by Ben Graff
By the time we were going with our own children, it was different again. Not just the people, but the boats. Mike with a Sunseeker now. “A gin palace,” Martin would have said dismissively. But it spoke to his success and continuing sense of adventure – our family still on the sea.
The children had no memories of Anna or Martin, no overlap even, and few of Mary, just as I had no recollection of Martin and Anna’s parents and grandparents, or most of the others he wrote about. Yet it is possible not to overlap, not to consciously remember, but still to be a part of something that predates you and might even go on after you, and for the whole thing to feel entirely natural. Perhaps we are all so destined to seek our place, to understand it, that we might miss noticing when we are actually there. Although sometimes I worry that I simply think too much. For all of us, it was to do with the boats and the creek and summer days as vivid as each other, spread over many years.
Martin’s Journal –
Holmes & Son
Of course, I know quite a bit about my fellow residents by now. What they did and what in some cases they still do – mainly what they did. At least how they put it themselves, which may or may not be true, although in my experience by the time people reach my age they go one of two ways. Either they are so convinced by the stories that they have told that they have come to believe them, or else they are more reflective about it all. What did and did not work and what might have been different. It is all the same in the end. On occasion I think outwardly I am more in the former camp, but I want to try and get beyond that now, to tell the story of what happened and to describe some of the characters along the way.
My grandfather, Arthur, started the business, my father expanded it and I managed the decline. That would be how I would summarise the history of the thing in a single line. Beginning, middle and end, so to speak.
It all started with my grandfather, Alfred Holmes, who was born in Sussex in 1853. He was the son of a cabinetmaker, and I sometimes wonder if I inherited some of my own skill and inclination to work with wood from this great grandfather. I am not sure what else I directly inherited from my lineage. Alfred must have left school at fourteen years of age. He spoke with impeccable grammar and was a first-rate accountant, and what he lacked in formal education he made up for through guile and ability to strike a good deal. He was driven and ambitious and had a way of making things happen.
Alfred worked in menswear retailing, rapidly rising to become the manager of the menswear department in a store known as Walter Bros. of Worthing. In 1880 he married Caroline Walter (daughter of one of the two Walter brothers). He then moved to Ryde, Isle of Wight, buying a small shop and two cottages in Ryde High Street.
Alfred had very little capital but received backing from Sir Maurice Leog, chairman of a clothing manufacturing company, a vital connection, cleverly cultivated. Sir Maurice used to travel the south coast and had known Alfred well in his capacity as a menswear buyer at Walter Bros. Through him and his firm, he was able to buy stock on a continued six-month credit agreement, an arrangement that lasted from 1880 to 1939, which served as the life blood or the backbone, if you will, for all his enterprises.
This was all a time of great promise. Railways were being built in the late nineteenth century, connections were being formed, places that were once inaccessible now were much less so, and this brought large numbers of tourists to the beach. Alfred had seen a gap in the market. Stocking up with the clothes these men required proved to be a booming trade. Perhaps not the garments one would necessarily envisage today, but back then it was all about corduroys, moleskin trousers, waistcoats, thick woollen vests and casual shirts. He sold them all and his store was the place to come. This Holmes shop prospered to the extent that Alfred was able to demolish his property and build a three-storey Victorian edifice with two shops and two flats. He was on the rise and business was booming.
At Holmes & Son, the staff, in addition to father Alfred and son Arthur, comprised two senior salesmen, two apprentices, a cashier and a porter. You would not run such a place with so many staff now. In fact there are not really shops like Holmes & Son anymore. The world has moved on and progress has had its way. The big department stores like Topshop and Woolworths, the huge out of town Tesco, this is what retail is now and doubtless always will be. It is hard to think to a time beyond it, that is for sure.
Alfred was always called the Old Governor, and Arthur the Young Governor. This title stayed with him until he retired in his mid-seventies. There was a formality to things then that you do not see so much today. We all had our clearly defined places, which had its limitations but also brought some certainty and structure, a sense of belonging perhaps.
The shop was cool and dark, an array of merchandise meticulously set out, perfectly arranged and presented for the discerning customer. I remember the smell of linen and cotton and thread that seemed to hang in the air, oh so gently, much as you can sometimes smell paper when walking through a library. A world far removed from that of the street outside.
The shops had round windows and were lofty, long and narrow, lit by gas lamps – according to Stanley Coffen who worked for the firm for the first sixty-five years of the twentieth century. Not that these ever quite dispensed the gloom. The fire risks were considerable, but fortunately there was never actually a blaze on the premises.
Ryde’s fire brigade in those days, and until the early 1930s, operated a horse-drawn fire engine with a steam pump. When Ryde’s first motorised fire engine arrived, this writer was one of a crowd of small boys who followed its trail to discover if it was able to climb our steep hills! Little did I know then how acquainted I was to become with fire engines when war broke out.
