The Basque wars were a dim memory by the time I came across the garment in a musty bottom drawer. Peach satin and black lace, home-made, whalebone carefully stitched into the seams to cinch a waist to hand span proportions. It was impossible to reconcile this saucy item with the generous proportions, (think Clarissa Dickson Wright) of my elderly and somewhat masculine Aunt. Yet there it was, painstakingly wrapped in tissue paper, preserving the memory of nights long ago, of a youthful persona.

The hours of careful hand stitching deserved more than being slung in the rubbish bin; it certainly couldn’t go to the charity shop, it was of no use whatsoever to its semi-comatose owner, now lying in a nursing home bed. It took its place, along with the rusty Carr’s biscuit tin in the shape of a London bus, full of letters and photographs, and quite illogically made a new home for itself in the bottom drawer of the utilitarian chest beside her hospital bed.

Why? I have no idea. I hadn’t felt able to pry into the contents of the tin, so obviously private; just a feeling that this was the essence of a woman the nursing home staff would only know as a somewhat rotund and awkward patient, to be turned, washed, and fed by rote.

The house was ‘cleared’ eventually – in the language of the probate solicitors. The generations of irons, still preserved in their original boxes as new fangled versions took their place, went off to a museum. The ‘Sam Brown’s’ in leather suitcases found a home with a collector. I still have the tags from the gas masks, the ration books, the white china shoes from my Grandmother’s wedding cake.

Eventually the call came – ‘come quickly!’ I sat by her bedside, speaking aloud of nothing in particular, hoping that she could hear my voice and it would give her some comfort as she slipped away. An hour turned into two, three, and running out of subjects to speak of, I remembered the basque and the tin.

Gnarled fingers moved imperceptibly as I placed the soft fabric into the palm of her hand – did she realise what she was holding? I opened the tin, and feeling emboldened by her presence, started to read the letters aloud.

Letters posted at 7am, answered at coffee time, the reply received in time for lunch, and the postcard announcing that he would be there at tea time. Did we really once have so many postal deliveries? Apparently so. The conversations that lovers have by text these days, recorded for ever on tiny sheets of lined paper.

‘Precious One’? My down to earth Uncle, with his pipe and slippers, his dry humour, his potting shed and his cacti, was ‘Precious One’ – he too once had another life I had never glimpsed before. A life when ‘Darling Girl’ fretted as he took the early morning train to war time London, and sighed with relief when she opened the mid morning post to learn that he arrived safely at his conference. ‘Darling Girl’ would be at the station on his return at 4.30 and they would take tea at the AddlePieOttel (there’s one for my fellow Scousers) before racing to the matinee performance at the Philharmonic Hall.

Questions only vaguely referred to in the sparse family history were answered. The comical phone call I had once taken in the middle of a business meeting from the Coroner investigating my Uncle’s death – did I know where and when my Uncle’s testicles had left their normal emplacement…..try answering that one with a straight face. Now I did. A series of letters between them told of his illness, childish stick drawings showed him lying on a table undergoing some sort of radium therapy; discreet allusions were made to a childless future together if ‘Darling Girl’ could possibly contemplate that.

Well, well, well, so the sardonic asides that theirs had been a marriage of convenience in late life were untrue. There were other reasons that made marriage not so necessary besides the fact that the Civil Service would not countenance married couples working together. Why not maintain the fiction that he was ‘Dave the lodger’; why wreck two careers, if there were never going to be children? The Basque spoke of private desires fulfilled.

Deeper into the box, and the photographs. The fine young man in his ‘It ain’t half hot Mum’ shorts, leaning proudly against the land rover against a back ground of palm trees and sand in an age when he couldn’t have dreamt of driving a real motor car in working class Liverpool. ‘Donald’ was scrawled across the back. Good Lord my Father! I had never seen him as a young man.

Seven identical sepia photographs, taken against the same curtained background of young men in First World War air force, army and navy uniforms, carefully named on the back each time. Of course ‘- the Great Uncles’, only three had returned from that carnage, but with what pride had they been photographed, carefully portioned out between the armed services, as they set off to do their duty for King and country.

