Aunt Bea’s Legacy

Tender Long Read

Look at this, Mum.” Pauline eased herself down in front of a large drawered cabinet in the half-cleared sitting room. She stroked the curving polished front and fingered the small brass handles.

She opened one of the drawers, loving the smoothness of the movement.

“The smell’s wonderful, even after all these years. Sort of woody and lineny. And – oh, do look!”

Jane set down a pile of woollen blankets. “These are for the recyling,” she said. “What have you found?”

“Lots of half-finished embroidery – some of it’s really lovely.” Pauline lifted out a white damask napkin over which patterns of primroses and forget-menots and dog-roses tumbled in clever abandon. “Look at the work in that!”

“Old Beatrice was a great needlewoman,” remembered Jane. She took the napkin and ran her fingers over the tiny satin stitches that made one of the petals. “She made some of these for your dad and me as a wedding present.

“I kept them for years, folded in a drawer. They seemed too good to use and by the time I’d got over that, they’d gone a funny colour so I chucked ’em.” “You didn’t! Mum!” “You can’t keep things forever, love. You and Robbie’ll find that out soon enough. You’ll be wiping up baby sick with the likes of these and then you’ll throw them out, too.”

“I know everything’s been left to you, Mum, but would you mind if I kept some of these?” Pauline took the napkin back and studied the work. She pictured Jane’s godmother sitting by a window overlooking a garden, sewing and nipping off threads, resetting a thimble on her finger…

“I could have a go at completing some of them, wouldn’t that be fun? Look, there’s loads of stuff here, cross-stitch and all sorts.” She rifled through the other drawers. “There are scissors and patterns and things, dozens of skeins of threads.

“I can try the cross-stitch ones anyway. They’ll give me something to do in the evenings now I’ve stopped work.”

“This baby of yours will put paid to that idea when he or she comes along,” Jane said with a knowing smile. “Oh, Mum!” “You have it, and the cabinet too. With my love and hers.” Jane ruffled Pauline’s hair. “Beatrice would be really happy about that. We’ll get Robbie and your dad to move it, though where you’re going to put it in that tiny house I really don’t know.”

Thank you, Robbie.” Pauline looked across at her husband the next evening as he flopped down beside her onto the sagging sofa. “Sorry I couldn’t help much.”

“That’s OK, pet. And it is beautiful even if it does weigh a ton.” He looked across at the huge set of drawers cramped between the bookshelf and the sideboard. “Burr walnut. I wouldn’t mind learning to do woodwork like that.”

“One day, when you get time and a following wind!” They both laughed at the old joke.

“So what’s the project, then?” Robbie leaned across to see the embroidery Pauline was studying.

“It’s a picture.” She showed him. “Cottages halfway down a cliff, where Mum says Beatrice lived as a child. She must have been stitching from memory.” Robbie put his arm round her. “How on earth can you hope to finish that, if you don’t know where it is?”

“I’ll ask Mum. There might be an old photo or something. It would be fun to know. I can’t imagine I’d ever be able to finish this one though – too complicated. I can only just manage cross-stitch!” Robbie peered closer. “She’s put the cottages awfully close to the edge,” he pointed out. “One good storm would see that lot into the sea.”

“She’s done the coast road already,

Robbie PEERED closer. “She’s put the COTTAGES awfully near the EDGE”

and outlined your delivery van, bringing fresh meat and probably the post as well.”

“Oh, you do have such a fanciful imagination, Mrs MacIntyre!”

“Why not? It’s someone’s little van, delivering to the hamlet on the cliff. I could stitch your van’s registration number onto it.”

“You’re a clever auld thing.” He kissed her cheek. “Less of the ‘auld’, Mr MacIntyre!” Pauline found herself drawn to the sketchy scene often. Robbie was right, the houses were too close to the cliff edge. She wanted to move them back, to make them safer for the people who lived there.

Her tummy twitched and she felt her baby kicking.

“That’s why I worry about those people,” she told her bump. “Because carrying you’s made me aware of so much that might be dangerous. I hope I’m not going to turn neurotic!”

