Jessie Fysh died.
Entry in the Agapemone diary
for Thursday, 15 October 1953
I had never met Jessie Fysh. Yet the moment news of her death reached home, my mother and two uncles were talking about how she had left them between £10,000 and £11,000 in trust, whatever ‘in trust’ meant.
I was nearly always on my own when I had a weekend home from boarding school by this stage. But being the lone child in a house of elderly people had its advantages. I went almost unnoticed, something I soon learned to exploit. I found if I looked as though I was reading, everyone assumed I wasn’t listening either. I did a lot of hanging about in tall wing chairs and horsehair sofas, open book in hand, in those days.
I soon learned that 92-year-old Jessie had once lived in the Agapemone but had gone to live with her sister in Weston-super-Mare, the seaside town in north Somerset. But she had never forgotten her happy days in my grandfather’s community and left his children what seemed an enormous sum of money to my cashstrapped mother and uncles. Such a legacy, my mother and Uncle David argued, would surely ease their money problems, even after paying their brother’s current debts and then dividing the remainder between the three of them.
But as with everything concerning money when it came to our family, there was a catch – Jessie’s will had stipulated the money must be used for the religious purposes of the Church of the Ark of the Covenant in Clapton, north London. (I learned about this while staring vacantly at my book as I strained to keep track of yet another muttered conversation.) ‘But a service hasn’t been held there since just before you were born,’ Mummy said to my uncle. ‘Toto told me.’
‘And that’s damn near 50 years,’ replied Uncle David. ‘It’s no good. I’ll just have to make an appointment for us to see the solicitor to sort this out.’
‘And spend more money,’ countered Mummy.
‘I don’t see any alternative,’ he replied.
The front door shut behind them. I heard the gravel scrunching beneath their feet as they made their way down the drive to the Lamb Inn for their pre-luncheon drink. I closed my book and eased myself off the leather sofa in the hall, where I had been lounging. It was time to find out more about this strange Ark of the Covenant.
The study was deserted, as I knew it would be between midday and one o’clock. The oval table, at which my grandmother, mother and uncles would lunch, was already laid with the ornate King’s pattern silver that had once belonged to my father’s family but which for many years had been used exclusively in Belovèd’s End. Ellen would be having her own dinner in the kitchen parlour and would not return until just before ten to one, when she would bring Granny downstairs and guide her to her seat at the head of the table.
A fire crackled in the grate and Gay lay at full stretch on the hearth rug as I carefully picked my way between her long legs until I was close up to the small framed photograph of an ornate church which hung to one side of the fireplace.
Over lunch that day, I considered each of my fellow diners, wondering whom I could ask about the Ark of the Covenant. I had already discounted Waa, who had told me she had never visited it. Surely Violet Morris, who was an architect, would know. Besides, I loved visiting these two old ladies in their large East Gate home, with its bright, airy rooms and walled garden. I would spend an entire afternoon dusting all six drawers of Violet’s egg collection. Other times, I would visit Olive in her carpentry studio just off the kitchens, where she would wield her chisels, planes, augers and carpenter’s square, her hands moving with astonishing dexterity, despite her arthritic fingers.
Their sitting room was in darkness when I was ushered in later that afternoon. Tea had long finished and the two old ladies were waiting by their television for the news, which they would listen to at such a volume I could hear it from the road beyond their garden. I would have to ask my questions quickly before I was drowned out by the newsreader.
‘What brings you here, miss?’ bellowed Olive from her comfortable armchair.
‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ I enunciated.
‘And collect your usual?’ she queried, with a knowing grin.
‘Um-hm,’ I acknowledged. The half-crowns which all the old ladies gave me whenever I returned to school made up most of my school pocket money. ‘And I wanted to know something about the Ark of the Covenant.’
‘Speak up, child.’ Olive fumbled for her ear trumpet.
‘SHE WANTS TO KNOW ABOUT THE ARK,’ Violet shouted.
‘Ah, poor Jessie! Never did have much sense, that one,’ her sister retorted. ‘They will soon go through her money, if they get their hands on it. Mark my words.’
Could she be talking about my mother and uncles, I wondered. And then I realised she must be when her sister shushed her with a warning glance in my direction.
‘You’ve come to the right person, Kitty,’ said Violet. ‘My father and brother designed it. And I helped them.’ I stared at the quiet little grey mouse of a woman before me with increased respect. Designing houses was one thing – I knew she had just finished working on one in the village – but a church?
