It was Charlotte’s belief that her grandmother Florence could see off, possibly with the axe she used for chopping kindling, any problems that chanced to trouble her granddaughter. Most Sundays she would sink into the cushy armchair beside a glowing fire whilst her grandmother prepared tea. Charlotte would close her eyes and idly listen to the TV news that prattled in the corner like a second guest.
This day though, the news was ugly, at odds with the fine bone China tea service. Another public figure had been charged with abusing young women.
“At least they’ve been believed,” her grandmother pronounced, “and they know they weren’t the only ones”. She settled herself on the settee, extinguished the story with a press of the remote. Even so, as she poured the tea , she muttered to herself “ruining girls’ lives”, consequently sloshing a little liquid into the saucer, handing it over with a tremor in her usually steady hand. This was a passion her granddaughter had seen before when her grandmother was outraged by injustice from animal cruelty to the plight of the homeless.
Charlotte often forgot she was talking to a woman in her 80s. The frankness of their conversations felt more like chatting to a contemporary . Whilst most elderly ladies preferred word puzzles and fussing over cats, her grandmother never shielded her eyes from the realities of the modern world.
Significantly, she never remembered her speaking so freely to her two daughters. Their discussions were more domestic, more gossipy. But between Charlotte and her grandmother no subjects were ever swerved, their conversation free-ranged from views on the current government to the latest exhibition at the V and A. Sometimes they agreed to disagree on certain points, like the reinstatement of hanging, but generally their opinions were in harmony. It was as if their faculty for talking freely was a trait that had jumped a generation. Now, whilst sipping tea and nibbling on sandwiches, they discussed this shocking abuse of women that had gone unchecked for generations.
Later, Charlotte could never recall the exact point in the afternoon when their discussion shifted to the personal. Perhaps this is how it is with secrets. To the listener, the revelations seem to spring from nowhere. But to the owner of the confidence, it is a matter of sensing the right time. That late afternoon, in the intimacy of the room, lit only now by firelight, and in the company of her beloved granddaughter, the elderly lady suddenly took a leap of faith.
“When I was 70”, she began “I had to acquire a first passport”. Her grandmother had been a late but enthusiastic traveller. Peering down from the plane’s window at the pitching world beneath her, she would give a running commentary. “There’s the Alps, I think that’s the Agean”, whilst her daughters either took a diazepam to crash out or looked straight ahead, white faced, counting the minutes of the flight away.
But getting the passport proved tricky. Her birth certificate had been lost in the chaos of multiple moves over the years. A new one had to be issued by Somerset House. Unfolding the certificate when it arrived, to check the details, where she expected to see under ‘father’ Alexander Coppin, she read instead ‘Father unknown’. The words stung like a sudden slap. She re-read, reasoning it was an administrative error. Phoning her daughters, it was largely brushed aside amid their busy lives. “At least you can get a passport now mum. You’re 70, it shouldn’t matter”.
That afternoon, whilst her son-in-law made inquiries, she cleaned the silver, washed the curtains, ironed sheets, all the while glancing at the clock and keeping within earshot of the phone until, at 6pm, his brief phone call informed her “No mistake I’m afraid”. She did not cry. Life had taught her that crying solved nothing. But she replaced the receiver with shaking hands. Crumpled onto the sofa, shame replacing shock now.
Her granddaughter was confused. “But you had a dad”. The old lady shook her head. “No dear, transpires I was the ‘B’ word”. Charlotte was not dismayed by the revelation itself, but by the evidence that this indomitable woman still flinched at the stigma of being born out of wedlock. She had always believed her grandmother did not bruise easily. But it was impossible for the younger woman to fully comprehend that for someone of her grandmother’s generation, the disgrace of being labelled a bastard could not be exorcised with time.
“It says something that the man you called ‘dad’ took you on as his own”, she suggested. But grandmother remained silent, as if she could not bring herself to agree. Finally she quietly stated “It was a relief to find that he was not my father”. Charlotte was dumbfounded by this extraordinary assertion. It was clear that something distressing lay behind it. She did not challenge her for an explanation, sensing that questions might spook her grandmother from opening up further.