There was a sale down in the auction rooms and a lot of Beatrice’s stuff was sent to it. Many people came, as items from other sources had been well advertised and dealers were looking for bargains.

Pauline and Robbie went along, because the quarterly sales were a magnet for all the locals and it was a great place to meet, have coffee and catch up on gossip from the outlying

farms in the county. Jane had said she’d rather not go – she hated to see the remnants of Beatrice’s life picked over by total strangers, even though selling it all was the only sensible thing to do.

The bidding for everything was brisk and the auctioneer’s gavel dropped every few minutes. Card numbers flashed up to add another tenner, another fiver, sometimes quite sharp little tussles went on between rival bidders, but Pauline didn’t recognise any of the people buying Beatrice’s furniture and effects.

The mood was cheerful and the sun streamed in through the high hall windows onto the numbered lots. At the back of the hall, someone was selling burgers and tea. The smell became too much for Pauline and she whispered to Robbie that she was going out for a few minutes.

He looked down at her, concerned, but she smiled her reassurance that it was only the smell that made her want to leave.

Out in the open, the cold, bright October sunshine immediately improved her nausea and she sat on one of the benches, watching early lots being picked up from the exit and loaded into cars, trailers, even a horsebox. She nodded hellos to several of her friends’ fathers who had bought gardening equipment and workbench tools.

One of the officials was looking across at her. He raised his hand in greeting, then sent the woman he was talking to over to Pauline’s bench.

“Lady wants to ask you something,” he called by way of explanation.

“Good morning.” The woman had an odd accent that Pauline couldn’t place.

“The steward tells me you’re Jane Mattock’s daughter.” Her voice lifted at the end of the sentence making it sound like a question. Pauline nodded.

“May I join you?” Without waiting for an answer, she sat down and laid the number card on the bench beside her. “The stuff’s selling really well, but I’ll bet these dealers are from away and everything will leave here forever.”

“Probably,” Pauline agreed. “Every time one of our oldies dies they seem to know it and descend for the pickings.”

“You make them sound like magpies!” The woman laughed and Pauline smiled too.

“It’s business for them. But it’s a good thing really – what else would family do with all the unwanted leftovers, curtains and cushions and china and stuff? Up-country someone else will buy pots and pans from, say, Beatrice Mountjoy’s estate and learn to cook on them.”

“You’ve saved me asking,” the woman said. “I was talking to the steward, trying to find someone who could tell me about her. Beatrice Mountjoy is the reason I came today – the steward chappie says you knew her.” Again the voice went up and still Pauline couldn’t place the accent.

“She was my mum’s godmother,” she explained.

“When we were at school, she was my best friend.” The woman half-turned away and stared into the distance. “Where are you from?” “A village called Clifton Rocks, near Scarborough, originally. That’s where Beatty and I were born. When it fell, just after the Second War, my family left for New Zealand. It’s been quite an emotional journey, coming to the UK looking for any of the kids I knew then.”

The unfinished embroidered picture flashed into Pauline’s mind. “When it fell?” she repeated. “Clifton Rocks?”

“The sea took it,” the woman said brusquely. “Washed it away, road, seven little homes, everything. We got a couple of days’ warning that the cliff was collapsing, and everyone did get away, but the community split forever. I think some people moved further along the coast to other villages, but my parents decided to emigrate.”

She pulled a notebook from her pocket with lists of names on it.

“These are the names of people from Clifton Rocks I’ve found since I started looking, twenty years ago. We’ve been three months in the UK, looking them up, finding more.

“Tracing Beatrice here was quite a detective trick. As she never married, she was easier to find than some, but she’s a long way from Clifton Rocks now, here on the west coast of Scotland!”

“You’d better come and meet my mother,” said Pauline at last, heaving herself upright. “I’m Pauline MacIntyre, by the way, and as I said, my mother is Jane Mattock, Beatrice’s goddaughter. She can tell you more.”

“I’m Carey Barnes,” The New Zealander offered her hand. She was all smiles and wrinkles, her blue eyes bright with pleasure. “So happy to meet you!”

