Good Old World

By V. P. Hall

In this memoir of growing up the author gives his own version of the life, customs, activities and personalities of the folk around him. The story opens with a house removal by horse-drawn sleigh from a farm to a village pub.

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'Harry Blackberry' is a nickname given to him by one of the villagers and the circumstances are explained early in the story. The entertainment in the pub in wartime and the cast of customers, their songs and pastimes, the darts team and the leek show, the village school and the scholarship exam, Latin lessons and the Sunday School Christmas party, are situations that Harry brings to life.

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We meet Wagstaff, the wielder of the 'stick' who had exploding shoes, according to Harry. We also meet the elderly headmaster who did the football pools and came alive to organise a search of the village by the whole school.

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In a hospital with a perforated appendix and peritonitis, Harry comes round to find a piece of rubber tubing sticking out of his lower abdomen with a safety pin to keep the tube from disappearing into the wound.

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At 12-years-old he and his cousin of 13 decide to run away to sea but the plan is brilliantly thwarted by the port agent.

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Harry learns algebra from gentle Mr C, ballroom dancing from the gym mistress, and how to do corrections of his English composition without getting his exercise book thrown out of the window by a fierce English teacher.

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In his first job Harry finds that his bosses arrive at the office every morning after the official starting time at ten minute intervals according to seniority with the top man arriving last, of course.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Legend Press
• Release date: Oct 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781785071829

Book preview

Kent.

Chapter 1: Three Horse Shoes

Large flakes of snow drift down onto the white carpet already covering the village. All is quiet under the snow except for the clink of the chain, the swish of the iron runners, and the clicks of encouragement from Dick Croft to the old horse as Captain moves forward through the snow. I watch from the front window in quiet amazement at the sight: the old horse is harnessed to a huge sledge! The harness is linked with chains to a platform of stout planks nailed across two long wooden runners. The runners are plated with narrow strips of iron and curve upward at the front. I recall a big, dusty, cobwebbed wooden contraption propped against the wall in one of the barns. It had no meaning for me until now: the horse sleigh, the biggest sledge I have ever seen!

Captain behaves as if he does this every day even though he doesn’t. He is usually harnessed to a cart with two large wheels and a load of manure. The long hair above his broad feet flicks the soft snow in the air as he raises each hoof. On the sledge behind him is a huge, dark-varnished sideboard which had taken four men to lift there. There is also the iron frame of a double bed with its foot and head rails dismantled and laid on top, pans of all sizes, a kettle, hot water bottles, a box of knives and forks, a coat stand from the front room, and several biscuit-tins full of smaller things from the kitchen. Together with some large cardboard boxes, they stand neglected over the surface of the sled. At Captain’s head, leading him by the bridle is Dick Croft. The sled glides smoothly over even ground, overlaid by the snow fallen overnight to a level just below Dick’s knees. Indoors I press my face against the cold glass of the window and one foot comes out of its wellington. The giant sledge and its load disappear from view on the way to the Three Horse Shoes. There is that weird stillness that heavy snow brings with it.

I cannot get the wellington back on but shuffle to the open front door. I want to keep an eye on this marvel now out of sight from the window, this horse and giant sleigh. There is a slight slope which speeds the load on the short journey from farm to pub. The laden sledge glides easily behind Captain while Dick Croft, holding the bridle and walking by the horse’s head, keeps him nimbly on pace. The slack chains reach up to his collar, rattle cheerfully and then tauten. I am spotted by my grandmother and re-wellingtoned. And Aunt Olive brings coat and gloves. An outrageous hat with flaps over my ears is buttoned under my chin. I stick to the open doorway peering through the legs of adults standing around waiting to load up the giant sleigh again and again.

It’s bloody car’d, a man says.

Aye, it’s brass bloody monkey time, Willem Johnson says.

Shh! The lad’s behind thi’, says the first man.

He means me.

The return journey with the empty sledge is harder work for the horse. He needs to pull all the way up the slope and the chains remain taut all the way. Dick Croft mixes sounds like "C’mon yer bugga’ with his tongue-clicks to urge Captain onward. I watch them approach up the slight slope of the village street. Opposite the front door of the farm, Dick turns Captain in a broad arc to stop beside the furniture and bags and boxes stacked where the snow has been cleared. The sled is loaded once more. There are some tall items of furniture. A wardrobe wobbles as Captain takes the strain, but Uncle Bill steps up on to the sledge to hold the item steady on the journey. Why didn’t I think of jumping on?

