Everything I Have Always Forgotten (5 page)

To the right was the kitchen door. This was always the warmest room in the house, thanks to an Aga stove and hot water boiler, both coke burning. Next, came the door to the telephone room with its single window, with a huge gold-brown velvet curtain, so long it trailed on the floor, and a windowsill upon which sat the telephone. Already, the telephone no longer had a crank – but then, it didn't have a dial either. You simply picked up the receiver and eventually the operator (could it really always have been the same woman?) would reply. You might say: “Good morning, may I speak to Williams Taxi?” and the reply might be: “Well now, Gwylim just took Mrs. Jones the bacon all the way to Bangor. Got a lump, she says. Hurting something terrible. Doctor sent her to the hospital indeed. Mind you, he should be back this evening. Kind man, Gwylim, never a hard word. Expensive, they say…” Did anyone ever just hang up on her and decide to walk or hitch-hike rather than bother to call a friend, or try to reach the one and only taxi? In winter, Mother would wind the velvet curtain around her, to keep warm. It looked like a cocoon, with a telephone cord emerging from its depths.

The telephone was not a familiar contraption to many people in Wales at the time. Several times Father called the farmhouse at the top of the hill, when he was away, to ask if they would turn on our water and leave it running, because a freeze was expected and the water line would freeze up. Once, the telephone rang for a long time and the operator did not pick up, until finally a frightened voice said: “It's only the mother of Grace” and hung up – ‘Grace' was the operator. Another time, he reached the operator and asked for the neighbouring farm, where a different, confused voice answered: “There's nobody here!”

Beyond the telephone room came the living/dining room with its scrubbed pine floor and scrubbed twelve-foot sycamore table. It had been made for my Parents' wedding in 1932, of unseasoned wood but designed to shrink symmetrically. Raw, unbleached linen-covered couches surrounded the fireplace and a stuffed gannet sat on its base on a side table. On the wall above the bird, hung a brilliantly gay, great Raoul Dufy Mediterranean seascape of a sailing regatta off Cannes, one of his best, I believe. On another wall there was a large gloomy, foreboding North Sea storm scene by the naïve fisherman-painter Crask. A gaily-coloured Matisse-like portrait of a Moroccan servant by Edward Wolfe hung over the fireplace and a moody portrait of Mother by Augustus John (finished and signed) hung to the left of the fireplace. Another Augustus John, unsigned and unfinished, of Father as a young man, hung at the far end of the long dining table.

When Mother's portrait was brought in to hang, I asked who “that horrid, cross lady is.” Little did I know then, the myth that runs amongst many Augustus John admirers: that, while he was often not satisfied with portraits of men and so left them unfinished and unsigned (I know of three of my own Father), those women whose portraits he had finished and signed he had also bedded. But then, he was a well-known ‘ladies' man' and often claimed conquests that may never have gone any further than his own head! At all events, none of us looked in the least like him… Indeed, I was later shown a dedication by the painter to Father, in pale pencil on the face of the painting. Surely he would not have had the gall to give him the portrait after cuckolding him? No doubt I am only too eager to ascribe a lively sex life to Mother, since she later told me that I was “a delightful surprise” after Father (at forty-two) lost all interest.

The comfortable, somewhat broken-down couches were a mine of treasures: under the cushions there was frequently some spare change which had escaped from people's pockets, but also, Mother sometimes hid the sewing or darning she was doing at the moment someone paid a visit. Pins and needles were normal fare and her long cutting shears could also be hidden under the cushions… making casual, blind exploration full of pitfalls – it was wiser to wait for some privacy, then raise the cushions and look. Just delving with unseeing hands could be a painful experience! Between the couches and the fireplace lay a very threadbare lion's skin with its stuffed head rearing up in a perpetual snarl.

Father told the story of a little girl (no doubt a grandmother by now) who was staying with us and came down early to breakfast. He discovered her, terrified by the snarling lion's head and standing on a chair, clutching her skirt around her knees like a Victorian Miss who has espied a mouse in the corner! Mother responded by telling how, as a child staying with a great-uncle, her governess would bring the children down for breakfast in the breakfast room, but she herself would always make a quick detour, just to check to see if the rhinoceros, whose head was thrust right through the wall into the dining room, had managed to come in any further during the night!

