On Chapel Sands

by Laura Cumming

  One last photograph, in sixties Kodachrome, shows Veda at the kitchen table in Edinburgh. She is seated before a birthday cake, made by my mother, with a constellation of candles. She looks down at my brother’s upturned face with such tenderness. It is another Ghirlandaio.

  I look at that picture again, and realise with a start that I am not related to this grandmother by blood, unlike Hilda Blanchard. But that means nothing at all. What matters is my strange inability to think of Hilda as my grandparent in the first place; for me that role seems to skip a generation, back to Mary Jane Blanchard.

  Ever since I learned that it was she who took Betty off the sands, my heart has gone out to this woman who lost her daughter to Australia and her granddaughter to a man she hoped would keep away. How hard she tried to bring Betty back; how much she longed to see her once more. And it might have happened if not for this self-sustaining silence that continued for decades, long after the adoption agreement was null and void. Betty could have found the windmill and met Mary Jane; she could have discovered the whereabouts of her birth mother – and vice versa. But they were all paralysed, frozen, my mother too, immobile as figures in a picture. The local people looked away. The ploughmen all ploughed on.

  16

  The Windmill

  On the eve of the Second World War, one of Fred Blanchard’s workmen climbed up inside the windmill when nobody was about and nailed a bag to the uppermost beam. The following morning he left Lincolnshire for the army, quite possibly never to return. First he was posted to France, later Italy and North Africa, in the blazing heat of the long desert war. He did not see the village of Hogsthorpe again for six years, one hundred and sixty-one days. During this immense span of time, the young soldier often remembered his bag and wondered what anyone would think if they came across its secret contents, especially if he never came home.

  The bag contained an agricultural thermometer, some stones and a black-and-white photograph of a car. This car could have been any car, ordinary as thousands of others, except that the image singled it out. The stones could have come from any beach and the thermometer was of the heavy metal variety commonly used in farms for forcing mushrooms. There was nothing specific or special about any of these things to a stranger’s eye, although together they cried out for interpretation. But for the workman they spoke of a shared past: mementos of time spent with Hilda Blanchard.

  Objects mean more than they are; signify more than themselves. One man’s chaff is another man’s treasure. A stone is easy; it might recall a walk. A car could be a haven for two. But the thermometer would have foxed anyone. It is an odd thing, terminally rusted yet still quick with mercury, apparently defunct yet suddenly alive when out in the sun. It sits on the desk before me now, along with Tennyson’s box, and the photograph of the little girl among the tulips. They all mean far more than they are.

  Hilda had come back to Hogsthorpe in 1938, this time without Lance but bringing four-year-old Judy. She stayed at the mill for many months, teaching in the local school, helping in the bakery. And it was here that she met Paul Eresby, her father’s best baker, who arrived at five every morning, put on his whites and began the first dough for the bread. He was there for long hours each day, moving around the mill and the kitchen. They became close. The stones in the bag were gathered with her on Chapel Sands. The thermometer was for taking the temperature of the soil in which they grew mushrooms, raising a crop of white caps together out of humid darkness. The photograph shows the car in which Paul taught Hilda to drive in the lanes around Hogsthorpe and Chapel.

  The shot is so humble – just an unremarkable old heap pulled up by a hedge – that its significance couldn’t possibly be to do with the car itself. It is still in the small brown envelope in which it was sent with utmost sensitivity to give comfort to my mother.

  Ever since she heard Fanny tell the story of her birth, the memory of Hilda’s outburst to the doctor continued to lacerate my mother. Her adult self understood the despair, the ordeal of concealment through nine months and the terrible exposure on that August day. But the child in her still grieved. It did not seem that George had wanted her to the point of love, only ownership; it did not seem as if Hilda could have cared for her quite enough to keep her. And all the recent generosity shown by the surviving members of the Blanchard family implying that she had been loved as a child established nothing but the fact of their kindness. The photographs of her early years at the mill did not persuade her, then or since. But then came a letter with a Hogsthorpe postmark in the first week of 1987.

