This review was first written in response to a challenge for people to talk about their grandparents, now updated in the light of new material from my mother's papers. Unfortunately, the old photos haven't taken very well.
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Albert and Edith

"Albert courted all my girls and then picked on poor Edith," my great-grandfather on that side of the family used to say.

In writing about my grandparents, it is tempting to start with Edith, the one I knew best and loved most, but she would have thought it quite wrong to take precedence over her husband.

Albert probably thought it was about time he had a few things his own way. The life into which he was born was a harsh one. He was the eldest son of a working family in a small mill-town on the moors above Halifax. A sickly infant, Albert was from the outset a disappointment to his father, Binns by name (first name, that is; yes, really). Binns was a stern patriarch and the sort of Spartan stage-Yorkshireman who delights in boasting about rising at four on a freezing morning to walk five mile across moor to mill, probably in bare feet, clogs being needed only by sissies and southerners.

When two more rugged younger brothers arrived in quick succession to restore Binns' faith in the hardiness of his genes, Albert was all but rejected by his parents. One of his earliest memories was of hearing his exasperated father tell him that he ought to make up his mind whether he was going to live or die, instead of having everyone waste their time wondering. (My grandmother told me this, perhaps in an attempt to explain his coldness. He himself would never have said anything about it to a mere grandchild.)

He made up his mind to live, but it was not a soft option. A chronically weak constitution and his unusually tender skin made him unsuited to work in the woollen mill that provided the only employment on offer in the town of his birth. He was minimally educated, but he had a quick mind and tongue, and dogged determination, without which he would not have survived his childhood. Leaving home, he talked his way into a job as a messenger and office boy at the local newspaper in Halifax.

Thus started, Albert progressed eventually to selling advertising space, and the day came when he could even afford a holiday. Inevitably, for someone from those parts in those days - just before the first world war - he went to Blackpool. He liked it so much that he applied for a job with the Blackpool local newspaper, and was accepted. He was to work there for the rest of his life.

Edith was the second of three sisters initially brought up in the outskirts of Manchester. I believe her father had some sort of business there, and sold it to move to Blackpool. If so, it must have been a small business, or failing; they were not wealthy folk. I used to have a fading photograph of the three sisters (alas, now lost), and it was never hard to see why Edith was the one picked on by Albert. She was not particularly pretty, no prettier than her sisters, although she had striking eyes, at once penetrating and placid. Even in a sepia print, one can tell that they are the purest china blue imaginable. She is neat and calm, and dutiful. Above all, she looks as if she is waiting to be chosen, whilst the other two do not. Albert will have noticed this, and it will have appealed to him.

Albert's photo from about this period shows him to be too thin-faced to be truly handsome. There is something insubstantial about his cheeks. Despite this pinched look, he exudes confidence, albeit of a manufactured kind. He has put something (macassar?) on his hair to make it sit as he wants it, and his moustache is waxed to sharp points at its tips, in a way that looks faintly ridiculous today but at that time was doubtless fashionable. His eyes are unfeeling, slightly haunted, but not without a certain strength that is accentuated by the thinness of his countenance.

For forty-five years or more this couple lived in their little redbrick Edwardian house in a nondescript suburb of Blackpool. My first memories of visiting it as a grandchild are from the fifties. It was the highpoint of my year, only rivalled by Christmas. I would be put on a steam-train at Euston for a journey that seemed to take forever, to be met by my grandmother at Blackpool Central Station (since demolished). Edith was always matter-of-fact when we met. No hugs or kisses, no gush. She treated it as if we saw each other every week, quieting my over-excitement by enquiring

conventionally about my journey and other members of the family in her level Lancashire voice as she guided me out to catch the bus or tram back to her home. I was back in the north, where sincere affection is not to be confused with slushy sentimentality.

I hardly saw my grandfather. Albert would be up and off to work before I rose. How I was allowed the decadent indulgence of lying in, I am unsure. Possibly she persuaded him to permit it on the grounds that, up, I would only be underfoot and in the way while she served him his breakfast. In the evening, all other activities would come to a halt an hour before he was expected home. The living-room had to be tidied (it was already tidy), the fire lit, the table laid, his tea prepared. The timing was tricky. If, on entry, he announced that he would have his tea immediately, he expected it on the table there and then - and this was a proper northern high tea, cooked. Often, however, he would want to sit by the fire and smoke a cigarette or two before tea, but the cooked course had better not be spoiled when he was ready to eat it.

After tea he would smoke another cigarette (he smoked too many, and died of lung cancer in the year when he would otherwise have retired). Then he would go up to change to go out to his club. Among his cronies at the club or among business colleagues he was, I'm told, the life and soul of the party. At home, despite (or because of) his own grim upbringing, he was aloof, autocratic and austere. Only occasionally was he animated by a particular piece of news. "Aye, he's done, he's done," I once heard him say, his voice rubbing its hands together with purest Yorkshire schadenfreude as he bore the tidings of some acquaintance whose plight he had discovered to be terminal. Often, he was simply silent. I cannot specifically remember him ever speaking to me at all, and certainly I would not have dared to address him uninvited.