She told me how in the 1890s Dear Belovèd was drawing such crowds with his preaching that a proper church was needed. A plot of land on Rookwood Road, near Clapton Common, was bought by a group of 13 people, including my great-grandfather Charles Stokes Read and Violet’s father, who was a well-known architect and the county surveyor of roads and bridges for Berkshire.
Violet said she and her father and her brother Frank had put together a design which included a simple hall with a single-span, high-pitched roof, a semi-octagonal chancel, and a tower and spire at the western end. The church also contained several offices and meeting rooms below ground. ‘It cost £15,000. That was a lot of money in those days,’ she said. ‘And the congregation raised all the money. Toto’s father even paid for the hymn books.’
But Violet was most proud of the artwork, such as the statues, mosaics and, above all, those astonishing windows. ‘What a time my father and brother had persuading Mr Crane to do the designs,’ she recalled. ‘It was his first attempt at stained-glass windows.’
‘I carved the pulpit,’ interrupted Olive, who had been following the conversation by waving the large end of her ear trumpet from one of us to the other.
‘And what a day it was, when it opened,’ Violet went on. ‘Rookwood Road was jammed from one end to the other. People came from miles to see it.’ Her face softened, ‘Your grandfather preached the most wonderful sermon that day.’
‘Why isn’t it used now?’ I asked.
‘Because your mother and her brothers—’ Olive burst out.
‘Now, dear,’ Violet interrupted. The mantel clock began chiming.
‘Spoilt, that’s what they were,’ Olive continued muttering.
I thought back to Granny May’s caustic comments about Mummy and her brothers. She wasn’t alone in her view, it seemed.
‘Time for the news,’ Violet announced loudly, switching on the television set.
I said goodbye and left, disturbed by Olive’s criticism of my mother and uncles but grateful for my new-found knowledge – plus the two half-crowns the old ladies had not forgotten to give me.
* * *
It was nearly nine o’clock that same evening when Gay began to growl, a deep throaty sound that filled the study and brought my mother and uncle up from their chairs.
‘What’s up, Gay?’ My mother crossed the room and stroked the tall, leggy animal. Gay was attempting to push aside the net curtains that hung across the French windows looking out over Eden’s garden. Her rangy body was vibrating, the sound coming from deep within her.
‘There’s someone out there,’ said Uncle David.
‘Perhaps it’s the village constable doing his rounds?’
My uncle shook his head. ‘Gay knows him; she’d never growl at him. I’m going to call the police.’ He left the room.
‘Do you think someone is trying to tar and feather us, like they did my great-grandfather?’ I asked.
My mother’s eyes widened. ‘I’d forgotten you knew about that,’ she admitted after a long pause. ‘But no, Kitty, I don’t think there’s any danger of that. It’s probably just a couple of village louts coming home from the pub and deciding it would be a lark to come in here.’ She paused again and then, with concern in her voice, said, ‘But I’m glad, Kitty, you didn’t go over to the Ledermans this evening.’
‘They’re away.’ I had got so used to spending the evening with them that when I found out they had left for a trip to Germany while I was at school I had felt bereft. Now I was quite glad I hadn’t been coming back across the lawn alone, even though Mr or Mrs Lederman always watched me safely home from their doorway.
Uncle David returned within minutes to say the village constable had answered the phone himself, ‘So it couldn’t have been him.’ He went on to report that the policeman would take a walk round the estate immediately. ‘And in the meantime,’ he said, ‘no one should go out.’
My mother and uncle drew the heavy curtains across the windows, something they rarely bothered with. I followed them as they checked each of the mansion’s several outside doors to make sure they were locked and bolted.
‘I’ll bet you, Lavita, it was that article about Jessie’s money in the paper,’ remarked my uncle. ‘Pat showed it to me, today.’
‘You’d think reporters would have better things to write about,’ my mother replied.
‘Why are the newspapers writing about us?’ I asked, puzzled.
My mother and uncle stopped and turned, staring at me in surprise, as though they had forgotten I was still around. ‘Because they have nothing better to do,’ my uncle said flatly.
‘And you, Kit, should be in bed. It’s back to school tomorrow.’
I heard later that Uncle Pat showed up soon after with a cage in which squawked half a dozen grey-speckled Pearl guinea fowl.
‘They’re the best guard dogs there are; far better than geese,’ he explained.
And so they proved, shrieking a forewarning from their perch in the top of Granny’s blue cedar if anyone even tried the handle of the community’s locked entrance door.
