Truth or Lies?
Only one of these stories is true, but which one?
Later, much later, the BBC put out a programme about the OSS, and how a British Industrialist, Sam Courtauld, allowed his Company, with its US connections, to be used as a recruiting base in the UK for America’s first Secret Service and how it was disbanded after the war but reformed as the CIA.
My father was dead by then but I talked to my mother and it was she who brought up the subject of the young art historian they had known for a while during the war.
“Of course, that would explain it.”
She told me that when my father was sent to Boston in 1947 he thought he’d try and look up their friend
“He was such an interesting young man you know.” She looked wistful for a moment. “Just disappeared all of a sudden and we never saw him again.”
She took a sip of Lapsang Souchong; we were sharing Sunday afternoon tea together.
“But we’d lost touch of course. Things were like that during the war, so your father asked one of the Directors if he could help; Mr George I think.”
I was offered another biscuit.
“Poor man, he came home looking rather battered. He’d always got on so well with the Courtauld family, Mr George in particular. Quite the blue eyed boy he was, but not this time.”
It seemed he’d been warned off.
“On no account must you try to contact the American” he’d been told, “and it would be better if you never mentioned him again.”
Sometime during 1922, with the Troubles in their prime, a man with a Donegal accent came to her door in Gorton. Grandma hadn’t much time for the Irish, seeing them as a distraction from the cause of the proletariat, but her reputation as a scourge of authority must have spread into the Fenian community.
“Would y’ just look after this for a while Missus.”
He was clearly in a hurry and thrust a roughly triangular package into her hand. She was surprised at its weight and tried to refuse.
“And don’t y’ be tellin’ anyone y’ve seen me.” With that he was gone.
By late 1941 Hitler had invaded Russia so we and the Soviet Union were friends and Grandma could support the war effort. The blitz was in full swing in the Midlands and the South and its depredations went some way to soften relationships between the two women. Grandma was happy for my mother to bring our little family north to take refuge in Manchester. As a result I found myself early one morning edging across the yard to the outside jakes.
Grandpa’s voice wasn’t much heard above the family din, perhaps the years he spent unemployed in the 30s had robbed him of his right to an opinion though I do remember him saying: “There’s only one thing wrong with this family, too much politics.”
But he’d done what he could during those years without work. The outside privy had been lined with laths of wood and he’d fixed a chain to the ceiling from which hung copies of the Daily Worker cut into neat squares. There was a large hole in a solid plank appropriate to the ample proportions of grandma’s backside, its edges worn smooth with use. The adult posterior fitted it like an egg in an eggcup but I always found myself teetering precariously on the edge with my child’s legs dangling above the floor.
On one memorable occasion I lost my balance and grabbed at the chain, pulling a piece of grandpa’s handiwork out of the ceiling. There was a thump on my shoulder and a louder plop than I ever managed as something heavy bounced off the wall behind and into the cesspit below.
Nothing was ever said about the collapse in the privy ceiling and I was in my teens before I heard the story about the Irishman and the gun. But when I did it all made sense. To my surprise I’d played a part, however small, in the fight for the Irish Free State.
My mother, just married and struggling with her new life, felt some responsibility for the young maid in her care. It was a comfort to her to know that Daisy returned home each night. Someone else could defend her honour until the morning. Meanwhile Leon was showing no sign of leaving and it was quite apparent that his Republican sympathies had waned for the moment.
Apart from the polemics he didn’t seem much trouble to begin with and each evening he would return, looking particularly mellow, having ‘gone for a walk’. From what she knew of the men in her new husband’s family, my mother assumed Leon had managed to persuade the local publican that he was 18 though he never smelt of alcohol, which was strange. It was the realisation that whatever the time that Daisy set off for home Leon always commenced his walk a few minutes later that gave the game away. This couldn’t be allowed to continue and the International Brigade gained another recruit soon after.
His exploits in Spain became part of the family legend as did much else. I was just out of college when a hitherto unknown member of the family made his appearance. Four years younger than me, Sidney turned out to be the fruit of a consoling fling undertaken by Leon in the aftermath of defeat by the Falangist.
I must have been three when Sidney was born, well after the time that Leon spent at the farmhouse, but I got to thinking: what if he’d bracketed his time in Spain; one bastard child before and one after? If so, what had happened to Daisy’s baby who would have been my age exactly? Could my mother, guilty at her failure to protect, have taken in a fatherless infant?
As we’ve got older my brother and I have grown to look and sound exactly like each other, but earlier, with six years between us, the comparison had been less comforting. I could never quite discuss the matter with those who knew, and how could I have relied on their answers anyway?
Perhaps it was a blessing that DNA testing wasn’t available back then. I’m too old to worry about it now.
Only one of these stories is true, but which one?
- I hadn’t seen it for several years, but the music box swept me back to childhood in an instant as the first notes of Twinkle Twinkle filled the loft. A winding handle stuck out of its side, and caught on the lip of the bin liner as I retrieved the decorated cylinder. A ballerina, standing balanced on one end, pirouetted as the tune played. Once, the wire arch over her head had served as a perch for three blue birds but they’d long gone.
Later, much later, the BBC put out a programme about the OSS, and how a British Industrialist, Sam Courtauld, allowed his Company, with its US connections, to be used as a recruiting base in the UK for America’s first Secret Service and how it was disbanded after the war but reformed as the CIA.
