Child from Home (6 page)

We went back the way we had come before turning left at a wooden gate; this led onto a narrow stony road and passed between the tall sentry-like conifers whose tangy aroma scented the air. At the side of the tree-shaded track – that led up to a large stone farmstead called Spiers House – small brightly coloured birds darted about. We climbed ever upwards through the hushed beauty and solitude of the forest until the coach turned right by the big farmhouse that stood in an open area of wide grassy meadows.

Climbing up from a gurgling runnel the track passed between hundreds of densely packed green giants. Tiny black and brown birds flitted in and out and Miss Thorne said, ‘Those shy little birds that you see there are coal tits.'

Halfway down, a short track led eastwards to the rear of Sutherland Lodge, which was owned by the Stancliffes. A short gravelled drive, big enough for a car to turn round on, ran along the back of the house that had no formal gardens as such. There was just the odd grassy area to the south and east, otherwise it was hemmed in on all sides by the vastness of the forest.

On our arrival, the driver carried our luggage through an old nail-studded oaken door and left it in the passageway. From here a narrow servant's staircase led straight upwards and a door on the left opened into a large kitchen. We were warmly welcomed and shown round by the deputy matron Miss Rosemary Waters, a tall young woman with short, fair wavy hair that was parted in the middle. Mam was shown around the huge old-fashioned kitchen at the eastern end of the house where there was a large well-scrubbed wooden table in the middle of its stone floor. A Welsh dresser stood against the back wall and a wide stone fireplace and chimneybreast occupied most of the gable end. In front of it was a range of fire irons and an old wooden rocking chair stood to one side.

‘'Ere, I'll 'elp thee with thy baggage,' said an elderly, bow-legged man and Mam left to go off with him. He was wearing a soft, checked flat cap; a waistcoat; riding breeches and leather gaiters, and we learned that he was called Spaven. He carried Mam's luggage along an earthen path to her lodgings and she told us later that the trees had a tangy smell similar to carbolic soap. Between them she caught glimpses of lovely wooded hills stretching away into the distance. She was to lodge in an old stone farmworker's cottage, called Keldy Cottage, which stood in a forest clearing about a mile away. Her cosy bedroom lay directly beneath the red pantiles of its steeply sloping roof and she said the view from her dormer window was magnificent. Spaven, who took care of Mrs Stancliffe's horses, lived with his daughter and her husband in a large stone house at the far side of the meadow to the east of Sutherland Lodge. It had been the estate gamekeeper's house at the turn of the century. In time, we learned that Spaven was a little too fond of visiting the local hostelries, and he sometimes arrived back a bit tipsy after sampling the potent ale available at the
New Inn
at Cropton. We would see him reeling around like the top of a spruce tree in a gale. He was a smallish man of medium build and it was said that he thought more of his beloved horses than he did of people. He was convinced that they were plagued by witches saying, ‘T'osses 'ave bin found first thing in t'morning agitated and lathered in sweat after bein' 'ag-ridden durin' t'neet.' As a preventative measure he hung small stones that had a natural hole through them above each of the stalls. These were known locally as hagstones.

Mam was kept very busy in the kitchen, but on most days she would stay with us for a while when her work was done. We were taken to her cottage on her off-duty days, and this helped us to adapt more readily to the sudden changes in our life, but in the early days we cried a lot when she was obliged to leave us.

Sutherland Lodge with its impressive double-gabled, ivy-clad frontage stood on rising ground and had magnificent views to the south. It overlooked dense green forests, rolling countryside and the green fields round Cropton way. The eaves of the house had intricately carved bargeboards with a series of alternating diamond and bow shapes cut into them along their whole length. Delicately carved wooden finials crowned the apexes of the gable ends with, below them, a matching inverted finial. High up on the gable at the western end there was the gauntleted forearm of a knight grasping a short dagger on a stone shield, with the word PERSE engraved below it. It was probably the crest and motto of a noble family, with the word meaning ‘perseverance'. We would need a good deal of that in the times to come.

Three stone steps led up to a pair of studded oak doors which were flanked by stone buttresses. Above them an elegantly carved Gothic arch framed a stained-glass window with a leafy stemmed rose (the flower of secrets) in the centre of it. A pair of finely carved, winged gargoyles – which always frightened me – jutted out on either side of it. At one side was an old-fashioned, brass bell pull and directly above the doorway there was a stone-mullioned, three-sided oriel window.

