Tall Chimneys: A British Family Saga Spanning 100 Years

by Allie Cresswell

  Then, one morning, I woke up properly. A bright, white light like a knife blade pierced the gloom of the room through a chink in the heavy curtains. My body felt weak, but well. From across the passageway I could hear Awan crying. Instinct as strong and irrepressible as the tide overwhelmed me, and I had pushed the covers back and crossed the floor before rational thought caught up with the compulsion.

  John was really unwell. His exertions for Ratton in the snow had brought back his chest infection and the doctor had sent him to bed. Rose, Kenneth and their mothers had, between them, nursed us both. My friends Patricia and Ann had managed things for our recalcitrant guests, bringing food from their homes and taking away laundry, but Ratton’s stay did not last more than a couple of days. John’s illness lingered far after my brief incapacity had ended and I was up and about.

  By the spring of 1937 John was well enough to get up, but the appalling weather made it impossible for him to get the fresh air he so desperately needed. He had lost more weight and his hair, which had always been lustrous and thick, began to thin at his temples. Once or twice I asked Kenneth to drive him up to the gatehouse to work on the canvas he had begun on the morning of Awan’s birth. But often he tired before much time had elapsed, and Kenneth gave me to understand that when he went into the gatehouse to collect him he would find John sitting by the fire, staring into the flames. He had a persistent cough which never really left him fully and there were times, in that wet spring and late-coming summer we had that year, when it seemed no amount of jerseys and coverings could keep him warm. He made hundreds of pencil sketches of Awan, though, capturing her sleeping and waking, making studies of the creases in her wrist, the feathering of downy hair on her head, the curl of her tiny toes. I have them here, yellowed with age, but still exuding love and tenderness. It occurs to me perhaps he was trying to capture in his memory something he somehow knew he would not be able to see indefinitely with his eyes. How he lived with this foreknowledge I do not know. I had no suspicion of it, living blithely, day-to-day, all unsuspecting of what was to come.

  I recovered well from the birth, after that small bout of feverishness. The doctor pronounced me fit in February and I resumed my work in and around the house. Apart from one solitary visit from Colin and some gentlemen we were left alone at Tall Chimneys. It was a good thing, really, as the house was hardly fit for guests. In spite of the allowance for fuel which we received from Colin, and the diligent efforts of Rose, Kenneth and myself, we had a hard time of it keeping the house in good repair. We had rainfall double what we would normally experience and dampness took easy hold unless we heated and ventilated the rooms. It was almost impossible to admit fresh air without letting in squalls of rain too, and mould bloomed on the cornices and all the linens took on a musty, unpleasant smell. Our gutters sagged and then broke under the weight of water that came down. Kenneth risked life and limb to repair them. It seemed the slightest storm could dislodge tiles from the roof and we had a number of severe thunderstorms in February, March and April.[11] Temperatures remained bitter; Kenneth struggled to get vegetable seeds to germinate, the raised beds were soggy, the vegetables which had over-wintered rotted in the ground. To add injury to insult a fox got into our hen house and decimated our flock.

  It was a struggle, but none of it mattered to me. In my naïve understanding, John and Awan and I floated in a little bubble of happiness which the awful weather, the challenges of John’s illness and the decrepitude of Tall Chimneys could not puncture. I stopped thinking about the outside world, about what other women were achieving, about how life was progressing, leaving me behind. It had all become irrelevant. John and I were both utterly and absolutely in love with the baby, whose sunny nature and goodness made her a daily delight. She looked like an angel, with all the blonde, cherubic looks of her father. Nobody, not the best intentioned or most diplomatic person, could have mistaken her for John’s child, but she adored him from the first, and when the truth was cruelly and precipitately thrust upon her, she continued to love him and to think of him as her daddy.

  1937 drifted by and we celebrated Awan’s first birthday on Boxing Day, an overcast day without the sparkle and beauty of its predecessor but without its drama and trauma also. Rose and Kenneth - by then engaged, Mrs Greene clearly having gained her object - joined us along with their mothers and little Bobby. We made merry around the kitchen table and Awan’s eyes almost popped out of her little face at the second tranche of gifts she had been presented with in as many days. I looked around the table and my eye fell upon John at its head; still too thin, still too pale, as he leaned forward to help Awan blow out the candle on her cake. Something in the way the candlelight illuminated him from beneath his chin exaggerated the thinness of his face, his sunken cheeks, the dark hollows around his eyes, and then I had a sudden sense - terrible but fleeting - that he was slipping away from me into some shadow where I would not be able to follow.

