I remember first the curve of a grassy hill plummeting into the sea...

I was born in Yorkshire, in Saltburn, by the North Sea.
Six years before, the man who would become my father had been invalided out
of the Royal Navy, his stomach ulcerated and his spirit broken.

He was a working class boy who had enlisted at the age of sixteen.
On the back of a photograph of him with his fellow matelots
on board HMS Hood a proud battleship of the Mediterranean Fleet, he declares romantically:
"Now my schooldays are over, the work begins in plenty."

But that was in 1938. He did not know then that within three years
he would be escorting convoys in a corvette across the icy Atlantic
or that, eventually, he would find himself in the crew of a small landing craft
foundering under heavy fire as it ferried troops to the landings in Salerno.

He never recovered from the loss of his naval career.
It had been a way of cheating his class destiny.
But now he would return to the factory and the steel mill.

I have been told my mother was from the south.
Why her family made their way north I do not know.
But her manners would always mark her as an alien in that rough
industrial terrain. She would always yearn for something better.

They met and married and settled by the blue-green sea.
They had one son and then another.

One day they moved inland to a drab, grey town.
They bought a semi-detached house on an embankment
overlooking a busy main road.
Just opposite ran a railway line which traversed a deep stone bridge.
Beyond the bridge lay rows of terraces and beyond them loomed
the towers and chimneys of the steelworks and chemical refineries
discharging fire into a polluted sky.

He found a job as a signalman on the railways.
Then he became a process worker at the refinery.
Day after day he would ride his bicycle to work and back.
She stayed at home and looked after the children.
Sometimes she would have her friends to tea.

At the rear of their house there was a lane.
In one direction it led past a wasteland
pitted with derelict air raid shelters
and, finally, to a row of slum terraces.

Just beyond their back gate, in the opposite direction,
the lane meandered past much finer houses than hers
with large well-kept gardens the like of which she could never hope to own.
In one of them lived a young man in his twenties.

They became lovers.

November 10, 2001

A young woman is sitting by an ornamental lake.
To her left a large pendulous plant with long narrow leaves
dominates the middle distance.
Its leaves trail in the water which shows only the slightest ripple.
Behind her, two whitish-coloured birds have alighted
and are frolicking on a pathway.
It is a tranquil scene. A calm, sunny day in late Spring.

The lake is edged with flagstones.
The young woman's sandalled feet extend slightly over the water.
She is wearing jeans and has drawn her legs up almost to her chest.
Her arms rest loosely on either side of her knees.
Her right hand softly clasps her left just above her ankles.
What appears to be a bracelet is just visible below the cuff of her windcheater.

The photographer has captured a moment of quiet contemplation.
The woman is staring fixedly at something just outside our range of view.
Her eyes are intelligent and have a questing look.
Her brows are wide, and from over her high forehead her blonde hair falls,
curling where it meets her shoulders.
Her neckline is long, her chin and jaw are striking and determined.
Her mouth displays the faintest glimmer of a smile.

But there is not just one young woman but two in this photograph.
Her image has been repeated, reflected in the water of the lake.

If we turn the photograph upside down
we see what at first seems to be the same person.
But the pendulous plant is now to her right and, quite remarkably,
there are no birds visible frolicking in the background.
Instead there are three, or possibly four, unadorned broad stone columns framing a view of a metal fence with a blur of trees in the distance.
It is still a sylvan scene but it now wears a sense of menace.

In the slight distortion brought about by the gentle rippling of the water
the young woman's demeanour has been transformed completely.
Her head now declines markedly to the left.
She seems hunched and insecure.
Her eyes are vague and apprehensive, perhaps recently tearful.
Her mouth is set in a grimace of anguish.

The level flagstones have become a slight slope
on which her stability no longer seems so certain.
It looks as if she might have sought solace there.
But everything is filled with uncertainty.

I am drawn to the young woman's image with a compulsion
which I cannot quite crystallize.
She seems incredibly familiar as if I had once known her in my past.

Suddenly I realize she is my daughter.

Lying to the young is wrong.
Proving to them that lies are true is wrong.
Telling them that God's in his heaven
And all's well with the world is wrong.
They know what you mean.They are people too.
[ 'Lies' - Yevgeny Yevtushenko]


In 1957 my mother suddenly disappeared from my life.
I was told that she had 'gone away'.
I did not see her again for forty-four years.

For weeks and months and then years, I waited for her to return.
But she never did.

Often I would cry myself to sleep at night but all my tears
could never fill the emptiness she had left.

At other times I would send my thoughts to her across mountains
and seas and beg her to come back. But she never did.

Eventually I buried my sorrow as deep as I could.
My mother had gone away. But she still dwelt within me.