The load glides off on its last delivery from where we live, almost opposite the churchyard to the pub near the corner of Coulton Terrace, where the road turns a corner and goes to Spenford. The load is followed by my grandmother carrying a broom, a brush and a mop, with a biscuit-tin under her arm. Aunt Olive carries shopping bags filled with tea, sugar, milk, jugs, cutlery and cups. I am in line between the two women following one of the tracks through the snow made by the sledge and carry one fireside brush. I had argued for more of a challenge and was not given one, so I blacken the snow by the track with the sooty brush.

We are moving house, leaving Shellam House Farm to live in the Three Horse Shoes; I am four years old. And, by the way, nobody ever referred to our pub as ‘Three Horseshoes’. It was always said with a stress on each word, like one, two, three: Three Horse Shoes. The three words were painted on the front of the pub.

I arrive there as the last one of the three figures that set out from the farm following the sledge as Aunt Olive had stepped past me on the way. A rattle of chains and Captain, Dick Croft and an empty sledge are just leaving as I arrive outside the pub, my new home. Dick halts Captain and the horse lowers his head. Captain is trying to find my open palm with his rough tongue hoping for a trace of what I might have eaten recently, like boiled sweets. Too bad I’m wearing gloves. I stroke his nose, feeling the breath from his nostrils warm my hands through the fibres of the woollen gloves.

I don’t feel that I am saying goodbye to either of them. I’m sure Dick said, I’ll be back to see thi’ and I’ll hev a double rum. A double click of the tongue from Dick, and a Gid up, yer bugga and off they glide. Dick and the horse will stay with the farm, and down at the pub I’ll no longer see them every day. I have left Shellam House Farm forever.

Giddyup Captain, yer bugga, I shout after them. Dick looks back and grins. There is no one else around. The adults have all disappeared inside the pub. A long, dark corridor with a smooth cement floor stretches before me. There is a rectangle of daylight ahead through the open door at the far end of the building and beyond that I see the beginnings of a backyard. The walls of the lower half of the corridor are panelled with a blurred, wavy design in a murky yellowish varnish. Halfway along on my left is a closed door with two mottled glass panes in the upper half. A light gleams like old gold through the glass and a dulled gold paint spells the word BAR across the middle of the door. After a slight bend in the passageway I suddenly feel frightened. The panelled walls drift away from me as the corridor widens. I can still see a narrow strip of the alien backyard ahead, where there is a black-painted rainwater pipe descending a brick wall and a cleared cement pathway through the snow disappearing from view as the yard slopes upwards away from the house. I feel the cool air from the open back door and notice the door is kept in place by a hook to the wall. In the corridor to the left of the backdoor I see a glass-panelled door with two words painted on it. Next day I read them as SMOKE ROOM because I’ve asked what they say and been told. I don’t think to ask what happens in a smoke room. Venturing into a new building is scary enough.

Grandmother and me.

Olive and Billy.

‘Bait’ time in the hay field.

Further to my left, set into an alcove, almost hidden in its dark corner is yet another door, unglazed and solemn. Its painted name begins with K. Where does this door lead to? The place is a warren. Is there a home somewhere? Or a room that looks like even part of a home? I try to turn the smoothly rounded wooden door knob but I don’t have enough grip. My fingers slip and I start to cry. I can hear voices inside and the door opens. My grandmother and Aunt Olive appear, the elder behind the other, looking at me. Aunt Olive gives me a hug and my grandmother tells Aunt Olive she shouldn’t have left me behind.

The licensed premises of the Three Horse Shoes and the smell of beer, the taste of cigarette smoke, and the hubbub of voices were to become as familiar as the farmyard had been. The squeaks of the young pigs at the trough and the smell of potatoes steaming in the outside oven had vanished.

The rooms licensed for public consumption of alcohol were the bar, the kitchen/living room, and the smoke room. The silliness of the name of the last-mentioned room never occurred to us at the time. It wasn’t uniquely for smoking in. You could drink beer in it too, and you could smoke in the low-ceilinged bar. Everyone did except Aunt Olive, my grandmother and me. A better name would have been Accompanied Ladies’ Room because it was where Aunt Olive sent women who came to the pub. She had decided early on that women should not be allowed in the bar. The occasional chance-visitor with his wife or 'other woman' would be directed to the smoke room where they would be waited on. In the years to come I would learn to carry a small enamelled tray with a pint glass filled to the brim plus a small glass and bottle of Babycham from the bar through the kitchen, then open the connecting door with one hand and spill myself into the smoke room.

