Whatever Remains

by Penny F. Graham

  The facts as I saw them now were:

  Denis was not using the name he was born with.

  All, or most, information on his post-war passports was false.

  The stories of his childhood may have been true, but place names and people’s names were not.

  So it was back to work.

  In 1984, we had checked thoroughly for any possible or probable record of the family he said was his. Since then, we had found no clues, not the slightest whisper of a family that could, even with a little stretching of the facts, be ours. We found nothing.

  We obviously needed a new approach.

  It was time to look more closely at the photocopied documents that my brother Tony had found in Denis’s desk. Lindsay and I looked again at the contract between Denis and Dunlop Plantations Limited. The surname he used, and signed, was Elliott. Both first names were as per his current passport and driving licence. Elliott was the second part of the double-barrelled name he now used and we had, of course, checked this name exhaustively on the Births Register.

  We now looked at the other names on the contract a little more closely. Denis has listed his address as c/o Mrs Helen Dibble, Cyril St. West, Taunton. The witness to Denis’s signature on the contract was F. W. Dibble at the same address. The two guarantors were Horace Emerson and Ernest Reginald Redding. Emerson was the first part of Denis’s current surname but Ernest Reginald Redding was a name that meant nothing to us.

  We had been told Denis’s sister had married a Frederick Dyble, the Solicitor General of Northern Ireland. We knew there was no Solicitor General called Dyble. So it was not unreasonable to assume that maybe Mrs Helen Dibble was Denis’s sister and F. W. Dibble was her husband, Denis’s brother-in-law. And we had an address, even if it was nearly 60 years old.

  We wrote to David. David of the shy smile, red hair and myopic eyes whom I had met at the Local History Library in Taunton on that abortive trip to Milverton so many years ago. Miracle upon miracle, he was still there and he remembered me and my amazing story. We filled him in on the search so far and asked if he could help.

  By checking Kelly’s Directory of Taunton, David found a Frederick William Dibble living at 82 Cyril Street West from 1928 to 1957. The entries then stopped. Presumably he had died or moved on. David suggested we check at St Catherine’s House for a death certificate for him. If we could pinpoint Dibble’s death, he could then check for an obituary in the local papers. An obituary, we reckoned, should be a gold mine of information should we be lucky enough to find one.

  We wrote to the British Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (the Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages) asking them to do a search for us and send a full copy of Frederick Dibble’s death certificate if they found one.

  When the reply came, it was with nervous fingers that I opened the slim fawn envelope. And there it was — a certified copy of Frederick William Dibble’s death certificate. He had died of a heart attack on 24 July 1958. He was Chief Clerk, Locomotive Section, British Railways, and he was 58 years old. Curiously, the Informant shown on the certificate was R. J. Aston, not Dibble’s wife.

  In a severe drought, the earth will dry and crack. In the whole 10 years or more of searching for my father’s roots, we had experienced a total drought of information. Suddenly the landscape of my search was about to change. Soon a deluge of information would descend and our personal drought would be over.

  We prepared a letter asking if the present householders in Cyril Street West had known the family at number 82 who lived there so many years ago. We sent the letters to the 10 house numbers on either side of 82, but they did not elicit a single reply!

  Undeterred, we wrote to David to tell him about the death certificate and asked if he would look in the local papers around 24 July 1958 to check for an obituary for Frederick Dibble. There was, and David found it and sent us a photocopy. Bless him; a major breakthrough at last. He had found the obituary in the Somerset County Gazette dated 2 August 1958. I have it on the desk next to me as I write — it is large, two columns wide and its contents opened the flood gates of information.

  RAILWAYMEN MOURN POPULAR COLLEAGUE — Funeral of Mr. F. W. Dibble

  The obituary paints a picture, albeit in black and white and in very formal English, of a well-liked and respected family man. It tells of the tragic circumstances of his death from a sudden heart attack and fatal collapse at the Taunton Railway Station.

