I was too young to notice when my parents' rented house in Chiswick had its windows blown out. That was at the beginning of the blitz. Mary, my mother moved out with me, aged three, and Martin, one, to a cottage in the country near Newbury. The cottage was lent us by my mother’s Aunt Olive who ran a girls’ boarding school up the road. My father, a civil servant, stayed on in London helping organise shelters and civil defence. He came out to join us most weekends and my earliest memories – brief clips and cameos – go back to these visits of his.
What price oral history if what’s preserved is more the exception than the rule? Is what I remember what happened, or a distant derivative, reshaped in the retelling?
In one clip I am walking down a straight country road with heathland on either side. My mother and father walk side-by-side, a long way ahead. Have they got Martin with them? If so, his pushchair is out of sight in front of them. I shout after them to wait but they don’t turn or slow down. Now, seventy years later, I realise they must have had a lot to talk about. Then, I could probably have run and caught up with them. But I seemed too far, and I hadn't the heart.
In a TV clip, we see lions stalking a herd of deerlike animals. The one they take is a youngster that lags behind. Still in Africa, a family of emaciated elephants trudges in search of food and water. This time it’s a baby elephant that cant keep up, its legs crumple and it falls to the ground. The mother does turn back, but cannot carry it or wait. She sadly leaves it there.
Keep moving, keep up, catch up or you’re lost!
My father is sawing firewood in the yard beside the house. The log he’s cutting lies across a sawhorse and I’m the rider sat on top. When the log gets too short for him to saw, my father lifts me off. I help pick up the sawn-off bits, brush the sawdust off with my hands. I can smell the sawdust, see the logs, but now I’m not sure when or where. Is the child on the log me, or one of my sons? In Berkshire 1940-41 or in ‘70s Manchester or ‘90s Wales, when it was my turn to saw and another son's to play around.
With my father sawing, I knew that this was work and felt happy to be part of it. It was also a game, not just the horse for me, but a welcome break for him from London office, stiff collar, bombs.
My mother was somewhere there, but indoors, out of sight and mind. She was the constant presence then, and constantly busy with two young children, no washing machine, hoover, car or fridge. I know all that but don’t remember it. I have no picture of her then, except the distant view from the back on that walk, or snapshots seen later. The inside of that house, where we must have spent most of our time, is blank and dark. The nearest I get is a glimpse or two from outside looking in, through the French window or a half-open kitchen door. It may have been on the doorstep that I helped Mary salt some sliced green runner beans in a big red earthenware jar, a layer of beans and a thick sprinkling, crusting of white salt, then another layer. I', sure she had me helping her from early on.
She never felt her own place, or women’s place, was at the kitchen sink. But if that’s where she had to be, why not her children, boys or not. I wouldn't have grasped that then, only years later, after the war, when all of us, three brothers and sister, were expected to do our share.
This ‘Cancellors Cottage’ in Berkshire was the first of several war-time billets for our little family of DIY evacuees. I do remember one indoor scene, fraught threesome in a dark little dining room. Martin, aged 18 months or so, is sitting in a high chair more or less facing me. Mary, back to me again, is trying to feed him. Martin, survivor of twins, was always reluctant to eat. Spoonful after spoonful went astray, he'd shut his mouth as the spoon approached, or let it in, then spit the contents out. Or swallow, then sick it up. Dreading that moment, I cowered behind a chest. Maybe Mary turned to me than, and Martin seized the moment, and his bowl, raised it in both hands, over his head, and dropped it on the floor behind his chair. It could have been the one with rabbits round the rim.
How common is very partial remembering? What I remember is the exception, not the rule, the best of my father, the worst of my mother. Is this unfair selection common? About men and women? If I had been a girl, would it be the other way round, or does the bias work on both? Is it his scarcity-value that gives George pride of place in early memories, a real or assumed male dominance, or the fact that I identified with him as another male? I'm sure I was closer to my mother, not comfortable - any more than she was comfortable with herself - but too much a part of her to see her face.
Back in the sun, on another weekend or holiday, my father and I are out on the lawn playing Tom Tiddler’s Ground. He is Tom Tiddler, the lawn is his ground. I have to run onto it and off again without being caught. He’s chasing me and I’m running for the safety of the path between lawn and house. The path is narrow, there’s the French window beyond it and I put out my hands to stop myself. My left hand goes through the glass. I remember the blood more than the pain, the firm white bandage that hid the damage, and being told how brave I was.
I can still see the scar on my wrist, shaped like a high-heeled boot, ankle tapering away across a small blue vein.
But for the scar, would I remember the incident? Or is memory itself a scar? By what everyday magic are mental images formed and stored, filed and recalled? How much can we remember things before we have words, or images, to fix them to? There is an ongoing, if intermittent, physical process, as with external records. There's a portrait of my father on our stairs, painted when he was called up, in case he got killed. Now the portrait hangs on our stairs, the portrait reminds me of him and when I try to remember him at other times its often the portrait that comes to mind. What I see is just paint, quick daubs picking up the light reflected off his skin nearly 70 years ago, when he was younger than than my elder son. The movement of light, to painter's eye, through brain to hand, brush, paint, canvas. And now, the light off the paint - same light or another, is light one thing? - to my eye, and somehow from there to times I spent with him... Or is it just his name, George, and the painting, steady, gentle eyes and rough-weave jacket. Between these appearances, moments, events there is a continuing process, an actual chain of events running to and fro through time and space, in us and between us. Very odd, these images, but not imaginary.
I've almost stopped taking photographs. Partly because I dont know what to do with them, partly because I'm uneasy about the way they stand in for memory. Sometimes they prompt remembering, but it disturbs me when I find myself remembering the picture instead of its subject in real life. How much could people remember before they started making images, in pictures or words?
