A Habit of Dying (21 page)

The usual combination of census returns, the indices of births, deaths and marriages, provided the answers she needed concerning Dix and Myers. To be completely sure she traced, for the third time, Isabella Dix back through her mother Prudence to John and Martha Jolly, hers and Papa’s common forebear.

In 1861 Isabella and her sister Martha had shared the Dix household with their parents Prudence and James Dix. They still did so in 1871. Then Isabella married Papa Albert Joslin in 1874 and died a year later. Martha stayed with her parents at least until 1881 and probably until 1886 when she married Henry Myers at Coggeshall. What circumstance prompted Henry and Martha to call themselves Dix-Myers instead of plain Myers was lost in the five years that followed, but by 1891 they were recorded with the double-barrelled surname which had eluded Lydia for so long. Perhaps it was an accident of recording, a name spoken and written in the wrong column. Or perhaps Martha Dix, or more likely her father James, had sought to preserve the name despite having no sons to carry it. It could have been money, Martha from the relative
wealth of the Dix farming dynasty, Henry Myers the Braintree shop assistant, a union sanctioned only on condition of an adjustment to his name. For whatever reason, Henry and James Dix-Myers carried both their parents’ names. Their relationship to the Joslins, to Longlands, was complicated and Lydia settled on ‘cousins’ as being wide enough to cover the complexities of being Papa Albert’s nephews by his first marriage as well as his second cousins by great grandfather John Jolly. Either tie would be enough to justify their presence at the family home in 1911, where nineteen year-old Alethia was no doubt already drawn to young James. But no marriage until 1922. War had indeed intervened. Even so, it was a long wait. Neither had Alethia married anyone else to ‘fill the gap’. The question of what took them so long nagged at Lydia.

Henry was soon accounted for, once again courtesy of the war graves register. Paschendale 1916, rifleman Henry Dix-Myers died of wounds received. For James, Lydia could find no record beyond his medal card, the presence of which confirmed no more than his enlisting and that he had seen out the war in uniform. And if he had seen out the war, survived uninjured, why had he and Alethia not married until 1922? Did he take four years to recover from the scars? Or had he travelled abroad, seeking fortune and new worlds as an antidote to the horrors of Flanders? A search through passenger lists revealed nothing, hardly a Joslin amongst the travelling multitude bound for all parts of the Empire. Then it struck her. James might have married before 1922, despite the long-standing connection to Alethia. Sure enough, it looked as if he had: in 1919 to one Barbara Vaughan at Colchester. It might not be the James Dix-Myers that Lydia sought, but as there was but one of that name in the 1901 census, she was confident she had her man. But if James had married Barbara in 1919, what had become of her? Early death seemed to be a habit acquired by this family, and Barbara simply added to the list. Lydia found her entry in the summer of 1920 and duly noted the details. So, after a suitable period had elapsed, where else should James turn for solace than his childhood sweetheart Alethia? Not Alice, her twin, but Alethia. Then the subversive thought that maybe James could not tell them
apart winked into Lydia’s mind. She justified such subversion by telling herself that speculation was half the pleasure. Why would a man prefer one twin to another? Perhaps availability rather than romance provided the mundane answer. Of Alice she had no trace, perhaps she had disappeared from the family circle by the time that the widower James had felt the need of a new wife, and so saved him the problem of choice.

