Sunday, 16 December 2018
De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est
My English great grandfather, as well as researching his family history, also wrote brief biographies of his parents, and of what he knew of other family members, such as the grandparents he never knew. I have often wanted to do the same thing, but I have always held back. Either these people were living, in which case it was unfair to write about them as that might cause hurt and pain if they were to become aware of my thoughts and feelings, or if they were already dead, what good would it do? Nobody is perfect, we all have failings, but I have always wanted to understood better why we are a certain way, and what influence our backgrounds and upbringings have had on us.
My mother died a year ago, and she was an important influence on me, and I was the only one of her children to identify with her background, language and culture. My siblings all chose to be absorbed into Mancunian life.
How do I describe my mother? Physically she was short, perhaps five feet tall. Nearly all her life she was overweight, something that I think started with the death of my sister before I was born. She lost weight twice that I recall, both times associated with returns to Italy, once when I was about seven in 1956, and again in about 1958. After that, the weight stayed on and slowly grew. She had good skin, and very little grey hair, even at the end of her life. Her personality was fiery: she was permanently angry, losing her temper at the slightest provocation. She could not cope with silence, often mumbling and humming to herself, forcing 'conversation' which usually consisted of her giving a monologue. A 'conversation' quickly became a confrontation. My mother was very opinionated, and never apologised to a person in her life, because she was always right.She was not a listener, she was a fury, with a huge sense of entitlement. To me it felt that, having survived awful experiences in the war, she met my father when peace came and then just coasted through life, expecting to be waited on, respected, honoured, pampered and indulged. Like my father she was magnificently egotistical. I remember her saying that it was my father whom she loved, and that she never wanted children, although she bore six of us. When I was driving her to distraction as a teenager I remember her phrase, wishing she had drowned me in the toilet when I was born, Another phrase, when told what a nice person I was, was to retort that 'You don't know what he's really like'. I do not recall interacting with my mother as a child. We didn't have stories at bedtime or anything like that. From birth pretty much I learnt to be on my own and enjoy my own company. I didn't have birthday parties, mostly because my birthday falls at the very end of July. We did not have family holidays, though on one occasion we all went with my grandparents to Newton's Farm near Scarborough. On a couple of occasions my mother did walk with us down the lanes from our council house to Castle Mills, an outdoor swimming pool, together with her friend Franca.
My mother's fiery temper meant that we were all in fear of her exploding, especially my father, who actually stayed away most of the time. He left early and came home late. When we moved to Alexandra Park there was the daily evening ritual of eating our 'tea' at 6pm, and my father's plate being placed over a pan of simmering water till he got home an hour or two later. There was no compromise. On one occasion I remember my mother throwing the plate at the wall when my father sulked after being upbraided for being late home as usual. The mashed potatoes and gravy created a suction pad so the plate stuck to the wall, so we all burst out laughing, breaking the tension. It did not for my mother though.
My mother was not happy as a housewife. Our food was pretty monotonous, with a strong reliance on 1960s convenience foods: 'Smash' instant mashed potatoes, 'Surprise' freeze-dried peas, that we're always impossibly salty, as my mother never adjusted her method of adding a handful of salt to cooking vegetables, and 'Angel Delight' instant pudding. She did make occasional apple pies, but custard was mostly forbidden, and because she only drank coffee she treated tea as 'unclean' and never made a cup of tea for my father in their seventy years together.
She disliked my grandmother and most of my father's family, making exceptions only for my young uncle Ralph, and for my great aunt Dora who she saw as having some class and education, as she also respected my great aunt Phyllis in Loughton, and especially her husband uncle Jimmy, who worked for a bank like her own father. My mother had no time for people she saw as working class or uneducated except as people who might admire her.
My mother could dress well, despite her dumpy figure, and in a very continental way that she never lost. She did have style. She was certainly a shopaholic, her main pastime throughout her life being shopping for clothes for herself and for my three sisters. There were vast quantities of these which accumulated in the attic rooms. She loved opera, and was very happy as a theatrical landlady after I left home, as in addition to having a captive audience of listeners, she had a plentiful supply of complimentary tickets, and she received all the income, although it was my father who made all the breakfasts and prepared all the bedrooms for the guests.
It was when we became teenagers that my mother was challenged. As children we could be smacked, shouted at and punished. As we became older we began to stand up to her and this infuriated her to the point of hysterical madness. She expected total obedience and total respect. Answering back was a terrible crime, but this gave us power, so that by answering back we could drive her over the edge, which we did. Our teenage years were marked by her reliance on purple hearts (dexamyl) and threats of suicide, such as placing the miniature gas poker on the cooker in her mouth. Christmas had always been a terrible time, when my mother's anxiety levels would explode and she would fall to pieces.
My mother could shine, and in particular I remember how she would function well as an amateur midwife, supporting my sisters when they became mothers. When my mother came close to death with the birth of my brother when she was forty we all felt close to her, of course we did, she was still our mother, despite her failings. She also shone when she returned to Italy. In about 1983 I travelled with her to Italy as my grandfather was unwell, and she seemed a different person, calmer. more rational, and more lovable. I am glad I had that glimpse of another persona.
My mother truly reflected her background, as a northern Italian, as somebody who had survived World War Two in very difficult circumstances, and who in the process of that war had been cheated of her chance of an education. It was partly that that led to her sense of entitlement too. She always felt superior to my father and his family. What I found particularly difficult was her apparent lack of rationality. I remember saying very early on that it seemed that my mother had a ganglion rather than a brain. Everything had a set response. Nothing was negotiable. She was always right. She was remarkably selfish and egotistical. But sometimes, under very extreme pressure, a better person could show themself, a glimmer of sensitivity and thoughtfulness. I always used to say that it was all Hitler's fault. I don't think it was all his fault, but certainly what she lived through damaged her terribly, and froze her so that she did not fully develop intellectually or emotionally. The price she paid was that she was never satisfied, never happy, never formed a good friendship, never was able to think about others and their needs, and was never fulfilled in what she did. Her life was one of frustration, waiting for others to make her happy.
I never gave up on my mother though. At one time I wanted to help her, to make it possible to move on from this frozen, stunted state, but of course that did not work. I determined that I would stay loyal and supportive, but in my twenties I started to make my own life, and broke away from her emotional hold. That worked. I tried to support my father as best I could, and I suppose that worked too. I learned Italian, I got the education she had always craved, I loved opera as she did, I had a home in Italy. I suppose I thought these things would make her happy, and in a way they did. Fortunately they gave me happiness too.
My mother died a year ago, and she was an important influence on me, and I was the only one of her children to identify with her background, language and culture. My siblings all chose to be absorbed into Mancunian life.
How do I describe my mother? Physically she was short, perhaps five feet tall. Nearly all her life she was overweight, something that I think started with the death of my sister before I was born. She lost weight twice that I recall, both times associated with returns to Italy, once when I was about seven in 1956, and again in about 1958. After that, the weight stayed on and slowly grew. She had good skin, and very little grey hair, even at the end of her life. Her personality was fiery: she was permanently angry, losing her temper at the slightest provocation. She could not cope with silence, often mumbling and humming to herself, forcing 'conversation' which usually consisted of her giving a monologue. A 'conversation' quickly became a confrontation. My mother was very opinionated, and never apologised to a person in her life, because she was always right.She was not a listener, she was a fury, with a huge sense of entitlement. To me it felt that, having survived awful experiences in the war, she met my father when peace came and then just coasted through life, expecting to be waited on, respected, honoured, pampered and indulged. Like my father she was magnificently egotistical. I remember her saying that it was my father whom she loved, and that she never wanted children, although she bore six of us. When I was driving her to distraction as a teenager I remember her phrase, wishing she had drowned me in the toilet when I was born, Another phrase, when told what a nice person I was, was to retort that 'You don't know what he's really like'. I do not recall interacting with my mother as a child. We didn't have stories at bedtime or anything like that. From birth pretty much I learnt to be on my own and enjoy my own company. I didn't have birthday parties, mostly because my birthday falls at the very end of July. We did not have family holidays, though on one occasion we all went with my grandparents to Newton's Farm near Scarborough. On a couple of occasions my mother did walk with us down the lanes from our council house to Castle Mills, an outdoor swimming pool, together with her friend Franca.
