Chapter 3
The next morning is grey, wet, and cold. Any hint of summer went the evening before, and an overnight wind has brought down leaves scattering them over the view from Ollie’s window. He gets up late, and has a full English breakfast in the hotel restaurant. This is a modern extension with a tiled floor and a glass roof, like a large old-fashioned conservatory. He had originally thought he would walk the mile or so into the village, but there are black clouds blowing in off the sea and salt in the air, and he drives over in the Beetle. The cottage is between the village and the bay, exposed but with a spectacular view over the bay and the cliffs beyond, and surrounded by a small neat garden, rose beds edged by neat lavender hedges.
Cathy welcomes him in with a peck on the cheek, gratefully accepting the flowers he picked up yesterday at a garage, now looking a bit tired. She stands back, blocking the entrance to look at him, and she peers into his face. “You’ve inherited your mother’s looks,” she says. “You got your height from Debbie, not your father. And your hair.”
Ollie frowns, and runs his hand through his short gingerish hair. He is tall and athletic, with a natural charm.
“Anyway, come in. I’ll put the kettle on.”
The cottage has two main rooms downstairs, a sitting room and a dining room, which have been partially knocked together, separated by a staircase in the middle. A door at the back leads to a small kitchen. There is little furniture, and the paintings are neutral landscapes. No family portraits were kept back from the sale, but there are a few photographs in polished silver frames on a mantlepiece above the fireplace and on the top of an upright piano. Ollie goes over to have a look at them. Some are old, and Ollie doesn’t recognise many of the people in them. There is a picture of Cathy with her husband Michael, and Philip, Ollie’s father, as a young boy. And another of Ollie’s parents on their wedding day. There is a faded black and white photograph of two girls, younger versions of the sisters in the picture at the hotel. Cathy must be about 12 years old, the other girl a few years older. They both have smiles fixed for the camera, clearly posing.
Cathy comes in with two mugs of coffee. “That’s Alice and me. I haven’t kept many old photographs, they just gather dust, and when I was sorting things out to move in here that was the only good one of her I could find. I had forgotten about the portrait that you mentioned, I haven’t seen it for such a long time.”
“I have got a picture of it here on my phone – here have a look”, and Ollie brings up the picture on his phone and hands it to his grandmother. She puts the coffee cups down and hesitates, as if unfamiliar with the technology, and then takes the phone awkwardly with both hands and looks at the picture. She is silent for a few seconds, looking steadily at the picture. Then she shakes her head.
“It’s so long ago, and my brain is getting old. But that’s not how I remember it.” She goes on looking at the picture, trying to remember something. She shakes her head again, slowly. “There’s something wrong.” She pauses again.” It wasn’t like that.”
And then she gives the phone back to Ollie, fumbling over it as she does so, and heads back into the kitchen from where she reappears with two slices of home made fruit cake and she sets them down next to the coffee cups. She looks across at the pictures on the shelf, and then at Ollie. He sits on a sofa next to the table, and she sits in a chair at the end of the table, clearly her favourite chair, facing the TV and with a tartan rug over one arm. For a few minutes they eat their cake in silence.
“There used to be a baker in the village, they made great fruitcake, but it closed and we don’t have a proper shop any more. A few vans operate down in the bay when there are tourists, otherwise there is just the pub. Anyway, thanks for coming down. I know you are wondering why I asked you, and I am glad that you are here. It is not just to see you again, although you are always welcome. I have to explain some family history that I have kept to myself for too long. I don’t know how much Philip told you about your background, but there are some things that he didn’t want to know about. Perhaps he guessed, but the moment was never right to explain. And now for him it’s too late. I expect to be around for a few more years, but moving here has made me sort out the physical things in my life, and it is time to put my mind at rest. And I should warn you that it may not be something that you want to be burdened with. But you’re my grandson and you should know.”
Ollie smiles, not sure how to react. “That’s OK. I’m sure I’ll manage. Dad never talked about his childhood. I know much more about mum’s family.”
“I have always liked your mother, she was good for Philip, brought him out of himself, helped him to find his feet. But they didn’t come down here very much. It all starts with the house, the Manor. You probably know that it was bought by my grandfather, Sir Christopher. He was a banker, and his wife’s family also had money. They lived in London and bought the Manor as a retreat after my mother, Victoria, was born. This was just before the first war. He had fought in Africa and he went back to his regiment when the war started. But he was killed in 1915 in the trenches, leaving his wife, Mary, and Victoria their daughter. Mary sold the London house after a few years and moved down here for good.
“My father, William, was in the navy. I don’t know how Victoria met him, but he was local and she was keen to stay in the house, so after they married he moved in. They married in 1934, and at that time William was based in Portsmouth spending his weeks there in barracks and his weekends here. My mother was pregnant with Alice when the Second World War started, but he hardly saw the baby, he was away at sea most of the time. I was conceived when he was home on leave in 1945, and was born just as the war was ending.