  A summation of Frederick’s life is spread before me on a sheet of A4 copy paper. The ink of the photocopy is starting to blur and fade. It is such a small and insignificant piece of paper to tell of such a momentous and tragic event. A man collapses and dies on the platform of the train station where he has been Chief Clerk for the last 10 years. He had been waiting for the train that would bring his wife home from London. Did he see the train approaching the station as he lay dying on the platform?

  Fred sounds like a decent man, a good husband and a good father. He was apparently well liked by his colleagues, a sportsman in his youth and a pillar of the community in his middle years. And yes, his wife’s name was Helen and I now believed that she was my father’s sister, my aunt.

  In the list of Family Mourners in the Obituary, there were plenty of names that I recognised. Many of the names listed as principal mourners were Dibbles, including Alan Dibble, his son. There is also a Mrs E. Reading shown as ‘sister-in-law’. Redding was, of course, one of the names on the Dunlop Plantations contract — Mr E. R. Redding was one of the two Guarantors. Was E. R. Redding the husband of Mrs E. Reading? And if Mrs E. Reading is Fred’s sister-in-law, is she Helen’s and Denis’s sister, my aunt?

  Representing Mrs Emerson and children at the funeral was a Mr J. Emerson, who is also listed as a brother-in-law. Horace Emerson was one of the Guarantors listed in the Dunlop contract — could Horace be a brother of Mr J. Emerson? If he was, then Mr Horace Emerson and Mr J. Emerson were brothers and they also may have been Denis’s brothers, my uncles.

  It’s starting to look like a big family. At that stage, I didn’t know the half of it!

  Mr and Mrs R. J. Aston, and other names that meant nothing to me, were also listed as principal mourners. It was Aston’s name that was shown on Fred’s death certificate as the Informant.

  The obituary also tells us that, for whatever reason, ‘Mrs H. Dibble (widow) and Miss Daphne Dibble (daughter) were unable to attend the service’. Were they too distraught by the tragedy to attend the funeral?

  It was this obituary that headed our search in the right direction. It took just two tatty faded newspaper columns to precipitate the avalanche that would ultimately bring down a solid wall of lies.

  In the letter we had written asking David to look for an obituary, we also asked him to check for a Mr R. J. Aston. He had been listed on the death certificate as the Informant and the person ‘Causing the body to be buried’. We weren’t quite sure what this meant but as his address was given as 4 Lansdowne Road, Taunton, he had to have been a local. We asked David to check his name on Kelly’s Directory for the same year that Frederick died.

  He was there. David kept checking year by year and found him still listed in the current Taunton and District Telephone Directory. He was still alive and still living at the same address in Taunton in 1991.

  With some misgivings and a lot of crossed fingers, we wrote to the address listed in the 1991 phone book. Aston would be in his nineties by now. Was he still alive? Did he still live at home? Could he be suffering from senility? Would he remember the death, some 33 years previously, of Frederick Dibble, a man whose body he had ‘caused to be buried’? A lot of unanswered questions were resting on the memory of a 90-something-year-old man.

  Every day after work for the next three weeks, I made the short journey up our steep driveway to our post box with butterflies in my stomach. I would rifle through the mail and sigh, ‘Not here today, please let it come tomorrow.’ One hot dry day in late December 1991, as I reached into the letterbox my fingers
wrapped round a soft thin envelope. I pulled it out. It was a small pale blue envelope with a British postmark. So thin it looked as if it contained nothing. But it did; a single sheet of airmail paper with neat firm legible writing on both sides. This is what it said …

  Dear Mrs Graham

  In reply to your inquiry about Mrs H Dibble, I regret that I cannot be of much assistance.

  Briefly, I came to Taunton in May 1943 to be in charge of the Depot when Fred Dibble was No. 2. In 1948 my No. 1 died and I was able to appoint F Dibble to my No. 1 and chief of general office.

  I knew Mrs Dibble but not closely. Alan the son was a pupil of Taunton School, also my son. Alan used to come to our place to play billiards with my son who was a few months younger than Alan. My son passed away in March 1949, age 17. After which I lost touch with Alan. I knew Daphne, but no more.