Lydia returned to the RAF album and the notes she’d made. Henry wrote to his parents and spoke of his sister V, who was surely Verity. His parents were now known to be James and Alethia so now she could look again for any records of the family, this time as Dix-Myers. Henry was born in the December quarter of 1922, as was Verity. Another set of twins, born to a mother who was herself twin. Of Bertie she could find no record. Again Lydia examined the album. Twins she had thought and twins Henry and Verity had been, and now that she knew it to be true, she could see how the young Alethia had turned out as a woman in her forties presiding over her brood. Surely Bertie was part of that brood, an integral part of the family, at least that is what the photographs said. But if it were true, then why did Henry not send his good wishes to B on his postcard home from the air training school as he had done for his sister V? No pictures of Bertie in uniform, or Verity for that matter. Had he served in the war, another casualty in a family of casualties? He was certainly older but not perhaps by much, and his image had been as lovingly placed and captioned as those of Henry and Verity. Could he possibly have been born before her marriage, conceived with someone other than James? If so then he would have been registered either as a Joslin or under the unknown father’s name. Lydia checked through all her stray Joslin birth records for the first twenty years of the century. No Bertie or anything that might be Bertie. And if not Joslin or some variant, then finding him anywhere would be impossible.

So engrossed had she become in her searches and her puzzles that Dorothy was long overdue another letter. She had not even replied to the last from her, offering to contribute to the costs of certificates and, touchingly thought Lydia, the cost of all the phone
calls. She supposed that the reference was to her ‘computor’ connection. At the end of April Lydia was able to tell Dorothy about Alethia and James and their family, explain how it all fitted in with the RAF album, how she knew nothing of Bertie, but that Henry had died in 1943, shot down while navigating a bomber over Germany. His body had been removed from its original burial place in 1945 and was now interred at Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, in the company of so many of his comrades. She could also tell her that a few months earlier Henry had married Kathleen Farrow, of whom Lydia had made no further enquiries. As far as she could tell, Henry had no children. Of Verity she could find no trace of a marriage or a death under Myers or Dix-Myers, even though she had looked right up to 1984. Another stray, another annoyingly loose end.

Dorothy’s reply was almost instant, or at least, as near to instant as the Royal Mail allowed. She would be very pleased to see Lydia again in a couple of weeks and suggested that if the weather was suitable they might like to take a packed lunch and go to the gardens that Dorothy’s mother had enjoyed visiting. Tantalisingly, she also said that she had found something else of her mother’s and that Lydia might find it interesting. Where this might once have irritated Lydia, now she counted the positive and enjoyed the pleasure of anticipation. Whatever it was, it could hardly be that significant, it would not alter all that she knew, at best it might offer some new line of enquiry. Unless it was news of Bertie, and that was unlikely in the extreme.

By way of relief from failing to find the missing Dix-Myers, Lydia turned her attention to the last significant gaps in the family, Papa’s grandchildren Albert and Harriet, only known surviving children of Albert Joslin and Beatrice Pelham. Lydia already knew the fate of their older sister Beatrice who died as a baby just a few weeks old in the winter of 1903. Mentally tossing the coin, Lydia surprised herself by choosing Harriet before Albert. First, she searched for an entry in the death registrations, searched until her eyes were sore from fifty years of entries flickering before them. Another half hour extended her search to sixty years and then on
again to seventy, and with sleep calling her, Lydia finally called it a day at eighty-five. Either Harriet had been missed, married or emigrated, or she was that rarity amongst Joslins, long-lived.

In the next few evenings Lydia carried the search for Harriet through the marriages, and found only one that might fit.
Harriet M Jocelyn in 1937 in the district of Chelsea to a Mr Fuller
. It was without much conviction that she ordered a certificate. The spelling of the name was not the problem so much as that middle initial. The Harriet that she sought was Harriet Pelham Joslin. Lydia began to consider if there could possibly be some common factor to these ‘missing’ Joslin women, Alice, Verity and now Harriet. But on reflection it seemed a fanciful notion, finding a pattern where none existed.

Drawing a blank with Harriet, Lydia turned her attention to Albert and starting her quest in 1922, found almost instant success with a marriage in 1928 to Hannah Brightside that looked promising. Another two in 1929 and 1932 might also fit the bill, but she put these aside until she had the details for Albert and Hannah. A couple of days before she was to visit Worthing and find what treasure Dorothy had for her, the certificate arrived and confirmed her hopes. From all that it told her, she was happy to accept that this was a marriage for Papa’s grandson. Finding any children of Albert and Hannah would wait until after she and Dorothy had shared a packed lunch.

