Fair Girls and Grey Horses

by Christine Pullein-Thompson

  In Scotland, when my sisters went fishing in the canoe I tried to teach a friendly cow to shake hands – for me a scientific experiment: I had taught a pony and a dog, so why not a cow? Every morning Christine and I swam together in that grey cove, peeling off layers of clothes before plunging into the cold Highland water. Afterwards we prepared breakfast for everyone, but our attempts at cooking failed; my hot bread rolls were again hard as stones. Later in the mornings we paddled close to shore in the folbot or played on the knoll which looked out across the sheltered sea to the blue outlines of Rhum and Eigg and Skye, which were already familiar from the watercolours Granny had painted of them.

  My sisters have forgotten the rowing boat our parents hired in Arisaig from a drunken fisherman. Cappy arranged to pay for it weekly, but, as the fisherman kept running out of money, the weeks got shorter and shorter, and he became a frequent, slightly dreaded figure on the cottage doorstep. In the evenings we rowed our parents out towards the glory of the setting Highland sun and trawled in vain for mackerel. One day our drunken fisherman brought us a live lobster to buy and, as luck would have it, there had been an article in The Times that morning on how to kill lobsters humanely. The usual method of plunging them into boiling water was apparently cruel. Far better, the author said, to put them in a large saucepan of cold, salted water and bring them slowly to the boil, a method guaranteed to send the lobster to sleep. Cappy followed these instructions and, unable to escape – it was raining and the cottage was small – we listened miserably for ages while our victim crawled round and round, his claws clinking against the saucepan’s sides, until at last there was no sound except the boiling water and we knew he had expired. Inevitably, his white flesh, extracted laboriously from inside his pinkish shell, gave us no pleasure when it eventually it arrived on our plates and I, for one, ate it only to please our parents.

  Cappy’s temper seemed to improve in Scotland – partly, I suspect, because his job running the Public Schools’ Employment Bureau now suited his temperament. Known as ‘pull-through Thompson’ by boys at Repton, he enjoyed driving across the country staying with careers teachers or headmasters, and lecturing pupils, and to this day we meet from time to time men whom he advised in their youth.

  But that year there was cause for sadness, too, because in May his brother Edgar – handsome, womanising Edgar, who had had his father’s charm, polished by Marlborough College – died of TB, so adding remorse, perhaps, to conflicting emotions mentioned by Christine. Cappy dealt with the funeral arrangements and afterwards handed me Edgar’s watch, because I was his godchild. It was too big and, since I never knew Edgar, of no sentimental value – and how could I bear to wear something taken from a corpse? Sickened, I put it on to please our parents and later lost it. But I still treasure Edgar’s christening present to me, a delightful silver porringer and spoon, each engraved simply Diana – I like to think he knew that when I grew up and used them for sugar, I would not wish my birth date there for all to see.

  Josephine

  I don’t think I was quite so Scottish-minded as the twins, but I found the journey there very exciting. Glencoe, magnificently sombre under storm clouds, was an indelible memory; another at the very end of the arduous drive, was a nerve-wracking confrontation with the Lochaber Laundry’s van on a single-track road with a precipice on one side and the wreck of at least one lorry lying in the valley below.

  The cottage, Achateilasaig, stern and grey with neat gables, stood quite alone on unfenced land; only a stretch of grass divided it from the sea. The twins and the parents had the large front bedrooms with views across the Sound; mine was a horrid little room with only a skylight. I swam on the first morning, but the sea water was freezing cold, and, emerging blue with orange splodges all over, I refused to go in again for the rest of the month. The twins, either better-covered or of higher moral fibre, swam every day. Mamma spent the mornings working on her crime novel for Gollancz and Cappy made his endless shopping trips to Arisaig, or to Mallaig if kippers were needed. We explored, searched for caves and canoed when it was fine, read and played Happy Families when it was wet. I remember Christine sobbing endlessly over Jane Eyre.

