The Allies went on to capture Rome on 4 June 1944. It’s no wonder that those involved had no appetite to talk about the experience afterwards. The war in Europe was declared over on 8 May 1945, when Germany finally surrendered, following Hitler’s suicide in a Berlin bunker. After the war, Ted was posted to Berlin to administer the dispersal of refugees and displaced persons.
During one of our late-summer walks, my father told me about a German girl he’d become attached to during his time in Berlin. I believe it was the first time he truly fell in love. How emotionally complicated their relationship must have been, as tales of Nazi brutality and the Final Solution unfolded. Perhaps members of her family had been killed by the Allies or were now struggling on meagre rations. My young father’s wartime experiences were so fresh in his mind. I asked him what she was called, and his eyes twinkled at the memory. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Nessie,’ he said. ‘I think we should put that time behind us now, don’t you?’
‘Don’t you understand, Dad?’ I persevered. ‘In this day and age, we can Google her name and then probably make contact.’ I found the idea of a ninety-three-year-old lady receiving an email from a man she’d met nearly seventy years previously, telling her that he’d never forgotten her in all those years, too tender for words. ‘Oh no, darling, we shouldn’t do that,’ Dad said. ‘It would upset your mother.’
While foraging for clues in my parents’ cellar, I came across a shoebox of cuttings and photos that Dad had kept. It was touching to see what he’d chosen to set aside. Apart from a number of his liaison officer maps and notebooks, there were many folders of black and white photographs. Dad had inherited his mother’s passion for photography. Here were beautiful images of the Pyramids, majestic in the desert, fellow officers on horseback, Arabs wearing flowing robes, camels and oases. Wading through these wallets of unidentified people and places, I found one that was stamped with the logo of a Berlin photo lab. Inside were eight small pictures, four taken by Dad and four by his sweetheart. They are both staring at the camera with love in their eyes, Dad loose-limbed and athletic and she with a fresh-faced calm.
Dad had hinted at the reality of his war but I hadn’t enquired too deeply, for fear of disturbing the veneer of cheer with which he’d managed to gloss over his darker memories. Only twice did I notice him drop this façade. Once was at Alton crematorium after his sister Joyce’s funeral. We’d been standing side by side as her coffin slid behind the curtains. ‘Daddy, how did you manage not to shed a tear?’ I whispered, holding his hand as we walked past the next group of mourners.
‘Ah, darling,’ he replied. ‘You know, I lost most of my friends in the war. I gave up crying at funerals a long time ago.’ The second time, just before he died, I was fortunate enough to talk to him about his real wartime experiences: how during the Battle of El Alamein he had taken up smoking a pipe to keep the flies away – there were clouds of them laying their eggs on all the rotting bodies. ‘It really was a pretty ghastly time,’ he admitted.
Ted returned to England, twenty-seven years old and one of the youngest majors in the British Army. He travelled straight to Suffolk, knocked at the front door and was greeted by the butler who calmly said, ‘Good evening, Master Ted.’
‘Good evening, Dobson. It’s good to see you again.’ Before another word was uttered, there was a commotion in the kitchen. On hearing her master’s voice, Patsy, Ted’s faithful fox terrier, came careering down the corridor, skidding on the parquet floor, and leapt into her master’s arms.
After the war, Ted learned that, as a veteran whose BA course was cut short by the war, if he sent £10 to Trinity he would automatically qualify for a Master’s degree. Within a few months, at the insistence of his father and though he had no real academic experience or interest in pursuing a career as a barrister, he was sent off to law school in London.
5
DEEPEST DARKEST DEVON
Necker, British Virgin Islands, July 2017
I’m sharing a room with Mum and she is, at ninety-three, as delicate as a robin. I have no idea how her thin legs and wonky hips support her, but she still scuttles around, emptying her neat suitcases that were packed back in Sussex by one of her two nurses.
We all found her memory slippages alarming at first, but they now form part of her personality. When corrected, she laughs them off with murmurs of, ‘Oh yes, silly me. I should leave other people to think for me now!’ A week before our trip, I visited her at her home in West Wittering and found her leafing through her diary.