My mother's fiery temper meant that we were all in fear of her exploding, especially my father, who actually stayed away most of the time. He left early and came home late. When we moved to Alexandra Park there was the daily evening ritual of eating our 'tea' at 6pm, and my father's plate being placed over a pan of simmering water till he got home an hour or two later. There was no compromise. On one occasion I remember my mother throwing the plate at the wall when my father sulked after being upbraided for being late home as usual. The mashed potatoes and gravy created a suction pad so the plate stuck to the wall, so we all burst out laughing, breaking the tension. It did not for my mother though.
My mother was not happy as a housewife. Our food was pretty monotonous, with a strong reliance on 1960s convenience foods: 'Smash' instant mashed potatoes, 'Surprise' freeze-dried peas, that we're always impossibly salty, as my mother never adjusted her method of adding a handful of salt to cooking vegetables, and 'Angel Delight' instant pudding. She did make occasional apple pies, but custard was mostly forbidden, and because she only drank coffee she treated tea as 'unclean' and never made a cup of tea for my father in their seventy years together.
She disliked my grandmother and most of my father's family, making exceptions only for my young uncle Ralph, and for my great aunt Dora who she saw as having some class and education, as she also respected my great aunt Phyllis in Loughton, and especially her husband uncle Jimmy, who worked for a bank like her own father. My mother had no time for people she saw as working class or uneducated except as people who might admire her.
My mother could dress well, despite her dumpy figure, and in a very continental way that she never lost. She did have style. She was certainly a shopaholic, her main pastime throughout her life being shopping for clothes for herself and for my three sisters. There were vast quantities of these which accumulated in the attic rooms. She loved opera, and was very happy as a theatrical landlady after I left home, as in addition to having a captive audience of listeners, she had a plentiful supply of complimentary tickets, and she received all the income, although it was my father who made all the breakfasts and prepared all the bedrooms for the guests.
It was when we became teenagers that my mother was challenged. As children we could be smacked, shouted at and punished. As we became older we began to stand up to her and this infuriated her to the point of hysterical madness. She expected total obedience and total respect. Answering back was a terrible crime, but this gave us power, so that by answering back we could drive her over the edge, which we did. Our teenage years were marked by her reliance on purple hearts (dexamyl) and threats of suicide, such as placing the miniature gas poker on the cooker in her mouth. Christmas had always been a terrible time, when my mother's anxiety levels would explode and she would fall to pieces.
My mother could shine, and in particular I remember how she would function well as an amateur midwife, supporting my sisters when they became mothers. When my mother came close to death with the birth of my brother when she was forty we all felt close to her, of course we did, she was still our mother, despite her failings. She also shone when she returned to Italy. In about 1983 I travelled with her to Italy as my grandfather was unwell, and she seemed a different person, calmer. more rational, and more lovable. I am glad I had that glimpse of another persona.
My mother truly reflected her background, as a northern Italian, as somebody who had survived World War Two in very difficult circumstances, and who in the process of that war had been cheated of her chance of an education. It was partly that that led to her sense of entitlement too. She always felt superior to my father and his family. What I found particularly difficult was her apparent lack of rationality. I remember saying very early on that it seemed that my mother had a ganglion rather than a brain. Everything had a set response. Nothing was negotiable. She was always right. She was remarkably selfish and egotistical. But sometimes, under very extreme pressure, a better person could show themself, a glimmer of sensitivity and thoughtfulness. I always used to say that it was all Hitler's fault. I don't think it was all his fault, but certainly what she lived through damaged her terribly, and froze her so that she did not fully develop intellectually or emotionally. The price she paid was that she was never satisfied, never happy, never formed a good friendship, never was able to think about others and their needs, and was never fulfilled in what she did. Her life was one of frustration, waiting for others to make her happy.
I never gave up on my mother though. At one time I wanted to help her, to make it possible to move on from this frozen, stunted state, but of course that did not work. I determined that I would stay loyal and supportive, but in my twenties I started to make my own life, and broke away from her emotional hold. That worked. I tried to support my father as best I could, and I suppose that worked too. I learned Italian, I got the education she had always craved, I loved opera as she did, I had a home in Italy. I suppose I thought these things would make her happy, and in a way they did. Fortunately they gave me happiness too.
Parents do the best they can in the circumstances...
My father always had an inferiority complex. He left school at twelve and a half. For seventy years my mother belittled him, but before that he had already given up. He has always been totally lacking in ambition, and rejected opportunities that were given to him. That is a family trait, shared with his own father, my brother and my youngest sister.
I used to worry about what I would say if I were to give a eulogy for my parents. I was spared giving a eulogy for my mother by my son. For my father there are things I could say, even though I tend to be more aware of how I felt he failed me. So firstly the good things.
My father loved his work. He was always happiest being a tradesman, a painter and decorator, engaged in domestic work. It was his life. probably his greatest love, as he loved it in a different way to how he loved my mother. He never tired of rubbing down, of prepping, of enamelling and paperhanging. He said recently that decorating the synagogue in Exeter probably gave him the greatest satisfaction, as there he could use his skills as a grainer, and be able to stand back and admire his work. He never had difficulty facing a day's work. When he came to visit he was happy if he could use his skills to decorate a room, whether in my home, or at my grandfather's in Italy, or other relations in Milan and Verona. decorating was his great skill and was how he communicated with others. Talking about his customers and their jobs still gives him pleasure now.
He took a huge pride in his work, giving detailed specifications and estimates. He looked after customers' homes. He gave good advice, although his taste was much more conservative than my own. I inherited from him my delight in practical skills, and I garnered many more practical skills in consequence. He had me work with him, and he taught me his skills, and he insisted on high standards. He understood colour, and he was brilliant at mixing the correct shade of a paint.
My father's happiest years were his four or so years on active service in North Africa and Italy, where he was respected in his squadron, and where too his skills with a paint and brush were appreciated.
Strangely my father completely lacked ambition. He had the promise of a successful and well-paid career with the decorating firm Holdings in Manchester, but he opted to work for his father in his business, in a lowlier role. My grandparents never had ambitions for their children, any more than their parents had for them, or my parents had for us. My father worked for his father for twelve years, and he was rewarded with the large Victorian villa in Alexandra Park where I was born, and where I lived from the age of ten when my grandparents left, but he always felt cheated, despite the generosity of this gift. I believe that on the day my grandparents left the house to live on the farm in Devon my father went indoors afterwards and wept with disappointment. I think he expected a large cash bonus too, but my grandparents were stretched to find sufficient funds to be able to purchase the farm, and in addition the deeds of the Manchester house had to be used for several years as security for the mortgage to purchase the farm, so that my father felt that he didn't really own the house. I always felt that my grandparents were generous, but I suppose my father felt that he too had been generous in working for his father.
My father was very close to his parents, and especially to his mother. He was her first child and her favourite. To me it felt that my grandmother always expected that her children would always stay with her, and when they chose marriage it came as a bitter blow, spoiling plans. I don't think it was conscious, just an assumption and expectation, and something I have always found rather strange.
My father is an extremely modest man, acutely aware that he left school when only 12 and never received a proper education. His years at St Margaret's he hated, as he was shy and bullied. I think in this he resembled his own father. Every Sunday morning at 9am my father would share a very long telephone call with his mother, standing n the cold hall of our house—phones were always situated there in those days—and sharing everything with her. My mother was always jealous, as he was closer to his mother than to her. Each autumn my father would attempt to visit his mother for a week in Devon, but it was rarely that long, as after three or four days my father would surrender to my mother and drive back to Manchester. She always won, she always did. My father missed seeing his mother at the end of his life, and my mother missed my grandmother's funeral. She missed all funerals of my father's family, she only ever went to funerals of her own family, and that was only thrice.
My father spent seventy years married to my mother, and he spent every day of those seventy years terrified of her anger, and would do absolutely anything to try and pacify her and avoid her explosions. We didn't share the same goal as teenagers, and would 'answer her back', something seen as a terrible crime. I remember his phrase, 'Why did you say that, you know it upsets her?' He never resisted my mother, stood up to her or set any kind of boundary. My biggest hurt is probably that he did nothing to protect us. Growing up with my mother was a nightmare, and we were hurt by the constant anger and criticism from her.