  We fetched the milk daily from the farm. I made friends with the farmer’s wife, another Mrs Macdonald, and I was soon invited into the kitchen and found myself learning to make soda scones. I don’t remember what we talked about, but cold wet mornings passed in the warmth of her kitchen with its blazing range, kneading the large round scones before we cooked them on the griddle, seemed infinitely preferable to swimming. At eleven we would cut sections from a scone, slice them open, spread them with butter and golden syrup and, sitting sociably at the kitchen table, down them with cups of tea. A scone, taken back for the family to sample, was so approved of that the parents later bought a griddle and, whenever there was sour milk at The Grove, I was called upon to make some.

  I feel certain that the main reason for Cappy’s constant shopping trips was to acquire the latest possible copy of The Times. The news was appalling and we had no wireless. In March Hitler had incorporated Austria into Germany and now it was Czechoslovakia’s turn. I don’t remember the parents talking to us about the situation – perhaps they didn’t want to spoil our last holiday – but all through that month they must have been reading about the air raid precautions; thirty-eight million gas masks distributed to regional centres, trenches dug and Britain’s pathetic stock of anti-aircraft guns deployed in London parks. When an evacuation scheme was announced eighty-three per cent of London parents had applied for their children to go. As the crisis mounted the House of Commons was recalled from holiday and on September 23rd the French began the mobilization of their forces. I was delegated to ask if we might listen on the farm radio to a speech Hitler was making; this must have been the ultimatum he delivered to the Czechs from the Sports Palace in Berlin on September 25th. We trooped over to the farm and sat stiffly in the Macdonalds’ formal front room. At the end of an untranslated extract Mrs Macdonald asked in her soft Highland voice, ‘And would that be Cherman?’

  To me Hitler’s raving and ranting was still something of a joke and was he not rumoured to bite carpets when in a rage? But the parents were filled with gloom and they took no comfort at all from his famous assurance: ‘This is the last territorial claim I have to make in Europe.’

  Hitler’s ultimatum was to expire on September 28th and orders were given for the mobilization of the British fleet. Then, as we seemed on the brink of war, the four powers agreed to meet in Munich, and Prime Minister Chamberlain returned with his agreement, saying that he had ‘… peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.’ Our parents felt only dishonour at the abandonment of Czechoslovakia, and this was communicated to us.

  After our wet holiday and the twins’ birthday celebrations, we finally arrived at Wychwood on October 2nd. I don’t think anyone had believed Cappy’s telegram about the big end of the car failing, and my friends also refused to accept that we were leaving. When on the last day of term our names were not included in the list of departing seniors, they turned to me in triumph and said, ‘There you see, you’re not leaving.’ I don’t think the school staff really believed it either and the final report on us threatened, ‘Gaiety and high spirits will not find them jobs in life.’ This description of us makes me wonder whether the twins were quite as unhappy there as Diana remembers?

  It was at Easter 1939, with Denis now working in the theatre, that I was considered old enough to accompany Mamma on her visit to Granny in St Jean Cap Ferrat. On the journey out we saved money by not having couchettes. I found sitting up all night rather arduous, especially as I had developed a boil on my bottom, and on arrival I was deeply disappointed for instead of the incredible blue of the postcards, both sea and sky were grey.

  Granny, who had a suite of rooms in the Dardes’ private hotel, had booked an extra bedroom for Mamma and me. It was all very comfortable and, as there was Dubonnet at eleven, on an empty stomach, and wine at lu
nch and dinner, I was deliciously drunk most of the time. I didn’t like Madame Darde – sycophantic, short and rounded into a ball by her own good cooking. I would avert my eyes from the two bushes of grey underarm hair which emerged from her sleeveless dresses. The Darde dogs were also a disappointment: small, dingy white, yappy animals, with curly coats and tails, they answered to names like Bou-Bou and Frou-Frou.

  We went out with Granny’s friends. Mrs Singer took us to lunch at a very grand hotel in Nice – the Réserve, I think – where you could choose your fish, live, from an ornamental pond outside. I decided against fish. The meal was endless and I was persuaded to eat and eat, delicious chocolate ice cream being forced on me when I was already bursting.