  Dear Betty, Mrs Cumming,

  I’ve found out your address, you don’t know me, but I thought I’d better write. I was told you’d been to the village looking for news about your real mother. I’ve written before but tore them up, too much to put in a letter. But I’ll send this one and hope it helps. When you were a baby I knew all about you, you were Hilda Blanchard’s daughter Grace. They say your name got changed to Betty when you were three and she gave you up to the father. You must be 60 thereabouts now, but I only knew you as a child, every day except Sundays for those 3 years. What it is you ought to know – you WAS wanted. I’m telling you this in case you ever thought different. Hilda couldn’t keep you, see, in them times it was hard and she didn’t want you brought up with boys, 4 brothers she had. She went to Australia after. If you come again to Hogsthorpe there’s questions I could answer if you wanted. Yours truly Paul Eresby. I was with the Blanchard family in those days, hired hand in the mill.

  My mother was startled to receive this letter. Apart from Fanny, everyone who had ever seen Hilda with Grace was long since dead, or so she thought. But here was a living witness who could testify to the relationship between mother and daughter. She returned to Hogsthorpe to visit Paul Eresby, who was himself surprised to set eyes on her again after almost sixty years. Her presence filled him with renewed sorrow for them both, as it seems to me, and the other lives that they might both have led. It seemed impossible for either of them to breach the social meniscus; they did not weep, or reach out towards one another, or even speak deeply of Hilda. I do not think that this was just propriety; although Mr Eresby had long ago married and had children of his own. Perhaps there was a loyalty – towards Hilda, towards Veda. But my mother wrote a note of the conversation in her Letts diary that day – ‘Grace adopted after pressure from George, kidnapped by Mary Jane, Fanny and third sister Emma. The sisters want her back. Grandma Blanchard was tiny! Memory of her crying in the bakehouse, Paul upset himself. George and Hilda keep in touch. Hilda erratic, distressed, throwing an inkwell.’ If only there was more; the scenes are so dramatically abrupt. But once they had met, it seemed possible for Paul and Elizabeth to write to each other and there were several more letters.

  For my mother these are perhaps the clearest proof she will ever have of Hilda’s feelings for her. One was written in April. ‘Spring with things coming to life, lambs, calves etc being born, should be a joyous time, not bring sadness. But it reminds me of an evening I was teaching your mother to drive. She pulled up to let a pheasant and chicks cross the road. It upset her so much, that I had to drive her home. Her thoughts turned to you.’ Another tells of Hilda trying to see her daughter on the beach, and standing in vain in front of George’s house. A third describes an afternoon in which Hilda tries to get a letter by a back route to her child – he does not divulge how – and asks Paul to send it. To his eternal shame, he foolishly asks to read it first; she weeps, he tries to console her; the letter is never sent. And even now, half a century later, Paul agonises about writing all this to Grace, as she still is to him.

  I promised all those years ago that Hilda could talk to me with the sure knowledge that I would in no circumstances betray her trust. After some soul searching I have come to the conclusion that she would forgive me for speaking. I am not sure that you were completely satisfied that your mother really wanted you so I have put pen to paper now to try and convince you that this was the case. You poor little
innocent baby, in a few months you had entered and affected many people’s lives. For most it was heartbreak. It should never have been handled the way it was. Those principally concerned soon arrived at that conclusion but it was too late, even so, they made a futile grab to get you back before breaking the law. Mr and Mrs Blanchard were regular church goers, pillars of the church in fact. They could not stand the shame, he being a friend of the vicar. Under this pressure they made a decision they were soon to regret. They drove their daughter to a land twelve thousand miles away and lost her forever, and missed the joy in seeing their two lovely grand daughters grow up. Mrs Blanchard never gave up hope that one day she and Hilda would be reunited to be parted no more. She thought it had been brought about when Hilda’s husband agreed to come and work at the bakery. Her happiness was short lived. Lance soon wanted to return to Australia. In Hogsthorpe churchyard there was a vacant spot for Hilda in the curbed section where Mr and Mrs Blanchard are at rest with Arthur and Frank. The churchyard is now closed.

