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LBIE HAD BEEN AT WORK for just over a year and it was now time for
him to take a well-earned rest and have a couple of weeks holiday!
He had planned to have started his vacation a week earlier
but, with Patrick Moore’s book of Astronomy to complete and
a visit from the famous astronomer himself, he was forced to postpone
his holiday until the end of the second week in August – ‘breaking
up’ on Friday the eleventh. He wasn’t to know it then
but in the years ahead he would always take the same two weeks for
his summer holidays! On the face of it, Albie always appeared to
be extremely well organised when at work – sometimes appearing
to be unyielding and pedantic in his ways – but when he was
faced with taking a couple of weeks vacation, he was like a fish
out of water!
ON
SATURDAY 12 AUGUST 1961, Albie began his first vacation from Jarrold
Printing in time-honoured fashion – by staying in bed until
almost midday! Even the sound of his mother hoovering-up downstairs
failed to disturb him, he just turned over, pulled the pillow over
his head, and went off the sleep again.
 “Come
on, Albie!” his mother Gladys shouted up the stairs
in an attempt to awaken him. “Tha’s nearly lunchtime,
boy – yar father’ll be home from work soon – so,
for goodness sake, will yew git up?”
Eventually,
with bleary eyes and an aching head through spending too
much time in bed – or was it reading his favourite magazine?
– Albie condescended to put in the briefest of appearances,
with the intention of returning to his room as soon as he’d
had his lunch.
“Yew
can’t spend yar entire holiday locked up in yar
room,” his mother told him, as he slumped down into the fireside
chair and put his feet up on the mantlepiece. “Spruce yourself
up, boy, here comes Father now – an’ I dun’t know
what he’ll hev to say about yew stayin’ in bed fur half
the day.”
Albie’s
father – also called Albert – hardly had time to get his
jacket off and hung up on the coat hook at the bottom of the stairs
before his wife began complaining about their one and only son.
“I
can’t hev him stinkin’ in bed all mornin’, or gittin’
under me feet,” she said as her husband sat himself down at
the dinner table. “Tha’s on’y Saturday, an’
already the boy dun’t know what to do wi’ hisself!”
“If
you’d let me have a motorbike when I asked...”
Albie declared indignantly, “...then I could git out more often
– you know, I can afford one now I’m at work!”
“Yew
en’t havin’ one o’ them dangerous things,”
his father replied, slamming his knife and fork down on the table,
“yew’ll hatta mearke do with your bicycle – and tha’s
final!”
Albie’s
mother returned from the scullery with three plates of fish
and chips on a tray.
“Since
that dreadful affair with that there mawther at the blessèd
Art School, yew’ve spent more time than wha’s healthy
in yar room,” she said, plonking his dinner down in front of
him. “I told yew then, an’ I’ll tell yew agin,
there’s pletty more fish in the sea!”
“Pity
this here fish din’t stay there, an’orl!”
Albie complained, pulling a face, “urgh – tha’s hoolly
strong, that is!”
“Just
shut yar face an’ eat your dinner,” his father told him
curtly, “there’s plenty of people in China what’d
love to have fish ’n’ chips, they would...”
“Best
we wrap it up then Dad, and send it to them!” replied Albie,
pushing his plate to one side, “’cos, I en’t eating’
it!”
“Anyway,”
he continued, getting up from the table, “I’m gorn out
and – afore you ask – I’m gorn to see a friend...”
“What
friend?” his astonished parents asked in unison. “Who
is he?”
Albie
stood by the back door, hand poised on the brass door knob, then
turned and laughed: “Actually – he’s a she!”
His
parents just sat there – speechless – half-eaten fish
and chips growing cold in front of them.
“Well,
Gladys, tha’s well an’ truly put me orf my lunch,
I dun’t know about yew,” Albie’s father said
angrily, then turning to his son: “I’d a credited yew
wi’ a bit more common sense than messin’ around with another
mawther – just look what happened last time – and
arter all, yew’ve got yar career to think of now!”
“I
think yew’d betta tell us, Albie,” his mother said
angrily, scraping the Saturday lunch leftovers into the pedal bin,
“who she is, an’ where she lives – an’ I hope
she en’t from the Council houses either!”