My father would do anything to pamper my mother. She had full control of the family finances, but was a hopeless spendthrift. Every weekend my father would buy a very expensive piece of fillet steak from Tennant's the butchers in Alexandra Road, purely for her, and he would beat it and marinade it, and serve it to her in the evening on a tray in bed. My mother spent a lot of time in bed. She rose late, after hot lemon juice and coffee in bed each morning. She didn't work, except for a brief period in the 1950s, at Fairey Aviation and Lewis's department store jewelry department, and briefly in the 1960s helping Noni in her ladies' fashion shop in Alexandra Road. She stopped this when she realised she was facilitation Noni's affair.
I remember particularly my father's lack of love and closeness with us. My father worked the long hours normal for a working-class man in the 1950s. In addition to working six days a week, and cycling six miles each way to Manchester, plus long overtime on Summer evenings painting outsides, he also spent Sundays helping his father with the paperwork of the business. I suppose my father was tired, but I missed him in my life. I lacked a male role model pretty much completely, and I lacked any protection from my mother's anger. In my case I withdrew into myself. I played out on my own for many hours. I discovered reading and books and lost myself in them.
For my siblings it was different. My sister Rina is only two years younger than myself, and although her birth meant I was suddenly weaned, I don't remember that. I do remember though how my mother always had 'Baby' as her favourite, and I lost that role after two years. Rina though was 'Baby' for six years, and her ejection from this favoured role was brutal. She was terribly hurt. I remember how she would cry for hours left alone in the outside toilet. To me it seems she has spent the whole of her life trying to gain my parents' love, showering them with over-generous gifts, effusive encomiums and making great sacrifices for them. It has always saddened me.
When 'Baby', my sister Dana, was ten, she too was ejected when my younger brother was born. I tried to fill the gap by being there for her, giving her attention, making reading books and reading to her, and she sometimes slept in my bed. However, it was only two years later that I left home and went to university. Over the next few years, her teenage years, my father took a huge dislike to her, and treated her with contempt and cruelty, something that he now acknowledges but cannot explain. It was verbal and emotional, not physical.
When I was a young teenager I have clear memories of being punished by him, usually by thumping me hard repeatedly on my head. This was always in response to my mother's complaints about my reactions to her anger and bullying. Dana was spared this, but my father colluded with my mother to make her life awful. Dana did pass her 11+ and go to grammar school, and I continued my support, even arranging cello lessons for her, but she has never realised her full potential, never believing in herself or her own abilities.
Although my father had a warm relationship with my brother, unlike the rest of us, it wasn't better for Adrian. It is true that my father would play with him in the mornings for an hour or two, and that my parents were financially generous, so that he had toys we could never have dreamed of, and he went away on holidays with them to Italy every year, or so it seemed, he also had the misfortune to be alone with my parents, where he had to deal with my mother's anger and bullying by himself, and of course he had no protection from my father. He may have been doted on but he had to grow up alone in the madhouse. I once took him out for the day to Chester for a treat. Another time he went away from Brana and myself for a youth hostelling holiday in the Cotswolds. Another time he stayed with us in Bideford, and together we made Punch and Judy puppets, built a puppet stage, and performed Punch and Judy in Iddesleigh. It was not long after though, that he really couldn't stand living with his parents any more, and left home, without O-levels and without A-levels. Like my father he has always felt that he has suffered from his lack of education, and although he was very successful as a DJ, and his life has gone pretty well, he's probably right.
The lack of a father-figure in my life, for whatever reason, has always affected me. I never learnt to kick a ball or catch a ball. I lacked a role model of a strong, self-confident male. I lacked a male who cared about me, engaged with me and encouraged me. I didn't look for a father-figure, though I did I suppose for a while, in turning to religion. God and Jesus were useless father substitutes though, and only made things worse, by putting blame, guilt and sinfulness on me. I was desperate for a brother but my real brother came to late. I saw how my first two sisters had a bond that strengthened them, they were allies against my parents.
My father, like my mother, was selfish and egotistical. They were both first-born children. Was that the cause? They had wonderful holidays together over the years, whether in Prestatyn at the holiday camp, in Italy in their motor caravan, or in later life in regular holidays abroad and cruises. I was never part of that, but I did appreciate being allowed to escape regularly to my grandparents in Devon. My parents' lack of interest or involvement in my life meant that I got away with repeating (unnecessarily) my A-levels when I lost a year caring for my new-born brother.
My father's weaknesses were expressed by the 1960s in his alcoholism. He wasn't a pub drinker, he wasn't a drunkard, but he drank a half-bottle of whiskey each day which he purchased from the off licence at the corner of Greame Street. I suppose he drank as an escape from the torture of living with my mother. He didn't have the inner strength that could sustain him through her onslaughts. I was used to protecting him. I hid his empty bottles, I covered up for him, and when he gave up alcohol I went with him to open meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I rushed to St Mary's Hospital in Manchester to support him when my mother was fighting for her life at the time of my brother's birth, and I defended him over the next forty years when my mother constantly belittled and taunted him for his drinking habits in the past.
My father did not allow himself any interests beyond his work and satisfying my mother. For a while he was interested in frogs, which led to a glut of gifts of model frogs, books and other ranid memorabilia. Of course that was dismissed by my mother, mostly because it ate into time that could be dedicated to her. My father's great passion in recent years has been, like for many men of his kind, a passion for his war years, which has led to a similar glut of gifts to do with WW2, Monte Cassino and the Italian Campaign. When he tried to write letters my mother would complain. She was desperate for total and complete attention and he was unable to deny her.
I have often thought that my parents' attitude is demonstrated well in their children's weddings. My eldest sister organised her own wedding. My parents' plea was that January was financially difficult. i suppose it was, but both my parents were utterly improvident. My father never did anything at all to do with money, except to pamper my mother. He entrusted it all to my mother, perhaps thinking that this would make her happy, but she squandered the money. My sister Rina's wedding was a nightmare. I discovered that absolutely nothing had been done about it, so that in a couple of weeks I had to find a venue and arrange all the catering, which I did myself, with my left arm heavily bandaged following a motorcycle accident. Auntie Mabel and Auntie May worked behind the scenes with me to put the show on, setting the tables with neighbours' cutlery that we borrowed, buying plates from a cheap shop in Moss Side. My parents never paid for the venue, St Augustine's church hall at All Saints.
It was Rina who arranged Dana's wedding generously and impressively, complete with a pipe band.
My parents did come to my wedding, but the only gift we received was a candlestick purloined from a customer. I don't think it was any better for my brother. His first wedding was, I think, at an Italian restaurant in Manchester. His second wedding was all arranged by his wife's parents in York. It feels that the message was that we were somehow not important, and that fits well with my mother's statement once that she never really wanted children, she just wanted my father. Well she certainly got him, body and soul, and she kept him with the use of her body, till the very end.
My father still seems to be incapable of thinking about others. It is his 96th birthday in a week, and of course I've sent him a present—something he has never done for me—and of course I'll send him a card, though it won't have the effusive praise that my sister can write. He always 'jokingly' reminds me before each Xmas how he is looking forward to opening all his presents, and I always cringe, but I always oblige.
Why do I persevere, even though I am obviously hurt by all this? I do have a sense of duty. he did his best, within his very limited capabilities. I survived and made a good life despite everything. He was always generous with his decorating skills, which I suppose is how he expressed himself. His was the language of the paintbrush and pasteboard, his only language, how he shared of himself and gave a thank you and some love. If he dies before me, just as I felt with my mother, I shall feel a twinge of sadness that we weren't closer, that he wasn't ever able to overcome his low self-esteem, that I never felt he was ever there for me, but at least I shall feel that I did my best for him, even if I didn't become a painter and decorator and work with him, like he once hoped.
I used to worry about what I would say if I were to give a eulogy for my parents. I was spared giving a eulogy for my mother by my son. For my father there are things I could say, even though I tend to be more aware of how I felt he failed me. So firstly the good things.
