Summer 1978
The hectic life your grandfather and I were leading caught up with me in the end.
In spring 1939, just after my thirty-eighth birthday, I suddenly had a sort of breakdown, both mental and physical. It was because of the drinking, and the underlying cause, which was unbearable anxiety.
My doctor told me that, if I kept on like this, I would either die or end up in a mental hospital.
He looked at my blood test results and said I was just a few months away from liver failure, which would almost certainly be terminal. I was to give up drinking, and never touch a drop of alcohol again as long as I lived.
He also told me I needed complete rest and relaxation, a break from the noise and pollution of London, from late nights and over-stimulation.
When your doctor says things like that, you’d be stupid not to listen, wouldn’t you?
So we rented a cottage down in Devon for the summer, in Salcombe on the Kingsbridge Estuary. It was a simple little place on the edge of the village – that’s all Salcombe was, back then – with a secluded garden and a lovely view across the estuary, with its little fishing boats and yachts, and its steep, wooded banks.
I gave up drinking as I was told to, and smoking. Your grandfather tried for a while, too.
I’ve never cared much for alcohol since. Just a little glass of whisky sometimes to help me get to sleep.
Another thing the doctor said: I was to go out in the back garden, or somewhere else private, and throw things against the wall.
‘Bottles, old plates, anything, Mrs Bullen. As long as it makes a nice, big crash.'
I was to do that any time I felt everything was getting too much for me.
So that’s exactly what I did. It was an unusual therapy, but it was cheaper than a psychiatrist’s fees, safer than medication – and it seemed to work. It was certainly very satisfying.
Other than the occasional sound of breaking crockery, it was a summer of peace and tranquility for me. Percy and I went for long windswept walks along the coast, and I tried my hand at sketching and watercolours. Your grandfather was a good artist, and he helped me to develop my technique.
A lovely thing happened: George rode down from London on his motorbike, to spend weekends with us. You remember Percy’s son? I suppose he was your uncle, or half-uncle, now I think of it, since he was your grandfather’s son.
Anyway, he’d turned into a fine young man, with nice manners. He’d join us on our walks, and he and his father would hire a boat and go out fishing on the estuary, to give me some peace and quiet.
Percy couldn’t afford to just give up work for the whole summer, of course. Sometimes he had to leave me alone in the cottage, while he drove up to London to attend to a case.
I didn’t mind at all: I’ve always been happy with my own company. I would just sit in the garden and read and paint, or stroll around the village. We had a part-time housekeeper, who took care of the daily chores.
Meanwhile, there were worrying developments abroad, in continental Europe.
Hitler had come to power in Germany in 1933. He was a horrid man, a hysterical, screaming bully, but many felt that German resentment over the Treaty of Versailles was justified. The Allies had gone too far, and the result was that the German economy had fared worse in the Great Depression than other Western economies, with millions out of work.
Hitler immediately began to rearm the country, breaking the terms of the Treaty with tacit acceptance by the Allies. Soon his army entered the Rhineland, which had been a demilitarised zone since the Great War. Nothing happened, and that made the Nazis even bolder.
In 1938 they marched into Austria, in a bloodless takeover, and took the German-speaking Sudetenland away from Czechoslavakia. People said it was just the German homelands consolidating, and perfectly reasonable. Nothing to worry about.
In March 1939 they decided to take the whole of Czechoslovakia. Now that was a clear invasion, and couldn’t be excused by history, culture or language. Yet still nothing was done.
It seemed likely by this point that the German Reich and Fascist Italy were on a collision course with Great Britain and her ally France, but our government gave one concession after another, in the hope of avoiding war. With hindsight, it was the wrong thing to do, but at the time, it was reasonable.
Very few of us wanted war, you see. We could still remember how terrible the Great War had been, when a quarter of our young men had been killed or maimed.
Nobody knew what would happen next, and opinions in Britain were divided about what should be done. Churchill called the policy of appeasement ‘an unmitigated disaster’, but at that time he was unpopular, considered a loudmouth and warmonger, who’d brought out troops against workers in the general strike, and few listened to him.
As long as the Germans stayed out of Poland and the Low Countries, the general feeling on our side of the Channel was that the new status quo was acceptable, and that hopefully the Nazis would be satisfied with the territorial gains they’d achieved.
Of course, we soon found out that was a vain hope.
Coming up:
This Friday in Tales from the Wood: Pauly gets in a fight with an older boy; for a change, he’s not the innocent party. (Paid subscriptions.)
Next Tuesday in Lizzy May: Britain enters the Second World War, but the first months create an illusion of calm.
Relevant to our current situation here in the U.S. We didn't learn from history, nor from corporate media, either. They still sanewash the guy.