I poured another glass of wine while I thought about it. And then another. Then another. I guess it’s not hard for the grog to get a grip on a man.
I had the phone number of a woman in Melbourne who’d known my parents in Papua New Guinea, so I made a call. Her name was Heather Grey and she was about eighteen at the time I was born. Her father had owned the local brewery and her parents were once part of Port Moresby’s European community. We made our introductions, with Heather hardly pausing for breath before setting forth a description of Moresby’s expats, the words tumbling over each other, painting the social scene as insular, stratified and all white.
‘Managers would mix with managers and clerks with clerks,’ she said.
Heather remembered my mother as incredibly glamorous – ‘the epitome of style’ – always wearing gloves, a hat and stockings, despite what Heather called ‘the stinking tropical heat’. She was already known as Bunty, having at some point discarded her given name, Alice. Heather also remembered my parents’ house – an elegant building on a hillside. Taken to dinner there by her parents, Heather was told to wear her very best dress. Ted and Bunty, she said, were ‘the top of the social pile; everyone wanted to be in their orbit’.
I mentioned that I was researching my family’s history and confessed, ‘I don’t think my parents were as posh as they made out.’
‘Well, good on them,’ said Heather. ‘In that case they had everyone fooled.’
I made email contact with another expat, Sue Voegeli-Sefton, who wrote back describing her life growing up on a rubber plantation at Koitaki, near Port Moresby:
Your parents were frequent guests at weekend house parties, which were at their stylish height around the mid–late fifties. Life at Koitaki followed the rhythms of the Raj. Everybody changed for dinner which was never served before 9pm. My sisters and I always gathered in your parents’ room to watch Bunty change for dinner. We were in awe of her glamour as she sashayed around the room dressed in just a silk half-slip, pretty bra and pearls around her neck. I must have been about eight years old at the time and I can remember thinking she was like a movie star!
Sue’s memories of my stylish mother chimed with the photos I’d found in my father’s collection. Amid the images of indigenous warriors, bare-chested with elaborate headwear, there was a photograph of my mother being presented to Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. My father, his back to the camera, was standing rather stiffly to attention by her side. It was November 1956 and Philip was on a five-day visit to Papua New Guinea en route to the Olympic Games in Melbourne. My mother was wearing an evening gown with long white gloves. She had the Queen’s husband hooked with a smile which he eagerly returned.
Like my father, she was all possibility; a young woman going places. This is the trouble with real-life story arcs: the happiness is so rarely saved for the end.
My parents returned to Sydney in 1961, after thirteen years in Port Moresby. Searching online, I found a clipping about them in the social column of the Sydney Morning Herald of October 29, 1961:
The Papua Club, 1956: my mother hooks Prince Philip with a smile.
LOVELIEST Harbour view in Sydney is that from Ted and Bunty Glover’s sweet little gate house at Fernleigh Estate in Rose Bay. They took full advantage of it last night when they had twelve guests in to dinner in the courtyard.
By this point my father was managing director of Shipping Newspapers Ltd, a trade publisher, and my mother was on her way to joining the Sydney social scene. It was sixteen years since the end of the war and the girl who’d left school at fourteen had already met Prince Philip, wowed Port Moresby and was about to take on Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
I found myself cheering her on.
From the clippings kept by her and my father, I reconstructed the story of her social ascent. First she won a place on the committee of the Metropolitan Opera Auditions – a group which raised money to help Australian opera singers travel to the United States to audition for the Met in New York. The group was laden with Sydney’s elite, including Lady Mary Fairfax, wife of the patrician Sir Warwick Fairfax, owner of the Sydney Morning Herald. The committee staged large parties, normally at one of the Fairfax homes – either the one in the eastern suburbs, looking out to the harbour, or their country manor. A memory came back to me of trailing behind my mother as she marched down the multiple terraces of the eastern suburbs house in preparation for one of the parties. I also remember visiting the Fairfax country property, complete with a circular drive, grand steps going up to an open doorway and a butler standing in uniform. I’d never seen anything like it. I was probably seven or eight. I remember my mother excitedly telling me that the main bedroom had a button you could press and the roof would roll back so you could see the stars as you were lying in bed. Did she make this up or could it possibly be true?