Then,
as an afterthought: “I hope you hen’t done nothin’
to make us ashamed of ya – hev ya?”
Not
yet, he thought, then replied: “Her name’s Nicole
an’ she comes from France...”
Hearing
this, Albie’s father hit the roof!
“A
furriner – I mighta known it,” he fumed, getting
up from the dinner table and banging his chair down in disgust,
“how could you – an’ French an’orl! I
despair wi’ you, I really do!”
Pausing
by the half-open back door, Albie replied: “But, she’s
really quite nice – and her father has a big, posh ‘chattew’,
somewhere in Pickadee.”
“A
chattew, well, why didn’t yew say so in the first place?”
replied his father, “and – in Picardy, yew say?
I was there during the war...”
“Oh
– dun’t that sound posh?” his mother
said, giving Albie a nod of approval, no doubt beginning to dream
of ‘continental holidays to come’. “Come an’
sit down, dear. We’ll all hev a nice cup o’ tea and yew
can tell us all about Nicole!”
A
ROSE OF PICARDY
Albie
then told his parents about the time he went fruitpicking on a farm
at Bodham,
during the summer holidays when he was still at the Norwich School
of Art.
“That
was your fault really, Dad!” he said, as his father
finished his cup of tea and began getting ready to go back to work
at the Co-op. “You told me that I should go fruitpicking as
there would be others students there as well – but you never
said anything about them being foreigners, did you?”
Opening
the door to the hallway, Albie’s father took his jacket off
the coat hook. “But, yew were only there a day, weren’t
yew?” he asked, putting on his coat and making for the back
door, “so, wha’s all that to do with this here French
girl then?”
“That
wuz where I met Nicole – Nicole Legrève – fruitpickin’,”
Albie replied, “but I thought it best not to mention it at
the time, ’cos I know just how much you love the French!”
His
father ‘tut-tutted’ to himself: “That
wuz durin’ the war – although their cheeses aren’t
at all good – they’re too soft, y’know – we
just can’t sell ’em in the Co-op... but, look yew here,
I must go, ’cos tha’s nearly ten-to-two – tell yar
mother all about it an’ I’ll catch up wi’ all on
it when I get home!”
With
that, Albie’s father went out of the back door, up the garden
path and down the road to Sheringham Co-op to open up for the afternoon,
leaving his son to finish the story with his mother listening intently!
“That
was all of three years ago when I first met Nicole,” Albie
revealed in a very matter-a-fact way, “ – under a blackcurrant
bush that wuz! She’d come here from Pickadee to improve her
English and wuz staying in Cromer.
But tha’s all I found out as, half the time, I couldn’t
understand a word she wuz sayin’!”
“An’
I dun’t s’pose she knew what yew were gorn on about either!”
laughed his mother. “But
how come yew met her agin?”
“Well,
I’m comin’ to that...” Albie replied, “that
all happened when I wuz comin’ home on the train the other
night with my friend Felix from work...”
THE
COUNTRY PARSON
“There
was this Country Parson, see?” Albie told his mother, “he’d
been sitting next to me – for most of the journey – coughing
and snivelling due to ‘something what he’d caught from
his Bishop’, or so he said!”
“Well,
as the train lurched into Woosted
Station,” he continued, “this ole Vicar gathered up his
belongings and, when he grabbed his tatty old Gladstone bag off
the luggage rack above my head, he knocked me flyin’ he did!”
“How
very rude!” declared his mother, “I do hope
he apologised?”
“Well,
yis, he did, sorta like,” Albie replied, “– anyhow,
next to me, sittin’ in the winda seat, wuz this young lady,
though I coon’t see her face ’cos she was all hid up behind
her newspaper most o’ the time.”
“I
would’ve liked to hev taken a look at her,” he continued,
“– but you always said it wuz rude to stare!”
“Quite
right too,” replied his mother giving him a smile of
approval. “Yew allus did hev good manners.”
“Well,
with all that conflopshun gorn on wi’ the Vicar,” he said,
“I accidentally jogged her arm – an’ she dropped
her newspaper...”
“I
do hope yew picked it up for her again, Albie?” replied
his mother. “Yew did, din’t yew?”
