Miriam

by Vic Evans

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

A brilliantly researched and exquisitely told tale of love, death, and heartbreak which explores some of the most important and devastating events of twentieth-century Europe. Miriam Rabin, a bright, headstrong young woman, grows up in North Wales in the early years of the twentieth century determined to make the most of her life. Her ambitions are thwarted after her mother?s death and she seems destined to live out her days as the obscure wife of a hill farmer, although her political beliefs provide her with some respite. In her early thirties, though, a major tragedy changes her life forever. Suddenly Miriam ? alongside her equally headstrong sister Esther ? finds herself fighting against Franco?s forces in the Spanish Civil War. Circumstances then lead her to Russia at the turn of World War II, where she becomes an officer in Stalin?s feared secret police, the NKVD ? Miriam?s fervour, passions, heartbreak, and determination lead her along a risky path through the most troubled times of the last hundred years. And, when the future looks ever more uncertain, what becomes of the loved ones she left behind?

Release date: September 30, 2014

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 294

Sample

Chapter One

Wrexham, North Wales, June 1957

It is early one June morning in 1957, not long after opening time for the market at Manchester Square, when a young man and a woman meet for the first time in the market café. The man, tall and not yet twenty, unwinds his college scarf and drapes it over the back of his chair before sitting down. Running his hand nervously through his fair curly hair he orders a pot of tea for two. The woman sits with her hands clasped. She is in her late fifties, though she looks younger, maybe because she is so slim, and her dark hair shows little sign of greying.

They watch in polite silence as the waitress sets out the tea things from a tray: a chrome teapot, a matching sugar bowl, and a milk jug all looking as outdated on the bare Formica surface of the spindly-legged table as her black dress and starched white apron. She places a small plate of rich tea biscuits before them and leaves.

‘Nikolai, isn’t it?’

‘Nicholas, my name is Nicholas. Nicholas Wilder.’

Thrusting her hand into her jacket pocket she looks at him intently. Pulling out a box of matches she tosses it on the table with a red and black packet of Craven A cigarettes.

He shakes his head as she offers the pack. ‘It feels strange to be called Nikolai. I’ve always been Nicholas although I’ve known for a short while that’s how I was named.’

Lighting up and turning her head slightly she exhales through the corner of her mouth. As he watches her closely her eyes narrow guardedly. How much does he know, this young man seeking her out like this? She holds his gaze. How much should she tell him? Why the hell did she agree to meet him in the first place? She could have dismissed the idea of meeting, made excuses, or simply ignored his letter. That was the sensible thing to have done. Yes, yes, she’d been through this many times before. It always came back to that unrelenting desire to see him. To find out about him, what he was doing and how he’d turned out. Perhaps to put to rest that question, did she do the right thing?

The new jukebox whirrs into life.

Briefly distracted she waits before responding.

Its brash chrome fins and flashing coloured lights look as incongruous as the tables in the insipid surroundings of the café. A record drops onto the playing deck with a clack. The Everly Brothers start singing ‘Wake Up Little Susie’.

‘I was taken aback when they gave me your letter at the police station; well, actually it was a bloody shock. How did you find me? Was it from the newspapers? They don’t usually give out that kind of information.’ There was a trace of the local accent.

‘That picture of you jumping the wire at the Hungarian border last year was on all the front pages. You were a celebrity. Then I read about your defection. It was in –’

‘My escape, dear, not my defection. Choose your words carefully, please.’

‘It was the article on you in the Picture Post magazine that did it, photojournalist of 1956 and your full life story. Madrid, Moscow, Budapest, special correspondent on Izvestia, very impressive. I gave my college library as a reference and told them I was working on a project, a proposal for my thesis. They gave me a London telephone number.’

‘Obviously you didn’t tell them you were a nephew of Esther Rabin. That would have put the cat among the pigeons.’ She draws on her cigarette. ‘Did you phone that number?’

‘Yes.’

‘You spoke to someone?’

‘Yes. It was a man. He asked me a lot of questions. He said he’d get back to me and that I was not to attempt to contact you in the meantime. I remember he was quite firm about that. It was in March when I had a call at the college. I’d given up by then. I was told if I wished I could write to you but I was to leave the letter with the porter and not to post it.’