With my grandmother I chatted all the time, about anything and everything. She was an extraordinarily patient and gifted listener, remembering all sorts of trivial detail about my childhood friends and interests in order to respond to my thoughts about them. I believe she even learned about football so that we could discuss it. Moreover, she had seven grandchildren and I know now from siblings and cousins that she could do much the same with all of them. It was not that I was a particular favourite; well, perhaps I was, but only in the sense that we were all particular favourites.

She would also take me out around Blackpool (a child's fairyland), play games, tell stories, and occasionally mix into the conversation some wise words of her own, but never didactically. She said things that were intended to make you have thoughts, not tell you what those thoughts should be. Although religious in her own personal non-conformist way, she knew that I was being brought up without religion and never made the slightest attempt to convert me to her way of thinking.

Edith died some years ago at the age of ninety-eight, surviving not just Albert but both her sons, which was, I'm sure, a sadness to her, but one she bore with dignity. She was quiet, clear-eyed, gentle, insightful and unassuming to the end. She was loved by all who knew her, with the possible exception of her husband.

So far as I know, she only confronted him once in all their years of marriage, and that was about the education of their children.

When his elder son emerged as the star pupil at the local grammar school, Albert took it more as an affront than as a matter for pride, let alone encouragement. Having made his own way in the world unencumbered by education, he saw no reason why his sons should not do the same, and he wanted them out at work at the earliest possible age to earn a living. But somehow Edith talked him round. Maybe he was so unaccustomed to defiance from her that he simply did not know how to cope with it.

By whatever means the decision was taken, my father was allowed to stay on at school, to win his scholarship and to go to Oxford, where, among other things, he met my mother. But that's another story, or at least, another episode.

Fred and Louie

Fred, my mother's father, also grew up poor, in his case in the east end of London. He was the eldest of ten children, of whom six survived to adulthood. His father had been a combmaker by trade, producing handmade combs. "But the works burned down," as my great-aunt explained it, "so he got a barrow and started in the fruit." To help out, Fred began going out with the barrow as a part-timer at nine years old, sometimes on his own.

Despite the distraction of having to work, he won a scholarship to secondary school, but he couldn't take it up. His earnings were needed in the family, especially as "the fruit" was faring badly. At twelve he started work in a foundry, not even as an apprentice, just a dogsbody. To supplement his wages he ran errands for the men. For instance, some of them used to cook kippers on the side of the furnace. Kippers cost a penny each or three for tuppence. When a man sent him out for a kipper Fred would canvass the other workers until he found another customer so that he could have one too, and not have to spend his wages on food for himself.

He moved from job to job, educating himself all the time from public libraries, and became active as a trade unionist. Energetic and dedicated to a fault, he worked on union business late into the night, minuting meetings, writing leaflets, whatever was needed. As the years passed, he rose in the union hierarchy and, having taught himself shorthand and typing, became secretary to a senior Labour politician. It was his escape from manual labour.

Hard though he worked, Fred was never a recluse. He was always supportive of his family; helping his brothers with their financial problems, his sisters with their matrimonial ones. He even found time to develop a few leisure interests of his own, in the theatre and in horse-racing. There was never anything puritanical or killjoy in his socialism. As my mother describes it, "he wanted a floor, not a ceiling". He had nothing against people enjoying themselves, simply wanting to make sure no one else starved while they were doing so.
The one pursuit he didn't find time for, not at least until he was thirty, was girls; or rather girl, since there was only ever one in whom he was remotely interested. "I never thought my Fred would get married," his mother said.

Here's his photograph: a strong face rather than a handsome one. A broad face, firm jaw, prominent nose, square brow beneath an already receding hairline. The one feature that you can't see clearly is his eyes. He had a lifelong visual defect and always wore glasses, which was a pity, because it meant that the gaze that could have been piercing and powerful was subdued into studiousness. Still, his bad eyesight kept him from conscription in the First World War, so maybe it was not a pity after all.

Here's hers. Louisa, always known as Louie or Lou. Her family was known for good looks and high spirits, but these are not reflected here. Maybe this was taken later, after she was ill. A tall face, strong in a different way from Fred's. Uncharacteristically, she looks wistful, almost sad. Her eyes seem dull, but to those who knew her the dark tones of an old photograph could no more hide their bright green colour than they could conceal Edith's blue. Despite her drawn look, Louie's lips still manage a resilient smile.