And the five Great Aunts! All photographed in a stuffed Victorian armchair, apparently all possessed of identical dresses…or maybe there was just the one dress deemed grand enough for the family portraits.

A nurse peered over my shoulder, momentarily distracted from her task of checking fading blood pressure. ‘Is that Ailsa?’ ‘No’ I said, ‘these are her Aunts, and look they all have the same blemish on their right jaw as Ailsa, and my Father here, and, and’…..I nervously fingered my own jaw. I had noticed a slight lump appearing in middle life. She lifted a wrist to check her pulse and the Basque fell from her grasp, I put it back in Ailsa’s other hand. What’s that’, she said. ‘A blast from the past’ said I.

At the bottom of the tin ware two metal photographs. My Great Grandmother – naturally with an Aspidistra, and a Sweet Shop in Scotland Road; the escape from the poverty of Edinburgh. The new life which had taken them all to Liverpool, a life spent boiling sugar, burning fingers, and hand wrapping boiled sweets carefully stored in glass jars.

Years ago, if you frequented the auctions, you would come across boxes of such photographs, unwanted by the family, or perhaps unappreciated by the Solicitor given to clearing the family home for probate sale. I used to wonder why no one wanted them.

Now I wonder, what do we leave for future generations to pore over? The love letters sent by text; the photographs downloaded onto hard drives that expire and we lose them all; the clothing, disposable and cleared out on a regular basis to make way for new things; the sheer mobility of modern generations. We head like lemmings to the genealogy sites, downloading the hard cold census facts; but do we leave future generations the copy of ‘Cacti for Beginners’ and the tangible evidence that its owner was dreaming of ‘Darling Girl’ in her Basque as he navigated the sharp spines?

Think on as your family gathers together this Christmas, find an old biscuit tin, preferably rusty, and put together your own collection for future generations.

John December 22, 2010 at 20:56

As someone recently bereaved I found that very moving and comforting. Your
aunt was very fortunate to have someone so sensitive to look after her last
hours.

Gloria Smudd
December 21, 2010 at 21:41

I have a drawer full of the most exquisite frillies, none of which now fit
me, all bought for me by an ardent Mr Smudd at the height of our mutual
passion and all once (or thrice) worn with the desired effect.

It tickles me to think of the aghast offspring ‘finding’ these as they
somehow find themselves rifling through the darkest recesses of our bedroom
while we are out! Ha-ha! Be careful what you look for, kids!

Pericles December 21, 2010 at 18:08

Poetry dressed as prose, Anna.

ΠΞ

SadButMadLad December 21, 2010 at 17:00

As always, a well written story that really makes you feel like you’re
there.

As an avid genealogy nut I’ve done a huge amount of research into my
surname worldwide and taken it back to the 1600s. But I wonder how it will
progress in the future, let alone the next few decades. As society changes
everything becomes more ephemeral.

No more letter writing, everything by phone and text and email. No
archiving of your old emails and they are so easily lost when you switch from
one program to another let along switching ISPs. No more photo albums as
everything is kept on a media server to view on your TV and easily lost by a
power surge or hard disk failure. No one takes into account the changing file
formats which mean that you might not actually be able access your old photos
in a few decades. Technology changes so often but we don’t keep the contents
up to data. Who has family videos on Betamax but didn’t transfer them to
VHS?

But it’s more than that. The whole of society is changing. More
partnerships and couples living together, less marriages. More divorces. Women
not taking the husband’s name. Etc. It makes it hard to keep track of whats
happening. Except when children have unusual names which is a counterpoint to
the other issues. Try matching up families when you have 80 Williams living
between 1850-1960!

And then there is the privacy aspect. Because the state interferes too much
(and loses records so easily) people become more hesitant about divulging
their personal details so the next census or two might be the last. Especially
when the state starts to existing databases rather than conduct a census to
get the data.