My father loved his work. He was always happiest being a tradesman, a painter and decorator, engaged in domestic work. It was his life. probably his greatest love, as he loved it in a different way to how he loved my mother. He never tired of rubbing down, of prepping, of enamelling and paperhanging. He said recently that decorating the synagogue in Exeter probably gave him the greatest satisfaction, as there he could use his skills as a grainer, and be able to stand back and admire his work. He never had difficulty facing a day's work. When he came to visit he was happy if he could use his skills to decorate a room, whether in my home, or at my grandfather's in Italy, or other relations in Milan and Verona. decorating was his great skill and was how he communicated with others. Talking about his customers and their jobs still gives him pleasure now.
He took a huge pride in his work, giving detailed specifications and estimates. He looked after customers' homes. He gave good advice, although his taste was much more conservative than my own. I inherited from him my delight in practical skills, and I garnered many more practical skills in consequence. He had me work with him, and he taught me his skills, and he insisted on high standards. He understood colour, and he was brilliant at mixing the correct shade of a paint.
My father's happiest years were his four or so years on active service in North Africa and Italy, where he was respected in his squadron, and where too his skills with a paint and brush were appreciated.
Strangely my father completely lacked ambition. He had the promise of a successful and well-paid career with the decorating firm Holdings in Manchester, but he opted to work for his father in his business, in a lowlier role. My grandparents never had ambitions for their children, any more than their parents had for them, or my parents had for us. My father worked for his father for twelve years, and he was rewarded with the large Victorian villa in Alexandra Park where I was born, and where I lived from the age of ten when my grandparents left, but he always felt cheated, despite the generosity of this gift. I believe that on the day my grandparents left the house to live on the farm in Devon my father went indoors afterwards and wept with disappointment. I think he expected a large cash bonus too, but my grandparents were stretched to find sufficient funds to be able to purchase the farm, and in addition the deeds of the Manchester house had to be used for several years as security for the mortgage to purchase the farm, so that my father felt that he didn't really own the house. I always felt that my grandparents were generous, but I suppose my father felt that he too had been generous in working for his father.
My father was very close to his parents, and especially to his mother. He was her first child and her favourite. To me it felt that my grandmother always expected that her children would always stay with her, and when they chose marriage it came as a bitter blow, spoiling plans. I don't think it was conscious, just an assumption and expectation, and something I have always found rather strange.
My father is an extremely modest man, acutely aware that he left school when only 12 and never received a proper education. His years at St Margaret's he hated, as he was shy and bullied. I think in this he resembled his own father. Every Sunday morning at 9am my father would share a very long telephone call with his mother, standing n the cold hall of our house—phones were always situated there in those days—and sharing everything with her. My mother was always jealous, as he was closer to his mother than to her. Each autumn my father would attempt to visit his mother for a week in Devon, but it was rarely that long, as after three or four days my father would surrender to my mother and drive back to Manchester. She always won, she always did. My father missed seeing his mother at the end of his life, and my mother missed my grandmother's funeral. She missed all funerals of my father's family, she only ever went to funerals of her own family, and that was only thrice.
My father spent seventy years married to my mother, and he spent every day of those seventy years terrified of her anger, and would do absolutely anything to try and pacify her and avoid her explosions. We didn't share the same goal as teenagers, and would 'answer her back', something seen as a terrible crime. I remember his phrase, 'Why did you say that, you know it upsets her?' He never resisted my mother, stood up to her or set any kind of boundary. My biggest hurt is probably that he did nothing to protect us. Growing up with my mother was a nightmare, and we were hurt by the constant anger and criticism from her.
My father would do anything to pamper my mother. She had full control of the family finances, but was a hopeless spendthrift. Every weekend my father would buy a very expensive piece of fillet steak from Tennant's the butchers in Alexandra Road, purely for her, and he would beat it and marinade it, and serve it to her in the evening on a tray in bed. My mother spent a lot of time in bed. She rose late, after hot lemon juice and coffee in bed each morning. She didn't work, except for a brief period in the 1950s, at Fairey Aviation and Lewis's department store jewelry department, and briefly in the 1960s helping Noni in her ladies' fashion shop in Alexandra Road. She stopped this when she realised she was facilitation Noni's affair.
I remember particularly my father's lack of love and closeness with us. My father worked the long hours normal for a working-class man in the 1950s. In addition to working six days a week, and cycling six miles each way to Manchester, plus long overtime on Summer evenings painting outsides, he also spent Sundays helping his father with the paperwork of the business. I suppose my father was tired, but I missed him in my life. I lacked a male role model pretty much completely, and I lacked any protection from my mother's anger. In my case I withdrew into myself. I played out on my own for many hours. I discovered reading and books and lost myself in them.
For my siblings it was different. My sister Rina is only two years younger than myself, and although her birth meant I was suddenly weaned, I don't remember that. I do remember though how my mother always had 'Baby' as her favourite, and I lost that role after two years. Rina though was 'Baby' for six years, and her ejection from this favoured role was brutal. She was terribly hurt. I remember how she would cry for hours left alone in the outside toilet. To me it seems she has spent the whole of her life trying to gain my parents' love, showering them with over-generous gifts, effusive encomiums and making great sacrifices for them. It has always saddened me.
When 'Baby', my sister Dana, was ten, she too was ejected when my younger brother was born. I tried to fill the gap by being there for her, giving her attention, making reading books and reading to her, and she sometimes slept in my bed. However, it was only two years later that I left home and went to university. Over the next few years, her teenage years, my father took a huge dislike to her, and treated her with contempt and cruelty, something that he now acknowledges but cannot explain. It was verbal and emotional, not physical.
When I was a young teenager I have clear memories of being punished by him, usually by thumping me hard repeatedly on my head. This was always in response to my mother's complaints about my reactions to her anger and bullying. Dana was spared this, but my father colluded with my mother to make her life awful. Dana did pass her 11+ and go to grammar school, and I continued my support, even arranging cello lessons for her, but she has never realised her full potential, never believing in herself or her own abilities.
Although my father had a warm relationship with my brother, unlike the rest of us, it wasn't better for Adrian. It is true that my father would play with him in the mornings for an hour or two, and that my parents were financially generous, so that he had toys we could never have dreamed of, and he went away on holidays with them to Italy every year, or so it seemed, he also had the misfortune to be alone with my parents, where he had to deal with my mother's anger and bullying by himself, and of course he had no protection from my father. He may have been doted on but he had to grow up alone in the madhouse. I once took him out for the day to Chester for a treat. Another time he went away from Brana and myself for a youth hostelling holiday in the Cotswolds. Another time he stayed with us in Bideford, and together we made Punch and Judy puppets, built a puppet stage, and performed Punch and Judy in Iddesleigh. It was not long after though, that he really couldn't stand living with his parents any more, and left home, without O-levels and without A-levels. Like my father he has always felt that he has suffered from his lack of education, and although he was very successful as a DJ, and his life has gone pretty well, he's probably right.
The lack of a father-figure in my life, for whatever reason, has always affected me. I never learnt to kick a ball or catch a ball. I lacked a role model of a strong, self-confident male. I lacked a male who cared about me, engaged with me and encouraged me. I didn't look for a father-figure, though I did I suppose for a while, in turning to religion. God and Jesus were useless father substitutes though, and only made things worse, by putting blame, guilt and sinfulness on me. I was desperate for a brother but my real brother came to late. I saw how my first two sisters had a bond that strengthened them, they were allies against my parents.
My father, like my mother, was selfish and egotistical. They were both first-born children. Was that the cause? They had wonderful holidays together over the years, whether in Prestatyn at the holiday camp, in Italy in their motor caravan, or in later life in regular holidays abroad and cruises. I was never part of that, but I did appreciate being allowed to escape regularly to my grandparents in Devon. My parents' lack of interest or involvement in my life meant that I got away with repeating (unnecessarily) my A-levels when I lost a year caring for my new-born brother.
My father's weaknesses were expressed by the 1960s in his alcoholism. He wasn't a pub drinker, he wasn't a drunkard, but he drank a half-bottle of whiskey each day which he purchased from the off licence at the corner of Greame Street. I suppose he drank as an escape from the torture of living with my mother. He didn't have the inner strength that could sustain him through her onslaughts. I was used to protecting him. I hid his empty bottles, I covered up for him, and when he gave up alcohol I went with him to open meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I rushed to St Mary's Hospital in Manchester to support him when my mother was fighting for her life at the time of my brother's birth, and I defended him over the next forty years when my mother constantly belittled and taunted him for his drinking habits in the past.
