I don’t see my sisters. And I don’t miss them, that’s what’s so odd. When we lived overseas I missed them like anything, but you get used to anything in the end and now they barely cross my mind. Talking about the past like this makes me think more about them than I have for years. Hypocrites, that’s what they are. I’ll give you an example. Some years ago Patricia and Greville stopped referring to the Leader as Tom and started calling him Mosley; that’s if he was mentioned at all. Back in the old days they used to love calling him Tom because it meant they were his social equals, part of his inner circle: none of the rank and file ever called him that then, it was always Sir Oswald or the Leader. But afterwards they went on as if they’d never met him, much less entertained him as a guest in their house: ‘We knew him a little, socially, yes. But we were never members. We’ve always been Conservatives, really.’ That sort of thing.
I think in their heart of hearts Nina and Eric still believed, but they kept their traps shut. Eric didn’t want his former affiliation to put the kibosh on his business aspirations. They both wanted to get on in the world and they knew it was divisive. A lot of people disapproved. Even people who’d been our friends thought we were a disgrace, because of the views we held. So much for a free country! You may have the freedom to express your views, but they’ll still damn you for them. She comes across as straightforward, but she’s a sneaky one, Nina. I’m still angry, of course. But anger takes up a lot of energy and what’s the point, now? What happened happened; there’s no undoing it now. It was a terrible thing to do to your own sister. And Patricia’s was a betrayal which struck at the very heart of me: she tried to take away my child. And she succeeded, more or less. We were never as close again as we had been when he was a little boy.
I didn’t tell them things, my sisters. They thought they knew all about me, but I always kept things back from them. They didn’t know a thing about Jamie. They didn’t know about the Leader’s birthday reunions, every year. Certainly not about Billy Prendergast. He wasn’t the last, either: there was another fellow later, but I won’t go into that now. What I’m saying is, I had secrets of my own, and I kept other people’s. People tended to tell me things; I think they thought I was a safe bet, not because they were interested in me, but because they were so interested in themselves. That’s how it is, you see. Some people consider themselves to be the stars of life, and they relegate everyone else to the shadows at the back of the dress circle.
It’s difficult, with the children. Well, I say children, but they’re all in their late middle-age now. It isn’t how I hoped it would be: I don’t see as much of them as I’d like. I think the girls felt unfairly treated because I put their brother’s education before theirs and set him up with a bit of capital. Instead of being grateful for the bit of extra help I gave them when they were starting out, they resented me when I sold the property and the income they’d had came to an end. I did what I thought was right: I stand by it. And they’re ashamed of it all, the political views we had; which I suppose means really that they’re ashamed of me. Frances in particular has never spoken one word with me about it. But then that’s Frances. In a way she’s the most like me, although she’s much more capable than I ever was; but she keeps herself to herself. She became a solicitor, so I don’t imagine it would have been good for her professional reputation if it had come out that her parents had both been jailbirds. Her husband’s a bit of a Bolshie.
Julia’s more vocal in her criticism. She came up here once a few years back and had a terrific go at me about it all, said it had ruined her life, having to live with the shame, et cetera, et cetera. She accused me of having tried to brainwash them, by taking her and Frances and Edwin to the summer camp. Of course I told her it was nothing of the kind: I hardly knew anything about it myself, at the time: it was just a way of keeping them entertained for the summer. She said it was wicked to have dressed them up in the uniforms, like dolls. There’s no reasoning with Julia. By then her second husband had left her, so I reckon she was looking for something to blame the failure of her marriage on. She’s one of those people who can’t take responsibility for their own lives, I’m afraid. She’s always looking for something to make her feel better – last time we spoke it was unpasteurized milk or some such nonsense. Faddish. I don’t like to speak ill of any of my children, but I do feel she’s rather immature. Doesn’t stick at anything. She wears these dreadful clothes, skirts made of cheesecloth, beads; well, they might look all right on a woman half her age. Edwin’s the most straightforward. Luckily his wife is very nice, so that makes things easier. I’d like to see more of them, but of course I live all the way up here and they’re southerners. Between them they’ve produced six children, but I don’t see a great deal of them either. The young aren’t interested in us old folk. Edwin’s middle one I’m especially fond of.
I generally have lunch with Antonia in November when I go down to London for the get-together. I expect she’s told you. She’s a nice girl, good sense of humour, she turned out well. Done very well for herself, too. She and Edwin are still very close, more like brother and sister, really, than cousins. Well, of course he spent so much time with her, growing up. She has him shooting, that sort of thing. She’s like her father, easy-going, but cleverer than she lets on.
