The Squirrel Man of York and Other Relatives

Who would have known when my son, Edward, had to draw out his family tree for cub scouts I was to begin a journey of discovery, not only of our past, but of my present and my future.

It was a discovery of who I was, why I was, of where I had come from and where I was going. My cousin had already traced my dad’s side back to the 1700’s and given Edward the most impressive family tree for the scout project, but I wanted to see if I could go further. My mum had a lovely old Victorian photo album full of nameless photos each surrounded by painted flowers. She knew they were the family of her grandmother, who had died when her father was only a child, but nobody knew their stories. I longed to know who all these people were. I was an only child, the daughter of an only child, who was the daughter of an only child. A lady in the album, I was told, was named Sarah. Sarah was calling out from the faded sepia photo for me, as her only great grandchild, to prevent her being forgotten. If these people were not to be lost to time it was down to me!.

One night, my husband was away and there was not much on the TV so, after I put the kids in bed at 8 pm, I signed up for a genealogy website and started to fill in the blanks. Vivid green leaves flickered on the screen, signalling documents that may be linked to the person on that branch. I started to click on them and the dark abyss came alive with a cascade of emerald flickers as my tree began to grow. When I looked up at the clock it was 2 am! This wasn’t the first time that six hours would fade into one as an obsession was born. I longed to know more.

My mum had remembered visiting her Aunt Maria just after the war and staying in a house next to a church in Stockton on the Forest. We looked at all the houses near the Stockton’s church, but non rekindled the memories of the time with Aunt Maria. Her memories of her time there were fond ones, although when she told me that Aunt Maria wouldn’t let her have pink juicy ham that hung from the hook in the larder because it wasn’t good for her digestion, which did not seem like fun to me. We found other houses in other villages, but non of them seemed right. While she was there my mother told us she would also visit an uncle who was a blacksmith and had a trained squirrel that ran up the curtains. My mum’s memory was strong for all the details, but not for the location of the house itself and the whole trained squirrel thing seemed a little far fetched, suggesting her memory may not be what it once was. A part of me just wondered if she had forgotten, but also deep down I knew she was like an elephant and never forgot!

When I did a DNA test whole new adventures were to begin. New connections were formed and each person I came into contact with splashed a little more colour into the story and contributed something to my knowledge, but non as much as Debbie who came up as a match on the maternal grandfather’s side.

I emailed her and told her that my mother remembered visiting family near York around the time of the war. I told her of Aunt Maria and Uncle Tom and the squirrel training blacksmith, adding that my mum may have got a little confused since it was now over seventy years since she last visited. I asked if any of her family remembered this uncle and his squirrel and if they knew his name. I wondered if that was the last I would ever hear from her, assuming she would regard us as the mad distant cousins who thought people trained squirrels for a living so I emailed and told her we had a photo album in the hope of keeping her interest. Much to my surprise she emailed back a newspaper cutting of her mother’s cousin Geoff holding an orphaned squirrel named Wilfred which he had trained and looked after as a pet. He remembered my mum and still lived near York and when Debbie’s mother, Molly, had seen the photos she told us she had a similar album which contained many of the same photos and also had names attached. Best of all we could all take a big sign of relief knowing my mum was just as sharp as ever and squirrels were cleverer than we had ever imagined!

On our next trip home we headed up to my mum’s and then over the Pennines to take her to York. Molly was just like my mum. A woman with a strong moral code who was very practical and gave the impression of not standing for any messing. Molly was kind enough to share a wealth of information with us and it was lovely to put names to the photographs as well as stories and memories. A man with a moustache seemed to listen intently from the pages of the album as he came alive on the sepia page before us. No longer anonymous, he became George, a man who struggled with the inner conflicts that resulted from shell shock, and eventually become over whelmed by them. A lady on a bike made up of reddish browns on

By Kate Gostick

the monochrome photograph became Aunt Elizabeth dashing from house to house delivering telegraphs as curtains twitched and rumours spread about the effects of such a contraption on her fragile feminine internal organs and possible future infertility. She was not consumed by others’ objections to progress, she fought to become a modern woman finding her own path. She found that path cycling under the blue skies of Yorkshire, lined with purple bluebells dancing in the green glades. Her world was one filled with colour unlike the sepia photograph or the men, whose letters she rode to deliver, fighting in the grey trenches of Flanders Fields.

