A slightly raucous drinking session recently lead to the conclusion that I had the education of an early twentieth century public school boy, from the study of classics to the wearing of the grey stockings and the grey hat. That being so, and I can't deny it however much I may wish to, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to know that my homelife as a child wasn't exactly normal either. We had a cook, a cleaner, a live-in nanny and a gardener, who, like all gardeners of the time period that I've ever read about, had a shed at the bottom of the garden, in which There Be Dragons.
We were allowed in his shed by invitation only. I remember plotting a coup with my to older brothers; the plan was to barricade ourselves inside one afternoon- but we lost our nerve. If memory serves, we snuck down the far corner of the garden and, in deadly silence, each of us twitchy as three twitchy things, opened the shed door- at which point we lost our nerve and fled. He was off with us for days after; again, if memory serves, this event fell around the time of the village fete, where the Clarke family traditionally did Something. My oldest brother, James, entered a batch of brownies that never made it to the fete, being eaten/ fed to the ducks on the half hour walk there. Being the only girl and the cooks favourite, I entered a sponge cake, and won second prize for it- I took it home with me and delivered it to the shed, rosette and all, in what, if you take my age (five and a bit) into consideration, remains one of my most elaborate apologies to date.
Crossing him lead to dire fates, such as not being shown where the birds nests were, being told on if we went climbing the trees, and not being given the pick of the crop; you could measure how high up in his favour you were by whether it was you he gave the first few raspberries to or not. He'd give us cucumbers from the greenhouse, and egg shells. I never could tell duck eggs and those of birds apart once they were in the pieces a hatching will inevitably render a beautiful eggshell to (and here, for some reason, two things pop into my head. Firstly, Margaret Attwood's The Handmaid's Tale, "happiness is an egg", and also the phrase "you can't make an omelette without cracking eggs.")
If invited, one could go into his shed and keep him company while he worked. Sometimes we'd sit in silence and I'd watch him weaving twine together (for the life of me I can't remember what he was making or what he used it for), his hands, twisted with arthritis following the pattern easily, if not as deftly as he had done. He taught me how to whistle using two blades of grass, and he'd tell me stories about his childhood. He was a gruff character, easy to offend but quick to forgive, kind and more than kind to the children who pestered him, getting under his feet as he worked. I think he's one of the people who shaped me most as a child, this man who's temper would flash, sudden and unexpected as lightning, and over just as quickly.
He had a limp that we accepted, as children do, as just the way of things- it was only much later that I learned, from another source, that it was a remnant from the war. I simply can't understand this silence of old soldiers. In the way of spoiled children with over-active imaginations, we'd tell one another stories that featured him- in one he'd be a character not unlike the farmer in Peter Rabbit, in another he'd be the dashing war hero- and I think, looking back, that it was the dashing part of that that made us laugh the most.

I heard today that he died last night, Charlie Hamilton.

I hate the memory of us giggling at him.