My Animals (and Other Family)

by Phyllida Barstow

  Though I enjoyed the work and realised I had been lucky, untrained as I was, to land a job so much to my taste, I greatly resented the restrictions it imposed on my liberty. The Editor was a charming, earnest, scholarly spinster, tall and frail with a chronic back problem that made her stoop, and I was not alone in thinking she would have been better suited to nitpicking her way through a new translation of the Bible than editing a commercial magazine, but for her Argosy really was the be-all and end-all.

  She made a good job of it, too. Every short-story writer of note was eager to be published in it and in terms of sales, Argosy more than washed its face. Editorially speaking, each month’s edition had to be as perfect as we could make it, each page scrutinised a dozen times, and our Editor had a completely blind spot about the social lives of her junior staff. We had to be there on the dot of 9.30, take our lunch hour between 1pm and 2pm precisely and never leave the office before 5.30.

  I found this absolutely infuriating, since there were no department stores near Farringdon Street and there was never time to dash back to the West End, do one’s shopping, and get back to the office by 2 o’clock. By the time I reached Oxford Street on the journey home, all the shops would be closing.

  Peggy, the secretary and Pat, my co-sub-editor, accepted these restrictions quite calmly, though each had a far longer journey home than me. Peggy’s father worked for the Times of India and in retrospect I suppose she was Anglo-Indian herself, though the subject never came up between us. She was small and tubby, with thick black hair cut en brosse, big, dark eyes and strongly-marked eyebrows which she would sleek into shape with a comb before putting on her coat to leave. Her telephone manner was a marvel to me. Nothing ever ruffled her calm, efficient politeness, and her filing was a model of neatness.

  Pat was Irish, with deep-blue eyes and straggling wavy hair, and rather played up the wildness of her ancestry, though she lived conventionally enough with her family in Sevenoaks. Her father voted Labour and Pat was keen on supporting the union – the NUJ – who would from time to time order us to attend meetings of the direst tedium, and demanded dues which I felt thoroughly disinclined to pay. But even I had to admit it was an agreeable surprise when I found extra money in the little brown envelope I collected from the Accounts Department in the bowels of Amalgamated Press at lunchtime on Fridays, after the union had blackmailed the management into pay-rises across the board.

  Pat and Peggy each had a boyfriend, or rather a series of boyfriends, but only one at a time. They considered it disloyal, even immoral, to go out with anyone who invited them in the happy-go-lucky way I thought normal, and though they would sometimes switch allegiances with maximum drama – tears, confrontations, accusations – and then latch on to someone else, they always detached completely from the old before attaching to the new boyfriend.

  Another maddening restriction was on private telephone calls. Even a message to say that someone was ill or in hospital was received with black looks, and the Features Editor, a widow with two children, had the greatest difficulty juggling their school pick-ups and visits to dentists without falling foul of office rules. Worst of all for me, though, was the taboo on leaving early which made it almost impossible to join Daddy at Paddington in time to catch the 4.45 train to Hereford on Fridays.

  It took a good half-hour to get from Farringdon Street to Paddington, and having asked for and been reluctantly granted permission to leave at 4, I would stand in the Editor’s office with a pile of proofs for her to sign off in thick green ink, glancing surreptitiously at my watch and feeling tension rise in me as she re-read pages that had already been initialled by me and the Chief Sub, and made miniscule alterations then re-instated the original, and vital minutes ticked past. Daddy didn’t like waiting for the 6.45 since it meant we wouldn’t get back to Fforest Farm before midnight, and there was no way of letting him know I was held up…

  At last she would hand back the last page. ‘Off you go, then,’ she’d say graciously but with a subtext of, ‘Some people don’t know what work is,’ and I would gasp my thanks and scuttle down the fire escape, run like hell all the way up Farringdon Road to the Underground station, and pray that the next train would be Paddington-bound.

  The net result was that I went home less and less, and gradually grew out of touch with both family and animals at the Fforest. Nevertheless, as soon as I did arrive from London, I would be subsumed into the latest crisis. Mummy preferred to live at fever pitch, and if events looked like going off the boil she would quickly give them a stir. Actually, few of my family were around just then. Gerry had finished National Service and gone up to Oxford to read History. Olivia had left school and was spending a year in New England with the family of one of Mummy’s bridesmaids. Miranda had whizzed through the local school before she was old enough to go to Lawnside, so had been sent to learn French in Switzerland, leaving George my sole sibling at the farm.

