Whether it was the children who became too quiet first, or if it was the birds stopping their singing and trilling first, I don't know ~ I don't think any of us there that day could say for sure ~ but it had gone very quiet...
much too quiet.
The sun should have been sending dappled light through the canopy of the oak and pine trees... but it was dark and damp. The smell of the earth itself seemed cloying and dank. Although we had all been to this local park hundreds of times, and knew where every pathway led...we were lost. We couldn't even hear the traffic from a road that SHOULD have been (by now, after such walking) only a few hundred yards away. Looking back, I believe that my mum and Dawn must have been quite scared themselves ~ but they both made their children believe that we were all having an adventure, that it was all a game. Imagine the relief, then, when a small house came into sight, along a narrow path between some bushes.
I can remember that house exactly, even now. It was a low roofed house, with a beautiful garden full of hollyhocks, roses and stocks ~ I even noticed catnip and rosemary growing. By the open front door there was an aged woman sitting in a chair. It wasn't a rocking chair, but a short-legged, wooden, kitchen chair. The woman was concentrating on something in her lap ~ it may have been her knitting, or something similar ~ when she looked up to see our rag-tag group coming near to her garden. Mary raised her hand to wave and let the old woman know we were lost and needed directions ~ but this old woman obviously didn't want us near her property. She stood up, raising herself slowly from the chair by using her right hand as leverage on the arm of the chair. Everything seemed to be set in slow motion, and I recall her long skirt and plain white pinny as she began to rant and angrily wave her left arm at us. It was then that we all became suddenly aware of the huge dog at her side. He stood suddenly, she patted his back, and he came bounding towards us ~ barking and frightening us all. Of course we ran...
We wanted to run straight away from the woman and her vicious dog, but there was a barbed-wire fence and bushes barring our way, so we had to run parallel to the house until there appeared to be a gap in the bushes where we could squeeze through the barbed wire. It was a small broken stile, with a warped wooden stepping plank ~ though still covered by the barbed wire. Mary and Dawn held open the dangerous wire so the children could clamber through... except for me. I was the youngest, and couldn't quite keep up with the rest of them. I was lagging behind, and in their panic everyone else seemed to have forgotten me. They were all through the fence and over the stile before I got there, and so I had to squeeze myself through. I could hear that dog behind me, and glanced back to see his huge grey body lumbering nearer. The house was there still, partially obscured by bushes and trees. I hooked my right leg through the wire... bent over and tried to get my head and body between the barbs... and got caught. Mum was suddenly there, yanking me through ~ and I screamed as I felt something bite into the back of my neck. I was sure that dog had finally reached me, and I was going to die a terrible death. But I never. It was suddenly deathly quiety again... except for the heavy laboured breaths and sighs of relief from us all. We looked back....and there was no sign of the woman, her house, the big grey dog...or even the wooden stile and barbed wire fence. The only evidence to suggest what we had all just been through was real was a small hole in the back of my neck where the barbed wire had sunk in and caused me to bleed.
It was at that moment when we all heard a cuckoo, the sun was shining through the trees and we could see the pathway that led to the groundsmans building close by.
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Now, as I have already stated, we all knew that park and the surrounding area very well. More than this, my family knows of the park and it's history quite well also. We can only go so far back in history, and with that research we have discovered that a Lord owned the land, and much of the surrounding area. Listed buildings are still within the park, and it dates back to the early 1830's as a parkland/recreational area. Before this time, I do not know who lived on the land ~ though due to the surrounding area and the lay of the land, I am convinced that it was not farmed ~ though much of the surrounding land was once farmland. |