The light in the room had faded to near darkness. They had forgotten to close the curtains. The shadowy garden, with its bulky shrubs, seemed to peer in the window, as if straining to overhear. Grandmother stooped, picked up the coal shovel and, with some vehemence, scooped up coal from the brass scuttle and fed it onto the fire, which flared up. The elderly lady sat back, temporarily mute, perhaps regretting this slip of the tongue. She seemed to be hesitating between disinterring family secrets or to let them stay buried.
At length she sighed, staring fixedly at the fire rather than her granddaughter. “Oh he knew alright”. She paused, searching for the words. “He did things to me”. Her euphemism jarred. Usually she was an articulate and forthright woman, now she had reverted to the idiom of her childhood.
“I dreaded Sundays” her grandmother explained. “Mum took the rest of the kids to church, but always left me at home”. And, despite tearful appeals, her mother remained adamant. “He would come into my bedroom – as soon as they had left”. She described her terror at his approaching footsteps – a child’s terror, not of the dark or ghosts, but of a very real monster who would enter the room still in his night clothes. As she listened, her granddaughter felt as if her stomach was being gripped by a fist that contorted with each utterance.
The elderly lady could not bring herself to go into explicit details, but made it clear that her eleven-year-old self had no idea what he was doing to her. She only knew it hurt. The child did not cry, but lay supine until he had finished. Telling her afterwards that ‘It was her duty’.
As she watched her grandmother struggling to relive the abuse, twisting the wedding band that had grown tight over her elderly fingers as if the pain helped to distract her from returning to those Sundays, tears ran unchecked down the granddaughter’s face. She wept for the 11-year-old child but also the elderly woman before her who had carried the memory of this violation for decades .
“Did you tell your mum”?
The old lady grimaced at the recollection. “ She struck me. Called me a wicked liar”.
Her granddaughter strove to imagine a little girl gathering her courage. Trying to catch her mother alone in a household where privacy was at a premium. Struggling for the right words to express what the man was doing to her, probably defaulting to the same euphemism she used now. Then the horror of not being believed, that condemned her to be routinely raped. It was, she knew, the automatic response from many mothers when faced with this reality. Certainly, a woman of her great grandmother’s generation would, for pragmatic reasons, have chosen not to believe her daughter.
“Well I believe you” she said firmly. Spontaneously, through the semi-darkness, they leaned forward and clasped hands. It was clear to anyone that this man had taken advantage of the fact that the child was not his. Old photos showed grandmother to be a pretty girl. Little wonder he had given her house room. In his mind he was taking payment in kind.
The young woman’s rage centred on her great-grandmother. “She must have known”. The bitter taste of disgust filled her mouth at the cynicism of her behaviour. With no hint of coercion between this woman and her husband, she suspected there was a tacit understanding that the child had to stand proxy for her mother. In her view the woman’s behaviour was equally monstrous. She sacrificed her child for her own ends, and was therefore complicit in stealing the innocence she should have been shielding.
Her grandmother shrugged. For many years she had kept herself busy to the point of overworking, in order to avoid dwelling. Dreams caught her out, of course. Some nights her subconscious would open all its locked compartments and let the secrets run riot. She would wake with her heart pounding, nightdress drenched with sweat as if she had been running from that past. She would rise, brew a strong pot of tea, and make a start on the vegetables for dinner.
“Have you a photo of her” ? Her granddaughter wanted to see this woman capable of such maternal dereliction. The old lady arose and drew the curtains and lit the table lamps. A softer mood replaced the darkness now, reflecting perhaps the catharsis felt by the grandmother at sharing her story to a sympathetic audience.
As she delved into the cupboard where the photo albums were housed, the younger woman considered her grandmother’s own relationship with her two daughters. She understood now the fierce protection that caused the girls to rebel. Her dark warnings against boys went unheeded as they worked in tandem to prize her hands off their lives.
