Part One 1973

My mother’s favourite television programme in the 1970s was The Waltons. The series tells the story of a three generation Baptist family living in rural Virginia during the Depression. Critics considered the show naive and sentimental, but its dedicated followers found it charming and sensitively written. I liked it because there were so many Walton children and I desperately wanted siblings, especially a kindly order brother like John Boy, who would take an interest in me and help me feel safe in the world. My mother liked company when she watched television, and so when I reached an age where I was at risk of drifting away from The Waltons, she hit on a plan: she suggested I sew a patchwork quilt, just like the one Mary Ellen had made in the quilting bee episode. She told me that she had a pillowcase full of material, including pieces of her wedding dress and scraps of linen and silk that had belonged to my grandmother. So, in the evenings I began to sew my quilt, joining my mother, not only for The Waltons, but also, on occasion, for The Galloping Gourmet and The Val Doonican Show.

Taken from The Absent Prince: In search of missing men

Part Two 2020

For several months, I spent every afternoon in what my husband began to refer to as the ‘sewing room’. In the days before we were visited by a global pandemic, the sewing room was in fact the guest room. Since March, however, the free movement of people in and out of our house is ‘verboten’ and flouting the rules can incur an on-the-spot fine of £200.

Three weeks after lockdown was imposed, I learned that I was to be a grandmother. Once I’d digested this wonderful piece of news and come to terms with the aching disappointment that I would be spending very little time with our daughter during her pregnancy, I began thinking about an appropriate gift. Whilst on a visit to the attic, I re-discovered my mother’s pillowcase full of linen sheets and lace-edged napkins. The hand- embroidered tablecloths from her trousseau date back to the early 1940s. My grandmother’s thick and creamy linen aprons are pre-WWI and Great Aunt Bertha’s sheets and pillow cases recall her days as a ‘gouvernante de lingerie’. Some pieces are embossed with their initials, expertly stitched in white and duck-egg blue thread – LK.RK.BG.

Using my 47 year old patchwork quilt as inspiration, I spent the next four months repurposing these ancestral remnants to make a quilt for my granddaughter. Trading in Waltons’ Mountain, Virginia for Starrs Hollow, Connecticut, I watched my way through 82 episodes of The Gilmore Girls as I cut and stitched and pieced together Thea’s quilt.

In 1902, Thea’s Great Great Great Aunt Bertha moved from her tiny village in Switzerland to the French Riviera, where, for 8 years she was employed in the linen room at The Grand Hotel du Louvre in Marseille. In 1910 she returned to Switzerland to work at resort hotels in Gstaad and finishing schools on the shores of Lake Leman. Her employers describe Bertha Gilomen as hard-working, dependable, loyal and morally upright but work was seasonal and in spite of her excellent references, Bertha lost her job at The Palace Hotel in Lausanne shortly before the outbreak of WWI. She was unemployed for 16 months. After the war, Bertha found a position as a housekeeper at The Grand Hotel Dent du Midi in Champery before falling into another period of extended unemployment. I have no idea what my great aunt did to survive during these fallow years. She was unmarried and there was no social security. Bertha moved to Davos in 1926 and spent the next eight years working in tuberculosis sanatoriums. The exclusive alpine resort was to become a notorious Nazi outpost, often referred to as ‘Hitlerbad’. Bertha’s final position was at The Savoy Hotel in Zurich and her career ended as the Second World War began. She retired at the age of 57 and moved to a small rented apartment near the Basel train station. Bertha Gilomen died in 1966 at the age of 84.

My still tiny granddaughter, born in 2020, will have opportunities that Aunt Bertha, born in 1882, did not have. Although Thea will not be spared the inevitable setbacks and sadness associated with being human, she will, I hope, also inherit some of the strength, resourcefulness and resilience of her Great Great Great Aunt Bertha.

One bleak winter afternoon in 2013, I typed the words “Rustic cabin on the water, North Carolina” into a search engine. I had never heard of Harkers Island but the salt-stained, wooden cottage with its floor-to-ceiling windows and views across open water to Shacklelford Banks, looked perfect. Shackleford is home to a herd of wild horses. According to local legend they are the descendants of shipwrecked Spanish mustangs from the 16th century.  

For the next few years, I would spend two weeks of every year on Harkers Island, a 12 hour journey from my home in North Hertfordshire.  

The island has a strong identity and a long tradition of oral history. In 1987, a group of local women from the Methodist church decided to write a book. Ostensibly it is a cookery book but it is also the story of the island and how its people got there.

Those born and raised on Harkers Island speak a dialect that has its roots in Elizabethan English and they are affectionately referred to as ‘Hoi toiders’. The community has lived by fishing and boat building for more than 300 years but, new regulations, pollution and the importation of cheap fish from Asia are all contributing to a slow decline and the closure of many of the fish houses.

