Bliss

I awoke really early this morning feeling a little ‘strange’; that is, unusually lethargic and again unusually, disinclined to leave my bed. I had been in the midst of a dream when I awoke, an interrupted but unknown dream, and I felt reluctant to let it go and begin the day. And I didn’t have to begin the day yet, so I remained in bed and drifted mentally, first to thoughts of the last week then sliding to memories of childhood. This is a common habit of the really old anyway and may have been triggered by my enjoying the recent sight of a toddler being swung by his parents who kissed him each time in rhythm with the beat of the movement. I smiled at this happy little cameo and judged how loved he must instinctively feel and how safe. And thus to les temps perdus.

Dahlias were my mother's passion.
The long back garden overflowed
with them. I loved them too but was
wary of the earwigs who dwelt there.

Purple Emperor

So, memory one; I am supposed to be picking dahlias from the back garden but I am lying under the purple buddleia tree at the edge of the front lawn; it is a perfect day with my mother happy and busy in the house and father mercifully absent. The sun, through the swaying buddleia leaves, dapples my skin and I feel open, like a flower lifting its head to the warmth. I am there to count butterflies. I have noticed often the cloud of mixed butterflies fluttering, around the buddleia, mainly white with pearlescent wings and fewer Red Admirals and Purple Emperors. There may be more exotic specimens but I only recognise those two. Why do I want to count them? Because a friend has claimed an impossible number in her garden and I am curious. We may have more! There are 27 at that moment; 22 white and five exotic. I gaze up at the lyrically blue sky with its billowing white cumulus shaded in part with pearl grey, and luxuriate, wondering lazily how I can increase the number of butterflies sufficiently without lying?

Buddleia with Red Admiral.

We were a little older than
this on the red clover day

Now this time, I am younger; too young for Heather, six years younger, to be there. I am perhaps 7 or 8 with Esme two years younger. She and I are walking to school across the fields with a few other children. There was normally a single decker school bus waiting for us at the water tower, but had it not arrived? Or had we chosen to be more adventurous? Though it is highly unlikely that we would not have clambered aboard as usual had it been there. As we walked, we concentrated on our other communal purpose; we were intent on pulling off the heads of pink clover flowers, dotted among the grass everywhere. As we picked, we popped each dusty pink head into our mouths and ate it with relish. It was a treat we thought, new to us, and they did taste delicious! I cannot remember where this knowledge came from but I do recall the intensity of our belief. We were not thinking of time or school as we dawdled, spotted more clover heads to add to the feast, harvested and devoured them, totally immersing ourselves in this special experience. It seemed, in retrospect, one of life’s peak moments, redolent with joy; we were such a happy, purposeful little group. We arrived a little late for school and we must have explained the now unknown reason for our unusual tardiness, but we hugged the feast of pink clover flowers to ourselves; it was our secret, just for us.

Peter Malcolm

And here is a sliver of a very early memory. I am tiny; I walk between my parents, each holding one of my hands. I feel beautiful; identified as special. We are leaving Dolcis, the shoe shop in Mansfield and I am proudly wearing the reddest, patented bar shoes ever invented. They are the most shiny red shoes ever seen and they are mine. I am in Heaven! This may be a tiny memory but it is very strong. It is also very strange as my parents never went out together to shop for any child; my father never walked anywhere in public holding any child’s hand as far as I know and he hated spending any money whatsoever on any child. Yet the memory is of my huge excitement together with my happy smiling parents on my perfect day! This must have been in the small window before Esme was born and after my brother Peter Malcolm had died at 13 months. Thus a Very Small Window Indeed when I was an only child.

A
Probably c 1939/40
nother strong feeling I have is of the divine Miss Miller, my first teacher in the Infants’ School. She was lovely; she had brown wavy hair, a kind, smiling face and a sweet voice. Her classroom was a haven where only good things happened and I adored her to the extent that I had fantasies of both parents disappearing in some fatal but unknown accident and Miss Miller stepping in to insist I go to live with her. A special recall is the moment when I returned to school after several weeks’ absence with measles and wearing spectacles for the first time. I was nervously proud of them but also unsure, still unaware of the ‘Four eyes’ jibe which would be my occasional later fate. Miss Miller immediately said, “ Oh look everyone; Averil is back with us and she is wearing some beautiful new glasses. Aren’t they lovely?” And the class chorused back, “ Yes Miss Miller” And I was in Heaven. I was in the best place in the world.

Another vivid memory is of me as a little girl, standing in the small kitchen in Lindhurst Lane. I am gazing intently at a sunbeam lighting up the beautiful rough-surface jug given to my mother by neighbours. There is a scene on it of large bunches of grapes; a stunning white butterfly with large black circles on its wings and a man drinking greedily from a black bottle. A later, more sophisticated me decided the drinker must be Bacchus and the scene depicted must be harvest. The reverse side of the jug shows more liberal grapes and a large bee with a Cupid sporting

The much-loved Bacchanalian jug

a generous crown of fruit, holding a small barrel and to the left, some hideous creature, a snake I think, with a long tongue darting towards the putto. I rarely used to see the reverse side as the jug was always displayed with the handle to the right. It always stood on a large round pewter tray with a small bite out of the rim. As I gaze in memory just past the kitchen sideboard, the pantry door is open and I see tins of fruit, and of salmon, with empty Kilner jars awaiting the Autumn harvest of my mother’s tomatoes, the blackberries we would gather from the hedgerows, and apples from the big tree in the garden.

The harvest clearly visible
on the reverse of the jug

Larkspur in my living room

Eighty years later I still have both pewter tray minus the little bite out of the rim and the jug. The latter in particular is a most treasured possession and often in use for flowers like the Larkspur I am currently buying from Bury market.