Interludes: The Visit
...we were only allowed to peep into the front parlour downstairs to look at Grandma’s set of red and gold lustres placed on the mantelpiece. If the fire was lit - as it had to be sometimes to air the room - the crystal pendants would glitter in the light of the flames, and the damson coloured glass supports with delicate gold patterns would become rich ruby jewels...
Sylvia West, with a camera-eye discernment of detail, recalls childhood visits to her Grandma, and Gran's brother, Uncle George.
To read more of Sylvia's visual words please do click on Interludes in the menu on this page.
When I was very young my Dad bought his first car, and then we were able to visit my grandmother from time to time. She lived in a Leicestershire village called Heather, and she had gone to live there after she was widowed, so that she would be closer to her brother. This was several years before the rumblings and forebodings of World War 2, and the leafy lanes of the countryside were peaceful and undisturbed by anything more than the cows being walked home to be milked. The clear sweet air and the quality of the summer sunlight are still etched upon the strata of my childhood memories.
Soon after Gran moved she took in the local curate as a lodger, though I don’t remember seeing any sign of his presence. I wonder where he slept? It must have been in the best bedroom at the front; it was forbidden territory for my sister and me, and we were only allowed to peep into the front parlour downstairs to look at Grandma’s set of red and gold lustres placed on the mantelpiece. If the fire was lit - as it had to be sometimes to air the room - the crystal pendants would glitter in the light of the flames, and the damson coloured glass supports with delicate gold patterns would become rich ruby jewels. I’ve seen them since, in the windows of antique shops, but never quite as magnificent as Grandma’s were, and I’m sure my memory is not deceiving me.
When we visited as a family, several things always came to pass. I would have to go down to the bottom of the garden to see if the privy in a shed was still as awful as I remembered it. I’m sure it was kept as clean and non-smelly as any privy could be. That didn’t bother me; it was the huge spiders that whizzed across the walls the second the door opened and a chink of light came in. You had to have the door open to get your bearings, to see to lift the lid, and the thought of climbing up on to the actual seat either with or without an open door was intolerable. Shut the door and I would be over-run by spiders: open the door and I could be seen enthroned by everyone. It didn’t matter that the only people down in the house were my immediate family. I don’t remember how I solved the problem - amnesia can be a life-saver, but I think perhaps I closed the door and made it a very quick visit.
After dinner - we didn’t call it lunch in those days - it was always my little sister who would say,
“Can we go and see Uncle George?”
Uncle George was Gran’s brother, and with Auntie Lily and son Edgar, he lived a few houses further down the lane. There were only fields on the other side; the odd man on a bicycle went by or a horse and cart, and there was a special attraction at George’s house that couldn’t be missed. He was a motorbike mechanic, and next door, on the other side of a dark passage-way, he had a workshop and a wide shop window for a few sales. Go down the passage, turn left through a doorway, and there was an Aladdin’s cave of motorbike parts and oily cans, spanners and wrenches, and best of all, an earthen floor into which dozens of ball bearings had become embedded. This was my sister’s Mecca, even though she was only four years old. She would squat down and piggle about with chubby fingers until the ball bearings had been released from their prison.
All the time Uncle George and my Dad would be enthusing about the latest ‘Triumph’ or the ‘Brough Superior’. Before he had a family, Dad used to drive my mother about in a motorbike and sidecar: one day, alas, it burst into flames and they both had to leap for their lives, but that’s another story, one that my sister and I were brought up on: one of those family anecdotes that has a life of its own. Dad never lost his passion for bikes, and it must have been lovely for him to spend time in the workshop with George, my sister down at floor level leaving tiny holes where the ball bearings had once been. She would hand them over and then be wiped down, and the three of them would come into the kitchen for a wash at the sink.
I’m sure we never got beyond Aunt Lily’s kitchen. Perhaps no-one else did, for the cosy feeling and the plates on the dresser, the cooking range and the thick pile of ‘Tid-Bits’ on the side felt like a safe enough haven for anybody. We didn’t stay there long - we’d come to visit Gran, after all - and while the men and Pauline were in the workshop, my mother would chat and I would fix my gaze on the pile of apple-green tabloid-sized magazines. Were they magazines, of were they newspapers? I still don’t know, and those days were still “seen and not heard” times to some extent, so I didn’t dream of asking questions. Why were they entitled ‘Tid-bits’? What were they all about? Perhaps I should have joined the hunt for ball-bearings with my sister instead.
When we retraced our steps to Gran’s house I could go out into the bit of yard at the back while the table was laid for tea. There was just the right sort of flat space for me to play whip and top. I had one at home but Gran kept a couple of tops in a drawer for me to play with when we visited. One was shaped like a toadstool with blue, red and green circles on the top, and the other was more difficult to spin because it was a chunky shape with only a small “lid” at the top.. I wonder what became if them, those simple., satisfying toys from the past. Does anyone still know how to whip a top?
When my grandfather was alive, Gran would have a constant supply of worn out garments to cut into strips for rag rugs. All the rugs in her house were handmade, and everyone of her neighbours did the same. They were always dark colours, and I can see her now with a rug hook and a canvas, pushing the strips of material through and up in no particular order so that every hearth and every bedside had a warm place for the feet. She was a dab hand at crochet too, so when we all sat down to Sunday tea of bread and butter and home-made jam, the Victoria sponge would sit proudly on a silver cake stand with a crocheted doily, and a black and brown rag rug would lie next to the brass fender beside the hearth. I still have one of her chemises with delicate crochet all round the neckline, and all the doilies she made for my mother lasted for years, the crisp white cotton designs prettier by far than any paper ones.
Rag rugs, chemises, cotton nightdresses and thick cotton dishcloths, my grandmother made them all. She didn’t do fancy embroidery or samplers to go on the wall, but there were tablecloths and cushion covers, pillow cases and quilts, all made by her.
“Goodbye Gran, thank you for having us” we would say, as we made for the car. Dad was an only child, and now that I have grown-up children, I can imagine the loneliness of our departure after a few brief hours. Just as well the curate was coming and going, and George and Lily were down the lane, for they didn’t “do” coffee mornings in those days. No, there would be long, untroubled silences for Gran, time to think, to remember, to prepare the rags for another rug, to bake, to grow vegetables and clean the privy. Time to look forward to the next visit of her son and his family. Time to look forward.
