romney

This is a strange old memory to find me now, when everything is cold and dark.  If I lie close to the fire my back is freezing, if I move away all of me is freezing.  It reminds me of Mrs Plunkett’s boarding house close to Clonegal Castle down in the South East of Ireland many years ago. Olivia Durdin-Robertson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_Robertson) aunt to the baron and excellent friend lived at the castle. We spent much time together there on the doorstep of Narnia, and it was wonderful, but that's not what memory shows me now. Now what I see is Mrs Plunkett’s boarding house nearby, well meaning but dark and very cold. In my room there was a big basket full of cut up slabs of peat, and these I would burn as best I could in the hearth. Small light and sullen heat! Still, bless Mrs Plunkett's strange generosity, if I used up every peat square in a night, the basket would be full the next, so I never ran out of these exercises in futility.  I was so unsuccessful I wondered if there was a special method for making peat burn well, but have never heard of one to this day.

Mrs Plunkett’s was said to be haunted but then so was everywhere else. For sure I got little sleep with that dim fire and the chill wracking my bones, but as to the clanking chains and the ominous dread recounted by friends, all I ever really felt there was bloody cold. I never felt that strange stillness I associate with something nearby. And I wonder why it is I remember Olivia today. 

This too is a war story, though not of the world wars. It is not a tragedy. But it is something.

My grandfather Juan Diego served in the Spanish Legion, and survived the tragic farce of Melilla. He was minor nobility they say, son of a count or something but my lack of the language stops me from properly chasing that back. Certainly he was of extremely good family, and rather gorgeous.



His family connected to Santa Casilda (no, really!) which would place them back in Toledo I guess. I have no idea about this. Here is Saint Casilda though, looking properly intense.



Before or after his time in the Spanish Legion, Grandfather Juan Diego came home and was a wit. He drew cartoons or wrote columns for a newspaper, and was best described as an armchair socialist - quite a vocal one at that. However, when a communist mayor was elected, he was equally as loud in his scorn because the man could not read or write, and Grandfather thought it was ridiculous for someone illiterate to hold such a role.

Chickens do come home to roost. Came the Spanish Civil War, and came too, the time when the communist mayor decided to settle old scores. My grandmother was pregnant with my mother at the time, and all Juan Diego's family and friends tried to persuade him to leave the house via a laundry basket hung out of a window while the mayor's chums gathered outside. He refused, and strode out, thoroughly drunk, to meet the mob. They were going to shoot him then and there, but a canny friend of his persuaded them not to do so on account of my grandfather being a doctor, a much needed necessity at that time. It was mostly a lie. Grandfather had studied the equivalent of a PhD, but it had nothing to do with medical practice, and in any case he never finished it. Nonetheless, the persuasion worked, and he was dragged off to prison. Then the mayor had a little table set up with wine, glasses, and chairs, even a tablecloth across it, and bade my grandmother sit down and drink. Then in front of her, they burned the house down.

She never got over it. To her days ends her eyes would turn dark with tears and she would rock backwards and forwards. She loathed communists ever after.

I do not know how the family lived then, but when the nationalists came, they drove the communists out and set my father free... until they saw his track record of espousing liberal thought in his journalistic career. Then, only his past as an officer and a gentleman saved him from execution, and back to prison he went. This time the family were left alone, but when he was released he had no teeth.

He never spoke of the war again.

From then on, for a long time the family had guards at the door, my mother remembered playing with their capes and running around them, completely at ease.

But one day the guards at the door went away and didn't come back. He lived, they lived, and they all grew old and happy. Such a contrast to Grand Uncle John's short days, and yet he and Grandfather Juan Diego are not without connection. There's heroism in dying bravely, heroism in living bravely too.

To any who have read this far, I hope your life and the lives of your folk remain free from war and all its cruelty. I hope that peace, not the milky word on cards, but the feeling and reality of it, fill our days. Here's to that.

I put a poem up every year around now. Doesn't matter to me if this is a mawkish habit, I do it. I choose a poem that reaches me in the moment of remembrance. This year the poem is Cha Till Maccruimein (Departure of the 4th Camerons) by Ewart Alan Mackintosh (1893-1917)
https://smokingboot.substack.com/p/lest-we-forget

I put it on my still-don't-know-what-I-am-doing-with-it substack, which works if you want to hear me recite it, but my feeling is that one's own voice works best for this. I have read Cha Till Maccruimein many times, but for some reason right now it makes me shudder and grow cold.

May war never touch you. May you and your folk ever come home.

Cha Till Maccruimein*
(Departure of the 4th Camerons)

The pipes in the streets were playing bravely,
The marching lads went by
With merry hearts and voices singing
My friends marched out to die;
But I was hearing a lonely pibroch
Out of an older war,
Farewell, farewell, farewell, MacCrimmon,
MacCrimmon comes no more.'

And every lad in his heart was dreaming
Of honour and wealth to come,
And honour and noble pride were calling
To the tune of the pipes and drum;
But I was hearing a woman singing
On dark Dunvegan shore,
In battle or peace, with wealth or honour,
MacCrimmon comes no more.'

And there in front of the men were marching
With feet that made no mark,
The grey old ghosts of the ancient fighters
Come back again from the dark;
And in front of them all MacCrimmon piping
A weary tune and sore,
On gathering day, for ever and ever,
MacCrimmon comes no more.'

Ewart Alan Mackintosh (1893-1917)