“He had spent most of the war hunting U boats in the North Atlantic. It must have been tough, cold, constant tension with the risk of being torpedoed. But as far as it is possible he came through unharmed. He never talked about the war when he came home, he said it was behind him. I was much too young to understand at the time, I was just a baby, but he had changed when he came home. I don’t think it was trauma, he didn’t have nightmares. For him it was the futility, the wastefulness, the arbitrary killing. He saw ships sink, but his never did. Why did one man drown while the next man was rescued? One man take a bullet through the head while the next had a graze on his shoulder? The father I grew up with had lost his ambition, lost his tolerance for waste, frivolity, spite and jealousy. He liked walking, gardening, he appreciated nature. He started giving away money. He left the navy and got a job working for the Forestry Commission. He didn’t go to parties, lost his taste for expensive things.
“I don’t think Mother ever understood, or forgave him for not being the man she married. I think she could have coped with injury, but not his withdrawal from the things she valued. He became boring to her, and they drifted apart. She kept appearances for her friends, but missed her trips to London. And she lost interest in her children. We had a nanny to look after Alice and me and we weren’t unhappy, but Mother found us difficult and I remember her being cold, inconstant, and unloving.”
She looks up at Ollie. “Don’t think we were neglected. We had a sheltered, privileged childhood. We had the sea, and the bay, and each other. We looked for fossils on the beach, and I remember trips to Lulworth Cove and Corfe Castle. A favourite walk was up to the Clavell Tower on the headland. You know it, you can almost see it from here. It has been refurbished now, and they moved it back from the cliff edge a few years ago, but when we were young it was a ruin perched on the cliff, just waiting for a storm to take the rock from under it. I was fascinated by it. Why was it built? Who would build a tower, a folly, just for the sake of it? And it was in an ornate Italian style. We made up stories about it; that lovers met there, that someone fell from the cliff, that smugglers used it, that it was haunted. Sometimes a light wind would find its way through the gaps in the stones creating an eerie sound, like ghosts in pain. And the view from there is the best. Now you get too many walkers, it is right on the South West Coast Path, but then it was a quiet place.
“We could afford staff at the Manor in those days, a nanny, a cook, a maid and a gardener. Father wanted to get rid of them but on this Mother had her way. The staff lived in the village, except for the gardener who lived with his wife in a cottage near the big house. We spent our time with them, and only at lunchtime and sometimes in the evening did we spend any time with Mother. Father came and went, and when he wasn’t working sometimes came to seek us out. He wanted to know what we were doing, took an interest in our games, showed us things in the garden.”
Cathy gets up and walks to the mantlepiece, picking up a black and white photograph of a couple in their 20s. “This was taken when they met, before they got married. Victoria was five years older than William, the only daughter of a wealthy family. I believe it caused a bit of a scandal at the time, marrying a younger man, a dashing naval officer with no background. But look at him. He had film-star looks. She fell for him. I would have done too.”
Ollie is surprised at the force that she puts into this statement, and takes the picture that she offers him. Although the picture is eighty years old it has caught a moment of love and joy in a handsome young couple. There is a breeze and she is smiling and holding onto her hat. He is relaxed, in uniform, with his arm around her waist. They are standing on a pier, a beach and headland in the distance behind them. It is easy to imagine them, perhaps with another couple, enjoying a day by the sea, with friends and sunshine. Ollie hands the picture back.
“There were other pictures, but this is the one that I want to remember them by. The others were flat, and told of the sadness to come.”
The telephone rings in the kitchen, and Cathy goes through to answer it, shutting the door behind her. Ollie checks his phone for messages, and then stands up and looks more closely at the other photographs. They are of other people, other places, more recent. He looks round the room, and realises how much she must have thrown out, or left behind. There are no trinkets collected over the years, few china ornaments. A couple of vases, a couple of pictures. It is as if she doesn’t live there but is just visiting. The room has none of the clutter he associates with old people. Little to remember a long life by.
Cathy comes back in, holding a small package, a bit flustered. “I’m sorry, someone in the village. I shall have to go out.” She doesn’t offer any explanation. “We haven’t got very far I am afraid, but you will have to bear with me; I need to get my thoughts in order. Can we continue this tomorrow? I think I warned you it may take a couple of days. And there are some things that I need to sort out for you.”
Given how little there is in the room this surprises Ollie, and he smiles. “That’s fine. I might go for a walk, it is going to be a nice afternoon – or at least nicer than this morning.”
“Here, take another piece of cake to have on your way. I won’t eat it all.” She hands him the package. The cake has been firmly wrapped in cling film and then in waxed paper and a brown paper bag. “Come back for lunch tomorrow, I need to go to the bank in the morning to collect something. Come at 12.00.”
“OK. I’ll see you then.”