A Death in the Family

‘I am very much afraid,’ my cousin Hilda wrote, ‘that you may have to suffer a visit from Bernard Prior. He arrived at my house uninvited, and indeed unannounced, last Wednesday and stayed for several hours. He seemed oblivious to my hints that he and that dim little wife of his had long outstayed their welcome, so that in the end I was obliged to be quite
brisk
in my effort to get rid of them.

‘Apparently now that he has retired he has taken up genealogy – such a tedious study, I always think – and wished to glean from me any information I might have about our common ancestors. Appalled as I was at the mere thought of having anything at all in common with Bernard Prior, I made it quite clear that I had nothing to say to him. Unfortunately this did not, as I had hoped, send him on his way. Instead he insisted on telling me at great and boring length what he had already discovered, all of which involved unfolding cumbersome family trees all over the floor, which greatly upset Tolly, who, not unnaturally, considers
that to be his own particular domain…’

There were several more pages in this vein, a sure sign that Hilda was very put out indeed, since her letters are usually brief and to the point and only go beyond one page when her feelings (quite rarely) get the better of her. I did see what she meant though. Bernard Prior is a sort of cousin on my father’s side and, on the few occasions I’ve met him, I’ve resolved never willingly to repeat the experience. Not only is he a dreadful bore but, like nearly all bores, he is convinced that people are delighted to see him and he is very difficult indeed to shake off. Since Hilda’s manner, even to her friends, verges on the acerbic, I could imagine only too well what her ‘briskness’ had been like. The fact that he had upset her beloved Siamese, Tolly, would have made her even more formidable than usual. Not, I imagine, that even that would have penetrated Bernard’s carapace of self-satisfaction.

Before he retired he was the headmaster of a private school in Bristol and like some – though mercifully not all – headmasters he had acquired a tiresomely didactic tone and I always felt that he was addressing me as if I was one of his less intelligent pupils. I mentioned Hilda’s letter to Michael when he rang to ask if I’d look after Alice one evening.

‘We have this tedious dinner thing we really ought to go to,’ he said, ‘and we thought you might like to spend a little time with your granddaughter.’

‘Of course I’d love to,’ I replied, ‘and apart from anything else I plan to be out as much as possible in the immediate future in case Bernard suddenly turns up.’

‘From what I remember of Bernard,’ Michael said grimly, ‘nothing short of emigration will save you from a visit by him. My childhood was blighted by one ghastly afternoon when he went on interminably about steam railways he had visited.’

‘Goodness, yes, I remember that. By the time he finally went I was quite
rigid
with boredom. It’s genealogy this time and, from what Hilda said, it looks as if he wants some
input
from the rest of the family.’

‘Well,’ Michael advised, ‘don’t get the photographs out whatever you do, otherwise you’ll never get rid of him.’

‘What I particularly dislike about him,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘is the way he just turns up without any warning. One time he and Janet arrived just after midday and he simply ignored the fact that we were in the middle of lunch. I did offer them something, but he waved it away and simply carried on talking about whatever he was mad about then while I was clearing the half-eaten food from the table. Janet looked really embarrassed, but I suppose, poor soul, she must be used to it by now. Anyway, she obviously adores him and thinks he’s marvellous – well, she must, else she couldn’t have stood it all these years.’

‘All I can say is the best of luck,’ Michael said. ‘So what about Tuesday? Thea said she’ll give Alice her supper before we go so it’ll be just bath and bedtime story. OK?’

My friend Rosemary was equally sympathetic.

‘Oh, poor you, how vile! I
do
know what you mean. Every family has one. Ours is Uncle Ernest’s youngest son, Tim. He could bore for England – he’s sports mad and knows the date and score of every cricket match since the year dot. Poor Jack, who’s keen enough on cricket, goodness knows, turns pale at the thought of him. He lives in Manchester, thank goodness, so we don’t see that much of him and fortunately Mother was really rude to him last time he was down here so perhaps she’ll have put him off.’

‘Hilda was very rude to Bernard,’ I said with a sort of melancholy pride, ‘but it didn’t seem to have any effect on him at all.’

‘Oh well,’ Rosemary said. ‘Perhaps you can palm him off onto other relations – you’ve got a fair number of cousins and whatnot and some of them live quite near.’

