Fathers and Sons (5 page)

That was it. The first and last occasion in my father’s childhood when his father made the slightest gesture of physical affection towards him. Dad never forgot it. Until the day he died he could remember every detail of the moment: the ‘pinking’ of the blackbirds roosting in the dim hedgerow, the evening star beginning to shimmer in the darkening sky, the smell of his father’s tobacco pouch, the colour of the tie he wore.

It was blue, by the way.

When my father first told me this story I felt almost guilty. I was around nine or ten and I felt guilty because it was clear to me–and to him–that my own relationship with my grandfather was much better than my father’s had been.

Granddad and I were pals, mates. He did what endears any adult to a child: he took an interest in me. He also treated me as an equal. He taught me how to play draughts and sometimes I would beat him. He didn’t mind.

We swapped jokes. One Christmas Eve he insisted that the stockings my sister and I had just hung above the hearth at Kiln
Farm (we always went to Kiln Farm for Christmas) were too small, and lent us his own huge, knee-length, woollen farmer’s socks instead (this became a tradition). Next morning I woke at dawn and looked out of the bedroom window to see my granddad, hurricane lamp in hand, walking out of a straw-filled outbuilding where some calves were kept. I thought he looked like a genial Joseph by the stable.

I loved him and always looked forward to our visits to Shawbury. My grandmother was perhaps a little distant with me in my earlier years; she doted on my sister, probably because Kitty had never had a daughter. But when I stopped being an irritating little boy (she didn’t call me Richard: I was always ‘Wretched’) Kitty and I grew close, too.

I think my father took vicarious pleasure from all this. I also believe I was a kind of surrogate son for Geoffrey, in the narrow sense that he could demonstrate the affection to me that had been locked away inside him for all those years. When he ruffled my hair or kissed me in greeting or farewell, he was also doing it, belatedly, to my father.

Even so, they never managed any more than a handshake.

But it must have been hard for my dad, on the days when his father took me down to the river to fish, or told me stories on long walks through the fields. He’d never had anything like that when he was a child.

There can be no doubt that we children, and our cousins, James’s son and daughter, helped to defrost the atmosphere at Kiln Farm. I remember happy family parties there, my father and grandfather laughing delightedly together, or falling into a deep discussion about their shared love of classical music.

What a terrible shame it took so long. Back in the 1930s, my father had to grow up on Cold Comfort Farm.

But if Geoffrey was unable to demonstrate love, he was nevertheless a good provider for his family. By the mid-1930s he had steered his farm through the worst of the Depression. The atmosphere at Kiln Farm became more optimistic and, perhaps best of all, he and Kitty had the place to themselves and their children. At some point Sarah and her brothers had moved to a cottage of their own nearby, to give the growing family more room. My grandmother was mistress of her own house at last.

Up to a point.

Sarah still kept a protective, almost maternal eye on Geoffrey and she made regular return visits to Kiln Farm to check that Kitty wasn’t frittering away her husband’s money. Before each arrival, my grandmother moved any new furniture out of sight and replaced it with the old pieces. New vases vanished from tables, rugs were rolled up. Even the newly installed telephone was hidden in the big chest in the living room, after explicit instructions to the local exchange not to connect any calls until further notice.

I don’t know why the young couple was so worried about Sarah’s disapproval of their modest domestic improvements. Perhaps Granddad, so fond of the woman who had done her best to be a mother to him, simply didn’t want to hurt her feelings or make her feel inadequate, as if she had failed to furnish the farm properly. Or it could have been that this was no time to rock any boats, as the day of his promised inheritance drew near.

Because William was now an old man, and in failing health.
He still took a close interest in the business, but appeared satisfied with his nephew’s running of the farm.

So he should have been. By 1936 Geoffrey had continued to build up his herd of prime dairy cattle. Profits were good. Meanwhile, after the fiasco with the ducks, Kitty concentrated on her hens, cultivating the orchard, and bringing up her two boys. The Madeley acres had never been so productive; Geoffrey thought that William must be proud of what he was achieving.

He couldn’t have been more wrong. Just a week after his last meeting with William, the old uncle died, not unexpectedly.