  The weather for the first part of spring 1938 was exceptionally dry and warm, and John’s cough seemed less troublesome, but we had awful rain in May and it came back again, stronger than ever. The doctor sent him to Leeds for a chest X ray and the results were worrying; a tubercle in the left lung.

  ‘He needs hot, dry weather,’ the doctor pronounced. ‘God knows, Europe is a dangerous enough place at the moment but staying in Yorkshire is a death sentence.’

  I gasped, and cried out. John frowned. It dawned on me that this was not news to him; but that he had rather it had been kept from me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the doctor said. ‘But there it is.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘The dry weather will help a scab form over the lesion,’ the doctor explained. ‘With luck, it will hold fast far into the future. Unfortunately many artists fall foul of this disease: Keats, Shelley, Kafka, Chopin. It’s the bohemian lifestyle, poverty, living in close proximity in sub-standard conditions…’

  ‘I did all of those things in Paris,’ John said.

  We spoke little in the car on the way home. Awan wasn’t with us; Rose was looking after her.

  ‘You’ll have to go to France,’ I said at last, the suggestion tearing itself out of me, bringing to the surface all kinds of rabid jealousies and ancient suspicions. ‘You know people there,’ I added, bitterly. ‘You have people who will put you up, look after you.’

  John glanced across at me. ‘You don’t know what you’re condemning me to,’ he muttered.

  ‘No,’ I retorted, ‘I don’t. You have never told me anything about your life over there, about your….’ I choked on the word ‘wife,’ it wouldn’t come past my throat for the sobs which were caught there.

  John voiced it for me. ‘My wife?’

  I nodded, dumbly.

  John sighed and pulled the car over on to the verge. It was at a particularly beautiful spot, elevated, over-looking the undulations of the neat countryside which rose up to meet the wilder, hardier line of the moors. Nestled beneath us, in a fold where a bright flash denoted the slow-flowing river, our local town looked safe and bucolic; the grey rise of the church spire, the squat square of the brewery in the elbow of the river, the arrow of the railway line piercing the age with a stab of modernity. We both climbed out of the car and stood near the hedgerow to survey the scene.

  John lit a cigarette, coughing through the smoke as he always did. ‘What do you imagine, about her?’ he asked me.

  His question surprised me. ‘Oh! That she’s beautiful, of course, sophisticated and worldly in a way that I will never be. Rather sultry and alluring, knowing in the ways of the world and proficient in the bedroom…’ my description faltered to a halt as I noticed John’s shoulders shaking. I thought for a moment he was coughing, but he was laughing.

  ‘Oh, Evelyn,’ he gasped at last, ‘you are a prize ninny.’ He put his arm round my shoulder and pulled me to him. ‘She is old,’ he whispered, ‘bloated and lazy. She was thirty years older than me when I married her, and that’s sixteen years ago, more o
r less. And she’s virtually bed-ridden. She can hardly get out of bed, let alone turn a trick in one.’

  I turned to look at him. ‘Why did you marry her?’

  He shrugged. ‘She hasn’t always been incapacitated. When I met her she was reasonably healthy if a little overweight. She was recently widowed, and rich - independent - without ties or obligations; she had no children. I was on my beam ends. No one was buying my pictures and I was overdue with the rent on my rooms. I was surviving on goodwill from a couple of café owners in Montmartre and what I could earn drawing portraits for passers-by on the Champs Elysée. She sat for me and I drew her likeness. Let’s say I erred on the side of flattery. She was impressed. She invited me to her villa in St Germaine. You can imagine the rest, I suppose.’

