A person's story begins with their parents at least, probably much further back than that. In any case my parent's stories are a whole lot more interesting than mine are. Take my mother for instance, if she didn't actually run away to London, she certainly went there as a young lady - too young a lady maybe.
My mother's name was Mable Gertrude, mercifully shortened to Pam, or as her father called her, Mab, as in Mab queen of the fairies, she was told. The family name was Bishop. There were five children all girls but one. Their father ran a successful market garden in Bittern, or Bidden, a small village in Somerset. I only know a few things about my grandfather; he played the violin, called it his 'Strad' short for Stradivarius - which it wasn't of course. His philosophy of life was that you should do unto others as you would they do unto you. He always gave to beggars, and said as doing so "there but for the grace of God go I", and my mother adored him.
My mother was born about the turn of the century, on the third of March. March it is said in England "comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb". It was certainly doing its lion thing on the night of my mother's birth, because Emma said, "ah, she will be a wild one born on a night like this". My mother was quite proud of this, and told me of it many times.
Emma was, I suppose, a housekeeper, certainly it was with her that the jaunts to the village to buy goods, in the pony trap pulled by Nellie, took place; and she did seem to run the house. She was dearly loved. Children who were naughty at table were banished to the kitchen, there was no punishment in that as the kitchen was always warm and cosy, and besides, Emma was there. Also Kruger the sheepdog-mix was there. He was called Kruger because he was so ugly! All her life my mother did things the way Emma had taught, and referred to her as 'dear old Emma'.
My mother's mother, now she seemed to be 'something else'. My mother told me in later years that, when I was young, fearful that I was turning out like her mother she watched me most carefully. What she hoped to do about it if her worst fears had been realised she never said! On reflection as an adult though maybe that is where that, "Bee-Ann watch what you are doing" came from. It could be that all people have to be told to watch what they are doing I really do not know, but I do know that I have always been exceeding clumsy. You know droppy, spilly, breaky, that sort of thing. There have been times when I have actually been aware of not having 'watched what I was doing!'
However this lady who was my grandmother, was deeply religious, a great church lady. My mother suffered from the "church three times every Sunday when I was a child" syndrome, but with this - as usual - went a very thorough knowledge of the Bible. I think my mother herself had quite a problem describing her mother. She seemed to be very vague, and not in touch with reality. My mother told how, if asked where one of her children were, she would say something like "I'm not quite sure dear, but I saw one of the children down by the strawberry patch just now."
Another time in the early days of the gramophone, a young chap, a friend of one of one of the older girls, asked if he could bring along his newly acquired wonder and demonstrate it.
Everyone foregathered in the parlour - mostly kept for the visits of the vicar - and the contrivance was produced, it took quite a bit of winding up, and organising, it seems, but eventually a scratching and scraping preliminary sound was heard. My grandmother, much to the dismay of the family said, "oh, is that the noise it makes?" and stalked our without waiting to hear more. She simply didn't quite know what was going on around her most of the time. Hence Emma I guess. My mother when speaking of her would always end up by saying that her husband adored her and that made her fine with my mum.
For a while my mother's - I think maternal - grandmother lived with them, but by that time she was senile. My mother was one of the few who could manage her. On one occasion the old lady was all dressed up to go out for a walk. As it was either raining or snowing at the time, that walk was most unadvised, so my mum was called and she said "well now Granny, did you have a nice walk, was it raining a bit? Your coat seems damp, can I take it and hang it up and help you off with your other outdoor clothes! It was from this old lady that we inherited the silver tray.
Of the three other girls in the family I know very little, one was called Edith, but I don't know which one. One was consumptive and later died in a sanatorium. While she was still at home she, being particularly sensitive, my naughty mother and her brother would dress up in sheets and rattle clothes pegs and say "oooo" to frighten her, and one day the poor soul fell down the stairs in her terror. One girl married a preacher, went to Australia and later died in childbirth.
The third sister must have been married and around England later, because when grandfather's wife died, my grandfather went to live with them, although my mother said he was unhappy there, so she rescued him and he came to live with her in a flat in London. The time when her father was living with her in London, was, I think, a very happy time for my mother. They would go on holiday in France with friends, and so on, until he died of cancer. I think I have a slight memory of him, but I am not sure.
The only boy in the family was called Walter, and was the apple of everyone's eyes. My mother was apparently a 'tom-boy' and tagged around after him everywhere. I believe she was two years younger than he was, they were the only two dark haired ones, and the others were fair. She proudly tells how when he went off to play with other boys she would be seen 'tagging'. The other boys disapproved of this, but Walter would say, "Oh leave her, she is just like a boy anyway'.
One of the favourite games was funerals. The deceased were my mother's dolls and the chief and genuine mourner my mum, because in those days dolls were made of a sort of wax, and if my mother didn't dig them up pretty quick the sun would melt their faces! He also kept mice, or anyway one mouse, and its only home seems to have been about Walter's person, peeping out of his pocket or some such. This mouse was named Arabella. One day Arabella got somewhere where she had no right to be. I think making a nest in my mother's bed or something. Anyway, my mum threw her out of the window. When Walter heard about this he regaled my mother with grim stories of what happens to innocent little tame mice when they find themselves among their wild, savage, cousins! Ever after that she was blackmailed with "remember what you did to Arabella".
Walter was reported missing believed killed during the First World War. The grave of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abby had therefore a very special significance for my mother. My vague grandmother would never believe him killed, and would never even allow the family to have a memorial put up for him in the local church. My mother said she never recovered from the loss of her son.
So Mable Gertrude Bishop went to London, unusual in the 1920's. She was not, she said, going to sit around at home like other girls and wait for a husband. She went to work at Selfridges, where she learned to be a manicurist. The old gentleman that taught her said that hands should be used as though everything handled was as delicate as an eggshell, and ladies hands should look like butterflies! Also due the shapeliness of leg, she modelled stockings.
My mother had many amusing stories to tell of her Selfridge days. The owner of the store was of course still alive in those days, and known to my mum, 'old Selfridge' she called him. She seemed to have interesting but strange friends.
There was Babe German who had, living with her, a long suffering gentleman. When she was cross with him she would turn him out, calling him a "Dirty German Jew Bastard" but he loved her, I was told, and always came back. I think it may have been the same lady who used to arrive home tipsy at night. One morning she was alarmed to find all her jewellery missing, she phoned the police who conducted a thorough search and discovered all the stuff pinned to the lining of her curtains where she had hidden it the previous evening.
Then there were the 'precious' men - for that was the word used in those days. One particular man who, when asked about the death of a friend who, it seems, jumped out of a window, said, "well yes Pammy darling, you see he had a bit too much to drink, and he thought that he was a fairy and just flo-ated away". This same gentleman, who was rather large, once bought a beautiful antique desk, and my mother would tell me with much fluttering of the hands, how he related that it was "far too small for me of course, far too small - my knees you see......... Pammy darling, far too small, but exquisite, yes, quite exquisite". There was another friend, a woman - a vastly overweight woman - who had the job of driving new cars to their destination up north someplace. She took my mum along for company. When she was tired from long driving, she would get out of the car, execute a ballet dance to loosen up, get back in the car and drive off again.
There was also Quex, he was apparently quite important in the newspaper world, my mother regarded him as part of the intelligencia of the day. It seems that those were the days when it was fashionable to believe that there was no God. To prove this one way or another they made a pact that whoever died first would come back by some means, and tell. Well he died first, and never did tell, so my mother was always in grave doubt about God. I was brought up to believe that when you died, you were simply snuffed out like a candle - poof! Finished, gone.
I think it must have been in the early Selfridge days that my mother became engaged. It seems he was German, and upon the day that my mother found out he was not kind, and had a bad temper, - if I remember correctly this latter discovery was made through the throwing of a sewing box, - she broke off her engagement. She never gave the ring back though, as by that time, her sister had taken a fancy to it, it must have been the consumptive sister, because she was buried with it on. So much for that engagement ring!
These next few bits I find difficult to tell, because they are not my story to tell and it seems to be prying in a sort of way, but my family insist that now those happenings are long gone, and so none of the telling matters any more. I rather guess that it was a time after the above engagement that my mother married someone called Palmer. She only told me these sad events once and that was long ago, so I hope I have it right. It seems that on the very marriage night Palmer was discovered with a chambermaid. Ultimately he was also discovered to have been married and had a wife still living, so my poor mother was not married at all. For what reason I can not imagine, but for many many years, she had post arrive addressed to Mrs Palmer, and this was always an embarrassment to her.
It is not difficult to believe that the above incident affected my mother mentally, and I gather she was unwell for sometime after that. This may have been responsible for the fact that there were those that regarded my mum as a 'difficult woman'. She was not, certainly during my childhood and early adulthood, difficult with me. We had in fact a very strong and good relationship, until she was threatened by my marriage that is.
However, my mother bobbed up again, and I think probably found herself somewhat wilder than before. She then had this friend. I believe he was the aid-de-camp to the Duke of Windsor. All I know of his name is that he was Phil to her. Phil wanted to marry my mother, but she wouldn't marry him because he had estates and things and my mother said she could never cope with all that.
She did however bear him a girl child, and that was me.
