"Dreams - Really Do Come True" - A Book By Gordon Beard

New Beginnings

With the Jubilee celebrations over, the school returned to normal. As usual, all of us who lived too far away to go home to dinner, assembled in the infant class room. Miss Bacon was the only teacher not living locally so she was left to supervise the lunch period, making sure we all ate our sandwiches before we were allowed out to play. For most of us, this only took 20 minutes or so – it didn’t take long to eat two sandwiches (containing brown sugar, margarine and cheese, plum or other home made jam or dripping) and a currant tea cake (if we were lucky). Miss Bacon, who sat at her desk facing us, would open her brown attache case and peel a hard boiled egg. I remember the butter oozing off the edge of her slices of bread and the way she always had a banana or a real orange – something we only got once a year in our Christmas stockings. For fruits year round, we Beards had to be content with a windfall apple, out of which, when bitten into, a dozen earwigs would run out.

One day, Miss Caroll, who dined in her own quarters, came in with a plate of brown bread sandwiches and gave us one each. (She had obviously decided that the Beard family was under nourished). We had never had brown bread before and Madge took one bite, pulled a horrid face and spat it out. Miss Caroll was most annoyed and stood over her, demanding that she eat it. However, I was having none of this and called Madge, Keith and Phyllis to pick up their satchels and come to the cloakroom. Then I told Miss Caroll in no uncertain terms that we were going home. Mum was in full agreement with my decision and a nasty note was soon dispatched to Miss Caroll telling her precisely what the Beards thought of her action. A week later, the summer holidays began and we did not return to the school again. Arrangements were made for us to attend the Chapel school instead.

The chapel school was in the village centre, opposite the shop run by Iris Claydon’s father, Hugh, and the headmistress, Miss Agnes Gentry, made the Beard family very welcome. She was a down to earth, swarthy-complexioned woman the daughter of a light house keeper, who seemed inclined to favour boys. I had only six months left as a scholar and like the other senior boys, I was trusted to teach myself. We’d select a good book and as long as we behaved, we were given complete freedom.

I remember the other senior boys very well indeed. There was Donald Mead, who wore wire framed glasses and huge clumsy steel- capped hob-nailed boots. He resembled a professor and was quiet and unobtrusive, burying his head in a book all day long. He was a clumsy footballer too. He kicked our ankles more often than the ball and those steel-capped boots left a painful bruise! Then there was Herbert Bircher, who became a great friend. Although we appeared to be reading, we were really designing fancy book markers out of note paper and forming our own an imaginary company called “B & B Publishing Company -Book-Markers & Binders Ltd”. We did everything together. He was good all round sportsman; a good centre forward and dribbler of the ball as well as a good bowler and batsman. I preferred to play centre half and was a mediocre cricketer, unable to bowl, better at bat. Fred Manning, another senior boy, was an excellent bowler and Alec Metson was a good all round sportsman, whose dog, Paddy, would follow him everywhere. Paddy sat on our coats as we played and God forbid anyone went near them. He would also retrieve moorhen’s eggs from the nest and swim ashore with them in his mouth. He never broke a single one.

The captain and leading character was Eric Coe, the blacksmith’s son. He picked the team, and refereed and umpired as well as playing. His decisions were final. He’d stand on the imaginary centre circle with his right foot on the ball and his cloth cap on back to front. His bushy pure white eyebrows and steel grey eyes gave him an air of authority which he emphasized by sending a gob of spittle some five yards beyond the ball. He always chose Herbert Bircher as his opposing team captain and Eric would have first choice. This meant Bert always had the weaker team. I usually played for Bert.

We used to play in the church meadow at lunchtime and at play time in the school yard which was surrounded by iron spiked railings. If the ball went over the side railings into the Metson’s garden, the kicker had to jump the railings to retrieve it and, one afternoon, the kicker was me. But as I was climbing over, I slipped and my calf became impaled on one of the spikes, leaving me hanging upside down with my head on the playground. Don Mead came to my rescue and pulled me down, leaving a big lump of flesh on the spike. I think Keith raised the alarm and Miss Gentry and Miss Byatt covered the wound with a towel and carried me into Miss Gentry’s house and on to the bed. There I was attended to by Nurse Bonner (now the proud owner of an Austin seven to replace her sit up and beg bike). An agonizing hour later, a doctor arrived from Gt. Dunmow to stitch me up. No anaesthetic was used.

My other memory of those times was that Miss Gentry insisted the whole class learned “Grey’s Elegy” by heart.

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day
The lowly herd winds slowly o’er the lea
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

It seems a fitting end to my saga, especially because my school days did used to end like that. At 3.30pm, every day, we’d all listen for the jingle of the harness chains and tired clop clop of the horse’s hooves as the ruddy-cheeked ploughman, Francis Redman, rode by, side saddle, on the back of one of his horses. We would all picture him in our minds: his greying moustache, the peak of his cap off centre, his bright red neckerchief knotted around his neck and his lips parched and needing lubrication from his tongue – until he could refresh them with his favourite pint at the Cock and Bell.

I left school in March 1937 and joined the Essex regiment a year later. Childhood was over but my dreams did not die with it. Remember that lorry I dreamed of driving? And those medals I longed for?

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