But I digress, as I sometimes seem to a little more these days. The shop was open from 9am to 7pm Monday to Wednesday, and Thursday was 9am to 1pm. This early closing day started during Arthur’s apprenticeship and the shop workers could not believe their luck. Friday closing was at 9pm. Saturday, midnight! I was told that my grandfather would be standing by the door at this time. Precisely at the stroke of twelve, the porter would make his way through the shop carrying the pole with which to pull down the shutters. My grandfather would take his gold watch from his waistcoat pocket saying, “Don’t be in too much of a hurry to close, Hobbs. Give the clock a chance to cool down.”
The senior staff member when I joined the firm was Mr Morris (Percy, but Christian names were never used in business). Mr Morris had joined as a boy apprentice. Some two years later a family event was taking place in Southampton. His parents told him to ask for a day off in order to attend and were convinced that ‘nice Mr Holmes’ would consent. The following dialogue ensued.
“Please, sir, can I speak to you?”
“Yes, what is it, boy, what is it?”
“I wanted a day off, sir, because—”
“Day off, boy! Whatever are you talking about? Suppose we all wanted a day off? Have to close the shop, wouldn’t we? Go back to your work and let me hear no more about it.” And that was that.
When I was a small boy we had living next door to us a Mr Joiner: tall, dignified, bearded. Formerly one of our senior salesmen, he had had to retire early because of ill health. Every Saturday morning my father would give me a small brown envelope to deliver to Mr Joiner, who always liked me to thank my grandfather very much. As this happened every week I wondered if these thanks were really necessary. The envelope contained a £1 note. My grandfather was paying a pension, which he was under no obligation to do, out of his own pocket. There was a generosity in him that was not in keeping with his general air and demeanour; my father had that about him too, at least deep down.
The staff retirement pension at the time was ten shillings a week – half of one pound. Mr Joiner was really doing very well, evidently. This service to retired employees continued with Mr Morris and Stanley Coffen.
Percy Morris was typical of Isle of Wight characters of
those days – a strange mixture of ability, intelligence and stubborn ignorance. Perhaps the insularity came from island living; we were a breed apart in a lot of ways. I do not think many of us could have contemplated being on the mainland for any length of time, although I always felt that I had a greater degree of curiosity about things than many of those around me, albeit I would not see this as a particularly unusual thought.
Percy Morris was nationally respected as a leading breeder of canaries. Many people kept joy birds in cages at the time. The money he made from his birds he invested in houses, and he owned quite a number of small cottages in Ryde. It would be difficult to imagine anybody managing to build up a property portfolio in this way today!
Stanley Coffen served an apprenticeship with my grandfather, then worked in Brighton for several years, before returning to Holmes’ shops after service in the Isle of Wight Rifles during the 14-18 war. He was another complex character. I knew him first as a small dapper man who drove an Austin 7. Car owning by shop workers was almost unknown prior to 1939, and this was often commented on and yet never really explored. There was a tendency to leave well enough alone in relation to things that you had no business knowing the ins and outs of.
He was a competent, considerate painter, an exceptional photographer and a violin player. A bachelor, he courted his ‘young lady’ for the last forty years of his life. He had a wryly amusing attitude to life. I think to him now all these years later in part because it would be hard to imagine anyone quite like him today, certainly not with his experiences and history.
During his service with the Isle of Wight Rifles he showed a tremendous aptitude for rifle shooting. He served in the Middle East: and recalled an occasion when his unit had some Turkish troops pinned down in a trench. There he was, sheltered behind some rocks, rifle trained should any of the enemy show themselves above the parapet.
The Turks were short of water, and eventually one appeared carrying a bucket, trying to reach a nearby well. Private Coffen, for his own satisfaction and amusement, put a hole through the bucket, causing its owner to dive headfirst back into the trench. He was able to repeat this performance several hours later, with the same effect. To my query as to whether he should have shot the man rather than the bucket, he looked quite horrified. “But I might have killed the poor chap!”
His only experience of a full-on battle was to be a disappointment to him; although, as I think to the above, perhaps it was also something of a relief, even if he would never have said as much. His platoon commander led his men into action, pipe in mouth, walking stick in hand, in the nonchalant British way, so at last Private Coffen was about to use his rifle in earnest. However, before he could fire a shot in anger his right leg was shattered by an enemy bullet, and his fighting days were over. He could never forget that all his skill with a rifle had been for no purpose, other than to put holes in a couple of buckets! He was forced to draw a disability pension.
From time to time he would visit the Ryde shop to dress windows. On one such occasion, in my early days, he did a display with tweed overcoats amid bales of hay and tree branches. My father commented, “Nice window, Coffen; you’ve done a good job there.”
Stanley displaying his peculiar sense of humour replied, “Thank you, sir; next week I thought we could have a plague of locusts!”
The few mourners at his funeral included the disconsolate ‘young lady’ he had courted for forty years to no avail. Sadly, she was still firmly tied to the apron strings of her elderly, domineering, widowed mother.