‘That’s a thought,’ I said gratefully. ‘There’s Cousin Richard and his family who’re just the other side of Taunton, and Harry and his lot at Brendon, and poor old Fred, if he’s still alive, I haven’t heard from him for ages. Though of course since he lives in Bristol Bernard may have got at him already. Oh
yes, and there’s Cousin Sybil over at Lynton in that convent place. Only she’s not Sybil any more. I think she’s Sister Veronica now.’

‘I didn’t know you had a cousin in a convent,’ Rosemary said.

‘Some sort of second cousin – I’ve never quite worked out the relationship,’ I said. ‘No doubt Bernard will be able to explain it to me!’

‘What I meant to ask you,’ Rosemary said, ‘is do you feel like coming blackberrying one day? They’re very good this year and just getting properly ripe.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I love blackberries – well I do when they’ve been put through a sieve, I can’t manage those seeds now – but I’m not mad about picking them. I always seem to tear my hands to pieces when I try.’

‘Oh, do come,’ Rosemary urged. ‘We can take a flask and make an afternoon of it. There are always some gorgeous ones up above Robbers Bridge and it’ll be lovely there now the tourists have gone and it’s all peaceful.’

‘Well, I suppose I could always wear some gloves…’

‘Bless you. I want to make some sloe and blackberry jelly so I’ll need quite a lot and I couldn’t face going off to pick them on my own. It’s supposed to be a nice day tomorrow so shall I come for you just after two?’ 

It was a perfect autumn afternoon, quite warm with gleams of bright sunlight coming and going from behind the clouds. We made our way along the hedgerows bordering the track above the river, picking as we went.

‘They’re nice and ripe,’ Rosemary said, ‘but not too squashy.’

‘And,’ I said thankfully, ‘there are quite a few at eye level – I do so hate it when you have to pull down the sprays with the best ones on and they spring back and hit you in the face! They’re just about perfect now – much later and the devil would be in them – isn’t that what they say?’

‘Mm yes. I must say,’ Rosemary went on, ‘there’s something immensely satisfying about gathering things from the hedgerows – sort of
traditional
, what people have always been doing.’

‘And free,’ I said, ‘that makes it even better. When we were small we used to pick the hazelnuts too, do you remember? There never seem to be any now. I wonder why?’

‘I suppose the squirrels have them and there are probably more squirrels now, like there are more rats in towns. Do you know, the last time I was in London I saw a rat in Leicester Square.’

‘No! Really?’

‘Yes, it was sitting up on the pavement bold as brass, absolutely unconcerned, and none of the passers-by took any notice of it. I was appalled.’

When our plastic boxes were full we went back to the car.

‘It’s really quite warm,’ Rosemary said. ‘Shall we have our tea by the river? I’ve got a rug somewhere in the boot.’

Sitting with our cups and slices of Rosemary’s delicious chocolate cake we watched the dragonflies swooping over the river – hardly more than a stream here – while a buzzard hovered over the bracken-covered slopes of the hills behind us.

‘Yes,’ Rosemary said, reverting to her earlier theme, ‘traditional – really timeless, like this valley. It doesn’t look as if it’s changed for hundreds of years. People must have been coming here for centuries, hunting and gathering and whatever they did. Our remotest ancestors…’ She broke off and laughed. ‘Perhaps you’d better send your cousin Bernard out here to get in touch with them.’

‘Don’t remind me,’ I said. ‘I’ve been trying to put it out of my mind.’

But it seemed that I was fated not to do so. A few days later I had a letter from another cousin (my grandfather was one of eight children so there are a multiplicity of cousins both close and remote), Marjorie, who lives in Kirkby Lonsdale.

‘You will be interested to hear,’ she wrote, ‘that I have just had a visit from our cousin Bernard and his wife. They were on a caravanning holiday in the Lakes and said they felt they must look me up as they were so near. Bernard has taken up genealogy,
such a fascinating study I always think, and is most anxious to talk to as many members of the family as possible. He was most interested in all the old photographs I have and borrowed some of them to take away and have copies made. I said I was afraid some of them were sadly faded but he said they can do wonderful things with them nowadays. He was really delighted to learn that I still had some of the letters your Great Uncle John wrote to your grandmother in the First World War, and, of course, the letter and the citation they sent her when he was killed.

