farms in Shropshire there were suicides.
Meanwhile, it wasn’t a bad place for a boy to grow up. However bad the slump got, there was always food on the table–it was a farm, after all–with eggs and cream, bacon, home-baked bread and, occasionally, a freshly pluckedchicken. (I can remember as a child the days before battery farming when chicken was an expensive delicacy. On Sundays my grandmother would go to the hen coop, select that day’s lunch, and wring its unfortunate neck. Back in the kitchen she’d pluck it and burn off the stubble with a lit newspaper. I can smell the sharp fumes now–a pungent odour of singed hair and burned toast.)
Sometimes the family would dine on duck. Kitty once kept a small flock as an experiment, but it was short-lived. My grandmother had a schizophrenic attitude to animals: ruthless, yet sentimental. One hot summer day she decided to lead her quacking charges down to the river ‘for a little swim’. The flotilla disappeared around the first bend. Kitty’s anguished cries–‘Duckies! Come back!’–could be heard in the village. The creatures were never seen again, except perhaps by foxes.
The Depression forced Geoffrey to postpone plans to buy Kiln Farm’s first tractor, so huge horses still hauled the ploughs and harrows and seed machines. This was a job my father loved to help with, and he struck up a great friendship with the biggest beast of the lot, a magnificent black-maned giant called Captain.
Captain was devoted to my father. At the end of the working day he would whinny loudly for him from his stable and only settle down after the boy had come to say goodnight. Once he escaped from a carelessly locked stable door and trotted up to the drawing-room window. Christopher was practising his scales on his father’s highly prized baby grand (bought secondhand before the Depression and one of Kiln Farm’s few luxuries). There was a crunch and tinkling of glass, and helooked up to see Captain’s great head pushing into the room like the figurehead on the prow of a ship, nostrils flared, teeth bared, lips curled back in a sloppy, happy grin of greeting.
Other animals were less friendly. When Christopher was about four years old, he went to pet Rex, the farm dog. It was a hot day and the big black Labrador was sleeping in his kennel (there was no question of dogs being allowed in the house). Rex was startled when the little boy’s hand suddenly materialised through the doorway. He flew out and clamped his jaws on my father’s face.
There was pandemonium as farm hands rushed to pull the dog off. When they managed to free my father, the damage looked bad. He was bleeding from both eyes and screaming that he couldn’t see.
The village doctor quickly established that it was simply blood that had temporarily blinded the child, and dressed and disinfected the deep bites around my father’s eyes. But the attack left lasting damage to his sight. Almost as soon as the wounds had healed, he complained of headaches and not being able to ‘see proper’. An optician in Shrewsbury diagnosed astigmatism. It seems likely that the bites had disturbed the shape of the surface of both eyes, and my father had to wear glasses for the rest of his days.
So life on the farm was nothing if not eventful. But as my father grew up he often struggled to be happy. He had the companionship of James, of course, but his brother was four years older and had his own interests and circle of friends. He also seemed to have, my father thought, an easier and more open relationship with their father. Indeed James, a talented farmer, was destined to run Kiln Farm in years to come.
Like many siblings with a significant age difference, the relationship between Chris and Jim, as they called each other, would only become truly close when both were grown-up.
Christopher loved his parents and assumed they loved him, but as he got older it was hard to be sure. There was a near-total absence of demonstrative
Meanwhile, it wasn’t a bad place for a boy to grow up. However bad the slump got, there was always food on the table–it was a farm, after all–with eggs and cream, bacon, home-baked bread and, occasionally, a freshly pluckedchicken. (I can remember as a child the days before battery farming when chicken was an expensive delicacy. On Sundays my grandmother would go to the hen coop, select that day’s lunch, and wring its unfortunate neck. Back in the kitchen she’d pluck it and burn off the stubble with a lit newspaper. I can smell the sharp fumes now–a pungent odour of singed hair and burned toast.)
Sometimes the family would dine on duck. Kitty once kept a small flock as an experiment, but it was short-lived. My grandmother had a schizophrenic attitude to animals: ruthless, yet sentimental. One hot summer day she decided to lead her quacking charges down to the river ‘for a little swim’. The flotilla disappeared around the first bend. Kitty’s anguished cries–‘Duckies! Come back!’–could be heard in the village. The creatures were never seen again, except perhaps by foxes.
The Depression forced Geoffrey to postpone plans to buy Kiln Farm’s first tractor, so huge horses still hauled the ploughs and harrows and seed machines. This was a job my father loved to help with, and he struck up a great friendship with the biggest beast of the lot, a magnificent black-maned giant called Captain.
Captain was devoted to my father. At the end of the working day he would whinny loudly for him from his stable and only settle down after the boy had come to say goodnight. Once he escaped from a carelessly locked stable door and trotted up to the drawing-room window. Christopher was practising his scales on his father’s highly prized baby grand (bought secondhand before the Depression and one of Kiln Farm’s few luxuries). There was a crunch and tinkling of glass, and helooked up to see Captain’s great head pushing into the room like the figurehead on the prow of a ship, nostrils flared, teeth bared, lips curled back in a sloppy, happy grin of greeting.
Other animals were less friendly. When Christopher was about four years old, he went to pet Rex, the farm dog. It was a hot day and the big black Labrador was sleeping in his kennel (there was no question of dogs being allowed in the house). Rex was startled when the little boy’s hand suddenly materialised through the doorway. He flew out and clamped his jaws on my father’s face.
There was pandemonium as farm hands rushed to pull the dog off. When they managed to free my father, the damage looked bad. He was bleeding from both eyes and screaming that he couldn’t see.
The village doctor quickly established that it was simply blood that had temporarily blinded the child, and dressed and disinfected the deep bites around my father’s eyes. But the attack left lasting damage to his sight. Almost as soon as the wounds had healed, he complained of headaches and not being able to ‘see proper’. An optician in Shrewsbury diagnosed astigmatism. It seems likely that the bites had disturbed the shape of the surface of both eyes, and my father had to wear glasses for the rest of his days.
So life on the farm was nothing if not eventful. But as my father grew up he often struggled to be happy. He had the companionship of James, of course, but his brother was four years older and had his own interests and circle of friends. He also seemed to have, my father thought, an easier and more open relationship with their father. Indeed James, a talented farmer, was destined to run Kiln Farm in years to come.
Like many siblings with a significant age difference, the relationship between Chris and Jim, as they called each other, would only become truly close when both were grown-up.
Christopher loved his parents and assumed they loved him, but as he got older it was hard to be sure. There was a near-total absence of demonstrative
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