The sense of community, however, remains strong and questions such as “You from off? “(ie. not from the island) and “Got anybody in the graveyard?” (ie. how long has your family been on the island?) help determine who belongs and who doesn’t.  

Of course the locals weren’t the first to settle on Harkers Island and when their ancestors arrived from England in 1701, they chased off the Coree People, an Indigenous American tribe, so tiny that they only lived in this particular area of the Carolinas. 

In May 2015, I was researching the role of religion in my ancestry and I decided to visit both the Pentecostal and the Baptist churches on the island. In England you can slip into a church service and be largely ignored, so I was surprised to be greeted at the door by a very short lady with a very tall beehive. When she heard my British accent, she was enchanted and rushed me down the aisle to meet the deacon. He too was thrilled to bits and wrote down my name and the town where I was from.

Soon I was standing in a sea of people, all wanting to know how I had got to the island and why I had come. ‘We’ve never had a visitor from England before’, declared one. 

Before Brother Anthony began his very long, very rousing sermon, I was given a ‘Harkers Island’ welcome. While I sat, slightly embarrassed on my velvet pew, the entire congregation got to its feet to clap and cheer my arrival.  Afterwards my picture was taken ‘for the church records’ and everyone waved me a fond farewell.

The following Sunday I went down the road to see the Baptists and they too were overjoyed to meet me. This time I was slightly better prepared and explained that my grandmother had been a Baptist and I was interested in knowing more about her faith. 

During the sermon, which, like the Pentacostal homily was well over an hour long, my thoughts drifted to other things. Suddenly I was tapped on the shoulder by the lady behind me, alerting me to the fact that the pastor was addressing me directly. His question was more of a statement and related to the challenges of living amongst Muslims. ‘You must have a lot of Muslims in London and so you will know just what I’m talking about’, he said, nodding sympathetically at me from the pulpit.

He then moved on to an even trickier topic – the transgender bathroom bill which North Carolina was actively opposing at the time. I prayed he wouldn’t invite my opinion on that one. These were kind people who had welcomed me into their church because they assumed that I shared their views.

How could I show appreciation for their generosity and respect for their community whilst remaining true to my own ideas, beliefs and confusions. How could I avoid being outed for what I in fact was – someone from ‘off’; someone who didn’t belong; an outsider.

Two hours later when it was all over, I hurriedly explained that unfortunately I couldn’t stay for coffee and donuts because I was heading down the coast to visit an old plantation house. I left feeling a little embarrassed but also relieved that, on the face it, I was still in everyone’s good books. 

Two days later I was shopping at Walgreens off the island when I heard someone call my name. It was Dianne from the Baptist church, working at the check-out. She was visibly delighted to see me again, introduced me to her co-workers and then ran all my purchases through her personal discount card.

I wanted to hug Dianne and thank her for remembering me. I wanted to tell her that I’d miss her and would talk to my friends back in England about the kind people I’d met on Harkers Island. I also wanted to tell her that I worked with Muslim families in London and that many of them were kind and generous, just like her, making their way in a challenging world, just like her, wanting what’s best for their families, just like her.

But I didn’t, because I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have been able to explain myself in a way that Dianne and her friends would understand. But, in truth, I also didn’t want to snap that thread of momentary belonging, that feeling of being included in something that felt so real and so very kind.

I am sitting under a tree in a small area of woodland, thinking about life and death and my  friend, Herman. On the other side of a wire fence I notice a group of school children. They are on litter-picking patrol and are spread out across the field, eyes to the ground, in search of sweet wrappers and crisp packets.

Suddenly, I hear a voice calling to me. I look up and see a line of small boys standing along the fence line.

First Boy:             Excuse me …. what are you doing?

Me:                       I’m sitting and resting for a while.

First Boy:             Is this the first time you’ve been here?

Me:                       No, I used to come here with my dog.

First Boy:             Where’s your dog now?

Me:                       He died.

Second Boy:        Awww that’s so sad.

Third Boy:           My grandpa had a dog, a Jack Russell and he died too. He was 16.

Fourth Boy:        My fish died but fish don’t live as long as dogs.

Me:                      Death is sad, isn’t it?

At this point I wonder whether I might be getting them into trouble and I suggest they return to their teacher and their litter-collecting duties. I stand up to leave.

First Boy:             Oh, don’t go. Please stay.

Me:                       I have to go home now.

First Boy:             Will you come back another time?

Me:                       Maybe I will.

As I walk away, the children remain standing on the fence line and we wave until we can no longer see each other.