  Paul Eresby is the only correspondent who ever met George.

  Your father was an extremely intelligent man. But domineering and somewhat like a character from Dickens. I thought if you were under his influence too long you would be sour and unapproachable. I am glad I was wrong in my assumption. I too wish you had met your mother and grandparents. With hindsight I think we ought to have brought this about. What seemed right at the time now appears cruel and inhuman. You say Hilda must have found happiness with her two daughters. In my opinion not complete. How can you explain that with Judy nearly four years old she was begging to have you pointed out so she could see you. Could she have been contented with a look? We shall never know, but the chance should have been taken. I think after reading this you should realise that what you suffered would have to be multiplied by two to be anywhere near what your mother went through, and went on twice as long for if you have grown up children you were not so old when you found happiness.

  Eresby says that Hilda simply could not keep her child; yet he also implies that her parents’ shame was decisive. These accounts are not necessarily contradictory. His feeling for Hilda leads him to an emotional reckoning – it was much worse for Hilda than the child she abandoned – that hurt my mother at that time, but his loyalty to the Blanchards is undivided. Immense compassion for Hilda does not stop him from feeling the same for Mary Jane. ‘Hilda had three lovely daughters and I am glad to have met you all. Your happy ending was a long time coming. But Mrs Blanchard was like a second mother to me and in this desperate tale, she suffered most, reaching the age of ninety. If in unburdening myself I have caused you more pain I am truly sorry, but remember I have had this to myself for fifty years and confided in no one.’

  I have grown to feel this way too; to wonder whether Mary Jane lost most – a daughter as well as a granddaughter, outliving her husband and two of her sons. I could not bear to think that she never saw Grace again. But with the notes of the encounter with Fanny I have now found something else. An old reel-to-reel recording that none of us had ever played; my mother was too sad to listen and eventually, I suppose, the technology became obsolete. I bless the Blanchards for giving us these four minutes of revelation.

  The sound was recorded by one of Grandma Blanchard’s sons, Hugh, on Christmas Day 1965. They are trying out their new machine. Reel one is a sea of voices, all talking over each other, and off-mike, mainly about presents and visitors and seasonal subjects. I feel overwhelmed with the desire to rescue Mary Jane’s voice from this tide, to identify even one syllable spoken by her, and imagine taking the tape to some forensic lab and paying any price to distinguish the sound of my great-grandmother, her being momentarily incarnated. I can hear an aged voice murmuring in the background for a second or two. Then nothing. But in reel two she is right there on her own, answering occasional questions. Hers is a soft soprano, with a melodic laugh covering up the self-consciousness she feels on hearing that she is being recorded on this cumbersome machine for posterity. The tape runs out after a couple of minutes but it is long enough to hear her tender tones to all involved, her sweetness of character. She speaks so lovingly to her grown-up sons, now grandparents themselves, and remarks, almost as if talking about the weather, that she is blind nowadays. And then, just before the tape runs out, she pictures the lifeboat at Chapel and how they used to take it out on the sea for fun even when there was no call for it. And she is struggling to remember the name of her great friend there, all those times with her, and it turns out to be George’s wife at Stow’s Stores. She always went visiting Mrs Stow down the lane, she says. Mary Jane must have known exactly how my mother was getting on, what she looked like, perhaps even how she spoke, through this lifelong friendship. She must have seen Grace in that very same place, framed behind the post-office counter.

  Words and images. In life as in art we do not always see what is going on at the edges, or even the foreground, do not notice what seems irrelevant or superfluous to our needs and theories. Perception is guided by our own priorities. Brueghel played upon our habits of looking five hundred years ago, knowing that we would be a good while pondering the ploughman, the sun, sea and ship before we ever got to the shepherd staring up at the sky and realised that there must be something else going on, finally spotting the shock of Icarus.

