The Hazel Riley Project

MOTHER (C)

My mother’s house (C)
When my mother died  I was surprised at how entangled I became in her house and all its objects. How did I become the guardian of the house and everything in it?  I was judge and jury, deciding the fate of each object, ornament, card, photo, book..  It was a slow and painful process.  There were discoveries, rediscoveries,  disappointments.  At the back of a drawer I found a paper bag with baby shoes.  In one of many boxes on a shelf high up in the cupboard under the stairs I found all her wedding mementos, including bus tickets from her honeymoon in Southport, decorations from the cake, cards and gift tags. There were notebooks with accounts, meticulously kept, immaculately hand written, that seemed to blow open the doors to the past.  She’d kept every bill from my father’s funeral, a receipt from the Co-op for flowers, another from the caterer. I hovered on the edge of time.
 
I became more and more entangled in invisible cords that tugged at my heartstrings and pestered my conscience.   So many things awakened memories of my childhood, my dad, my grandparents. Not all the memories were happy.  There were letters that reopened old wounds and showed a side of my mother best forgotten.  There were cards I’d sent, with words I’d struggled to get onto the paper, lacking any warmth or kindness.
 
Many of the objects  held stories and secrets I’ll never be able to decipher.  They’re a link to people I never knew, like my grandmother’s many sisters, who mainly died before I was born.  Clearing a house is a form of archaeology. I disinterred things from layers of dust and ancient spider webs.  I was bringing them into the light.  I was recording their existence, exploring their hidden stories, so I could let them go.  I became ruthless.  The necessity of clearing the house eventually outweighed everything else. 
 
The house, and the clearing process, haunted my dreams for many months.   It’s still hard to believe that it’s all gone, and that my mother is no longer sitting in her chair, by the electric fire, next to a rug so old it still had burn marks from the days when we had a coal fire.  

Eulogy
My mother was a remarkable woman.  It’s hard to comprehend the nine decades she experienced.  Born in 1924, living in Saltwell Road, she grew up in a society where relatives and neighbours would support each other and feed a sickly child.  She caught german measles and might have died.  She survived, but it effected her eyesight. She had to wear an eye patch and wasn’t able to take her exams.
 
Whatever life threw at her, she would overcome.  It wasn’t an easy life, but I think it was a happy one.  After the war she met my dad and together they created a happy family home, moving up in the world from Windsor Avenue to the edge of Low Fell.  They first met at a dance and they continued dancing until my dad’s sudden, untimely death. 
 
My mother was heartbroken.  But she had always been very active, first volunteering at a playgroup then training in playschool leadership and child welfare.  Eventually she both ran the playschool and was on the management committee of the Hardman Centre.  She found this work very satisfying and was proud of her achievements.
 
I once had a dream where I was wearing layers and layers of dresses.  Each dress was one of the ones she’d made for me as a child.  There was a whole ritual around looking at patterns, choosing fabric.  Each dress was unique. A particular favourite was turquoise blue.  It had a kingfisher embroidered on a big, square pocket.  She was very talented.  She sewed, knitted, embroidered, crocheted.  There’s lovely photos of her in coats and suits she’d made herself.  I’ve less fond memories of a knitted swimsuit.
 
About 20 years ago she filled this note book with our family trees: the Rileys, Seymours and Thorns.  It’s very precious to me, giving a glimpse into the decades long gone.  She tried to maintain the values she’d learned as a child. She was always charitable, making felt toys, cards and other things for church fetes; visiting anyone who was sick.
 
As she grew older a rebellious streak emerged.  She was active in the older people’s assembly and even when her hands lost flexibility, she continued to write to her MP protesting about services.  She hated modern banking and its endless security checks.  ‘We didn’t fight two world wars for this’ she’d say, when anything really annoyed her. 
 
She was very resilient, overcoming all the illnesses she experienced in later life until her stroke last year.  Yet she managed to make friends with the people who were looking after her and who invariably said she was a lovely lady. 
 
She was a lovely lady, but she was also a very strong and determined one.  She enjoyed life. She loved nature, travelling, day trips to the coast and the countryside.  Above all, she loved children.  We will miss her.

