The Girl from Station X (9 page)

One summer after my mother got Alzheimer’s and could no longer come to Hope Cove, my own daughter and a fourteen-year-old schoolmate of my son’s got into trouble while body-surfing.
The girls had gone out too far and were in danger of not being able to swim back. I had already warned them, as my mother had me, about the undertow, and I remember my feeling of impotence, yelling
at them to come in, all the time knowing that they couldn’t hear my voice over the roaring waves. I understood then the undercurrent of fear that was always present in my mother. That little
girl, bravely running on stones, was ostensibly in a landscape that appeared calm and safe but which had already – and would again – deliver terrible shocks. The teenage Anne knew of
the fate of her Aunt Elisa; during her first few days at school in Rome in October 1930 she wrote in her diary of a cancelled excursion:
Madame Boni has discovered that Aunt Elisa was
drowned at the place where the villa is, she is the only person ever to be drowned there, I am glad I am not going there now.

Luckily, the girls were scooped out of the sea at Bantham by two lifeguards, but others in my family had not been so lucky.

When I tell friends and acquaintances that my mother has written over thirty diaries, eighteen of them about the six years of the Second World War, they express amazement. How
wonderful! Did she write them every day? How did she manage it? To me, this feat is nothing special, since I too have been writing diaries, like her, from the age of fifteen, without knowing that
my mother had done it before me. Maybe I am more her daughter than I had realised. What matters is that when I had thought it was too late, my mother has, unwittingly, thrown me a lifeline, linking
herself to me.

I have no qualms about reading her diaries; not one has the word
PRIVATE
on its cover. Perhaps she did secretly want them to be read, even to be published. In that case,
who more suitable than I, her only daughter, a diarist myself, to be their reader?

I feel that I have the right to scrutinise every word, perhaps because my mother has never communicated with me properly in person. I quickly discover that I feel so strongly about her diaries
that I know I would fight for possession of them, I would try to rescue them from fire, I would barter my other things for them. Instinctively, I know how important they were for my mother, as
important as my own diaries are for me. They are the one creation of her life that is really hers, the most personal thing, her true voice. And, unlike so many other aspects of her life, they
haven’t disintegrated.

I am soon convinced that, like me, my mother wanted to be a writer, but she was too shy to talk of it and did not have the willpower or confidence to persist. However, it took determination to
write those entries nearly every single day of the war, besides doing a full-time job, often involving night duty. I find myself experiencing admiration, something new for me in connection with my
mother.

When I visit her now at Camelot, I find a vague old woman in slippers, a semi-invalid who is given mushed-up food on a spoon. But in the diaries, I find a different person; first, a lively and
mischievous girl, then, before and during the war, a vigorous and dynamic young woman. At first, in these new guises, my mother is a stranger to me, but steadily she walks towards me, becoming more
and more visible as I immerse myself in her past, her inner life. I am aware that, had she not lost her mind, I would not be reading these diaries now. I would not be getting to know my mother.

There are twelve war diaries, then three written in Germany after the war in Europe ended. I find three after that, in lined school exercise books, then others written in America, from May 1946
till January 1947. But, to my disappointment, there are no diaries following these, none about how my mother met my father, nor their courtship, nor their wedding. And I can find only one about my
early childhood in Spain. Dismayingly, this even starts in mid-sentence: . . .
flowers that smelled exactly like heather honey.
On its cover, inside a little frame of ivy
leaves, my mother has written ‘SPAIN Volume VI, Anne Segrave’. Unlike the other diaries, all with beige or black covers, this SPAIN diary is purple with a red border, and very long and
narrow. This, seemingly my mother’s only surviving written record of my very early childhood, at once seems sweet to me, like heather honey. But it turns out to have no entries about our life
in Madrid. Instead, it begins on 26 August 1952, at Comillas, that seaside village in the north of Spain. I read that, instead of returning to Madrid after that summer holiday, on 9 September 1952
Raymond and I were put on a ship,
La Reina del Pacifico
, at Santander and sent back to England with Doreen, to stay at Knowle. My father was winding up his job as naval attaché and
would return home after two months. I am so disappointed that I don’t even read this diary right through. Where are the other five diaries about our lives in Madrid? Where are the diaries of
‘the old days’, when I was a little girl?

Although I am burning with curiosity about my mother’s life as a young woman, I’m also apprehensive. Maybe this is why I don’t delve at once into all her war diaries –
those most representative of her adult life – and why I don’t tackle them chronologically. Instead, I glance through different ones at random, fastening on certain sections. I’m
almost reluctant to read them right through, for fear of what I’ll find.

A few years ago, Molly told me that she had thrown away letters to my mother from a woman she had almost certainly had a love affair with after my father died. Molly said she was so shocked by
the contents that she didn’t want me or my brother to see them. What other secrets has my mother hidden?

I
knew that Anne Veronica Hamilton-Grace was born on 1 July 1914, to Raymond Hamilton-Grace and Gladys Grace, distant cousins. Gladys, my
grandmother, had longed for a son. She had told me without shame that when the nurse handed her her firstborn, she had looked at her baby girl and declared: ‘Oh, I don’t want
that
!’

I discover, with the diaries, a letter that Anne’s father, an officer in the 13th Hussars, sent her from Flanders, for her first birthday.

June 29th 1915.

My dear daughter,

Very many happy returns of your birthday. May you grow up into just such a woman as your mother is, in this you will have a hard task for she is a perfect woman in every
sense of the word. She is more beautiful than a wild rose, and more educable in character than any woman I have ever met or believe to exist. Still, you are lucky to have such a pattern.

You should be a strong healthy child too – children of a love match always are – I think there never was a match more concerted by love than in that of your parents. You will be
lucky to have grown up in an atmosphere of love because the love of your parents will always last and you will be spared the sight of father and mother nagging at each other.

