Alison's Memoir, page 2
Then in 1914 the Great War broke out and my father had to take in more work and all night had to guard the reservoir as it was thought the Germans would drop in poison. My beloved father I adored, he used to take me with him whenever he could.[1] He was Chaplain to a lunatic asylum and we used to walk across a field to it. I was then given into the charge of a "safe" lunatic and we played croquet. One day walking home from school I saw my father, once so upright, walking on the opposite side of the road, bowed, and seemed to me in tears. In 1917 he became ill with tuberculosis - of which then there was no cure - and died. My sorrow was indescribable. I remember walking around the dark garden the night he died and knowing that it was the end. My mother I think was jealous of me although I am sure she did not know it, she was always looking after my 3 small brothers and could not spend much time with my father. In 1915 we had a house on the Broads and my father and I used to go for long walks after dinner and one night we met my mother at the drive gate in floods of tears. My mother was a Scot and severe and she constantly found fault with me.
After Daddy's death we moved to Cambridge where mother had lived and where she met my father when he was 'up' at Corpus Christie. We were all sent to the Perse School and I did badly being only interested in drawing.
Later I read all of Guoduk's books. He was a psychotherapist, a pupil of Freud, and in it he says that the body manufactures illness to avoid difficult situations. When I was 16 I was faced with taking a senior Cambs exam, in which I had not a chance of passing - so I manufactured a first class mastoid. I had a lot of pain and felt ill but Mother made me go to a Girl Guide Rally in the town hall. My patrol leader who saw I was ill made me spend the afternoon on stone stairs behind the hall. I became worse and remember the pain, and mother went to London for the day and a neighbour brought me some lunch. Finally I went to Addenbrook's hospital and was operated on. I was very surprised when Mother told me that, when she was carrying my clothes from hospital, she cried.
When I was ten my brother Donald was born and I became devoted to him. In fact I did quite a lot of bringing him up. The year that he was born we spent the summer holidays with my aunt and uncle[2] at Barford St Martin [just West of Salisbury] and our tents were put up in their apple orchards some way from the house. Beyond was a deep railway cutting and when lying in bed I used to imagine I was on the rails.
The noise of the approaching train was terrific and I worked myself up into a state of terror! I had spent many summer holidays with my uncle and aunt before this. I loved being there and learned to ride and used to ride all over the Downs up to Stonehenge[3] then quite open and unprotected. When father died they wanted to adopt me. I think my mother would have been willing only my uncle Corry, my father's elder brother, would not allow it as uncle Patrick's wife had been married before and there was no proof that her husband was dead, as she said.
One day my father was driving the dog cart, my mother beside him, Clark, the coachman sitting back to back with them. Dog carts were a carriage with two big wheels and as they drove up to the front door my mother heard her new baby crying in his pram in the garden. Mother should have waited for my father or Clark to help her down but she jumped and her long skirt was caught in the big wheel and crashed her face into the gravel. I was standing watching this. It was horrible. Mother was a beautiful woman and this of course smashed her nose. In that era 1913 there was no plastic surgery and all that could be done was an attempt to fill in her broken nose with wax which did not stay in the right place. My father must have suffered a great deal and of course I knew nothing of this. The next summer we were at the Broads and while we were there, War broke out.
2
[1] Aged 8 in the 1911 Census, she was with her father in Ipswich but her mother and two younger brothers were in St. Ives, Cornwall.
[2] Their identity not yet established.
[3] Eleven miles away; due North of Salisbury.