All this time my mother still worked at Selfridges, still a manicurist. It was in the men's hairdressing department that she met Doc. Doc, my mother related, had lived in the far east, and was somewhat used to throwing his weight around. Therefore made every effort to jump the queue in Selfridges hairdressing department, and the first words my mother spoke to him were, "would you please be kind enough to sit down Sir, and await your turn". By the time she met Doc, I rather suppose she was pregnant. They struck up a friendship, and formed a rather surprising alliance; seeing that Doc was a somewhat dour Scotsman, and wouldn't seem my mother's type at all. To say nothing of the fact that he was about 20 years her senior. Who can see clearly the relationship between two others, particularly a - married as it were - couple, certainly not a child. Anyway they lived together for 25 years until he died; he was the father I knew. I say knew, but he wasn't the sort of person that one got to know at all really. Doc looked after us as well as possible through difficult years, and I remember him with affection and gratitude.
How many - of our generation anyway - look back and say to ourselves "why did I not ask him about that, or show an interest in the other, or in fact show more love," maybe that is the difference between a Christian family, and a non-acting Christian family. I will attempt to tell the small portion of his story that I know.
Doc was born Albert Edward Augustus Ridgway and he was born in Glasgow in Scotland. I think his mother was a small lady, and was French. She had many children. I know nothing of the father, or any of the other children except Hector, for Hector I think it was that Doc said was the father of the quite famous colonel in America, but no one was sure about that. Doc was a brilliant guy. I think it must have been almost from birth. He won a scholarship to Edinburgh University where he studied - either separately or consecutively electrical and mechanical engineering.
Doc's training took him eventually to the Far East. The names I remember hearing about were Burma, Borneo, Java and Sumatra. I suppose it was here that he worked with the Ghurkhas for whom he had the greatest respect. I think that was a bit to do with their size and this will be because Doc was a very small man.
It must have been before going to the Far East though that he fought in the Boer war. A piddling little war he called it.
On one of his long leaves back in England he married someone whose name I never knew. He took his wife back with him. In those countries during the monsoon season the women were sent up into the mountains to live. She did not take kindly to this, so returned to England. They had a son George. No relation to me of course but regarded as my half brother.
He trained at Charring Cross hospital and was also a doctor. It seems George, poor guy, was not as brilliant as Doc, and was always a bit of a disappointment to him. He married a French lady, Elaine, and they had two children, a girl and a boy. I met George only once - after Doc died. He seemed very nice indeed. He had greyish eyes like Doc.
I do not know much about what Doc did in those Far East countries but I seem to remember that he was responsible for laying the electricity ahead of the railways as they needed electricity for the laying of the rails. I remember also that they had a lot of trouble with monkeys, who kept getting themselves fried, and bunging up the works in the process. On one other of his long leaves he took a course in law because he said he found himself in the position where he needed to advise people on all matters of law.
Doc had not been in the Malay States very long - and I don't know what he termed 'not very long' - before he realised that dwelling in that place meant an early grave for white people. So after investing all his money in the rubber plantations because they were producing this up and coming material which was in great demand, he headed home.
It was then that he decided to become a doctor. He signed up at Charring Cross hospital, and did that. He must have done very well indeed because he was quite well known by the other doctors as a gynaecologist and obstetrician. He was either, and I don't know which, a Master or Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. Plus, as I think was common in those days, he had his degree in pharmacy. In fact I remember him telling me that he was one of the last doctors to have to do pharmacy. I am not sure that they did a specialist training in gynaecology and obstetrics in the 1920's, but his expertise in these branches was certainly known and highly regarded by his peers.
After he put up his 'brass plate' outside No. 85 Inverness Terrace and waited for patients, other doctors sent him difficult midwifery cases. He had them staying in 85 where he saw them through the birth. This seems a bit strange to us these days but I believe that was how it was. He had his own methods, which were maybe a bit unconventional. I know this because when my mother arrived on the scene he said he preferred her as his assistant, as she would do as she was told without argument, which does not reflect too well on the midwives that he previously employed. He actually, in 1934, delivered me, much against his will, largely because doctors do not like taking on board the responsibility of their own family. My mother obviously won that one. Doc always said that the human body was the most marvellous and ingeniously contrived machine imaginable. It is easy to suppose that he brought his knowledge of how machines work, to bear in the delivery of babies. He used to tell how when walking or driving one day he saw quite a crowd around a little boy who had put his head through some railings, and couldn't get it out. The rest of the story is obvious, he used his knowledge and a successful delivery was achieved!
No 85 was a tenement house, narrow and tall as is the case with houses in England. I don't know if it was joined to its neighbouring houses or not. It was in Bayswater. My mother would later always refer to it as Kensington Gardens, which sounded much smarter, but was not its address. It was very near Kensington Gardens though, where I used to be taken. In fact we have a photo of me there. My mother used to take me for walks in a bathing suit because she said it was healthy for the body, and all the old ladies objected.
My recollections of those days are only those of a child under four years old. I remember talking to Mary who worked for us in the housecleaning department, on the stairs, I guess I sat and she worked. I remember once being unwell and lying on a couch by a fire, and being given a large teddy bear, and a music box. The music box I still have. Unfortunately it doesn't work any more, it did good service! My mother informed me that I had had a blocked tear duct unblocked - I think it must have been my left one, because it is blocked again now! It is quite difficult to know what one remembers, and what one has got to know about through being told a few times. I do think I remember being taken to a pantomime and being so terrified they had to take me home. This was probably because of the noise, I have always been sensitive to loud noise, and I have always found that very small children find the clowning of clowns a bit much to cope with.
Another memory I have is being taken into my mother's bed in the mornings and being taught to sing? My mother said that unless a person was taught to sing in tune at a very early age, they may forever find this a problem. So I learned to sing 'one fine day' from Madame Butterfly, I suppose there were other songs; I only remember that one.
Then there was the white rabbit that was forever escaping from its hutch. Stories abound about him, or her. Doc's surgery and waiting room occupied all the downstairs level. Surgery would more properly be interpreted these days as consulting room - anyway they were downstairs. On one occasion, they afterwards told me, it had taken many visits to convince an old lady that it was OK to take your clothes off for a doctor to examine you. That in fact it was downright necessary at times, so, behind a screen this important disrobing event was taking place, when suddenly between this old ladies legs shot a large white rabbit. She took a lot of calming, and neediess to say they never saw her again.
It was always difficult, it seems, to get a servant to work in a doctors house where there is more than the usual amount of work to be found; prospective employees would simply walk on by at the sight of the brass plates. Not so Hildegard, for this is where she enters the story.
Hildegard Wenger was an Austrian from Vienna. She always - so everyone had better do the same! - called herself Viennese. She was one of the many who fled ahead of Hitler's armies. She spoke little or no English when my mother took her on. She could, however, read English, so my mum wrote all instructions on the enamel top of a kitchen table. She had suffered from rickets as a child, but had since trained herself to be immensely strong. Despite the Viennese business she was totally Germanic except for having very dark eyes and hair. Anyway, that is the way I view her on looking back. The only London recollection I had of her was that she was a Catholic, she had awful bleeding heart and realistic crucifixion pictures and the like about her room - they terrified me. Describing her dark hair and eyes right now informs me that I was probably always scared of her. Hilde was very fond of me, and she became my governess, but I never remember her as being kind. She was, from here on, part of our family for many years.
It may have been about this time that my mother changed her name by deed poll to Ridgway so that she had every right to that name. I, I presume, was left floundering around without a second name! Can you imagine it, Bee-Ann as a first name, and no second name at all. Those things were not quite so imperative in those days - papers and things.
About 1938 Doc and household decided on a "retirement to the country" scheme. There was to be built a very large house somewhere in the country, and it would have many bedrooms, and be a convalescent home for those recovering from sickness or operation. Doc and Pam set off on a tour or two of England looking for the most likely spot for their dream. I guess I stayed in London with Hilde, and Mary. Hilde had by that time just about taken over the entire running of the household, learned to speak English and taken it upon herself to teach me German - beg her pardon - Viennese, for that is what she called it! The touring eventually bore fruit, and the ideal spot was found, a view of the fairly far distant blue sea on one side, and a view of the fairly far distant purple moors on the other side. This ideal spot was in South Devon.
The spot in South Devon was a small village 18 miles from Plymouth, 9 miles from Kingsbridge and was called Kingston. The very place in Kingston was a field, a five-acre field owned by a Rogers, I think 'Old Rogers'. There were of course many Rogerses. He didn't at first want to sell his field, but when - I think one hundred - nice new pound notes were laid out on the table, it is said, he changed his mind. It seems reasonable to suppose that the plans were all drawn up in London, but I am not at all sure that that is what happened. I still have one or two of the sketches from the architect. Work commenced, local labour was employed with, I think, Leslie Troupe in charge. Beautiful timber was ordered from Canada. The sewage system was all laid out, the foundations and a couple of chimneystacks built, and the garage built. My mother bought bales and bales of heavy linen for curtains, bedspreads and the like. The months, and a year or two, marched on. So did Hitler!
Over an intervening period time was spent between the two locations, with a practice to be sold on the one hand and a large house to be built on the other. I was eventually sent to Devon, in Hilde's company part of the time, the rest of that time I stayed with Lesley and Lena Troupe.
