The Day Gone By (14 page)

My mother did the best she could: but I reckon I grew up a lot that morning.

Still, in those days there were plenty of living animals about Newbury in which you could take pleasure. Donkeys, trit-trotting with little carts, were quite an accustomed sight; so much so that sometimes, before going down in the town, I would put a carrot in my pocket, in case we met one. The cows, at close quarters, smelt sweet and warm. But best of all were the horses - beer horses, coal horses; Whitehorn the baker's horse, dappled brown and white, a lighter, quicker fellow altogether, pulling his two-wheeled, box-shaped, enclosed delivery van which looked a bit like a hansom cab. There were fine carriages, too; Miss Myres and Miss Southby, both patients of my father, drove everywhere by coach; Miss Southby all in black, with an open-work, spotted veil and, of course, gloves; their coachman was tophatted, his whip upright in its stock beside him, tall as a spear. And it was by no means uncommon to see men riding on horseback with their parcels slung about them: they had been shopping. Gigs and traps, too, had certainly not gone out. I remember a pleasant maiden lady, Miss Spackman, giving me a lift one morning in her trap. I sat beside her fascinated as the horse took its time over defecating less than a yard before our eyes, Miss Spackman continuing to chat unconcernedly the while.

But the best chap to meet, as my father would have said, was the Water Gee-gee. The Water Gee-gee was very large, very white and, as I remember him, covered with creaking, brass-decorated harness. He wore blinkers, out of which he looked at you benevolently before you gave him a lump of sugar. When he stamped his hind hoof in the gutter it made a hollow, satisfying
snack
! His job was to pull the big tank-cart from which water ran onto the road out of perforations in a long, horizontal pipe at the back. If I give the impression that he did the job on his own and wasn't controlled by a man, it is because he gave that impression himself. I suppose he'd done the job so often that he could do it on his head without bidding. It was exciting to see the water jets spurting onto the road and streaming down the camber, and then to watch the gutter turn into a running rill, empty cigarette packets and matchboxes floating along to the gullies and dropping in. We didn't always meet him - no doubt he had his appointed districts and areas — but when we did, I was allowed to stand and watch him for quite a while. My mother seldom hurried, and possessed the kindness and imagination to understand that a leisurely encounter with the Water Gee-gee could make your day. I'm sure she herself enjoyed it, too. It was always pleasing to be able to say at lunch ‘Oh, and we saw the Water Gee-gee'; as who should say ‘We saw the Mayor.' I was really thinking not so much of communicating my feelings, but rather of what I myself had felt.

The Mayor, in fact, was, as the Americans say, something else. Alderman Elsie Kimber was a legendary figure in Newbury. She came of the respectable family of Kimber the grocer's and was middle-aged and unmarried. She had rimless glasses, wore a heavily-skirted, brown belted garment, sandals and no hat, and she rode a motor-bike. She was emancipated, bizarre, no fool and excellent company, even to a small boy. To me it seemed entirely natural that the Mayor should look somewhat unusual, as did, for instance, Beefeaters. I vaguely supposed that that was what mayors looked like.

To illustrate my mother's gift of identifying with children, I must instance another time when we were down in the town together: I suppose I may have been five or six. We were walking up Batholomew Street from the southern end, by the railway bridge (and Kimber's). In those days Newbury still had the sort of Thomas Hardyesque atmosphere which I have been trying to evoke, and there were still many dwelling-houses actually in the town, from working-people's trim, small houses, fronting the street, to Dr Hickman's beautiful house and garden (of which more anon) and the Dower House, long since become business premises. People
lived
in the middle of Newbury because they preferred to. (It was quiet then, see.) We were walking past a row of neat little dwellings, near Vincent's the ironmongers, when suddenly, for some reason, I was greatly taken with the whitened step, the polished brass handle and gently gleaming panels which comprised a front door. Whoever owned it was obviously house-proud, but I didn't consciously think of that: I just felt I liked it.

‘Look, Mummy,' I said. ‘What a wonderfully good door for knocking on!'

‘Why, so it is, dear,' answered my mother. ‘A
very
good door for knocking on.'

I knocked on it with my knuckles. My mother knocked on it with her knuckles. We became absorbed.

