My Secret Sister: Jenny Lucas and Helen Edwards' Family Story by Helen Edwards, Jenny Lee Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

bunker to get onto the narrow part of the green. It was just a chip-shot – half a wedge; something like that. If I made it I knew it must have been a very good shot. Sometimes I practised till as late as eleven o’clock. I was still young, around six, but a perfectionist even then, and keen to improve.
    All the children played golf. There were three holes on the top of the hill towards the sea, and we kids used to go out in our bare feet at night-time, carrying a few clubs in the darkness, and play these three holes round and round.
    When I was old enough, maybe eight or nine, my dad started to take me round the course with him to be his caddy and carry his bag, which was great, because I enjoyed his company so much – I was happy to be anywhere with him. His joviality rubbed off on everyone, especially me. We used to talk about his golf as we were going round. He wasn’t a fantastic player, but he loved the game and did well in our club competitions. It wasn’t just golf he loved – he had so much enthusiasm for life. It bubbled out of him. It has stayed with me and inspired me in everything I’ve done.
    Dad loved me coming around with him, caddying. We often used to practise shots together, and he was with me the first time I played round the whole course. Looking back now, I’m sure he was proud of me, especially the fact that I often chose to go round with him rather than play with my friends, though occasionally I would say, ‘Oh no, Dad, I can’t today. I said I’d go out in the canoe.’ I’m sure he must have been disappointed on those occasions, though he never showed it. We were such wonderful companions. I don’t suppose he could have realized at that stage that I would make a good golfer.
    Sometimes a haar would come in across the bay and over the links. You get them a lot in that area, a kind of sea fog that blots out everything. We couldn’t see our own hands held out in front of us one time when we were all coming across from the car park one night over the dunes. We managed to find our way up to the golf-course, then lost our bearings.
    ‘Come on, pet, follow me,’ said my mother as we inched along in single file. ‘I know the waaaaaaaay.’
    She disappeared. She’d missed her footing and had slid down the damp sand all the way to the bottom of a bunker about six feet below. I was alarmed until I realized, as she climbed out, that she was fine – covered in sand but unscathed.
    ‘Oh yes, Mam.’ I smiled. ‘You know the way?’ and we laughed together.
    The contrast between Embleton and our home in West Jesmond was striking in almost every way. Where we used to live in West Jesmond is now a student area, by the Metro line that runs into Newcastle, but when I lived there as a child, in Ashleigh Grove, West Jesmond was a real community where everyone helped each other, and there were all sorts of shops just round the corner including a general dealer across the road from our house. The wife was Dutch, a lovely woman. I can still picture her cutting the bacon and shaping the butter with her ridged wooden paddles. (All the customers wanted to be served by her, as her husband drooled a little.) There was a dairy next to the dealer’s, then the Co-op, where shoppers collected ‘dividends’, a bit like today’s loyalty cards. My mother used to send me across for things she needed.
    ‘Go for a loaf at the Co-op, Jen. What is the divi number?’
    ‘65239.’
    ‘OK, go quickly now, flower, and look each way before you cross the road. Don’t forget to count the change, then come straight home.’
    The old train station, next to the coal yard, was only a couple of streets away, and heavy steam trains rumbled through at regular intervals, blowing their whistles and blackening the buildings. I remember how much my mother had to clean. There was always a layer of coal dust lining our window sills that she could never get rid of, and it thickened the air and clogged our lungs so that we were