The Green Years Mollie Harris
p.63 |
Chapter 7 : Caravans and Kings
Living in Little Ducklington, just a few hundred yards away from us was Mr and Mrs Jesse Pratley. Their home was a brightly painted caravan which stood in a field next to the entrance to the moors. I do not know if they were of gipsy[sic] origin, but they were both dark and gypsy-like in their looks and dress. He was a big, black-eyed, swarthy type and she was small with jet-black curly hair and sloe-black eyes, and she dressed in the fashion of a gypsy too, with her long, black skirt and blouse and a black, shiny sateen-like apron, and she had ear-rings of half-sovereigns in her pierced ears.
Mr Pratley always wore a red, spotted kerchief knotted round his neck, with the ends neatly tied to his braces.
The caravan was always neat and tide, with its bed at the far end wideways across the van. It had on it a pink, rose-covered quilt, which was covered over by a beautiful hand crocheted lacy bedspread; the small table also had a white, lace-edge cloth on it. All this handiwork was done by Mrs Pratley, she used to crochet her own shawls too. There was brass and copper in the caravan in the shape of water carriers, lamps and ornaments.
Mr Pratley was a coal and wood merchant and most days he would journey up to Witney Railway goods yard and load his cart with hundredweight sacks of coal, which he sold, not just to Ducklington housewives, but to many of the surrounding villages. His pony, at least the only one I can remember, was called Nora, and she had hindquarters like a cow.
When trees were being felled in the area, Jesse would buy the tree top wood, leaving the trunk for the timber merchants.
Sometimes our step-father would go along to the field and help Jesse cut up the wood into blocks. He had a wonderful mechanical saw which sawed through the timber in no time. Mr Pratley did not pay our stepfather, but he would often give him a big sack of blocks which he carried home on his shoulder.
One Saturday afternoon he had gone along to give Jesse a hand, and from our house we could hear the whine as the saw blade cut through the wood. Suddenly our step-father came stumbling into the house clutching his hand to his chest. He had Jesse's old red kerchief wrapped round his left hand, which was supported by the right one, blood dripping through his fingers onto the ground.
Betty[author's sister], who was about eighteen at the time, rushed towards him. "Whatever have you done?" she cried.
"Cut me bloody fingers awf I reckon," he said, wincing as he did so.
Carefully she took off the blood-soaked kerchief. The top of one of his fingers was all but off-it looked just like the lid of a hinged salt cellar, she told us afterwards. And the other finger was very badly cut too. She plunged his hand into a bowl of water laced with Jeyes fluid. Our step-father, a very strong man, nearly passed out with the pain. Quickly our Mother ripped up an old sheet, handing Betty a piece so that she could swabble the injured fingers. When she was sure that all the blood and dirt was washed from the wounds, she started to try to bandage the fingers. She said afterwards that she had, in fact, replaced the finger tip which was completely severed, and the guides on the other one were cut. She bound the two fingers, first separately and then both together, which helped to keep them stiff.
In the middle of all the chaos of sheet tearing and water boiling and general confusion, Mrs Pratley came running down from the caravan. She burst into the house crying, "I never ast him to do it, I never ast him to do it." This was in case our step-father claimed off them for injury, which of course he did not.
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Once, when Mr Pratley was out delivering coal, during a very hot, dry spell, one of the iron rims from one of the cart wheels came off. He was a long was from home, and from a blacksmith, and at first he though that he would have to drive back home without a rim on, which would have been bad for the wooden wheel as the rough roads would have soon cut into it. And Jesse knew that if he wore too much of the wood away, the wheel then would be completely spoilt. So he took hold of a thick rope which he kept in the cart, in case he needed a tow at any time, and wound it round and round the wheel. We heard him coming up the street that night, clump, clump, clump, the cart went. Jesse said afterwards, "It nearly shook me guts out, 'twas worse than a ride on the cakewalk-and it lasted longer."
But back home Jesse soon put his cart to rights. He always had a spare wheel soaking in the water in the ditch that ran alongside the field where the caravan was. Mind you, they did not always match up. When Jesse was a bit pushed, he would fix a wheel on one side of his cart that was bigger that the other side, and this would cause a peculiar noise as he drove down the street. But in those days nobody took much notice of simple things like that.
It was Jesse Pratley who sent me on an errand one day, to get two pennorth of hurdle seed. Green as grass I made my way to the village shop, clutching the tuppence tightly in my hand. I was just about to open the shop door when I heard someone calling my name over and over again. I turned to see Mrs Pratley running down the street after me. She came up to me, put her arm round em and told me that it was just a joke and Mr Pratley was only teasing me. "But you have that tuppence and spend it on some sweets, my little love," she cried. "That'll teach him no to send little girls on fools' errands."
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Mrs Pratley used to accompany her husband round some of the remote Oxfordshire villages. While he was busy selling coal and logs, she would go off calling at the cottages with her wicker basket over her arm. It was filled with all the little odds and ends that the housewife needed, boot and shoelaces, collar studs, needles and pins, hair combs, hair pins, knots of tape and ribbon, elastic and clothes pegs, which she and her husband used to make. They would sit outside the caravan in the evenings, he whittling away skinning the wood and shaping the sticks while she expertly fixed the small tin band on to the top end of the peg, which kept it together.
Later on, when things got a bit better for them, Mrs Pratley acquired a pony and trap of her own, so that she could come and go when and where so wanted to. She also collected rags and rabbit skins as well as selling her wares, and sometimes our Mother would let me go with her. Mind you, I was not allowed to go with Mrs Pratley as she went from door to door. I used to have to sit on the cart and wait for her. "You just sit and guard them rags, young Mollie, see as nobody pinches um."
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I was very fond of both Mr and Mrs Pratley and as a child spent many happy hours sitting on the steps of their caravan, while they made clothes pegs for the next day's journey.
I think Mrs Pratley must have had the gift of second sight, because she used to tell me about some of the ghostly things that she used to see, especially in the Minster Lovell area. That village was usually her last call of the day, after she had been round Astall, Swinbrook and Leafield. Well, one autumn evening she said it was getting a bit dimpsy and the mist was already lying low over the water meadows, shrouding the village in a mysterious veil, when suddenly a figure of a white knight rose up in front of her. He was dressed in shining armour and he was astride a huge white charger. Her pony shied, pulling the trap onto the side of the road. In a flash the rider and horse disappeared into the mist. She said she even saw the white breath coming from the animal's nostrils and his long, white tail was stretched out behind him.
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... Mrs Pratley told me that she saw the same ghost on several occasions along the same stretch of road, but not necessarily in the same place.
And another 'sighting' of hers was that of Old Mother Culpepper, the ghost of a very old lady dressed all in black, with a little poked bonnet on her head, who walked along the tops of the hedges in the Hanborough area. Mrs Pratley used to tell me that as she jogged along in her pony and trap, Mrs Culpepper used to keep up with her until she reached a certain field and then the old lady would disappear as mysteriously as she had appeared. |
Jesse PRATLEY, Cissie DAVIS |