Fair Girls and Grey Horses

by Christine Pullein-Thompson

  Meanwhile Christine and I had read and were reading more grown-up books. The favourites Kidnapped and Jane Eyre were followed with whatever interesting books we could find on our parents’ shelves, particularly detective novels by Agatha Christie and her contemporaries. Mamma had read Oliver Twist and David Copperfield aloud to us. And, like Josephine, I had enjoyed three novels by E Nesbit. With the money Granny gave us for Christmas and birthdays, I had also bought books illustrated by Cecil Aldin – I still treasure his Dogs of Character and An Artist’s Model. The Studio, which Denis sometimes left lying around, introduced me to a wider field of art.

  Although he visited, Denis no longer lived at home. But the mural of a French café scene, which he had painted on the garage wall, remained to remind us of him. When he did come, he usually made some comment about Christine or me, because, after we left Wimbledon, he more than almost anyone else had seen us as individuals rather than as ‘the twins’. On one occasion he announced that Christine was suffering from an inferiority complex – he was probably right – and on another he asked why Diana always jumped up first when there was something to be done.

  With Hope I became at last a person in my own right, perhaps able, I thought, to catch up with Josephine. Suddenly ambitious, I tried unsuccessfully to write stories about Barney for The Tailwaggers’ Magazine and a year or so later I won first prize for the best review of an article in Riding. With all the arrogance of youth, I had chosen a piece by a well-established expert – was it Faudel-Phillips? – on jumping with the Weedon seat, which I tore slowly apart, unfavourably comparing the style he recommended with the Italian forward seat. For once Riding broke with tradition and did not publish the winning entry, for fear, I suppose, of offending the expert.

  But before this, Hope’s husband Owen found a job in London and she gave in her notice. War broke out, as Christine will describe, and our parents interviewed another governess. She arrived on a hot summer’s day in hat and gloves. While our parents talked to her on the lawn, we hid behind shrubs with a gander and a ferret, wanting to test her courage. When we emerged the poor woman shrank at the sight of the animals and failed on every count.

  A few days later our parents asked whether we would like to abandon our formal education, and we said, ‘Yes’. ‘Promise you will never reproach us,’ they said, and we promised. Afterwards Josephine lit a fire and we burnt our books on geometry, algebra and mathematics. Deciding to become writers, we appropriated a huge and ancient typewriter Cappy had thrown out. The letter ‘R’ was missing, but we would write it in ink. We had no pocket money, so Josephine suggested we should start a proper riding school. Christine and I wondered whether we were good enough riders to teach others, but Josephine was adamant. Denis would paint us a sign of a grey horse’s head on a black background, to advertise our business to all those who passed down the road. Then we decided to educate ourselves by reading up the subjects which interested us. Suddenly life seemed full of new possibilities. We would write a pony book, too. Perhaps one day we might even be famous.

  I suspect that by now I had developed that fine balance of arrogance and insecurity described by Terence Blacker in the 1995 Summer edition of The Author as the driving force behind most authors, whatever their calibre.

  Christine

  As Diana has explained, lessons were never boring with Hope. But we were still naughty, and her enthusiastic lectures on communism had absolutely no influence on me. (Indeed, in later life, when Labour were in office, Diana and I both became ardent Conservatives.) Mentally lazy, I was unable to understand geometry until many years later when waking one morning I cried out triumphantly, ‘At last I understand it!’ ‘Understand what?’ asked my long-suffering husband. ‘Geometry of course,’ I shrieked. Did the mystery unravel in a dream? What else could have cleared a blockage of so many years? I’ll never know.

  But, returning to my school days, I must confess that although I was often miserable, I must have occasionally been happy too. I suspect that after every setback, and there were many, I simply shrugged my shoulders and returned to my usual exuberant self. I was still a very new soul, for though I wrote poems praising romantic love from an early age, it was many years before I knew anything of carnal desire. But I do remember Diana constantly pleading to be told what she called ‘the facts of life’: no one responded.