  As for the animals, they were there, just as they had always been and I always expected them to be. Ponies to ride, cows to be fed, sheep to be driven from one field to another. And then there was Scot with his bright button eyes and shag-pile hearthrug of a coat, the grand old man of the farmyard, devoted as ever, bowing and waving his tail at me with never a look of reproach for coming to see him so seldom.

  So it was a nasty jolt to me a few days before Christmas when Mummy said, ‘Have you noticed how poor Scot’s gone?’

  Poor in that specific sense meant thin, emaciated.

  I looked at Scot, lying as usual on his sack under the bench in the porch where people sat to put on their boots. His enquiring round eyes and sharp nose poked out of the great curly ruff of coarse black coat and his thin, foxy-looking legs, now sprinkled with silver, were stretched in front of him.

  I shook my head. ‘He looks just the same.’

  ‘Look properly. Put your hand on his back.’

  So instead of stroking his head as I usually did, I felt carefully along his loins and had a shock. Under the big thick coat, Scot had shrunk to a mere skeleton. Every rib, every knob of his backbone was sharp under my fingers. I could hardly believe it.

  I had known that he was slowing up, less keen to jump into the Land Rover, more inclined to lie in the sun at the top of the drive monitoring people coming and going than to trot behind the ponies on long rides, but I’d had no idea how much he had declined since the summer.

  ‘He’s not eating up,’ she said. ‘It’s not just age.’

  ‘His teeth?’

  ‘Idris took a look and they’re all right. He says it’s internal. Something’s gone wrong inside him.’

  I said helplessly, ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Well, you’re not here much.’ There was a long pause, and then she said, almost angrily, ‘You can’t just let him fade away. He’s your dog.’

  She put only a tiny emphasis on ‘your’ but it was enough to send a wave of guilt over me. Scotty had given me his life, and what had I done for him? Left him for others to look after for months on end, and now I hadn’t even noticed that he was suffering. This was one responsibility I couldn’t duck out of. I bent down to scratch him under the chin and he pressed his silver muzzle against my hand.

  Mummy watched him for a moment in silence. ‘Well?’ she said at last.

  ‘All right,’ I said reluctantly.

  Scot had never visited the surgery in his life, but he followed me in willingly enough, then retreated to the door and whined. He knew he wasn’t allowed indoors. I said to the receptionist, ‘I’ll wait outside,’ and we went and sat in the sun on the surgery steps for what seemed a very long time.

  I tried not to cry because that would give the game away, but it seemed the blackest treachery to go on chatting to Scot and stroking his head when I was about to have him killed. The vet came out, looked at us and said doubtfully, ‘Are you all right?’ and when I sniffed and nodded, said, ‘Bring him into the car park, then.’

  He shaved a patch on Scot’s forearm while the boot-but
ton eyes watched me anxiously, but he never moved as the needle went in.

  ‘Good dog. See you soon,’ I said as I always did when going back to London, and a moment later the spark faded from Scot’s eyes.

  How soon is soon? How long is a piece of string? Every religion has its own notion of celestial bliss, but none of the official versions come anywhere near what I would consider Heaven. Harps and nighties? No, thanks. Seventy-two virgins? A recipe for strife. The formless perfection of Nirvana? Hardly a stimulating prospect.

  On the other hand, the certainty of a life after death in which I would see again everyone I had loved on earth is extremely appealing, and that would include my animals – goats, rabbits, sheep and all. If Scot and Taffy and all the rest are not waiting for me on the other side of the Pearly Gates, I shall know I’ve come to the wrong place, and request an immediate transfer.

  I could only just be squeezed into the family christening robe in March, 1938.

  Playing with toy soldiers as war clouds gather, summer 1938.

  Insecurely perched on the flighty Blackbird above the Whee-air jump.

  Fforest Farm in 1949. It had been built on the site of Colwyn Castle where the Norman baron William de Breos once held sway.

  With Clarissa and armfuls of the Angora rabbits we bred at Gaytons during the war.

  Hanging on tight to fiery Mincepie (aged 25) a star of the VWH Pony Club with former owner John Oaksey.

  Wet weather gear – suitable for a Welsh summer.

  On our favourite mounts: (L to R) Stag (Gerry); Sally (Olivia); Dustyfoot (Miranda, half hidden); and Taffy (me) with George in au pair Sylvia’s arms and Scot the border collie.

  Miranda inspects a fine potato crop in the 16-acre.

  A family portrait taken at Tenby where we stayed with Cousin Geraldine most summers.

  My younger brother soon became a dab hand at bottle feeding orphan lambs.

