Chapter Nine ‘Long Journeys Between Our Parents’ Homes…’ #2
There were fewer pets than at our father’s home, just a Jack Russell and a Labrador, Carnaby and Qantas. Diana and I enjoyed feeding the donkeys that a neighbour kept in the field next door.
We had an ongoing feud with two American boys, who lived on the other side of Appleshore’s garden to the donkeys. They took against us for no apparent reason, firing catapults at us from trees in their family’s garden, before one day suddenly declaring a truce, which we were happy to observe.
My mother always encouraged a sense of community in her children.
At Appleshore, Diana and I would help to bake cakes, which we would take on our bikes to lonely elderly neighbours.
One of these whom I particularly remember was the wonderful Gladys, Lady Seal, widow of Sir Eric Seal, one of Winston Churchill’s closest staff members during the early years of the war.
To see her face light up, as we proffered a freshly baked malt loaf, knowing she had us as a brief distraction in her quiet day, was our reward.
It encouraged an appreciation of others’ plight – equally fostered by my father – that stayed with Diana for ever.
Her headmistress at West Heath, the school in Kent where Diana boarded as a teenager, would recall in a speech to old girls soon after Diana’s death, ‘As a Senior, she was an enthusiastic member of the Voluntary Service Unit, visiting, and shopping and gardening for someone I knew only as “my old lady from Solefields Road”, rushing back, puce in the face, just in time for her after-tea lessons.’
My mother played a part in that.
*
From 1972, when I was eight and Diana ten, the train journeys between our parents’ homes grew much longer. Peter and my mother bought Ardencaple, a beautiful, if rain-drenched, coastal farm on an island off the west coast of Scotland.
We were both, by this stage, at different, single-sex boarding schools.
Our school holidays saw us remain together, with each parent.
Meanwhile Sarah and Jane came in and out of our lives: being that much older, they were allowed to choose which parent they saw, when they wished. We both envied them this freedom.
Diana and I would take the overnight train, the ‘sleeper’, together, from London to Scotland.
Once we were in a train crash, in one of Glasgow’s stations, that was serious enough to garner a mention on the BBC’s evening news bulletin.
The wall mirror in our compartment shattered when another engine hit our stationary train at speed, and Diana received a nasty cut in her scalp that required stitches.
Another time, while my mother was away from Ardencaple for the day, Diana accidentally sliced deep into her hand while carving some cold pork that had been left in the fridge for our lunch. The hospital and stitches were again required.
Generally, though, time with our mother was quiet and isolated, with no local friends of our own age.
We helped out on the farm, moving sheep and cattle between fields, loading up the tractor with bales of hay, and – one leaden day, soon after Christmas – helping to bury a cow in cloying mud, as the hazy, relentless, Scottish rain caught the wind.
We did extra chores for pocket money, such as cleaning out the henhouse, and uprooting ragwort so my mother’s herd of Shetland ponies could be protected from poisoning.
*
Diana was often, as teenagers can be, worried about her weight, which she monitored on the scales in our shared bathroom. Her concerns were not helped by the catering packs of Mars bars and chocolate biscuits that my mother stocked in Ardencaple’s chock-full larder. We grazed on these, daily.
Having no sports clothes, Diana would sometimes run down the drive and beyond, in raincoat and boots, to expend calories.
In the summer, she might dip in the extremely cold sea – it never reached 15 degrees C and was often a much lower temperature – hoping this would also, as she would say, ‘burn off some fat’.
*
It must have been pretty dull for Diana at times, having a little brother as her sole childhood companion during the holidays. She was much more grown-up than me – a point she made once, when we were on our way to Ardencaple, and I said how much I was looking forward to getting there.
‘So you can play with your toy soldiers, like a baby?’ she taunted.
That had indeed been something I was very much looking forward to but, embarrassed that Diana was calling me out, I reached for a lie: ‘No, no, of course not. I’ve grown out of playing with soldiers!
’ From then on, I did occasionally get my soldiers out, but only after I was sure that I was away from my sister’s scrutiny.
But despite the difference in maturity opening up, as we got older, Diana and I continued to operate as a team. We once went to a party for children we barely knew, in a hotel in Oban, the town nearest to Ardencaple, where my mother owned and ran a successful toy and gift shop.
After tea the party’s hosts said it was time to play a game.
Each of us guests was ushered into a room, one by one, to find a panel of smug-looking children seated on the other side of a long table.
‘Say: boots, and not shoes!’ barked their spokesperson as the others smirked and squirmed in malicious anticipation.
Diana, like all the others confronted with the riddle, duly said: ‘Boots, and not shoes.’ This reply prompted whoops of derision from the far side of the table. The aim of this game, Diana realized, was to confuse and humiliate.
Before I went in, Diana managed to sidle up to me and hiss: ‘Whatever they tell you, just say “Boots” back to them.’ That was the one-word answer I gave, immediately dousing the spiteful glee in the riddle-setters’ eyes.
My big sister could have let me stumble into the trap, as she had done, but she chose to spare me the raucous taunting, and to take the power from the hands of bullies.
In adulthood, I would try to do the same for her.