If you are wise you will see and learn how to create such a life for yourself in the future because it is the best that this world can give. First and foremost you must not be selfish and
you must never say something that will hurt – for those things though forgotten always leave their mark. You must try to see the other’s point of view and remember that the upbringing
of your husband was probably quite different from yours and you must make allowances.

It is the little things in life which count
–
things that happen every day. Your mother much prefers that I should remember to write to her on every day and show that I have
not forgotten her when I’ve been away for a day, than, say, once a year, I should give her a diamond necklace then forget her the other days. And when you are married do not forget that your
husband will want to be petted sometimes and will want to see that you love him. He will not care to be the appendage of a beautiful successful hostess who is always too busy to talk and play with
him. There is only one way to be happily married that is for you both to have the same aims in life, to be absolutely frank with each other, to respect each other and not to be ashamed of showing
how you love each other. If you are not prepared for this then don’t get married.

I have said ‘the sermons’ don’t forget to have an aim in life people without them are always unhappy
–
besides which you have no business to help consume the
world’s produce and give nothing in return. As to religion for heavens sake don’t parade it but if you work up to the idea of trying to make everyone a little happier because of your
presence in this world you won’t be far wrong.

Lastly as to your conduct and learning. If you follow the example of your mother you won’t go wrong
–
don’t forget you have the name of a very old family of which
you may well be proud but don’t be merely proud remember that it carries its responsibilities and to belong to an old family carries the responsibility of never staining its escutcheon.
Others will judge you by your own estimate, so it will be well to have plenty of self-respect
–
but above all avoid being proud with nothing to be proud about. Let your motto be
‘Play the game and make life for others happier by your presence.’

Goodnight and kiss your mother. I miss and love her very much for she went through a lot to give you to me.

Your affectionate father.

That was the only letter he ever wrote to her. Five weeks later, he was in action in France on his way to Dunkirk, when the soldier driving him drove into a farm cart. The soldier survived, but
my grandfather, due home on leave for the birth of his son, died shortly afterwards.

My mother never talked to me directly about her father’s death, nor had she shown me that letter. I did not even know where he was buried. But, just before my fortieth birthday, my
daughter, then eight, had opened the drawer beside my bed and brought out an exercise book. It must have come to me from Knowle after my grandmother died, and was full of newspaper cuttings about
the death of her husband. During the collision, one of the cart’s shafts pierced my grandfather’s ribs. He regained consciousness for two hours on the way to the hospital. His only son,
named Raymond after him, was born five days later.

I look through the old photograph albums which also came to me from Knowle. On 15 July 1915, a fortnight after my mother’s first birthday, two snaps taken in the garden at Knowle. My
mother has written under them, much later, in her adult handwriting:
My Father’s Last Leave.

Everyone is sitting on the grass, including a white bull terrier. There is my grandmother, bare-headed, supporting Anne, a baby of twelve months, in a white dress and cardigan. My grandfather,
in his soldier’s uniform, is looking down at his little daughter. In the second photograph, the baby Anne is standing, in the same white dress and cardigan, but this time her father has one
hand up (probably shielding his eyes from the sun) so that his face is hidden, turned away. He will never again be part of that little family.

In the next photograph, taken a year later, my grandmother, a young widow, is sitting with her two small children under a tree at Knowle. She is all in black, except for her white sun bonnet.
Its ribbons hang charmingly down each side of her pretty face. My mother, now a little girl, also in a sun bonnet, is standing behind, her hands on her mother’s shoulders, and there, on my
grandmother’s knee, is my mother’s little brother, lying on his back, his puny legs bent in an odd position, a sort of rictus grin on his face. What was wrong with him? Everyone’s
dead who might have known. I remember again Nah saying that he never sat up, and I know that he died aged three. How pretty my grandmother is! But when I look closely, I see that her smile is
fixed, like that of her disabled son. She is still mourning her beloved husband, and must be horribly aware that her son, who bears his name, and was born a few days after his father was killed, is
not quite right. How much does my mother, nearly three, understand about all this? In this photograph she looks such a robust, happy little girl. Please let her go on being happy! I find myself
wishing.

In earlier albums are photographs of Knowle, taken before my mother was born. There is my mother’s father’s sister, (Aunt Kathleen), with her high cheekbones and pear-shaped face,
hands in a fur muff, standing with a distinguished-looking old man with thick white hair, outside what was once the front door. That old man must be Aunt K’s father, my great-grandfather
Sheffield Grace.

A wing was added to Knowle after Colonel Joseph Benskin – Chow – married my grandmother in 1919. Would she have led her life differently, more simply perhaps, if my grandfather had
lived? I prefer the look of the old house without the extra wing, unfussy, as it was when she saw it as a bride in 1912.

Here are my two grandparents having breakfast together on the lawn outside the old front door. My grandmother has her hair in a single plait down her back and is in a long white dress. He is in
his soldier’s uniform. I recognise their little round table with the teapot on it. I have it in my flat in London.

Here is my grandfather again on the lawn, towering over his girl-wife, jokingly pushing his pipe into her mouth, both of them laughing. How happy they look!

There are even older albums, of Knole, as it was spelt then, in the 1900s. My grandfather Raymond and Aunt K were raised there and, judging from the theatre programmes pasted into the album,
Aunt K acted in amateur theatricals at home and in the nearby village. There are photographs of picnics at Knole, even a snap of Aunt K as a young woman haymaking in the field near the house, with
a woman friend called ‘Bird’, and others of horses, polo ponies belonging to my grandfather. I see that in those days there was a wide gravelled terrace along the top of the garden,
where, twenty or so years later, my grandmother planted ‘The Bridesmaids’.