Patricia St. John - Chapter 7 - Family Joys and Sorrows
here was no doubt that Farnham needed a wife; we prayed about it as we travelled home in the summer of 1950 to be present at John’s wedding. He had got engaged while doing a house job at the Mildmay Mission Hospital to Gwynne Morton who was a nurse there. She became my much loved sister-in-law here in Coventry where John was later in practice, the very successful mother of seven children, their home a lovely welcoming base to which we could always return from overseas.
Oliver was the first to be married in 1945 to Eileen Morris, also a wonderful life-long companion who, along with Oliver and their three boys, was soon to join enthusiastically in work with a live church youth group in the early days of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Scheme which made full use of their interest in climbing, skiing and mountaineering.
But all that was far ahead as we arrived back joyfully for a month at home.
Clarendon, my aunt’s school, had moved to North Wales, to a most impressive building called Kinmel Hall, bought by Sir John Laing and rented for the purposes of a Christian school. My parents had moved with the school and lived in a large flat overlooking the Venetian gardens with their shaped trees, rose beds and water lily pond. Seven little girls slept in the flat and my mother spoilt them outrageously; there was enormous competition to sleep at Mrs St. John’s.
We spent the whole month with our parents and had a wonderful holiday climbing the Snowdon range and exploring the beautiful Welsh countryside, but nothing transpired that suggested romance until exactly one week before we were due to return to North Africa. The Overseas Missionary Fellowship (then the China Inland Mission) was to hold its annual conference in the school and Farnham’s old college friend, Leith Samuel, was expected. Hearing that he had just arrived, Farnham ran down to the front door to meet him.
Leith and his wife alighted and Farnham greeted them and then turned to be introduced to the girl who got out of the back of the car – a tall girl with a coronet of brown hair round her head and freckles on her nose. ‘Let me introduce you to Janet Thompson, a medical student’, said Leith. They shook hands and Farnham knew at once. He came upstairs with a slightly bemused expression. Fortunately, I knew the girl slightly as I had been at school with her, but as she was five years younger than me, our paths had not crossed much.
Janet’s parents, who had been missionaries in China, were also attending the conference, which slightly complicated matters; but, on the strength of our old acquaintance, we arranged a picnic breakfast on the beach and I invited her. We swam in a cold Welsh sea and fried eggs; they looked at each other through the smoke of a bonfire and she accepted a ride home on the pillion of his new motor cycle. After that things moved fast and they became engaged five days later on the heathery slopes of Mount Tryfan, just two days before we were due to leave. It proved to be one of those marriages made in Heaven – God’s good and perfect gift to one who had been content to wait.
John’s wedding took place on the Saturday at Clarendon. Janet attended, and it could almost have been a double celebration, but her parents, startled at the unseemly speed of the courtship, asked her not to make her engagement public until after her final exams, which would take place about three months later. So next morning, when Farnham and I set off to North Africa on the motor bike, they said goodbye behind some bushes at the bottom of the school drive. They had known each other for a week and they would not meet again for six months.
The journey to North Africa took us eight days, and it was one of the most glorious weeks I can ever remember.
The motor bike bounced along to the sound of our singing – sentimental love songs or happy hymns of praise, for Farnham had discovered very suddenly what it meant to be in love. He had been given his heart’s desire, and I think I shared a little of his ecstasy, and it partly overcame the sorrow of parting from my parents. The joy of it is still wafted back to me by the breath of new-mown hay or the scent of a bean field. I can no longer give a lucid account of that journey, but certain moments stand out, vivid and golden. I remember the very first morning after we left. We had intended to reach Dover the evening before and cross on the night ferry. But Farnham decided to stop off and visit a friend, Maurice Wood, to share his news, and of course we missed the boat. It didn’t matter. In those days we could just as well cross in the morning, so we padlocked the bike by the side of the road and climbed the bank. We had a sleeping bag and a small cushion apiece, strapped to the panniers of the saddle, and we made ourselves comfortable and fell asleep.
I woke early in the morning to the sound of voices. It was only half light and I was alone. I peered over the top and saw my brother fast asleep at the bottom of the bank, his legs stretched out in front of him, while a couple of puzzled policeman surveyed him. ‘Hello,’ I said, ‘is anything wrong?’ ‘Nothing yet,’ replied one of them solemnly, ‘but if you don’t wake your hubby and tell him to take his legs off the London to Dover Road, he’ll get them cut off.’
Our luggage was minimal – a saucepan, a small frying pan, eating utensils and a water bottle, a change of clothing, a big bag of rice, and a Bible – nothing else as far as I remember. We bought bread and a large heavy sausage at Calais to slice in the rice, and although it smelt rather strange after a day or two, we persevered. I remember the long, straight French roads, lined with poplars, flanked by fields of sunflowers and patches of scarlet poppies, sometimes running beside great rivers where we stopped to swim. And then the unforgettable sleepy smell of pines as we drove through the forests of Les Landes.
I remember swaying giddily, only just winning the struggle to keep awake. There were no crash helmets then, and I knew that a fall would have meant almost certain death, but we were not afraid. We were far too joyfully alive to consider the possibility.
