Rambles on the Edge. Wendy Maitland

it was charming at the time, and now he likes me to sit on his lap, which is charming too. But not in front of you, of course, since you are so disapproving of our lovemaking.’

      That observation put an end to any further conversation on the subject as any mention of lovemaking in association with Andy was too much to bear.

      East Grinstead was in an area of glorious walking country that included Ashdown Forest where we took the children on mellow afternoons, Peter in a pushchair while Louise and Simon ran ahead. If Andy came too he would drive us there and then sit in the car reading a book while we walked. Ros likes to tell the story about one of these walks when I was wheeling Peter in the pushchair, deep in conversation with Muz, while Ros and Spindle walked behind. Peter stood up in the chair, pointing to a bird he had spotted, trying to draw my attention to it, but lost his balance and fell out of the chair onto the path in front. ‘You never even noticed,’ Ros reminds me on those occasions when family misdeeds are being revisited. ‘You just ran him over with the empty pushchair and carried on completely oblivious, yakking away to Muz. When you eventually noticed, and stopped to pick him up, he didn’t even whimper or make any fuss at all, obviously used to that kind of negligence.’

      It was just as well that none of us were soft-centred when we went to stay with Adam’s aunts at Howleigh and the children were introduced to their legendary beach picnics. These carried on all year regardless of weather, so that in winter we would be crouched on the shingle like survivors from a shipwreck, huddled together with wet dogs, lashed by an arctic wind. None of this deterred the aunts who rallied us with forced cheerfulness and sandy sandwiches that the dogs snatched from our hands. ‘Here, have a b-boiled egg instead, the d-dogs don’t like those,’ Aunt Diana would stammer through frozen lips. ‘It’s slightly b-bracing today.’

      Back at their house, keeping warm offered a different set of problems in the absence of central heating or provision for such unaccustomed requirements as drying nappies. ‘Granny mustn’t catch sight of them,’ the aunts warned me, ‘so you’ll have to hang them on the rail above the Aga after she’s gone to bed.’ Granny had never been exposed to the sight of a nappy. There had always been nannies and nursemaids to deal with such things for her own children and she would find it offensive to observe, even accidentally, any such article on display now at this stage of her life. Regardless of these and other eccentric prohibitions, we all loved being at Howleigh where the aunts fondly prepared such a varied programme of events for us that it was impossible to be bored or unhappy.

      On other visits, in summer it would be long hot days at the county show or village fetes, in between picnics in meadows where we lounged on tartan rugs, buzzed by wasps. Evenings were spent in a twitter playing cards or getting out the sherry glasses for neighbours coming round; the glasses sticky with lip and finger marks from the previous time used, with only a dip-wash afterwards by the aunts before being put away ready for the next round. Howleigh’s tiny scullery did not allow for hygienic washing up in a stone sink at knee-height designed for dainty Victorian kitchen maids, and now visited as briefly as possible by the aunts.

      ‘We can’t seem to get village girls to come up the hill and oblige any more,’ Granny complained, unable to comprehend that those village girls who used to slave in the kitchen for a pittance were long gone. Somerset village girls now went to university or took the bus to Taunton where they worked in smart offices or shops, while Howleigh stayed mothballed in a time-zone where innovations such as a washing machine or electric kettle were thought by Granny to be dangerously modern.

      Muz however had a marvellous invention called a twin-tub that was wheeled out on washdays when hoses were attached to the sink to provide a water supply and draining outlet. One tub did the washing while the other was a spin dryer, working together in a combined operation that I found captivating despite the close supervision required. There was a tendency for the machine to lose control at maximum revs when the wash-tub went into rock-and-roll mode, slopping soapy water onto the linoleum floor, while the spin-tub tottered and lurched to a roar of increasing vibrations. At this point there would be a shout from Louise in the sitting room next door where she and the others were watching Magic Roundabout on TV: ‘We can’t hear anything, Mummy. You’re making too much noise.’

      We were settling into a contented routine at Forest Lodge and I wanted to enjoy it for as long as possible but the children were starting to ask: ‘When are we going home? When are we going to see Daddy?’, making it clear they were missing him. The time away was having a different effect on me as the energising environment of southern England began to evoke a sense of belonging and continuity. In the early mornings I opened my bedroom window as wide as it would go and leaned out to take big breaths of air that were stingingly fresh and cool, making me feel supremely alive. The break from Africa was giving me a sense of renewal, re-connecting with Englishness and the reassurance of a shared history and heritage that I had not fully comprehended or appreciated before. I didn’t want the children to be unaware of this identity themselves, and was conscious of an increasing unease about the situation in Rhodesia as the children imbibed the spirit of Ian Smith and all that he stood for. Adam went along with the ideology for the sake of good relations with others we had to live with, and his vision of our future was whole-heartedly Rhodesian. Whatever my own feelings, I had to go back there and make the future work for all of us.

      I was standing at the open window one morning when Muz called me. ‘There’s a telegram for you.’ I thought it might be Adam asking about a return date. But it wasn’t. It was from Agadir in Morocco with just one sentence pasted on the paper form:

      SURVIVED EPIC ACROSS SAHARA ARRIVE BLIGHTY 2 WEEKS MUST SEE YOU DAVID.

      I showed it to Muz, who was hovering anxiously. Telegrams arriving unexpectedly were alarm bells for anyone who had been through the war. ‘Who’s David?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘Why is it so important for him to see you?’

      ‘He and his wife were friends of ours in Nakuru and David in particular helped a great deal with our move, helping me pack up, and looking after Elizabeth. No doubt he has news of her and other things to tell me about.’ But I knew the invitation held more than casual interest, especially if he was on his own. I went upstairs with the telegram in my hand and stood at the open window again, looking out until I was shivering both with the cold air and unexpected anticipation. David had told me about a plan to drive across the Sahara with army friends when he was posted back to re-join his regiment, but there had been no expectation that I might be in England myself when he arrived.

      On fine days when Muz wasn’t working, we often went on picnics and the children’s favourite place was the end of the runway at Gatwick airport where they could watch planes landing and taking off. What they watched out for most eagerly was a Cessna that looked like Grandpa’s plane, keeping alive the hope that any Cessna arriving might be his. Gatwick airport in 1970 was hardly more than a runway with sheds at one end where passengers assembled in an atmosphere of no great formality. A nursing friend who had trained with me at the Royal Free Hospital, now lived nearby under the flight path in a rambling house where she had settled in bohemian disorder, absentmindedly gathering babies and children around her. Four of these were her own, and three were stepchildren who came with someone else’s husband whom she had collected along the way. On visits to her, my own three were absorbed into this blithe household, running wild in the paradise of their tangled garden abandoned to the incessant roar of planes overhead. For a family of plane spotters like ourselves this was nothing but joy, and I loved the old house that had evolved during three distinct architectural periods. Its centrepiece was a modest but exquisite Tudor house crowned with a fanciful crenelated roof, standing between a Georgian wing on one side and a Victorian wing on the other. Each section had its own staircase where all ten children (when we were there) raced up and down, swinging from the banisters like lemurs.

      It was into this tumult of family life that David arrived, unshaven, sunburnt and dog-tired, hours after driving off the Dover ferry, having arranged to meet us there. This was to spare Muz the dilemma (had he appeared at Forest Lodge) of deciding where he fitted on her moral spectrum of suitable friends for me to be associating with. There were no scruples in the minds of the children who were so pleased to see David that they all wanted to sit on his lap at the same time. Louise perched