  I watched a bank of dark cloud advance towards us, throwing its shadow across the moor, and then over the town. ‘It’s going to rain,’ I said, walking back to the car. John followed me, throwing the butt of his cigarette into the hedge before closing the car door. But he didn’t start the engine. ‘At the time,’ he said, presently, ‘it seemed like a life-line. She had money and she was prepared to support me while I painted. She was well-connected and she got me some commissions. But soon I realised it was a death sentence. She wanted to own me, to parade me in front of her cronies like a prize bull. She controlled the purse strings very tightly. I’d thought we’d be able to rub along like two reasonable adults. I’d even imagined that affection might grow, in time. But soon I began to hate her. I found her disgusting - not because she was fat (which she was) but because she was such a bitter, rancorous person; selfish and scheming, missing no opportunity to do anyone a bad turn. She was tolerated in society, because of her wealth, but nobody liked her.’

  ‘You were trapped?’

  ‘I was. Until we met your brother and his wife. George and Rita were doing the tour and we were introduced to them in Paris. George liked my work. More importantly, Rita liked it - she would be paying for it, after all. It was arranged we would all travel to London to meet other members of their artistic circle - the Bloomsbury group; Monique liked that idea a great deal - she had a yen to try something salacious and disreputable. Rita wanted me to work on a series of canvases for them. But at the last minute, Monique fell ill and couldn’t go. She wanted me to cancel the trip, but I didn’t. I caught the boat train with George and Rita, and soon afterwards came up here and met you.’

  ‘I’ll remember that night as long as I live,’ I put in, ‘you rescued me on the north landing.’

  ‘You rescued me,’ he replied, taking my hand.

  We sat for a moment. I took in what he had said. His wife had never been any kind of threat to me, she was not my rival. She might have been the first, but I would be the last.

  ‘You’re my only wife,’ John said, as though he had been party to my thoughts. ‘And I have told her as much.’

  I gasped. ‘You’ve seen her?’

  ‘Yes, of course. When I go to Paris, I have to visit her, to stay with her. There are appearances to keep up. I owe her that much, at least.’

  ‘And she accepts me?’

  John shrugged. ‘She has no choice.’

  ‘And…’ I struggled with my next question, ‘...if you go to her, now, she’ll look after you? She’ll take you back?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ John sighed, his voice doom-laden, ‘with open arms. She has a place in Provence, the perfect place for me, where the weather is warm and dry, and the scenery is good to paint.’ He turned to face me. ‘You’d like it there, Evelyn. Why don’t you come?’

  I was aghast. ‘To Monique’s house?’

  He shook his head impatiently. ‘No, of course not. But somewhere in the region. Or somewhere else? Italy? Spain? There’s no earthly reason why we couldn’t all go.’

  ‘There is,’ I said, snatching my hand away. ‘There’s Tall Chimneys and our life here.’ I could almost feel the pull of it as I sat there, like a magnet of pride and need and refuge and honour. In contrast the world felt cold and inhospitable and a place of rejection. ‘And I don’t want to have to sneak and hide,’ I went on. ‘Awan would be in an impossible position. She’d be labelled a…’ I couldn’t say the word. ‘Those are Catholic countries, aren’t they? It would be even worse than it is here.’

  John sighed. ‘You and that house,’ he said, ‘what is its hold on you?’

  ‘It’s my home,’ I said, in a small voice. ‘And it isn’t just the house; it’s us and our… predicament.’

  John nodded. ‘I know, I know.’ He reached for my hand again, and clasped it between both of his. ‘Provence it is then,’ he said, with a brave, resigned smile. ‘No doubt we’ll go there until...’

  ‘Until what?’ My voice was scarcely a whisper.

  He plastered a wider smile across his features. ‘Until I’m better,’ he said, with forced brightness, starting up the car and putting it in gear, ‘or until the war,’ he added, over the roar of the engine. ‘Either way, I’ll come home.’

  He left us soon afterwards, travelling light, as though for a short trip. The night before we made love ferociously, as though we were both famished for love. I took him into myself as deeply as I knew how, as though I might retain him; absorb him utterly into myself, leaving nothing remaining for Monique. John mistook my desire for him as pure lust; he brought me to climax again and again, with his mouth and his hands, his fingers deep inside me, finding a place which Awan’s birth seemed to have made more sensitive than ever before. My last orgasm drenched us both and we lay, panting and satiated in the damp, tangled sheets.