‘Now let me see,’ she said. ‘On Monday I’m seeing my old friend Maggie McGee. I’m not sure what for – take a look for me, Nessie. Is it for her birthday?’ She checked her diary entry again before handing it to me and bursting into giggles. ‘Oh no, I’ve got that wrong,’ she said. ‘It’s for her funeral!’
Mum has become adept at hiding her erratic memory loss by remaining curious about other people’s lives and hoping that no one will ask her about hers. Her lights go on and off according to her level of anxiety (usually zero), her energy (usually bountiful) and her whisky levels (more often than not, topped up).
Her coiffed hair has been flattened by the journey, and she looks like an impish version of Jean Seberg in Breathless. Around her neck she wears a mother-of-pearl crucifix on one chain and a gold hand of Fatima on another. She lies on her bed, staring out at the swaying palms towards the glistening Caribbean beyond and running her fingers back and forth over her temple, something she does when she wants to think. I finish unpacking for her, hanging her delicate gowns on padded hangers. She has always adored clothes and, as an act of defiance against her old age, regularly adds to her wardrobe. Three swimsuits, a pair of skinny white jeans, four or five chiffon dresses, T-shirts, gold sandals, and satin slips with matching bras and panties. I continue to unpack, amazed at what she has managed to fit in her two small cases. Next come her wash bag and make-up, her jewellery and curlers, her book of French grammar, her Kindle, her mobile phone and, finally, her diary.
Mum has always written. To her, capturing the passing days in her diaries is an urgent task. She tells everyone she meets that they should write their experiences down. ‘Trust me,’ she says, ‘you will forget.’ Looking at her now, I have a hunch that she is right.
‘Shall we be little devils and have a drink, Vanessa?’ she asks.
‘No, Mummy,’ I reply. ‘I’ll get you a cup of tea for now. We’ve almost finished unpacking and then you can have your whisky.’
‘You old spoilsport,’ she laughs and we settle down into the rhythm of easy companions, knowing we have an entire week of holiday stretching before us. ‘Tell me, Nessie,’ she says suddenly. ‘Have you got a special man in your life?’
‘No, Mummy,’ I say. ‘I haven’t given up hope of finding someone special again but, for now, I’m quite content as I am.’ My answer is fundamentally true. Obviously having a partner would be the ideal but surrounding myself with interesting, challenging people is a happy compensation. That is unless I’m made to feel humiliated by my mother, of course. I should lie. If Mum asks my sister Lindy if she has a boyfriend, she says, ‘Yes, his name is Net Flix,’ and Mum approves.
‘I don’t believe a woman is a real woman unless she has a man,’ Mum continues. I grit my teeth – we’ve been through this routine many times before. My voice goes a little sing-songy as I reply, ‘You may well be right, Mummy, but at my age it’s not so easy to find a man who is worth making the necessary compromises for. And anyway,’ I finish, ‘I’m not sure I find older men that attractive.’
She floats off into her own thoughts. ‘Of course I’ve got a man,’ she says, reassuring herself. ‘Well, I think I have. I have got a man, haven’t I, Nessie? I really can’t remember.’
‘Yes, Mummy, you have a special friend,’ I say.
She looks at me and smiles. ‘Now tell me, Nessie, have you got a special man in your life?’
‘Let’s go and get you that whisky,’ I say, and we make our way into
the cavernous main room of the great house on the hill.
Mum is happy as she washes down a dementia pill with a good slug of whisky. We sit quietly watching the clouds form abstract paintings, as the sun sets on the horizon. All is quiet. The babies are being put to bed by their exhausted parents, the young are showering in various outbuildings and I can’t help feeling I’m exactly where I should be, witnessing the last of the old generation and the birth of the new.
Mum breaks into my thoughts. ‘What are you reading at the moment, Nessie?’ she asks.
‘A book called The Bright Hour, about a woman dying of terminal cancer,’ I reply.