In the end, Pauline and Jane arranged to have Mr and Mrs Barnes over for the afternoon. Pauline rushed home to collect some of Beatrice’s needlework

She pulled out a NOTEBOOK. “These are the NAMES of people I’ve FOUND”

and Jane put out a display of some of the things she’d inherited that Carey Barnes might have known in Beatrice’s home as a child.

They arrived after lunch. Mr Barnes was a tall, silent man, very supportive and indulgent with his wife, and they told Pauline about their diamond wedding anniversary. About their Once-In-a-Lifetime trip – three months back in Great Britain – during which time they’d been hunting down people from Mrs Barnes’ childhood memories.

“I just missed her – I’m so sorry about that.” Mrs Barnes shrugged it off. “But we’d never kept in touch. Children only tend to keep up with the ones near to them – thousands of miles across the world would have put paid to any friendship between eleven-year-olds, I think! But she and I shared a passion for sewing, as you have discovered and I’d love to have chatted to her about that!”

She pointed to the displayed napkins and other lovely projects Beatrice had made, laid out for viewing by Pauline and her mother. Pauline brought out the embroidered picture of the hamlet of houses on the steep cliff.

“This must be Clifton Rocks,” she said. Her unborn child kicked at her, as though remembering Robbie pointing out the perilous position of the village.

Mrs Barnes drew in a sharp breath and exhaled it very slowly as she reached out to study the embroidered scene.

“Oh, my,” she whispered. “What a wonderful memorial.”

She swallowed hard and her husband put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. Tears formed in her eyes. She traced over the stitches, just as Pauline and Jane had done a few weeks earlier.

“Yes, my dear, this is Clifton Rocks as it was – that last summer before the storm washed it all away and out of our lives forever.”

Pauline felt tears welling in her own eyes as she watched the old lady lift the material to her lips and gently kiss it. “She must have been working from memory, all these years later,” she guessed, just as Pauline had. “In her old age, just like me, she was drawn to remember her roots.”

Supper time came and they were all still talking, and Pauline’s father silently brought in a fish supper for everyone from the local chippie.

“May I keep this?” Mrs Barnes had kept the view of the cliff hamlet beside her throughout the evening. “I’d really love to try and finish it, for old times’ sake and for friendship’s sake.”

Her smile was magical, distant, misty, almost fey and Pauline could only imagine what the task really meant to the old lady.

“Of course you may. In a way, it’s more yours than mine. That’ll be OK, won’t it, Mum?”

She looked across at her mother who was pouring another cup of tea for the New Zealanders.

“Beatrice would have loved the idea. But please, do send us back a photograph when you’ve completed it.” Jane pushed the cup across to her guest. “I surely will.” Mrs Barnes stroked the cliff view again.

When, a week or so later, Pauline found among the needlework patterns in the cabinet an ancient black and white photograph of the hamlet on the cliffs, she showed it to Robbie with just a tinge of regret that she’d let the embroidery go.

“Beatrice was working from this and not just memory after all,” she said. “Maybe I could have finished it myself.”

“It wasn’t yours to do,” Robbie said gently. “The old lady had come halfway across the world looking for the last of her roots, and you gave it to her. She’ll get so much more out of finishing it than you ever would do, love.”

Pauline had the photograph scanned and e-mailed a copy to Mrs Barnes in New Zealand and thought no more about it because the reality of her baby coming banished everything else from her mind.

It wasn’t until she was actually holding bonny seven-pound Morag in her arms that she and Robbie were reminded again of Beatrice’s legacy. Among the many lovely gifts, knitted and crocheted and stitched with love, arrived a parcel with a New Zealand postmark. The note that accompanied it wished them both well.

You have brought my story full circle, dearestPauline, Mrs Barnes had written, and now atlas tI feel I can put it all to bed. I can leave the memories alone now, happy in the knowledge that the community from Clifton Rocks lived on, and found joy and friend ships wherever they settled.

I feel honoured and deeply moved to have been able to finish this picture my childhood friend started. I bequeath it to you and your family and wish you as long and happy a life as I have had.

Inside was the finished embroidery picture of Clifton Rocks, beautifully complete, backed and ready for mounting in a frame – Aunt Bea’s legacy would live on.

Among the gifts STITCHED with love was a PARCEL from NEW ZEALAND