A wide gravelled drive ran along the front of the house and we were told that the upper west wing was for the exclusive use of the resident Stancliffe family. From the drive, a wide flight of steps flanked by low stone walls led down to a rustic fence that surrounded an open paddock; a couple of horses were contentedly grazing on the meadow grass that was still lush and green.

Part of the house had been requisitioned on behalf of Middlesbrough Borough Council to be used as a nursery school for evacuee children below school age. It was about a mile and a half north-east of Cropton as the crow flies, but it was three miles or so by road and forestry track. It stood in a small clearing at the southern edge of the vast Cropton Forest where English kings had once hunted deer and wild boar.

Much of the land had been in the care of the Forestry Commission since 1930 and they had provided sorely needed work for the locals and those who came here from farther afield. A huge area of land had been planted with conifers, although many of the indigenous trees remained and rhododendron shrubs grew in profusion along the edges of the forest tracks. Our new home (built in 1870) had originally been a shooting lodge belonging to a Lieutenant-Colonel Daniel Thompson, a retired veteran of the Crimean War.

The fine three-storey stone building, with its eleven bedrooms, had later been the property of the Ringer family who were much involved with fox hunting and grouse shooting. They had made good use of the long range of stables and kennels that stood to the east of the house but most were now unused. A couple of the stables housed the horses of the present owners, Captain and Mrs J. Stancliffe, who had bought the house between the wars. They were deeply involved in local church and village affairs, although Captain Stancliffe, like so many others, was away serving with the army.

Mrs Stancliffe, a refined and attractive middle-aged lady with dark curly hair, was always kind, gentle and ladylike in her dealings with the nursery. We thought her very posh as her daughters Susan, aged seventeen, and Rosemary, aged fifteen, were away at a private boarding school. Her mother was a leading light in the local Red Cross and Women's Institute and they owned several farms and a good deal of the land in the area.

Mrs Stancliffe employed a young German Jew as her housekeeper and her living quarters were in the topmost room of the ivy-covered tower. To me it seemed like a scene from a fairytale. Apparently she had recently been reported for letting a light show after dark as the blackout regulations were being strictly enforced and a light had been spotted at her window. Malicious rumours concerning the Jews were circulating in some quarters and there were real fears of infiltration by secret agents. Stories concerning the unseen presence of German sympathisers were ‘doing the rounds' and the press called these fifth columnists ‘the enemy within'. The suspicion became even greater if they were German nationals. This atmosphere of mistrust may have had a bearing on the governess being reported and she was fined and sternly reprimanded at Pickering Magistrates' Court.

Within a few months all German nationals were to be classed as aliens and interned. Most were kept behind barbed wire, patrolled by armed soldiers, in requisitioned hotels and guesthouses on the Isle of Man while their credentials were examined, but most turned out to be genuine refugees escaping Nazi persecution.

Mam had had a good deal of experience as a domestic servant, having worked for middle-class families in a number of large residences over the past ten years. This stood her in good stead as she assisted Mrs Winnie Ruonne, an excellent cook who always managed to feed us well even in those increasingly austere times. She was a short, plumpish lady with small features and a pale, freckled complexion, and we always called her ‘Dinner Lady'. She was actually a middle-aged woman but her round baby-face made her seem much younger. She always wore a white wrap-over pinafore and an elasticated mobcap that hid most of her ginger-coloured hair, which she plaited into a thick pigtail that hung down her back.

Winnie's husband was a railwayman, and she saved up her off-duty days so that she could go and stay with him from time to time. Mam and Dinner Lady worked happily together in the cosy warmth of the kitchen where there was a large open fireplace and a Yorkist range of cream-coloured, enamel-coated ovens. They rose early and were getting breakfast ready long before we got up. As the porridge bubbled away in a huge pan the great black kettle steamed on the hob, and the distinctive mouth-watering aroma of home-made bread and cakes often permeated the whole house.

