My Brother

My father is listed on Noel's birth certificate as "bridge builder."  I do recall Dad telling me he had worked in a construction team building a bridge across a river in New Zealand.  However, I thought that his work in Christchurch was as an orderly in a mental hospital, and assumed this came after his construction work.  Perhaps he just thought "bridge builder" looked better.  Or perhaps something else: there is a tradition of civil engineering in the Derbyshires.  Grandad Derbyshire had some sort of qualifications as a mining engineer; and I recall Cousin Isobel telling me of a diary she had, kept by one of the Derbyshires in a previous generation who had made a living as a journeyman digger of wells and builder of bridges.

Until very recently, neither Noel nor any of the rest of us (except, of course, Dad, who kept what he knew to himself) knew anything else about Noel's mother.  The only factual evidence we had — apart from Noel's existence, of course, and the bare details on the birth certificate — were two photographs and some cryptic entries in Dad's 1929 pocket diary. 

Of the photographs, one shows a smartly-dressed and good-looking young woman standing in a large public square, and has "Jessie" written on the back in Dad's handwriting.  The other shows Dad in a playful pose with a young woman-possibly the same one.  This picture belongs to Noel, who says Dad told him the young woman was his mother.

The diary ("Johnnie Walker's Diary for 1929", issued by John Walker & Sons, Ltd., distillers, of Kilmarnock, Scotland — the white population of New Zealand is heavily Scottish in origin) is hardly more informative.  The most suggestive entry is the word "legitimate", written in the space for Friday, May 10, 1929.  Supposing conception to have taken place sometime in early April, this would be about the point where Jean would be getting worried.  Dad — whose schooling had been minimal — might have just been acquainting himself with some unfamiliar spellings at this time.  The only other distinctly relevant entry is "Jean 8 o'clock" on Thursday, November 7, when Jean would have been seven months gone.

Nothing else was known about Jean Pepper until January 2003, when Noel, after some online trawling through the New Zealand white pages, got in touch with Anthony William Goddard of Christchurch, New Zealand.  Jean was Tony's father's sister, so that Noel and Tony are first cousins.  Tony has a sister, Julie, who is a schoolteacher in Christchurch.  Both are now in correspondence with Noel, and there have been phone conversations, too.  They are amazed to find they have a cousin in England:  they had no idea of Noel's existence.

It appears that Jean met Dad while estranged from Pepper, her first husband.  She already had a son, Russell Pepper (1927-1983).  In 1934, after getting a divorce from Pepper, she married a fellow who had come to New Zealand from Scotland.  They had a daughter, Margaret, born 1935, who is still alive, and is married to a man named Mervyn Winsloe.  Thus Noel, at the age of 73, learned that he had a half-sister.  In fact, Jean herself had only died in January 2000 — the day before Noel's 70th birthday.

At the time of compiling these notes (mid-2003), the story continues to unfold.  We still do not know why Dad had sole custody of Noel at the time they left New Zealand.  Jean was still married to Pepper, though separated from him.  Presumably she felt that raising two children by herself would be too much of a burden.  

Dad actually told my mother that Jean was his first wife, and that she died in childbirth.  On my parents' marriage lines Dad listed his status as "widower."  My mother told this tale to me, and I grew up believing it.  Only in old age — around 1980 — did Mother learn (from Cissie, I think) that there had been no marriage and no death.  She was furious.  "Why, the woman might still be alive!"  (Which, we now know, she actually was.)  Mother also told me that Dad once said to her, early in their life together — and so when the marriage-and-death-in-childbirth fiction was still in play — that he had been deeply in love with Jean and doubted he could ever love so well again.  Dad was not a tactful man, nor an especially truthful one.

At age thirteen Noel abandoned school and turned up at Perry Street in Northampton, where Mum and Dad were living.  He did odd jobs around Northampton, then was called up into the Royal Navy soon after I was born. After two years in the Navy he left, I am not clear how, and returned to Northampton, getting a job in the projection room of the Savoy Cinema in Abington Square.  Cinemas at that time employed legions of young women as "usherettes" (to show people to their seats). One of the usherettes at the Savoy was Dorothy Mitchell.²

In 1948 Noel went back to the military, this time the Army.  In 1950 he was shipped out to Tripoli, Libya.  Then in 1952, when the Egyptians threw out their king and threatened to nationalize the Suez Canal, he was sent to Egypt. 

Noel and Dorothy's wedding, November 1953.  At the far left are Cousin Janet, Cousin Michael, and Auntie Cissie.  The next few, working rightwards, are unknown; then there is my mother standing next to Noel, with me in front of her.  My sister Judith is on the other side of Dorothy.  My father did not attend, as he disapproved of Noel marrying in a Catholic church.

In September 1957 the family were posted to Hong Kong, where they stayed for three years.  (Overseas postings in the British Army were generally for three years.  The Hong Kong one was Noel and Dorothy's favorite.  For their 40th wedding anniversary, their son Peter paid for them to go back to Hong Kong on a vacation.  The place had changed beyond recognition, of course.  I gave Noel an introduction to my own dear old friend Chen Guang-zhi, and they had a drink together.) 

Postings in England and Germany (again) followed.  Noel left the army in May 1971, being then at a barracks in Shrivenham, Berkshire, near the town of Swindon.  He became a traffic warden (i.e. issuing parking tickets) in Swindon, and also served as Warrant Officer in charge of catering for two Territorial Army³ Regiments, before retiring in December 1994.  At the time of writing this, Noel and Dorothy live in Swindon, Wiltshire.

In my own childhood Noel was a very occasional presence. I have a dim memory of him coming to see us in the early years at Friars Avenue.  He was with the Army in Egypt or Libya, and came back with presents, all of which I associated in my mind with those countries.  There was a cigarette lighter shaped like a camera on a tripod, and some throat lozenges ("Victory V") which I supposed to be Egyptian but which were, in fact, entirely English.  He wrote to Dad regularly; the family joke was that only Dad could decipher Noel's handwriting.

I have two very early memories of Dorothy baby-sitting us.  One is of her sitting on the piano stool with me on her knee and Judith somewhere nearby.  Dorothy taught us to pat our heads and rub our bellies simultaneously, which we thought very fascinating.  (Note on that piano stool.  When Grandad Derbyshire died, we got the family piano.  It was set up against the east wall of the living-room at 62 Friars Avenue, and Judy was sent to piano lessons.  Judy hated the lessons, however, and there were terrific fights over practice, and in the end my parents gave up and sold the piano.)  The other memory is of visiting with Noel and Dorothy at the barracks in Northampton (on Barrack Road — not the Simpson Barracks outside the town).  This was my first encounter with canned pineapple, which Dorothy produced but which I refused to eat on principle-the principle being that Judith had told me it tasted horrible.

Other recollections of the German holiday, my first trip abroad:  Being seasick on the Dover-Ostend ferry.  Seeing Toblerone chocolate for the first time on that ferry, and thinking how wonderful it would be to have some.  ("Too expensive!" — Mother.)  The cleanliness and smartness of the German trains, by comparison with our English ones.  Mother laughing helplessly as she tried to master the phrase fόnf bananen.  Oily crisps (= potato chips).  Construction sites floodlit at night so work could go on 24 hours — a thing never seen in England.  Some unpleasantness involving a crippled beggar — a war casualty, I suppose — who found out we were English and began cursing us.  American horror comics that Noel had access to — tremendously more horrifying than any you could get in England.  There are entire stories in those comics that I can still recall.