She draws on her cigarette again then slowly breathes out. ‘The powers that be have provided me with a flat in Central London near the Embankment. They’ve been sending a charming man to see me every week, whether I want them to or not of course. He delivered your letter actually, last month. It’s probably the same person who contacted you. They’ve certainly taken their time. He’d obviously read it. He told me if I wanted to meet you I should tell him where and when would be convenient.’

‘Yes, I had a note at college about where and when.’

‘He’s been spending hours with me going over the usual routine, every detail, over and over, but I’m not supposed to mention that. I’ll just say that the doctor, their doctor, said I shouldn’t go on without resting for some time. Of course he meant I’d had a nervous breakdown. Go away somewhere quiet, he suggested. I could decide where but I had to report to the local police station every three days. Each time I’ve been it’s a different officer so I have to go through the same routine, documents, passport, well, I haven’t got any. Everything I had was taken from me as soon as I got into the British zone and I’ve never had a passport anyway.’ She taps ash into her saucer then lifts her face to meet his eyes. ‘I’ve been here, in Wrexham, about three weeks. Three publishers have offered me contracts and I’ve had a generous advance from the Telegraph just to consider an exclusive with an offer of a regular column but I’m not allowed to take up anything yet. I told them I’m not ready. I took the advance of course. So! This was the only place I could think of where I could be guaranteed anonymity. It seems I was wrong.’

‘Why here, Wrexham in particular?’

‘Why not? It’s as good a place as any.’

He stares at her. His eyes are drawn to her hand as she runs her little finger back and to around the inside of her watchstrap.

She sees he is not satisfied with her answer.

‘According to the article you’re from this part of the world.’

Licking a flake of tobacco from her lip she picks it off her tongue becoming aware of a slight tremor in her hand. There won’t be a response to that sort of approach. No, there’s been enough interrogation for one lifetime. After a pause she decides to go on the offensive. ‘Well, are you working on a project? Is that why you asked me to come here today?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No, but I am working on an essay. Actually it’s only my second term, a little early to be preparing a thesis.’

‘Don’t you have to do some form of military service, what’s it called, National Service?’

‘Yes but my call up’s been deferred until I graduate. I’m reading Modern History but that’s not why I’m here.’ He takes a bulky envelope from his inside pocket. It is of a washed-out brown paper, discoloured in patches as if by damp, and its torn dog-eared flap is open.

Esther’s eyes widen. The Red Cross stamp is unmistakable and the two red bands running diagonally across the envelope indicating it as having diplomatic immunity are still clear. She feels her heart beating against her chest. Could he see the pulse in her neck? Instinctively she draws her collar close.

‘The solicitor gave this to me after my mother’s funeral last July.’ He places it on the table. ‘I still thought she was my real – my natural mother then. The man who I thought was my natural father died some years ago. He was the manager of the bank on the high street where we lived. I’m the only one, no brothers or sisters. The house I grew up in and everything in it is left to me. It’s empty. The place where I was so happy, all my childhood there, now I’m a stranger in it. I go through it room by room and see them so differently, cold, damp, empty; it’s as if I haven’t happened. I don’t know how to live in it anymore. I don’t want to go back to it.’ Slowly he pushes the envelope towards her. ‘This came with me. The Red Cross had placed it in my wrappings I was told.’ He looks into her face. ‘You know what’s in it, don’t you?’

For a split second her dilated brown pupils hold his in a cold stare. He sees they are flecked with hazel like the glass marbles deep in his boyhood memory. She blinks and abruptly averts them. An evasive shrug topples her cigarette ash.

‘There’s the letter addressed to me trying to explain why she’s sending me away and saying she hopes we’ll be together again one day. Then there’s your typed note giving details and descriptions of events and some newspaper cuttings of articles by you.’

He waits for a response from her but she will not be drawn. Her eyes are still fixed on the envelope.

‘I read these papers –’ He is caught off guard by the emotion constricting his throat. He swallows then limply motions toward the envelope. ‘I read these papers just before I saw the Picture Post article. I was –’ Fumbling among his thoughts to find the expression of his feelings he gives up and then goes on. ‘Do you know it was some days before I could believe it really was me being addressed in the letter? I read it over time after time. Then I retrieved the Picture Post magazine. Yes it was you, the person who wrote the articles and the note in that envelope. I still find it hard to believe.’ His voice breaks slightly. Tears of suppressed anger well up. ‘The idea I have of myself, who I am, who it is my friends think they know, it’s shattered. Something I still find hard to accept. I have to find out who I really am.’ He pauses again and breathes in before going on. ‘That’s why I’m here today.’  