  Among the photographs that came from Australia was the very picture of the little girl among the tulips that always stood by Hilda’s bed. On the back is written, in my aunt Judy’s hand, ‘Betty in the orchard at Grandma Blanchard’s mill. She was still Grace. This is before the kidnap.’ My mother is certainly surrounded by trees, and she looks as happy as in all the other mill photographs; I have always regarded it as a bitter-sweet vision of paradise lost. There she is in her best dress, with its pleats and pearl buttons and that long chain of beads, shining hair and matching smile, out among the tulips and trees. But look closer, look again, this is what I should have told myself. The tulips tell us that this is spring, probably April or May, given the lilies of the valley and the fact that she is not wearing a coat. If Betty is still at the mill then it must be 1929, in which case she would be two years old. But the girl in this picture is clearly three, rising to four, definitely conversational, quite possibly on the way to reading. In which case it can only be the spring of 1930, after the kidnap, by which time she has been living with George and Veda for at least six months. This is not the mill, therefore, and my sense is that it is in fact the land around 1 St Leonard’s Villas. Other photographs from the Elston album at this time show the same landscape, the same beads and dress.

  The photographer is not Hilda, Mary Jane or any of the Blanchards. It is George.

  The fringe Betty has in the mill pictures has grown out, her hair now pinned neatly to one side for this formal occasion. George has posed his daughter with particular care, so that she appears ringed by trees and spring flowers. She is following his instructions with enthusiasm, standing at a jaunty angle, hand on hip as if dancing, holding a bright smile for his camera – and the viewer for whom the image is intended. It is a declaration, almost a kind of propaganda.

  George takes the picture, and makes an unusually large print which he sends, along with another of Betty surrounded by several new toys, pleasingly configured by height, all the way to Australia. Both portraits are composed specially for Hilda, and the perfect size for framing. The tulip scene still bears the rusty imprint of her bedside frame. Betty is well; all is well. Here is the ocular proof: a beautifully dressed, well-nourished, reassuringly happy child. Everyone else may be sworn to silence, but George and Hilda are in touch through images.

  The photograph tells me this, but it has quite another meaning to my mother. It is important to her because she knows that this is how Hilda continued to see her lost daughter on the other side of the world. Towards the end of the birthday memoir, she suddenly falters, wondering with characteristic humility why I wanted her to write the story of what she calls her insignificant life; then she is s
truck by the idea that she could at least justify it as an act of gratitude for the happy days with her parents. These appear to me so few that the debt is surely exorbitantly overpaid. Still, they must have occurred, I tell myself, because the photographs say it is so. And then I remember that even when posing in the tree with the Happy Days annual, she tells of feeling the opposite emotion. I cannot be sure that Betty is as merry among the tulips as she seems; perhaps I need words, after all.

  Hilda kept the photograph by her forever. ‘A picture of a little girl who once belonged to me,’ as she described it to Susan. It reminds me of my mother’s phrase: ‘You are my most precious possession.’ I did not understand it, still react against its connotations of ownership, until I remember its corollary: ‘I never belonged to anyone until I belonged to you.’ Once, she wrote a letter to the grandfather she never knew, Fred Blanchard, in which she speaks of being disowned. It is the language of the period, but also of the heart. You are mine, I am yours; as we still say.

  But that is not how any of them talked to her. Nobody ever spoke of love, a word Betty never heard in childhood. Even now she has only modest hopes of other people’s affections. She is the woman who always asks all the questions of egotists who never offer any in return, who writes back to every letter by return of post, who cannot let gratitude be delayed by a moment, who never wants anyone to be left out, sincere in all her love and concern. Two things are very often said of her: that she takes self-deprecation almost to an art form, and that she can charm the birds from the trees. Where others would be hurt by the coldness of this world, in response to such charm, she takes it as normal. Her childhood diminished any sense of expectation.