‘A
very
good door for knocking on!'

‘Yes, yes!'

All of a sudden the door opened, and I had a glimpse of a lady in carpet slippers and an apron. But only a glimpse. My mother clutched my hand and together we sped away up the street - simply hared, as she herself would have said. Five minutes later we had forgotten all about it, and were watching a horse repeatedly tossing his head to get the last out of the bottom of his nosebag, while at each toss the chaff flew round his ears and the flies buzzed up in a cloud.

We were not, of course (ah! those class-conscious days), on visiting terms with tradespeople; you didn't ask tradespeople to tennis parties or anything like that. Nevertheless my father – and my mother – had many friends among tradespeople in the town, most of whom were always ready to oblige Dr Adams. One of these was Mr Tufnell (old Tuffy) and his protegee, Miss Rowle (Rowley, as everyone called her). ‘Do you mean Miss Rowle?' snapped one of the lady assistants one day, when I asked for her. She (rightly) thought it disrespectful for a little boy to use the nickname. ‘No, I don't: I mean Rowley,' I replied. And I got away with it.

Mr Tufnell was fond of telling how he had first come to Newbury as a poor boy with a shilling in his pocket. (That would have been in the eighteen-eighties, I suppose.) He was now the proprietor of a thriving newsagent's and toyshop, a tobacconist's and also of one of the town's two cinemas. I believe he was unmarried. So it was Rowley — dear, kind, unmarried, middle-aged, bubblingly cheerful Rowley — who ran the newsagent's, supplied us with newspapers and helped my father and my mother in all sorts of little ways. For example, on the strength of a telephone call she would pick up a prescription which had been made up at the chemist's, and it would be delivered with the newspaper next morning. Or she would take charge of a basket of shopping (Tufnell's was near both the club and the ‘bus terminus) while my mother walked the length of Northbrook Street to buy something else. When I wanted to buy cigarettes (half a crown for fifty) for my father's birthday, Rowley would buy them for me, as I was, of course, under age.

The last favour which Rowley ever did for me was in 1946, at the end of the war. I had learned of the death of my dearest friend in Tunisia, and had there and then sat down in the College Bursar's office in Oxford and copied out his commanding officer's account of his death (no duplicating machines then) in my own hand. Returning to Newbury I gave it, weeping, to Rowley and she typed it for me.

Mr Mann was the floor manager at Toomer's, the ironmonger we favoured. He was middle-aged, tall and shiningly bald, in a long brown shop-coat buttoning down the front. He seemed just right for the arrays of smooth, flashing saucepans, spades and pails over which he presided. I liked the shop because it was spacious, light and full of hard, clean things which could be touched and even played with, without anybody minding. (They couldn't soil or break.) Also, it stocked exciting goods like clock golf sets and mousetraps (both box and break-back).

Mr Mann was another friend who was ready to do anything for my father, and I think with good reason. At one time he was not well and that, of course, is as much as I know about his illness, except that we can presume from the story that it was something internal, like rupture or hernia. He didn't seem to be getting any better and accordingly he wasn't confident in the treatment he was receiving or the doctor who was prescribing it. Being afraid, he spoke in confidence to my father and asked his advice. This was a ticklish situation, since he was someone else's patient and, if there really was no more that could be done, didn't want all the invidious trouble of changing doctors. My father connived at the secrecy. One evening, after the shop was shut, he privily joined Mr Mann, who pulled down all the blinds of the display windows and stripped off. The big display window had powerful electric lights and here, among the trowels, frying-pans and mowing-machines, my father gave Mr Mann a full examination. All I know is that his diagnosis was a different one from the other doctor's, and that whatever ensued made Mr Mann better. One day, several years afterwards, I remarked to my sister that Mr Mann seemed devoted to my father. ‘Oh, yes,' she replied, ‘I rather think Father saved his life -or something like that.'

Mrs Mann was expert in making wine, and we used to come in for this in a considerable way. Much later, during the war, whenever I managed to get home on leave in summer, I used to fill my father's silver hip-flask with Mrs Mann's dandelion or cowslip and take it trout-fishing with me. It was extremely potent. You had to watch it, and I seldom, if ever, emptied the flask.