My father did not allow himself any interests beyond his work and satisfying my mother. For a while he was interested in frogs, which led to a glut of gifts of model frogs, books and other ranid memorabilia. Of course that was dismissed by my mother, mostly because it ate into time that could be dedicated to her. My father's great passion in recent years has been, like for many men of his kind, a passion for his war years, which has led to a similar glut of gifts to do with WW2, Monte Cassino and the Italian Campaign. When he tried to write letters my mother would complain. She was desperate for total and complete attention and he was unable to deny her.
I have often thought that my parents' attitude is demonstrated well in their children's weddings. My eldest sister organised her own wedding. My parents' plea was that January was financially difficult. i suppose it was, but both my parents were utterly improvident. My father never did anything at all to do with money, except to pamper my mother. He entrusted it all to my mother, perhaps thinking that this would make her happy, but she squandered the money. My sister Rina's wedding was a nightmare. I discovered that absolutely nothing had been done about it, so that in a couple of weeks I had to find a venue and arrange all the catering, which I did myself, with my left arm heavily bandaged following a motorcycle accident. Auntie Mabel and Auntie May worked behind the scenes with me to put the show on, setting the tables with neighbours' cutlery that we borrowed, buying plates from a cheap shop in Moss Side. My parents never paid for the venue, St Augustine's church hall at All Saints.
It was Rina who arranged Dana's wedding generously and impressively, complete with a pipe band.
My parents did come to my wedding, but the only gift we received was a candlestick purloined from a customer. I don't think it was any better for my brother. His first wedding was, I think, at an Italian restaurant in Manchester. His second wedding was all arranged by his wife's parents in York. It feels that the message was that we were somehow not important, and that fits well with my mother's statement once that she never really wanted children, she just wanted my father. Well she certainly got him, body and soul, and she kept him with the use of her body, till the very end.
My father still seems to be incapable of thinking about others. It is his 96th birthday in a week, and of course I've sent him a present—something he has never done for me—and of course I'll send him a card, though it won't have the effusive praise that my sister can write. He always 'jokingly' reminds me before each Xmas how he is looking forward to opening all his presents, and I always cringe, but I always oblige.
Why do I persevere, even though I am obviously hurt by all this? I do have a sense of duty. he did his best, within his very limited capabilities. I survived and made a good life despite everything. He was always generous with his decorating skills, which I suppose is how he expressed himself. His was the language of the paintbrush and pasteboard, his only language, how he shared of himself and gave a thank you and some love. If he dies before me, just as I felt with my mother, I shall feel a twinge of sadness that we weren't closer, that he wasn't ever able to overcome his low self-esteem, that I never felt he was ever there for me, but at least I shall feel that I did my best for him, even if I didn't become a painter and decorator and work with him, like he once hoped.
My Eldest Sister
In January 1946 my mother became pregnant by my father, a soldier based in Milan at the end of the war. He left shortly afterwards for duty in Austria. Then followed a battle as my father attempted to be reunited with my mother in order to marry her, which he eventually did, thanks to his release from the army, his return to England, and the help of a local Anglican clergyman. My parents married on June 29th 1946, in St Margaret's church, Whalley Range, when my mother was almost six months pregnant.
Their daughter, named Valerie Liliana (her second name after her mother), was born at my father's parents' home on October 4th 1946. My parents spent the first five or six years of their married life living there, mostly on the top floor. I believe Valerie was especially close to our English grandmother, especially after the birth of my parents' second child, another girl, Stella Grace, only just over a year later, on 6th December 1947. She was a sickly child, born, it was later discovered, with an enlarged heart, and she died only ten months later in October 1948. During this time I believe Valerie spent a lot of time with our grandmother, as they all lived together, and my mother spent a lot of time with Stella, with frequent hospital visits.
Just over nine months after Stella's death I was born, and two years later Rina Grace, my parents' next daughter was born. I think she too was born at Manley Road, but I think that soon after her birth we left Manley Road to live in a new council house on the Wythenshawe estate. I was weaned abruptly at this time, there was a new baby to be cared for, and Valerie lost the close support of our grandmother. I should imagine that must have been difficult for her.
My recollections of those early days of our childhood are of Valerie and Rina, five years apart in age, sharing a bedroom. I was jealous, as I was alone, but now I think that cannot have been easy for Valerie, as that is a large age gap at that young age. Valerie was less than three years older than me, but I don't recall any closeness as siblings, though I do remember running away together one day to escape from difficulties at home, taking a toy piano with us as we walked through the fields near our home, but eventually coming home as the day grew on and we were getting hungry. I don't have memories of sharing anything else with Valerie, nor with Rina then. We started going together to stay for the weekends at my grandparents, and I recall closeness with my aunt and uncle as well as my grandmother, and a little with my grandfather, but I cannot remember a sense of connection with my eldest sister. I think I must have been an embarrassing, irritating younger brother, just as how I probably appeared when I started at primary school, a scared, awed, insecure child, and Valerie did her very best to avoid me. I have often recollected the hurt that I felt then.
It was in the early 1960s that we were living again in my grandparents' house in Manley Road, overlapping a little till they moved to Devon. My parents were wealthier by then, they had a van, and went out every week together, usually, I think, on a Thursday evening. They would eat together in Willoughby's, a smart restaurant, and then go to the cinema or theatre. We would be left to our own devices all evening, with Valerie placed in charge; I suppose if I were 12 she'd be 15, Rina 10 and the youngest, Dana, would have been 4. It was a tall order for her to be in charge of us week after week, and it was sometimes difficult, though often fun. I remember playing ghosts, when we would take it in turns to place a sheet over ourselves and then come in the girls' bedroom and terrorise each other, or another time when they dressed me up as an elderly lady, complete with clothes, wig and makeup, and sent me next door. When Mrs Berry answered the door she said, 'Hello Frankie!'.
Another occasion wasn't so pleasant. Angry with me for not doing I was told, Valerie chased me down the stairs holding a heavy marble statue of a cat, striking me on the back of my head. She was so angry that I had to go to the Lorant family next door, and Dr Davitt came from his home at the corner and stitched my head. On another occasion she was chasing my sister Rina who rushed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her, so that Valerie's head went through the glass cutting her face. I remember she came down the stairs, face and hands covered with blood, and said to me, 'I've cut my nose off!' The next day I fainted when I recalled this. As the eldest child Valerie had the standard task of being in charge. I think a similar accident occurred when Valerie attempted to stop our learning-disabled aunt Silvana from leaving the house. Silvana slammed the front door, Valerie put up her hand which went through the glass, and she received terrible cuts.
We did go together annually down to Devon on the train to stay with my grandparents, but we lived separate lives there for most of the time, as I was obsessed with playing in the stream and the woods, but we had understandably very different interests, although I think we rubbed along together pretty well. It was no wonder she was bossy, as she was groomed for that role.
I think it was in 1964 that Valerie had had enough and ran away from home, a difficult experience, as she had nobody to stay with, and in fact slept for a few nights in railway carriages in a sidings. I think she'd met a boy already at the Twisted Wheel club—she was normal in that she was attracted by now to boys, wanted to go out, wanted to be a raver in the new 60s pop scene. My parents did nothing to prepare any of us for a social life or adult life. My mother was as usual angry, and my father played the role of the typical reactionary father: trying out lipstick, Valerie would be told she 'looked like a prostitute'. I cannot remember the exact sequence of events, but I do know that Valerie had a job as a typist at the Inland Revenue in Manchester, and that she married Peter in January, 1966. Peter was similar to my father in being a lovely, gentle guy, totally lacking in self-confidence, in his case because he was an illegitimate child, the son of a G.I. who returned to his wife in America. Valerie perpetuated ever afterwards the role of my mother in being permanently angry and unremittingly envious and resentful, and Peter duplicated that of my father in being a patient doormat.