  We waited a long time for war to be declared. We were issued with gas masks in cardboard boxes. A trickle of evacuees appeared and, it was said, cut up little birds with scissors. After much heart-searching a few parents began sending their children to safety abroad. The Waterhouses and the Kenningtons went and, like others, returned after the war with American or Canadian accents. Some wished that they had never gone, maybe feeling that without being consulted, they had been made to run away. But it was probably more distressing for their parents, who took the decision imagining that they might never see their offspring again. Cappy called a meeting in the drawing room to discuss the matter. Josephine says it was a highly charged occasion. Eventually we decided that we would live and die together – a decision none of us ever regretted.

  Amazingly on that historic day in September, which was to change all our lives, we were still without a radio. Ingenious as ever Cappy decided that we would hear the declaration of war on our tenant’s radio. The cottages were now done up and had become one. The beanhole was the bathroom, with frosted glass replacing part of its old battered door. Our tenants were called Gittins and had come from Birmingham. Mrs Gittins was small and bustling, Mr Gittins was tall, thin and bespectacled. I cannot recall their Christian names, but they had two attractive daughters called Ursula and Honour. They all cared a great deal about appearance, and because of this could never have been our kindred spirits. Why Mr and Mrs Gittins wanted to live in Peppard I have no idea. They were not our friends for very long, but on that epoch-making day, we were still on speaking terms. Our parents sat and listened to their radio. I think I stood; maybe there were not enough chairs to go round. When the announcement came, in Neville Chamberlain’s measured tones, it was almost an anti-climax; but we knew that with his words our lives had changed for ever. We were finally at war.

  I think we walked home in silence. I believe that Mamma decided then that the war would not derail our lives as the previous one had derailed hers. Granny and Denis were still in France. The seas were already dangerous. Would Denis make it home? Would Granny return to England? It was the end of summer and in the orchard the trees were heavy with apples. But it did not feel like summer. In the bath that night, Diana smoked her first cigarette. Imagining Denis dying on some distant battlefield, I shed tears. Mamma quoted, not for the first time, ‘God bless the narrow sea that keeps them off.’ She had always insisted that we were lucky to be British, with the Channel to deter our foes, and lives unthreatened by earthquakes. Only recently she had told us about the Maginot Line, that wonderful defence the French had built which had miles of underground passages and even bathrooms, she said, a place where soldiers could live in safety and comfort, and an impregnable defence against the Germans for all time. None of us imagined that the Germans might simply go round it.

  By now our ponies were steadily increasing in numbers. Before leaving, the Waterhouses had asked us to look after their black pony Susan, a rather dreary character with a white blaze, straight shoulder and low head carriage. We still had Milky and Rum and of course Shandy Gaff. Pennywise had been bought by that great expert, Glenda Spooner who, seeing her competing, at the Kidmore End show, announced that she was a pure-bred Dartmoor and must be registered at once. Knowing that she would now have a wonderful home, I did not mourn her going. Angus, a large-headed, short-legged black Shetland arrived at about this time, and a black and white cat called Magpie, who for some reason was mine, took to riding him bareback. Five or six ponies eat a lot of hay and when Mamma rang Ford and Sons of Hurst and was told that no hay had come into the docks, it was a devastating blow. It was only then that we realised just how much we
had relied on food coming from the Commonwealth, English farms having gone to rack and ruin a long time ago.

  After a traumatic journey Denis returned safely from France. Granny, who loathed an English winter, refused to come home. Two days after his return, Denis enlisted in Cappy’s old regiment, The Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment; and since young men no longer needed career guidance, Cappy joined the Board of Trade.

  I cannot remember exactly when Denis’s cat Simon came to live with us. He had killed a family of kittens while living with Denis (who had been working in rep at a theatre in Bexhill at that time), and had subsequently been neutered. I don’t think Simon took any interest in our outside cats. When it was cold he slept in the bottom oven of the Aga or in the airing cupboard in the bathroom. Like many Siamese cats, Simon was temperamental and when annoyed flung things off the kitchen or nursery chimney pieces. He also stole and on one terrible guilt-ridden day helped himself to our neighbours’ joint – their entire ration for the week. We had only a pound of sausages to give them in return. The Platts did not complain. The only time I ever heard them complain was when they knocked on our front door and Mamma, who was typing and did not wish to be disturbed, hastily crawled across the room and hid under a table. The knocking continued for some time and afterwards they were to say, ‘We knew you were there all the time, because we heard you typing and then it stopped!’ But they were not offended, they never were. I cannot remember Mamma’s response, but she did tell me that once when she had a visitor, Cappy crawled into the drawing room on all fours, before taking a wanted book out of the bookcase and crawling out again. What she said to the visitor I do not know – probably nothing. But I think it does show that we were an eccentric family!