“Yis
– ’corse I did,” her son replied, “but, d’you
know what the mawther said?
His
mother shook her head: “No, Albie, what did she say?”
“She
said ‘Mon Dieu! Is
zat really you, El Bee?’ – an’ tha’s
when the penny dropped!” he laughed, “– so, I said
to her ‘My
Gawd, can that really be you, Nicole?’ knowing
full well it wuz of course.”
“How
nice,” his mother replied, thinking how romantic it
all sounded. “Tha’s just like that there fillum, wi’
Trevor Howard, wha’s its name...? That happened on a train
an’orl, din’t it? Oh, I know – Close
Encounters...”
 Albie
then told his mother that it had indeed been a close encounter
inasmuch that the French girl had kissed him on both cheeks as they
do in continental parts!
“What
wanton behaviour!” declared his mother, with a hint
of disapproval in her voice. “In such a public place
too – and in front of a Vicar! I’m quite sure he
din’t think much of it, did he?”
“Well,
anyhow, then the train stopped in the station and the Country Parson
got off,” Albie continued, “but, do you know what? As
he walked back along the platform, and passed our window, I swear
that there ole Vicar mouthed, as clear as day: ‘Don’t
do anything I wun’t do’! Tha’s as true as I’m
sittin’ here, that is!”
“Anyway,
Mum,” Albie said, having reached the end of his tale, “I
can’t sit here mardlin’ all afternoon, as I’ve got
a ’bus to catch – I’m goin’ to Cromer to meet
Nicole...”
ALBIE
MEETS NICOLE’S AUNT...
Later
that afternoon, Albie arrived in Cromer at the Eastern Counties
Omnibus Station on Prince of Wales Road. Crossing the busy road
he made his way towards Church Street, passing the parish church
of St Peter & St Paul, and headed for the far side of town.
Walking
along the Overstrand road, he soon passed North
Lodge Park with its colourful gardens ablaze with flowers and
children plying their yachts on the boating lake.
Albie paused for a moment, at the park gates, to look at the hastily-scrawled
address Nicole had given him: 14 Cliff Drive, before setting off
again, his pace quickening with excitement at seeing her!
Half
way along Cliff Drive he stopped in front of a large house, hedged
with sweet-scented pink tamarix, its fragrance heavy in the air.
“Here
at last,” he said to himself, noticing the number 14 displayed
in brightly-shone brass on the white-painted gatepost. Lifting the
latch on the front gate he began the short walk up the winding crazy-paved
path to the front door, set back slightly inside an open porch,
and magnificently-framed by a graceful, red-brick archway from which
hung a little wrought-iron sign declaring it to be ‘Chez-Nous’.
The
front door, flanked on either side by old brass lanterns, had a
doorknocker in the shape of a dolphin, Albie noticed, and gave it
a polite ‘rat-a-tat-tat’, before stepping backwards and
waiting patiently for his knock to be answered.
After
a minute or so, the door was opened by a very smartly-dressed, middle-aged
woman, accompanied by a small, neatly-trimmed, poodle, which immediately
began to bark at Albie and nip his ankles!
“Good
afternoon,” he said, doing his best to avoid the dog’s
unwanted attention, “I’ve come to see Nicole...”
“Hello
– so you are
El Bee? Our Nicole zed you were coming,” said the lady, who
seemed to have a slight foreign accent and definitely not
from Cromer, or Norfolk, for that matter! “Oh – never
mind Fee-Fee, she is ’armless – her bark is worse zan
her bite – please, do come in!”
Albie
stepped in the hallway, tastefully decorated in creams and golds
and furnished with warm-coloured, well-waxed oak furniture. From
the high ceiling hung a glass chandelier – its individual glittering
glass teardrops tinkling slighty from the incoming breeze of the
open front door.
“Go
through,” said the lady, closing the front door and pointing
towards a room at the back of the house, “you’ll find
Nicole in the garden.”
 Nicole
was mowing the lawn when she saw Albie and, quickly running towards
him, she flung her arms around his neck. Gone was the young student
of three years ago, barely able to make herself understood in the
blackcurrant fields of north Norfolk. By now, she had blossomed
into a fine young woman, now able to speak passable English
– though not yet with a Norfolk accent!
