CHAPTER 12

MUSIC IN OUR HOME

 The next event was quite out of character, with our Mother, she always was so practical. But this time she must have felt it was about time we had something besides work to brighten us all up. What gave her the idea, was Annie who brought us home pieces of music, when she came once a week from her occupation as a nanny from Folkestone. Songs that came about to cheer up the soldiers, one was “Keep the Home Fires Burning”, and “There’s a long long Trail”. Also “Its a long way to Tiparrary”, and one soldier who was a consistent visitor told us that he was sorry we had no piano in our home, because if we had he would play us lots of nice pieces of music. I well recall how I looked forward to that, and too recall that he never did. But my chief delight was that Mother could play the hymns. Her two favourites were, The Old Rugged Cross and, We shall Know Each other Better When the Mist has Rolled Away. And what’s more she could sing those hymns. She told me that she learnt her two favourite hymns at Sunday school when a little child. She was quite clever playing by ear, of course she didn’t have much time, what with butter to make, calves to feed, and the chickens and flower garden time was scarce; The piano was indeed a treat, as it was the only music we had ever had in our home.

That Easter was when John too started school, that was when Mother really would find a little more time to play the piano with no children or babies but just Hylda and Mother until we all came home from school again. John took to school like a duck took to water, which we all thought he would as Fred his brother last Easter went to school. He probably, had been longing to go just as I couldn’t wait to go after Alice started. He was a disposition even at that age, in harmony with his surroundings, so never showed any opposition, also, he was so fit, nothing delicate about our brother John. And that summer was a chance for Mother to go out in the cart and horse to visit an uncle two villages away one afternoon when we were leaving school for home. I shall never forget because I was so delighted as I had seen Mother go pass our school in the morning, so that I kept wondering where she had gone. She had planned to get to school just in time to give us a ride home, and our cart was full of ripe cherries, this was a treat for us, as we had all sorts of fruit. But not cherries, but our aunt Polly and uncle Robert lived where the cherries grew.

REAL AUNTIES.

Soon after that, another event occurred one morning when our Mother came as usual to say time to get up, she was carrying a young baby. Imagine our surprise “who’s baby is it” was our first words. “It belongs to all of us”, was Mother’s first answer. Then by five minutes we knew it all, Hylda was the mother of this baby daughter, Mother was the grandmother and what made Alice and I delighted we were aunties. Real aunties. How wonderful I thought, I felt so happy and excited, I wanted to get to school as soon as I could to tell my school friends at school. If they would believe it. I had a job to believe it myself. At school we were not in the infants class Alice and I were in the first class. Which has a few more rules to keep. But that day I couldn’t care less about rules, and the one about no talking at class was soon broken. The punishment was that we had to come out in front and tell the class what we were saying at this occasion this was no punishment to me but a great pleasure. I felt like telling the world. Those were the days, when children were brought up to be seen and not heard. If like myself you were one of ten, in any case you didn’t feel you were the only pebble on the beach, and you were lucky if you felt important just sometimes once before I felt we as a family almost owned the church yard. When a big tall pure white marble stone was put on our father’s grave. With his name and address on it, it was in a very prominent place, just in the entrance by the lytch-gate, and we saw it twice a day when we went to school and came home. Since I have grown up, I have so often thought what a strange thing to be so proud of. It makes me realize how sweet it was to be a child. Certainly the age of innocence. something made me feel very different than important however, when folk would say, which one are you? I can only find a name for the five oldest, you other five are just the others, and sometimes as we were going by a house, the owner would stand by the gate until we had passed, in case we would get into mischief. But others would give us a smile, and wave until we were out of sight. So we were learning all the time to take the good with the bad and that it takes all sorts to make a world.

The baby girl was a great treasure to us all, she was named Edna. Her father was still away fighting in the war. So was brother Len the eldest. Mother was always saying she must do this, and the other job as soon as the war ended. But until it did end she couldn’t get interested. The day was  November 11th, it was good news for everyone and everyone felt celebrating differently, but our grateful Mother wanted to express her relief by hard labour. She said her spirit moved her, and she found the energy to sift the cinders which had piled up for months past. We all helped as it was a hard and dirty chore, and like the war, we were thankful to see it finished.