When Stan Coffen died, I felt it somehow ended our link with the nineteenth century. Certainly as the years moved on Holmes & Son became less profitable and our problems seemed to mount. Many businesses struggle to move with the times, to do things other than in the way that they have always done them, and this in part was our undoing. What people wanted from a menswear shop changed faster than we did. My father to some extent lost his touch, and for me it was always a case of trying to manage and defend against a myriad of near insurmountable problems. But these things do ultimately pass, and I can just think now to the shop at midnight, with the clock not yet cool and Stanley Coffen and all the others from that time who are now gone.
Helen
To what extent can you have a relationship with someone who dies before you are born? Whom two people speak of for the rest of their lives as if she was still present but your father never mentions, ever? The stomach ulcers that developed soon after her death made him violently sick on and off for many years, always at night, until a new drug fixed the problem instantly and completely, not long before he died. I would listen to him throwing up from my bedroom, which was next to the bathroom, a sound I have never heard anywhere else – raging, guttural, going on and on beyond what you might think would be possible. Mum often comforting him, rubbing his back, saying soothing words. Did he think to Helen in these moments? As with so many things, Helen was something in him that he could not share and I did not know.
Helen had been seventeen. A little more than two years older than Annabelle is now. A child just starting out on things; then the routine appendix operation that does not go quite right, although still is not a cause of immediate concern. The time in hospital in which she contracts MRSA, which to begin with is just something else that needs to be fixed, but she struggles over a week, two weeks, until suddenly the situation has become something else. No longer about antibiotics and science, luck is needed now and it simply is not there. In those last few days, hope is replaced with a grim realisation of what might be coming, and then it is over.
The funeral will be the next day, as Jewish funerals are. Dave and Colin will go, but Theresa will not. At that time Jewish women did not attend, and she did not witness her daughter being moved from bed to box and into the ground all within the space of a few hours.
Helen had been training to be a legal secretary. She had certificates and hopes and dreams of which I cannot know. Her photograph is on our mantelpiece, but I would guess few others. Too many years have passed, too many of those who might remember, would want to remember, have now gone. Even though I did not know her, our lives did not overlap, I want her to be remembered as part of this story. For herself as well as for those who knew and loved her – it always saddened me that my father could not talk about Helen.
I wondered if there might have come a point when he would, in those last few months, as time grew short. But what right did I have to ask? I regret not doing so now, but if I could go back I know it wouldn’t be any different; asking was not the right thing to do.
Whether I could take my own advice in the end I do not know, might never know. But when you are dying, denial only takes you so far. Better to see what is coming as your final project. To have the conversations, to tell the stories, to put things in context; a last chance to frame everything for those around you. Unless of course you do think to all this, but what you are holding is so secret, so personal that it, belongs only to you. I think all of this was the case with Dad and that this was how he saw things. Also, more simply, that it made him sad. A life spent trying to outrun the deaths of Helen when he was young and Mum when he was middle-aged. When you know what death is and what it does, perhaps it is possible to see why you might choose not to dwell on your own. I cannot know; perhaps this is too simplistic: the opposite could also be true. The pain that he had known could have been the reason for his guardedness. A desire to protect others from what he had come to live with, also a wariness of getting too close to others who might then let him down by dying and inflicting still more pain on him. Instead of choosing not to dwell on his death, perhaps he thought to little else, just quietly and privately, much as he had lived.
I sometimes wondered if things might have been different with Theresa and Dave, had Helen still been alive when Dad married out of the faith. Would they have accepted us in the same way? I think yes, but who can know anything for sure? Having children of my own ga
ve me new insight into their loss, but not his. Not really.
No one ever mentioned when we were younger that my father was Jewish. I found his skullcap in a bedside drawer once and he was irate. I had inadvertently uncovered yet another part of him that for whatever reason he did not want to talk about. I do not know if my parents agreed it should be a secret, if it was simply because she was religious and he was not.
As we got older it was acknowledged more, if still not explicitly mentioned as such. Impossible to avoid when we started going to Jewish funerals, and a pretence developed that we had always known about it, even though we had not. He regularly went to synagogue in the years before Helen died, but then he stopped. He did not attend any place of worship again outside of other funerals until after my mother’s death, when he would go to services at St Wulston’s and light candles and tend her grave and give the parish over-large donations.
Theresa and Dave would go to their daughter’s grave every year, ‘to visit Helen’. A day trip with flask and sandwiches, a car journey filled with ‘do you remembers’ and hopefully laughter. An adventure – the closest they could get to her physically now. The joy of her still in them, along with the sadness; both blissful and excruciating, I would guess.
Theresa would talk about what Helen would have liked or thought, lightly, with complete naturalness. I should have listened better. I have only an impression, nothing more. Toward the end of her own life, Theresa said it was a dilemma: to be with her or to be with all of us. “Helen has been calling me for a long time,” she would say with a smile, serene in the thought that her daughter was waiting for her.