  When we didn’t have enormous lunches, my need to eat at teatime was recognised and I was sent into a patisserie to choose a delicious fruit tartlet. I enjoyed shopping except for the cries of excitement French women gave at the sight of my blue eyes and blonde hair and the constant necessity of explaining that I was not Swedish.

  I was rather hurt when on Easter Sunday I presented Mamma and Granny each with a chocolate Easter egg and didn’t receive one in return; but later in the day we visited the headmistress of Mamma’s old finishing school and she gave me a tiny Russian Fabergé-style egg to wear on a chain, which restored my faith in human nature. Granny loved Mamma but really had no interest in children, and I was good at being seen and not heard. I remember only one real conversation with her, when she advocated the learning of poetry by heart. She told me that now she was old and didn’t sleep well, she spent the long nights reciting the poems she had learnt in childhood.

  Every day there was an expedition. In Monte Carlo, Granny bought Mamma an evening dress. A creation of lace, black taffeta and cherry-red velvet ribbons, it was lovely, but I knew that Mamma would have preferred the money to pay the coal bill. Hanging about in the dress shop was boring, but walking along the terrace outside the Casino, where so many ruined gamblers had cursed their luck for the last time before shooting themselves, was much more to my taste. Another time we drove to Grasse and lunched there with some more of Granny’s dignified friends.

  The parents had decided that we would all holiday in France for the whole of September that year, so Mamma and I viewed and booked a large apartment in Villefranche. The idea was that Cappy would sunbathe and live a café life, the twins and I would acquire impeccable French accents by doing the household shopping, and Mamma would spend a good deal of her time with Granny. I have always wondered if this was a fantasy born of desperation, for all around us were the signs of war, including the grim, grey battleships gathering in the harbour outside. In Menton Granny wanted to cross the frontier so that I could say I had been in Italy, but we had to leave Silvio, as his papers were mysteriously ‘not in order’, and walk. It was then, seeing the threatening stance of Mussolini’s Fascist troops, that I felt for the first time what Churchill called the ‘hush of suspense, the hush of fear’.

  Chapter Seven

  Diana

  When the parents told us we were going to have a governess, visions of that often down-trodden breed in Victorian novels leapt to mind. But Hope, a communist and, I suspect, a feminist too, was very different: a graduate, brisk, intelligent, and, at times, amusing. I remember her as brown-haired with, I think, green or hazel eyes, and a fresh complexion. She was of medium height with a bust made prominent by the uplift bra of those days. Her husband Owen, an architect, was finding it hard to get work and, although war seemed inevitable, a medical condition made him unfit for the armed forces; I expect the money our parents paid Hope came in useful.

  Hope, who lived locally, arrived every morning at nine o’clock and stayed until twelve-thirty. We all sat round the nursery’s gate-legged table, in winter close to a roaring fire, each fortified during our eleven o’clock break by a glass of Australian burgundy, which Mamma said would give us iron and ward off colds and ’flu. Sometimes we slipped away into the kitchen, saying we needed the loo, and returned with a plate of cakes from a batch Joan had cooked; other times we pretended to be drunk and giggled a great deal, and then Hope told us not to be so bloody silly. When it rained we were late because, we claimed, the ponies needed drying. But Hope, who called a spade a spade and not a bloody shovel, never got rattled, except when we wound her up by expressing outrageous right-wing views, for we soon learnt that we had only to gabble on about grinding the faces of the poor and the laziness of the British worker to interrupt whatever lesson she was taking.

  Mamma decided we should study Julius Caesar for School Certificate, and continue with Macbeth, which we had ‘done’ at Wychwood. We were each bought for English a copy of Modern Poetry 1922–1924, an anthology selected by M. Wollman. I still have my copy and suspect now that some of the poets in this book have been almost forgotten; but there is a poem by one of Josephine’s favourites, Humbert Wolfe, and I remember liking ‘The Zebras’ by Roy Campbell, and ‘Cambridgeshire’ by Frances Cornford, some of whose work was already known to us. The notes I made in this anthology show how thorough Hope was; no unusual word was left unexplained, and although she accused me of reciting poetry like a vicar preaching in sepulchral tones from a pulpit, I enjoyed our English lessons. We all loved learning ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen lend me your ears’. We already knew much of Macbeth by heart and frequently pretended to be the three witches; for who of our age could not revel in ‘Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble’ and ‘By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes’? Soon ‘Open, locks, Whoever knocks’ became a frequent cry before closed doors.

