Joan agreed to go. On a wet night in March 1941, Alf, Brian, Malcolm, Joan, her friend Doreen Garbutt and another young woman set off from 23 Kirkgate in the direction of the village dance in Sandhutton.
Joan Danbury, on whom the character of Helen in the Herriot books is based, was not the daughter of a farmer as the reader is led to believe. She was a secretary at Rymer’s Mill, the corn merchants in Thirsk, and her father was an official in local government who was working at that time in York. Her family came from Winchcombe, a picturesque little town in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire, and they moved to Thirsk when Joan was eight years old. At the time of her meeting with Alf, she had quite a string of boyfriends, her number one suitor being a wealthy farmer from the Harrogate area.
It is not surprising that she had her admirers; photographs taken of her in her younger days reveal a very attractive girl. Some of the descriptions of Helen in the first books describe the young Joan Danbury vividly: ‘The small, straight nose’ and the mouth ‘that turned up markedly at the corners as though she was just going to smile or had just been smiling. The deep warm blue of the eyes under the smoothly arching brows made a dizzying partnership with the rich black brown of the hair.’
Alf’s first evening with Joan in the company of their friends did not go smoothly. In appalling weather, the little Ford car ground to a halt on a flooded road with water pouring in through the floor. The men leapt out, pushed the car onto drier ground, restarted it and returned to 23 Kirkgate in order to dry themselves out. They finally made the dance, then returned once again to the old house where they spent the remainder of the evening chatting, drinking and listening to Brian’s endless string of humorous stories. He threw in a couple of spectacular convulsions for good measure.
From that very first meeting, Alf decided that Joan Danbury was worth pursuing, although he acknowledged there was plenty of competition. He summoned up the courage to ask whether he could see her again and, to his delight, she agreed. If she was looking for someone with money, she certainly was on to a loser with Alf Wight. He may have been a professional man but, in common with many young veterinary surgeons of his day, he was a financial nonentity; he was worth little more than the clothes he stood up in, with his capital in the bank standing at around five or ten pounds.
She saw other qualities in him. He was an attractive young man with a sincerity and honesty about him that appealed to her. Most importantly, they shared a similar sense of humour and she enjoyed his company – vital ingredients in the recipe for a long and happy relationship.
Their courtship was not an extravagant one. As Joan, too, had little money, visits to the cinema (romantically seated at the back in the ‘one and nines’), trips to village dances and walking in the hills were enough to stretch their budget to its limits.
Joan, when time off from her job allowed, often accompanied Alf on his TB Testing trips up into the Dales, helping him by writing the numbers of the cows in the book. Although he loved the Dales, the TB work was boring and repetitive, but to have a young lady, to whom he felt so attracted, accompany him on his long and usually solitary journeys, put a completely different complexion on the working day.
The village dances were a prominent feature of country life. They have largely disappeared today but, fifty or more years ago, there was a dance every Saturday night in one of the local village halls with throngs of people, young and old, attending them. A few drinks in a nearby pub, followed by an energetic fling on the dance floor and a good feed from the vast tables groaning with good Yorkshire fare, made for a great night out.
These events, at which he had a chance to observe the huge appetites of the Yorkshire country folk, were a revelation to Alf. The food, usually prepared by local housewives, was of the highest calibre, even during the austerity of the war years. Pork pies, brawn, piles of sandwiches, apple pies, trifles, cakes and pastries were all consumed with effortless ease. He was a willing participant in the duty of demolishing the delicious mountains of food – and, in Joan, he had an able assistant. Over his many years working among the farming community, Alf never ceased to be astonished by the farmers’ ability to put away staggering quantities of food. He was always a good eater himself, but these people were in a league of their own; they worked hard and they had appetites to match.
I remember, many years ago, attending the silver wedding celebrations of one of our farming clients in a small village hall. The place was teeming with laughing faces, there were vast amounts of food, and very soon a buzz of satisfaction pervaded the atmosphere, dominated by the noise of the scraping of plates and happy chatter. People filed up to the serving tables for second and third helpings, and I was taking my turn when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was an old client of my father called Herbert Megginson who was a regular at the village dances in the days when he used to visit them. He especially used to enjoy dancing with my mother – on one evening, when heavily under the influence of drink, whispering unsteadily into her ear, Ooh! You ’ave such a supple form!’
‘Supple form’, as he was always known from that day onwards, was enjoying himself on this occasion, surrounded as he was by food, drink and women. ‘Hey, vitin’ry!’ he said, with a knowing smile.
‘Hello, Mr Megginson,’ I replied. ‘This is a good “do”. Plenty to eat!’
‘Aye, ye’re right there!’ He plucked at my sleeve. He was obviously impressed by the speed with which the food was being shovelled out of sight. He nodded in the direction of a group of busy, sweating faces. ‘’Ave yer got yer instruments with yer in case someone gets blown?’
It was at these village functions, which formed such an enjoyable part of their courtship, that Alf and Joan met many people who would become lasting friends, but there was a serious side to Alf’s courtship, too. He was a great letter writer and pursued Joan with the written as well as the spoken word. Some early letters in the summer of 1941 reveal his fluency as a writer, together with more than a dash of the romantic to his nature:
Joan my dear,
Why on earth should I be writing this when, if the Gods are kind, I’ll be seeing you tonight? I believe it is because something, a very trivial something, has been fermenting in this funny, analytical mind of mine and now demands an outlet. It is just that a succession of little thoughts have resolved themselves into a brooding sense of injustice that so many fellows seem to be writing love letters to young Danbury while Wight, with all his music within him, as it were, never puts pen to paper.
Anyway, Joan, now that I am sitting down to the job, I find myself rather up against it because I realise now that I have never written a love letter before. But how difficult it is when it should be so easy. Somehow, the feeling I have for you is not one that bubbles up and froths over in a mass of endearing terms and neatly turned compliments. It is such a very quiet thing like a wide, deep running river and so completely sincere that I, who have always shunned sincerity with its way of laying one open to all the hurts and disappointments that are going, am rather scared. It is only when I sit down to write that I realise the hopeless inadequacy of words to come near to expressing my thoughts; or maybe I am just tired.
Yes, that’s it. How can I make a go of this very important letter when my head is nodding and my arms are aching? But I am going to stagger out with this unfinished fragment so that tomorrow you’ll know that I did make an effort anyway. I’ll be thinking of you till Tuesday – all the time. Goodnight, Joan.
Just yours,
Alf.