Margan (Enid). This must be in about 1988 as she is wearing a hat Clare and I bought in Thailand that year. I don't know what year she was born and therefore how old she is in this picture. She must be ninety something surely . . .
Mum; Liz Fayle - Kiakoura, 2009
It was about this time that John and I made an important discovery. Greta was in love! She was seventeen, tall and willowy, and Oh! How seriously she took this love, warmly returned by the young man, who although only her own age, was already destined for the Church. We saw them first sitting on a fallen tree in the little pine wood, and he was holding her
hand in both of his, and they were talking earnestly.
Presently the young man took a large silver watch from his pocket, and they both bent over it to
look at the time, then, rising from the fallen tree, they kissed tenderly and parted. They arrived at the house from different directions, only a few moments after we did, and amazed us by greeting each other as if for the first time that day.
“Oh, hullo Bob”, and “Hullo Greta” he replied, smiled at Mary and then talked to my mother who was rescuing the last baby from the too vigorous clutches of Richard.
All through tea-time John and I kept staring first at Greta and then at Bob, until it became noticeable, and Greta said irritably - “What on earth's the matter with you two?”. Whereupon we decided to slip away and discuss the matter privately, lying flat on our stomachs on top of the
“black shed”, our hair and clothes bristling with pine needles.
We reached our hideout by climbing a thickly foliaged tree and crawling along a branch which overspread the roof of the building. It was our own secret place, and no-one else ever found it. We could lie there and watch everything that went on and listen, and best of all we could escape from our father.
We discussed everybody in low voices, and made plans and decisions. We found we didn't care much for our family – the big ones were “bossy” and the little ones were a nuisance, interfering with our plans. John discovered during one of our secret talks that he was going to be an engineer when he grew up.
“What!” I said, aghast, “Not a farmer?”
“No,” he replied firmly, “An engineer” - and an engineer he eventually became.
I didn't discover what I was going to be, and so I felt lonely and separated from John; he knew and I didn't, and I felt somewhere at the back of my mind that the time would surely come when we should have to go our separate ways, he to be an engineer, and I – where should I go?
I felt empty and sad as I crept back along the branch and went slowly home. We had always played together, lied each other out of trouble, and even taken each other's whippings. Now I wondered if John knew how desolate I felt all at once.
My depression, however, was quickly forgotten, temporarily at least, when my father suddenly announced that he would sell up and take us all home to England – we always spoke of England as home, even those of us who had never been outside the South Island of New Zealand. But to my father it really was home. Back to the gentle grey stone house where he was born and which he had left so impulsively more than twenty years ago.
It was time, he said, that we went to proper schools, and learnt to behave like normal children instead of little savages. He had a serious illness at this time too, and the doctor advised a sea voyage and a long rest. We had mixed feelings about England; it seemed impossible that we should leave this, the only home we had known for ever.
I had moments of real panic, it was agony parting with our ponies and all the other treasures we had stored up over the years – years though small in number were a whole lifetime for us. We wandered about looking at this and that, John's little sheepdog, lately acquired, trailing after us.
Through the big granary built after the fire, and past the gravel pit down which John had so dramatically fallen some years earlier, to the pond in the lambing paddock, where we used to
bathe in the hot weather. We pushed through the gorse fence, golden with blossoms, and waded through the sweet honey-scented clover where the bee hives stood. We visited the water race crossing it by a natural bridge, formed by a fallen tree to the little pine wood where the geese were nesting; they thrust their long necks out and hissed at us as we passed.
Then we went to the Whari, but the men were all out, and the place deserted. Even the white cockatoo, the property of the cook, was unfriendly, and sat hunched up in his cage. My mother cried a little at first, knowing that it would be years before she saw her brothers and sisters again; but she loved England, and was soon too busy making preparations for our departure to
dwell on the coming separations. All but my two eldest sisters were sent immediately to stay in
Ashburton with my grandfather, where he had moved after my grandmother's death, two years earlier.
We went to school but didn't seem to learn very much, though I could run faster and jump higher then any other child in the junior school. I hated school, hated Ashburton, and I hated living in my grandfather's house, so near to the town. John and I were bored all the time, we missed our ponies and the wide plains; we realised that our lives had been very self-centred, but also very satisfying.
We didn't know what to do with our spare time, so we were often naughty and mischievous. We shamelessly raided other people's orchards; fought with the horrid boy next door, stole all his toys, and hid them on top of his father's potting shed. We found another neighbour had a belt of hazelnut trees just inside her garden, and paid daily visits to get hazelnuts; we were defiant when caught by the owner, but our defiance quickly turned to shame when she sweetly said we could have as many nuts as we liked, if we would only come in by the gate, and not break down her hedge.
We couldn't understand at first, why we must stay in our own garden – never before had an apple tree on the other side of a hedge borne forbidden fruit for us, and it seemed incredible that so many families should live so close together.
We learned to ride our grandfather's big bicycle by putting one leg through the bars andpeddling like mad to keep the machine on its wheels. When we wanted to get off, there was only one was to do it, and that was to fall off – which we did quite easily by running into the side of the road,
and rolling off comfortably onto the grass.
We used to spend long periods standing on our heads, seeing who could stay up the longest, until my grandfather found us doing it on the roadside, our legs in the air, and our faces scarlet. He was terribly angry, and we were quickly dragged into the house and punished. It seemed most unfair; we had been standing on our heads when the mood took us all our lives, and no-one took any notice; now suddenly, it was a shocking thing to do.
All the time we were in Ashburton after my mother joined us, a sewing woman was kept busy making new clothes for our trip to England. The rolls of material gradually grew smaller, and the piles of finished garments higher. Never before had I seen so many new and beautiful clothes all at once. New trunks were bought and packed, and soon everything was ready, and the luggage was sent off to get to the ship the day before we sailed.
At last we were off, a crowd of relations were there to see us go, and most of them seemed to be in tears. I cried too, but only I think because it was such a dismal scene and I was homesick for the life on the farm that we were leaving for ever. We stood in a row at the ship's rail as she began to move away from the dock, waving at the little group of relations, when suddenly my father saw a pile of luggage which hadn't been put on the ship, and recognised it as ours. There was an immediate uproar.
The first time I ever saw something go wrong and my father powerless to do anything about it, but it didn't prevent him from flying into a rage, and storming off to find someone to vent it on.
My mother was horrified, and wondered how on earth she was going to clothe her nine children for six weeks with only one change of garments each.
Actually the other passengers came to the rescue, and almost everyone provided something so we were quite adequately, if rather quaintly dressed for the rest of the voyage. So at last we were on our way to England, where the two youngest members of our big family were born.
Frances, a dark, bewitching little girl, and lastly Robert. We stood at the rail for a long time watching New Zealand growing smaller and smaller, and the sea grow bigger and bigger.
Then night came down, and we were shut in our small, swaying world; so crowded, and so very different from anything we had ever known....
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