The news clippings gave an overview of her progress:
Vogue Australia, 1962: She’s photographed in a fancy hat, among a group of fancy-hatted women – ‘members of a Rose Bay, Sydney, luncheon club: pretty young matrons having a pre-Christmas gathering’.
Sydney Morning Herald, Women’s Section, March 7, 1963: There’s a long article about the house my parents are building ‘on the North Shore’. My mother’s quoted: ‘In winter we’ll keep a stack of firewood in the storage room. Then it will only be a step – under cover – to get more wood for the library or the drawing-room fire.’
Sun-Herald, July 10, 1966: Mr and Mrs Edward Glover are photographed at a ‘party to aid opera auditions held in a home in Vaucluse’.
Daily Telegraph, June 13, 1969: A profile piece marks my mother’s appointment as ‘promotions officer’ with the Elizabethan Theatre Trust, handling both The Australian Opera and The Australian Ballet. ‘“I practically forced myself on them,” said an attractive, fair-headed Mrs Glover.’
Daily Mirror, June 19, 1969: A fashion spread on her taste for knits. ‘Bunty attributes the fact she can wear knits with no trace of bulge to yoga. “It’s the greatest figure controller I know. When I get home from a hard day’s work and have to give a dinner party for twenty-four or go out, just standing on my head and doing yoga breathing for a little while works wonders.”’
By 1969, when this last piece appeared in the Mirror, I would have been ten years old and I can’t say I remember walking in and seeing my mother standing on her head, but – who knows – maybe she did so in the privacy of her bedroom. Presumably she would run in at 6pm after work, thinking ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to put on the canapés, but first I’ll just get up on my head.’
While tracking my parents’ life in Australia, my research continued into the family my mother had left behind. It was ten days since I’d first made contact with Margaret, Bertha’s daughter-in-law and my conduit to my mother’s secret family. First thing in the morning, I found an email from Margaret waiting for me:
Sadly, Richard, you contacted your long-lost relative just in time. Colin died suddenly this morning. I am naturally still in a state of shock but felt that you should know. We will no longer be able to pick his brains over family members, but hopefully I will be able to fill in a lot of the blanks for you. Please do keep in touch. M.
It was just a coincidence, of course, this death that came so rapidly after I first made contact. But it felt creepy. For a second, I thought it was somehow my fault, as if I had brought the poison of my family life into theirs. It was a fleeting, superstitious notion, but one that fitted with thoughts I’d had before: the idea of my parents as a source of contagion. Once I’d managed to have my own family – when I found Debra, loved her, had children, knew it was good – I was sometimes overcome by fearful fantasies. I imagined my parents somehow reaching in and wrecking the life I’d managed to create. On the few occasions my family drove in my mother’s car, I’d have a premonition that she would crash. Debra and I would be all right but one of the children would die. Or if my father slept over, maybe on the night before Christmas, he would get up drunkenly duri
ng the hours of darkness and accidentally start a fire. The fire would kill one of the children.
My parents could hardly be blamed for these mad thoughts: they were more about me than them. Perhaps I felt I didn’t deserve the happiness that had come my way. Or that I’d had a lucky escape from my past and that somehow it would reach out and haul me back. And it’s important to say my mother never crashed her car and injured my children; my father never started a fire. People are not responsible for the monstrous images you create of them, even if they are your parents.
I wrote back to Margaret, expressing my shock and sympathy. I also, at Margaret’s urging, made contact with Molly’s daughter, Dorothy – my other maternal cousin. I’d missed meeting one cousin by putting things off and now realised what a mistake that had been.
If there was a hole at the centre of my mother’s story, it was Harold, her father. The genealogy site I was using had only the most basic information.