I remember the smell of paraffin and the satisfying bulk of rice and old sausage eaten at sunset, after which we would snuggle down in our sleeping bags behind some friendly hedge and sleep soundly. I remember crossing the border into Spain and zooming upwards round hairpin bends into the cool heights of the Pyrenees, and a little green valley by the side of the road with a mountain stream gurgling through the grass. Buttercups, forget-me-nots and grass of Parnassus grew beside the water, where we picnicked and washed and drank deeply; and I seldom read the words, ‘He makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside the still waters’ without thinking of that place. There were rainstorms, too, in those high Alps. One night we were drenched, sleeping out of doors was impossible, so we stayed in a wonderfully cheap village inn. I suppose I looked incredibly young and innocent, but the innkeeper’s wife insisted on coming to my room and tucking me up and kissing me good night with a string of Spanish endearments mostly ending in ‘issima’.
From the cool heights of the Pyrenees we zigzagged down to the scorching plains north of Madrid to the strange red rocks and barren fields, where the crops had all been harvested. For the next three days we changed our habits. We rose about four in the morning in the great pre-dawn silence, lit our primus, gulped down scalding cups of tea and set off chewing our bread and sausage. Darkness paled to pearl grey, shot with fire in the east as the sun rose and the cocks crowed and the world woke.
By eleven o’clock we seemed to be riding through a curtain of fire. We would seek some shade in a eucalyptus grove or under an overhanging rock and stretch out to sleep, and once we shared the shelter of a stone wall with a family of Spanish gypsies.
I slept long and deeply, and woke to find them all grouped eagerly round Farnham; he was fluent in Spanish, and was reading them the story of the prodigal son. At four o’clock we would set out again on our southward journey, and the wall of fire gave way to the soft coolness of evening and the amazing pageant of sunset over the burnt, desolate landscape. Then on through the night beneath those fierce southern stars, singing to keep ourselves awake, till about eleven o’clock when we would snuggle down in some ditch and sleep again.
I remember the flat summit of the Sierra with its bracing mountain air, and the breathtaking moment when we looked down and saw the jewelled blue of the Mediterranean lying thousands of feet below, with Gibraltar crouching like a fierce old British lion to our left, while far away but very clear lay the coast of North Africa. All that late afternoon I clung frantically to Farnham’s back as he zoomed round those hairpin curves that led to the coast, but we slept luxuriously that night on the beach, after soaking off the dust and dirt and soreness of the journey in the warm sea. We camped near a fisherman’s hut, and when we woke early in the morning a group of perfectly naked, smiling little children brought us a great platter of oranges and olives. Goodness and mercy had followed us and protected us all the way. As we crossed in the ferry to Tangier, the dolphins leapt and flashed in the sunlight. We were starting a new era.
A new nurse had come to the hospital, and in the spring Farnham was going back to England to do further surgical training, work for his fellowship and marry Janet. The way seemed open for me to move up to the town in the mountains.
We went up together on the motor bike to spy out the land. The rains had fallen and we bumped up the steep road. It was hard to believe that we were within a few miles of the little town, for there was nothing to be seen but rocks and stones, covered with that thin veil of green that appears so swiftly when the first rains fall on the ground. But we drove to the crest of the hill and there just below us lay the town, sheltered between two arms of rock and set in emerald, for above the town towers a great cliff, and out of the cleft gushes a flood of clear, ice-cold water that never dries up, and the drought cannot touch it, for its source is hidden deep inside the mountain. Part of it tumbles away in a foaming stream and part of it is carried by pipes to the town, so that there were splashing fountains in nearly every street. But long before you see the houses you see the watered fields and the green, green gardens. Here in this sheltered valley the parched land has become a pool and the thirsty land streams of water.
Mohamed met us and took us to his home, where the family expressed their welcome by one stew after another – fish stew, mutton stew with vegetables, chicken stew with olives. When we were almost torpid, we set out on a house-hunting expedition, and one of them seemed suitable. It was small, but it had windows and a roof from which I could see the winding road that led eastward into higher mountains and the autumn gold in the valley below. It looked down into the village inn, where the town donkeys lodged, joined at night by the very poor and homeless, who could sleep on the straw for about three farthings. It is supposed to be like the place where Mary laid her baby, and that pleased me and compensated for the probability of there being a very strong smell of donkeys in the hot weather.
We arranged to take the house in three months’ time and drove off early next morning. As we left, Mohamed, as a parting present, thrust three live hens into my arms, and their struggles and squawks added interest to our departure. It is not easy to carry three live hens on the pillion of a motor bike, but they settled down quite soon; and as I turned to look at the valley, beautiful with daybreak, the early morning shadows long on the hills, I knew for certain that I should come back. The lines had fallen unto me in a pleasant place. Yea, I had a goodly heritage.
The three months passed quickly. Christmas at the hospital was a happy time, and it seemed strange to think of leaving it all. Then on February 11th the telegram came late one night. My dear grandmother had died at her home in North Wales.
It was my first personal contact with death in the family, and I had often wondered what it felt like to know that someone who had always been there through life was there no longer. When work was over next day, I ran to the top of the cliffs overlooking the Straits of Gibraltar and tried to adjust to my loss. But no sense of loss came; only an amazing, glad sense of proximity and companionship. I felt almost as though I could stretch out my hand and touch her. Separation of distance and the veil of old age and a wandering mind were all done away with for ever. We had been close in spirit before, but now we were united. And I realized the meaning of those words, ‘the whole family in Heaven and on earth. . . that neither life nor death can separate us from the love . . .’ She was in Heaven, a place to which I was allowed constant access. Never had there been less sense of loss, never more consciousness of a comforting human presence, strong and brave and bright as she had been before her mind clouded. Just as I was anticipating leaving all European companionship came that close sense of that dear presence. The comfort was greater than the sorrow.
