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Bertie, May and Mrs Fish
Xandra Bingley
A lyrical, evocative and wonderfully original wartime memoir about life on a farm in the Cotswolds, seen through the eyes of a child.‘Bertie, May and Mrs Fish’ is Xandra Bingley’s account of her childhood on a Cotswold farm, set against the backdrop of World War II and its aftermath. Bingley’s mother is left to farm the land, isolated in the landscape, whilst her husband is away at war. With its eccentric cast of characters, this book captures both the essence of a country childhood and the remarkable courage and resilience displayed by ordinary people during the war. The beauty and sensitivity of Bingley’s observation is artfully balanced by the harshness and grit of her reality.‘In the cowshed my mother ties her hair in a topknot scarf that lies on the feedbin lid. At five-thirty each morning and four o’clock in the afternoons she chases rats off the mangers. She measures cowcake and rolled oats and opens the bottom cowshed door. Thirty-one brown and white Ayrshires and one brindle Jersey tramp into their stalls…’‘Two thousand acres. A mile of valley. Horses cattle sheep pigs poultry. Snow above the lintels of the downstairs windows. Her fingers swelling. Chilblains. Her long white kid gloves wrapped around a leaky pipe in her bedroom. Knotted at the fingers. She has a lot to learn and no one to teach her. Accidents happen.'Bingley tells her tale in a startling voice which captures the universe of a child, the unforgiving landscape and the complicated adult world surrounding her. Her acute observation, and her gift for place, people, sound and touch make this a brilliantly authentic and evocative portrait.
BERTIE, MAY AND MRS FISH
Country Memories of Wartime
Xandra Bingley
Copyright (#ulink_1bda595f-ef45-5c60-9e10-c5db7c03e98b)
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
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This edition published by Harper Perennial 2006
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2005
Copyright © Xandra Bingley 2005
PS Section © Xandra Bingley 2006
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Xandra Bingley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007149513
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007370917
Version: 2019-06-18
Note to Readers (#ulink_80ca5f67-c4d9-52b9-902a-4db3e7648f61)
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Dedication (#ueba158e2-aa52-5dba-9cf9-f3cefe754096)
For my grandparents Elizabeth and Noel Bingley Eva and Hubert Lenox-Conyngham
Contents
Cover (#u774e0a13-4606-54fa-bd68-589e2b02d662)
Title Page (#ud3ace2de-1b22-504d-be63-83b9d3d63948)
Copyright (#uc248ff1f-b280-5407-be59-d3583f5746c6)
Note to Readers (#u59a78380-e103-5c33-946f-806ce96dcd6a)
Dedication (#ubdbcbaf3-a60c-5e5f-8744-49881a81303c)
Introductions (#ucf562553-f2b6-5413-9869-d0ea84c6e5fa)
1 HOMEFIELD (#u01ae1213-c6ff-5dd6-9cc3-649fd98ce824)
2 WARTIME (#u2b3ed762-8d9b-5bfa-b6b2-e8982fec65ec)
3 MRS FISH (#u1703bacc-2a6b-569c-9751-cd193ac4a7a8)
4 COWS (#litres_trial_promo)
5 YARD (#litres_trial_promo)
6 PATRICK (#litres_trial_promo)
7 NIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
8 BLESSINGS (#litres_trial_promo)
9 HUNTING (#litres_trial_promo)
10 KISS-ME-QUICK (#litres_trial_promo)
11 HORSE (#litres_trial_promo)
12 CHRISTMAS (#litres_trial_promo)
13 GALLOP AWAY (#litres_trial_promo)
P.S. Ideas, Interviews & Features … (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Q and A with Xandra Bingley
Life at a Glance (#litres_trial_promo)
Top Ten Favourite Books (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Book (#litres_trial_promo)
How My Memory Works (#litres_trial_promo)
Read On (#litres_trial_promo)
If You Loved This, You Might Like … (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Praise (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Introductions (#ulink_cfea1067-4ea4-50ef-aa66-7d45bd5e6d28)
It never harms to exaggerate in the direction of truth.
