BACKGROUND:
The Paull family, Arthur
Charles and Hazel Monica, their three sons, Jimmie, John and Charles, lived
with Grandma Paull, and Joseph the black and white tabby cat in 16, Treveneth
Crescent, in a newly built-small low-income housing area in the county of
Cornwall, in south-western England. The house overlooked the busy fishing
village of Newlyn, Lariggan Beach, which was just beyond Newlyn’s picturesque
harbor, and, in the far distance, St. Michael’s Mount, rising out of the
beautiful Mount’s Bay.
The big white stork
brought me to the back garden in July, 1942, the middle of the Second World
War, when the cities of London, Coventry and the naval base in nearby Plymouth
were experiencing nightly bombing raids by the Nazi Luftwaffe. It was a time of
fear, blackouts, oil lamps, flickering candles, and food rationing. It was the
time before television, computers, smart phones, Ipods, and video games.
To supplement the
family’s food needs,
Dad, a bus driver
for the Western National Bus Company, did what all our neighbors did – grew
potatoes, sprouts, carrots and sweet peas, in his small back garden.
My dad was a
born-and-bred Newlyn lad.
When he wasn’t
driving the big green double-decker buses from village to village, he’d set
snare traps for rabbits in the nearby Bejoywan Woods and the hedgerows around
the manor house lived in by the famous painter, Stanhope Forbes. Weather
permitting, he’d go to Lariggan Beach and dig in the sand for the brown and red
sand lugs, then set and bait a long spiller - a fishing line holding perhaps 20
or more hooks, tied to tins that were buried in the sand - hoping to catch
flounder or bass.
Dad also kept a few
chickens in a nearby farmer’s field, selling the eggs to neighbors in our
street.
To celebrate the
birth of his sons, first for Jimmie in 1938, then, me, in 1942, and finally,
Charles, in 1947, dad planted three gooseberry bushes near the back garden
fence behind the few rows of vegetables.
When we were in the
garden, picking sweet peas, eating goosegogs
when they were in season or, more likely, looking for worms and other small
creatures, dad would always say, with a smile and a twinkle in his eye, to my
brothers, Jimmie and Charles, and me,
“That’s where
the big white stork left the three of you, just there, right under those three
gooseberry bushes!”
I had no idea what
a stork looked like, but, as it had carried me, I sensed it was much bigger
than the herring gulls that perched on our roof.
I remember the day
Charles was due to be born, I wanted so badly to see the stork and waited
patiently in the garden, next to the two gooseberry bushes, with next-door
neighbor, Johnny Hoskins, hoping to see the big white stork swoop down to the
garden with mum’s new baby. When it was
time for bed, 10 year-old Jimmie wasn’t surprised when I told him the stork
didn’t arrive with our new baby.
“See,” he said, as we got into bed, “ told you. Ain’t true.”
“Just a story.”
The next morning,
over breakfast, a very tired looking dad told us that the big white stork had
indeed brought baby Charles during the night and left him first, under the new
gooseberry bush he’d planted, then Aunty Stella, the neighborhood midwife,
brought him upstairs to our mum’s bed.
So it was true! I
was so thrilled that, yes, we were left under the gooseberry bushes by the big
white stork. Dad said so, didn’t he?
In the daytime, I played with neighborhood kids outside in the
street, down the Bowjey, or, when the weather was nice, we’d kick a ball around
in one of the nearby farm fields.
After clearing away
the teatime dishes, mum, a Lancashire girl, usually sat in the kitchen with my
Grandma, close to baby Charles lying comfortably in an old wooden drawer.
Sometimes she listened to the latest news about the war on the crackly yellow
Ferguson wireless as she worked on her weaving, making fishing nets to sell to
the fishermen.
My brother Jimmie
and I sat on the small carpet and he read aloud The Beano and Dandy comics before
we played with my long-gone Granddad’s clay marbles. Sometimes, we played a
game of cards, tiddlywinks, ludo, or snakes and ladders.
If dad wasn’t on
the late night shift, he always sat on the soft green chair under to the front
room gas lamp, with Joseph stretched out on his knees, reading the boxing and
rugby reports in The Cornishman newspaper sports pages.
He’d set aside
Sunday afternoons, when he wasn’t driving his bus, to take the family on walks
to the beach or to the nearby lanes around the painter Stanhope Forbes’ manor
house.
It was dad’s chance
to show off what he knew about the hawks, owls, ducks, rabbits, badgers and
foxes that lived in the old granite hedgerows around the local farms, and the
jelly-fish, sharks, seals and dolphins that swam in the warm currents of Mounts
Bay.
.
Lariggan Beach was
the best place to go, though. I loved going there most of all because you never
knew what you might find lying on the pebbly sand - especially after a stormy
night!
After the Sunday midday meat and potato pasty dinner, washed down
with a cup of hot, steaming tea, if the sun was shining, mum would pick up her
old, scratched black leather bag. She’d fill a big Farley’s Rusks tin with
something to eat, perhaps a handful of small crab apples or small cheese sandwiches
with the thick crusts cut off, and drop in two empty ‘OXO’ tins and two
of dad’s used ‘OLD HOLBORN’ tobacco tins. We knew it was time to put on
our thick socks and rubber wellies.