Upstairs at the pub were two bedrooms, a wide one and a narrow one. This was no medieval inn with an arch and stables; it was a modified terrace house with a considerable backyard containing a stable used as an outhouse. There was also a urinal open to the weather from above —simply a walled-off space parallel to the yard wall, with a drain in the cement floor. There were two outside toilets, one for the tenants, us, and one for ladies or, indeed, male customers in the event of a specific need. The key could be quietly requested in the bar. It wasn’t requested much. Already, though, I was afraid of the toilet. I had still to find out the frightening feeling of being in there when footsteps would come across the yard. I’d hear the noise of the door of the adjacent toilet opening and closing. The sounds of divestment would follow. I’d now be a captive listener, not daring to breathe. The next sounds would be of water falling on to water and then ………. By this time it was definitely too late to clear my throat or make any kind of sound to give away my position. I was to ‘suffer’ from constipation quite a lot as a child.

The sloping pub yard fifty paces long and twenty wide had a coalhouse at the top, and a pair of solid wooden gates taller than a man. At the bottom of the slope by the house and under a window there was a large flat wooden trap door, about 4 feet square.

What’s that for? I asked.

It’s for getting in to the cellar, lad, replied Uncle Billy.

What’s the cellar for?

It’s for beer, barrels of beer.

Do you like beer?

I do, lad, I do, but it’s not all for me.

Who’s it for, then?"

Customers. Uncle Billy is getting a bit short.

Will customers come in and buy the beer?

I bloody hope so. Uncle Billy went off into the house.

The next day I was having my tea at the table in the L-shaped room we lived in. Around me, partly emptied boxes were parked around the floor. There was an area next to the table covered by a thick mat on which two dining-chairs were placed side by side. It was already the day after we moved in and the adults were sorting and storing our possessions. Uncle Bill came briskly in to the kitchen from the bar. He looked at me and said, Watch this, lad.

He moved the two chairs into the centre of the room, pulled aside the mat, bent down to the floor and seemed to pull up the linoleum. A square piece of floor came up in his hand and he gently let it rest against the wall. Below, under the floor, stone steps were revealed, painted white near their edges. They curved downward out of sight in a spiral. Uncle Bill disappeared down the steps. His face reappears at floor level as he steps back up through the hole. This is the cellar, lad, then he disappears again. Here I am, sitting alongside the entrance to an underground cavern: gold, jewels, silks, sandwiches, sugar and spice and all things nice might be down there. I got off my chair and made to follow Uncle Bill. I was grabbed by Aunt Olive as I was about to make the venture and step off into space and the magic land that I was sure lay below.

I wouldn’t be the last to be startled and amused by Uncle Bill opening up the floor and disappearing through the hole. For example, Great-Aunt Lydia came to visit one day. Sitting talking with my grandmother, Aunt Lydia’s eyes were big anyway. They almost left their sockets when she watched Billy Elliott walk briskly in from behind the bar, move two chairs and then disappear through a hole in the floor. She was one among many visitors who were amazed by this display. After opening the trap-door Billy would usually align the two chairs alongside the space left open by the cellar lid. They acted as a barrier to anyone passing by and stepping into the space accidentally. Mind the cellar! was a cry I came to hear often as Uncle Billy dashed in from the bar to change to a new barrel of beer. He opened the hole in the floor to rush down the steps as if the Germans had landed.

Chapter 2: The village school

They were bluish-grey, the slates we wrote on, with a frame of smooth wood. They were about the size of an iPad. We wrote on them with chalk. I suppose nothing else would have worked very well in those days. We must have got rather dusty. A wonderful Miss Robinson was our teacher in the Infants Class in that pre-war autumn of 1938. Two years passed in a warm glow, whether of play or battle or both, I do not know. I got somewhat used to other kids but I remember no detail from this time.

