We escape to the country - and it was unbounded bliss!
Eric Smith and his parents
We were greeted at Goldens by Mrs Nottage, wife of a farmer who was churchwarden and by Mrs Walters, wife of the headmaster of Wethersfield church school. It was a wonderful summer’s day.
The house was covered at the front by rambling roses and honeysuckle – beautiful and sweet smelling. Tea was ready on the lawn, the sandwiches were traditional, cucumber, tomato and egg. Marvellous home made cakes were superb.
I was in Paradise! My father’s work had meant that my early life
had been in challenging parts of London – Stepney and Dalston -
but Wethersfield was unbounded bliss which would last throughout my childhood.
Throughout my time in Wethersfield many birds such as bullfinches which
are now fairly rare were there in abundance. I think my greatest joy while
we lived at the cottage was a chiff-chaff’s nest in the raspberry
canes.
Goldens belonged to two elderly sisters and near to it was a small brick
building behind the pump which was firmly locked. Peering through the
windows, it clearly held treasured possessions going back to their childhood.
Behind the cottage was a very large black-boarded barn in which were stored
abandoned traps - a playroom for us. I believe it has now been converted
into a pleasing residence.
My father had strong feelings that children should go to the local school,
so I went to Wethersfield school for a year. The school had three classes,
one for infants, one for juniors and one for senior. My sister, Maud,
being three years older, went to Braintree Grammar School.
Mr Walters, the head, was in ecstasy that the vicar’s son was attending
the village school. Never had this happened before. He showed me the school
register where he had written an entry in red capital letters to record
it. I thought it was an odd thing to do.
It was nice to enjoy schooling with the village boys (and girls) but Mr
Walters refused to let me just be one of them. An example of this was
when, out of boredom, one playtime I had some flowerpots on the top of
a wall and pelted them with pebbles until most were demolished. Mr Walters
was very angry and assembled us in the playground and issued dire threats
for the whole school to suffer unless the culprit owned up. The culprit
would be dealt with so severely that even execution seemed likely to be
the equivalent of a let-off.
When he paused I put my hand up and said, “Mr Walters, it was me.
I’m sorry!”. When he could recover enough to speak he said,
“School dismissed.” And that was the end of that. On another
occasion when it was a gardening afternoon, Mr Walters ‘excused’
me from taking
part and for all future gardening afternoons. It was incredibly boring
but the final humiliation came at the end of term. The boys had to file
through a gate with Mr Walters on one side and me on the other side and
as they came to the gate he would say "Three carrots or some other
vegetable" and I finished up with
more
than anybody. A return to tithing! But he was a lovely man, kind and gentle.
On market day he might decide to go to Braintree and told the other two
teachers to go home. The children were not told but if there was no bell
for assembling in our classes half an hour after dinner we all knew we
could go home. On one
such occasion a boy asked me to play marbles with him on the floor of
the cloakroom. I had no marbles so he lent me one. I won all his marbles
and gave him back the borrowed one and won that. He arrived with a bag
of marbles, I arrived with nothing. He left with nothing; I left with
a bag of marbles.
I felt
rotten about that – but kept the marbles. I have a feeling that
something similar happens in big business today, sometimes.
Eric and his sister
Maud