It was Valerie who organised and paid for her and Peter's wedding in January, 1966, my parents proffering the regular excuse that January was a difficult time for money, though at this time my father was drinking heavily, and expensively. However, Valerie and Peter did come to live upstairs at Manley Road, in the very rooms our parents had lived in for the first years of their married life together. Their daughter Lisa was born just thirteen months later, in February 1967. I remember babysitting for them, and giving Lisa baths as a baby.
It was when Lisa was born that my mother became pregnant with her last child, whilst staying with my father when he was working away on Anglesey for several months. Although Lisa was my parents' first grandchild, my mother's pregnancy meant that Valerie was unable to receive the expected dotage for her own child. Furthermore, my mother spent most of 1967 in hospital, and I think she had to take her O-level exams (she was studying for adult-entry teacher training) sitting in a hospital bed. Throughout 1967 it was I who took the main responsibilty for caring for my two younger sisters, and feeding them and my father, whilst at the same time I was attempting to study for my A-levels which I took in June 1967. Looking back it saddens and surprises me that Valerie kept firmly separate and uninvolved, though I was helping to care occasionally for my niece as well.
When my mother went into labour in November 1967, after two days an emergency caesarian section was performed, and my mother's heart stopped. She was resuscitated, but it was very scary for all of us. I supported my father, who sent for me urgently to join him at the hospital. When she had recovered a little we were all able to sit round her bed, emotional to see how frail she looked, and knowing how close she had been to death. When she came home it was me who bore the brunt of the nighttime childcare, giving my new baby brother his feeds in the early hours, and continuing with the domestic chores, though it was my father who would get up when the new baby woke in the morning, and bring him down at 6am to play with him. It was fortuitous that although I passed my A-levels in the summer of 1967, my grades were mostly poor, so that I ended up repeating the year, which allowed me to continue my caring role.
Valerie though. never accepted and welcomed her brother. Adrian did not have a happy childhood, especially after the first few years, but Valerie never forgave him for the mere fact of even being born. They live very close to each other but have no contact whatsoever. The resentment has never gone away.
I think it was about this time that Valerie and Peter left for their own home, which I think was a terraced house in Railway Street, Gorton. I did visit them there a few times. I also enjoyed going for walks in the Peak District with Peter.
I went off to university in October 1968, but in the autumn of 1969 both Valerie fell pregnant, and our sister Rina. Rina, however, was unmarried. I happened to be home in Manchester when she told my mother, who asked me to tell our father. I guessed rightly that he would be furiously angry, but I managed it well, and the anger was contained. Rina, under pressure from my mother, kept the pregnancy, but she lived at home and at long last she had some loving support from our mother, but meanwhile Valerie, who was equally pregnant, missed out yet again on some grandparental dotage. Fortunately this was forthcoming from the lovely Auntie May, which was how everybody knew Peter's mother. Valerie's son Michael was born on 22nd April 1970 and Rina's son Julian was born on 2nd May 1970. I am sure my parents celebrated this, but with a toddler of their own, and given the kind of people they were, I am also sure they wouldn't have realised how hurt Valerie might have been. Valerie was always close to her mother in law, and Valerie had her last child, her son Paul, on 16th April 1973, by which time they were living on the Hattersley estate outside Manchester. It was here that Auntie May died in the spring of 1979, aged only 60. Valerie did care for her at the end of her life, but there was a curious and inexplicable incident when her death occurred, and Valerie wanted the body removed from their home immediately. I've no idea why that was so.
Valerie and Peter moved from Hattersley to Glossop, buying their own home. Peter worked in engineering, I think as an engineering fitter, and was unfortunate that his employers went successively out of business. Fortunately, Valerie managed it so that the mortgage was paid by the benefits system that then existed, but Valerie was already becoming a victim to jealousy and resentment. My father employed Peter for a while, and they enjoyed working together, but we heard that Valerie thought he was underpaid, and stopped it. Over the years there were many similar stories. I paid Peter to help me demolish some outbuilding, and to build some new sash windows. I paid train fares, a salary and provided obviously board and lodgings, but I heard that that too was unsatisfactory and insufficient. My uncle Ralph paid Peter to fit a new kitchen, and the same complaint arose. My sister and her husband were living in Bideford, so at the very end of their Devonshire sojourn we employed my sister to do some childcare for our youngest, then a toddler, to give them some financial support.
The stay in Bideford was difficult. Valerie always gave priority to her two sons who could do no wrong. I recall being invited to visit and have tea with my wife and children, but when we got there the two sons had been, and all the food was eaten. There was no apology or explanation, just a suggestion that we'd got it wrong. I nipped up the road from their house and bought some food, pretending that it was what we expected, but I was hurt. My mother was similarly hurt when she visited them from Manchester, and her camera vanished from a table while Paul was there, but the inference of course was made that she'd made a mistake. My parents were staying with us in March 1993 when we took them to see Valerie and Peter before we were to go to Dowland to see our father's sister, Lyn, but sadly Lyn died that day.
Soon after Valerie and Peter left Bideford, probably in 1994 or 1995. Peter was enjoying his work at the bike hire centre very nearby, but of course he did as he was told, the house was sold, and back they went to Glossop. It was also the time when Valerie cut ties with most of us, though she stayed friends with our sister Dana while she was not close to our parents for a few years. In June 1996 it was my parent's 50th wedding anniversary, and a special dinner was arranged for us all in Chester, with my parents booked into a special suite. Valerie said she couldn't really afford it, but my mother insisted she would pay, and she and Peter were expected but never turned up. My mother never saw either of them again. I suppose the affront was deliberate. My father once engineered a chance meeting with Valerie in a store carpark, but when she saw him face to face, she just said, 'What are you doing here?' and angrily turned away.
I did see Valerie when she asked to come and visit us in Devon over ten years ago when she thought she was dying of leukaemia. She came, and we welcomed her, we listened to her, and that was that. As it turned out her leukaemia was not terminal.
A few years later there was the sad tale of Paul's death. By then an alcoholic and drug taker, he was admitted to hospital, where he was warned that another drink would kill him. He persuaded a friend to smuggle some alcohol to him, and it killed him. He had a partner and left a son. Valerie strangely attempted to sue the hospital for neglect, but she had pursued several other such futile complaints in the past. I sent a card with a message of sympathy. Dana also sent a similar card, but it was returned to her in an envelope shredded to pieces. Dana had been close but the relationship chilled whn Dana became closer again to my parents.
Valerie from her time in Bideford, and perhaps before, pursued friendships with people who disliked their families, though she did maintain a friendship with our uncle Philip. a strange person with some personality disorder, perhaps autism. She went to see him near Ilfracombe, she telephoned him, and she angled for a legacy. I think he left her £20,000 though he deducted the money he'd provided for a trip to Australia by her son Michael. I gave the eulogy at Philip's funeral, and Michael helped me carry Philip's coffin, though she studiously avoided me. My last glimpse of her in my life was as I was carrying the coffin. In fairness, it was Valerie who saved Philip's life. her stange plan of ingratiating herself with Philip meant that when she failed to make contact with him for too long at his remote cottage she called the police who broke in and called an ambulance. He may not have been grateful for this, but it was good that he did not die horribly.
I believe, according to my daughter, that Valerie left a curious comment on Amazon on my small booklet that I wrote last year about my life and illness, saying that it wasn't as she remembered our childhood, and that, I think, I wasn't practising what I preached. There was no reference, I believe to anything else, like my terminal illness, or our mother's death. I suppose it was this that has provoked my thoughts here.
Valerie has a grandson by her son Michael and his marriage to a lovely Romanian. Their son, my great nephew, was in contact with me over the past month, and I was able to tell him how I remembered last seeing him when he was a toddler, before his parents separated and divorced. He had been told that we all hated him, which was why there was no contact between him and his family. I can guess who told him that, and I assured him that it was not true.
Valerie could never see any wrong in her sons' behaviour, though they could be challenging. Her daughter was blessed with decency and kindness, though even she found it difficult to tread a safe path in her dealings with her mother. I remember many years ago when they grew apart, and Valerie attempted to take court action to gain access to her grandchildren. Lisa to her credit, being the decent person she is, did maintain contact with her parents and with her grandparents. It was she alone from that side of the family who attended my mother's funeral, just as it was she alone who came with her husband to my parents' 60th wedding anniversary. These were brave acts, as Valerie always expected people to take sides, as Dana had done for a while, to be cut off when she reconnected with our parents.