Then, with Mum
pushing Charles’ pram, we’d make our way down the winding lanes, across the
harbor, to the pebbly beach.
If the tide was
out, we looked to see what had been washed up on the beach, then we’d hunt
small green and red crabs or brown bull cods in the rock pools. If we were
lucky, we’d find a stranded jellyfish that we could return to the sea. Then
we’d collect beautiful black and grey and white pebbles that had been smoothed
by the constant rolling motion of the sea.
Pebble collecting
was, for me, the most fun. I’d search for heart-shaped pebbles, or, even
better, black pebbles with a vein of white quartz running through the middle.
These pebbles with
the line of quartz were special. Mum and dad called them wishing rocks.
Finding a wishing
rock that rested comfortably in the palm of your hand made you feel good. You’d
pick it up, slowly wrap your fingers around it and squeeze really tight. When
your fingers warmed the pebble, you closed your eyes and thought about someone
you wanted to send a special wish to. Then, slowly, you uncurled your fingers,
knowing that somebody, somewhere, suddenly felt a warm shiver down the spine,
just as that lucky person got your wish! I always sent my very best wishes to
my mum and my dad.
When the wish had been sent, you put your wishing rock into what Mum called your treasure tin, a small
red OXO meat-cube tin. Mum and dad put theirs into the bigger, yellow OLD HOLBORN tobacco tins she’d carried
in her bag.
When we filled our
tins with our best finds of the day, ate our snack, we made our way home. If we
were really lucky, we’d first visit the corner shop at the bottom of Old Paul
Hill, and Dad would buy everyone a thruppeny crispy cone filled with Daniel’s delicious
homemade ice cream.
When we got back
home to 16, Treveneth Crescent, we took off our wellies, sat on the carpet in
the front room, and emptied our treasure tins on to a sheet of ‘The Cornishman’ newspaper. Mum boiled
the kettle on the gas stove, made a pot of tea, and cut up a couple of scones
and a fresh saffron cake.
As we drank tea and
munched slices of currant-filled saffron cake, sweetened with thick, yellow
margarine, dad, with Joseph the cat curled up on his knees, chose what he
thought was the best wishing rock, held it in his hand, looked at us
all, and would always ask the same question:
“Who found this
one?” “Was it you, Jimmie? You, Hazel?”
“ You, Johnny? Is
it yours?” “OK, then you, Johnny, you can make a wish for us all!”
“Then, you make a
wish, Jimmie, alright?”
“OH, then me and
mum, ok?”
“First, though,
we’ll all make a wish for baby Charles.”
After Jimmie and I
closed our eyes and made our wishes, Dad put five of our best, most beautiful wishing
rocks in the old chipped
green-glass jar on the small wooden table near the window in the front room. Most
of the rest were put into mum’s bag to return to the beach another day, so, as Mum would say, someone else could find and enjoy them. Then, lighting his
hand-rolled cigarette, Dad would take his first deep puff, slowly blow out a
circle of white and blue smoke, and then say:
“Ready, now? For a
story?”
Collecting wishing rocks was great but this was always
the best moment of the day.
We were always
ready for one of his stories because he told the best tales about badgers,
foxes, stoats, weasels, rabbits, sharks and whales. When you listened to his
soft voice, it was as if you could see everything as he had seen it.
“Yes, Dad. We’re ready.”
“’Onest, we are!
Tell us the one about the day you and mum collected wishing rocks. You know,
when you found the dead seal! You know, the crabs and stuff that were chompin’
on it!”
“NO, tell us about
the man who had his thumb bit off by a conger eel!”
“Then tell us about
the weasel.”
“Tell us both
stories!”
“OK” he said, shifting Joseph from
one knee to another, “here’s the one about the conger eel, THEN, the one
about the weasel surrounded by a circle of...............well, first I’ll show
you what I found today...”
Leaning back in his
chair, dad stubbed out his cigarette, closed his eyes, opened his tobacco tin
very slowly, cleared his throat, and, showed us what he’d found on the beach.
Dad’s best find always surprised me. It was always something different
and was always something that prompted him to tell a story.
When Dad finished,
he’d put his treasure inside his Old
Holborn tin and rest it on the side of his chair. Then, with the quietest voice,
told us how, when he was out in the woods very early, one bitterly cold morning,
he’d seen a family of stoats surround a wounded weasel, waiting to pounce, kill
and eat it.
“I waved my arms,” he said, “I shouted
really loudly, and the stoats ran off.”
“I saved the injured weasel’s life.”
“When the stoats had gone, the little weasel stood up, shook its
head, and hobbled off to the bushes.”
Transfixed, I sat at his feet and stared up at
him, sucking in every word.
As his story unfolded,
I’d close my eyes, like my dad closed his, really tight. It helped me see the stoats
and the weasel and hear the wild sounds that his words drew in my imagination.
When I went to bed,
under which was my growing collection of pebbles and shells in an old cardboard
box, my head was filled with bright images of wishing rocks, animals, birds and fish -
and filled with hope .
I hoped that the was weasel ok.
Did it get home
safely?
I hoped so.
Finding your own wishing rock makes you feel good.