  I understand, but not sure, that Alan went into banking.

  After the funeral I heard that Mrs Dibble in a matter of weeks moved to London to be with her relatives. I am unable to recall anyone around here ever having heard of her again. I think that she went to the East side of London, and I cannot give you any more details. I retired 18.12.64. I am now 92.

  I am returning funeral report. You may need it for future use.

  Looking through the Gazette funeral report brought back many memories of people that I had worked with. Nearly all of them have now passed on.

  Yours Sincerely

  RJV Aston

  Our letter must have also brought back very sad memories of the death of his son. How tragic to die so young. We wrote immediately to thank him for his help and for his prompt reply.

  The letter did not tell us a lot about the Dibble family. It did, however, tell us that Alan Dibble, who I now believed was my cousin, had attended Taunton School. We wrote to the school and briefly told of our search for relatives asking if they had names and addresses of past students and in particular an address for Alan Dibble. In due course, the Assistant to the Bursar replied saying yes, Alan Dibble was a member of the Old Tauntonian Association and they did indeed have an address for him. Not surprisingly, she was not able to give us his address without his authority. However, she suggested we write a letter to Alan and send it to her, and she would then forward it to him. We did as she suggested, giving Alan a brief outline of my history and explaining why I was contacting him. We then waited and waited and waited.

  As the weeks went by the waiting became almost intolerable. The hours seemed to stretch between sunrise to sunset and days became eternity. I watched the post as it was brought in each day and speculated if, or when, I would ever hear from Alan. Autumn rains brought relief to the parched garden and plans were afoot to organise a special birthday celebration for me. I would turn 50 that April.

  Just a few days before my birthday, a lettergram arrived. It was from Alan Dibble. It was typed, short and to the point but friendly and helpful in tone. Alan was cautious about admitting to a definite connection between his family and ours. He did say, however, that yes, his mother had had a younger brother who had gone to Malaya as a young man and that the family had not heard from him since the Japanese invasion of Singapore in 1942. The family assumed he had died during the battle for Singapore. He finished his letter with the request that I should send some photos of Denis so they would be able to identify him as the missing brother. What excitement! I was now certain in my own mind that this was the right family and I was just a mere blink away from proving it.

  My birthday party came and went and life in the house settled back to normal, but not for me. I began to collect photos and started on a new letter to Alan. Before I had finished it, the month of May brought Mother’s Day; Sunday 10 May 1992 in Australia. It was a bright sunny autumn day. I was looking forward to doing some work in the garden and, being Mother’s Day, I figured I could spend a few extra hours pleasing myself amongst my flowers and shrubs. It wasn’t to be! During the morning the phone rang. I happened to be passing the kitchen phone so I answered it.

  ‘Is that Australia?’ asked a woman’s voice. A firm and authoritative voice that knew where its duty lay.

  ‘Yes, yes this is Australia,’ I replied.

  ‘Is that Penny Graham?’ came the very English voice.

  ‘Yes, Penny Graham speaking.’

  ‘Hello, I’m your cousin Daphne, Alan’s sister,’ was the reply. My legs began to give way. I needed a chair to sit on — and quickly. Daphne had been contacted by Alan and shown the letter from me. She had obviously come to the same conclusion as I, and believed that we were indeed the missing part of her family. The ever-decisive Daphne was not going to waste time in letter writing — she was going to take the direct approach and get on the phone.

  We spoke for half an hour or so, my new English cousin Daphne and I. We agreed to write to each other as I could not take in all of what she was telling me in one conversation. My mind was racing in all directions, trying to make sense of the information I was hearing. One of the first things she asked was did I know that I had a half-sister called Pat, who lived in England. I could hardly believe what I was being told. When I got off the phone the family gathered round me, realising the importance of the phone call. I didn’t know where to start, what to tell first, what to think. So I did what came naturally — I burst into tears!

  Daphne and I wrote to each other several times over the next few months. She told me her brother Alan had had some reservations as to the validity of my letter and, after sending his cautious reply, he suggested she take over the correspondence, as he had no particular interest in maintaining contact with me. How glad was I that Alan had a sister!

