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I entered into the shabby filthy hall where a bottle of milk lay on its side, its curdled  contents half  spilt out onto the  filthy musty  carpet. Then on into the equally dirty sitting room where I sat on an armchair next to a thin sickly cat. The sun shone in brightly and soon she was back with a weak pale cup of sweet milky tea served in a cup that was caked on the outside and probably had not been properly washed for months. I gritted my teeth as I sipped it and waited for her to open the conversation.
“ Where do you come from?” she inquired.
“From Horsham, not so far away”
“I have a daughter living there, she is married with a son”.
“What is her name?” I inquired.
“It is Holmes”
“She hasn’t got a 15 year old son called  Colin ?”
“ She certainly has”
“Well he works for me as one of my Saturday boys, and he is one of the best I have had for a long time, and is always neatly turned out and is most obliging with a nice manner. The customers love him”.
Her scowling face suddenly in an instant changed into a beaming smile at this amazing coincidence, and the fact that I liked her grandson so much. We chatted away for a bit and then she said:
“ Well what   is it that you want, is it the garden?”
I replied that it was and I explained all my problems and she said, of course you can have it, I wont be here much longer and we settled it there and then for £1,000 for 1,000 sq ft. We were then able to get land from Vicky  where we needed it,  and in exchange gave her space for her garage and her access so everyone ended up happy!

In the middle of May 1975 there was yet another crisis of a different sort. This time it was my poor Mother who had been ill for sometime and was admitted to Hammersmith Hospital  to have her gall bladder removed. Whilst this was being done, the surgeon noticed that part of the bowel was cancerous, and he removed the diseased section successfully. I came to see her each day with huge bunches of flowers from our lovely garden. Great spikes of blue delphiniums, huge bunches of roses and colourful paeonies  all lifted her spirits and added a touch of country brightness to the drab ward. After a few days there was a nursing staff  change and the standards of care fell, with no-one monitoring her and changing the drainage bags which had filled up. Luckily I arrived to be confronted with this and I raised such a furore taking the names down of each of the nurses  in charge, and the duty doctor. I warned them that should anything untoward happen to her, I would not hesitate to take the matter to court and name the people concerned. On this everything suddenly swung into action with a great fuss being made,  but already it was a bit late and an infection had set in. She had to have a new antibiotic which then caused an allergic reaction in her blood destroying her platelets which resulted in  her  having blood blisters all over her hands face and body. Fortunately the Hammersmith Hospital is the leading centre in England for blood research. I met the professor in charge the following day who was very concerned at her condition and transfused more platelets until fortunately over the next few days she slowly recovered under his careful eye and close supervision. Mother was in hospital for over a month and then when she was strong enough to leave, I placed her in my yellow Triumph Stag and drove her down to Stoneways to recuperate The summer of 1975 was very hot and sunny and she spent most of the day time sitting under a fir tree in the garden in the cool of its shade. As usual Jill was marvellous in feeding nurturing and making her feel at home for the next month whilst she built up her strength again. Mother although so physically frail after her long traumatic life, through the constant rows in the thirties with Lilian Paterson, the POW camp in Japan where she starved herself  for me, the the lonely time in setting up home in Buxted and later in London, was at heart a  born fighter. This together with her wonderful intellect made us both very similar in character as we both talked the same inquiring intellectual language. Jill with her kindness also fitted in perfectly and the two would also be close  and would endlessly chat about household matters such as cooking, sewing, gardening  etc. in spite of the great difference in years. Each greatly respected the other and each had a good brain in their own particular ways.
In July 1974 the schools broke up. Peter and Janet had each done well in their school work and had each got a University acceptance, Janet to read Art History and English at Nottingham,  and Peter to read geology at Southampton.

I was very keen that they had a year off prior to going to University to enable them to be capable of standing on their own feet before meeting the intoxicating whirl of  a freshers life which can sweep youngsters off their feet. Janet wanted to improve her french which she had taken her A levels in,  and applied as an au pair with an agency in Paris. Her first appointment was disastrous but three weeks later she changed to a “Pieds Noir” (ex Algerian French settler) architect and family who were absolutely charming and treated her very kindly. Each afternoon she had time off to go to the Alliance Francaise where she had lessons that ended up with her becoming absolutely fluent. Peter meanwhile who was rather introverted and nervous in disposition I thought would come out more in a colonial environment and I arranged for him to go and stay with my brother Hugh who lived in Salisbury (Harare). Hugh at the time had a black granite quarry about 100 miles away in the bush, and of course he was always off shooting in the outback. Peter was very nervous as I took him to the airport and put him on a plane for Johannesburg as there were no direct flights there with British sanctions in force because Ian Smith had declared UDI. Peter loved the free and easy life of Hugh’s household and his three younger children  who he would regularly toss into the swimming pool. After a brief spell of selling encyclopaedias, Hugh managed to get him a job with a man who worked for Union Carbide that was doing exploration work. He had to take a couple of land rovers and caravans, some Africans and campin the bush a couple of hundred miles south of Salisbury. There they took soil samples on a grid map basis for about two weeks, when he would return with them back to Salisbury, have a few days off and get back to work. He had a gun and would shoot the odd guinea fowl for the pot, he had authority over his small crew, and above all he had a wonderful sense of freedom that one can only get when one works in a far off place. So he fell in love with Africa and also fell in love for a brief time with a pretty blonde girl that he met in a bookshop called Jenny Wall whose father was a water engineer. As the year of his tour was coming to an end he got offered a place at Salisbury University to study geology out there, financed by Union Carbide on a release contract, which he wanted to accept. At that time as well Hugh happened to come over to England on business and told me of the details of the offer and how he must take it up. I went nearly round the bend with worry as it was self evident that the guerrilla war was just about to commence. In fact there had already been the odd skirmish, and Hugh was boasting to me how the Africans  did not stand a chance and how the Rhodesian army would have them all wrapped up in no time.   I retorted that guerrillas by their very nature always win in the end, and in the meantime a lot of blood will be spilt and I did not want Peter being called up to fight  and be killed in a war which was of no concern to him and which it was doomed to be lost in any case. Hugh would not agree, and could not see sense, but Anne was still out there and even more important staying with them was her younger brother Paul  Matthews who was a teacher doing a practical spell of work out there. Peter had a great regard for Paul who was about 10 years older and a very sound and like Anne a very sensible individual . I telephoned

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Great Nieces & Nephews 2010.

 

 

Freddie Charnaud 2010.

 

 

Cathrine & Roger, Westlands 2011.

 

Stoneways Garden