I do not know in what year the whole convalescent home thing drew to a grinding halt, I think probably a few months into the 1940 - 45 war. Materials were simply not available for private building any more, nor ships to transport timber from Canada. Everyone in England believed that the war would very soon be over, so all this was supposed to be a temporary affair only. Lesley went to war, where he died tragically somewhere of appendicitis!
After, I suppose, a considerable amount of soul searching, the decision was made to move into the completed garage which had two upstairs rooms intended for a housekeeper and groundsman couple. So the base room had an iron stove built into it, as well as a sink, and it was turned into an all purpose living room. A toilet outside. For a bath a metal tub behind a screen was used. Water was pumped by hand from an artesian well, and heated in buckets over Primus stoves. For months this method was also used for all clothes washing, and in those days, my mother reminded me years later, men, doctors certainly, wore starched collars.
It was a motley crew, our family, that descended on Kingston. There were my mum, and Doc who was a rather small and most unusual doctor, Hilde - this foreign woman with a Germanic accent, and Betty. Betty was Miss Shawbakka she was a little old Jewish lady, and was mentaily deranged. Miss Shawbakka was a patient of Doc's and her family begged him to take her with him to Devon. It was naturally a business deal, and because she provided a certain income my mother rather tended to call her "bread and butter". I remember her only as a small person all in black with white hair in a topknot. She was quite harmless, and spent her days walking from the house to the gate and back. She had done, I believe, some secret service work in the first world war, and spoke many languages. She was German, and 'in extremis' would stand around giving herself up, and saying "they are coming to take me away now, you know, oh yes, they are coming to take me away". I think she must have been with us a year or two before she died. I can remember that during air raids my mother used to shove us under the kitchen table. This being the only place she could imagine as safe should the house receive a direct hit from a bomb being dropped on the way back from Plymouth. This could happen in order to lighten the load of the German bombers on the return flight. This good lady never could understand the rationale behind being shoved under a table in the middle of the night! Miss Shawbakka occupied the second upstairs room. Right, beyond the five above mentioned, there was a canary in a cage, and a Pekinese dog. Added to these was, very soon, a goat. I have no idea at all how the people, dog and canary all fitted into that tiny house, I can only suppose that Hilde and I slept in the downstairs room. Hilde was not there so very long at that stage.
On understanding Kingston, one must remember that travel was not what it is these days, and besides normal small village tendencies to regard everything that you do not know as strange, or downright bad, as I say, we were a motley crew. South Devon did not go in for goats, so many had not seen one. Certainly Pekinese dogs were not an everyday sight, even a canary was somewhat rare in isolated district places back then. We were regarded as foreigners to the day we left 21 years later. We had Doris from the village working for us in those early days. Hilde insisted that she and any other villagers that she had anything to do with called me Miss Bee-Ann. This fact coloured my relationship with many of my peers and their parents for most of my stay there. The fact that Gabberwell, for this is what we called the house / smailholding, was a little bit out of the village, added to its mystique. The local residents called it the house on the hill. But regardless of the natural suspiciousness of the rural English, we did have two Germans (well, Germans to all intents and purposes) in the household and England had just started a war with Germany. Then there was this devilish creature with a beard prancing around the place. "They say it is a perfectly natural farm animal in some places, but neither my father nor grandfather found such a weird creature necessary", was the generally held opinion.
We had our ways for finding out what the generally held opinions were. Any visitors from elsewhere that we had, were sent to the local pub and there they would just sit quietly and listen to the local gossip. One conversation - after Doc had treated one of the farmer's cows for some udder complaint with Bonnies Blue, an application much used in those days for fungal infections - went like this. "E in af a funny old doctor that one, e been an painted all of faaarmer Frood's cewws tits blue."
Other livestock included two calves - Molly and Fanny, Geese, and a lamb with a ribbon around its neck. When the lamb was a baby it was my job to feed it from a bottle, so of course it quite believed that we were bound in an unbreakable relationship - we played well together, and she would come in the house with me time to time. Probably winter then intervened and, come next summer, the time naturally came when my mother left the door open, and next found a full-grown sheep lying resplendent on the sitting room floor. The calves were around growing quietly long before we became resident, and were forever escaping. Doc had to chase and retrieve them when he came down. It is told that he presented quite a picture haring around the lanes in his doctor's pin stripe suits chasing a cow or two. I don't think that anyone in the household was all that used to farm animals actually. Before the cows were mature enough to supply milk, the goat was! What a performance trying to get milk out of that extremely reluctant goat.
Time came when the 'powers that be' ordered that no one who was not English should live within so many miles of the coast. That of course included Hilde. I don't think anyone bothered much about Betty. So Hilde had to be sent away. I really don't know what was done with these folk, but I think they merely had to live inland. Anyway Hilde, seeing she had fled before Hitler, thought this to be unjust persecution; which in some ways it was. I believe she was just about suicidal, being by this time very fond of our family, although she and Doc fought like cat and dog most of the time. I think they were both jealous of my mother's attention.
This is where another aspect of Doc comes in, because due to his extra-ordinary influence, he got her into a munitions factory - of all things. And more to come. That was only a stepping stone, for he ended up getting her into the W.A.A.F. in the medical corps. Hilde battled a bit in the air force with her German accent and all - more persecution! But it seems that after a few Christmas concerts where she donned a moustache, pulled her black hair down over her forehead, strutted around raving and shouting in a fair imitation of Hitler, she was more or less accepted by her peers.
What gave Doc this great influence in high places? The fact that he had spent many years doing secret service work. When all this was I don't know, as I never heard it from him, but only from my mum, and my knowledge of it is very sketchy. The secret service work that had to be done, it seems, was in China, and in order to do it Doc had to learn Chinese - it is a difficult language so this took a year or so of intensive learning. I do remember him telling me about his teacher, who was called Lau Yip Ping. For this teacher Doc had the greatest respect. I also know that when the time came they had great difficulty finding anyone to examine his proficiency. His mission - whatever it was - took him wandering all over China. I had always wondered how he coped with all the various dialects of which I know there are many. It is only recently that I discovered that if a Chinaman could speak Mandarin then he could manage almost anywhere in China. Doc taught me to ask for a cup of tea in Chinese and I think it goes something like this " Ning pouie cha li" with the pouie going up somewhat in scale. Best no one quotes me however, as if you get even the slightest inflection wrong, you could be saying something quite rude! I wonder if the 'cha' part of it is responsible for the cockney word cha for tea. There is one story that my mother told me however. One night Doc awoke to find an unwelcome intruder about to enter through his window, so he merely took his knife and chopped off the offenders fingers that were gripping the windowsill. Offender fell to ground outside, one supposes, and fingers inside onto floor. I always wonder how he explained away the ten or so fingers in his ashtray in the morning! My mother found this story quite scary, and when Doc was having a bad dream, she said, she would always wake him in case he turned around in bed and mistook her for a Chinese bandit. This always amused me because my mother at no time resembled a Chinese bandit. Another story was to do with a Chinese cook who for some reason was speaking English when he asked Doc if he would like clab for lunch, on being asked again and again what clab was he said "he walkie walkie sideways, cook in own pie dish."
Doc brought many artefacts back from various places and from China he brought five beautiful embroidery pictures, four I remember, depicting the four seasons and the fifth with real gold thread incorporated. These pictures, and many other such things, got hopelessly damp and mildewed hanging on the walls by the coast in South Devon. Doc also brought back a Buddha beautifully carved out of one piece of wood; he had blue eyes of some precious or semiprecious stone. He was supposed to be a god of laughter, so why he had a many-tailed whip over his shoulder, I never could tell. Also, of course he brought back the Chinese vase still in our possession. This vase also has a story. Chinese vases often have two ears on the neck part of them, and it seems this one had. The Chinese cleaning boy, knocked one off, much to the chagrin of Doc who created something awful, whereupon the said cleaner took the vase down the road to the people who paint the vases. There he had the two scars where the handles had been painted over so that the scars didn't show, which can be seen on inspection. The other things that we had at Gabberwell from distant parts were wicked looking knives. One I remember with a curvy blade, and more than one Malayan Kriss complete with scabbard.
Once or twice shipments of Japanese prisoners of war were brought to Plymouth, and Doc was sent for to go and interview them to ascertain that there were no spies among them. I don't know how we came to believe that there was a machine gun secreted somewhere on the property but my mum and I spent much time looking for that gun, which I have often thought since was most probably a figment of some ones' imagination! The only other thing I know about the secret service bit is that Doc would receive post addressed to Colonel Ridgway. When I asked my mum how that could be seeing that he was not, nor had ever been, in the army, she said that was the only way that they could rationalise the pay cheques that they sent to him.
I was six when the war started, and eleven when it ended, people ask me what I remember about the war, it is odd the things you do remember. The sounds are clear. The air raid warning siren, and the all clear, also a siren, but different obviously. The sound of air raids, the guns shooting. My mother could distinguish the sound of the German plane engines and say "there goes another one " and sure enough the warning would go off, and the shooting begin; the barrage balloons like large elephants in the sky. At night one could read a newspaper at our house by the light of Plymouth burning 18 miles away. The 'black out', a very real necessity as a bomber plane off-loading bombs on his hasty way home is obviously going to look for a light to drop them on, and we were on their direct route home.
