Memories of a Malmesbury Girl

Chapter Seventeen

My Brothers

I didn't have a great deal to do with my older brother's because by the time I was about 3 years old my eldest brother, Tony, had left home to join the training ship 'Arethusa' as a boy cadet that was moored at Rochester in Kent. I only saw him when he was allowed home on leave and when Tony became 17 he was enrolled in the Royal Navy proper and took his final examinations while his ship was in action somewhere off the Korean coast, The Korean War was raging at this time. Tony travelled around the world three times with the Royal Navy as a gunner and attained the rank of Petty Officer, but unfortunately Tony had the Poole short temper, he took after my Grandfather on my father's side, and one day he struck a senior officer and was reduced in rank to Able Seaman. Tony stayed in the Royal Navy for at least twenty years, by this time I was about seventeen years old and had just got married. He eventually settled down and met a young lady called Brenda, they actually met in a hole in the ground while Brenda was involved in an archaeological dig in Priory Park, Prittlewell a suburb of Southend-on-Sea, and eventually married and had one son called Richard. Tony and Brenda settled down to married life and bought a house in Rochford. Unfortunately Tony died in January 2002 but has been buried back in his beloved Malmesbury at the cemetery where all the family from both sides are interred. I must have been only about 7 or 8 at the most when my second eldest brother, Geoffrey, enrolled in the RAF, unfortunately he failed the eye test to train as a pilot because he was found to be colour blind. I am not sure what he did train for in the end; it could have been navigation or traffic control. Geoffrey spent many happy years in the RAF and he also travelled the world being stationed in Nairobi, Kenya, South Africa, at Aden in North Africa, a very tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean on which there was a small base, he sent my eldest daughter at this time a beautiful red satin oriental outfit. Geoffrey also spent a lot of years based around Cologne in Germany. It was while he was in Germany that he met his wife Anna. My mother just couldn't get along with Anna and always insisted she only married him to get a British passport. I must admit there is something of a mystery surrounding Anna, she claimed her parents were titled, her father being Baron Puch, and she liked to listen to the BBC Foreign Service news. She claimed at one time that she had heard on the news that her parents had been killed in a car crash, but at other times she talked about visiting them and other family members. I don't think Geoff had a happy marriage because not long after they were first married a 'lady' friend of my Aunty Mary who we used to call Aunty Katy went to visit them and never moved away. I understand this 'lady friend' was what is now known as Gay and Geoff was barred from the marriage bed because Aunty Katy had moved into his place. At this time he was still in the RAF so only came home when he had any leave. It was not long after this that he retired from the RAF and entered the Prison Service as a warder. He was stationed around Send near Guildford at a prison for young offenders. The house Geoff, Anna and Katy lived in belonged to the prison service but Geoff was allowed to purchase it. Unfortunately Geoff died in 1995, he had a massive heart attack and because of the severity of it he also suffered a stroke and memory loss. I used to telephone Geoff to speak to him and he still thought of me as a young teenager, he could not remember that I was married with 2 children of my own, in fact, it was Geoff who gave me away when I got married. There was a big piece in the paper about Geoff flying home from Nairobi so as to give me away at my wedding, in fact, it was touch and go as to whether he would be with us in time, although of course my father could have done it but my mother thought it would be a nice thing for my brother to do this. I do not have many memories of much to do with my older brothers because as I said they left home when I was very young. One of the few memories I do have relates to me being taken by them both to the a cinema in Chippenham on my mother's orders, to see the Disney film, Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs, that came out in 1947. I was only about 3 years old at the time but because my brothers didn't want to be seen with a little girl they palmed me off with a lady in the queue who had children of her own while they went exploring. I can remember being taken to this lady's house after the film to wait for my brother's to collect me but not a lot more. I have also been informed reliably that on another occasion Tony and Geoff went off together to do some fishing from a small pond that wasn't far from where we lived at the time, 46 Kings Walk, I tried to run after them and as they had gone over some stepping stones to the other bank of this pond I tried to follow suit, unfortunately I slipped and fell in and was nearly drowned. Tony and Geoff got into a lot of trouble over the state I was in when they got me home; I was covered in green algae and wet through. It was always exciting when either Tony or Geoff came home on leave, as the usually brought home items they had bought while they were abroad. I can remember on one occasion, I believe it was Tony, bringing home a Japanese Porcelain tea service that was so thin, that if you held the cup up to the light you could see the head of a Japanese lady in the base. I believe it was Geoff who brought this item home, from the time when he was stationed in Nairobi. It was a stuffed baby crocodile about 2 to 3 feet in length. I thought it very ugly. It wasn't often that they managed to get leave at the same time as each other, but one Christmas this did happen and we had a big party in our best front room. I can remember Tony strumming his guitar and Geoff thumping away on his skiffle box he had made. The Four of Us, Tony behind me, Geoff behind Chris. One of my brothers also brought home a Hawaiian Guitar and neither Chris nor I was allowed to touch it. I am afraid I didn't get along to well with my younger brother; I think this was because my mother always thought of him as the baby of the family and he couldn't do any wrong. Also as I was the only girl I had to help my mother around the house. At first I used to have to share my bedroom with Chris and he used to make a mess of his things. I was always being told to go and clean this room up, but when I remonstrated saying that it wasn't my mess but Chris's I was told it was my job to keep it clean. I was very pleased when my father converted the attic into another bedroom and Chris moved up into the attic. Chris was something of a tomboy and always hurting himself. On this occasion he was off school because he had broken his arm, I can't remember how, but it was around April time and my mother needed to go up to a local farm where Aunty Mary stored a caravan she owned. This caravan was always taken to Portishead for the summer months for holidays. While my mother was inside the caravan giving it a spring clean in readiness for moving she left Chris outside playing. She had refused to leave him home because she said she couldn't trust him to behave himself on his own if left at home. Anyway, my mother was inside the caravan when she heard a cry and went outside to see what had happened. Chris had decided that it would be fun to climb up to the top of a large hayrick and slide back down, only at the bottom hidden among some weeds was a barbwire fence. Chris had slid down this hayrick right onto the barbwire fence, badly cutting his face just above one of his eyes. The doctor said if the barb itself had been at the point he could have lost his eye, Chris was left with a nasty scar on his face. On another occasion it was the start of the new school year, so my mother had bought both my brother and I new school uniforms. The cost of these wasn't cheap, anyway, when we came home from school we always had to change into our old clothes to play in. This day Chris didn't bother changing when he got home from school but went straight out to play. At the back of Bremilham Terrace was a large open field and the local authority had just started building a new school in this field, it was to be the new Secondary Modern School, but as I said, Chris went out to play in this field with all the wet mud and earth that had been removed to dig the foundation with. When he came home he was covered from head to toe in mud and dirt, as well as being minus one shoe. My mother was so angry because as I had said all these items were brand new. We never did find the shoe and my mother had to buy Chris another new pair. <<<   17   >>>