This is just a narrative account. It's not revenge, or justification, merely a description of a family in disarray. I thought that writing this down would help me to understand what happened in my sister's life. These are memories, not facts, except for obvious data likes births, marriages and deaths. They are my memories that survived through the decades. I cannot make sense of what happened. Certainly Valerie was angry like my mother, but then my niece is angry, as is my daughter. My mother's anger was not focused, it was not directed at anybody or anything in particular. My sister's anger seemed to become a whirlpool, that grew and dragged her down, and became personalised. She wrote letters that were angry. Such letters, that should be written but not sent to the recipient, she sent to me, and I dealt with them by placing them in a special box, so that they could be compartmentalised and not allowed to affect our relationship. I still have them, and haven't read them again, any more than I read the comment on Amazon that triggered this response. She was contemptuous of employers, as she was of the hospital where her son died. She drew around her friends like Sue in Bideford who were similarly bitter and resentful. She let us down deliberately, whether it was at my parents' golden wedding, or earlier, when we were paying her to help us with childcare, and she would let us down without reason. She once said two decades ago that the next time she would see my mother would be when she was in a coffin. My mother was not vindictive, like Valerie, and offered the hand of friendship, as did my father. Valerie did not see our mother ever again, and did not attend her funeral. Valerie flavoured her anger with a strain of hurtful spitefulness.
I realise how fortunate I was in my own life. I have a different personality, in which I had no choice, it was just the way I was born. Valerie's personality was different, and I am glad I do not share her anger and bitterness.
Their daughter, named Valerie Liliana (her second name after her mother), was born at my father's parents' home on October 4th 1946. My parents spent the first five or six years of their married life living there, mostly on the top floor. I believe Valerie was especially close to our English grandmother, especially after the birth of my parents' second child, another girl, Stella Grace, only just over a year later, on 6th December 1947. She was a sickly child, born, it was later discovered, with an enlarged heart, and she died only ten months later in October 1948. During this time I believe Valerie spent a lot of time with our grandmother, as they all lived together, and my mother spent a lot of time with Stella, with frequent hospital visits.
Just over nine months after Stella's death I was born, and two years later Rina Grace, my parents' next daughter was born. I think she too was born at Manley Road, but I think that soon after her birth we left Manley Road to live in a new council house on the Wythenshawe estate. I was weaned abruptly at this time, there was a new baby to be cared for, and Valerie lost the close support of our grandmother. I should imagine that must have been difficult for her.
My recollections of those early days of our childhood are of Valerie and Rina, five years apart in age, sharing a bedroom. I was jealous, as I was alone, but now I think that cannot have been easy for Valerie, as that is a large age gap at that young age. Valerie was less than three years older than me, but I don't recall any closeness as siblings, though I do remember running away together one day to escape from difficulties at home, taking a toy piano with us as we walked through the fields near our home, but eventually coming home as the day grew on and we were getting hungry. I don't have memories of sharing anything else with Valerie, nor with Rina then. We started going together to stay for the weekends at my grandparents, and I recall closeness with my aunt and uncle as well as my grandmother, and a little with my grandfather, but I cannot remember a sense of connection with my eldest sister. I think I must have been an embarrassing, irritating younger brother, just as how I probably appeared when I started at primary school, a scared, awed, insecure child, and Valerie did her very best to avoid me. I have often recollected the hurt that I felt then.
It was in the early 1960s that we were living again in my grandparents' house in Manley Road, overlapping a little till they moved to Devon. My parents were wealthier by then, they had a van, and went out every week together, usually, I think, on a Thursday evening. They would eat together in Willoughby's, a smart restaurant, and then go to the cinema or theatre. We would be left to our own devices all evening, with Valerie placed in charge; I suppose if I were 12 she'd be 15, Rina 10 and the youngest, Dana, would have been 4. It was a tall order for her to be in charge of us week after week, and it was sometimes difficult, though often fun. I remember playing ghosts, when we would take it in turns to place a sheet over ourselves and then come in the girls' bedroom and terrorise each other, or another time when they dressed me up as an elderly lady, complete with clothes, wig and makeup, and sent me next door. When Mrs Berry answered the door she said, 'Hello Frankie!'.
Another occasion wasn't so pleasant. Angry with me for not doing I was told, Valerie chased me down the stairs holding a heavy marble statue of a cat, striking me on the back of my head. She was so angry that I had to go to the Lorant family next door, and Dr Davitt came from his home at the corner and stitched my head. On another occasion she was chasing my sister Rina who rushed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her, so that Valerie's head went through the glass cutting her face. I remember she came down the stairs, face and hands covered with blood, and said to me, 'I've cut my nose off!' The next day I fainted when I recalled this. As the eldest child Valerie had the standard task of being in charge. I think a similar accident occurred when Valerie attempted to stop our learning-disabled aunt Silvana from leaving the house. Silvana slammed the front door, Valerie put up her hand which went through the glass, and she received terrible cuts.
We did go together annually down to Devon on the train to stay with my grandparents, but we lived separate lives there for most of the time, as I was obsessed with playing in the stream and the woods, but we had understandably very different interests, although I think we rubbed along together pretty well. It was no wonder she was bossy, as she was groomed for that role.
I think it was in 1964 that Valerie had had enough and ran away from home, a difficult experience, as she had nobody to stay with, and in fact slept for a few nights in railway carriages in a sidings. I think she'd met a boy already at the Twisted Wheel club—she was normal in that she was attracted by now to boys, wanted to go out, wanted to be a raver in the new 60s pop scene. My parents did nothing to prepare any of us for a social life or adult life. My mother was as usual angry, and my father played the role of the typical reactionary father: trying out lipstick, Valerie would be told she 'looked like a prostitute'. I cannot remember the exact sequence of events, but I do know that Valerie had a job as a typist at the Inland Revenue in Manchester, and that she married Peter in January, 1966. Peter was similar to my father in being a lovely, gentle guy, totally lacking in self-confidence, in his case because he was an illegitimate child, the son of a G.I. who returned to his wife in America. Valerie perpetuated ever afterwards the role of my mother in being permanently angry and unremittingly envious and resentful, and Peter duplicated that of my father in being a patient doormat.
It was Valerie who organised and paid for her and Peter's wedding in January, 1966, my parents proffering the regular excuse that January was a difficult time for money, though at this time my father was drinking heavily, and expensively. However, Valerie and Peter did come to live upstairs at Manley Road, in the very rooms our parents had lived in for the first years of their married life together. Their daughter Lisa was born just thirteen months later, in February 1967. I remember babysitting for them, and giving Lisa baths as a baby.
It was when Lisa was born that my mother became pregnant with her last child, whilst staying with my father when he was working away on Anglesey for several months. Although Lisa was my parents' first grandchild, my mother's pregnancy meant that Valerie was unable to receive the expected dotage for her own child. Furthermore, my mother spent most of 1967 in hospital, and I think she had to take her O-level exams (she was studying for adult-entry teacher training) sitting in a hospital bed. Throughout 1967 it was I who took the main responsibilty for caring for my two younger sisters, and feeding them and my father, whilst at the same time I was attempting to study for my A-levels which I took in June 1967. Looking back it saddens and surprises me that Valerie kept firmly separate and uninvolved, though I was helping to care occasionally for my niece as well.
When my mother went into labour in November 1967, after two days an emergency caesarian section was performed, and my mother's heart stopped. She was resuscitated, but it was very scary for all of us. I supported my father, who sent for me urgently to join him at the hospital. When she had recovered a little we were all able to sit round her bed, emotional to see how frail she looked, and knowing how close she had been to death. When she came home it was me who bore the brunt of the nighttime childcare, giving my new baby brother his feeds in the early hours, and continuing with the domestic chores, though it was my father who would get up when the new baby woke in the morning, and bring him down at 6am to play with him. It was fortuitous that although I passed my A-levels in the summer of 1967, my grades were mostly poor, so that I ended up repeating the year, which allowed me to continue my caring role.