I go back to the Isle of Man, to Port Erin, for a week every summer. Funny, isn’t it? You’d think I’d never want to set foot there again, but it’s a lovely place, so unspoilt. It’s like England was, before the war. One year I saw that there was a talk about the archaeological sites on the island and I thought I recognized the name of the speaker, so I went along. It was little Dr Bersu – much older now of course – who’d been interned as an enemy alien during the war. I remembered listening to a talk of his when I was first there. He and his wife had begun making a record of all the ancient sites when they were interned. With the approval of the authorities, of course. They volunteered to stay on after the war to finish the job. Actually they were lucky to’ve got someone so distinguished on the island. He’d catalogued every single antiquity and site, over time. It took me back, listening to him.
We all have our crosses to bear, our own personal sorrows. Mine is that the people who should be dearest to me, my own children, my sisters, consider me a bad woman. The grandchildren have been taught to be wary. I think I’m a disgrace, to them, really. After the war when the newsreel film was shown of what had gone on in Germany and Poland, those places, the horrors … It all got tangled up in their minds, as if we’d stood for such barbarism. I just wish they could have heard Sir Oswald speak: then they’d have known. He is an honourable man. He’d never have stood by and allowed such things to happen on British soil.
I think that was the big thing for my children.
With my sisters I can honestly say it was more that I stopped being in the same social class. After we were released from prison we were effectively social pariahs, and then to cap it all it became apparent that we hadn’t any money. Hugh’s naval pension was never restored. So of course my older sister didn’t want anything much more to do with us. The irony was that my younger sister got caught up in snobbery of her own. She thought the sun shone out of your rear end if you were what she and Eric called a business professional. An accountant or surveyor or local auctioneer: that sort of thing. Well, I wasn’t a business professional: I was the paid companion of an old lady from up north. Nina aspired to people who ran their own businesses and worked very hard to build them up, as Eric had. And of course Patricia aspired to mix with people who were so rich or landed that they didn’t work at all.
After the war ended Hugh and I were in a kind of exile, even though we were living back in Sussex. We were in exile from our family and from the class that we were born into, the world we’d known and inhabited. And then I became an exile on my own. It was easier not to live close to the family. I am an exile from my own past, my own people. They’re all ashamed of me, if they think of me at all. I am someone who is a nuisance to ha
ve to send a card to, twice a year.
That is what I have to live with, every day.
If you were to ask me who the significant people in my life had been, do you know what I’d say? It may surprise you. I’d say Jamie and Sarita, even though I only knew Sarita for such a short time, really. But my sense of guilt about her death has never left me; I still feel that I was in some measure responsible; although by now I acknowledge that there was probably nothing I could have done. And I haven’t seen Jamie since just after the war, although we do exchange cards at Christmas. He married and had a family; his wife became rather famous as a potter. Much better known than him, as a matter of fact. People collect her things. They’re a bit rustic for my taste, look like hardened porridge. Anyway, to come back to them: it doesn’t make any difference, the fact that I can’t see Sarita and I don’t see Jamie. When I think about them now from all this distance, the memory of them is like a kindly dream. A dream of a more innocent and carefree time in my life. The reason these two both matter, still, to me is that I think I can honestly say that they were the only people in my life who ever saw the good in me. Who believed I was a good person. No one else ever looked for the good in me, and so no one else ever found it. But they did.
A Note on Sources
I drew on papers held in the Special Collections at the University of Sheffield Library and the Manx National Heritage Library at the Manx Museum, Douglas. The librarians at each were unfailingly generous and helpful.
Mr Jeff Wallder answered all my questions with kindness and courtesy.
I consulted a great many books while researching this novel, but there are three in particular without which it could not have been written:
Booker, J. A., Blackshirts on Sea: A Pictorial History of the Mosley Summer Camps 1933–1938, Brockingday Publications, 1999.
Gottlieb, Julie V., Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement, I. B. Tauris, 2003.
Pugh, Martin, Hurrah for the Blackshirts!: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars, Pimlico, 2006.
THE BEGINNING
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First published 2018
Copyright © Cressida Connolly, 2018
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Extract from A Word Child by Iris Murdoch, published by Vintage Classics.
Reprinted by permission of the Random House Group Limited, copyright © 2002
Cover image © Topfoto/Ullstein Bild
ISBN: 978-0-241-32774-6
After the Party Page 26