‘Oh dear,’ she says. ‘It must be terrible for people knowing that they’re going to die soon.’
I nod and smile. ‘Mummy, you really are an extraordinary lady. How about another whisky? You’ve certainly earned it.’
***
Our family tale now takes us back to Scotland and this time to Edinburgh, for the birth of my mother’s mother, Dorothy Constance Jenkins, on Sunday 19 June 1898. Her father, the Reverend Charles James Jenkins, barely had time to congratulate his wife, Mary Eve, before dashing off for the 7 a.m. matins service. By all accounts he took his vocation as rector of St James the Less Episcopal Church very seriously indeed. He hailed from seven generations of clergy, including two bishops, and had a powerful legacy to uphold. Dorothy, or Young Dock as she soon became known, her older sister Eve and little brothers Charles and Jack, were always aware that Reverend Jenkins put his parishioners first, while his family came a firm second.
The Jenkins clan lived in a dour but comfortable Victorian vicarage, next to the church in Inverleith Row. There wasn’t money to spare for luxuries, but there were plenty of opportunities to excel. My great-grandmother’s belief in the importance of a sound education, self-discipline, hard work and a focus on the job at hand served her children well and provided the foundation for their matter-of-fact practicality. All four went on to thrive. Eve and Dock were educated at St Brandon’s Clergy Daughters’ School in Bristol, while Charles and Jack won full scholarships to Fettes College, Edinburgh’s most prestigious public school. Mercifully, both boys were too young to be enlisted to fight in the First World War.
Dock resisted church life from an early age. She didn’t believe in metaphor or transcendence and had little truck with spirituality, but she approached her responsibility towards the poor of the parish with enthusiasm. Helping her mother support the unfortunate, who would knock at the kitchen door of the vicarage asking for help, was a formative experience for her. For these wretched souls, the alternative to seeking help from the parish was entering the dreaded workhouse. Year after year she witnessed babies being born to undernourished women. As an impressionable girl, she also saw the effects of domestic abuse on wives who were entirely dependent on their alcoholic husbands. The insight she gained while helping with the congregation of St James provided a lesson she was to remember for the rest of her life.
Dock was sixteen when the First World War broke out. This frightening period was made even more challenging when her father died of a heart attack in 1917. Her mother then took on the job of secretary to the Bishop of Edinburgh, a job she retained until she retired at the age of eighty. Dock received a fine education at Lansdowne House School in Murrayfield and went on from there to St Brandon’s. She fitted into school life in every respect, being bright and gifted at sport. She took up gymnastics and cricket, captained the squash team, became a keen ice-skater, a fine golfer and tennis player, and also swam for her school. She was fearless and loved performing for an audience; her family enjoyed telling the story of how, finding the top diving board at the Drumsheugh Baths not challenging enough, she climbed into the rafters before diving from there – the only girl ever to have done so.
Young Dock was a tomboy and fiercely competitive. The role of girls at the time was to emulate their mothers in being ladylike and decorative. The long skirts and enormous hats of the day were not conducive to thrashing your brothers at tennis, but this didn’t stop Dock from taking them on at every opportunity. Sadly, as she neared her eighteenth birthday, she had to leave St Brandon’s; the journey there was considered too hazardous as the war developed. To leave school without any academic qualifications must have been unbearable for my clever, energetic grandmother, and she wasn’t alone – few women at the time went on to higher education.
For Dock and many women of her era, the war was a liberating godsend. The restrictions of middle-class Edwardian life lifted and not only could they work; they were expected to. Women were needed to support the war effort at home and to fill the holes left by a generation of workers who had been called up to fight. Dock first trained as a nurse and then as a mechanic in the Royal Army Service Corps, becoming the only woman driver in the north of Scotland – a tough assignment, as the lorries had no windscreens and had to be started by hand. She enjoyed the admiring looks she received as she fired up the truck’s engine, turning the crankshaft while wearing a long coat pulled tight at the waist with a brown leather belt.