From a bench below a chalky outcrop on Highdown, with the English Channel glittering in the distance, Dorothy and Lydia surveyed the landscape rolling away to the south, down to the sprawl of development that covers the coast in an almost unbroken band from Brighton to Littlehampton. The May sunshine bathed them in warmth and threatened to curl the corners of the ham sandwiches before they could be eaten. Dorothy’s mother Fanny had chosen a good spot to be one of her favourites.

‘It is lovely here, Dorothy. Did your mum get up here often?’

‘No, I don’t think so. We never had no car and there was no bus. When she was younger she’d cycle up here sometimes, I think. One of her friends used to come up with her, brought her up in the car in the last few years.’

‘Did you come along as well?’

‘Once or twice, but while mum was out it meant I could get a few things done.’

Lydia thought a moment about the cares of daughters for their mothers and, for all she knew, for their fathers too. She had been spared all that by her father’s premature and sudden death and her mother’s fierce independence, even to her last few months. True, she’d been the one who organised the home care, smoothed the transition and in secret had arranged her mother’s affairs. But she had done none of the caring, none of the really hard dirty work, the grinding, day-in day-out commitment to care. Whereas Dorothy clearly had, finding her mother’s absence a rare opportunity not for time for herself, but instead a chance to ‘get a few things done’.

‘Were you working then Dorothy, when your mother was ill?’

‘Yes, I kept the job going, it was a matter of needing to really. There wasn’t half the help in them days as there is now.’

‘She must have been proud of you.’

‘I don’t know about that, but we got along alright. We was quite a team really. Funny, I just thought, that’s what she used to say, ‘We’re a good team, you and I’. She’d say that a lot when I was young.’

‘And now we’re here in her spot. I expect she’d like that.’

‘Probably.’ Dorothy paused a moment, then leaning towards Lydia she said in a hushed tone, ‘I’ll tell you a little secret, if you like dear. I’ve never told anyone else before, but you’ll be right with it.’

Lydia wondered what she could possibly be about to say, what secret of her mother’s had she held all these years that Lydia could now be privileged to share.

‘She’s right here with us now.’

Lydia looked blankly, then around her, half expecting to see Fanny approaching them through the rose garden.

‘I scattered her ashes here.’

‘Oh’ said Lydia with breathless relief, uncertain as to the right response to this revelation.

‘I don’t know as if I was meant to, if you are allowed to, but I did it anyway. I couldn’t think what else to do and it didn’t seem right to just have them thrown away. I just came up one day and did it when there was no one about.’

It didn’t matter to Lydia one way or the other, it was the act of a loving daughter, probably the very last thing that she could have done for her mother, or at least for her mother’s memory.

‘I think you were right, Dorothy. And if you weren’t supposed to, then it certainly doesn’t matter now.’

They sat a while in silence, soaking up the sun and the soft murmurings of insects, the flittering of birds. Dorothy perhaps thought of her mother, while Lydia simply sank into tranquillity, glad for once to have her mind idling, untaxed by enquiry.

‘Oh, Lydia I have that little discovery to share with you. I brought it with me, here have a look.’ She withdrew a small envelope from her bag. ‘It’s not much, but it was in the kitchen drawer with some other bits and pieces.’

Lydia opened the envelope and examined the four photographs that it contained.

‘Those two are snaps of me, I don’t know why she kept them in particular.’

Lydia saw a young woman, in her twenties maybe, looking awkward and shy, her clothes both shapeless and ill-fitting. In each one Dorothy was half smiling and to Lydia’s mind, probably asking her mother not to take the picture.

‘Then there’s those other two. You remember I said that I thought mum had a cousin or something come over once? I can’t be sure but I think they was taken on that day, they were up here, I think. It’s all changed now so you can’t be sure.’