Valerie though. never accepted and welcomed her brother. Adrian did not have a happy childhood, especially after the first few years, but Valerie never forgave him for the mere fact of even being born. They live very close to each other but have no contact whatsoever. The resentment has never gone away.
I think it was about this time that Valerie and Peter left for their own home, which I think was a terraced house in Railway Street, Gorton. I did visit them there a few times. I also enjoyed going for walks in the Peak District with Peter.
I went off to university in October 1968, but in the autumn of 1969 both Valerie fell pregnant, and our sister Rina. Rina, however, was unmarried. I happened to be home in Manchester when she told my mother, who asked me to tell our father. I guessed rightly that he would be furiously angry, but I managed it well, and the anger was contained. Rina, under pressure from my mother, kept the pregnancy, but she lived at home and at long last she had some loving support from our mother, but meanwhile Valerie, who was equally pregnant, missed out yet again on some grandparental dotage. Fortunately this was forthcoming from the lovely Auntie May, which was how everybody knew Peter's mother. Valerie's son Michael was born on 22nd April 1970 and Rina's son Julian was born on 2nd May 1970. I am sure my parents celebrated this, but with a toddler of their own, and given the kind of people they were, I am also sure they wouldn't have realised how hurt Valerie might have been. Valerie was always close to her mother in law, and Valerie had her last child, her son Paul, on 16th April 1973, by which time they were living on the Hattersley estate outside Manchester. It was here that Auntie May died in the spring of 1979, aged only 60. Valerie did care for her at the end of her life, but there was a curious and inexplicable incident when her death occurred, and Valerie wanted the body removed from their home immediately. I've no idea why that was so.
Valerie and Peter moved from Hattersley to Glossop, buying their own home. Peter worked in engineering, I think as an engineering fitter, and was unfortunate that his employers went successively out of business. Fortunately, Valerie managed it so that the mortgage was paid by the benefits system that then existed, but Valerie was already becoming a victim to jealousy and resentment. My father employed Peter for a while, and they enjoyed working together, but we heard that Valerie thought he was underpaid, and stopped it. Over the years there were many similar stories. I paid Peter to help me demolish some outbuilding, and to build some new sash windows. I paid train fares, a salary and provided obviously board and lodgings, but I heard that that too was unsatisfactory and insufficient. My uncle Ralph paid Peter to fit a new kitchen, and the same complaint arose. My sister and her husband were living in Bideford, so at the very end of their Devonshire sojourn we employed my sister to do some childcare for our youngest, then a toddler, to give them some financial support.
The stay in Bideford was difficult. Valerie always gave priority to her two sons who could do no wrong. I recall being invited to visit and have tea with my wife and children, but when we got there the two sons had been, and all the food was eaten. There was no apology or explanation, just a suggestion that we'd got it wrong. I nipped up the road from their house and bought some food, pretending that it was what we expected, but I was hurt. My mother was similarly hurt when she visited them from Manchester, and her camera vanished from a table while Paul was there, but the inference of course was made that she'd made a mistake. My parents were staying with us in March 1993 when we took them to see Valerie and Peter before we were to go to Dowland to see our father's sister, Lyn, but sadly Lyn died that day.
Soon after Valerie and Peter left Bideford, probably in 1994 or 1995. Peter was enjoying his work at the bike hire centre very nearby, but of course he did as he was told, the house was sold, and back they went to Glossop. It was also the time when Valerie cut ties with most of us, though she stayed friends with our sister Dana while she was not close to our parents for a few years. In June 1996 it was my parent's 50th wedding anniversary, and a special dinner was arranged for us all in Chester, with my parents booked into a special suite. Valerie said she couldn't really afford it, but my mother insisted she would pay, and she and Peter were expected but never turned up. My mother never saw either of them again. I suppose the affront was deliberate. My father once engineered a chance meeting with Valerie in a store carpark, but when she saw him face to face, she just said, 'What are you doing here?' and angrily turned away.
I did see Valerie when she asked to come and visit us in Devon over ten years ago when she thought she was dying of leukaemia. She came, and we welcomed her, we listened to her, and that was that. As it turned out her leukaemia was not terminal.
A few years later there was the sad tale of Paul's death. By then an alcoholic and drug taker, he was admitted to hospital, where he was warned that another drink would kill him. He persuaded a friend to smuggle some alcohol to him, and it killed him. He had a partner and left a son. Valerie strangely attempted to sue the hospital for neglect, but she had pursued several other such futile complaints in the past. I sent a card with a message of sympathy. Dana also sent a similar card, but it was returned to her in an envelope shredded to pieces. Dana had been close but the relationship chilled whn Dana became closer again to my parents.
Valerie from her time in Bideford, and perhaps before, pursued friendships with people who disliked their families, though she did maintain a friendship with our uncle Philip. a strange person with some personality disorder, perhaps autism. She went to see him near Ilfracombe, she telephoned him, and she angled for a legacy. I think he left her £20,000 though he deducted the money he'd provided for a trip to Australia by her son Michael. I gave the eulogy at Philip's funeral, and Michael helped me carry Philip's coffin, though she studiously avoided me. My last glimpse of her in my life was as I was carrying the coffin. In fairness, it was Valerie who saved Philip's life. her stange plan of ingratiating herself with Philip meant that when she failed to make contact with him for too long at his remote cottage she called the police who broke in and called an ambulance. He may not have been grateful for this, but it was good that he did not die horribly.
I believe, according to my daughter, that Valerie left a curious comment on Amazon on my small booklet that I wrote last year about my life and illness, saying that it wasn't as she remembered our childhood, and that, I think, I wasn't practising what I preached. There was no reference, I believe to anything else, like my terminal illness, or our mother's death. I suppose it was this that has provoked my thoughts here.
Valerie has a grandson by her son Michael and his marriage to a lovely Romanian. Their son, my great nephew, was in contact with me over the past month, and I was able to tell him how I remembered last seeing him when he was a toddler, before his parents separated and divorced. He had been told that we all hated him, which was why there was no contact between him and his family. I can guess who told him that, and I assured him that it was not true.
Valerie could never see any wrong in her sons' behaviour, though they could be challenging. Her daughter was blessed with decency and kindness, though even she found it difficult to tread a safe path in her dealings with her mother. I remember many years ago when they grew apart, and Valerie attempted to take court action to gain access to her grandchildren. Lisa to her credit, being the decent person she is, did maintain contact with her parents and with her grandparents. It was she alone from that side of the family who attended my mother's funeral, just as it was she alone who came with her husband to my parents' 60th wedding anniversary. These were brave acts, as Valerie always expected people to take sides, as Dana had done for a while, to be cut off when she reconnected with our parents.
This is just a narrative account. It's not revenge, or justification, merely a description of a family in disarray. I thought that writing this down would help me to understand what happened in my sister's life. These are memories, not facts, except for obvious data likes births, marriages and deaths. They are my memories that survived through the decades. I cannot make sense of what happened. Certainly Valerie was angry like my mother, but then my niece is angry, as is my daughter. My mother's anger was not focused, it was not directed at anybody or anything in particular. My sister's anger seemed to become a whirlpool, that grew and dragged her down, and became personalised. She wrote letters that were angry. Such letters, that should be written but not sent to the recipient, she sent to me, and I dealt with them by placing them in a special box, so that they could be compartmentalised and not allowed to affect our relationship. I still have them, and haven't read them again, any more than I read the comment on Amazon that triggered this response. She was contemptuous of employers, as she was of the hospital where her son died. She drew around her friends like Sue in Bideford who were similarly bitter and resentful. She let us down deliberately, whether it was at my parents' golden wedding, or earlier, when we were paying her to help us with childcare, and she would let us down without reason. She once said two decades ago that the next time she would see my mother would be when she was in a coffin. My mother was not vindictive, like Valerie, and offered the hand of friendship, as did my father. Valerie did not see our mother ever again, and did not attend her funeral. Valerie flavoured her anger with a strain of hurtful spitefulness.
I realise how fortunate I was in my own life. I have a different personality, in which I had no choice, it was just the way I was born. Valerie's personality was different, and I am glad I do not share her anger and bitterness.
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