Then there were Standards One and Two, taken by Miss Taylor. For punishment she had a stick, varnished in light brown, with dark-brown knobbles. She wasn’t very good at wielding the stick, but it still stung the palms of your hands, which then felt hot. You then looked pained, tried not to cry, and swung your hands about for effect, trying to cool them down by inviting air to rush over them in large quantities. Then you put your hands under your armpits, and bent forward from the waist as if doing obeisance like a Japanese businessman whose firm was not doing very well. The armpit contact gives comfort to the hands, and the bending to the spirit, and all this on the way back to your seat unless you were Kenny Wainwright. In that case, you held out your hand, trembled just a bit. Swipe! You then offered your other hand, didn’t tremble at all. Swipe! You then offered the first one back again. Miss Taylor refused to swipe you again by pointing the cane to your desk.

You walked there and sat down without any arm swinging or armpit routine showing what a tough lad you were. I didn’t get enough practice at being caned to be like Kenny. By working at it he ended up getting a minimum of two on each hand every time from Miss Taylor. I only got the cane once from Miss Taylor. Once on each hand, that is. I misbehaved deliberately in order to try the experience. Afterwards my hands didn’t hurt much but something was bruised. I didn’t know then which part of me it was, but I did later in the day: it was my dignity. That was where the hurt lay. I didn’t deliberately seek to be punished again.

The school was at ‘the bottom of the village’, as the area nearest to Chilcliffe was known. The Three Horse Shoes was at the top of the village, the part nearest to Spenford. From the village green overlooked by the Three Horse Shoes, the road gradually sloped away south towards Chilcliffe. To go downhill to school and uphill back home was the right arrangement. You had the motivation of going home to do the harder work of walking uphill. It was very windy one afternoon as I was walking the quarter mile or more downhill to school after being home for lunch. I was having trouble getting my breath —every time I opened my mouth to breathe, the wind got in and blocked my throat! That’s what it felt like anyway. I got almost half way to school when the force of the wind on the back of my legs made me start to run to keep up with its speed. I was as close as you come to levitation in an upright position and very frightened. I held on to some iron railings by Mr Crouch’s shop.

I was longing to climb the four stone steps and seek refuge in the shop. I could press down on the sneck, open the door, and the bell overlapping the top of the door would jangle the message of my alarm into the dark depths beyond. I daren’t do it, dare I? I didn’t have any money. I couldn’t go into a shop without money.

Just then one of the ‘big girls’ came along on her way to school and took charge of me. She lived in Bede Place. Her name was Bessie Britton. You can tell that she would be a caring person just from her name. I must have been about 7 years old then— any older and there wouldn’t have been any iron railings to hold on to as they were removed shortly afterwards from everywhere, private houses as well as public gardens, for military use. Someone had said that the railings were’ melted down’ to make weapons. I was very confused about this. For example, what happened to the paint? And how many railings would make a tank? One street or a whole town’s worth? The latter, I thought.

On the way to school, feeling safe holding on to Bessie’s hand, I forgot the wind and the problem with the railings. I was thinking I was in Mr Crouch’s little shop. Standing on the stone floor in the dusty gloom with the jingling of the bell fading, I waited for Mr Crouch to appear. Without a sound, the thin, slightly bent figure like the child-catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was suddenly, silently there behind the wooden counter like an emanation from the tall jars of sweets behind him on shelves. The lower shelves were filled with open cardboard boxes of treats, well out of the reach of wandering hands and deep pockets. An Eastern Bazaar in our village: liquorice, sherbet, cinnamon sticks and Turkish Delight? The counter was only big enough for two people to face Mr Crouch standing at the other side. Its surface held the tray covered in glossy white paper with rows of shallow concave depressions under it. When a depression was prodded with the little stick provided then a colour was revealed under the glossy paper. There was a different prize for each colour: black was for a piece of ‘Spanish’ (black liquorice), red was for a marble from the jar on the counter, blue was for a small bag of sherbet with a straw made of liquorice to suck it up from the bag, while yellow was for a hard-boiled sweet in the shape of a fish. I took the wooden dabber in my hand and was about to pierce the paper with it when we arrived in the school yard. DING ding ding; DING ding ding; DING ding ding, clanked out the school bell, fortissimo. I’d been ‘dreaming’ again! Deafeningly it broke into my spell in Mr Crouch’s shop. (I often had these spells. My grandmother used to call it ‘dreaming’.)

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