THE STATIONMASTER'S DAUGHTER

Chapter 10

We had lived at Otterham for over a year and my parents had made several friends. One couple had a farm just down the Launceston road. I don't know how they met, but suddenly I had a new friend too, the couples' daughter, Marita, she was two years older than me, but the age difference didn't seem to matter, she didn't have any other friends. Her school was a convent in Launceston, so none of her school friends lived near. Marita's mother was German and her father was Polish, both I have come to realise were very stereotypical of their races. The mother, Mrs Griner, came across as a very hard, unfeeling woman, who would drown baby rats in a bucket of water without batting an eyelid, but Mr Griner was a very gentle little man, with a ready smile, who was kind to everyone and loved his animals.
 
Marita and I did not see a great deal of each other on school days, but on weekends, she would walk over to play with the rest of us kids. She also had another reason for coming over - she had a crush on Edwin and would hang around the station office, especially in the holidays, hoping to see him. We all thought it was hilarious. Other times I would walk over to the farm to play with her. The other kids never came to the farm with me.
 
Life on their farm has left me with many happy memories. I would walk over to the farm after school and always spend whole days there in the school holidays. We would ride on the tractor, or the trailer at the back. We would help fetch the cows for milking and watch fascinated as they all trooped into the cowshed and knew exactly where their places were. Harvest time was always fun, helping to rake up the hay and load it onto the trailer, no fancy machinery in those days! It was during haymaking, as I got older, that I learnt to use one of the heavy two handled scythes. It was bigger than me, but at least I can say I had a go. Not many kids get that sort of opportunity. Another memory of life on the farm springs to mind - feeding the calves with huge bottles of milk, if there own mothers were unable to feed them, They would push and shove to get to the bottles, then guzzle it down, with some of it leaking out of the sides of their mouths. Some of the calves were nearly as big as me. The next step was to teach them to drink milk out of a bucket, so we would dip our fingers in the milk and let the calves suck it off our fingers, gradually letting our fingers drop lower and lower into the bucket until the calves were drinking straight from the bucket. I still feel emotional even now when I think of their soft wet mouths nuzzling my fingers, their beautiful big brown eyes looking trustingly at me.
 
Marita's parents grew fields of sugar beet, some of which they harvested and sold and some kept back as cattle feed, but we liked nothing better than going out into one of the fields and picking, peeling and eating the raw sugar beet. We must have eaten pounds of the stuff, but it never did us any harm. It was out in one of these fields that I had my first experience with an electric fence, and a very painful one it was too! Marita and I wanted to get into the next field and the gate was right the other end of the field. Was the fence switched on or not? Usually you can hear it ticking, but this time we couldn't hear anything, so of course, Marita, being the eldest, pulled rank on me and said I had to touch it to see if it was working. I touched it, it was working and the force of the shock sent me sprawling backwards, frightened to death.
 
The Griner's home was a large bungalow, often filled with Mrs Griner's relatives visiting from Germany. Mr Griner never seemed to have any of his relatives visiting, so perhaps he didn't have any. I remember them as being loud and of course speaking in German.
 
The beds always fascinated me. In the days before we had duvets, their beds were always piled high with thick fluffy duvets and huge pillows that almost swallowed up a small kid like me. I was forever climbing into Marita's bed and disappearing in the bedclothes. The rooms were always warm too, not like our cold house. It was a good place to visit.
 
There was a large shed in the garden, which Marita used as a playroom. She had loads of dolls and clothes to dress them in. We spent hours in that shed. Once I was playing in there on my own and found a sixpence on the floor and to my everlasting shame, I put it in my pocket and kept it. All these years later I still remember, so I must have had a very guilty conscience over stealing money from my friend. I have never done anything like that again.
 
At the side of the shed was Marita's swing and in front of the swing was a small duck pond. I liked the ducks, they were fun to watch, but there were also a couple of geese and a very bad-tempered gander. He would glare at us with evil eyes and flap his wings threateningly. We made sure to keep out of his way and never went on the swing if he was around. One day while I was waiting for Marita to finish her tea, I looked around, couldn't see the geese, so I decided it was safe enough to have a swing. What a mistake that was. I was swinging as high as I could possibly go, when round the side of the shed came the gander. He saw me straight away. By then the swing was slowing down. The gander rushed at me wings flapping furiously and honking loudly trying to attack me. I managed to stand up on the swing seat and kept kicking out at him, all the while screaming at the top of my voice. I was absolutely terrified. Eventually they must have heard me in the bungalow, because they all came rushing out and Marita's father shooed the horrible creature away. I never went on that swing again and have had a dread of geese ever since.
 
I felt back then that Marita and her parents would always be our friends, but one summer's day we made our way to the field as usual where the haymaking was, to give Mr and Mrs Griner a hand. We took some cold drinks with us as it was such a hot day. They totally ignored us and left us standing on the edge of the field wondering what on earth was wrong. My father tried to speak to them, but they wouldn't look at us, so the only thing we could do was leave. We never saw or spoke to them again. I lost a good friend that day. This was also my first experience of what a difficult woman my mother could be. She obviously couldn't deal with anyone who she felt had slighted her and made no effort to find out what was wrong and wouldn't let my father go and visit the Griners to find out either. To this day, I never knew what caused the sudden rift, but I always blamed my parents, it had to be their fault that I had lost Marita's friendship.
 
Another couple they became friends with were Jack and Peggy, the couple who ran the post office in Marshgate. They didn't have any children, so would come up to our house and play cards in the evenings. They were a nice couple. Our walk home from school took us past the post office, so if I ever had any pocket money, I would call in and buy a small bar of treacle toffee, yummy stuff! The third set of friends were Les and Bonnie Dawe, who lived a bit further down the road from Marita. They had a smallholding, but best of all they had electricity, run from a generator and so were able to have a television, which they invited us over to watch on a Saturday evening. Les and my father decided it was a great opportunity to go out for a drink, so the two of them would go off in Les's van and Mum, Neil and I would stay with Bonnie and her mother who was living with them and watch television.
 
Neil was too young to take in much of what we watched, but there were entertainment programmes, news and films. I can't remember much, but one film I saw was totally inappropriate for a child my age, but my mother never considered it unsuitable. It was a film about the Nazis and prisoner of war camps. Images of that film have stayed with me the rest of my life. When I think of what children have access to these days, I fear for their future, because they too will have images that stay with them for the rest of their lives.