* * *
I was usually too busy at school to think about home, especially as I now had my pony and a friend had recently sold me a couple of baby rabbits, which I kept in a building set aside for students’ pets. But the jibes about Mummy and my uncles being spoilt began to haunt me; they also seemed to imply that Waa was one of the culprits and she was beyond reproach as far as my sisters and I were concerned.
‘Waa, were Mummy and the uncles spoilt when they were children?’ I burst out the evening I returned home for the Christmas holidays. I was already in bed and Waa had come to tuck me in and switch out the light. It was a little ritual that brought me comfort every night of my childhood.
‘Why do you ask, Kitty?’ Waa lowered herself onto the bed, as if she had all the time in the world.
‘Granny May said they were, when I stayed with her that time and then so did—’ I hesitated, not wanting to sneak on Olive, or Emily (being a sneak at school was the very worst of crimes, one I was determined not to commit).
Waa smiled and patted my hand. ‘They were very special, Kitty. They were Belovèd’s children.’ She stared into the distance, as if recalling those halcyon days. ‘Were they spoilt? I don’t think so. Certainly no more than any child should be spoilt.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps if anyone did any spoiling it was Katie. Oh, how she loved them.’
‘She sounds nice.’
‘She was a wonderful woman.’ Waa rose from the bed. ‘Remember, Kitty, a lot was expected of the three of them because they were Belovèd’s children.’
‘More than Daddy, when he used to stay here?’
‘Much, much more.’
‘Did Mummy and the uncles get into trouble if they were naughty?’ That was my definition of spoilt. ‘Like when Uncle Pat rode his bicycle through the picnic.’
Waa laughed, reaching to the bedside light and plunging the room into darkness. ‘Do you know, Kitty, I simply can’t remember.’
* * *
Having a pony of my own had given me a freedom of movement I had previously only imagined. Where once I would have not even dared to venture beyond the community gates – unless it was to the corner shop, and then only when I could be sure it would be empty of customers – during the summer of 1953 I found I could roam at will. No longer did I retreat when I caught sight of a group of village children. From high up in the saddle I could ignore this imagined enemy or, at the most, grandly lift my horse whip in greeting as Pinto clip-clopped by. This meant I could indulge my interest in collecting birds’ eggs. Over the years, I had located just about every nest on the estate, but riding Pinto, I could roam much further afield, as well as spot any nests from my lofty perch atop him. I wanted a collection to rival Violet’s, being careful to obey her rule of only one egg from each nest unless I was sure it had already been abandoned.
I had so much freedom, I often didn’t even bother to return home for lunch. Nobody appeared to worry and nobody asked me where I had been when I returned in the late afternoon. Sometimes I would beg the kitchen to make me sandwiches, but mostly I told no one where I was going, preferring to merely stop at the village shop and buy a bottle of Tizer and a Crunchie bar. And then one day Mrs Lederman asked me if I would like to go to the seaside with them the following morning.
‘Don’t forget to ask your mother’s permission,’ she reminded me.
I was in the back seat of their car, along with David and baby Ruth, heading down the road when Mrs Lederman called over her shoulder from the front seat, ‘You did remember to tell your mother, didn’t you, Kitty?’
My heart sank. ‘Yes,’ I lied, comforting myself that no one would notice my absence.
I was in seventh heaven that day, doing what most ordinary families did: picnicking, playing catch on the wide sandy beaches of Weston-super-Mare, helping lug Ruth, now a lusty one year old, up and down the steps from the car. David and I even had a swim in the cold, shallow water.
It was dark by the time the car’s headlights picked out the stables at home, where the Ledermans had been given permission to park their car. In their glow, I saw two figures hurrying towards us. Mummy’s face was streaked with tears; behind her loomed Uncle David. Mr Lederman rolled down the car window.
‘Is Kitty with you?’ Mummy said as she thrust her head inside the car.
‘Yes, she is,’ replied Mr Lederman. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘We were just about to call the police,’ replied my mother.
Terrified I might be banned from seeing the Ledermans, I confessed that I had lied to Mrs Lederman when asked if I had been given permission to accompany them. It was a tricky few days, with the whole community apparently having an opinion on how I should be punished, but they were gentle mutterings and within days it had blown over.
‘Just don’t do it again,’ said my mother.
Perhaps, I wondered as I reflected on the lack of retribution, it wasn’t just my mother and uncles who were spoilt.
