Nana never knew her father. She was deeply ashamed of him.
He had been to fight in the war. He came back home broken. An alcoholic. Unable to get a job, or to keep it if he did. He left when Nana was still small. Nana always referred to her Mam as “Mother”. She tried to avoid referring to her father at all, but when she had to, he was never “Father”, he was always “That Man”. I only know his name because I found my Great-grandparents’ marriage certificate - it was Thomas Foster.
Nana had shown me postcards that her Mother and Father had written to each other during the war. Some were field service postcards (the delete as appropriate kind) some were plain blank white card postcards, of the kind you can still get today, with 'Post Office' printed at the top others were souvenir picture postcards and others still were beautiful - silk, embroidered with flowers, usually roses and forget me knots. Every bit of blank space, on all but the field service cards, was filled. The writing frequently went up the sides when there was no more room the right way up, and onto the front, around the address, if it was plain. Sarah and Thomas were obviously very deeply in love. I tried to talk to Nana once about how the war might have caused her Father to do the things he did, but she was still (after 60+ years) too hurt by him. I think she blamed him for what happened to them. She said 'That Man isn't my Father', and that was an end to it.
When my Great-grandfather left, he took a large amount of Great-grandmother’s (Sarah’s) money with him. He was still of the opinion that as Sarah and he were married, her wealth was his wealth, (despite the truth, that it was hers and hers alone).
Sarah had enough money in investments that Thomas couldn’t get at, that she, Trudy and Ronnie weren’t left in straitened circumstances. Sarah didn’t need to work, but as a gifted painter, she did illustrate some children’s books. One of Nana’s albums contained a painting of St George that Sarah did during this time. It was stunning - all swirly and romantic.
Nana used to tell me about the days when she was a little girl. She told me about long days spent at the beach in the summer, and having to wear a knitted bathing suit. There were photos in her giant stack of albums, of her aged about 7 or 8, in her knitted swimsuit, building sandcastles and eating ice cream, with a giant floppy sun hat, over her short bobbed hair. Nana was a true child of the 20s – she never had long hair in her life.
She would tell me about their house – not palatial, but enough for the three of them, with a maid to help out. It was on the edge of town, where the streets started petering out into farmland. And she’d tell me of their milk deliveries – by cow. The farmer would walk a cow around town, and you went to him with a pail or milk urn, and he’d milk the cow straight into the pail for you. Of course, Nana convinced him to teach her to milk the cow.
Sarah started telling people Thomas was dead. As Nana said one of the few times she talked about it, so many husbands and fathers hadn’t come home from the war, or had then been lost to Influenza, nobody ever questioned it.
She would tell me about going to school (fee paying) in the South Bay, where her history teacher would stop them talking by throwing the blackboard rubber at their heads, without looking, and would regularly hit them square on.
She had to cross the headland to get back home to North Bay, where the family house was.
Nana and her friends would play around the gravestones in St Mary’s Churchyard, (where Anne Bronte is buried), and be chased away by the justifiably furious vicar.
(If you’ve ever been to Scarborough Castle, St Mary’s is the church on the left, just on the way up to the castle gate.)
Sometimes when Nana was walking home, she and Ronnie would meet their mother at the Victoria Hotel, which was owned and run by one of Sarah’s friends and her husband, and they’d have tea there.
One day while Nana and I were watching old movies together, which we did a lot, ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ came on. The old one starring Clark Gable, and I was decrying how horrible Captain Bligh was. Nana matter of factly said’ oh yes, but he was lovely in real life you know – afternoon teas were always more fun when he was visiting his Mother and Father’. My mouth fell open. The lady Nana had always referred to as ‘Mother’s friend’, who owned the hotel where they used to have tea, was the mother of Charles Laughton. The Oscar winning Hollywood and stage actor, and director of the 50s classic ‘The Night of the Hunter’.
Nana took dancing lessons as a girl, and piano lessons, and French lessons, which Sarah insisted she took, but she was terrible at. And embroidery lessons. Sarah said all nice girls were expert embroideresses.
She had an idyllic childhood.
Till she was 9.