Wedding Photo (C)
The year is 1952.   The war has been barricaded into the past,  with blocks of  stone and loose rubble.  Occasionally some of the rubble drops out and the noise of artillery leaks through. But not today.   This is their wedding day.  I wish I could say who made her dress, but that’s one of the many questions which will never be asked.   
 
Both grandmothers are there.  My mother’s mother, Annie, is small and stout.  She’s smart, as always.  My father’s mother, Margaret, has also dressed for the occasion.  She’s put on a brave face along with  her best coat.  People believe that she’s a widow, because this is what she told them.  It’s a lie.  My grandfather is absent, probably in the pub, on Old Durham Road, where he was for much of the time.  He married above him.  A labourer, from Ireland, he’d lived in a slum on the banks of the Tyne, with only packing crates for furniture.  He must have been very charming, and courageous, to court the girl from the top of the hill, whose family had a fish shop on Low Fell, perhaps a mile but a whole world away.   She owned property, but he drank it all into oblivion.  As everything went her resentment grew.  She got her revenge, sentencing him to a living death.  He outlived her.  His was the first funeral I was allowed to go to.   A proper burial, with everyone standing around the grave, the priest reciting ‘ashes to ashes’.  The only time I met any of the Irish side of the family. 
 
No photograph of him exists, anywhere.  I’ve searched through many albums and asked all the surviving relatives.   I barely remember him.  I remember more about the cat, Smoky, who had long grey fur and tolerated our affection. 
 
When she was a newly old woman my mother wrote about both sides of the family tree.  This was when I found out about his exclusion and a few other things… like the fact that my favourite aunty had been a nudist and would walk home in her bare feet after a night of dancing.   Easier to put things in writing, than look someone in the face?   Probably not.   Perhaps she couldn’t maintain the barricades any longer.   The stones were crumbling and crashing to earth. She could see the world was changing. Later I typed her memoir up, had it bound and put in the local archive.   I realised that things had not been as they seemed, when I was a child and a judgemental teenager.  I’d thought my mother was a snob, avoiding visits to my father’s family.   Now I see she was very good at hiding pain.
 
My mother, like her mother before her, was a very determined woman.   She’d grown up in a poor but genteel world, where neighbours helped each other.  She always looked on the bright side, but her life was interwoven with shadow. She had pneumonia when very small, and almost died. She grew up in the depression. The Jarrow Marchers were on their way to London.  Then she had German Measles which affected her sight.  For some years she had to wear an eye patch. She wasn’t able to finish school.  She always looked on the bright side,  but it was an effort.   She built many barricades to protect us from all the things she dreaded, illness, drink, the fact my cousin Margaret was illegitimate,  that my dad’s mother hadn’t wanted them to marry.  ‘He’d always been sickly. He wouldn’t survive,’  she’d told her, when the engagement ring was on her finger and the wedding was being planned.
 
My father was very shy, a gentle soul.  His hair turned prematurely grey during the war, when he was in North Africa. He somehow found the courage to ask my mother to dance.   In later photos he’s smiling, but slightly dazed, as if he can’t believe his luck, that he survived the war, broke free from his mother, is a husband and father of two children, and the proud owner of a flat in Windsor Avenue.  He continued to support the Rileys too. When he won anything on the horses, which he often did, he always shared the money equally between his children, brothers and sisters.
 
He was xx when they married, my mother 30.   Had she given up all hope of romance?  So many unasked questions.  So many stories that withered away in the brightness.  Unlike my Aunty Violet, also at the wedding, she hadn’t lost a fiancée in the war.   When, some years later, Violet married Bill, a divorced man, my mother was disapproving.  She felt it was a betrayal, though she hadn’t known the dead man.  She was bound by principles.   She never accepted him, though grudgingly admitted the marriage was happy. Perhaps exclusion, like poison, was a woman’s weapon.  
 
The marriage was at St Chad’s Church.  The wedding party gathered outside, for the photographs.  The bells rang out.  My grandfather had sung in the choir here, perhaps still sang.  How did he feel, giving away his only child?  Another thing I’ll never know.  He too had his barricades in place, though I doubt they kept out his memories of the trenches and of being a prisoner of war.   These were stifled by silence, his refusal to speak, but they were all recorded in two small notebooks, in immaculate handwriting, tucked away in the corner of the bookcase. 
 