Every room in the house, even the telephone room and the entrance hall, had its own little fireplace grate, for burning coal. Most were never used. The electrical grid had not reached even the hamlet a mile away, on the other side of the hill, so electricity simply could not be obtained. Father had wired the house himself, with the aid of an electrician. It was a 12-volt system charged by a windmill that was tethered to one corner of the house, making that bedroom shake during heavy windstorms. The light was insufficient to read by. The light bulbs used were the size of ping pong balls and were unobtainable during post-war rationing. Visitors coming from London might ask what they could bring with them, some “Stilton cheese or coffee perhaps?” Instead Father would ask them to ride a double-decker bus and steal some bulbs from the upper deck when the conductor was not looking. We received quite a few such gifts from distinguished citizens turned kleptomaniacs, just for us.

I was sleeping in the windmill-corner bedroom – it had been my brother's, but by then he was almost never at home – when there was a surprise in the morning. I looked out of the window at the line of accessory buildings that housed the stable, tool room, an outside toilet and the coal room. The roof of the coal room was gone. In my sleep-befuddled state, I thought that a stork had come to nest on its slate roof, proved too heavy and it had collapsed! I hated that coal room. I was frequently sent out with a cylindrical coalscuttle to get fuel at night. It was always pitch dark and I imagined that, camouflaged by the noise I had to make, scooping up coal (for the open fires), or coke (smokeless, for the kitchen stove and boiler), anything or anyone could jump on me from behind, perhaps cleave me in half with a hatchet. That was always my greatest fear, far more than scaling cliffs or setting out for long hikes alone. As it turned out, no stork was involved: someone had put hot coal ashes in there, which had caught afire again, set off the coal and the roof beams had burned. The slates, which had fallen to the ground, were mostly intact and once the wooden frame had been replaced, were re-hung in place.

Another morning, Father awakened me, dressed as usual, barefoot, with his grey flannel trousers rolled up to the knee and a threadbare tweed jacket over an old cable-knit sweater full of holes. He smelled of pipe smoke, seaweed and fish. His eyes twinkled above his greying beard as he ceremoniously plunged his hand deep inside an inner pocket of his jacket and produced a large, torpedo-shaped sea-bass (or branzino). Not many of them came up our estuary and when we caught one, it was a most welcome alternative to plaice. The idea of putting his day's catch in his jacket pockets was no more eccentric than having a rocking horse in the entry hall. Besides, he would never wear that jacket to go up to London.

When Father did go up to London to speak or read on the BBC (he had an excellent, deep, sonorous reading voice), his travel expenses were, of course, paid. Wearing a dark formal suit and Fedora, he would take a taxi to the station. His beard would be neatly trimmed and while he certainly smelled of his pipe tobacco, he did not smell of fish. When the taxi driver knew it was for the BBC, he would come with his 1930 Rolls Royce, which he had bought second-hand for weddings – but the BBC was as grand as any local wedding. Later, he took to bringing a more modest vehicle to the house over our rocky, potholed track and transferred to the Rolls (for the last two miles) once they reached the asphalt public road. Everyone listened to the one or two wavelengths available on the radio and when Father was speaking, it was a great source of local pride: “Lu-u-u-vely voice he has,” they'd say afterwards, “very profound.” I'm not sure they ever discussed content, but the sound of his voice impressed them.

These dramatic occasions of his departures for London cClub – the United Universities Club), helped bolster his reputation in my mind as a Great Man, a genius much larger than life. A man to be revered, if not actually feared.

Once, he found himself sharing his railway compartment with our neighbour, the philosopher, Bertrand Russell. After a passionate discussion, Father invited Russell to join him in the dining car for luncheon. Russell (a very lively little spare man, already in his eighties) joined him readily, but only drank a glass of water, eating nothing. He explained that for some years he had been suffering from a nervous condition that made swallowing very difficult, if not impossible – he could only eat liquefied food in private. Their conversation continued as animatedly as ever all the way to London.

Another time, Father went to the dining car alone and was about to indulge in his favourite escapist literature: Agatha Christie. He opened the book, only to find the hero sitting alone in a railway dining car and opening a book… by Father! He felt a frisson of fear and
déja vu
, then tucked into his meal and the book.