  After reading my letter, Daphne became convinced I was her Uncle Len’s daughter. But before ringing, she had spoken to Pat, telling her of the letter Alan had received and asking if it was all right to mention her existence to me. During that first phone call, Daphne gave me Pat’s name and address with the suggestion that I might like to write to her. I was in the process of writing that letter when a letter arrived for me. It was from my half-sister Pat. She had beaten me to it.

  Not long after my mother died, I had begun to feel the loneliness of being the only girl in the family. With no extended family of aunts or grandmothers or even female cousins, I wished I had had a sister to confide in, to play with or just simply to take my side in a very male-dominated family. Now, after all these years, a letter had arrived from my very own sister. It was on floral notepaper and there were four pages of neat legible handwriting finishing with ‘with love, Pat’. I sat and read it over and over again. It was both friendly and cheerful, a letter written by a happy-natured person. She sounded like someone I would like to know.

  Daphne, a cousin of whom she had heard but never met, Pat explained, had rung to tell her of my existence. She was writing to tell me a little about herself, of her first marriage and the birth of her four children and the subsequent death of Kenneth, her first husband, from multiple sclerosis. She told me about her children’s marriages and of her 10 grandchildren.

  She told me how she had rediscovered her first boyfriend, Albert, who had lost his wife, and of their subsequent marriage 19 years before. At the time of writing, she was 65 years old. I was 50. We had both missed out on a lot of years of knowing each other.

  Pat spoke briefly of her mother, Doris, my father’s first wife, who had died two years before. She urged me to write and tell her about myself, my children and about the life I had led.

  Letters and photos flew between us. Then, when I found writing too slow and tedious, I sent her audiotapes. You can do a lot of talking on a 60-minute tape! So our relationship developed, and month by month we would find out a little more about each other. Letter by letter, tape by tape, we slowly became part of each other’s lives. We talked about the possibility of meeting. I told her that Lindsay and I were planning to come to Europe the following year. She invited us to stay at her place and promised a warm welcome. It was decided. We would meet in March 1993. />
  Pat, obviously, was keen to hear about her two half-brothers and her father. I had to tell her of the silence between us, the silence that had now lasted almost two years. I told her all I could about both brothers and about Denis’s life to date, but I am not sure that she ever understood why I found it so difficult to talk to them. But then, Pat had not grown up with her father.

  During the months after my first conversation with Daphne and the flow of letters and tapes to and from Pat, her husband Albert and Daphne, I slowly got to hear about some of Denis’s early life.

  So here is probably a good place to tell his story, the real story of his real family and the life he led until he metamorphosed into the man I knew as my father. Frustratingly, right up till his death he refused to discuss any details of his ‘true’ early life. He steadfastly stuck to his version of events. If nothing else, he was consistent to the end.

  Chapter 15

  True stories: England to Singapore 1905–1926

  An uneven light falls on Denis’s early days. By the time I found the Emersons, no grandparent or uncle or aunt was still living. So for details, I relied on my English cousins and my half-sister Pat for their memories and accounts of the family’s stories to try to flesh out the bare bones of birth, death and marriage certificates. Now I had some facts, I needed the intimate details to bring to life the true stories of my father’s early life.

  It was said to me on numerous occasions, and by different cousins, that, generally speaking, the Emerson family were a peculiar lot. They often feuded and argued amongst themselves. Even though there was internal family bickering, they closed ranks if they perceived an outside attack. This trait was to cause great hurt to Denis’s first wife Doris, Pat’s mother.

  None of the cousins that I came to know over the next few years seemed to think it particularly odd that in his early twenties Len (he was always known as Len to the family so that’s how I will refer to him in the next two chapters) should disappear so completely from their lives. I would tell them that he had developed his own persona, changed his name, his birth date and created a fictitious background, and they would give a wry grin. A common response was ‘The Emersons were a rum lot’ or ‘Your dad always did want to make something more of himself than he was’. And indeed, a ‘rum lot’ they seem to have been.