The will was read.

William hadn’t left Geoffrey a thing.

My grandfather was dizzy with shock. What had he done to deserve this second great betrayal in his life? There had been no argument with his uncle, no rift. They had last spoken the week before the old man died and Geoffrey racked his brains to remember if there had been some hint of the catastrophe that was about to explode in his face. He could think of none.

He faced ruin. All those years of grinding labour–for nothing. A brave new life and a great love in Canada rejected–for nothing. His word of honour put above the yearning of his heart–for nothing. It was a catastrophe with no meaning. Not since he was ten years old had Geoffrey felt so confused and cast aside. He could make no sense of it at all.

The shock waves from William’s bombshell would ripple
through space and time–down the years into family legend, but first across the Atlantic to Canada.

Yes, Canada, once again inextricably bound up in a stunning reversal of fortune for my grandfather.

Because William had not left Kiln Farm to his sister. That would have almost certainly undermined his extraordinary decision to disinherit Geoffrey; Sarah would probably have made the farm over to her nephew or at the very least left it to him in her own will.

No, there was a surer way to put Kiln Farm beyond Geoffrey’s reach.

Cleverly, thoughtfully, and with a kind of wicked capriciousness, the will divided Kiln Farm into equal parts. And bequeathed them to each of Geoffrey’s siblings in Canada.

‘Every field, every brick, will be yours. Only come back…you gave your word.’

William’s treachery was grotesque. The circle of betrayal which began in 1907 now closed neatly around his nephew like a noose. In his confusion, Geoffrey could only wildly think that his success in running the farm had made his uncle jealous. I think my grandfather was wrong. Jealousy, which may well have been a factor, scarcely seems reason alone to account for an act that fell little short of sadistic.

More than seventy years later, I am convinced that William’s perfidy sprang out of a terrible obsession with control. As I have said, I don’t think he ever really ceased regarding my grandfather as his personal possession, a pawn on the chessboard he could move at his pleasure or sacrifice at his whim. The jealousy Geoffrey dimly discerned was, I think,
something far more sinister: the tip of a monstrous hidden iceberg of malice.

William would have known full well the effect of the reading of the will on my grandfather. To be disinherited would be a heavy enough blow, but to learn that everything was to be divided amongst his brothers and sisters, who had only been in a position to go to Canada with their parents because of Geoffrey…this was the devastating sucker punch.

Perhaps the old uncle thought it all an excellent joke. But beyond a warped sense of humour lay, I think, a rather neat calculation. Leaving Kiln Farm to my grandfather would have been a poor endgame for William; it would be a final, irrevocable transfer of control from him to his chattel. And William just couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t bear to release the boy from his power.

So he did the next best thing. He transferred it to others.

Long ago, Henry had handed his son into his brother’s keeping. William became the boy’s guardian–legally, at least. Morally, he developed into something infinitely colder and darker.

By the end, William was Geoffrey’s bane.

The first thing Sarah did when she heard the news was to hire a lawyer. The will had to be challenged, she said. It was monstrous. Right was right, and her brother had done a dreadful thing. Granddad wasn’t hopeful, and the lawyer swiftly confirmed that the will was legally watertight. Now the focus switched to Canada. Everything depended on decisions taken
there. Would Geoffrey’s siblings grab their windfall with both hands, sell up and cash in their assets?

Geoffrey looked west, and waited.

Opinion about what to do was divided amongst the Madeleys in Canada, but their discussions were held in camera and it is impossible now to piece together exactly how they unfolded. All the main players are long dead, and confused stories have been passed down the years. However, it seems pretty clear that Geoffrey’s fate hung in the balance. Apparently some siblings wanted to sell their share of Kiln Farm at once; others were acutely conscious of the moral dilemma with which they had been presented.

This latter group pointed out that the prosperous farm they had been jointly bequeathed was only a going concern because of their brother’s sacrifice and hard work.

The opposing forces countered that Uncle William’s last will and testament should be respected. Legally the place was now theirs, and they had their own growing families to consider. Geoffrey could stay on as manager; there was no question of throwing him off the farm…

The debate wrangled on.