We had one large bathroom (the W.C. next door) in which Father had installed an enormous bathtub on the theory that his five offspring could all be bathed together in one jolly stew. It was large enough to completely engulf him and his six foot one or two. He had not thought of the prudery that comes with adolescence (his studies of children stopped at that age), but nevertheless, there was a relaxed atmosphere amongst us and while my sisters washed, I might bathe or while my brother was shaving and singing in German (he studied modern languages), my sisters might be bathing. It was not a very practical arrangement, but everything works until it doesn't. There was also an enormous airing cupboard which housed the uninsulated copper hot water tank (heated by the small coke boiler in the kitchen). That was the only really dry place in the house, and sheets and towels were kept there – but the mattresses upon which we made our beds were always a little damp, so how long could a sheet remain dry?

That bath recalls an older sister supervising my evening bath. She is musical and sang like a lark, such tender, comforting lullabies as: “Hush-a-bye baby, Hush quite a lot, Bad babies get rabies and have to be shot,” or again: “Bye baby bunting, Daddy's gone a' hunting, Gone to get a rabbit skin to wrap my baby bunting in…” But that was nothing to the time I was staying in some grand house with a starched old nursemaid who told me that if I didn't behave, she'd send “Old Boney to get me”… a reference to Napoleon Bonaparte, that frightful foreign bogeyman. She also threatened to set the Nazis with their spring-loaded heels on me (she said the springs allowed them to jump from one side of the street to the other to capture naughty children and eat them alive). At least that was a little more up to date than threatening me with Napoleon!

I probably do not recall, but have been reminded since, that one day, when the long dining room table was filled with more or less august guests, I came in very pleased with my exploits. I had very curly blond, almost white, hair and I had discovered the delights of clambering to the top of the coal pile in the coal shed and then jumping down and rolling in the coal. I recounted excitedly: “Owain, climb, jump, r-o-l-l in the coal. Fun. Happy.” I was, of course black from head to foot and caused great hilarity at the lunch table. No doubt I was as mischievous as any four-year-old.

There is a family photograph (taken in 1948) of an afternoon tea party around the same table. I recognise the architects Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew in their forties. My youngest sister, sitting next to our Father and while everyone else turns cooperatively towards the camera, is in the process of stealing a piece of cake from our Father's plate next to her! My blond curls having been washed since the coal incident, I am watching her subterfuge from across the table, no doubt making a mental note for the next opportunity I might have for myself.

This house, this home, this chrysalis that gave birth to the ‘me'… it was sparing on creature comforts, such as heat and light. For years we were all accustomed to climbing into beds that were not just cold, but also damp. It was not a fuzzy place, swaddled in fitted carpets, curtains and chintzes. It was unpadded, though in no way barren. Quite unobstructed, it was decorated with the fanciful originality of my Parents. Whatever influence that chrysalis (or, for that matter, my own Parents) had upon my upbringing – this is what it was.

V

FIRESIDE TALES

A
round the house was a garden enclosed by a stone wall. Behind the house, on the east side, was a dark and gloomy clump of Ilex or Holm Oaks, evergreens with particularly dark green foliage. To the north, two terraces with stone walls faced the estuary – the lower one partially flooded by exceptionally high spring tides. Also on the lower one, was a well that we used whenever the mains water failed for some reason. Inside, it was lined with brick. For many years (until Father got around to having the blacksmith make some large, strap hinges), there was no cover, just a few rotted planks lay over the top like a trap for a wild animal.

We had a penny farthing – one of those ancient bicycles with a tiny back wheel and a five or six-foot wheel in front. Father had bought it at an auction, but it was left outside to slowly rust away. Before it did so, numerous of my sisters' suitors tried their best to ride the beast, no doubt in the hopes of capturing an admiring heart in the process. They all fell off very quickly, which makes one admire those cyclists of the nineteenth century who so nonchalantly peddled along in their tweed caps and britches. These regular accidents inspired a family myth: We told numerous guests that there had been a fourth daughter in the family, called Molly. She had been cycling (on the penny farthing) down the hill from the farm, when she lost control and fell into the well. When guests asked with alarm: “Was Molly badly hurt?” We would reply that she made such a noise down there that we pulled the cover over the well and laid a quartz boulder on it to stop her getting out. Clearly, the guests did not really listen to the details, for many of them continued to ask concerned questions about the sister and how her death affected us all!