After my mother died I found a box full of souvenirs of her wedding and the honeymoon.  There were bus tickets, horseshoes, silver paper flowers that had decorated the cake, gift cards.   I kept a few of these things.  Every year my father had sent her an anniversary card, with a tender, heartfelt message.  I think they both knew they’d found love.  Their ship had reached a safe harbour. 

Luxuries (C)
Take care of the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.
 When my dad dropped dead, around midnight on 18 September 1988, both my brother and I wondered how my mother would manage, financially, until things were sorted out.  It turned out that she had savings, a nest egg, that dated back to the period before her marriage. 
 
Thirty years later, as her health was failing, she put all her financial papers together and left them in my room.  She had a number of different ‘pots’, with different companies.   Take care of the pennies was her motto. She’d wanted me to leave school at sixteen, as it was, she confided, the only time a girl would get to have a job, and money of her own.  At the time, I didn’t see that she meant well.  It was as if she’d extinguished my entire future with one careless breath. 
 
She’d incubated her nest egg, in secret, for decades. 
 
Take care of the pennies…
 
My dad was frugal too. He had a one hour walk to his work at Clarke Chapman’s, one of the big engineering factories by the river.   He brought home The Daily Mirror, a copy discarded by a colleague.   Watching the pennies had bought them a nice house, semi-detached, in a nicer part of town. 
 
…. and the pounds take care of themselves.
 
My dad was very good at DIY.  There was talk of starting his own business, but the loss of financial security was too a big a risk.   In his early sixties he took retirement.  Then they discovered that the lump sum was taxed.  They felt cheated.   He was dead in five years. The pounds didn’t take care of him. 
 
My mother was proud of her house. Her greatest fear was being forced into care.  It was harder to maintain without my dad.  There was a tiny kitchen, a scullery, by the back door, about four foot square.   My dad had built fitted cabinets, with sliding doors. He painted it yellow, his favourite colour. My mother looked shocked at the suggestion she replace it.  For some years I felt a new sympathy for her, and her loyalty to him.  Then I realised that she’d had every other room redecorated.  She didn’t want to disturb the pounds.

…  the pounds take care of themselves.
 
If my dad had had his way, they’d have sold the house and moved to Spain. He loved the sun.  As it was, the saved pennies did buy them many holidays.  Off season, month long breaks for the retired, full board, with entertainment.   There were many photos, carefully placed in albums, along with postcards of tropical gardens and flamenco dancers.   It was painful to go through them. I took out all the postcards, carried them to the charity shop.   The empty albums quickly filled the bin. 
 
… the pounds take care of themselves
 
My brother said nothing in the house was of any value.  He’d get a skip and put everything in it.  I was shocked.   This was such a betrayal of my mother.  I made regular trips North, slowly clearing out drawers and cupboards.  My brother, who still lived there, did nothing, apart from systematically emptying her current account.   When she had her stroke he wanted to be her carer.  He thought he could assuage his guilt for all the things he hadn’t done.  The doctors looked at him in horror.  He’d been a seaman,  a high earner and a big spender.  The pounds never took care of him and he didn’t know how to care for himself.
 
Watch the pennies…
 
We always had a money box.  Mine was a china pig.  All year we put any spare pennies in.  A penny bought a small bar of Cadbury’s chocolate.  Two pennies a larger one.  My grandparents gave me sixpence a week, alongside a brown paper bag with an apple and an orange.
 
My brother started stealing at an early age.  He was already drinking.   My mother hated drink as much as she loved money.  Perhaps this was his way of rebelling. He’d inherited the family curse.  My dad had escaped it, but it struck his father and his brother.  My brother never watched the pennies. He never watched the pounds. Once, returning from a long spell at sea, he arrived home with nothing. He’d spent everything on drink, lost all his luggage.  The pounds never took care of him.
 
Take care of the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.
 
When my purse begins to fill with pennies I put them in a charity box. Sometimes I feel guilty that I’m spending the money they worked so hard to amass, but at others I feel their approval, as if I’m living a life they would have chosen, had their ship come in.

