Special Visitors

THEY CAME TO MY HOUSE

When I was growing up, we rarely had visitors so it was a red-letter day when anyone unexpectedly called.  I remember one occasion when James, a cousin of my parents, arrived by car with his wife and daughter, Emma.  After lunch my brothers and sisters and I were lined up to be introduced to the visitors and as James shook hands with us he slipped each of us a half-crown, a princely sum in those days, and his wife left a large bag of sweets to be shared among us.  Five half-crowns and all those sweets made it seem like Christmas!

After the visitors had gone, my father offered each of us a shining new penny, worth one-thirtieth of half a crown, saying, “I’ll give you this clean penny in exchange for that dirty coin of yours.”

Can you imagine our gullibility and innocence in those far-off days!  Our father reckoned that the half-crowns were his cousin’s payment for the meal, as we were a lot poorer than James, and giving the money to the children, rather than to the parents, showed sensitivity.  The penny, to be sure, was a treat we didn’t often enjoy.  It would buy two oranges or a small ice-cream or two lucky bags, any one of which might return your halfpenny, hidden among the sherbet and dipstick.

Visitors may have been rare in my early years, but they grew ever more numerous, ever more exciting and interesting, the older I became.  One January a few years ago I entertained a large number of athletes, friends of my daughter, Anna, in our two-bedroomed bungalow.  Mike, my husband, fled to Dublin to escape the mob who were due to arrive the day before the Tough Guy race which was being run in Staffordshire and in which most of them were competing. 

By 7pm that Saturday there were 15 of us sitting down to dinner or should I say that three of the fifteen, including myself, were sitting ‘up’ on the sideboard with the other 12 seated at the table?  I was in my element being accepted as part of the group.  At 9pm three more arrived and we all trooped down to a local pub before returning to collect pillows and duvets and be allocated floor space on which to lie down to sleep!  I had already earmarked a camp bed in the kitchen for myself, where I slept the sleep of the just.

In the morning my alarm went off at 6.30 so that I could rouse the two sleepers in the dining room before Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who was on his way from Somerset to join us for breakfast, arrived.  There I was, entertaining ‘the world’s greatest living explorer’, a charming and unaffected man who, while familiar with hostile and dangerous environments, is, nevertheless, completely at ease wherever he appears.  Like a star-struck schoolgirl in his presence, I felt I was living in a dream. 

Three more turned up in time for a coffee and they, too, were thrilled at meeting Sir Ranulph (‘Ran’ to his friends).  By 9am the Tough Guy contestants had departed. Ran was the first to return in the afternoon, caked in mud and urgently in need of a wash and a change of clothes before setting out for an important meeting in Slimbridge Wildfowl Park.  You should have seen the mud that clogged up my drains after everyone had taken a shower!   As might be expected, I received a charming letter of thanks from Ran a few days later.  This has become one of my treasured mementoes.  Two years ago he told me that my shower hadn’t worked so he had just sponged the mud away!  I had forgotten to tell him the shower had to be switched on inside the door! 

My excitement that week was only beginning, for on the Thursday Anna rang to ask if she and Keith, her friend from North Face, might call and bring Conrad Anker, ‘America’s answer to Sir Ranulph’, to meet us.  I invited them to share our fish pie at five o’clock.  I was highly excited at the thoughts of meeting this famous climber who hit the headlines in 1999 when he discovered Mallory’s body on Mt Everest.  Conrad bowled me over completely, being as American as Ran is English, but equally charming, friendly, and interesting.  When I apologised for not having a more festive meal, he replied that enjoying home cooking was such a treat for him.  Oh that I possessed this gift of saying the right thing at the right time! 

I couldn’t believe it when he asked me if I’d mail six postcards for him to his family in America!  He showed me each card, explaining why he’d chosen it for its intended recipient.  His eldest step-son was a ‘Lord of the Rings’ fan so he had a picture of a character from the film, while the middle boy, crazy about Harry Potter, likewise had a picture from that recent film.  An old-world picture of a lady feeding hens was chosen for his wife, Jennifer, because they had six hens.  His parents and Jennifer’s parents and the 7-year old boy received equally appropriate cards.  Conrad told us that Jennifer’s first husband was the famous climber, Alex Lowe, who was killed in an avalanche while climbing.  As he described Mallory’s body to us, I had to keep pinching myself to prove I wasn’t dreaming.

Two heroes in one week leaping from the pages of books I’d read and from TV programmes I’d viewed left me walking on air, and that wasn’t the end of the tale.  A few days later, Conrad sent us a poster of himself rock-climbing, on which he’d written some beautiful words of thanks.  What a lovely and loving person he is!  He was very interested in two watercolour pictures of ours, which had been painted by friends.  Later, we discovered that his hobby is painting in watercolours.  He has that knack of making you feel valued and special.  I met him again a few years later at the Great Outdoors Show in the NEC. 

That March I was watching a programme on BBC2 about the SAS and I spotted three of my January guests, including Anna, who had played prominent parts in the September filming.  It was a far cry from the days when heroes and famous people remained on the pages of books for me!

Before I end my story I must tell you about one more outstanding guest who came to my house.  One evening, a few years ago, Anna borrowed my car to drive a friend to Stafford.  That’s my Anna, in a nutshell, always putting herself out to help, and in the process counting on her Mum’s support and co-operation.

On their way home, they passed a young vagrant trying to thumb a lift.  Anna knew that he was attempting the impossible and that no one would offer this scruffy young man a lift, so she stopped and picked him up.  She brought him home and asked me to give him something to eat while she fed the tiny puppy he was holding so tenderly, tucked inside his coat. I led him into the dining room and sat him down at the table, where all my guests sit, and I gave him a meal of cheese and tomatoes and toast with hot coffee.  Never before had I witnessed anyone so obviously hungry. 

As I chatted to him, I was struck by his cultured accent, and I learned that he was on his way to his parents’ home in Tewkesbury.  What story could he tell if I started asking about his private life?  Thank God I was sensitive enough not to launch into my usual probing quiz!  I don’t know why he was wandering the roads so far from home, unkempt and hungry and carrying a tiny starving puppy, but I was touched by his courtesy, his gentleness, his sadness, his calmness, but above all by his appreciation of my welcome and attention.

Anna drove him towards Walsall where she felt he’d stand a better chance of getting a lift.  I often think of that young man and wonder if he decided to re-embrace a more conventional life-style.  Only afterwards did I realise that I should have paid his fare on a train or coach to ensure that he arrived at his destination.  I hope his parents welcomed him with open arms.  His passing visit touched me every bit as much as Ran’s and Conrad’s, if in a different sense.  I didn’t receive a letter of thanks from him but I had perceived his gratitude as he sat and ate so ravenously.  I’m glad all three came to my house, for each, in his own way, enriched my life and inspired me with renewed faith in human worth.