My father was dead by then but I talked to my mother and it was she who brought up the subject of the young art historian they had known for a while during the war.
“Of course, that would explain it.”
She told me that when my father was sent to Boston in 1947 he thought he’d try and look up their friend
“He was such an interesting young man you know.” She looked wistful for a moment. “Just disappeared all of a sudden and we never saw him again.”
She took a sip of Lapsang Souchong; we were sharing Sunday afternoon tea together.
“But we’d lost touch of course. Things were like that during the war, so your father asked one of the Directors if he could help; Mr George I think.”
I was offered another biscuit.
“Poor man, he came home looking rather battered. He’d always got on so well with the Courtauld family, Mr George in particular. Quite the blue eyed boy he was, but not this time.”
It seemed he’d been warned off.
“On no account must you try to contact the American” he’d been told, “and it would be better if you never mentioned him again.”
- My grandmother was a formidable woman, and so was my mother. Perhaps that was why the two never got on. It may also have had something to do with politics: the middle class, secular, leftish atmosphere in which I was raised had a politeness, perhaps even a suffocating politeness, about it that didn’t suit Grandma.
Sometime during 1922, with the Troubles in their prime, a man with a Donegal accent came to her door in Gorton. Grandma hadn’t much time for the Irish, seeing them as a distraction from the cause of the proletariat, but her reputation as a scourge of authority must have spread into the Fenian community.
“Would y’ just look after this for a while Missus.”
He was clearly in a hurry and thrust a roughly triangular package into her hand. She was surprised at its weight and tried to refuse.
“And don’t y’ be tellin’ anyone y’ve seen me.” With that he was gone.
By late 1941 Hitler had invaded Russia so we and the Soviet Union were friends and Grandma could support the war effort. The blitz was in full swing in the Midlands and the South and its depredations went some way to soften relationships between the two women. Grandma was happy for my mother to bring our little family north to take refuge in Manchester. As a result I found myself early one morning edging across the yard to the outside jakes.
Grandpa’s voice wasn’t much heard above the family din, perhaps the years he spent unemployed in the 30s had robbed him of his right to an opinion though I do remember him saying: “There’s only one thing wrong with this family, too much politics.”
But he’d done what he could during those years without work. The outside privy had been lined with laths of wood and he’d fixed a chain to the ceiling from which hung copies of the Daily Worker cut into neat squares. There was a large hole in a solid plank appropriate to the ample proportions of grandma’s backside, its edges worn smooth with use. The adult posterior fitted it like an egg in an eggcup but I always found myself teetering precariously on the edge with my child’s legs dangling above the floor.
On one memorable occasion I lost my balance and grabbed at the chain, pulling a piece of grandpa’s handiwork out of the ceiling. There was a thump on my shoulder and a louder plop than I ever managed as something heavy bounced off the wall behind and into the cesspit below.
Nothing was ever said about the collapse in the privy ceiling and I was in my teens before I heard the story about the Irishman and the gun. But when I did it all made sense. To my surprise I’d played a part, however small, in the fight for the Irish Free State.
- The interwar years were funny old times. That my father, a young man brought up in poverty during the 20s, could find himself, by the mid-30s, living in a large house with a wife, a servant and a dog amazed himself as much as it dismayed his family. Admittedly he’d been fortunate. Propelled by his mother’s ambition and his own intelligence he’d won a university scholarship, gained a first class degree and obtained a good job, all against the odds.
The Spanish Civil War broke out in the summer of 1936 and shortly after that my parents married. Their first home was a run-down farmhouse which came with a pretty 16 year old maid as part of the lease. The puppy had been a wedding present.
Not long after I was conceived.
At this time numbers of men, mostly from the north, were making their way via London and Paris to fight with the Spanish Republican Army against the Falangist insurgency.
My mother, just married and struggling with her new life, felt some responsibility for the young maid in her care. It was a comfort to her to know that Daisy returned home each night. Someone else could defend her honour until the morning. Meanwhile Leon was showing no sign of leaving and it was quite apparent that his Republican sympathies had waned for the moment.
Apart from the polemics he didn’t seem much trouble to begin with and each evening he would return, looking particularly mellow, having ‘gone for a walk’. From what she knew of the men in her new husband’s family, my mother assumed Leon had managed to persuade the local publican that he was 18 though he never smelt of alcohol, which was strange. It was the realisation that whatever the time that Daisy set off for home Leon always commenced his walk a few minutes later that gave the game away. This couldn’t be allowed to continue and the International Brigade gained another recruit soon after.
His exploits in Spain became part of the family legend as did much else. I was just out of college when a hitherto unknown member of the family made his appearance. Four years younger than me, Sidney turned out to be the fruit of a consoling fling undertaken by Leon in the aftermath of defeat by the Falangist.
I must have been three when Sidney was born, well after the time that Leon spent at the farmhouse, but I got to thinking: what if he’d bracketed his time in Spain; one bastard child before and one after? If so, what had happened to Daisy’s baby who would have been my age exactly? Could my mother, guilty at her failure to protect, have taken in a fatherless infant?
As we’ve got older my brother and I have grown to look and sound exactly like each other, but earlier, with six years between us, the comparison had been less comforting. I could never quite discuss the matter with those who knew, and how could I have relied on their answers anyway?
Perhaps it was a blessing that DNA testing wasn’t available back then. I’m too old to worry about it now.