The most spacious shop premises in Newbury at that time were Camp Hopson's, who covered everything from haberdashery through men's and women's tailoring to carpets, upholstery and removals. (They still do.) As a little boy I was always impressed by the air of quiet, controlled activity and order, carried on by what seemed a great many black-clad, committed people intent on the tasks of the business; by the division of the place into different departments and the differences in atmosphere between each. The rooms seemed huge, extending back deeply from the street front almost like corridors, and the old-fashioned wooden counters very broad and solid.

In several of the departments there were ‘overhead railways' which carried cash and bills from the counters to the central cashier's office at the back. When a purchase was made, the bill and cash were put by the shop assistant into a screw-top container, about as big as two fists, made to run along an overhead wire. This was then ‘fired': a spring was released, the head of which struck the container and impelled it hard along the wire. It fairly flew off on its course, with a characteristic swishing noise which I can hear now, and you could watch its flight to the cashier's - a good, long way, too. Then, after a brief interval, it would return with the receipted bill and the change, arriving back with a loud ‘ping' and a sudden stop. Sometimes there might be as many as four of these containers in flight at once, their frantic speed dominating the otherwise quiet department. I was always sorry to leave. I could have watched them for half an hour on end.

At times one would meet with the imposing figure of old Mr Camp, now well on in years, stout and impressive, an Elgarian figure with a dark suit, white hair and moustache and a rubicund face. He walked slowly, in a majestic manner, seldom speaking much. I realize now that he must have been born some time during the eighteen-fifties.

After the close-set chessboard of the haberdashery, the carpet department appeared vast - by far the biggest room I had ever been in. It was all open and unencumbered, with a large, low central platform on which carpets were laid out for display. It seemed as big as a field, and was filled with the true smell of carpets - the strawy smell of the new backing - as with the scent of grass. The carpet department was, I could sense, unique: there were no overhead wires and no money ever seemed to change hands. The shopmen were different, too. A few were ‘proper' shopmen: others wore caps and green baize aprons. (They, too, of course, were in the correct uniform for their job.)

Yet another acquaintance of my father was Mr Gibson, a jeweller and watchmaker in the arcade. Mr Gibson was urbane and polite, a pleasant, courteous man; imposing, too, for he was on the large side and always wore a dark suit, with a waistcoat and a thin gold watch-chain across it. It was he who once said to me, quietly and positively, ‘Of course, Dr Adams has got more brains in his little finger than all the other doctors at the hospital put together; only he can't get them over.' It was true: my father's reticence and practice of saying what he had to say and letting people take it or leave it confined those who liked and trusted him to such as had the sensitivity to perceive what lay within. He was often brusque, but he was usually right as well.

With certain tradespeople in the town his friendship was warmer, involving an element of the comical which drew him out of his customary gravity; and of these I remember particularly the Merry Mosdell and the True Messiah.

My father was always extremely careful about money. No doubt he had to be. For instance, he himself never used toothpaste, which he considered a waste of money. Using nothing but water and a toothbrush, he succeeded in keeping his teeth into old age. Although he advised me against toothpaste (‘Only making some nasty old millionaire richer, my boy') he didn't actually prohibit any of us from using it. I've always preferred to use it myself, but I never asked him for money to buy it.

Another expense which annoyed him was that of having his hair cut. To have it done at home was not an option, since that would have been low class and bad form. The best hairdressers in Newbury charged about one shilling and threepence, as far as I recall - too much for my father, anyway. What he wanted was a working-class hairdresser who would nevertheless understand who he was and treat him accordingly. After a good deal of reconnaissance, he discovered Mr Mosdell.

Mr Mosdell cut hair at sixpence a time. He cut it most acceptably. He was a quiet man with a low, pleasant voice - I suppose he may have been about fifty at the time - and I think he was probably deferential to everybody as part of the job. His shop, complete with striped pole outside, was conveniently situated at the junction of Bartholomew Street and Market Street. In the window was a canary in a cage, and most months of the year the gas fire was on. The shop had a characteristic, warm smell; of shaving soap, bay rum and some kind of emollient jelly used for cuts or sore necks and chins. It was a cosy place, and I never minded waiting there.