Henri Matisse, to an art student
Across the snowy hills some galloping horsemen are chasing a single horseman. He is beating his horse and racing away downhill to escape. He reaches flat white land and gallops on and on, looking over his shoulder, beating his horse. The others do not follow him away from the hills.
At last he arrives at a village exhausted and people crowd around him and exclaim, ‘You are safe … it is wonderful … we never believed you would get here.’ He says, ‘I can tell you I was afraid, they got close to me up in the hills.’
The people say, ‘No – no – you do not understand … it is a miracle … you have ridden across the lake … underneath the ice is water a mile deep.’
Then he dies. From fear of a danger he did not know he was in.
German fable
1 HOMEFIELD (#ulink_45b24576-de6d-5d30-8c7e-cf7d341ecf67)
After wartime my father sends home bales of midnight-blue and plum-red velvet for downstairs curtains, a cinecamera and roll-down screen, two black bearskin coats, a touring Bentley and a dinner service for twelve of creamy rippling Copenhagen china hand-painted with wildflowers.
He writes to my mother … Now we’ll have some damned good fun.
And that’s what he says when he is home on leave and a thousand daffodil and narcissus bulbs arrive from Holland in plywood boxes. He spills whitewash from a blue speckled tin bucket in a half-moon arc from the coal shed oak to the damson tree by the bridge on the Rushy Brook stream and marks off half an acre of Homefield and shouts … Mind out of the way you bloody child … as I run over his white line. I am four years old and not afraid.
A post and rails goes up along the marker line. Joe Rummings slams the iron crowbar in the ground. Griff drops spiked ash stakes in the holes and swings an oak mallet. The Ayrshire milking herd chew cud in Homefield and watch nails hammered into split ash rails.
My father walks about with a box. He swings up one arm and throws a handful of bulbs that spray the pale blue autumn sky. Then he is gone.
My mother kneels for days in the grass and jabs a trowel where each bulb fell. Turf splits and she drops one in and smacks the trowel down once twice three times and shuts each grass lid.
Daffodils grow and flower and lean and break in the winds that blow across our farm in the Cotswold hills. In springtime I snap off stalks and my father arrives home and shouts … Pick the broken buggers first old girl … must experiment using your brain one of these fine days … bloody east wind.
Fifty years later I am by Juno beach on the French Normandy coast where his Inns of Court invasion troops landed in the Second World War. Dune grass blows east and my father’s wartime padre, code name Sunray, strides past in white cassock flapping in the breeze and a Hans Holbein black hat. Soldiers hold up embroidered flags on polished wooden poles tipped by fluted steel knives. The Union Jack and the French flag lie over a carved memorial stone beside a country road. War veterans wear medals and hold flags embroidered combatants. Four hundred of us stand with French families in the sun and the Inns of Court regimental band plays tunes from Cavalleria Rusticana.
An Inns of Court officer steps up to the dais and speaks. ‘For the sake of freedom – a suicidal mission – our men never gave up – covered a wider area than any other military unit – with this act of dedication we bridge the gap between this world and the next.’
Down go the flowers. Wreath after wreath. Poppies, marigolds, daisies, phlox, poppies, daisies.
A soldier at attention by the memorial stone falls forward on his face on the grass. Two others drag his body behind the loudspeaker van. From the ranks another steps forward to take his place. The regimental band play my father’s favourite hymn: ‘Praise My Soul the King of Heaven’ … and the padre reads, ‘We meet in the presence of Almighty God to commemorate this day.’
Nearly all of us weep. I remember my father, with his white hair round his bald head and wearing green corduroys and a navy-blue jersey, coming past the corner of top barn, arms held open wide saying … Fancy our meeting … when times are so fleeting … to what do I owe the great honour of your presence on this perfect summer morning … what say a small celebration is in order … a cup of Mr Bournville’s famous chocolate lightly stirred into fresh milk … agree … and I can hear my mother’s voice call … Any shopping wanted from Cheltenham … I’m taking a broken bridle down … I’ll be home by lunchtime.
