A Rowan Tree In My Garden

Day 26

Mother said it was right that we should dress attractively but not provocatively and that we mustn’t ‘lead men on’

Some of the teenage girls quite fancied him and although I liked him well enough, I was not enamoured. We all knew who he fancied, a young girl with auburn hair. If we were out on a trek with him he always rode beside her.

After our grazing was let to the stables, Tom was sometimes sent up to Westburn for a horse or two. One autumn morning he came up as usual. He was after a certain horse that I knew was difficult to catch. I offered to help him.

We had just got the horse in question into a corner in the high field when, all of a sudden, without anything said, or any warning, Tom attempted to wrestle me to the ground.

With all the farm work I had done I wasn’t as frail as I looked. I managed with a struggle to stay upright and remembered in a flash the advice mother had given me on what to do if a young man tried to “get fresh” as she put it.

“Give him a good hard slap on the face,” she had said.

And that is exactly what I did – and it worked. He went off, holding the side of his face with a silly sheepish grin, to catch the horse that had taken the opportunity to gallop off back down to the bottom of the field.

I went back to the cottage and locked myself in. I never told my mother about the incident because I knew she would worry about it.

Frightened

I don’t remember being particularly frightened by Tom’s behaviour but I didn’t offer to help him again and if I saw him coming I would go into the cottage and lock the door. It didn’t stop me going back to the stables but I was careful to keep out of his way.

By this time I was beginning to dream of young men; Sir Walter Scott’s Young Lochinvar coming out of the west on a beautiful steed was an example but Tom was certainly not the young Lochinvar of my dreams.

Mother was beginning to talk to us girls on how we should behave when we grew older. Words like sex or love-making were never used but we were told that we had to be very careful when we were dealing with young men.

It was right that we should dress attractively but not provocatively and that we mustn’t “lead men on.” It was the girl’s responsibility to keep things in order as, sometimes, young men had urges that were difficult to control, which could lead to a girl having a baby and if she was unmarried, that was a complete and utter disaster.

The best scenario, if that happened, was that there would be a shotgun marriage which might or might not be a happy one and the people around you would always remember that your baby came too early.

More often than not, however, the man would not marry you and it would lead to a baby being illegitimate, who because of this would get a hard time at school.

Shame was brought on the whole family and unless the girl’s mother was willing and able to look after the baby it would have to be adopted by a stranger.

Money was very tight in these days and there was no help from the state. What was more, the girl might never get married because most young men wanted to marry a virgin.

“Nice” girl

Our mother also told us that most young men respected a “nice” girl. We didn’t quite know what she meant but the opposite of “nice” seemed to be “fast”.

I often argued with my mother but I did believe her. How could I forget Hetty in George Eliot’s novel, Adam Bede, that I had read, loved and cried over at least twice. Mother was quite a religious person but I don’t remember religion coming into the equation. Sin was never mentioned. Her advice was all practical common sense for the times we lived in.

Although she was all for education and careers for women, she extolled marriage and told us we would learn all about everything on the marriage bed, which was a wonderful and mysterious adventure and that to have a baby in a happy marriage environment was the most wonderful thing on Earth.

I did miss my mother when she went off teaching as there was no one at home during the day on week days to talk to but I don’t remember feeling lonely.

There wasn’t time for that, there was always so much to do. In those days housework was quite a big thing, as there were no washing machines, vacuum cleaners or fridges; also we had dirty coal fires and oil lamps to contend with. I had, of course, also to cook for myself and Jean coming back after school, plus look after the livestock.

Every other day I went along a hill road to a farm some distance away to get milk. Nanny the goat and her kid Distlefink had both died. The latter had started going round in crazy circles and died before she was very old and her mother didn’t live long after her.

We were left with Jenny, whom we had stopped milking because of her age. All that winter the hens laid well but we had a disaster with the ducks. They had a daily routine which they stuck to. I would let them out about 11 in the morning after they had laid their eggs.

After a breakfast of mash they would waddle, single file, to the small pond, fashioned out of the burn that came down from the hills, to have a swim. Then they all took off to the hill at the back of the house to see what they could forage. At dusk they came dancing back, with smiling eyes and happy faces, to get one more feed before they were shut up for the night.

Devastation

One day, after a cold spell, they were late in coming back. I went out to look for them. What I found was devastation: scattered across the back field 24 dead ducks with not a visible mark on any of them. A fox had killed the lot and only gone off with one.

The summer of 1946 was a happy one. The war was over. Relatives started coming home from abroad to visit. My mother’s brother, our Uncle Charlie and family came over from Kenya and came to see us.

Charlie was mother’s favourite brother and it was a happy reunion, apart from one remark. Before he left he said to Mother: “I don’t think you should be leaving these two young girls all on their own all week up in this lonely place.”

Mother didn’t like to be criticised.

(More tomorrow.)