Cherry by Sara Wheeler Read Free Book Online

pavilion.
    It is only two weeks from the holidays.
    I am looking forward to the time when we wake up in the morning and find that we are going home.
    I am your very loving son
    Apsley.
    No doubt his mother found time to send the toothbrush.
    For most of Laddie’s childhood Evelyn was either pregnant, or nursing, or both. Margaret, to be known as Peggy, made her appearance on 21 September 1896, when her brother was ten. He was now outnumbered four to one, and left alone in the school holidays to nurse his finches by the kitchen range, build crow’s-nests in the trees and ride his pony. In the summer he corralled as many of the male staff as he could for games of cricket. Tom Hobbs, the coachman’s son, was a mainstay of the team, and his niece recounts an episode that entered the lore of her own family:
    The young master did not much like being bowled or caught out, and once in a fit of temper threw a ball which hit the coachman’s daughter on the head. For his bad-tempered action he was rebuked by Mrs Hobbs who had witnessed the outburst, the more so because he denied the act and tried to frame the footman. ‘Fie, Fie, Master Apsley!’ Mother said. ‘That is not the way for a gentleman to behave.’
    That year, after term ended in December Laddie went on holiday to Devonshire with his father while his mother was with her family in Bedford. They took the train, and stayed at the Torbay Hotel on the seafront at Torquay. ‘Dear Mother,’ Laddie wrote two days after their arrival, Father and I went to church this morning and after church we went to try and get ourselves warm but it came on to rain so we had to retreat to the hotel. You can’t imagine how nice it is here especially when it does not rain and how I am enjoying myself. There was a collier in yesterday at least it has been in for a good time I should think as it was here when we came unloading the coal, it went out this morning early, we have got a very nice room facing the sea and not too big and not too small just ripping. Father and I went for a walk yesterday afternoon down by a place called Daddy’s Hole, it was very nice and so pretty. I am going to try if we get some decent weather to get some shells for my collection. I hope the baby is all right and kicking I shall expect to have some very pretty music from her when I come back to Lamer. It was an awfully nice journey down here, and having our dinner in the train . . . mind you tell the baby when I come to Lamer to celebrate my arrival with a tune. With much love to all I am your very loving son Apsley.
    In June 1897 Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee was celebrated from Zanzibar to Simla. The British Empire covered a quarter of the earth’s land surface, Lord Salisbury was back at the helm of the nation, and there were still plenty of reasons for landowners to celebrate. The forebodings of Kipling, the adult Laddie’s favourite author (‘Lo, all our pomp of yesterday/Is one with Nineveh, and Tyre!’), were hardly representative of the national mood. In Wheathampstead the Jubilee was marked by a feast in Parson’s Field next to the rectory lawn. The servants were given the day off. Dressed in their best clothes, they gathered for freckled cylinders of tongue, beer and rolled jam puddings. In the regrettable absence of the monarch herself, Evelyn glided between the tables doling out gifts while the village band played and the children raced donkeys. But Laddie was imprisoned at Folkestone. At the end of May he had written to his parents:
    Lots of boys are going up to the Jubilee, they are going up one day before and coming back one day after. I do not no what Mr Hussey is going to do about it but I think very likely we shall have 2 or 3 days holidays. My wrist is nearly all right we are having very changeable weather here. But it is not cold. I hope you are quite all right. The map we had on past Sunday was Spain and Portugal we have got to finish it today.
    I am your very loving