The “virtually indestructible” story reminded me of another incident from the dawn of time. If a certain person who reads this blog sees this she may well arrange to have me killed but it’s a cute story.
It could have easily been a tragic story but fate, or whatever controls these things, intervened and there was a happy outcome.
My mother worked up at Hillgrove for a few more years just taking my little sister with her; I was in primary school by then.
One day my older sisters and I got off the school coach to be met by the lady who played the church organ. We were to go to her house for tea and stay there until Mummy came to collect us.
Apparently my little sister had been rushed to hospital and everyone was quite worried. I didn’t mind having to stay at the Webber’s, Mrs Webber believed in cooked tea and we had sausages.
Naturally we were all very upset about our little sister and waited on tenterhooks until Mummy finally arrived to take us home. We were assured that everything was fine but our sister was being kept in overnight for observation.
It transpired that a certain little girl had gone for a wander in the big garden at Hillgrove and had come back to the house with a big smile on her face. Asked what she’d been up to she announced that she’d found some ‘pretty’ berries to eat.
Instantly alert to danger Mummy and Mrs Tobin asked her to show them the berries and she happily trotted back into the garden. When she pointed to a deadly nightshade plant there was uproar.
Calling an ambulance would have taken ages in such an isolated place so Mrs Tobin immediately got the car out and off they all sped to Petworth Cottage Hospital where a powerful emetic was administered.
My little sister thoroughly enjoyed all the attention she got at the hospital but wasn’t at all happy about being made violently sick. The doctors were fairly confident that they’d got all the poison out but, just for safety’s sake, decided she should stay in.
The next day when we got home from school there she was, her usual smiling self and apparently none the worse for her experience. A valuable lesson had been learned about not eating ‘pretty’ berries without asking Mummy first.
The sweetest part of this tale is the retribution that befell the evil plant. The Tobin boys were home from school at the time and they adored my little sister. When their mother told them about the incident they were incensed that a mere plant could cause so much trouble and threaten the life of a little girl.
Donning their sheath knives, they marched down the garden and slashed the deadly nightshade plant to pieces before digging up the roots. They then gathered all the bits together, found some twigs to use as kindling and started a little bonfire to utterly destroy the horrible thing so that it couldn’t hurt anyone again.
Love
That sounds like almost primeval vengeance by the boys!
But I thought little girls were made of sugar and spice?
Which reminds me: Pete has suddenly discovered that what he thought was a hawthorn bush (and therefore butchered all but out of existence) is in fact a blackberry bush and has picked us some apparently beautiful ripe ones.
Mind you, if it was left to me, I’d purify them in port wine for an hour or two and I’m sure that would make them very good for us.
I think it proves something that I’ve always believed, even before I read Lord of the Flies, boys are fundamentally savages and it’s very easy to strip away the veneer of civilisation.
I’m a bit saddened that Pete would be so nasty to a hawthorn, they’re beautiful at certain times of the year. A nice discovery though and blackberries really are delicious; we had a huge bramble hedge in the cottage garden when I was a kid and blackberry something or other was often a late summer pudding.
Everything is better for you if it’s purified in some form of alcohol first!
I loved the last part about the boys making sure the plant wouldn’t hurt another person. While nature has its rough edged side and for good reason, it sure was sweet to read how they were willing to put their concern into action for some one they cared about.
Thank you for this post as it brought a smile to my lips, as it is full of love and hope and things working out right.
Love and hugs
Scottie
Yes, happier moments that live on in the mind. They’re memories worth holding on to as they prove that there is good in the world even when bad things happen.
Love
Mac
I think it proves something that I’ve always believed, even before I read Lord of the Flies, boys are fundamentally savages and it’s very easy to strip away the veneer of civilisation.
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I could not agree more!
Sums it up I think.