According to my parents, it was Geoffrey’s youngest sister, Katherine, who banged heads together at a crisis meeting held to resolve things once and for all. Legend has it she summoned her siblings to the capital of the Canadian midwest for what became known as ‘The Winnipeg Summit’. Katherine, who had been barely three when she was separated from her brother, arranged the meeting at a hotel in the dusty prairie town. Once they were all there, she read them the riot act.

There was to be no more talk of anyone selling off their parcel of Kiln Farm on the open market. She would never speak again to anyone who did such a thing. They were entitled to their inheritances, but only up to a point, and certainly not at the price of their brother’s happiness and security. They owed him everything.

In the end, Katherine prevailed. Back in England, Sarah paid for a lawyer to draw up contracts allowing Geoffrey to buy back Kiln Farm from his brothers and sisters. It was, Granddad would later generously say, ‘an amicable settlement’. Under its terms, he took ownership of Kiln Farm in 1937 although the deeds were, for some reason, retained by Sarah. They were finally passed to him on her death fourteen years later, in 1951. Geoffrey was fifty-four years old. A long time to wait.

I have often wondered how he managed to regard the ‘buy back’ agreement with such apparent equanimity. I suppose it was the best offer on the table; William had seen to that. But my grandfather’s acceptance of a great injustice was rooted in more than pragmatism. He had forgiven his parents for abandoning him; now he forgave his siblings for presenting him with a bill for what was rightfully his.

Why? Because I think my grandfather had grasped one of the most fundamental truths of human experience: the extraordinary healing power of forgiveness. Geoffrey had been sundered from his family once; he had no intention of allowing it to happen a second time. So he made the necessary sacrifices and accommodations.

Perhaps at the expense of relationships closer to home.

Geoffrey, Kitty, James and Christopher huddled round their wireless set one Sunday morning in September 1939 and listened to Chamberlain’s weary voice telling them they were at war. It seemed a strangely remote prospect; after all, Shawbury had been a long way from the guns of the Great War.

The village didn’t know it, but things were going to be very different this time.

Kitty wasn’t greatly disturbed by the prime minister’s announcement, although she thought the poor man sounded very tired. He had worked so hard to avoid this; she felt sorry for him. But she knew her eldest son couldn’t be called up for at least a couple of years, and Christopher four years after that. Her husband was already too old at forty-two. The Madeley men should be safe this time and, anyway, the thing was bound to be over soon. France had a huge army and we had a navy. There was an RAF aerodrome at Shawbury now and Kitty had been summoned outside by her sons to see the new fighter planes being put through their paces high in the skies above the Shropshire Plain. Everyone said our Hurricanes and Spitfires were better than anything Hitler had.

Geoffrey was less sanguine. He had done battle with the Germans face to face and knew they were depressingly good at it, both at long range and at close quarters. They’d almost won last time; if it hadn’t been for our secret weapon–tanks–they probably would have. For nearly four years their armies had been within an ace of breaking through to the Channel ports. What if they made it this time?

But to begin with, it seemed Kitty’s optimism was justified. For months, nothing much happened. Perhaps Hitler’s bluff had been called. Some people said an honourable truce should be announced and everyone could just go home.

May arrived. Dad woke one morning to hear his father coming back into the house from the dawn milking. There were the usual start-of-the-day noises–the fireplace being raked out from the night before; pots and pans banging on the kitchen range. Suddenly everything went quiet. Then, his father’s voice bellowing from the foot of the stairs: ‘Come down, everyone, now! It’s on the wireless! It’s started!’

German soldiers had swept into the Low Countries at dawn. The fight was on.

The phoney war hadn’t just ended; it was being blasted into oblivion by events which followed each other with dizzying speed. Within a few weeks Belgium had capitulated, France had fallen and the British were fighting a desperate rearguard action in the Pas de Calais so its army could escape across the Channel. Dunkirk was a catastrophe and a deliverance. But with most of its battered army’s equipment left behind, many wondered if Britain would fare any better than France if Germany invaded.