There was the rationing of course. Country folk suffered less than those in large towns. In fact I remember my mother sending chickens by post to London friends, and also Daffodils - she reckoned they needed some colour in their lives. I suppose her father sent his goods by post some of the time, so she learned how to pack them. I was in London once, long after the war, visiting friends, when some Daffodils from her arrived and it was remarkable how fresh they managed to look. Then there were always rabbits to catch, eating rabbit in England was quite common in those days, since then they got a disease called Myxamatosis and people never quite went back to eating them the same way after that. Anyway in those days they were much sought. I used to go 'rabbiting' with the Frood boys. They had a tame ferret that would - 'ferret' them out of the burrows, and then Nell the whippet dog would give chase and catch them. As I was the novice, and the female probably, it was my task to kill, skin and draw them. I can remember the tensions that surrounded the news broadcasts, the general talk of war enemies, and the fear when the war effort was not going our way. We were having a bible study the other day and some were saying that God spoke to them in dreams at times, I had to sadly inform them that more often than not in any dream that I remembered, the Germans were chasing me up hill and down dale! Going around with a gas mask slung over your shoulder if far from home, I remember. And clambering under the table in the middie of the night as we did not have an Anderson shelter. These shelters were large table like constructions made out of cast iron, The idea being that if one's house collapsed, the people in the shelter would remain safe. I don't think they would have been much help against a direct hit, mostly folk used them as tables - in the meantime. As far as the actual war was concerned, you or your family or friends were either killed or not, but the effects of the war in a country last generation after generation.
Doc being at that time too old to go to war, became a police reservist and had a police uniform. My mother said that of all his achievements he was most proud of that uniform. Again I think because he was small. When he died they gave him a police funeral of which I feel sure he would also have been proud - but that was still much work and many years away. He worked up quite a considerable local practice, in the absence of other doctors who were called up. This practice extended through some of the other little coastal villages. We had sold our Austin eight by that time, but had to get another little car for this reason, as far as I remember it was a two-seater, and had a canvas draw-over roof. It had to be cranked up to persuade it to start.
George, Doc's son, ended up in the Burma campaign, and sent to him the most extraordinary and interesting letters of his experiences, largely to do with the appalling conditions that the wounded Japanese soldiers were left in by their retreating army. It always struck me as such a coincidence that he should be witnessing the fighting as it took place over the rubber plantations in which his father had invested all his money. Doc took the loss of all his investments badly as one can imagine. Along with the realisation that the convalescent home was not to be, and that somehow he had to build a home for his family out of what he had in the way of building materials in the foundations, and two chimney stacks of the lovely-big-house-that-never-was. I think these things embittered him somewhat. My folks did try to get some compensation for this lot after the war, but unsuccessfully.
Even now, as I think back, I can hear the "clink clink clink" of the heavy hammer and chisel as Doc broke away each brick and cleaned it up to build on to the garage house that we were living in. It seems impossible that anyone could have gone all that way down to the Wonwell river and bring sand back in a wheelbarrow to mix cement. This however, is what Doc did. I can well remember him doing it and it is a very long way, with hills up and down. The pantry was the first room built on and I suppose building sand for private use was simply not available at that stage, but the sand from the river did not work very well due to the fact that the river was tidal quite a way up. The walls of that little room bled salt for ever. I suppose my mother nagged for it, and Doc built it this way, against his better judgement. It can't have been easy living in one room. No electricity, no fridge, and no local shop around the corner. Groceries were ordered by phone weekly from Modbury, and delivered. The butcher - complete with blue and white striped apron - came around with his van; the baker called once or twice a week and a local farmer delivered the milk. The latter's name was Donkin and he had a particularly moist lisp, and can you believe it, he charged sixpence for a pint of milk, and we never called him anything but 'Stlictlpence'. Later the local shop got a deep freeze - great excitement, but in the early days it was very basic.
All in all Doc built on, besides the pantry, a hall and porch, a bathroom and a large kitchen-cum-livingroom with a Rayburn stove. This he did, all on his own although Hilde would help from time to time when she was around.
I can remember a building inspector coming to do his thing, quite alarmed because the local doctor was doing goodness knows what in the way of construction and I remember Doc being tickled pink because he couldn't fault anything.
Few children in those days knew much about their people's financial status, that was just one of the things never discussed in front of the kids. Looking back however I realise they battled, and the stream of semi-patients that seem to have paraded through the house did so for financial reasons.
The first, longest staying, and therefore most important of these was Bridget. Marjorie either worked at, or she and her husband owned, an inn at Ringmore called Journey's End. She was Bridget's mother, and Bridget was born at Gabberwell under Doc's watchful eye. Ere the birth however - what a 'carry on'. Marjory's husband was away at war. Bridget's father was Cyril, the good-looking son of a wealthy farmer. Husband came home on leave to find a wife pregnant as shouldn't have been. Divorce followed - a nasty one where seeds and the like from the turn-ups of farmers trousers were isolated on the carpet of lady's bedroom - folk were a bit touchy about wives who carried on while husbands were doing their patriotic duty, naturally. All this upset endangered the pregnancy at the beginning, and the baby at the end. I can remember hearing 'raised voices' as my mother phoned said Cyril, told him to come and visit Marjorie pronto, bringing flowers, which he did. Thereupon my mother collared him and told him he was to promise Marjorie that he was going to marry her. Whether he did or not was his affair, but she was to be told this, to give her a measure of peace. Doc had never lost either a baby or mother in childbirth, and this was not about to be the first. Eventually the baby was safely delivered, but they never did marry. Baby, however was very, very premature, no toe or fingernails and tiny, tiny; my mum literally wrapped her in cottonwool. After the birth an ancient toothless old district nurse came visiting, and told my mum that she did know, didn't she, that that baby could not possibly live. Well survive she did, much to the nurse and every one else's amazement. My mother nursed her day and night by the iron stove to keep her warm.
As she was such a midget, said my mum, the only possible name for her was Bridget. Well Marjorie went back to Ringmore, and Bridget stayed with us. I can remember being jealous of Bridget. She stayed with us until she went to school where she boarded, and ran away at least twice to go back to Aunty Pam. Later there was an Elizabeth, and later still a Leslie. Both had something wrong with them but I don't remember what.
I do not suppose that the war can be held entirely responsible for what amounts to my general lack of education, but I guess it had quite a bit to do with it. First I was sent at a very tender age to what Hilde called a kintergarten. This was in Kingsbridge, which was regarded as safer than Gabberwell. There I boarded. The school was called Twyford. There were three other boarders, big girls, probably only about fourteen or so, but I thought they were huge. They did not take kindly to having a six year old in their midst and showed it in many ways. There was, however, a lovely, lovely old lady who was in charge of me. She was loving, giving, ample bosomed, and everything that was comfortable; a gem. This lady taught me to pray. I had never heard of Jesus, the friend that is with one all the time although you can't see him. I thought he was grand and prayed a lot even when I went home, which amused my mum no end. I have no idea how long I boarded there, or why I didn't go on staying there, or if there was a gap between the two but eventually I ended up staying with the Edwards family. He was a dentist in Kingsbridge. I then attended Twyford as a day child.
There were two Edwards children in the family, Peter and Janet. There was no love lost between us. It was a very proper household with the silver service at every meal. I rather suppose I was found to be a bit of a culture shock. Once a lady came to tea and to make conversation with me asked if I had a cat at home, and I replied that yes I had had but she got pregnant too young, and died of an abortion. Not exactly polite conversation then, if it is now. Also I swore a lot. Doc was a great swearer, so that is where I got the idea probably. Doc always swore in an amusing way. After a row at home once, where my mum obviously thought she needed to protect me, I remember Doc yelling in reply, "She is not a bloody paragon of every bloody virtue, you know'.
Then suddenly Kingsbridge was not a safe place at all. I have since been told that this could not possibly be true, but I can only tell you what happened. I was probably about eight by this time, the school was at the opposite end of the town to the Edwards home, and I walked to and fro. One day on my way home up the hill there was the terrific noise of very low flying aircraft, and then gun shots clattering around. I don't think there could have been many people around because I have no recollection of people screaming, or running or being hit or anything. I rang a bell and knocked on the nearest door and asked if I could come in to safety, they let me in, and I stayed there until fetched. The result of this little episode was that both Janet and I ended up in Gabberwell. There we both took the opportunity to have mumps or measles, or both. My mom nursed us in their double bed.
My mother was a very good storyteller, and to keep us entertained during the measles period she told us long stories that had a new episode every day. She would later tell how she was not allowed to polish off any characters, however bad they were, no one was allowed to die; she would eventually end up, she said, feeling quite giddy, in an absolute tangle of all sorts of queer creatures. To this day I can remember an ogre called Uglisome. He, of course, was only ugly on the outside, and all loving kindness within.
