Writers Together - York Creative Writing Group

We were very sombre as we drove to Hudson-Steeple, it was many years since I had been there and my earliest happy memories belonged there.

My mother died when I was only a few months old and my twin brothers Peter and Paul were not yet four. It must have been terrible for my father to be left with three small children and as my Aunts and Uncles had homes and families of their own to care for, they persuaded my father to engage a housekeeper to look after us. I don’t remember the early ones but when I was four Pamela came to be our mother. She was very young, just twenty but she made life fun for us and our Dad was always happy and smiling. When I started school after my fifth birthday, Dad said we were all going to stay at a farm in the country for the whole six weeks of the holiday so Pamela could have a rest, as she hadn’t been well recently.

On the Saturday my brothers and I piled into the back seat of Dad’s old Woolsley car along with Floss our cocker spaniel, our clothes were in two suitcases and placed in the boot and Pamela sat in the passenger seat next to Dad. Once we got out of Leeds the roads were narrow and twisty and sometimes the trees joined their branches together so it was like going through a green tunnel. Dad slowed down when we came to fields with cows in them so that we might see. He told us we would see sheep and cows everyday on our holiday. We were very excited. When we found a quiet road Pamela suggested this would be a good time to have our picnic. I didn’t know what a picnic was but I didn’t say anything because Peter and Paul obviously knew and would tease me so I just kept quiet and waited to see what would happen.

Dad pulled the car into the side of the road and took a basket and a rug out of the boot. Pamela opened our door and told us to keep to the edge of the road and led us into a field. There were no cows or sheep anywhere. Dad laid the rug on the grass and put the basket down then he went back to the car to fetch the deck chair and helped Pamela to sit down. She took sandwiches and buns from the basket and we all had a packet of Smith’s crisps each, then a drink of fizzy lemonade to finish off our picnic. Now I knew what a picnic was, without having to ask, I felt very grown up.

When we were back in the car and the rug and basket had been put back into the boot, Dad drove us through a village with flags strung across the street blowing in the breeze. After a long time in the car Dad said we would be there soon, in half an hours time. Pamela saw we were all tired and sleepy so she got us singing all the nursery rhyme songs we knew. Dad said as we were going to stay on a farm why not sing about old Macdonald’s farm, this made us all laugh as Dad made the funny noises of the animals and then we were turning into the lane leading up to the farm.

Great Uncle Wilfred and Great Aunt Jessy were waiting at the door to greet us. They were very old, as old as our own grandma. We were led into a low-beamed kitchen with a huge table laid with a white cloth and nice blue patterned plates. When we were sat down, Aunt Jessy put a plate of boiled ham and chips in front of each of us and said to tuck in before the chips got cold. We had jelly and ice-cream and cakes to follow then Uncle Wilfred took Peter, Paul and me into the farmyard and showed us the calves and the piglets and some chickens and ducks on the pond, oh it was so exciting and wonderful.

The next morning we were woken up by the cock crowing on the roof of the barn, Peter and Paul jumped out of bed and raced down the stairs, I put my clothes on and followed them. Dad was already at the table and said Pamela was having a lye-in then while we were all eating our breakfast, Aunt Jessy gave Dad a tray with breakfast to take upstairs to Pamela. Uncle Wilfred suggested we children took Floss for a walk in the field next to the pond, there were no animals in that field. We got back just in time to say good-bye to Dad and Pamela. I cried, I thought they were staying too but Dad said he had work to go to and Pamela needed to rest.

Aunty Jessy was very clever. She showed me how she made clotted cream and I helped her when she made scones and buns. Paul and Peter had a wonderful time having rides on the tractor and feeding the calves and milking the cows. Aunty Jessy told me lots of stories about when she was a little girl and then one day she took me upstairs into the attic and opened a big cupboard. I gasped at what I saw. There was a big teddy bear, a black doll and laid in a cardboard box was a beautiful baby doll with a porcelain face. ‘Would you like to play with this,’ she asked me. I couldn’t speak, so I just nodded. Aunty Jessy pulled out a bag with doll clothes in and gave it to me to take down stairs then she carefully picked up the box with the doll inside and followed me. I played with Annabel, for that was the doll’s name, for the rest of our holiday. I loved her so dearly, and when Dad came to collect us Aunt Jessy said I could take her home with me.

Pamela didn’t come with Dad to take us back home and when we asked why he just said wait and see. The journey seemed very long and it was nearly dark when we turned into the avenue where we lived. Pamela didn’t come to the door and Dad said we were to be very quiet. We hung our coats up then went into the living room. There was Pamela sitting in the chair near the fire she put her finger to her lips, a sign we had to make no noise, then we heard a funny cry and saw the baby in Pamela’s arms. This is your little sister, she said.

Things were never quite the same after baby Susan came to live with us, we were always being told not to make a noise and turned outside to play. My brothers didn’t seem to mind, they had each other to play with and played boys games sometimes with their friends in the neighbour-hood.
I was a quiet child and very shy, I sometimes wished Susan could grow up to be my age then we could play together. I played with Annabel a lot and told her all my troubles but I still was lonely. School time was the best time then, I didn’t have to wheel the pram up and down until Susan had gone to sleep.

The years passed, Pamela wasn’t unkind to us but Susan was her daughter and I wasn’t. Each year the twins and I went to the farm at Hudson-Steeple for the summer holidays we always enjoyed ourselves and Auntie Jessy made a fuss of me. We loved to play in the fields. We called them summer fields as that was the only time we saw them. Over the years we had met and made friends with the village children and when I was twelve we visited our Great Uncle and Aunt in the autumn as well as the summer and we pulled the blackberries from the hedgerow, pounds and pounds of them. Auntie Jessy showed me how to make bramble jelly and also how to make a port wine using brambles and elderberries. Two years later everything changed, my brothers went away to university and my Great Aunt and Uncle sold the farm and moved into a small cottage in the nearby village. The following year my mother’s sister Auntie Joan invited me to stay with them at their holiday home in Spain, this was something very special. I was to travel with them to Spain but they would put me on the aeroplane at the end of three weeks and Dad would meet me at Manchester airport. Dad never shared a holiday with his older children. He had his holiday with Pamela and their children Susan and Stuart while we were at the farm.

I qualified as a teacher in domestic science. I moved away from home and had a very nice flat near to the college I taught in. Peter and Paul are both happily married and I am an Auntie. Peter has a son Matthew and Paul has a little girl named Elizabeth, after me.

Today had to happen one day. Great Uncle Wilfred died in January and now just seven months later we are visiting Hudson-Steeple to attend Great Aunt Jessy’s funeral. All the happy times we had shared with her, now were precious memories. As we neared the village we saw the village school had disappeared, in its place some shops had been built with apartments above. The stately house had become a hotel, and the fields that had been Uncle Wilfred’s farm were now covered with industrial buildings.

After the funeral and a reception in the George public house Peter, Paul and I wandered down by the river trying to find something of our past playground, our summer fields but found nothing. Everything had changed. Disappointed we returned to the car park and then we spotted the swings and slide and other things the children could play with on the other side of the hedge in a field. Peter said there must be a way in if children were meant to play there. We followed the path by the hedge for a few yards then it turned and to our joy we recognised the old oak tree that stood in what had been Uncle Wilfred’s field. There’s a gate over there, said Paul pointing to iron gates hung on stone pillars. When we stood in front of the gates we were able to read the inscription on the board above, “This field has been donated to the children of Hudson-Steeple, by Wilfred and Jessy Garbut, 1 Aug 1978, and is to be known as The Summer Field Children’s playground. Oh, how wonderful we cried. Now there will always be a summer field in the village.