A small photo was presented to her. Great-grandmother held the formal pose of a professional print taken in a studio. Studying the sepia snap, she saw that the woman was tiny, almost poppet like. There was no trace of her grandmother’s soft prettiness. Even taking into consideration the formal stance, her face was hard. Her features seemed incapable of smiling. The severity of the expression was accentuated by black hair brutally scrapped back into a bun.
Yet she had about her that indefinable but recognisable air of sex appeal. Men would be seduced by this very hardness, the complete absence of vulnerability that would seem a novelty. Her expression suggested an availability at odds with the coyness of the era.
There was nothing aberrant about her promiscuity. It was a myth that poverty rendered the working class of her era somehow more moral than their upper class counterparts. They were, in fact, just as promiscuous . It was just that lack of money and effective contraception led to chaotic family lives.
“Were all your half-siblings his ?” Grandmother shook her head and explained that some of her mother’s brood had been sired by him but others were the result of brief liaisons. Looking again at the photo, the granddaughter saw this was not a woman who would blush with shame. On the contrary, she would thumb her nose to social convention.
But her grandmother remembered the gossip that followed her mother like a rank smell. The whispered ‘No better than she should be’ from affronted neighbours who she simply tossed her head at or countered with oaths she borrowed from male counterparts.
Moreover this hard faced little woman would always push herself forward, put herself in the eyeline of men with crude jokes, matching their banter. Grandmother’s other siblings boasted in later years that their mother had slept with her ‘betters’ ; local farmers and landed gentry, their lame attempt to add a fool’s gold glamour to their family. “So your father could have been lord of the manor? “For the first time they both giggled at the granddaughter’s ingenuous words. “Funnily enough, even at my age ‘Father unknown’ leads to much speculation, much fantasising that your father was someone better, which would explain so much”.
“What would it explain?” her granddaughter asked, sensing another statement behind which further truths lurked .
“It would explain why I always felt like a foundling in my own family”. The elderly lady expressed her shame at being associated with this woman with rough hands and a rough tongue. Whose kids, lacking parenting, were practically feral. In contrast to her mother, she was inherently lady-like in looks and demeanour. On shopping trips to the local town, her mother would stash the baby and toddlers in a makeshift pram that more resembled a soap box. She would pull it behind her up the high street, courting attention. The rattling of the wheels, the kids raucous as starlings running into shops to pilfer sweets, made a spectacle that had other shoppers staring and stepping to one side. But her mother revelled in it, throwing her coarseness in their well-mannered faces.
Grandmother, red faced with embarrassment, would cross to the opposite pavement to dissociate herself from this exhibition. But her mother would catch the slight and shriek at her “Think you’re too good for us do ya ?” And in her head the girl would whisper ‘Yes I am’ .
Even in the 1930s English society was still organised by a strict class system. Her family positively glorified in their lack of status. Bottom of the tier they were free to live as they pleased and embraced other people’s censure. But grandmother was an inherently sensitive child who cringed at their behaviour. It was not that she had delusions of grandeur, she simply yearned for a family that was, at least, respectable.
Escape eventually came in the guise of her older half-sister, Edie. She was the result of another of their mother’s casual relationships. Edie was married and moved some way away as if to put open water between her mother and herself. Although the two women never directly discussed it, her grandmother felt that Edie had her suspicions about the man who was nominally her sister’s father. Consequently she found her a position as nanny to a doctor’s family. Grandmother was 14 now, an age when most girls earned their own living. However, she still needed her mother’s permission. Thankfully, the woman sensed an opportunity, and gave her consent, but struck a deal that the girl should send the majority of her wages home. In truth, grandmother would have sacrificed all her earnings to get away. Giddy with happiness she packed an old suitcase. As the bus to the seaside town put distance between them, she felt her body unfurl from the clenched position it had come to adopt.
Arriving at the large detached house she was allocated her own bedroom with clean sheets, plentiful food, and above all found herself in the company, albeit as an employee, of people who spoke moderately and with cultured accents, who treated her with kindness. As a result she blossomed, the household becoming fond of this pretty girl who wore happiness like an adornment.