‘I told him that your father had inherited the big family Bible with all the dates in it and I said I was sure you would be delighted to show it to him and any other family things that you may have. He said that now he has retired he plans to spend some time in the West Country “rediscovering the family roots”, as he put it. It was so nice to see him and Janet again. They stayed for several hours and Bernard came back the following morning to check on a few things he’d forgotten to ask.’

‘
Bother
Marjorie!’ I said to Michael when I went round to babysit Alice. ‘She’s a dear soul but she does love company – any company – and she obviously had a lovely time listening to Bernard boring on, but I do wish she hadn’t passed him onto me!’

‘Well, you’ll just have to be brisk with him too, like Hilda,’ Michael said.

‘You know I can’t do that. I’m hopeless at being
rude to people. There are several people, people I would gladly never see again, and all it would take would be one really beastly remark and I’d be free of them forever, but somehow I just can’t do it.’

‘Do what?’ asked Thea, coming into the room with Alice.

‘Be really rude to people I dislike so that I don’t have to see them again.’

‘Oh I
do
know what you mean,’ she agreed. ‘You want to so much, but the words simply won’t come!’

Alice, who had been impatiently waiting to attract my attention, tugged at my arm and said, ‘The book, Gran, have you brought the book? You promised.’

‘I hope you have,’ Thea said, ‘she’s been talking about nothing else since she got back from nursery school today.’

‘Of course I have. Linda sent it specially for you Alice, all the way from America.’

‘America!’ Alice echoed, the word obviously having no meaning for her. ‘Read it now!’

‘When you’ve had your bath and are in bed.’

Alice rushed towards the stairs. ‘Come on Gran!’

‘I’ve left some sandwiches and things in the kitchen and help yourself to drinks and whatever. Oh yes, and the telephone number’s on the kitchen table. We should be back about 10.30…’

‘Come along Thea!’ Michael said, as impatient as his daughter. ‘Ma knows where everything is – we’ll be late.’

Thea gave me an apologetic smile and disappeared after him.

When I had read
The Moose in the House
to Alice (three times) and she was finally settled and asleep, I looked down at my granddaughter and wished, as I so often did, that my husband, Peter, and my mother were still alive and could have seen her. I stood there for a while thinking of parents and children, going back generation after generation. I’ve never really understood about genes, but I thought of how little bits of people who had gone before were present in their descendants and that somehow something of Peter and my mother were there in the sleeping form before me. It was a comforting thought and I smiled and pulled the coverlet more tidily over Alice and, leaving the door slightly ajar, went downstairs to my smoked salmon sandwiches and my copy of
Mapp and Lucia.

Possibly the same mood was still with me next day because I was moved to open the glass-fronted bookcase in the sitting room (where the ‘special’ books had always been kept) and take out the big family Bible. I noticed somewhat guiltily that the leather binding was beginning to crumble at the corners and made a resolution to rub in some lanolin (could one still get lanolin?) to try and restore it. The leather was embossed with a pattern and it was still possible to read the lettering round the circle in the middle: Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge. I laid it on the table in the dining room, because it was too heavy to hold, and opened it.

On the flyleaf in Gothic lettering were the words: Samuel Prior: His Book: 18
^th
November 1830 – presumably the date of his Confirmation. Inside the cover there was a long list, covering both sides, recording the births of generations of my father’s family, beginning with ‘Mary Prior, born at nine o’clock on the evening of 10
^th
September 1846’. The writing was brown and faded but still clear enough to read. The entries ended with the record of my father’s birth and I felt a faint sense of disappointment that I was not included in that list.

Taking down the Bible that had belonged to my father I saw that he had recorded the date of his marriage to my mother and the dates of the birth of my brother and myself. Under the entry for my brother the date of his death, together with the words ‘In action in Cyprus’, was neatly written.

I sat for quite a while, not really looking at the volumes before me, but absorbing the information they contained. Then I shut them, put them away and went into the kitchen to cook some of the blackberries I’d picked with Rosemary. Foss, my Siamese, attracted by the sound of someone in the kitchen materialised suddenly and, leaping up onto the worktop, began his inevitable demands for food. Tris, who had been sleeping peacefully in his dog basket, decided he was missing something and
joined in with short excited barks. Brought back to reality and the present day I opened tins for them both and put the radio on just in time for a talk on divorce settlements on ‘Woman’s Hour’.