Cherry Read Online Free PDF Page A

The women of the house were almost permanently taken up with babies, and father and son formed a unit of manly isolation. They were often together. The General was a keen trainspotter, and if a new engine was running in the valley or a branch line had been opened, he would take Laddie off in the carriage to have a look. The two Apsleys made a fine sight, one a rotund old soldier pushing sixty with a curling moustache and a thick suit that smelt of cigar smoke, the other a small boy with long hair and a sailor suit.
    The General told stories of his Indian and African adventures which thrilled the small boy, especially if they involved one of the exotic souvenirs brought back from those far-off lands. In the upstairs hall at Denford there was a pair of Zulu shields, and Laddie liked to sweep the day nursery with the yak-tail brush stowed in the military chest with the striped cover.
    The Denford Cherrys kept in touch with more distant branches of the family, and if news came in that a relation had died, or married, or produced offspring, the fact was recorded in the pages of the family bible. Well-known stories of especially colourful ancestors were aired. And yet, or perhaps because of all this, the grown-up Laddie took no interest in his dead relations, and little more in those who were still alive. He was proud of his distinguished ancestry, but not a man of genealogical piety. His was a theoretical appreciation. In the course of his long life he broke with many traditions, sold the seat and wilfully elected to let the name die.
    The arrival of more girls – Elsie in September 1889, and Mildred in May 1891 – meant that Evelyn was permanently preoccupied. When the General was absent, Laddie spent much of his time with the servants. He had his baths by firelight in tepid water ferried in cans by the young nurserymaid, and went to sleep to the small sound of coal falling in the night nursery grate or the orchestrated plumbing in the bathroom. As he grew more independent, the estate gamekeepers and woodmen became his companions. His earliest memories were of the shallows of the spring in Goose Acre Coppice and the cushiony moss of Flaggy Mead. His life followed the rhythm of the seasons, from the millpond freeze to the eruption of the daffodils in the park. He was given rides in the gardener’s handcart, and later he was sometimes allowed to play with the estate workers’ children, many of whom were baptised in the Denford chapel like the young master.
    Evelyn and the General socialised at the local big houses, occasionally even venturing over the border to Hampshire to Lord Carnarvon at Highclere Castle. In the summer of 1891, the year Mildred was born and Laddie turned five, their parents went away to Weymouth. Laddie inscribed the alphabet to send to his mother, with only two reversed letters, and on a separate sheet he wrote: ‘LADDIES BEST LOVE BABYS LOVE’. The following year, in November, Evelyn was away again, and once more Laddie showed himself to be a committed correspondent. ‘DEAR MAMAR,’ he wrote, between lines which his nurse had drawn on the page, ‘WE HAVE HAD A VERY WET NIGHT BUT NOW THE SUN AS COME OUT AND WE HAD A NICE WALH WALK WITH LOVE AND KISSES FROM LADDIE.’
    The estate was his empire. He was not a natural explorer, and did not dream of discovering great lakes or charting polar wastes, even as an older boy. Instead, he was happy keeping tadpoles and minnows, and picking catkined hazels and primroses. He was shy, and rather an introvert. Laddie did not whack other children unless most severely provoked, nor did he bully his expanding troupe of sisters – at least, no more than any little boy might. Nature was his refuge, and a love of the world he observed in the fields and skies around him stayed with him for the rest of his life.
    When the vicar of Hungerford could manage it, the whole family and all the servants, indoor and outdoor, went to a service at Holy Trinity, that sublime piece of