I was one of those kids that get delirious with high temperatures - no Panado syrup for fever back then. My bed would always swim around and my mother had to sit on it to keep it steady! Then there were always lots of little creatures capering around. We - I suspect she - made up poems about them like this one:-
When I was in bed with measles,
my room was full of little weasels,
they ran round and round my room
and mummy chased them with a broom,
then they jumped upon my bed,
and all my little spots turned red.
Amazing the things you remember.
Then came the time that I went to the village school - gas mask in hand. It did not go too well with me there, partly because of the "Miss Bee-Ann" business, partly because I spoke differently, lived in the 'house up the hill', and because I had not started there at the same time as the rest. Children being charming creatures, I got myself spat upon and the like. Never in my life have I learned anything as fast as I learned to speak with a broad Devonshire accent.
We were taught by a Welsh woman. A Miss Durrrel and a member of the Labour Party. In those days much the party of the have-nots. However, she later married a wealthy farmer, her politics changed abruptly and she became a revered member of the Conservative Party. She taught at that school for a long time, and I am sure adequately. You know I can actually remember the time when that good lady was teaching fractions and I thought to myself that that was hard and I was not going to bother to learn that stuff, thus lazy mindedness commenced, and has always been a problem.
I had one good friend - ginger headed Dina. We had great times together Dina and I. We had a 'faraway tree', and got into many scrapes. We also had this friend, an old lady as mad as they come. She called us her 'little darlings' and we would go and drink dreadful tea with her. She was always in long skirts, and a bonnet. She had piercing black eyes, lots of whiskers, and most of the kids were scared of her. Neither she nor her house smelt too kosher. I remember later, when children from the cities were evacuated to the country and people came to collect some at the official collection point where Doc was involved, she just about had a stand up fight with every one because they wouldn't let her take a couple. Dina and I also did a musical tour of the village with my musical box and a toy piano. At the end of the tour we arrived at my home with quite a considerable amount of remuneration, and my folks said how nice it was of us to do that for the Prince of Wales Hospital in Plymouth; where it was promptly sent! They sent us such a charming thank you letter. Also in mushroom season we would get up early and go and pick mushrooms and sell them. We flatly refused to be parted from that money however, because we said, lots of children did it, which they did. It was quite the thing to know the field where the best mushrooms were to be found.
Then there was a weird incident. Just out of the village there was sizeable house almost mansion-ish actually, in which lived a tiny little old lady called Miss de la Pole who kept stallions. Anyway she died leaving no relatives and no will. This talk of no will, I suppose, went round and round, and Dina and I read too many children's adventure books, so we went off in search of a will. This of course entailed breaking into the house, which we did and though a thorough search was made no will was found. It was all a bit spooky. Actually we were quite pleased when the search was over and we could get out of the musty house again. Once more back at my home we related all. I can remember that an immediate solution to this problem did not occur to the grownups this time. Anyway eventually my long suffering mother phoned the police and informed them that they had better secure the house a little better, because if two small girls could break in, so could anyone else.
Then I failed my eleven plus. It has been said in my hearing more than once, that it was practically impossible to fail the eleven plus, but anyway I failed it. It was an important exam because if you passed it you went on to a higher grade school - in Kingsbridge. If you failed it, you went by bus daily to a lower grade school in Modbury, a small town five miles away. Dina also failed, so off we went. I remember very little about what I did or didn't learn there. All I remember is that during the reading periods, unlike everyone else, I actually read. Also our domestic science teacher was called Miss Spellacy and I shone at cooking and sewing. Also I was good at story writing. During composition I had to read my stories to the class more than once. Once I got over being travel sick after the bus journey every day, I was fairly happy there.
In England in those days there was this milk plan and lunch plan. Every child had to drink a half a pint of milk daily, which was delivered to, and dispensed at, the school. We had to drink it while being watched - not so bad during the Winter, but in Summer invariably sour, so you learned to drink it while holding your breath, then you didn't know the difference. Then every one had a school lunch complete with pudding. If you had a note from your parents' after lunch you could give your note in, and go to town. By which time you were hungry again and would buy, for two pennies, some chips wrapped traditionally in newspaper and consume those on the way back up the hill to school. Sometimes Dina's mother Dora would forge a note for me if I had neglected to get one from home.
Is it not amazing how the human animal loves to fight. There was an absolute war between those who caught our Bigbury bus, the Thurlston, or Brynston buses or others - you had better not be caught talking to someone who was taken home on one of the another school busses.
By these Modbury school days, the house at Gabberwell as it would finally be, was just about complete. Doc was then sixty-six, which meant that he pulled down one partial house, and built another in his early sixties - small but strong! My mother did a super job making mats and covers for things with that linen that had been bought for the big house. She then worked hard on a veg. Garden which was called 'the kitchen garden!' Gooseberries red and green, Redcurrants, and Blackcurrants, the strong smell of Tomatoes, which we picked and ate like you eat an apple, still reminds me of that veggy garden in Gabberwell. We also had a glasshouse, or greenhouse as it is sometimes called, in which grew cucumbers. When you go into a hot house - another name for it - and pick a cucumber it is often uncomfortably hot and humid in there, and as you put your hand out and pick the cucumber, it will be found to be surprisingly cool to the touch - hence the expression. She also of course had a flower garden. Both were an absolute joy to her. Doc built what he called a' Japanese arch' which was a sort of doorway to a bower housing a garden seat. Bridget left for school round about here. From Doc's medical practice we had quite a few friends by that time locally and in the neighbouring villages.
From considerably earlier than this we joined in with the harvest efforts, it was just about the end of those everyone-climbs-in days because greater automation was soon to come. I can remember taking large picnic baskets to the fields at lunch time, and the children played while adults got dry hay in and made hayricks. Hilde was around for periods on and off these days, and she, because of her great strength, would compete with the farm boys in the tossing of hay onto the top of the rick, where another would arrange it to make the rick the right shape.
A lady and her son from just out of the village opened up a local cinema. My mother was delighted, would inspect the poster to judge if it was to be a good film, if she liked the look of it, off we would go. Doc often came if it was likely to be his type. This was an entirely new world to me, and thus was born my love of films. They had a signature tune, did the two that ran this cinema. It was the 'Tritch Tratch polka' and they would play it just before, and as, the lights went down and it added to that feeling of excitement at the prospect of a three hour entertainment where the world as it was simply did not exist. The film was usually accompanied by a running commentary by one of the locals "they be droiving that there o' car dewn the road neew' or " 'e be enjoying that there ol sausage then." Other than this if one wished to see a film or play you had to go to Plymouth. Which of course one did from time to time for shopping and the rest. There was a bus once a week on Thursdays. To Plymouth in the morning and home again at night.
We had wirelesses for our entertainment, of course. In the early days they had 'wet batteries'. These had to be charged in Modbury, and bringing them home by car was quite an issue because the 'wet' was acid and was quite a problem if it spilt. Then later the normal dry battery kind. There was no T.V. so serials and the like were listened to only. There was 'Dick Barton - Special Agent' Dick had two assistants Snowy and Jock. I sent away for their autographed photographs, the only one that I got back was from the player of Snowy, he did not look a bit as I had imagined and brought me to an understanding of the acting scene with a bump! Then there was 'Children's Hour' where they ran serials like 'Storm of Green Hillocks' - I had beautiful black Alsatian called Storm after the one in that story. During the time that so many children had been evacuated to various places safer than London and the big cities, at the end of 'Children's Hour' they would say "goodbye children" then pause for effect "everywhere" this just about brought my mum, who was particularly fond of children, to tears. I have always since thought that it was rather un-English actually.
Of these patients of Doc's that became our friends, one family from Ringmore was the Nash family. Mr. had some important lighting job at the Admiralty headquarters in London and the rest were evacuated by the state to the safety of Devon. They lived in Challaborough in a cottage by the sea. There were, Pam, Pat, Michael, David, Wendy, Richard and Christopher, Christopher set himself alight when wearing his flannel and highly flammable pyjamas and just about burnt himself to death. Doc was called in but by the time he got to the child, couldn't save him to any reasonable quality of life, so he died. Mrs was actually in the Journeys End inn down the road when Christopher got hold of the matches but during the inquest Doc perjured himself to protect her. Later when they got back to London there was Nicholas, and Angela. Lots of little Catholics. Mrs Nash was a most extraordinary lady. One of the most unprepossessing looking people I have ever seen, thin as a rake, shocking smokers cough and complexion, eyes badly squint, mousy unkempt hair. But when she opened her mouth and spoke, everyone in a room would turn around and look. She had cultivated, and she told my mother she had cultivated it, the most wonderful and compelling speaking voice I have ever heard. I spent many weekends at the Nash's, running around the beaches and rocks at Challaborough. Wendy had a little bit missing in the top attic and would suddenly and unexpectedly pinch one fiercely - not my favourite person. It is quite extraordinary how people treat 'the state' in England. On arriving back in London after the war Mrs Nash tells how she went to the council office from where they relocated families and merely said "right, here we are, find us accommodation". She lined all her kids up from the biggest to the smallest with the dog at the end, and there she stayed until they found her family somewhere to stay! They had sold a beautiful oak table to Harrods at a very low price in order to get rid of it quickly when they were evacuated. On return to London they were horrified to see the price at which the store was selling it. Mrs. Nash went in and spoke to managers, having things to say about making good out of others misfortunes, but Harrods said that that was how business was run and what businesses did. The price that they were asking was way above her reach. One can imagine her chagrin.