  From the beginning of the war our windows were blacked out. Petrol was rationed and we were reduced to one car. Hunting had resumed on horses that were thinner than a year ago. We tried to ignore the war. We were told it would be over by Christmas and, in the words of the popular song at that time, we would be ‘hanging out our washing on the Siegfried Line’ long before then. But there was no escape from the eerie feeling of waiting for something to happen. One of Cappy’s friends, a schoolmaster I believe, shot himself and his young family rather than let them endure the horrors of the war. Later Cappy was to say that he would do the same if the Germans landed on British soil. None of us believed him.

  It was a bitterly cold winter. The ponies grew still thinner. Oats, soon to be rationed, were hard to find. Bowley still worked in the garden. Joan continued to help in the house. But soon Moey (I never knew her real name) left. She came from a large family living nearby and Mamma had only employed her because she needed work. Moey was paid a mere ten shillings a week and was only supposed to come in the mornings but insisted on staying all day, and with Joan fetched wood from the spinney in the pony cart, with much merriment. Even so I felt that Moey hated us. She was only a few years older and when I took the nursery coal scuttle to her in the kitchen and requested coal from the cellar, I always felt uncomfortable. After Moey left, she never spoke to us again. I am sure she made much more money making ammunitions than she would ever have done as a domestic; so in a way war was a blessing for her.

  Since we were still being educated at home, we had almost every afternoon free to ride. Food rationing began in January 1940. At last after a long hard winter spring finally arrived to cheer us up, the grass grew, the ponies lost their winter coats, their ribs disappeared and they became sleek and round again.

  It was now that Cappy or maybe Mamma announced that they could no longer afford to keep so many ponies, and we started to give riding lessons in earnest – though some time would pass before we became The Grove Riding School, with a sign by the gate of a grey horse’s head painted by Denis on a black board, and even longer before we became a limited company. (This was to placate Cappy, who because we were under age, feared that if we were declared bankrupt he would be liable for our debts.) So we became responsible for the ponies’ food, shoes and any vet bills which occurred.

  After Dunkirk, which was a great shock to us all, the Local Defence Volunteers were formed, later to be called the Home Guard. Cappy, like many ex-soldiers, was quick to join, and took command of the area around us. The garage filled up with bayonets on the end of metal tubes, belts of ammunition, and field dressings – which came in handy after the war for our horses.

  Mr Gittins joined the Home Guard. Spurred on, I suspect, by his wife, he complained that when Cappy collected him for meetings he hooted his car horn – ‘treating him like a little dog’, his wife added furiously. (We of course were well-accustomed to being hooted at, and had never considered ourselves treated like dogs.) The Gittins could have taken into account that Cappy was lame and that by giving Mr Gittins a lift, he was doing him a favour. I am not sure whether the lifts continued after that, but from then on the Gittins were on our black list and must be cut dead by all of us. They were not the only ones on the list and we had long perfected the art, advancing on the proscribed person or persons with direct eye contact and then, at the very last minute, turning away with haughty expression and curled lip. We never questioned the list; for an order was an order in our house. Sometimes Cappy did not see eye to eye with his superior officer in the Home Guard, but fortunately it never reached the stage of a feud.

  The Times and the Daily Graphic were delivered daily to The Grove so by this time we knew for certain that we would not be ‘hanging out our washing on the Siegfried Line’ in the foreseeable future.

  I can no longer recall all the ponies which we bought or were lent during those early years of war. Certainly we bought Cocktail in April 1940. Dark brown, hogged, docked and cobby, he had bucked off his owner so frequently that the boy had given up riding. Cocktail cost us twelve pounds. He was not an easy ride. His trot was fast and unbalanced and the first time we cantered him, he bucked two of us off. We schooled him every day, setting an alarm clock which rang when one person’s turn ended and the next began. At last, after many weeks of schooling and too many tosses to mention, Cocktail gave up bucking and we wrote a story about him called ‘Cocktail Capitulates’, which really began our literary careers. It was published in Riding and was soon followed by another called ‘The Road to Ruin’ which was about a spoilt pony we had failed to cure of rearing. He was based, I believe, on a Welsh pony called Brecon.