They met, improbably, on a train between Epsom and Waterloo, improbably because they were both devout Londoners and would have regarded Epsom as out-of-town, except perhaps in Fred's case to go horse-racing. On this occasion, Fred was there because he had been suffering from insomnia and he was advised to find lodgings for a while in the country, where it would be quieter and he could take long walks at weekends. Louie was there to work.

Louie was the eldest of a family of six, of whom four survived past childhood, born to a printer in North London. Her mother was an invalid, and, money being scarce, Louie had to look after the younger children. Still, she was allowed to take up her scholarship to secondary school until her mid-teens, at which point she was apprenticed to a department store in Oxford Street.

She was not without admirers. She was engaged for some years to the only son of a widow, but she could see that her prospective mother-in-law would always interfere, and broke it off. So, fifteen years later, still a single shop-girl and approaching thirty, Louie was the despair of her family, but she enjoyed the business and worked hard. Eventually, she was appointed manageress of a shop in Epsom. Although she wanted children, perhaps she was resigned to remaining a spinster by the time she found herself addressed by her fellow-passenger on the train to Waterloo.

One suspects that Fred, whose assertive self-confidence in practical matters may well have masked inner insecurities, was shy with women. If so, Louie would have been ideal for him. As my mother later described her: "she was interested in people, only in people, and was so sympathetic in manner that people would tell her their life-stories, on the tops of buses or sitting next to her in the theatre. We often said that if she could sit in a doctor's waiting-room for people to confide in, to tell her their troubles, half of them need never see the doctor at all."

They were married two years later and, of course, moved back to London, settling eventually in Clapham, where they stayed for the rest of their lives. This included the war years and the blitz, during which, according to my mother, they went to the theatre whenever possible, took no notice of raids and never entered a shelter.

The house in Clapham is extremely clear in my memory, inevitably from many years after they first moved there. Although we lived on the other side of London, we often went there to visit at weekends. A small semi-detached house just off the Common, neatly but brightly decorated. It is a cosy, happy household. By the time I am aware of being taken there, Louie is already in decline, although she puts a good face on it. Illness has taken its toll, and her memory is fading. But she is in resolute good spirits. "Don't be such a misery," is her severest rebuke, for the most heinous of offences, down-heartedness. "It's keeping cheerful keeps you going" was her watchword.

Fred was endlessly solicitous and protective of her. Within the family he was the kindliest of men. Despite his radicalism, he was paternalistic and courtly in his manners. A lady would never be expected to open her purse in his presence. When he took Louie to the theatre in the west end, he did not meet her there from his nearby workplace. He came home to Clapham by taxi rather than his normal tube, because there would not otherwise be time to escort her back up to London.

Prematurely senile, Louie died before I really knew her. Fred remained a stalwart support for my mother. He was devoted to her, his only daughter, and she to him. Unlike my father, she received nothing but enthusiastic encouragement when she became the first in her family to be seriously educated. Fred's only worry when she went to Oxford was that she might lose touch with the plebeian roots of the rest of her family.

Fred also did his best to be a caring grandfather, but he was not naturally at ease with children and he found it hard. I would meet him in the middle of London sometimes when he had an hour or two to spare, and he would take me to a news theatre and buy me an ice cream. Nowadays, with television and all the other instant visual media, news theatres have died out, but there used to be many of them in the west end. They would show continual performances of newsreels, cartoons, short documentaries and comic films. He loved them for the newsreels, I for the comics and cartoons. Either way, we were both spared the embarrassment of trying to converse. But I liked him very much, sensing his innate decency and generosity of spirit.

He was a journalist by then, the right career for him. He was always a natural writer with a clear direct style, whereas at public speaking he was stiff and awkward. Outside the family, he found it difficult to socialise - the converse of Albert. Fred would never have made a successful politician, nor even a trade union leader.

Fred loved the Mediterranean, another of the champagne tastes you would not in those days have expected of one with his background and beliefs. My mother is named after the city in Italy to which he would have liked to take Louie on honeymoon, had the First World War not been in progress at the time. One winter in Cannes not long after he retired, he suffered a heart attack. Spurning local hospitals in favour of the NHS, he somehow got himself onto a plane and home to London, but he was dead within a month.

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My mother saw the uniting of the two sides of my family as a mismatch, in which superficial similarities between her background and my father's disguised a deeper division in outlook between chirpy cockney optimism on the one hand, and dour northern gloom on the other. But it was never that simple. Edith was serious, but never dour; she could lift anyone's spirits and her eyes never lost their twinkle. Albert could be downright genial, away from the home. Fred had a positive outlook and a sense of humour, but could not be described as chirpy. His manner was ponderous, carrying baggage from his early years of earnest self-improvement. Louie was perhaps the nearest to conforming to the stereotype. I wish I could say more about her. Apparently she doted on me, and I can't even remember that.

© torr; first published on Ciao December 18th 2002.

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