The other particular friends we had, but this was a bit later, were Monica, Vincent and Johnny de las Casas. Johnny was about five or so years younger than me, so barely tolerated. I used to make him smoke home-made pipes, and rebuked the poor kid fiercely when he coughed and choked. These pipes were made from acorns and straw but I have no idea what we smoked. This we did in the goose shed.
When we first moved to Devon, super wood houses were bought for all the prospective poultry, there was the ark, two duck houses, and a goose shed. We never got round to using all of these for the purpose for which they were intended, so they made very good storage places. Also hidey holes for me. I remember one becoming my den, and there I read all the 'Mary Plain' books - Mary Plain was a bear.
If I only tolerated Johnny, I absolutely adored his mother, as did my mother. Her name was Monica and everyone knew her as Monny. She was dark haired, complexioned, and eyed; rather gypsy-like we used to think. She had a husky voice and that rather attractive irresponsibility, topped by a great sense of humour. She was also Catholic, and took me once across the fields to Modbury to the Catholic Church with her. I was most impressed. On the way home we collected mushrooms in her hat.
My mother had incubators, and hatched chicks and ducklings and on one occasion sold some ducklings to Monny. One was looking a bit sick when she took delivery and my mum having pushed him a bit with her finger, said "this one will be fine in the morning". During a phone call when morning came, when asked how the ducks were, Monny stated that the dead duckling that she had been sold was still dead. This family lived on a farm where Vin, the husband, was trying his hand at farming - I think unsuccessfully. The house was a beautiful glass fronted place overlooking a river, and was called 'Cockleridge'. They had a boat and Monny would take Johnny and I out from time to time. I think Vin was Spanish or something. I was scared of him. I was scared of most men actually and am still uncomfortable in their presence largely. I think this was because Doc was not a particularly 'come hither' sort of person, I had no uncles, cousins, brothers or any male persons round me, so I never got used to men. Monny was still around during my riding days, and we went to a few gymkhanas together. Eventually they went to live in Douglas on the Isle of Man. I saw Monny a few times when I lived in London. She was somehow involved with people who owned a private zoo and trained animals for film work. When they left, they left us Sue and their Budgerigar. Sue was a miniature sheepdog and the cutest little thing you ever did see. The budgie was Pete and talked, boy did he talk.
I learned to ride on Smokey. Smokey was a very beautiful Arab horse - grey obviously - high-spirited and did not suffer fools kindly. My mother was a great believer in the philosophy that said that when you were thrown from a horse, you got right back on again! Round and round the field we would go with me learning to ride, and Smokey chucking me off at the same corner every, but every, time round until I acquired the ability to stick on, and we came to a sort of understanding. We looked after him for a while for someone else - great loss when he went home. Then Marjorie, Bridget's mother, won a Dartmoor pony. His name was Gypsy. Shetland and Dartmoor ponies were supposed, because they were small, to be good ponies for children to learn on but they were not, being generally wild and bad tempered. I can't remember anyone really riding Gypsy, or what happened to him in the end. Then there was Vicky. He belonged to one of the farmers, and I could borrow him. I rode Vicky for many years.
During the war cigarettes became hard to come by at times and my mother was a 40-a-day addict. One of my jobs was to take to horse, do the rounds of all the surrounding village inns, collecting cigarettes for her.
I wonder if the amount of freedom children had in those days and the safety with which they could roam around is a thing of the past. Once I had done my jobs around the house, which included pumping water by hand into the tank at the house - it took about 20 minutes - filling the lamps with paraffin, trimming the wicks as necessary and cleaning the glass chimneys among others, I was free to saddle up any horse I had use of at the time and roam around any of the villages I cared to go to. I had special stopping places around the lanes where I would enjoy a particular view, and the horses got to know where they were and stop there automatically. Then there were always nuts to pick. Hazel nuts are one of the nicest nuts and grow wild in the lanes, in Devon certainly, probably all over England; they grow up high so being on horseback gives one a particular advantage. Down at Wonwell beach in the woods was a super place to roam. As I think of that place I remember the smell of wild Garlic as the horses' hooves bruised the plants. Full of Rhododendrons those woods, quite a picture at the right time of year; then of course a blue picture when the Bluebells were in season. I can recollect collecting arms full of those with Dina.
Bigbury-on-sea was a favourite one of the villages to ride to. It was the largest and most commercialised of the seaside holiday spots. It had ice cream, and a small amusement arcade with slot machines with little balls dropping into places, if you were lucky - and I always was - the I little balls would drop into the right places and you would come out with considerably more money than you went in with. I actually just about relied on this for my teas and ice creams.
Just off Bigbury-on-sea there was a tidal island called Borough Island. It housed little more than a large hotel, and a small inn. Once, way back when I was still about five or so, a group of adults went to this island and to the large hotel. I can remember the owner taking an interested group, mostly children, on a tour of the island and showing us all the hiding places in coves and caves where a local pirate, Bill Crocker, used to stash his goods. He was quite famous in those parts. Smuggling goods in, past the customs and excise guys, was still quite fresh in folks' memories in those days. One or two of the rectories had underground passages leading down to the shore.
When finally the car - I think it was a Morris - packed up, I would ride to Modbury for some of the shopping. I had my own short cut across the fields. In the periods when there was no horse around I rode a bike but I felt safer on a horse, my sense of balance has always been somewhat at fault, and I liked to feel that that which I was riding had a leg firmly placed at each corner. Another horse I rode sometimes was Candy, brown and white and fat and lazy. Never having actually owned a horse I would go to the gymkhanas but never had a horse that was seriously raceable. I must have been about 14 or 15 or so when I rode Star. Often the farmers would lend their hunters out, out of season, to be grazed, exercised, and generally cared for. Star was such a one. I had to go far afield by bike to go fetch him, and can remember being somewhat intimidated when I actually saw him because he was 16hh (hands high). As one hand is 4 inches or 10cm, that makes him 160cm high at shoulder, and that is a lot of horse. I couldn't get on him at all with out the use of a mounting block and as we didn't have a mounting block at Gabberwell a plan had to be made.
Star only knew one thing and that was that once someone was riding him the thing to do was to gallop off to where-ever, and get it all over and get home as fast as possible and this is what he did, hardly waiting until a person was properly mounted! I remember taking him back in tiptop condition though; he was all shaggy when I first had him but with much grooming he was the most beautiful shining chestnut when I took him back. Amazing the trust that was involved in this kind of arrangement, the farmer had my bike in his stable, and I had his horse.
I don't quite know how I came to know Ann May but we rode a lot together. Mr May managed a farm. My mother and Mrs May - who never met - would swap tea for sugar during the rationing years, my mom needed the sugar for the making of jams and so on, and the Mays supposedly drank the tea. As I write this Ann is now in her second marriage and judges horses all over Devon. My mum was a great jam maker, a favourite jam in the English countryside is Blackberry and apple jam. We would go picking Blackberries by the hour, Bridget, my mom, the little dog Sue and I. Another thing we picked large amounts of because they grew so prolifically were Primroses, a simple flower that gives its name to a pale yellow, and has the most incredible perfume.
After the war Hilde settled in London. For a while she had a job as the cashier at a night club called the Coconut Grove. There she had a boyfriend called Sandy who was an Italian. Hilde obviously told him about the folks at Gabberwell and once he phoned to speak to my mum, and on hearing that she loved all the Italian opera songs, promptly sang to her over the phone. Next time Hilde came down he sent with her the entire collection of Gigli records. We had a big square H.M.V. gramophone that you wound up. We loved those records.
Well those happy days, like any days, happy - or unhappy days for that matter - came to an end; in my case with a bump, because this is where I went to boarding school in Salcombe. For what reason I was taken away from Modbury school, and how they managed to find the where-with-all to send me to a private school, I know not, but to Hazeldene I went. I suppose on reflection that Doc realised that my education was leaving a lot to be desired. There were three of us from Modbury school that ended up at Hazeldene, each as hopelessly behind as the next - Miss White called us dim, stupid, spineless (interesting one that) hopeless and un-teachable, and those are only the names I remember. Miss White was fortunately only a junior teacher. She really, really did look like a monkey by the way. She taught languages and sewing; she was always so disgusted by my efforts at French and German that she could not even find it in her heart to compliment me on my sewing which must have been O.K. I was always a blouse or apron or something ahead of the others and if she didn't like a seam, out it came. Of course I was always ahead with my German, because of having learned it when small, but she didn't appreciate the Viennese part, and would only say I had the most appalling accent she had ever heard! The school was run by Miss Surman - academic department, and Miss Wheatherston - other. It was to Miss Wheatherston that you went to when you thought that you also had caught mumps, which I did in the fullness of time, for the second time. I rather think it was a very good school. I actually started learning to learn there, and began to enjoy the precision of geometry and the way it fell together provided that you knew the things that the previous pages said that you must learn. Miss Surman was marvellous with Shakespeare, History, and Scripture. In English school style they called me Ridgy short for Ridgway. "Yes Ridgy" she said a few times near the end of my time there, "I think you are beginning to get the idea". Unfortunately I didn't get too far with the 'idea' because my people ran out of silver to sell and I left at the tender age or 16. This was a problem for all because I had not taken, nor, as was required by the state, passed, my school leaving certificate. I remember Miss Surman saying that she would simply have to say that I was 'school leaving certificate standard'.