“Oh,
mon cher ami, how lovely it is to see you again!” Nicole
said, kissing him warmly on the lips much to his acute embarrassment,
before turning to the older woman. “Ceci est ma tante, Madam
Gatsby.”
“Nice
to meet you, Mrs Gatsby,” Albie said, shaking her warmly by
the hand – although rather unsure whether he should have kissed
her hand – continental fashion ’ instead! “Nice place
you have here.”
“Oh,
do please excusé moi – I should have said this
is my Aunt Adelise,” Nicole interrupted. “I forget you
do not speak le français!”
“But
I do – I do!” Albie told her, not wishing her aunt
to think of him as being ignorant.
“So,
you speak some French as well?” Mrs Gatsby asked him.
“Oui
– un puh– well, at least a totty little puh!”
he replied proudly, then, turning to Nicole: “Do you have an
‘mon oncle’ as well?”
Nicole
nodded and pointed to a greenhouse at the bottom of the garden:
“Oui – mon oncle est dans la serre arrosé les
tomates!”
Albie,
however, was none the wiser but took it to mean her uncle was ‘doing
something to the roses and tomatoes’.
“When
in Rome, do as the Romans do,” he laughed, hoping both niece
and aunt would realise and speak in English again.
“Etait-il
signifie? C’est quelque coutume locale étrange, vous
pensez?” Nicole asked her aunt. With typical Gallic abandon,
Aunt Adelise just shrugged her shoulders: “L’anglais
est s’impossible de comprendre!”
...AND
HER UNCLE FREDDIE
Nicole’s
uncle, Frederick Gatsby, had been working in his greenhouse at the
bottom of the garden when Albie arrived but, upon hearing voices,
popped his head out to see who it was.
“Who
is it, Adelise?” he called out to his wife. “Is that someone
from the Gardening Club?”
“Non,
Freddie – c’est El Bee, le jeune homme de Nicole,”
Adelise replied, waving to him to come to the house. “Venir
ici – vite!”
“Oh,
I’ve told you before, woman,” her husband mumbled
under his breath, “speak English will you!”
With
a basket of juicy, ripe tomatoes in one hand and a watering can
in the other, Nicole’s uncle walked up the garden path to join
them near the house where they stood admiring a bed of dahlias.
“So,
you’re the El Bee I’ve been hearing so much about!”
he laughed, holding out a hand of friendship. “Our Nicole’s
really smitten with you, I can tell ya!”
“It’s
nice to meet you as well, Mr Gatsby,” Albie replied, having
his hand shaken furiously until it felt like falling off. “And
I can by your prize dahlias you like gardening...”
“Almost
as much as my little ‘rose from Picardy’!” Freddie
Gatsby replied, putting down the watering can and slapping Albie
on his back. “But, let’s go inside the house and celebrate
– it’s not everyday I get to meet a friend of Nicole’s!”
Going
in through the french doors into a large conservatory, Adelise gestured
to Albie to sit next to Nicole on a leather sofa looking out towards
the garden, whilst her uncle went into the kitchen only to reappear
a couple of minutes later with a bottle of wine in his hand.
“Let’s
crack open a bottle of Chateau Cromer ’59,” he
laughed, “ and – Albie – please call me Freddie,
everyone else does!”
Taking
it to be homemade, Albie said: “So your make your own wine
as well, Freddie? Nothin’ like a good bottle of elderberry
is there?”
Freddie
just tapped his nose, gave the corkscrew a quick twist and the cork
came out with a loud plop. Then he put the cork to his nose, expressed
satisfaction and poured a glass, which he swirled this way and that
before taking a mouthful and swilling it around, pulling all manner
of faces in the process.
“Don’t
worry, El Bee,” Aunt Adelise explained, “’e always
does that – every time – it’s ’is job, you know.”
Albie
was none the wiser – who on earth could spend all day sampling
wine? He knew, to his cost, a couple of glasses and he would have
been well and truly ‘under the table’!