The job of a genealogist is always interesting becasue society is always
changing and it’s more than just recording names and dates.

Demetrius December
21, 2010 at 15:18

Was the sweet shop Gambles? Memories and more memories.

Andrew Duffin
December 21, 2010 at 13:38

Touching.

In a similar way, I have found (1) My grandfather’s medal from the Battle
of Jutland; (2) His application to move to a less hazardous job (he was a
stoker on a Battle Cruiser); (3) His CO’s note refusing said application (“too
good a worker to lose”); (4) The surveyor’s and builder’s correspondence
relating to war damage to my grandparents’ house in the East End of London;
(5) A program from a test match at Headingley some time in the 60′s, signed by
every member of the England team at the time; (6) the original bill (£58.11!!)
and guarantee for an upright piano which I still have and which is still
played regularly, and under whose keyboard my mother and aunt slept during the
blitz, which probably saved their lives and mine, since the house next door
was demolished by a land mine.

And much, much more.

Everyone should have a few such keepsakes in their lives somewhere!

Dioclese December
21, 2010 at 12:51

I spent years researching my genealogy back to pre 1066 and stuck it all on
the web. Then I got into family history – beyond the dates and names. Then I
got into Social History. It’s all very engrossing and never ending.

I have old photos, sone of which I cannot identify but most I have managed.
I then started teaching genealogy. I used to say to my students that the
saddest thing was that by the time I got interested, all the people I could
ask were dead. There were one or two exceptions, but their recollections
seemed in general to be ‘conveniently unreliable’

I have now been writing my memoirs. I might start again as they are a bit
of a mess, but I am 120 pages in so far. I do wonder if my children and
grandchildren will ever be interested enough to read it, should it not have
been discarded first of course!

JuliaM December
21, 2010 at 12:15

A great post!

But…what if you have no relatives to pass these on to? One of the saddest
sights is to see an old family album at a boot sale or jumble sale,
unwanted.

Jeremy Poynton
December 21, 2010 at 11:58

Ms. R. By my desk I have a box full of the letters my father wrote to my
mother while on service in India. Hundreds, it seems, as they are all on
airmail paper. I have lifted a few at random – 1944, promoted to Major and he
is the youngest Major ever in his regiment (The Guides Cavalry – in full,
“(10th Queen Victoria’s Own Frontier Force)”, and the youngest ever Major in
active service in the Indian Army. I have some trepidation about going through
them all – they were fabulously in love, all their lives – but want to get
them all scanned so that all sides of the family have a chunk of family
history that otherwise might have just disappeared.

Chris December 21, 2010 at 11:48

Dusty in here, isn’t it?

(seem to have something in my eye…)

Bill December 21, 2010 at 11:20

Beautiful.

lenko December 21, 2010 at 10:55

That’s a lovely post Anna.

A year or so ago, talking to my sister about our own father and mother, I
realised that I never really KNEW them as people. Just as their labels — Mum
and Dad. And now they’re both gone, and it’s too late to ask the questions.

So I’ve begun writing out my own life story — not that it’s particularly
interesting — not for publication, but for my own grandchildren (who are in
Oz), so they too may one day realise that I wasn’t just the boring old git
they knew, back in the old country.

It’s something perhaps all of us should do.

wassname December 21, 2010 at 10:31

Nice story Anna. I admit to heading for the genealogy sites but not as a
lemming. I have a couple of biscuit tins and memories that I’ve waited years
to assimilate and record for the grandson I now have. I have also been able to
prove certain stories believed to be far fetched by certain relatives. It’s
slow going though because the cold facts are just the skeleton. I’ll add the
flesh and blood by attaching cuttings, pictures and letters in the media
sections of the family tree application and tell the individual stories in the
notes section. When he’s old enough, I’ll hand it to him and have
conversations with him about the way we were and hope he learns alot more than
the twaddle they seem to teach in nu-history these days.

David C December 21, 2010 at 10:14

Beautifully written Anna, thanks.