Embroidered Rose (C)
This embroidered rose is probably part of a set, for a dressing table.  Every woman had a dressing table, which was her personal space.  It was a sign of respectability and achievement.  My mother’s family were at the upper, genteel end of the working class. They had one of the first council houses, with the luxury of an indoor toilet and a bathroom.  Such a house was not easily acquired. You had to be interviewed and prove you would be a respectable, well behaved tenant.  In her eighties, my mother said she was shocked to learn how many of her contemporaries had grown up in families so poor they couldn’t afford to buy shoes.  She’d always been well clothed and had never been hungry.
 
The dressing table was a woman’s domain.  I remember hers having an amber glass set consisting of tray (for hairbrush, mirror and comb) and two small pots, with lids, for earrings, hairpins etc.  Part of growing up was being given your own sets of these things.  The glass pots remain, but the tray is long gone.  When my grandmother died my mother replaced her own set with her mother’s bone china one.
 
This rose, embroidered on linen, would have been under one of these small pots.  Perhaps the other bits will turn up too, in a different drawer or cupboard.  It was probably made by my mother as she always kept the silk at full thickness, while ‘experts’ recommended using only a few strands.  Going through cupboards, boxes and old suitcases I’ve found lots of this beautiful, gleaming silk in many shades, along with cut out shapes in tracing paper which were used for transferring designs onto the cloth. There’s an element of luxury in embroidery.  It’s associated with leisure, so signifies a freedom from the drudgery of chores.  My mother never liked housework, though for much of her life she was proud to be a housewife, who did not have to work, but she was never idle. She was always, sewing, knitting, crocheting, baking.  She pressed flowers and made cards. When she could no longer do any of these she created scrap books. There’s a terrible poignancy when I find these, as if she was heroically defying the tides of time, clinging to a raft of girlish things.
 
She made all my clothes, even swimsuits.  We’d go to the Co-op to choose fabric, usually buying something with modern pattern and colours.  I remember a turquoise dress with an embroidered kingfisher on the big, square pocket. Every dress had some individual detail such as piping, applique, ribbon… things I can no longer name.  By the time I was a teenager I longed for shop bought clothes.  Surprisingly, none of my childhood clothes remain. I once dreamed I was wearing all of these dresses, peeling them off one by one, like the layers of an onion.  It was as if my soul had its own archive, where these dresses were carefully preserved.

Easter (C)
My mother loved Easter.  It marked the turning of the year, the shift into summer clothes and days out to the coast and countryside.  We got some new clothes too. Family rituals perpetuated the idea that we were special. We were different to the run of the mill families.  Not wealthier, but better in unspecified ways.  This emanated from my mother, who’d been spared the worst poverty of the 1920’s.  She came from a genteel world and did her best to keep it going.
 
Easter preparations began with Palm Sunday. There was something magical about the palm leaf cross we were given. I felt a real connection with the holy land, and a god who rode on a donkey.  We might dye a few eggs with onion skins, but mainly we hand decorated eggs as specific gifts for each other.  The eggs were hard boiled… none of the pricking of the shell with a pin, no extraction of the yolk and white.  Faces were popular, perhaps with hair and eyebrows, made of wool or paper.  Planning your design was an inherent part of the process.  Chicks, daffodils, tulips and other Easter things were popular.  Rings of alternating pattern were a possibility too. 
 
Crucifixion and resurrection had little place in my mother’s world. In the Church of England, hell was never harrowed.  Easter day would arrive.  There’d be cards filled with bunnies and spring flowers. My mother kept them all. I preserved a few. Then, after church and Sunday lunch, the Easter Egg hunt.   At my grandparents  they might be in the garden, but in our terraced flat in Windsor Avenue we’d search behind cushions and under chairs. There’d be small chocolate eggs in pretty silver paper, plus a larger one, probably Cadbury’s chocolate buttons.  Lindt bunnies were the source of much delight.
 
Then there’d be games, stories, maybe a dolls’ tea party in the back yard…. Or a walk in Saltwell Park, swings, slide, simple roundabout.  We’d feed the ducks and fish for tadpoles…. if the lake wasn’t frozen.