In the stillness that follows he reaches for the envelope takes out a photograph and gently pushes it over the table until it touches Esther’s hand. She flinches as if pricked. ‘Tell me,’ he leans toward her, ‘Tell me. What was she like, my – my real mother?’

Mentally shaking herself Esther stubs out the cigarette and leans forward to take the postcard-size sepia-coloured portrait. She’ll just give it a token glance but she lingers over it longer to give her jarred feelings time to settle and to think of something to say.

How much should she tell him?

She gazes at the familiar likeness of her sister with her own strong aquiline features, heavy eyebrows, hair that looks dark in the style of the late twenties, and a lace blouse revealing a handsome neck and shoulders. The photographer’s address is embossed on the bottom right hand corner: A. Percival Browne. Jamiesons Studios. 3A High Street. Wrexham. They’d had one of each and one both together, she recalled as she pushes it back to him.

Nicholas stares hard at her. ‘How could she give me up? I must have been barely nine months old.’

How much should she tell him? Should she tell him what really happened? Best not to. Not yet anyway. Yes, that’s it, she will play for time.

‘Spain in November 1938 wasn’t the best place for a baby, believe me. Especially if your mother was fighting on the losing side.’

Nicholas looks at her closely. ‘She’s dead now, isn’t she?’

Esther hesitates, ‘I think you realised that before today but if you want to hear me say it, yes, she’s dead.’

He lifts his teacup and finds it empty. He replaces it carefully on the saucer as the feeling of resignation swallows his thoughts. Momentarily he turns his face from her looking away and addressing nothing in particular. ‘And my father, did you know him?’

‘No. I knew of him but I never met him. He died before you were born. Look,’ impulsively she places her hand on his arm causing him to turn back to her, ‘children of all ages were being evacuated. Britain accepted thousands of them. The way she saw it, it was only for the time being.’

Perhaps that will close the matter. Yes it’s best he sees it that way.

‘Eventually many did go back but by then things had moved on. She was in the Soviet Union and you had been adopted.’

Why should she feel the need to justify anything? She swallows the feeling of resentment rising like bile in her throat.

Suddenly Nicholas leans forward and places his hand on hers. ‘What kind of a person was she? Where did she come from? Where do I come from? Don’t you see? I have to know what part I played in her life.’

She gently draws her hand away, folding her arms defensively. She would be wary of what she revealed and how she would put it.

‘How much time have you got?’

‘Oh, I can get the last train for Oxford at twelve thirty tonight if necessary.’

She pauses to gather her thoughts. ‘We were very close, Miriam – your mother and I – do you mind if I call her Miriam; it makes it easier for me?’

‘No, not at all. Go on.’

‘Miriam and I grew up in Coedmawr. Do you know it?’

‘No. I’m not from here. I grew up in Oxted, Surrey.’

‘The village stands on a hill facing the mountain some five miles above here. In the winter the bloody wind always seemed to be blowing in your face. We never knew where it came from or where it was going but wherever it was it always called at the village on its way. There used to be a colliery below where most of the men folk worked. It closed for good after the miners’ strike in 1926. There were collieries in most of the villages around the town then. Steam whistles announced the changing of the shifts and marked the passage of time for the townies and the villagers alike. There were only two years between us, see, and when Mam died in the flu epidemic in 1919, soon after Dad came home from South Africa, there was just the two of us, and Dad of course. As for you wanting to know where you come from –’

Esther pauses, reaches for the teapot, and pours for herself, offering to pour for Nicholas, but he shakes his head. She attempts a cautious sip without milk or sugar, makes a face, then puts the cup down.

‘Well I suppose I have to go back to our roots.’ Her eyes briefly look into the middle distance.

She will tread carefully.

‘Over fifty years ago Dad, that’s your grandfather Joe Rabin, used to come to this very market with his father every week. He’s been dead, oh, it must be fifteen years now. In 1942 it was. We were both in Moscow then. It must have been over three years before we learned about it. We’d lost touch completely, you see.’ She hesitates, ‘Oh dear, I seem to be losing the thread. Where was I?’

‘You were saying my grandfather used to come to this market.’

‘Ah yes. Well anyway they took the train from Manchester Victoria and travelled in the goods van with a handcart loaded with clogs. Then after staying overnight in a lodging house they would catch the early morning train for the market at Oswestry. At the end of the day’s trading they went back to Manchester.’