  No pets were allowed at Lawnside, so I can’t think why Brag let me keep Mr Ham there for several terms.

  A walk with our Nanny-to-be, who was saved from colic by, and named in honour of, the actress Celia Johnson.

  With Boney, the sausage-stealing, selectively-deaf Dalmatian, who was killed by a car in 1939.

  A handy rock to rest on after a long walk to the Begwns.

  Restraining my sister Miranda with long-reins in the garden at Much Hadham.

  Family tea at Gaytons just after the war.

  Mummy with some of Lucy the labrador’s nine-strong litter.

  Siesta for Mrs White, stroppiest of sows, with her young family.

  Lord of the farmyard and bane of small children: Whimsical Walkern the turkey.

  Helping (or possibly hindering) neighbouring farmers who were gathering their flocks for dipping.

  Mummy feeding Jemima, the Jill ferret – so free with her teeth that she was best handled in gloves.

  Welcome break for haymakers (L to R): Bill James, farm manager, John Anderson, his stepson, Madeleine James, George, and farmhand Jack Howells.

  More suitably dressed for Ascot than farmwork, my grandmother Lady Barstow turns hay with a pikle.

  The geese that escaped the fox come racing for morning corn.

  Wartime haymaking at Abernant.

  Merry, the shire horse, pulling the gambo.

  Perfect going on the short-cropped turf of Aberedw Hill; me on Warrior, and Gerry on the Smatcher, with young Nesta running free. Summer, 1951.

  Clarissa and me with Judy the spaniel’s half-grown puppies outside the front gate at the Fforest.

  A lovely day’s fishing at The Rocks, near Builth Wells, for me, Olivia and Gerry – but we caught nothing at all.

  Jumping Taffy in the Sporborgs’ field, Much Hadham.

  Summer, 1948. Camping beside the Colwyn brook, which rose and flooded our bell tents. Left to right: Clarissa, David, Gerry, me, Olivia.

  Flash, who would go rabbiting with his mother Judy for days at a time.

  Mummy looking unusually pensive by the Chapel House lily pond in 1942.

  Mummy realising with annoyance that she is just about to shed a load of oats off the buck-rake, c.1952.

  I am unusually tidily dressed for tea with visitors in the Fforest garden overlooking the moat, 1953.

  Heygrove, the Hereford bull, weighed the best part of a ton and smashed through gates like matchwood.

  Romance for Heygrove, held by Ron Weale, farm manager, with his No 2, Bill James, holding the cow.

  The Radnor and West Hereford Hunt meet at Fforest Farm. On foot, Bridget Hart-Davis (among hounds) and my grandfather, Sir George Barstow, in mackintosh (centre).

  Picnic at Wolf’s Leap, Abergwesyn. Gerry builds a scientific fire while Bonzo, the blacksmith’s terrier, takes care of the food.

  Wild Welsh Mountain ponies greet tame ones above the Fforest.

  A long way to the top. Sylvia Weale and Miranda climb the haystack.

  Gerry, me, Olivia, Miranda and George on the garden wall, c.1954.

  Jack Howells on everyone’s favourite tractor, the Fergie 20.

  Watkins, our ally against Mr Hadley, the head gardener at Chapel House.

  Winterscape: Beili Bychan common, enclosed as part of Fforest Farm, photographed by Olivia.

  Scot, the best dog in the world – though certainly not the best sheepdog.

  The best entertainment I could devise for visiting school-friends was painting the roof of the covered yard c.1952.

  Summer holidays 1953. My first perm was deeply unflattering and all my clothes had shrunk.

  Olivia and I take a break with Scot in the Fforest garden, summer 1953.

  Cowgirl Shirley exercising Smatcher and Ginger in the snow on our only flat field, once the castle’s keep.

  My Coming-Out Dance during the Suez crisis was distinctly short of National Servicemen friends. Left to right: David Rutherford, me, my parents and Granny.

  My wedding to Duff Hart-Davis was on 22 April 1961, the wettest day of the year - but also the happiest.

  Full circle: our daughter Alice, born 1963, learns to rise to the trot on Nutty, with Preciway, retired steeplechaser, setting the pace.

  FURTHER READING FROM MERLIN UNWIN BOOKS

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  Saddletramp

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  Vagabond

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  The Yellow Earl

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  A Job for all Seasons

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  The Ride of my Life

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  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain by Merlin Unwin Books, 2009

  This ebook edition published 2017

  Copyright © Phyllida Barstow 2009

  The right of Phyllida Barstow to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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