The dedication of the Normandy landing regimental memorial stone is over. Soldiers march to a farm courtyard in the village of Graye-sur-Mer. Champagne and chocolate biscuits are handed out. Chocolate melts in my fingers and a French lady says to me, ‘I remember the war very well, madame, we were very hungry, oui ça c’est certain, mais …’ She shrugs and smiles. We look into each other’s eyes and down at the melting chocolate she offers me and we laugh and she says, ‘Il faut rire, madame, we must laugh savez-vous.’
I say, ‘Oui, merci, it is true.’
The mayor of Graye-sur-Mer says to me, ‘When I was a child I must go with no shoes. Certain things are not remembered. My family are going in the fields at night for food. It is food for cows. I do not know the names.’
I say, ‘Turnips, swedes, mangolds.’
He says, ‘C’est ça. If they see us the enemy shoot.’
I say, ‘Is there nothing left in the shops for you to buy?’
And he says, ‘Pour les collaborateurs … bien sûr, madame, there is everything.’
A Frenchman in a black beret reaches up and embraces me and says, ‘Madame, I live at Jerusalem Crossroads, a hamlet. The British soldiers come. We give them wine and flowers and tell them “Thank you.” We hear aeroplanes. A soldier calls, ‘It is Yanks, OK, OK, yellow – yellow.’ The soldier quickly spreads yellow silk squares on the two vehicles. A yellow smoke goes up into the sky. The driver says, ‘It is for the Yanks to see we are les amis.’ The American planes fly over firing. I run away with another boy. When I return, all Jerusalem Crossroads and all the soldiers are dead. I think I am lucky to be here with you today. It is a great honour and I say thank you, for your father. You are proud of him? I think so.’
British officer veterans drink French champagne and laugh and tell me, ‘We shouldn’t laugh, we oughtn’t to.’
I say, ‘Why not?’
They say, ‘We’re remembering hunting a Hun along Juno beach. Bloody hell he ran. We got him with the flail tank chains.’
I ask, ‘What are flail tank chains for?’
One says, ‘For mine-sweeping. Tank bars on the front swing the chains and find mines hidden under sand.’
Outside the farm courtyard I stand in wildflowers and lean on a sunny stone wall and look at a field of pale-cream Charolet cattle and hum ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’, and hear my father’s high tenor voice descant. I see him walk across our farmyard past a downstairs window and look in. I am piling up pennies and half-pennies on his desk and Gigi is playing on the radiogram. He shouts at the window … Turn that bloody man off … turn that man off … do you hear me … at once. Maurice Chevalier is singing … Thank ’eaven for leetle girls … for leetle girls grow bigger every day … thank ’eaven for leet-le girls … I open the window and he stammers … I w-will n-not … r-repeat n-not … h-have d-damned c-collaborateurs in m-my h-home.
I turn off the radiogram and he calls from the hall … That’s m-more like it … the so-and-so should be locked up by rights … one first-class slippery customer … or after the invasion we’d have caught him fair and square. Hey-ho … you keep an eagle eye out for cowardly types when your turn comes old girl … that’s my advice.
He closes the window and says … I hear the bastard’s filthy rich these days … three cheers for the ignorant hoi polloi … now who’s next on parade? What say we bring in the beloved horses and give them their tea … jump to it … enough fraternising with the enemy for you today. Did I tell you in confidence I risked the Lion of Judah over Dewpond sliprails … went at them like an Eleventh Hussar trooper … took off from his hocks … only had him in a rubber snaffle … mouth soft as a baby’s bottom.
His brilliant blue eyes look my way and his finger taps his lips … Mum’s the word … shh-hh … if I am called upon to make a confession I shall simply say to your mother … not a hope in hell of stopping a young horse who’s made up his mind to jump a fence … you’ll know that as well as I do. He and I walk up the yard and he sings … Chirri-birri-bin … chirri-birri-bin … I love you so-o …