I tried a different site, with more of a British focus, and again typed in Harold’s name. It threw up the documents I’d seen before – the census records for 1901 and 1911 – but also something new: an identity certificate from the merchant navy. I clicked on the file. Remarkably, it featured a photograph. I was seeing my grandfather for the first time. I was mesmerised. He looked like he was about nineteen, dressed in a jacket and tie, his hair slicked back. He had the same deep-set, widely spaced eyes as my mother. The document gave his profession as steward. Also included were his discharge papers from the merchant navy. They were marked 1923, when he would have been twenty-three years old.
Suddenly, after decades of prevarication, I was seized by a need to act. What had tipped me over? My mother’s dementia? Seeing the photograph of my grandfather? Or understanding how I had already missed, by just a few years, the chance to meet my Aunt Bertha and, by a few weeks, the chance to correspond with my cousin Colin? Maybe it was all these things but, once formed, the urge was intense.
I needed to find out where I came from. And to discover what drove my mother to run from her childhood in such a dramatic way, brushing over her tracks and denying the existence of her sisters. It would require, of course, a trip to the place my mother had left nearly seventy years before.
I booked a pair of tickets to Britain with a plan to discover the truth.
The first photo I saw of my grandfather, Harold Sudall.
Chapter Fifteen
It was day three of our trip to the United Kingdom and I was cold and flustered. ‘I can’t quite remember his name,’ I said to Debra. ‘I know it’s Nick, but is he the Earl of Cloncarty or the Earl of Clancurry?’
Debra stomped her feet against the cold. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s Cloncarty. He’s the ninth earl or something.’
I checked my surroundings. There was the tower of Big Ben to one side. Westminster Abbey was behind me. And the Houses of Parliament were doing what they were meant to do, architecturally speaking: intimidating intruders. I strode towards a policeman, who was blowing on his hands to keep them warm.
‘Is this the entry to the House of Lords?’ I asked, adopting my mother’s posh accent in the hope he would let me through.
‘Are you meeting a peer, sir?’ he asked.
Did I detect a tone of slight disbelief? With enormous delight I answered, ‘Yes, actually, I am.’
My cousin Victoria – a relative on my father’s side – had organised this trip to the House of Lords. I’d known her years before: firstly, when I visited Britain as a nineteen-year-old – she was the youngest of Auntie Audrey’s daughters – then later when she spent four years in Australia working as a journalist.
I’d only recently discovered what happened to her once she’d finished her Sydney sojourn. After her return to England she’d married into the aristocracy. Yes, the aristocracy. Her husband was the Earl of Clancarty. Or to give him his full title: Nicholas Le Poer Trench, ninth Earl of Clancarty, and eighth Marquess of Heusden. He was a member of both the British and Dutch nobility. He had a seat in the House of Lords. He and Victoria had a nine-year-old daughter called Lady Rowena. Victoria herself, it emerged, was now a countess. If I were to properly address her, I’d have to say ‘m’lady’. If only I could tell my mother: she’d spent a lifetime pretending to be an aristocrat. Had she stuck it out with my father, she could have been an actual aristocrat. Or to be more precise, she would have been married to a man whose niece was married to a man who had a seat in the House of Lords.
As for myself, I couldn’t claim to be related by blood to the Earl of Clancarty, but I was certainly related by blood to his daughter, Lady Rowena. She was my third cousin, second cousin or vertical cousin once removed; I’m never sure of the terms. But we are pretty close! The important thing was that if 99.9 per cent of the British population were to die in a nuclear holocaust, I was now pretty much odds-on to become king.
Inside the Peers’ Entrance of the House of Lords there was a reception desk, behind which stood a man wearing a white bowtie and tails, with a large gold medallion around his neck.
‘Who are you here to see?’ he asked in a melodic Scottish accent.
‘The Earl of Clarcorty,’ I said.
‘The Earl of Clancarty,’ he said, smoothly correcting me, ‘is expected soon.’