In September 1918, as the war was coming to a close, Dock was sent to pick up a quietly spoken major from the Lowland Brigade. As she drove him back to his headquarters in Edinburgh, she caught his eye in the rear-view mirror. He responded to her charm and cheery banter with a smile, but then looked out of the window in silence. He was unlike the other officers returning from the front, who were keen to flirt.
‘Who is this handsome, mysterious officer sitting behind me?’ she thought, as they bumped along the rough roads. She stole more surreptitious glances in the rear-view mirror, wondering how to get him talking – just the sort of challenge she couldn’t resist. ‘Do you play golf?’ she asked.
In 1911 Rupert Huntley Flindt had signed up as a volunteer to the London Rifle Brigade, a territorial regiment. Following the declaration of war on 4 November 1914, when he was twenty-three years old, he happily abandoned his City job and embarked for France with the 1st Battalion. Soldiers who became part of the British Expeditionary Force at this stage of the war later became known as Old Contemptibles, an assignation which derived from the Kaiser’s reference to ‘Britain’s contemptible little army’.
Rupert’s unit was first in action in Flanders, near the town of Ploegsteert (which soon became known to the British as ‘Plugstreet’), just as the First Battle of Ypres was ending in May 1915. In February he had been commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant and during the month-long battle he earned a ‘mention in dispatches’. He also experienced a dreaded mustard-gas attack and was wounded by a mortar bomb.
While on home ground recovering from his injuries – I’ve found no record of them, but Mum told me he had ‘lumps all over his head that still contained shrapnel’ and that his lungs never fully recovered from breathing the mustard gas – he attended staff college and became a staff captain. In the breezy language of the time, he wrote that he ‘spent a further spell at the Front’ with the New Zealand Division, and at the end of the war he was a brigade major with the Lowland Brigade in Scotland. This was where fate played its part and he ended up being driven to Edinburgh by the striking young Dorothy Jenkins.
Soldiers on the front line had spent months knee-deep in mud, living on meagre rations in trepidation of being sent over the top, to run over barbed wire and into machine gun fire, with nothing more to protect them than a tin helmet. Those who survived the war had experienced pure hell and witnessed most of their friends being bayoneted, blown up, gassed or shot. Their ragged nerves were worn out, too, by constant aerial bombardment. A million young souls survived these scenes of devastation only to be condemned to a future haunted by scenes too agonising to refer to and frozen in a state of brittle dignity.
It’s not surprising that Rupert was attracted to Dock. He would have found her no-nonsense approach to life comforting and her healthy presence and clear opinions on right and wrong reassuring. In her memoir, Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain wrote, ‘The difference between the Firs
t and Second World Wars was that in the Second World War some of my friends came back.’ What a complicated world for our two young lovers to meet in.
After marrying in Edinburgh in March 1922, the gentle major and his ‘little treasure’ set up home in Hadley Wood in Hertfordshire, now one of north London’s sprawling suburbs but then a thriving market town. Rupert took up his old post as a City trader in the family firm and soon became a partner in the company. Hadley Wood was convenient for the City, its neat station being on the direct line to Kings Cross. He and the other commuters, all dressed in black coats, pinstripe trousers and bowler hats, and carrying tightly furled umbrellas, took the train to London at the same time every morning and home again at the same time each evening.
Their first child, Michael, was born in the spring of 1923, quickly followed by my mother, Eve, on 12 July 1924. Michael and Evette were born into a happy home. Dock was confident and predictably took motherhood in her stride. The years of helping her mother with her younger brothers and caring for struggling parishioners had given her an understanding of just how robust a newborn baby is, and she enjoyed showing off her proficiency. But Rupert’s enigmatic silences were beginning to affect her sense of well-being and the more she encouraged him to share in the joy of their adorable children, the more taciturn he became.
One evening, Rupert returned to Hadley Wood on his usual train, walked into the house, threw his hat and umbrella to one side and announced that he was never going to work in the City again. ‘I want to do something clean,’ he said.
One Hundred Summers Page 5