  We bought more ponies in 1941. Bordeaux was one of them; rather long-backed and black, he bullied his owners and refused to leave the stable yard. He was also difficult to catch; but when he found we were not to be bullied, he gave in. Three days after we had bought him for five pounds he won rosettes at a local gymkhana. Subsequently he became one of the most useful ponies in the riding school.

  Pablo, a tiny pony, was black too. He had been dying when his owners rescued him from gypsies. They nursed him back to health but, loving him too much, allowed him to become such a tyrant that they could not touch him without a titbit in their hands.

  ‘Give me something to eat or else,’ threatened Pablo with ears back, before attacking them with hoofs and teeth. One good thump from us and he stopped biting, a second thump and he stopped kicking. His owners had begged us to take Pablo for a mere five pounds. He was another bargain, in a long line of bargains which followed. It wasn’t long before anyone who wanted to sell a difficult pony rang the Pullein-Thompsons. And it was surprising how many who came to us were simply misunderstood.

  Melody was one of the few ponies we bought without a blemish on her character. A dear little Dartmoor, barely twelve hands high, she could not bear to be stabled, and, like Shandy Gaff, taught my children to ride in her old age. She grew rather fat and, several weeks after we bought her, presented us with an unexpected foal which we named Windfall.

  As time passed, our pupils increased in number; there was little amusement for children at that time, so riding suddenly became fashionable. I remember one charming little girl from Pinner asking whether the pony she was riding took off h
is shoes when he went to bed at night!

  Sometimes I am asked whether I was ever frightened in the war? I can honestly say no. So good was our propaganda, so certain were we of British superiority, that even the disappearance of signposts and the stacks of weapons in the garage failed to alarm me. So when one day an elderly member of the Home Guard arrived in our yard on his bike, carrying a gun, shaking with fear and crying out, ‘They’ve come, they’ve come,’ Josephine and I – the only people at home at the time – remained cool. Looking up at the clear summer sky above us, seeing no aeroplanes and hearing no guns, we told him to report to the assembly post in the builders’ yard at the end of the road. To our surprise he left without arguing. Soon afterwards a farmer telephoned to say that someone had been tampering with his haystack. (I think he imagined a German had slept there.) Calmly Josephine told him to investigate it and then to report to the assembly point. A little later someone rang to ask whether they should ring the church bells. Josephine says now she had been instructed by Cappy that the bells were only to be rung if the invasion had truly begun. So we said no, not for the time being anyway. I do not know what actually happened at the assembly point that summer’s day, but Peppard’s church bells remained silent, though Nettlebed and other parishes rang theirs. Mamma and Diana eventually returned home from their ride complaining loudly that they had been stopped at every checkpoint and asked for their identity cards. ‘Do we really look like the enemy?’ Mamma asked, sounding both amused and bewildered. I cannot remember anyone complaining that at such a possibly crucial moment in the war, two teenage girls were actually in command of a contingent of the Home Guard.

  One evening after the battle in the skies had been won and the Blitz had begun, we stood in the road and, looking at a sky red with flames, knew that more than thirty miles away London was burning. The Germans did not drop bombs on Peppard or Sonning Common. It was said that Hitler wanted to preserve Oxford for his seat of power, so had instructed his pilots to leave the area untouched. Whether this was true I do not know; but one night a plane, probably flown by a pilot who could not face the barrage around London, dropped its bombs nearby. We assembled in the kitchen and drank tea, waiting for more bombs to fall; but none did. Next morning we found shrapnel on the lawn and heard that windows were shattered in nearby Shiplake Bottom and there was a bomb crater at Gallowstree Common. Only poor Shandy, limping sadly, appeared to be injured. Our vet Miss Thomson was called, and announced that he had slipped his stifle. She pushed it back into place and instructed us to paint it with iodine and to be sure he rested, preferably on a tether.