At 20 she married Reginald, a kind man whose good looks made him a bit of a catch. He had five siblings who were generous in their welcome of this ladylike young woman. Smallholders, they gave grandmother what she most craved, respectability. Significantly no one from her family, with the exception of Edie, were invited to the wedding.
Grandmother had clearly managed to cleave herself from her family. Her granddaughter had no recollection of meeting any siblings except Aunt Edie, who featured as a fuzzy memory in her childhood, a motherly soul who kept homemade cake in a fancy tin decorated with violets .
But the memory of the abuse could not be so easily shaken off. Grandmother tried consigning it to the past but her subconscious was cunning, it found ways to constantly ambush her present. Her granddaughter struggled with the unfairness of life. This man and woman went unpunished. Time and, indeed death conspired with them to evade justice. Introduced to them just that afternoon she saw they would not have lived their lives burdened by guilt or conscience. Her anger had nowhere to go, so exploded with the impotent injustice of a child .“I want them punished”. “Leave that to God”. The old lady smiled wryly, knowing her granddaughter’s absence of faith.
For once the younger woman saw the advantages of believing in a divine power. It clearly brought comfort to believe in an omnipotent being who never missed a trick. “Well I hope he’s an old testament God,” she replied “with plenty of fire and brimstone”. which made the elderly lady chuckle.
Grandmother picked up the newspaper beside her, “Selfishly”, she admitted, “these poor women and their revelations also comfort me”. For most of her life she believed her experience was a freakish occurrence . A one off that rendered her lonely, isolated from other girls who were still innocent about sex. The fact was, even in the 1930s and 40s, child abuse was condoned by some as a male prerogative. To others it was an act so grotesque it was too awful to contemplate, so was hushed up in a conspiracy of silence. If a boy or girl did speak up they were dismissed as ‘a bad child’ who told untruths. And rape, at any age, was mouthed behind hands, in the language of innuendo. Society laying the blame on the victim. ‘She led him on,’ ‘She asked for it.’
As an adult her grandmother viewed her abuse with a double think. Her independent self reasoned the imbalance of power between that man and her eleven-year-old self had backed her into a corner. The horror of each Sunday was inescapable. She knew he was wicked . She knew her mother was corrupt .
But at the same time, the child in her also accepted societal blame. He had a right to be angry with this bastard child who proved he had been cuckolded. Perhaps, then, he was entitled to extract payment for taking her in. Either way, the result of this squalid knowledge of sex effectively ended her childhood but more than that left her with a lifetime belief that she was spoiled, sinful and stained .
Becoming a mother herself in time, she resolved to practice the opposite of her own mother’s delinquent parenting. She strove to keep her girls’ innocence intact for as long as possible, which was not easy in the changing social landscape of the 60s. When they became adults, her grandmother would have liked to have them bear witness to her past. Such a confession might have brought them closer together, made the girls understand the reasons behind her over protection. “But” grandmother sighed, “there never seemed to be a right time”.
She certainly hid her past from her husband. Men of his generation, however well meaning, considered that anything concerning feelings belonged exclusively to a woman’s sphere. And, even if he had been receptive to confidences, she would still have kept the truth from him, terrified of being rejected as ‘dirty’, petrified the revelation would kill off his love for her. “And in a way” she said finally “it’s enough for me to realise, now, it wasn’t just me. These brave women are speaking on my behalf”.
Her grandmother slapped her hands down on her knees, as if dismissing the subject. “And now my story has had a good airing”, like it was a room long shut up whose windows had been flung open to release the stench trapped inside. Her granddaughter followed her cue, understanding the matter was closed for now. Together they began to gather up the tea things .
A thought suddenly struck Charlotte. “Why did you choose to tell me ? I know the media introduced the subject , but even so …”
The old lady paused from gathering up plates of leftover cake. She looked directly into her granddaughter’s eyes that were so like her own, dark brown, slightly misaligned, their ‘wonky eyes’ they called them in a private joke. “The trick about sharing a confidence”, she explained, “is waiting for the right person, even if it takes 60 odd years. Someone into whose hands you can place your secret, trusting she will not drop it”.
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