* * *
That summer I had hoped to stay at school and watch the coronation of Elizabeth II, the new Queen of England, on the television set rented for the purpose by one of the teachers; however, the historic event had been decreed a national holiday and only those children whose parents were abroad were allowed to remain at school. On returning home for this unexpected holiday, I found the Ledermans again away. Worse still, from my entirely self-centred point of view, Olive Morris wasn’t well; she had shingles, and so instead of watching the ceremony on television as I had expected, Waa and I, plus Margaret, who was home from art college, listened to it on the radio in one of the attic bedrooms.
Perhaps because we had not been able to watch the coronation, or perhaps because she had decided that Ellen was no longer up to the task – the elderly KP was getting decidedly doddery – my grandmother asked Margaret and me to clean out her curio cabinet. If only, I thought, she had asked a couple of years earlier, when the task would have put me in seventh heaven. Now, it seemed more like just another chore.
But the two of us dusted and cleaned every single tiny ivory saucepan and wooden cow before starting on the bottom shelf and a collection of long, flat presentation boxes in maroon imitation leather.
‘I could use this for repairing that corner of the stable wall,’ I said as I lifted a solid silver bricklayer’s trowel out of the first box.
Margaret removed the trowel from my hands. ‘It’s not for use, Kitty. It’s a presentation trowel.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s made to commemorate something, usually a building.’
‘What building?’
‘It could be the East Gate.’ She held it up at an angle to read the inscription on the blade: ‘Easter Sunday, 1905, Isaiah 54:10–12.’
I took the trowel from her and read the inscription for myself.
‘Why don’t you look the verse up in a Bible?’ she suggested.
‘I know where there’s one.’ I ran from the room to return moments later with my school Bible. Flicking to the right page, I began to read:
For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that have mercy on thee.
O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires.
And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones.
I looked up. ‘Phew, that’s a mouthful. What do you suppose it means?’
‘Somewhere to go to that’s peaceful?’ suggested Margaret. ‘Like here.’ The silence of the afternoon enveloped us like a blanket. It was certainly peaceful.
‘But carbuncles?’ I searched for the verse. ‘Gates of them?’
Margaret’s eyes sparkled. ‘Sounds like something to do with sore feet, like Ellen’s corns.’
I returned to my room and fetched my school dictionary. Carbuncles, I read, could be red precious stones, malignant growths or small pieces of coal. ‘You were half-right.’ I said. ‘But gates of rubies? We’d be rich!’
A few weeks later, Violet confirmed our suspicions. She told me how the trowel had been presented to Belovèd to commemorate the completion of the East Gate House, where she and her sister now lived but which she had designed as a retirement home for her parents. Then she took me outside and showed me the inscription carved into the house’s loggia.
But that was in the future. Back on that afternoon, we continued cleaning until all that was left was the collection of delicate porcelain mugs that sat on the bottom shelf of the glass-fronted area of the cupboard. We had been instructed to take them to Granny’s bathroom and wash them gently in her basin, using the rainwater tap.
‘Margaret, why does this say Glory on it?’ I asked as I deciphered the ornate Gothic letters painted on one side. I picked up a second mug. ‘This one has the word Power on it.’ Then a third. ‘And this one says Life.’
‘They’re christening mugs.’
I looked at them again. ‘That doesn’t make sense. Glory, Power and Life aren’t names. That’s what you say in church, sort of.’
My sister stared at me. ‘You mean you don’t know that Uncle David’s real name is Glory? And that Uncle Pat is Power. And Life – Lavita – is Mummy. La vita is Italian for ‘the life’, I think.’
‘But they’re not their names,’ I protested, ‘are they?’ I searched my sister’s face for that telltale sign she was teasing – the sparkle of glee in those huge dark brown eyes that always gave her away.
‘I promise I’m telling the truth, Kitty.’ She carefully laid the washed mugs back on the tray. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’ And then she grinned and I was plunged into doubt.
‘I’m going to ask Waa.’
‘Ask away – but not until we’ve finished.’
Waa confirmed that yes, those were their proper names and yes, she supposed I might think they were peculiar.
Peculiar! There was that word again. Could my mother’s and uncles’ weird names be one of what seemed a growing number of reasons why our family was thought ‘peculiar’?
Glory, Power and Life! David, Patrick and Lavita! In the early entries of the Agapemone diary, Belovèd’s children are always referred to by the extraordinary names they were given at their christenings. It is only in later years that they are referred to as David, Patrick – more often Panion – and Lavita. But why? I suspect that, as they became more aware of their situation and mixed with other children, such as my father’s family of five boys, these three luckless members of the Holy Family were allowed to use more normal names.