  The following day he flew to Paris and then on, as I soon heard, to Marseilles. Awan cried for three days, endlessly touring the rooms and calling for him down the empty corridors. I cried too, at night, and breathed in the scent of our lovemaking on the bedding, and wondered what sophisticated niceties of punishment the spurned Monique would inflict upon him. But soon Awan and I both took up the reins of our ordinary lives, she playing with her dolls and toys, running on the lawns and ‘helping’ Rose and Kenneth as they converted the old estate office and the rooms above it which were to be their married home.

  Of course we knew that war was coming; it encroached across our lives throughout 1938 and into 1939 like a malevolent cloud which blocks the sun. We had newspapers and we listened to the news broadcasts on the wireless. Periodically Colin came to Tall Chimneys with a party of grey, grim-faced political and military cronies. The men’s talk was always of appeasement and peace, but their actions were of rearmament and general preparedness. The size of the RAF, Army and Navy were discreetly increased; we lost many a local village lad to one or other of these organisations. An airbase was established across the moor from us and we frequently saw the ‘planes practising manoeuvres across the dome of our sky. Those not young or fit enough to enlist were encouraged to form local militias. Rose’s father, an ex-sergeant, exercised a gaggle of ancient worthies and loose-limbed youths on the village green, under the bristling eyebrow of retired Colonel Beverage who had moved into the old Rectory.

  Kenneth played no part in these proceedings. There was no question of him being conscripted - he was nearing the upper age limit of 41 and his marriage would put him further down the list in any case. But the emotional trauma he had suffered in the first war would probably have rendered him medically unfit even if he had not been in a reserved occupation, which, thankfully, he was. He clammed up whenever war was discussed. I wondered if, at heart, he had become a pacifist, ideologically opposed to war. I asked Rose what he had told her of his time in the trenches, but she was unable to enlighten me.

  ‘He never discusses it,’ she said.

  ‘He never discusses anything!’ I said, lightly, ‘not exactly a great conversationalist is he?’

  ‘He says plenty, but not with his voice,’ she said. ‘You don’t know him well enough, or perhaps you’re not looking.’ Then she gave me a narrow look, and said something odd which I didn’t understand. ‘Perhaps that’s
as well, for me and Bobby.’

  Mills and factories which had been empty were suddenly busy, rattling with machinery, producing mysterious components and millions of yards of brown serge. Ratton was with us often, orchestrating the purchase and repair of these facilities. It became clear before too long, his business dealings had amply paid off. He got fatter and greasier with every new acquisition, also more smug and insufferable. Ratton’s wealth seemed to increase with his figure; he no longer needed a car to fetch him from the station, he had two or three of his own, different models, and a driver. He boasted to me he had flown across the English Channel on several occasions. He began to sneer at our domestic arrangements, complaining about the lack of modern bathroom facilities and the homely nature of the food we served. He was amazed to find we didn’t have a television set. He was haughty and officious, once telling me to ‘keep the brats out of sight’ when he saw Awan chasing Bobby round the parterre. I told him, coldly, Awan had more right to be at Tall Chimneys than he did, but without much conviction; I had long since given up my efforts to discredit Ratton in Colin’s eyes and I knew our tenure at the house depended on both their goodwill.

  Rose and Kenneth were married, very quietly, in a Registry Office ceremony in town. Rose looked beautiful, with a circlet of flowers on her cascading hair. Kenneth, in a new suit, had a collar so starched it had rubbed a raw line on his neck. He worried at it constantly with his finger as the moment for the ceremony approached, and, at last, threw me a look such as a drowning man might give to a rescuer who has failed to throw a rope. I smiled my encouragement and followed them into the chamber. He spoke the vows and responses well enough, quietly, but clearly, his face as flushed as his neck, his lip beaded with perspiration. Rose spoke hers through tears. Afterwards we had lunch at a hotel - a new experience for me - before the couple caught the train for their honeymoon in Scarborough. Three days later they moved into their new home, and I had neighbours for the first time in my life. Kenneth seemed different, in some way relieved or set free, when he came home from his honeymoon. He was less taciturn although he would never be garrulous. He walked with a more confident step and took up the position as the head of his household with quiet authority, kind, but firm. I assumed the release at long last - he was nearly forty, after all - of sexual tension had in some way discharged his social awkwardness. I asked Rose, discreetly, how things had gone in Scarborough. She smiled and blushed and said ‘very well.’