I am very interested to follow your exploits on the OS map of the area. I see Hillgrove. What was it – a country house? A nice walk to it from your village by the looks of it. I can’t see a school marked at Northchapel so presumably there isn’t one there now. On your forced walks home as detailed elsewhere did you take the back roads? I can see there is a direct route from Midhurst to Lurgashall via Lickfold. Lovely country but up and down I presume. You must had to leave home in the morning at the crack of dawn in order to get to school on time – grim in winter. I don’t think you have said what happened to that village pest. I am amazed that it went on so long. That was incredible. Did you say how old he was? Is there more to come? Sorry, I don’t want to stir up memories.
That’s a comprehensive set of questions that merits a similarly comprehensive answer so here goes…
Hillgrove House sat right on top of Hillgrove Hill but there were houses, expensive ones on both sides of the hill as well. Technically, going from Lurgashall, Hillgrove started at a small crossroads just outside the village heading towards Northchapel.
I don’t think my old primary school is there anymore; for reasons that no doubt made sense to them West Sussex County Council decided to ignore the school’s record of excellence and rationalise primary education into one much larger school.
There were a couple of options for getting home from Midhurst on those times when I had to go on foot. At Easebourne there was a turning that led up Bexley Hill, down through Lickfold and then on to Lurgashall. Bexley Hill is very steep and I didn’t fancy that slog at all, even though it cut about a mile off the walk. The route I used was along the main Midhurst to Petworth road as far as Halfway Bridge, then left into Lodsworth and on through Lickfold to Lurgashall that way; longer but flatter.
The daily trip to Midhurst was about twice as long as it should have been. One coach picked us all up in Lurgashall, then dropped the secondary and grammar kids at Lane End (between Northchapel and Petworth) and another coach took us to Petworth, to deliver most of the children to the Herbert Shiner school. After that we’d trundle on to Midhurst picking up odd fellow Grammar school kids at places like Tillington.
My school day started at about 6:30am and I used to get home just in time for the 6:00pm news (Home service – no TV) as long as the traffic wasn’t too bad.
The pest (what a beautiful euphemism!) managed to avoid discovery by being a lot cleverer than I’d given him credit for. If your maps cover the area towards Haslemere, look for two places; one is Dial Green and the other is Windfall Wood. The wind is pronounced locally to rhyme with bind and it’s known colloquially as Windfold Wood. If you can see those two places I’ll tell you the story of how my Mother unwittingly compounded my problems.
I meant to add something. Don’t worry about stirring up memories; the bad ones never went away and it’s nice to have the good ones stirred up to remind me that there were very happy times as well.
Yes, I can see the two places you mention. The whole area seems such an idyllic place to grow up in. I was on the edge of a town with access to the countryside but you were right in the middle of it. In those days we roamed far and wide without anyone giving it a second thought. Without a wristwatch, I missed lunch on many an occasion. You had much more opportunity to roam but with dire consequences it would seem. But I hope you have good memories of the area, too. For me it was making bows and arrows, damming streams, climbing trees etc. You had such opportunity for these things. Your village is still very picturesque. I went through it a couple of times several years ago. That part of Sussex is quite remote.
Apart from one bad person it was an idyll; I spent a large part of my childhood wandering around the countryside without a care and with no harm befalling me. Mum never worried about me as long as I was home by evening. I have many wonderful memories of Lurgashall which I’ve decided to focus on for a while. Why should I let one perverted teenager spoil what was, for the most part a wonderful childhood?
The village is still beautiful, I was there in March for Dad’s funeral but it’s a deceptive beauty. Talking to Rich’s oldest brother in the pub afterwards I discovered that there are hardly any people left that I knew when I was a youngster. None of them can afford to live there and most of the houses around the green are weekend homes. The cricket club is barely surviving which is so sad; on of my proudest moments in Lurgashall was donning my school whites to play for the village team one Sunday. The Noah’s Ark is now Greene King’s idea of a village pub rather than the real thing where I used to sit outside with a glass of lemonade and a packet of Smith’s crisps when my ‘Uncle’ was courting Mum.
It was terribly remote though, we had to walk a mile to get a bus to either Petworth or Haslemere. Getting to Midhurst during the holidays was a nightmare and involved the walk to Lane End, a bus to Petworth and then another bus to Midhurst; all in all about 2 hours travelling.