They were a nice bunch of girls there and in a way I enjoyed it, but I have always been homesick when away from home, and still am up to a point. Our suitcases were kept in an attic and about a week before the end of term came down for packing. I can remember the excitement of that occasion, and similarly I remember ruining the last week or so of my holidays dreading going back. Our generation really appreciates the way teaching has changed throughout the years, and now one of the things that teachers first do, it seems, is see that children enjoy school, and mostly they do.
What to do with Bee-Ann was the next problem that my poor people had to contend with. What they did with her was, send her back to London. All on her own to boot! While living in London previously, Doc was the doctor to the Bradley girls and this is where the next idea for Bee-Ann came from.
Bradley's was a very exclusive fashion house. It was in Bayswater, on a corner and Chepstow Place led off from it. It was in these Chepstow Place houses that the Bradley girls lived. From having been their official doctor, Doc knew Mr Bradley. He knew that the models and other workers were watched over, and sort of locked up at nights. Those that resided there of course. So off I went to become one of those. I actually worked in the showroom as an assistant to an assistant - literally. Bradley's specialised in fur coats and suits made to order. The customers came in, the suits, coats or whatever modelled for them by the models, and the orders taken with any alterations to the original remarked by the assistant. This information then went up to the cutters who cut and fitted, each of these ladies presided over a large workroom of sewing girls. In the rooms where the fur coats were made, by the way, no talking was allowed, and workers worked for only about 40 minutes without a break, I guess to do with the value of the materials used, only genuine furs in Bradley's. I worked in the 'suits' showroom under Miss Nun, collecting, presenting for inspection, packing to send away, that sort of thing.
Although I visited Hilde over the weekends, and we did things together, and there were the Nashes, I was, as usual, homesick. The housekeeper in the house that I lived in, which was No 2, owned a large Alsatian dog. My greatest joy was to take Prince for a walk in the park. In those days they used sheep in Hyde Park to keep the grass mown, and Prince and I would go and talk to the shepherd. The girls called me a Bohemian. I had no idea what Bohemian implied in those days, and hoped that it was good. Pauline, who modelled the suits, would go with me to see a film occasionally. Then Bradley's closed down, I swear it was not entirely my doing! I can remember Mr Bradley gathering everyone together to tell them the sad news, the older assistants like Miss Nun, who had been there from the time she left school, cried bitterly. So back to Devon I went.
So, what to do with Bee-Ann again. It was decided that nursing was my only hope, if could get in. People always laugh when they ask what made me decide to go in for nursing, and I say it was a job! 1 can not remember being much involved in any of the decision making with regard to my future, but I suppose I was. I have always been inclined to live from day to day somewhat, and drift; never having goals or aspirations that I can remember. The telling point here with this nursing thing, of course, was, if I could get in, and this turned out to be even more complicated than we all imagined. When you are training as a nurse, you are working for the state. If you work for the state you have to have - "Papers"! My papers as you will remember, were not my strong point, the other thing you had to have was - Education! Another of my weak points. No matter, there was always Doc and his gift of the gab.
No amount of gabbling though, however gifted, would make up for not having the right - "Papers". This must have caused my folks some anxious moments, because I was now 18, and did not know that I was not Doc's daughter, and I suppose due to the war they had never got round to him sorting out adoption papers. The legalities of adopting a small child are very different from those of adopting an 18-year-old. This had to be done if I was to use the name Ridgway, otherwise goodness only knows what name I would have had, probably Bishop, not a bad name as names go.
It came as a bit of a shock learning the peculiarities of my birth at the age of 18. Not an age at which one is likely to take that sort of thing kindly and I certainly did not. I remember a poor unfortunate lady, I suppose a social worker, coming and insisting on speaking to me alone. It was a rough ride I gave her, as though it was her fault. Anyway that lot got through OK. Much more difficult was the actual act of getting me registered into the Prince of Wales Hospital as a student nurse. My abysmal lack of education being now a very serious matter. Well, I can only tell you that the amazing Doc bamboozled me in. How I will never know and if it were not me, I don't think I would even believe this awesome fact. I became registered as a student nurse and battled through it all, learning to learn, largely as I went, I think. I never passed any of my hospital exams all the time I was there, but miraculously I did pass both state exams. I can only suppose that the state saw itself as being mighty short of nurses.
Oddly though, I seem to have remembered most of what I learned, and I think got a good nursing training there. Although I describe myself as not being God's gift to the nursing profession I have never been found lacking exactly. I do not even remember the name of the matron of the time, who had been at the hospital all through the dreadful bombing in Plymouth. The children's ward 'Albertha' was damaged or hit and it was at that time that this lady got an award for bravery. I was, however, always at odds with her, and she must have wondered what had hit her. Not only was I impossible at the exams, but also what they called 'not amenable to discipline'. After a few uncomfortable sessions in her office it dawned on me that if a person worked very hard and scrubbed things very, very clean and was never found to be idle, life generally became more tranquil, so scrub I did. Those were back in the days when the nurses did all the work from sweeping floors and polishing pianos to the inevitable bedpan cleaning. Eventually the day came when I was not the junior nurse and then I learned a very important lesson. I learned that if you are good at it, you can charm your way out of things. The new junior on the ward was very pretty, and when sister asked her if she had scrubbed all the bedpans and she said 'yes', Sister who had obviously inspected them, said 'EVERY ONE nurse' and she smiled prettily and said 'well sister not EVERY one'. Can you believe, sister went off smiling, and she had got away with it. I could never do that, just not the type obviously. The sister tutors' name I do remember. She was called Miss Pasque and I remember her with the greatest possible amount of respect. Lamorna couldn't stand her, funny that.
I did not enjoy my period of nursing training, but I must say that it improved greatly when Lamorna came and we could not enjoy our nursing training together! Lamorna was a couple of 'sets' after me, which probably meant about six months. She had started her training at St. Thomas's Hospital in London. One couldn't help but notice Lamorna as she was so very different.
She is one of those people who, a bit like me, looks formidable and is not in the least. I was amazed to find her one-day cleaning her shoes out in the corridor (so that you do not put the carpet in your room at risk) without anyone actually standing over her telling her that she must. So I sat and chatted to her while she did this. Then there is the way she spoke-and walked. She sort of stalked with a measured tread. We are still friends. When living in the environs of the hospital simply became too much for us we got a flat and 'lived out' which was better. When we had any reasonable amount of time off we went to each other's homes. Lamorna's folks had the Dartmoor Inn, which, cold and windswept though it was, her mother managed to make warm and hospitable. Lamorna's father was ex airforce, and very "Gung Ho"! Spoke loudly. Needless to say I was quite unreasonably scared of him. He was Squadron Leader K. P. H. Cleife and either owned or had access to a small aeroplane. One day he took Lamorna and I out in this plane and we circled over Gabberwell doing interesting wing flapping things, and my folks waved white towels. I was unable to appreciate all this as I was far too busy turning green, being sick, and wishing I was dead. I don't think I was regarded as being a very 'good sport'. He wrote several books, airforce etc, types, and later "James Bond gorgeous girlie" types. As I write this he is still going strong at 90, and chasing any girl that seems likely.
My mum took Lamorna and I on holiday once to Weston-Super-Mare. We had great fun and laughed all the time; my mum was great fun to be with.
Lamorna had been to a Convent for her education, or part thereof, and though she remained an Anglican, she is about as serious regarding her response to The Lord as anyone I have ever met. I on the other hand, was at another "poof out like a candle" stage of my life, and all this grieved her sorely, poor dear. Some years after I left England we changed addresses once or twice too often and lost touch. Then, when in '95-odd we went to England for the Diocese, I got in contact with her through the Nursing Association and what a joy that was! Lamorna hadn't even known that Andrew was a priest and I a priest's wife with no 'poof in sight.
The most fearful part of our hospital days was night duty. I don't think anyone who has not done nursing night duty can understand the feverish rush necessary to get the late evening and early morning work done. Then there was always the dread of being put on 'Lopes', the female medical ward with 36 beds usually full of the very sick. As a junior, the horror was of getting the bedpan and washing round done to the clock; as a senior it, was of the diabetics that had come in for stabilising. In the semi-dark of night it is quite hard to estimate if someone was in an insulin coma, a diabetic coma, or merely sleeping peacefully! After facing the music resulting from waking patients to ask if they were all right, I learned to do it by smell! When in my nightmares I am not too busy being chased by Germans, then the day nurses are coming up the stairs and I haven't made the beds and taken the temperatures.
I went out with a doctor a couple of times while at Greenbank - just to test the waters!
Although only 18 miles distance separated them (not far by South African standards) the journey from the hospital to Kingston was quite an issue. Getting to Modbury was not too difficult because busses went that way to go on to Kingsbridge. The last five miles had to be by bike. I had a sort of understanding with Stevens' garage about leaving my bike there. On the way back to Plymouth one of the options was to catch the Bigbury bus at Four Cross which because it was just that, four crossing roads surrounded by fields, there was nowhere to leave a bike. This then had to be walked. I suppose it was a good couple of miles. I have a very vivid memory of those walks, usually taken at the last minute at night to catch the last bus.