When a friend mentioned my father's voice the other day, I tried to remember how he sounded. We have no recording of him, though he sang. He also stammered when he spoke, and if I try to remember him talking, that's what I recall most easily, the moments when he struggled to get a word out. Exception to the rule again, perhaps. Sometimes, when I remember the sort of words he said, what I hear is not his voice saying them, but my own.
With animals, I get the feeling that they only remember me when they see me again, with surprise. Perhaps animals have no way of recalling my image in my absence. Perhaps before we had words or pictures we were the same. Or perhaps we merged mothers into daughters, fathers into sons, recalling the one, reborn and transformed, in the presence of the other. One generation rediscovered in the next, changing all the while, like a film, where one frame blurs into the next with perfect clarity.
The other night I was preparing Brussels sprouts, peeling off loose outer leaves and cutting crosses in the stalks. I suddenly felt I’d been doing it all my life, my mother must have showed me what to do, explaining that the cuts let the boiling water in. When Ada trims the pastry off a pie, I have the same feeling. My mother would give us bits of left over pastry to make leaves out of, bowls to lick. Sometimes we got mixed messages, 'Come and help,' one moment 'Out of my way' the next. Some of the messages I picked up before my memories began, and I only remember them when I come across them again. I must have been at least 11 when I a new puppy made a mess on the floor. The noise Mary made at the dog, rather than rubbing its nose in it, disturbed me. I'd heard it before, when younger siblings messed themselves - I would have remembered it then, if not when the mess was mind. 'Ugh, ugh..' in a rasping rough disgusted voice, unlike herself.
For one Christmas, or birthday - mine was five days before the sacred one - George made me a balsa-wood glider, its wingspan as wide as my arms. For its maiden flight we took it to a grass arena at Downe House, my great Aunt Olive's school. It was a boarding school and the girls were gone for their holiday so we had the Greek Theatre to ourselves. A terraced hollow surrounded by walls and a cloister that led to the school chapel. The first flight was perfect, wide wings sailing out over the terraced hollow, rising slightly then dipping to land gently on the other side. Encouraged, my father - I think it was my father - threw it harder for its second launch. Again it sailed away, horizontally, up a bit, down, and up again. Instead of landing on the grass it cleared the boundary wall and disappeared among the pinetrees beyond. My heart sank with it.
I’m told I had a friend who lived not far away. I don’t remember him, but a picture of the two os us playing together in a sandpit. He, Barnaby, was the one with fairer hair. The other thing I know about him is that he got run over and killed by a lorry. When I was told about it, I said – my mother said I said - ‘Can I have his toys?’
It was from that Cancllors that I first went out to school, or rather a playgroup - kindergarten as it might have been called ar kindergarten. I don’t remember starting there, but I think I quite liked the teacher. That may explain my disappointment, and why I do remember one incident in the playground. When we went outside, the teacher told us to be birds. I was never and imaginative child, so I may have taken it literally. 'From out of the wood did a cuckoo fly...' and I circled round the wire perimeter fence. 'He hopped, he curtsied, round he flew and loud his jubilation grew...' I was brought back to earth by a shout the teacher at the classroom door. The playground between us was empty. 'The others all heard when I called,' she said, and she'd have to keep me in.
Like a bird indeed. The teacher was not my mother, school not home. I had arguments with my mother but hardly ever felt my parents were unfair. At bedtime, our differences were forgotten. Mary would read to us, sing a nursery rhyme or hymn, with with George if he was there. We said prayers. If there were any sorries to be said, Mary added hers to ours.
I’ve always had flying dreams, and still do sometimes. Not of flying in planes, but on wings of faith. Sometimes I’m running, on the flat, or downhill, or down flights of steps. All I have to do, once I believe in it, is take my feet of the ground. Sometimes I rise slowly like a balloon, up the outside of a building, or a stairwell between floors. Sometimes I launch myself out from a cliff or rooftop. There’s always a moment of doubt, until I'm sure I'm airborn. Perhaps I'd heard the story of Peter walking on water, or perhaps that story is a replay of ancient dreams, where what we believe becomes true. In my own dreams what mattered at first was to know I could fly, then for others to see that I could, and, a long time later, for others to be able to fly with me. It was disappointing when I could swoop past people's heads and they wouldn't notice, and embarassing when it was only me. How could I be sure of myself if I was the only one?
When Sam, my eldest son, first got a bicycle, he rode off almost unaided. I ran a few yards holding the saddle from behind, then he started pedalling and pulled away. I watched him round the end of the recreation ground and back the other side. Where the path sloped down he found he could stop pedalling and shouted across to me 'Look, look, I'm hovering.' Next time out, he had a fall and for months wouldn’t ride his bike again... But how in a moment of excitement did he hit on that word 'hovering'?
When that teacher suggested we be birds, she probably didnt have to tell us we needed to flap our wings, or that wings were arms. We made the association for ourselves, but how? Years later, when boys all did athletics in the summer term, I noticed all the legs go up around the high jump pit. As the finalist took off, the legs of all those watching rose in sympathy.
How does that transferance work, between people and other animals, jumping species and elements? Is there a bit in the vertibrate brain that stands for limb, so that arms, legs and wings can speak to each other direct, instantly, on sight?
Other animals are more tightly programmed than we are to a particular species behaviour. We learn ours as we go along. With us high-jumpers, it wasn't quite as simple as leg to leg. What counted was not just a congruence of limbs but a systematic shared experience: although only the champions were jumping that day, we'd all had a go for ourselves. What we had was not just the model before our eyes, but conditioned reflexes to match. Inner and outer, genetic and cultural links.
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