Manchester Square, Wrexham, 1900

Joe hated Mondays and Tuesdays when it was his turn to help Pa at the markets. He felt he should be working in his carpentry shop where he had a business of his own to look after, but Isaac employed emotional blackmail on his sons with the force and subtlety of a sledgehammer.

‘So! The son doesn’t want to honour his father alone in the world in his old age?’

Joe’s mother had been dead two years and this was the response to Joe’s protests every time he brought the matter up.

‘Just two days a week,’ he would whine looking up to heaven for support, ‘is that too much for a father to ask?’

On Wednesdays it was the turn of Joe’s eldest brother Maisky, who, despite being a married man with his own clogger’s shop, was obliged to travel to the Oldham market and on Thursdays to Burnley. On Fridays Isaac’s middle son Selwyn went with him to Rochdale and on Saturdays they went to Clitheroe. Joe also had an older sister, Reeny, the eldest child, who kept the accounts.

Though Isaac was a burden to his sons they never talked about it and to Joe who still lived with him he was also an embarrassment. ‘You don’t have to dress like that when we go to the markets, Pa.’

‘Like what?’

‘You know, the shawl and the cap.’

‘It’s tradition. You ashamed of it?’

‘It looks foreign, Pa. People stare in the markets and you haven’t been to synagogue since I can remember –’ Joe broke off. A punter with a blue coal scar on the bridge of his nose and a white silk scarf fixed at his throat with a gold-plated safety pin was showing interest in a pair of irons.

Isaac was well-known in Manchester Square, as the marketplace at Wrexham was called. If you were a steel worker or a collier needing clogs or irons to shoe them you looked for the announcement IKE RABIN FOR CLOGS gaudily painted on a board standing high above his cart. Often Joe was able to pick up some business of his own making a stool to order or such like.

When he was twenty-five Isaac Rabin the shoemaker as he then was, came out of the Ukraine with his wife Golda and one-year-old Reeny. Just occasionally, perhaps when he’d had too much cheese for supper, that day when everyone in his village ran away without even stopping to close their street doors came back to disturb his sleep. In his dreams they still seemed to be running when they got to the port of Hamburg.

They found their way from Hull to Manchester where Isaac worked in a clogger’s shop. Eventually he did well enough to buy a shop of his own in Burnley. It was after Joe was born that Isaac had had the idea that changed the nature of the business and the lives of his family. He saved enough to rent a small warehouse in Manchester and instead of making the clogs himself he bought them in bulk from the cloggers in the city and took them to the markets in the mill towns and the Welsh Marches. When Golda died in 1898 the business was doing well. Why didn’t he employ others to do the markets now, his family asked? Just sit back. You can afford it. There’s no need to go around anymore.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You can’t trust other people and you never know what’s around the corner.’

‘But, Pa,’ said Reeny, ‘things have turned out well.’

‘So! Things have turned out so well your mother dies?’

They didn’t argue. In bringing them up he’d made too good a job of instilling his own insecurities into them. One day it’s going well. Next the Cossacks come through the village. The images that flashed into his consciousness when he was caught off guard by the smell of wood smoke or the sound of hooves on granite sets didn’t help.

Joe especially had been sown with anxieties by his father,  probably because he, being the youngest, was Isaac’s favourite. Though his resentment of what he saw as the needless imposition on his life to satisfy his father’s whims was beginning to overcome his underlying fear that danger was lurking around every corner.

Each Monday at around one o’clock Joe liked to visit the pie shop on the edge of the market hall, leaving Isaac to look after the stall on his own for an hour or so while he sat down to a hot pie. However on this particular Monday there was a reason why he was looking forward to his visit, one that wasn’t just to do with hot pies.

Most Mondays two sisters, Edith and Sarah, came to town on the omnibus. Edith was seventeen and Sarah was two years older. When Edith left school at eleven there had been rare trips down to town with her mother and sister. They would climb up on the horse-drawn brake in the morning and take it back to the village in the mid-afternoon. Since then the omnibus had arrived, bowling down and grinding back up to the village every two hours from eight in the morning until eight in the evening each day of the week, excepting Sundays of course. While it was quicker than the brake, Edith had hopes that the motorbus she’d seen in Liverpool would one day arrive in the village.