  We rode most afternoons and every evening we spent at least an hour and a half on homework. Before Hope came I had been living in a sort of intellectual fog, but now, with individual tuition, I started to understand even geometry and algebra for the first time, while in private I tried to write sonnets, which were morbid and naïve but technically sound.

  Hope had a knack of criticising without wounding, perhaps because she often balanced her criticism with praise and encouragement. Of course there were boring moments – Civics I hated, although later I was to become very interested in politics. Surprisingly, I can’t remember which period of history Christine and I covered – the Tudors?

  Mamma, who was happier with us at home, sometimes asked Hope for a glass of sherry along with Mrs Grattan, a don’s erudite daughter, who worked as Cappy’s secretary for the Public Schools Employment Bureau, typing busily in what was once Denis’s bedroom. Other times Hope joined us for lunch and came riding with us afterwards.

  Josephine rode nearly a mile on Milky to Hope’s house on two evenings a week for extra tuition, because she hoped to study veterinary science at Edinburgh University. But over the years, when Mamma was asked about careers for Christine and me, there had always been a short pause before she said, jokingly, ‘The twins will marry rich husbands’ – words which seemed to confirm my suspicion that she could not see us fitting into any jobs. Yet I did not feel equipped to find a rich husband, for I was ill at ease with men and sexually and emotionally backward. Although I fantasised about hunt balls and love, as expressed in some Victorian poetry, I did not consider myself attractive and when it came to touching other human beings I was hopelessly inhibited.

  Then one spring day Hope said to Mamma, ‘I shall have no trouble getting Diana through School Certificate,’ and I felt as if a window had opened. I was going to get there after all. Netting a man was not the only option. Work became easier. I began to look in the mirror and consider my appearance without being cast-down, and I probably became a little arrogant, because Cappy, who had in the past been irritated by Christine, was now aggravated by me. But I didn’t care. Long ago my remark after some slight – ‘I walked away with my head held high’ – had entered our list of oft-repeated sayings. So no doubt when Cappy seemed to pick on me unfairly, I appeared haughty instead of mortified, and I don’t think he ever quite forgave me for that response. I don’t blame
him, for what father can bear a daughter, for whom he feels he has made financial sacrifices, treating him with disdain? But we were not allowed to argue or answer back; and, with hindsight, I know a wiser man would have had it out with me and cleared the air.

  These days Shandy, the pony we had bought as a foal at Reading Market, came with us when we walked with the dogs, happily jumping the stiles we met on our way. And about this time Lady Precious Stream, our turkey hen, temporarily solved a major problem in her life. Her mate Fujiyama had died of bronchitis in a basket by the hot-water pipes in the scullery – our intensive care unit – and Lady Precious Stream had twice sat on her eggs in vain. So, realising she was infertile, she took over a guinea-fowl’s nest, with two or three eggs, into which she rolled with her beak a few oval stones and potatoes. Then, puffed out and broody, she settled down to hatch her collection.

  Miraculously the fox didn’t find Lady Precious Stream and, to her intense joy, two tiny guinea-fowl chicks were born. Fearing perhaps that they might be stolen by their natural parents, she immediately took them away into Spring Wood, to live on blackberries. She returned a few days later, a proud and slightly ridiculous figure towering above her chicks, which she looked after with obsessive care. We called them White Waistcoat and Bow Tie, because of their markings, and watched them grow and turn away from their adoptive mother until eventually they joined their own species, who slept at night in the tall Blenheim apple tree. Then poor Lady Precious Stream keened terribly, as she had after Fujiyama’s death, and, too heavy to fly, crouched below the tree. Fearing the fox, we carried her each night as dusk fell to the henhouse. At last she gave up; her mournful turkey cries ended and she never again tried motherhood. Disheartened, Mamma decided not to buy her another mate.