the Christmas dinner, after Mass. For this repast, Mama with her expertise in cooking – rivalling, in my opinion, the best cook in the world – had prepared the roast turkey complete with stuffing, mashed potatoes and green peas with gravy, then plum pudding not without a touch of brandy and mince pies, to be washed down with cidrax (the non-alcoholic form of cider). Then we would turn on the radio for the king’s Christmas message, before going upstairs to play with our Christmas presents – if they were playable with. One Christmas Richard received a copy of Lingard’s History of England (in an abbreviated form) and I received a book of travel around the world, introducing me to Japan and Mount Fuji. But such are boys that I couldn’t help envying Richard his present, though I don’t know if he ever envied me mine. Anyhow, such presents are what I mean by “unplayable with”.
On the other hand, Easter, though more impressive and more central to the liturgy than Christmas, was less of a home feast. After all, Christmas is essentially a feast of the family, beginning with the holy family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, not to mention the ox and the ass, as appropriate companions to the new-born babe of Bethlehem. But Easter is the feast of the faith, recalling the death of Christ on the cross and his resurrection from the dead, though it is also a feast of the family in that the relation of Jesus with his disciples is regarded as a family affair. Anyhow, at home for Good Friday we merely had “hot cross buns”, that is, sweet buns marked with a sign of the cross. And on Easter Sunday we had chocolate eggs, often in the form of a large chocolate egg enclosing many small chocolate eggs. But we had no painted eggs or Easter bunnies, such as they have in other countries. After all, so many old Christian customs had been pushed out of the country by the Tudor Reformation, and even more by the Puritan triumph in the Civil War under Oliver Cromwell. And many of them had to be revived for us in the years of Catholic Emancipation during the nineteenth century. Anyhow, all that and much more is what the Church came to mean for me.
Holidays from School
To some extent I share Shakespeare’s prejudice against school, such as he puts into the mouth of Romeo, “Love goes towards love, as schoolboys from their books, but love from love, towards school with heavy looks,” and into the mouth of Jaques, who describes “the whining schoolboy” as “creeping like snail unwillingly to school.” But only to some extent. In many ways school was a precious experience for me, not least because it introduced me to the plays of Shakespeare, but holidays from school were even more precious, because then I was free. School was the place for the acquisition of learning, or what used to be called Art, but during our holidays away from school one could return to Nature – just as Shakespeare himself is praised by Milton as “Fancy’s child, warbling his native woodnotes wild.” Literally, “holidays” were “holy days”, bringing rest from secular or worldly pursuits, such as school – even though ours was a religious school under the care of Jesuits. Yet there is more real holiness within a Christian family than at school, however sanctified it might be by the teaching of Jesuit fathers.
All the same, that holiness – of which we were hardly aware at the time – consisted, for myself and Richard, in playing endless games of cricket in the back garden. Dada might sometimes join in, but he was mostly preoccupied with his business as a school agent, in visiting schools up and down the British Isles. But I don’t remember Tiny ever showing much interest in the game. With Richard I would represent Australia while he stood for England, and we would imitate the test matches between the two countries, with one side playing ten wickets in succession before yielding the bat to the other side. In this way Richard seemed to be unendingly at the wicket, and I would be bowling most of the time. Only fast bowling was out of the question, owing to the obvious danger to the kitchen windows. So I had to limit my prowess to slow spinners, whether leg or off breaks or googlies, in imitation of Grummitt or Fleetwood Smith. And so I continued till Richard mercifully declared his innings and let me take my turn at the wicket.
From time to time we would go as a family on walks over the Common, as we called the wide expanse of Wimbledon Common. Then Dada would drive us to a certain parking lot, and out we would scramble from the car, with our pet Sealyham Mickey leading the way. Off he would scamper, with ourselves in hot pursuit, leaving Dada and Mama to walk more sedately behind. It was such fun with the dog! He was still a puppy, and we had the hearts of puppies in our pursuit of him. Indeed, for a family it is so beneficial to have such a pet animal to play with. For us that animal was a succession of dogs, till we eventually replaced the last dog with a white rabbit, to whom we allowed the freedom of the garden – till we found him preferring the freedom of the next-door garden, after the family next-door had left. Only later, when all the family had grown up, did we look after a pet cat, and then it was rather the cat who adopted us, because of the food we had to offer him. Evidently he found it more appetizing than what we presumed he got from his owner.
Still, for us the real holidays came in the summer, when Dada had a fortnight’s holiday from his firm in London. Then he would arrange for us to spend those precious two weeks away not only from school but also from home, usually but not always (as we used to sing) “beside the seaside, beside the sea”. Then for two successive weeks we could live as a family all together, without a cloud in the sky – till Hitler began sending his bombers over the night skies into England. And then we always made our way Southwards, in the direction of that line of hills behind the Sussex coast called the South Downs, or more simply the Downs – echoing the road on which the Convent was situated. Rarely did we think of going North, which involved crossing the line of the Thames, as it seemed to us another world. Our interest was in the South – in the counties of Surrey and Sussex, and occasionally Kent and Hampshire. This was all the land of the Saxons, from the time of King Alfred, whereas it was the Angles who had settled to the North of the Thames. Though to the North there were other counties named Middlesex and Essex. After all, our very name of Milward, or “warden of the mill”, was such a typical Saxon name – though we couldn’t ascertain our genealogy so many ages before, “in the dark backward and abysm of time”.
Looking back over those holidays we spent on or below the Sussex Downs as a happy family, three in particular come to my mind. The first was at Bangalore Bungalow somewhere near Bognor. It was a lovely little single-storey house, with an extensive lawn in front, ideal (we naturally considered) for a cricket pitch. Only, we failed to notice the window just behind the pitch. So when I pitched a fast ball at Richard, he just nicked the ball, and it went right through the window! So that was the end of our cricket. Strange as it may seem, I have no memory of swimming in the nearby sea, for the simple reason that I was recovering from a motor accident back home – though it didn’t prevent me from playing cricket. Contrary to Mama’s instructions, I had been wheeling my fairy cycle across the main road not far from our house – thinking that, so long as I wasn’t riding it, I was keeping within the letter of the law – when wham! A car bumped into me and knocked me out. When I came to, there I was lying on the pavement, with a crowd all round me and a policeman at my side. “Where am I?” was the question that sprang to my lips. Anyhow, an ambulance brought me to a nearby hospital and I received the necessary first-aid, before returning home. My fairy cycle suffered more than I did. It was quite buckled up. The car, too, that had bumped into me had also suffered some damage, but the driver was so apologetic. All I suffered, however, were a few bruises on my elbow and my shin – enough to let me play cricket, but not for swimming in the sea. Anyhow, I was taught a precious lesson in obedience. As for the broken window, it also taught me a precious lesson in caution. (There are always precious lessons to be learned, if only we can see “figures in things”.)
The next summer holiday we spent at another bungalow on the Sussex Downs near the village of Rodmell, not far from the county town of Lewes. Much later I learned that the village had been made famous by Virginia Woolf, who had not only lived in the village but had also committed suicide, like Ophelia, in the nearby river Ouse. But we weren’t interested in her. Of more interest was the village smithy, where we could go and watch the village blacksmith at work over his “random grim forge” with undying fascination. Our bungalow was away from the smithy and the village, up a hill and set in its own grounds, with a long drive past a haystack. That haystack was a place for many a boyish adventure, and by the time we finished our holiday, there was little left of it – as if we had been searching it for a hidden needle. Once during our play we were called by Dada to the drive,