westward, look, the land is bright.
A. H. Clough, Say Not the Struggle
Naught Availeth
In 1925, when I was five and a half, we embarked on what, so far as I was concerned, was the most ambitious holiday I had ever had. In summer my father took a cottage at Branscombe, at that time a very rural and comparatively unvisited village in South Devon, between Seaton and Sidmouth. It promised to be a particularly exciting time as my father had decided that we should travel there from Barnes by motor. This meant that most of our luggage had to be sent in advance by train from Waterloo to Honiton, a market town on the main line to Exeter; at Honiton it was picked up by a carrier and transported the ten miles or so to Branscombe by horse and cart. Others taking part in this holiday, although they did not travel with us, being already foregathered there, were my Auntie May (the aunt who had accompanied my mother and me on the memorable visit to Godshill)and her husband, Uncle Reg. Before the war Uncle Reg had worked as a journalist in Dover on the local paper and in this capacity had been present in 1909 when Blériot landed on the cliffs, having flown the Channel. During the war he had been in the navy in some department connected with propaganda. Later he became editor of the Gaumont British Film News. He was very urbane and elegant. He was later on good terms with the Prince of Wales for whom he used to arrange film shows at Fort Belvedere, and for the Royal Family at Balmoral. For these services he was presented with cufflinks and cigarette cases from Plantin, the court jeweller, as well as other mementoes. He preferred to be called Reginald rather than Reg, but no one ever did so. They put up in the village pub where we, too, were to take our meals.
The third party was made up of three fashion buyers for London stores, Beryl, Mercia and Mimi Bamford, all of whom were friends of my mother, particularly Mimi, and their mother. All three were unimaginably elegant, often almost identically dressed in long, clinging jerseys and strings of amber beads, and they were surrounded by what seemed to be hordes of extremely grumpy pekinese who did not take kindly to the country. Their mother, who did not take kindly to the country either, was even more formidable. She owned a Boston Bulldog called Bogey, which had had its ears clipped, a practice by then declared illegal. Like her daughters she was immensely tall, and must at one time have been as personable as her daughters, but even I could recognize that she was incredibly tough, if not common.
‘She didn’t ought to ’ave ’ad ’im,’ was the comment she made about me, by now a boisterous, active little boy, to my Auntie May while we were at Branscombe, ‘she’ being my mother; an anecdote that my aunt eventually told me, which she did with an excellent imitation of the old lady’s gravelly voice, having put off doing so until only a few years before her own death in 1974 in order, as she put it, to spare my feelings.
Neither Beryl nor Mercia nor their mother ever went to the beach, or even set eyes on the sea, the whole time they were at Branscombe. For Beryl and Mercia the seaside was Deauville. What Branscombe was to them is difficult to imagine, or they to the inhabitants. Only Mimi relished the simple life.
The morning of our departure from Three Ther Mansions was a fine one. We were seen off by the head porter of the flats – gratuity – and by Ellen, the cook/housekeeper, who had taken Mrs George’s place in a resident capacity. At that time Ellen was probably in her late forties. She had smooth black hair parted down the middle with some white strands in it, a pale face and a rather forbidding, if not sinister, appearance – perhaps secretive is more appropriate; in retrospect I think what she most resembled was a female poisoner – and she was stiff, and starchy, or at least her aprons were starchy. In spite of her apparent grimness or strangeness or secretiveness Ellen was always very kind to me, especially when my parents were away, and I think that when they returned she resented their presence.
I found Ellen disturbing in a way which I could not have explained to her or to anyone else, not even to myself. Sometimes I used to ask her to take me in her lap and cuddle me. If she did, and sometimes I would have to ask her several times before she agreed, she would fondle me in a detached, offhand way that made me all the more determined to make her love me, although I did not really love her; but I was never successful.
Whether it was the Napier with the gleaming brass-framed windscreen, or the much more modest Citroën which succeeded it at about this time, whatever we were travelling in was a pretty close fit for the five of us, even with the picnic baskets and our overnight suitcases strapped on the carrier at the back. (I can’t remember which it was and anyone else who would know, or care, is dead.)
There was Mr Lewington, the chauffeur from around the corner in Fanny Road, who was driving us down to Devonshire and then bringing the car back to London – all attempts by my father and mother to learn to drive themselves had been attended by what might quite easily have been fatal results (my father had demolished the façade of a garage; my mother had left the road on Barnes Common and travelled some distance overland before coming to a halt). There was my father who sat next to him, from which position he was better able to keep an eye on the behaviour of other road users, pedestrian or otherwise, and if necessary stand up and rebuke them for some actual or imagined infringement of the rules of the road; and in the back, besides myself, there was my mother and Kathleen, usually known as Kathy, a sweet girl of fifteen or so with long auburn hair down to her waist who had replaced Lily and now ‘helped out’ with such chores as taking me to school. Kathy wore ordinary clothes. My mother had given up any high-falutin’ ideas about uniforms when Lily left and anyway I was now much too old to have a real nurse. Kathy was as excited about the trip as I was, never having been out of London before. There we sat with a travelling rug over our knees made from what looked like a leopard skin but was really a very costly length of woollen material from Paris, bought by my father with the intention of making from it a model coat, but pinched by my mother who had it made into a rug. In front of us was a second windscreen, a sheet of metal-framed glass, that would be as lethal if shattered in an accident as the front one would be, that could be folded down to form a picnic table when the machine was at rest. There was no such thing as safety glass in common use. In winter it was jolly cold in our open motors, even with the ‘lid’ up, and then everyone except the driver and me, because my legs were too short, was provided with what were known as Glastonbury Muffs, huge boots lined with sheepskin, each holding two feet. If it was really cold these boots had a sort of pocket in them which could be used as a receptacle for a hot water bottle; but I do not believe we ever went motoring with hot water bottles.
Branscombe was just over a hundred and fifty miles from Barnes by the direct route. Usually, when travelling with my father, we did not follow the direct route, he being as curious about what lay on either side of the direct route to anywhere as I myself was to be, years later. At Staines, we got down to admire the river and talk to a waterman of my father’s acquaintance at one of the boathouses. (He knew every waterman of any consequence between Putney and Henley.) At a place called Virginia Water we visited some exciting ruins brought all the way from Leptis Magna in Tripoli, and an even more exciting waterfall full of enormous rocks.
Then we drove on between miles of rhododendrons and across commons (over which, years later, in 1940, I would crawl on all fours armed to the teeth with ‘token’ wooden weapons because all the real ones had been taken away to give to the ‘real’ army after Dunkirk), my father with his quarter-inch to the mile Ordnance Survey ‘Touring’ Map at the ready to deal with any navigational problems and, as a member of the Royal Automobile Club and the Automobile Association, with both badges on the front of his motor car (the RAC’s was grander), returning the salutes of the patrolmen of both organizations (according to whose area we were passing through), men with wind-battered faces, wearing breeches and leather gaiters, who were either mounted on motor-cycle combinations or, in some more rural parts, on pedal cycles. If they failed to salute, members were advised to stop them and ask the reason why.
Among the interesting things we saw on this early June morning was a nasty accident, with splintered windscreens and lots of blood, which, although Lewington slowed down so that we could have a better view, I was not allowed to see properly, my head being turned the other way by Kathy, much to my disappointment. We also saw traction engines and enormous machines called Foden lorries, fuelled with coal and belching steam and smoke and red hot cinders; and a ‘police trap’, set up by a couple of constables