It was part of the sisters’ duties to come to Manchester Square on market days to buy what was needed at home. Their mother knew the girls enjoyed this weekly outing. ‘It’s quite harmless,’ she’d assured their father Emlyn, a blacksmith at the colliery.

They had been visiting the pie shop for some time as part of their treat and they often saw Joe there. Since Joe called after Edith when she’d once left her purse behind on the table they’d fallen to chatting, especially Edith. As for Sarah she saw nothing improper in it as Joe had introduced himself correctly without forcing his company upon them. And so for four weeks on the run they shared a table.

Today Joe came to join them, calling over to the busy pie man with a large tray steadied precariously on his head with one hand, ‘Three meat and potato please.’ Then he hung up his hat and sank on to the chair with a sigh before lifting his voice above the chattering market-goers and the scraping of chair legs on bare boards, ‘Pa’s even more stubborn than usual today.’

Edith looked at him becoming aware of the single dark curl he brushed in place across his high shiny forehead. ‘You oughtn’t complain about your poor pa like that.’

Joe could see she was joking. ‘Ought I not? He wanted to take his lunch break before me today, says he feels faint. Can’t go on much longer without something to eat, so he said.’

‘Poor man. Perhaps you should’ve let him go. He must be getting on a bit.’

‘He’s fit as a flea. He never eats at this time of day anyway. He just has a glass of lemon tea over on the other side of market somewhere. He knows I meet people here at this time.’

To the girls Joe’s Manchester accent with its flat vowels and harsh consonants was unfamiliar, and though he rolled his Rs like they did the slight lisping inflection and his pattern of speech sounded somehow exotic, especially to Edith. It contrasted with the Welsh lilt to which she was used, provoking her to tease him. ‘People?’ She feigned surprise and lifted her eyebrows. ‘Who might they be?’

Before he could answer three bowls crowned with golden crusts were placed on the green-tiled tabletop. ‘You know.’ Joe paused awkwardly and taking up his spoon he broke into his pie, releasing the meaty aroma, before looking at Edith, ‘You.’

‘Do you mean the two of us?’ said Sarah mischievously.

As the question hung in the air between them Edith became aware of the minute beads of gravy glistening on his moustache. Sarah persisted, ‘Have you told him you meet two ladies for lunch?’

Edith noticed how full his lips were as he ran his tongue nervously around them.

Joe paused again with his spoon halfway to his mouth, looking her full in the face. He became aware of her eyes changing between green and grey as she moved her head in the dim light of the pie shop. Suddenly he felt uncomfortable, ‘I’ve got to get on,’ he said evasively through a mouthful of hot pie. ‘Must get back soon but,’ he swallowed, ‘have you two ever been down to the river?’

They glanced at each other and shook their heads.

‘Have you not? Well I could walk you there after the market today.’

‘That would be nice but we’d have to take a later bus and Mam would be worried,’ said Sarah.

‘We could tell her we’re getting a later bus next week,’ suggested Edith.

‘I suppose we could. I’d like a walk along the river.’

‘It’s settled then. I’ll see you next week anyway and after the market I’ll help Pa take the cart to the lodgings, then I’ll meet you both at the bus stand.’

Chapter Two

Coedmawr, 1900

Ruth Hughes looked at her girls standing together in the parlour doorway as she straightened up from polishing the table. ‘And why do you want to come back on a later bus?’

They told her about the gentleman who had offered to walk them along the river after the market but then they had to tell her how they’d been sharing a table with him in the pie shop every Monday for the past two weeks.

‘Sharing a table, is it?’ she gave each a searching look in turn. ‘And both of you he wants to walk by the river?’

The girls kept silent.

‘Or just one of you. Which is it I wonder?’ then after a pause, ‘What’s his name?’

‘Joe,’ answered Edith. She felt her ears going hot under her hair and she knew her cheeks were scarlet.

‘I’ll talk to Dad when he comes home from work.’ Then as an afterthought Ruth said, ‘Best be when he’s had his dinner.’

That evening Emlyn lit his pipe from the fire with a spill then sat back in his armchair looking at the two girls. ‘What kind of a gentleman is he?’ he asked pointing his pipe stem at Sarah to target his question.

‘He’s very respectable, Dad. Good manners.’

Emlyn paused his pipe half way to his mouth, ‘I mean what is he, a clerk? Does he work in a shop? Not down the pit I hope?’