Molly took us to visit her cousins and my mum was reunited with the Squirrel Man of York who recounted his vivid memories of her visit seventy years before. He had wanted to go to the cinema, but was forced to stay home and entertain his cousin visiting with her mother and father from the other side of the Pennines. My mum’s memories of sitting on a bench and talking to an Italian prisoner of war also turned out to be true as did her memories of running with her cousins through the wheat fields to Aunt Maria’s and Uncle Tom’s. Molly took us to see Aunt Maria’s cottage nestled next to a church, looking like the idyllic retreat that inhabited my mother’s distant memories, but not in Stockton as my mum had believed, instead in the nearby village of Warthill. Long gone was the water pump which stood in the garden from which Aunt Maria refused to allow my mother to collect water to wash her face in the morning, instead insisting that she used cold rainwater as it was better for her complexion and would give her skin a peachy glow.

Molly told us how the Italian Prisoners of War were housed in a camp in the nearby Stockton Hall and were taken by bus to work on the nearby farms, replacing the Yorkshire men now fighting abroad. I imagined the Italian man who joined my mother and her parents on the bench, stopping for a moment maybe to eat his lunch and read a letter from home. I imagined his dark olive skin and thick black hair, which seemed very exotic to my mother, who at that time had never encountered a foreigner before. I imagined his warm smile greeting her hiding his longing to be back with his own family on a warm Tuscan hillside, but relieved he was no longer fighting in the fields of Europe. I could not help but wonder what my grandfather, a man who was home on leave from the conflict on the west coast of Italy, would have talked about with a man incarcerated for fighting against his comrades. It just shows the absurdity of war that at that moment two men could pass the time of day on a bench on a spring day in Yorkshire, but months earlier could have been pointing guns intent on annihilating each other on the hills that surrounded Naples.

Apparently, the fields of Yorkshire were filled with prisoners of war taking on the heavier work originally done by the land girls living in Stockton House. Molly reminisced about Goddard a POW who carried on living in the wash house of the farm where he worked long after the war had ended, unwilling to return to his native Austria as his village was in the Soviet sector. She gave the impression that wartime was far from unpleasant and the village was a hive of activity. My mother said the village seemed to have changed very little in the last seven decades and maybe this was why it was easy for me to imagine her stories coming alive.

Molly and my mother compared stories of VE day. Molly had spent her time eating sticky iced buns piped with her name, provided by local servicemen who also gave the children rides on their Jeeps around the parkland that surrounded the Hall. My mother had few memories of that day saying she only remembered going to a field for a bonfire, but her memories were strong for the weeks following victory. She went with my grandmother to South Station in Blackpool to greet her father returning from the battles to regain control of Italy. My grandfather and the men that fought alongside him were referred to as the “D-Day Dodgers” reportedly by Lady Astor. This was a cruel term for men who had watched thousands of comrades fall in some of the most brutal combat of the war, but whose sacrifices were overshadowed by the invasion of Normandy. As my grandfather had stepped off the train in the demob suit and trilby hat that he had been given to ease him back into civilian life, he greeted his little girl, a virtual stranger, with his deep voice. This did not match the softer tones that she had imagined as his words sung out in her head from his letters and she was horrified at this baritone voice that greeted her. She told Molly of how she learnt to knit at school and remembered sitting in rows with classmates, needles clicking as they made mittens and helmets to be sent to Europe. Molly shared her school day memories as Debbie and I listened in, gaining a glimpse of our mothers’ pasts.

“We didn’t get lovely sticky iced buns from the servicemen,” my mum recounted indignantly. “We were only given chocolate, which was waxy and bitter and cut with a knife from a huge brick sent by the Americans. It was a strange time.” We used to stand on the doorstep in St Annes and look up at the sky which glowed red. My Mother said, “That’s Liverpool burning! So we were lucky weren’t we Molly?” Molly nodded in agreement as she rummaged in a drawer and pulled out yet more photos.

Molly had photos of my grandad that matched those we already had. The identical clothes, little shorts and a matching jacket, brown with a big, white, sailor collar, socks almost to the knee and lace up boots. There were however different photographer’s props. On our photo he was perched on the edge of a carved wooden chair with a backdrop of stone columns. On her photo he was on a stone bench and the painted backdrop now showed Yorkshire’s rolling hills and a little farmhouse. His shoulder length blond curls, parted in the middle were now covered with a little hat which matched his suit. All showed a picture of a little boy, obviously adored by his parents who were eager to capture this moment for posterity. The photos showed their pride which they shared by sending the pictures to family members who had not seen him as often as they may like. Molly had photos of my grandad sat with his parents, unaware that their time together was soon to come to an end. I wondered if his mother’s brain tumour had started to manifest or if they were totally unaware of what was to come, posing like the perfect family. These are the questions I wish I had asked, I wish my mum had asked. These are the kinds of questions I was determined to record for future generations who may ask them of me.