Across the corridor from the kitchen was a large well-stocked storage cupboard with its shelves full of tins of ham, soup, baked beans and the like. There were even 71b tins of bully beef in it. At the other end of the kitchen there was a walk-in scullery and a large copper for washing the masses of dirty laundry that we produced every day. A local woman used to come in on a Monday to tackle it and on the following day she did the ironing. Whole days were set aside for particular domestic tasks in those times.

A doorway led out into the side yard and diagonally across it was a coal store and the garage where Mrs Stancliffe kept her big shiny-black Humber car. Next to it was a tack room with a converted bothy on the floor above, and beyond that lay the stables and kennels. It was not until many years later that I learned that the sensuously curving pantiles on the roofs had been brought to this country from Holland as ballast in the old sailing ships.

On my first night I was put into one of eight small beds set up in the large ground-floor dormitory that had a polished wooden floor and no carpets. There was a small rug by each bed and a wooden frame, covered in a layer of thick black material, was placed over the windows at dusk. It took me a long time to get to sleep and, in the dead of night, I woke with a start not knowing where I was; I felt lost and frightened in the unfamiliar blackness and had the urge to go to the lav (as we always called the toilet). Trying desperately to hold on, I searched under the bed for the po (chamber pot) only to find there wasn't one. I had not been there long enough to know the whereabouts of the bathroom and, in any case, there had always been a smelly po (often called a jerry) under our bed at home; a necessary evil as the lav was outside. When we went to the toilet during the day we always said, ‘I'm just going down the yard.' Unable to hold it any longer I wet the bed and, fearful of the consequences, I cowered under the covers on the damp warmth of the saturated sheets. I lay there full of shame and guilt and I thought the reek of ammonia must surely be noticed and I would be found out, but nothing happened. I lay there choking on the fumes that rose from the stinking palliasse wishing it would go away but, like me, it had nowhere else to go. Trembling with cold, I tried to smother my sobs in the now wet pillow. I lay there – a lonely, home-sick, ashamed four-year-old who badly needed his mother – shivering in the darkness for what seemed like hours until, exhausted, I dozed off, wrapped uneasily in a ragged veil of sleep.

The following morning, when my ‘crime' was discovered, nothing was said and I was bathed and dressed by Miss Waters who was a caring, sympathetic and likeable young woman. The thin mattresses on our small metal-framed beds were filled with straw and chaff and were, fortunately, easily emptied, washed, dried and refilled, and when Mam came to work that morning and learned of my accident she gave me a big cuddle, a hug and a kiss.

‘I couldn't help it Mam, it just came.' I mumbled tearfully.

‘Never mind darling, just forget about it. Things will soon get better,' she said in her soothing manner. It was not an unusual occurrence, but I was to live with the guilt and shame of it for some time to come.

A few days later the gaunt-featured and prim Miss Thorne took George and I to have our hair cut in Pickering. Her auburn hair, parted on the right, was tied back giving her a severe appearance but she was nice to us, although firm when necessary. Spaven brought out and yoked up the trap. In retrospect, his surname seemed a little inappropriate for a man in charge of horses, as the word ‘spavin' is defined as ‘disease or distension on the inside of the hock of a horse'. Miss Thorne sat with us in the trap, which was always readily available for our use, and which she referred to as a Governess cart.

It was our first time in one and we loved sitting on the hard, wooden side seats of the highly polished carriage. The wooden-spoked wheels were twice my height and the burnished brass rail at the front gleamed in the autumn sunshine as Spaven busied himself with the harness. As we set off, the rhythmic rippling of the horse's sleek flanks fascinated me; the muscular haunches twitched constantly and it swished its long tail about to stop the swarms of tormenting, stinging gadflies from settling. The sharp resinous tang of pine-scented air mingled with the faint leathery smell of horse.

We travelled on a different route this time and, as we headed south on the long straight forest tracks, we quietly absorbed the stillness and gazed at the luxuriant greenery. We watched red squirrels collecting nuts and cones to store up for the winter. The forest was mostly made up of sentinel-like spruce trees with greyish-brown flaky bark, but the pine trees had more deeply fissured, crusty-looking trunks. The brooding stillness was broken only by the gentle rustling of leaves and the rhythmic and leisurely clip-clop of the hooves of the sleek brown mare. A slight autumnal haze hung over the leafy vale and we could hear the soft murmuring of a beck.