered above the ground as I ran home. Mum and Dad were not back from work, but I ran to the telephone box at the end of the street to call Anne-Marie—I had to tell somebody my news. I was effervescent with excitement—I was going to Antibes, for heaven’s sake, and in a private jet! I blurted it all out to Anne-Marie.
Anne-Marie was silent as I recounted the whole story, and then said, “Jack—don’t get your hopes up. You’ll only get hurt.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your mum won’t let you go. I know it. She won’t let you go.”
“But she has to—this is my chance to go abroad.”
“I know your mother, Jack. I love her, but I know what she’s like. Don’t get your hopes up—she won’t let you go.” Anne-Marie has always been wise.
I tried not to worry as I waited at the end of the road for Mum to arrive home from work. As soon as the bus stopped and she stepped out, I could not stop talking, telling her about the summer job as we walked toward the house; about the south of France and the private jet and how I would be getting paid double time and it would be for four weeks, and . . .
“No. You’re not going.”
“But Mum—”
“The answer is no. Don’t bother asking me again, because you’re not going.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have to give you reasons, but seeing as you asked, I don’t want you to be a slave for those kind of people.”
Those kind of people. There it was again.
“She’s not those kind of people. Lennie’s good to me.”
“Well, then Lennie—Mrs. Robertson—will understand why I’ve said no.”
I stayed in my room that evening and didn’t come down to eat, to talk, to say goodnight. Anne-Marie was right—she knew my mother and she’d done her best to warn me. But I was devastated.
I went to the Robertsons’ house the following evening and told Lennie that I couldn’t go to the south of France. I think she saw the big tears in the corners of my eyes. “Oh, not to worry, Jackie,” she said. “Another time, perhaps.”
A couple of weeks later after school ended for the summer, I was at the house helping Lennie orchestrate a pool party for about twenty children when she turned to me and said, “We deserve a drink.” I thought she’d come back with lemonade or ginger ale, but instead, as I sat on the patio watching the children—and perhaps I should have told her I couldn’t swim—Lennie sat down next to me and handed me a tall glass with a clear sparkling beverage over ice with a slice of lemon.
“And you, especially, deserve this,” she said, clinking her glass against mine.
That evening I toddled home slightly tipsy, having tasted my first gin and tonic. No one noticed. I went straight to my room, which was becoming a regular occurrence anyway. The following week after the Robertsons left for Antibes, I started a summer job at the local egg packing factory. The supervisor was supposed to pick me up at the top of the road each morning—the factory was well off the bus route—and then go on to Cranbrook to collect several other female workers. After repeatedly having to shove his wandering hand off my knee during the first couple of days, I discovered that another woman drove from Cranbrook each day, so I arranged to meet her there in the mornings and be dropped off after work, when I would walk the two miles home, alone. I hated the job, hated the supervisor, hated the smell of broken eggs, was sick when I found half-rotting mice or rats around the storeroom, and I was earning less than Lennie Robertson would have paid me. But Mum loved my working there because I was given two-and-a-half-dozen eggs free each week, and she liked getting something for nothing. Except it wasn’t really for nothing, not in my mind. I didn’t touch an egg for three years. Or was it four? I know it was a long time before I could face seeing an egg on my plate, though I can still pick up ten eggs at once.
This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing Page 23