Some of my mum's and my favourite books were those written by Jeffery Farnol, especially "The Broad Highway" which my mum read to me before I was really into reading it for myself. - Farnol was particularly good at describing the countryside and walking in it at night, people walked of necessity more in olden days when his books took place. There was inevitably a roughish wind, owls hooting and trees swaying in the moonlight and weather warm or cold, a little on the spooky side. Then one would stand at Four Cross and wait and hope that you had got the thing right and then from the distance would come the brightly lit bus, civilisation at last!
I hung around doing staff nurse in the South Devon and East Cornwall Hospital, Greenbank Road as it was by then called. Then Lamorna finished her training and after applying to Perth in Scotland to do our midwifery and being accepted we shot up to London to do private nursing.
Life was a bit easier in Gabberwell by this time. They had an electric pump for the water, which my mom cared for as Doc was by that time a bit past it, a television set, and a better life with me off their hands. I had managed to get my mum to ease him out of doctoring by that time and this was not too easy as the villagers kept coming.
Wine making was the order of the day with Doc picking the Dandelions and so on and sampling the rather fine wines that mum made. Ivy Willcocks, the postmistress, a very large strong lady who walked many miles with the postbag, made it her business to call at Gabberwell last, and after sampling the latest would happily weave her way down to the gate and home. When I went home I had to try this one or that one because they were not mature yet but 'coming along nicely dear'. Immature wine, even when it is coming along nicely, is not the way to get used to wine and just about put me off for life. Doc used to drink a Whiskey at night and on one occasion it did not get itself ordered, so he had to settle for - some of Pam's stuff. As homemade wine tastes less strong than it is, he drank more than was wise, and just about had to be put to bed!
My mum and Doc were not too happy to see me go far away to London, but understood that a worker goes where the work is.
Private nursing was fun as you could do a case or two and then hare around the country seeing places, and when you ran out of money do it all over again. Sometimes if we had easy cases we would meet at the Serpentine in Hyde Park, eat some breakfast at the café there, and swim and go to sleep under a tree until time to go back to work, eat again and off we would go. Also there is the attraction of looking after only one person which means that you can really do it properly. Both Lamorna and I had some interesting cases. All this fun and games beat hollow the idea of going to Perth and becoming a student again so we never did! With private nursing you lose out on practising to run a ward, but because only the very difficult or unusual cases had 'specials' which was the, then, equivalent of the intensive care units of today, you learned quite a lot of unusual stuff.
I nursed in a Jewish house or two. In one family the lady had something to do with picture houses, and would give me her vouchers so Lamorna and I saw film previews aplenty. In another house I informed the family that my patient the Matriarch was by far too sick to preside over the Friday night session that week. Next thing I knew her sons were talking about how much they had paid for a consignment of sardines and that revived her, she just about hit the roof and was shocked into comparative health for another week or two.
The Jewish patients were quite able to integrate a nurse into their households but this seemed difficult for other families. Sometimes one was put into the kitchens with the largely foul-mouthed servants, or sat at the family table where the conversation was of the South of France, yachts, race horses and the like; some simply put a table outside for nurses - by far the best.
Once or twice Doc and my mum came to London to stay with me for a holiday.
I had a Swiss patient, Victor, with head injuries who when he came back to see his specialist a few months later took me out a couple of times, I never really liked him though. I also got to know a male nurse quite well - can not have been that well as I can't remember his name now. Lamorna had an Indian friend for a while. Mrs Nash, when I visited them - fancying me as a daughter-in-law - would do her best to get her oldest son Michael and I off somewhere, but it never really worked. We did, however, dutifully go to a few places together, notably 'My Fair Lady'. Michael had a motorbike and I quite liked the motorbike.
Then Lamorna took herself off to France to do an au pair job teaching a little 'un to speak English. By this time I was almost a permanent fixture at the London Clinic specialising cases there. There was Amin, and his interpreter Jimmy. These two were Arab, pure Arab. They looked the part, hooked noses and brownish skins. Old Amin was a hajji, and wore the white and black headscarf with the black circlet that I had to put back on after I had washed him. I was always scared that I would put the thing back wrong and create an international incident! Amin, who was, as I saw him, a lovely, lovely old gentleman, learned a little cockney English. He would walk the Clinic corridors with my help and to each soul that he passed he would say 'Salaam Ali Cum', and nearly topple over in his depth of bow. Then to make sure that they knew they were being greeted he would add 'allow 'allow 'allow'.
The only previous knowledge I had of Arabs was from P C Wren's books and Rudolph Valantino prancing around with a white scarf draped around his head and some daft woman singing "oh Shiek of Arabeee, your love belongs to meeee." So I found Ali, his cousin, and Jimmy, Mahamoud was his correct name, quite fascinating. I went out with Jimmy a couple of times I think largely so that I could tell my mum I had been out with a genuine Arab. No wonder she was scared to ask what colour the South African was when Dad arrived on the scene! I don't think Jimmy was a very good example of traditional Arab anyway, I had always thought that they were 'hot' stuff with horses. One time when I came back from Devon after a weekend or something I had a mark on my arm where a horse had bitten me, and when asked what the mark was, told him, whereupon an argument ensued because Mahamoud insisted that horses did not bite. Amin was brought in to quell the riot and said "ridiculous, of course horses bite," or words to that effect.
Amin turned out to be inoperable, and his cousin was in quite a stew about it all because he had told the family that they could do anything in England. If they would only let them take his uncle there they would cure him. He was quite scared to go home, poor man.
After nursing Miss McQuade at the Clinic I went home with her and became a permanent fixture in her household for a while. She was 84 and also inoperable. She was great fun to be with and took me all over the place with her. Convinced that she would be well enough she planned a last trip back to her native Australia where I was to go with her, she was however never well enough. But in the interim she learned that I could not dance and dancing, it seemed, was a must if you are to travel any distance by boat, so she advised me to go and learn to dance. I endeavoured to do this by signing up at the London Dance Institute in Oxford Street. Sadly I was not too good at dancing in the same way that I was not too good on a bicycle. To do with a somewhat impaired sense of balance. Anyway I had paid my money, and so they gamely tried to teach me to dance. They even set one of their bright students at the task, and that was Dad (hitherto referred to as Andrew). Finding ourselves badly in need of some coffee after these sessions we went out to have that together. Funny thing about Andrew, apart from Martin he is the only man in whose company I feel entirely comfortable. There are a few men of our acquaintance now that I have gotten pretty used to however. This business about feeling comfortable with Andrew has always struck me as odd because from the very beginning he was at times irritable, bad tempered, or depressed, or all three. Perhaps because all or any of these states when manifest where abundantly obvious and not sort of hidden I felt safe. Anyway, who knows about how these things happen and we became good friends at all events.
One evening while I was at the Clinic I had a phone call from my mum to say that Doc had just died. The Sister on the ward I was on was very kind, she gave me some money, and said to catch the very next train to Devon, which I did. It was not until the following morning that I actually reached Gabberwell. It seemed he had had a slight cold and was watching T.V. he said he wasn't feeling too good and my mum went to get him a cup of tea and when she got back with it he was gone. My Mum was naturally quite shocked. He was not yet 80. Someone from the village had laid him out, and the funeral parlour took over. It is when you see a person's slippers and the sweet that he had not eaten along with the unfinished book that he was enjoying that the sadness strikes. We both recognised that he had led a full life, and believed that he was as happy at Gabberwell as he had ever been anywhere.
What my mum was going to do next was quite a difficult one to work out. The house at Gabberwell was way back from the road and quite isolated. She had of course to stay there until the place was sold, so Lamorna's grandmother stayed with her for a while. Andrew and I went down there whenever possible to get the place ready to sell. It was bought by a local couple voetstoots, furniture and all. We only kept the silver tray, Chinese vase and a little bit of other stuff, but let all the knives, pewter and much that we should have had held onto go under the auctioneers hammer. We took quite a lot of books with us of course!
It was good that Andrew had just that much contact with Gabberwell and some of the folks of the village.
It was one of the Stevenses from the Modbury garage that drove us out of the gates of Gabberwell. He remarked with wonder that neither my mother nor I looked back as we left.
About forty years later Andrew and I visited Kingston. There was a widowed lady living in Gabberwell and her daughter living in a small house built on the old large house foundations. The Gabberwell residence was by that time called 'Ridgeways' and the set of cottages down the hill from it was called 'Gabberwell Cottages'. Much change had of course been made in what was our house. As they do in England, though, as much of the original, like the oak beams of the ceiling and slate roof, had been left intact.
Here really the story changes greatly, and ceases to be my story in a way. My mom lived with me for a while in London. Andrew and I became engaged. We all decided that a new life in South Africa sounded good, and this obviously had to include my mom because she could hardly live in England on her own. So -- GOODBYE TO ENGLAND - and off we all went on the Stirling Castle, a boat, which nearly set fire to us. That having failed, it nearly sunk us en route! But as I say, that is another story.