‘He sells shoes in town, Dad,’ said Edith.

‘Shoes!’ Emlyn shot a glance at Ruth.

‘Yes. In the market.’

‘In Manchester Square?’

‘Yes.’ Sarah was nervous, ‘Well, it’s clogs actually.’

‘Clogs!’ He’s not that old man with the cart, is he?’

‘No,’ there was a pause before she added, ‘That’s his father.’

‘His father!’ Emlyn sat up, his pipe forgotten.

Edith explained, ‘He helps his father in the market every Monday but I think he’s a carpenter really.’

‘They’re from Manchester,’ volunteered Sarah.

Emlyn turned to Ruth, ‘I’ve seen that clog man in the market. He’s a rum-looking Johnny, foreign if you ask me, like a lot of them from that Manchester place.’

‘Well, Joe is not,’ Edith snapped.

Ruth stood up, ‘I think we’d better have a look at this young man. Ask him to come up for tea next Monday, then we will decide about walking by the river.’

The next Monday Joe and his father were pushing the handcart to the lodgings after the market. While Joe was doing most of the pushing Isaac was holding forth, as he usually did when he was irritated.

‘So! He’s going. That he’s not going to eat with me, he says.’

‘I’ve told you once, Pa: I’ve been invited to tea by two young ladies.’

Isaac raised his eyes heavenward, ‘Invited, he says.’

Joe refused to respond, pretending to have difficulty in getting the cart over the cobbles.

‘And am I not invited? Your own father?’

‘Oh so you’re speaking to me. I thought you were talking to God.’

‘Not only does he leave his father to eat alone in a strange house while he chases after women, also he blasphemes.’

‘Look, Pa, I’m just going out for a short time. I’ll be back for supper.’

Isaac shrugged dismissively and sulked until they reached the yard of the lodgings. ‘What kind of girl is she?’

‘I told you, Pa. There are two of them. They’re sisters that I meet in the pie shop on Mondays.’

‘So they are two sisters but one of them is the one you would like to walk with most. Yes?’

‘Well – yes.’

‘And are you going to meet her family?’

Joe nodded.

‘A goyishe family?’

‘They’re gentiles, yes. So?’

‘A Manchester girl not good enough for you, eh?’

‘It’s not like that, Pa.’

‘What was wrong with Trudy Marks?’

‘With Trudy Marks everything was wrong, Pa, but it’s nothing to do with you anyway.’

Leaving his father to store the cart in the stables behind the lodgings, Joe made his way to the high street, and after calling at the barbershop for a shave and a trim for his moustache he met the girls and they all took the bus up to Coedmawr.

Wrexham, June 1957

Esther flicks more ash into her saucer. ‘So Joe and Edith soon started walking out together without Sarah. By the end of that December they were married, renting a cottage at the bottom of the village where Joe set himself up as a carpenter using the front room as his workshop.’

‘What about his father Isaac?’

‘He died the following summer. After that Joe turned his back on Manchester.’

Esther twists in her chair feeling restless, constrained almost. She looks out through the glass partition that subdues the hubbub rising from the floor of the market hall below. Broad beams of mid-morning sun strike down through the glass roof from a clear June sky. ‘What time do the bloody pubs open; I can’t stand any more of this tea.’

Nicholas feels a little irritated. He senses an attempt to change the substance of the conversation. ‘It’s another hour or so yet,’ he snaps.

‘I still haven’t got used to the opening times in this country.’

He leans over the table, determined to maintain the thrust of his investigation. ‘When was my mother born?’

At the sharp edge to his voice Esther turns her head and looks him up and down. ‘It was in the November of that year, 1901. I was born two years later and four years after that Dad went out to Canada using some of his share of his inheritance. They wanted people to emigrate, especially carpenters. Work was scarce with some pits closed and prospects in the village were poor, so were the living conditions. I was only four but I can remember some children going barefoot except on Sundays. Mind you, it was never that bad for us. When he’d made enough money he would send for us, he said. We would have a new life. It was going to be wonderful.’

‘And was it?’

‘Two years later he came back without a brass farthing. Mam had pinched and scraped so that there was still some of the inheritance left but in early 1914 he used it to go off again, would you believe, like some kind of Gulliver on his travels.’ She is surprised at how bitter she still feels about it. ‘To South Africa he went. It upset me, I can tell you. Even though it must be over forty years ago. . .