I hope you don’t mind my asking where your home town is. In my time I got to know most of Sussex (East and West) and actually had to travel to Crawley to take my senior violin gradings and the instrumental component of my music A level. While I knew Horsham reasonably well I was very familiar with Chichester as I had to go to St Richard’s Hospital for my knee problems.
I’m not procrastinating, I will tell you the tale of Windfall Wood but I don’t want to sour this particular moment.
My home town was Horsham. Much different then – idividual shops and narrow (mostly two-way) streets. Now the central streets are pedestrianised with a sort of ring road which operates like a race track. And all the usual – Top Shop, Next, Currys etc. But I guess a lot of market towns have been similarly treated. But good parts remain eg the Carfax and the Causeway leading to the Parish Church. This reminds me that on Founders day we used to march in School Houses to the PC through the town. When marching down the Causeway we used to dread that the Church bells would start pealing since this meant that we could not hear the prefect calling the squad to halt. To the amusement of onlookers I’m sure, some boys heard the command and halted while others kept marching! Complete shambles! From Lurgashall I can see that you take the road to Dial Green after which turn right to what is shown on the map as Windfallwood Common. But I can see there are woods and open land and some houses/buildings. As you can tell I am a bit of a map freak! By the way, you don’t need to share. I think we all have something. Does anonymity help?
I used to be very fond of Horsham, we didn’t go there often but occasionally Dad would decide that it would be a nice drive. As I remember it was very similar to, but larger than Midhurst so I sort of felt at home. Founders Day was always a bit of a laugh wasn’t it? We used to assemble in the quad; which could barely hold all 450 of us and then march up North Street, along Knockhundred Row to Church Street and the PC while adoring people watched the array of Royal Blue and Gold. The same chaos used to occur when we got to the church, the front would stop and the rear would keep moving. That happened every time and there were red faced Masters daring any one of us to laugh. Oh, the Head Boy and Girl proudly led the parade with a huge banner with the school crest on it.
I’ve no problem with telling the tale of Windfallwood Common; if anything I tend to be over considerate that people might be shocked. There’s an early draught of that incident at Windfallwood Common
I probably won’t make this a blog post, but it will be in the book I’m working on. It’s a ‘watered down’ version of the events so hopefully it won’t be too upsetting.
“Upsetting” is not the correct description – more bewildered; unable to grasp. You don’t say how old the pest was but my memory will not dredge up even the possibility that my contemporaries at that age could have behaved like that. Sure we larked around – fly ripping, ball grabbing etc but such activity as you experienced was totally unknown – not even joked about. Maybe we (me in particular) were naive. Dare I enquire, did you know him; know where he lived, see him on other more public occasions? You seemed close to your mother. Would you not have mentioned it to her? Were the encounters frequent? It must have been a very frightening experience.
The pest was 16 when he first molested me, I was 2 weeks past my 10th birthday. His family lived about 100 yards down the road from us. He wasn’t very bright and had left school at 15 to become a farm hand. He and his 14 year old brother had a reputation for violence and I was very scared of him so when he made me promise to keep things secret I didn’t dare do anything else.
I came very close to telling my best friend who would have told his big brothers and the problem would have been dealt with but in the end fear got the better of me again. From the first encounter in the bus shelter something happened almost every Saturday for 3 years; except in the coldest part of winter.
I was close to my mother but things had changed when her relationship with ‘Uncle Jim’ became serious; he wanted me to be more boyish and tough thinking that growing up in an all female household had made something of a sissy of me. Part of that was me fighting my own battles which I clearly took too far.
The psychology of an abuse victim is incredibly hard to explain which is one of the reasons I’m working on the book. On the face of it there’s no rational explanation for an intelligent, honest boy to allow the situation to develop but there’s very little logic involved from a subjective point of view.
Don’t feel that any of your questions impose or trouble me; part of the process of recovery has been finally being able to talk about those events.