 As
he sat next to Nicole, on the burgundy-red sofa, sipping his wine
– correctly chilled and from glasses of finest cut-glass, each
engraved with a fleur-de-lys – Albie began to feel quite warm
and contented inside. And, after a second or third ‘top-up’
– he couldn’t quite recall which – he started to
become rather ‘talkative’!
“Very
good stuff – this,” he said, raising his glass
and letting the northern light beam through the amber-coloured liquid.
“Good year ’59! Nicely rounded with vanilla undertones
and – sip, sip, sip – summer fruits to finish!”
Nicole
smiled quietly to herself, Adelise began stroking Fee-Fee and Freddie
looked at his wife and gave her a knowing look.
“Mon
oncle was only – how you say – pulling your foot,”
laughed Nicole, digging him in the ribs, “’e didn’t
make it – ’e gets all ’is wine from the ’otel
de Paris where ’e works!”
HOW
HAPPY IS MY VALLEY
After
cucumber and salmon sandwiches, and several little Cannele
de Bordeaux cakes, which Aunt Adelise had thoughtfully made
for the occasion, Albie decided it was time to get to know Nicole
better, and suggested they went for a walk.
“Thanks
very much for the tea, Mr & Mrs Gatsby,” he said, “it’s
been very nice meeting you both, and I do hope we shall each other
again...”
“You
are most welcome anytime, El Bee,” Adelise replied,
giving him a discreet kiss on both cheeks.
“Don’t
do anything I wouldn’t do!” the ever-jovial Freddie called
out, as Albie and Nicole walked, hand in hand, down Cliff Drive
and headed for the lane that led to Warren
Woods.
“I’m
just curious about one thing,” Albie said, as they entered
the secluded woods with their overhanging mantle of trees, “how
did Freddie – your uncle – get to meet his wife, and how
come they came to live in Cromer?”
Nicole
thought about it for a moment before answering.
“It
was a long time ago now, during zee war,” she said, sitting
on a rustic, wooden bench in a woodland glade, before beginning
to tell her tale.
“Ze
town of Beauvais, in Picardy, suffer badly during ze Occupation,
with much destroyed,” Nicole told Albie, ”ze Cathedral,
’owever, survive all ze bombers an’ bullets – but
Guignecourt ’ad it bad too.”
Nicole
then spoke of her family – some still living in Picardy –
and of her mother and father, Pierre and Aimee Legrève.
“My
parents, they come from southern France où j'étais
né – ’ow you say, where I was born in 1942.
Mon père was un architecte and, after ze war ’e
worked ’elp rebuild Beauvais and we moved to a little village
just outside the town – Guignecourt!”
“But
that dun’t explain how your uncle and aunt met does it?”
Albie asked persistently.
Nicole
waved her hand at him: “Non – attendre un moment!”
“Pierrre,
mon père, ’ad a sister, Adelise – who ’elped
at my birth,” Nicole explained, “and, as they ’ad
no parents living, she come to live with us in Guignecourt.”
“But
what about Freddie?” Albie asked impatiently. “Where did
he fit in?”
“Mon
coeur, vous êtes s’impatient!” laughed Nicole.
“They met in Beauvais! Freddie was in the British army, ’elping
rebuild bridges, an’ they met an’ ’ad une affaire
du coeur. They marry in Beauvais
cathedral an’, as as l’anglais say: lives happy
ever afters!”
“Hèlas,
after the war, Freddie leave the army,” Nicole continued, getting
up and standing in front of Albie, “and ’e get ’is
old job back in ze ’otel de Paris, and they leave la France.”
 “What
a lovely story – thank you so much for sharing
it with me,” Albie said, tears glistening in his eyes, and,
holding Nicole close, he kissed her tenderly.
As
Nicole and Albie stood, locked in a passionate embrace, the dying
rays of the evening sun tinged the trees with flickering embers
of liquid gold, whilst overhead, through the gently swirling branches,
the first celestial body began its never-ending journey across the
night sky, already punctured by friendly beams from the lighthouse
standing sentinel on the hill above them.
And,
in innocent solitude, close to where they were standing was a little
sign – half-hidden amongst fern and fallen leaves – with
words, faded and well-worn be Time’s relentless journey, which
read, quite simply: ‘Welcome
to Happy Valley’!
NEXT:
Has Albie found happiness
at last?
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