He asked my name, ticking it off on his list as another attendant scanned us with a metal detector.
‘There are hooks for visitors where you can hang your things.’
Debra, still cold, seemed reluctant to give up her overcoat.
‘Will it be warm inside?’ she asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ said the Scotsman, winking, ‘there’s plenty of heating. It’s taxpayer funded, you know.’
‘Not my taxes,’ said Debra, whose Australian accent was growing broader by the moment.
‘Well,’ said the Scotsman cheerfully, ‘my taxes, then.’
We hung our coats and sat to wait. The attendants had military bearing but a twinkle in the eye, as if this were somewhere between a court of law and a Butlin’s holiday camp. At one point, an attendant passed us, leading a group of visitors. ‘Walk this way,’ he said, immediately adopting a comic gait, his arms flailing from side to side. Some lords wandered through, venerable old fellows, shuffling. A few minutes later, a youngish man with dreadlocks, decked out in an immaculate pinstripe jacket, appeared: Lord Groovy, I presume. Another minute on, we looked up to see a smiling, eager-faced man striding towards us, dressed in a suit but his hair a mess, like a nine-year-old boy pretending to be a businessman.
He reached out towards Debra, shaking her hand, then mine, exuding warmth and enthusiasm. ‘I’m Nick. It’s so good to see you.’
Moments later, Victoria arrived, also stomping her feet against the cold. She hugged us all; I remembered how fond I was of her and cursed myself for being so lazy about our relationship. She hung her coat on Nick’s hook. The lobby felt like a primary school changing room – rows of hooks, each with a peer’s name written underneath. Nick then led us through the back corridors, explaining the place as he went. In the past, all hereditary lords had the right to turn up and vote. Now, most of the members of the House were life peers – successful people nominated by the political parties for a period lasting their lifetime. In a compromise during the process of reform, ninety-two seats were allocated to the hereditary lords, with Nick elected by his fellow peers to fill one of them.
Victoria and Nick took us to the peers’ dining room for lunch. There were white tablecloths and brisk, friendly waiters. One came up to take our order, inquiring of Victoria, ‘And for you, m’lady?’, and of Nick, ‘M’lord?’ Debra and I found this all quaint and strange, and Vicky and Nick seemed amused and appreciative, rather than jaded and born to rule.
By chance, the dining room had been in the headlines just a month before: a freedom of information request had revealed the most common complaints made by peers about the Lords restaurant. One lord had complained of a fifteen-minute wait to be seated which resulted in the loss of �
�some of the finesse of the afternoon’; another said he had been left ‘scarred’ after his booking was cancelled suddenly. He complained that his wife had been ‘unable to lunch elsewhere’ because she was wearing a tiara. The lord recalled: ‘We were only saved by the kindness of [a fellow peer] who offered us the use of his nearby home.’
Nick and Victoria – both tiara-free – offered us coffee, but then, checking his watch, Nick realised we had to rush. The afternoon session was about to begin and he was keen to hear the debate about the management of Britain’s water supply. He hadn’t yet decided how to vote. For someone like me, used to Australian politics, here was something new: a parliamentarian attending a debate in the hope of learning something.
While Nick’s titles were numerous, the family’s estates were long gone. Two days later we turned up at Vicky and Nick’s home, a duplex in a town about ninety minutes by rail from London. The house was gloriously chaotic. Almost every room was lined with bookshelves which, despite their capacity, found themselves unequal to the task they’d been set. Giant teetering piles of books – art, history, literature – crowded each room, stacked beside chairs and covering every table top. A thin volume of poetry balanced atop a vase, no other place having been found for it. In the sitting room, you had to navigate your way from door to chair, stepping over books and stacks of artworks, many of them painted by Nick, propped against walls. Amid the lively mess ran Lady Rowena: eager, theatrical, smart. Nick and Victoria cheered on her various enthusiasms – her singing and her story-telling, and even her guinea pigs, any proximity to which sent Nick into an allergic meltdown.
Flesh Wounds Page 14
