Swan River Read online

  ­­SWAN RIVER

  Throughout his childhood and youth David Reynolds kept an eye on the past, entranced by family stories from Victorian London – the music halls, the romances, the strange disappearance of his grandfather – even as he himself came of age in the vibrant 1960s. In Swan River he describes both worlds with great vitality and sympathy, and shows how a child’s puzzled interest in his forebears deepens into an adult’s understanding of human nature.

  Swan River was short-listed for the PEN/Ackerley Prize for Autobiography.

  * * * * *

  ‘David Reynolds’s memoir Swan River stood head and shoulders above every other book this year. ... a beautiful meditation on the nature of families, on the way that feelings are passed on almost imperceptibly from generation to generation. The material is crafted and shaped with the artistry that we would expect from our best fiction writers. An enthralling story, flawlessly told ... A book for all of us – mysterious, consoling and deeply pleasurable to read.’ JONATHAN COE -- Independent (Books of the Year)

  ‘An exquisite work of memory ... in turns funny, sad and moving; it’s a book that will stay with the reader long after the final page. Swan River is a lovingly crafted story about love, truth and searching, and David Reynolds is a writer of calm, quiet brilliance.’ JEREMY POOLMAN -- Daily Express

  ‘Entertaining and readable ... written with great warmth and shrewdness ... The sense of personal satisfaction, of some kind of closure being achieved, is strongly conveyed. It is a mark of Reynolds’s skill that the reader shares it.’ D.J.TAYLOR -- Times Literary Supplement

  ‘A gripping journey that has the all-important ring of truth… takes an inexorable hold on the reader ... a remarkable piece of social history and a stunning reconstruction of family life down three generations ... strangely moving and elegiac ... through his clarity and mastery of detail, Reynolds has taken us with him every step of the way.’ TIM LOTT -- Daily Mail

  ‘The unflashy prose and downbeat candour are disarming … His family’s story matters to him. Stubbornly, against the odds, he makes it matter to us, too.’ BLAKE MORRISON -- Guardian

  ‘Told in an unsensational and deft manner, all the more effective for its lack of stridency, and for its inclusion of quotidian detail ... Out of his bedroom, into the wider world, and back into the past, gently, Reynolds leads the reader on, immersing you in his antecedents’ world and his own memories until you begin to think they are yours too. Such inclusiveness is surely the mark of a good writer.’ PHILIP HOARE -- Independent

  ‘The story he pieces together is one of ill-fated love in Victorian London and that period is evoked with a striking clarity, as is the 1960s counter-culture scene which Reynolds inhabited while he pursued his family’s past ... The prose is sometimes startlingly good ... a moving account of the way every generation hands down pain and joy to the next.’ DAVID MATTIN – Observer

  ‘Evocative family memoir, in which the stories of three generations intersect until the mystery is resolved.’ FANNY BLAKE -- Woman and Home (Book of the Month)

  ‘Beautifully written family memoir ...’ -- Real Magazine

  ‘A remarkable portrayal of the love between father and son ... a fabulous, moving book.’ WILL SELF

  ‘A beautiful book ... A loving, wise book.’ ANNE MICHAELS

  ‘Immensely likeable … readable, engaging, wholly appealing.’ -- Toronto Globe and Mail

  ‘A profoundly moving story about fathers and sons.’ -- Vancouver Sun

  ‘It is difficult to guess whether Reynolds’s memoir has given him the gift of connectedness, or has simply illuminated it, but that sense of being in place is tangible ...’ GABY NAHER -- Sydney Morning Herald

  SWAN RIVER

  A FAMILY MEMOIR

  DAVID REYNOLDS

  First published in hardcover in 2001 in the UK by Picador

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd

  First published 2002 in the US and Canada by Greystone

  a division of Douglas & McIntyre Ltd

  This ebook edition first published in 2014

  by Old Street Publishing Ltd

  8 Hurlingham Business Park, Sulivan Road, London SW6 3DU

  All rights reserved

  © David Reynolds, 2001

  The right of David Reynolds to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  BARRY LOPEZ: lines from About This Life, first published

  in Great Britain by The Harvill Press 1999. c Barry Holstun Lopez 1998.

  Reproduced by permission of The Harvill Press.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–1–910400–26-5

  For Martha, Grace and Rose

  ‘He appeared to suggest, however, that there was something debilitating that haunted human society. He implied that the knowledge he conveyed was crucial to survival, that Armageddons loomed for us, always. The threats he saw to civilisation were vague. They had to do with the failure to remember, which explained some of his devotion to the study of history, and the failure to honor.’

  Barry Lopez, ‘Theft’ in About This Life

  ‘The more a man is, the less he wants.’

  Maxwell Perkins

  (painted across their living-room mantelpiece by his wife)

  Author’s Note

  While the events described in this book are essentially true, they stretch back more than a hundred years and have been recalled not just from my memory but from my father’s and from those of other members of my family. My father died many years ago and cannot be asked for verification, but it is worth noting that he was quite taken by Aristotle’s view that ‘poetry [by which, in modern terms, Aristotle meant fiction] is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history’. Though I have much respect for history, I am inclined to go along with my father and Aristotle on this - and with Nietzsche: ‘There are no facts, only interpretations.’

  The names of certain people have been changed to protect their privacy.

  Prologue

  In northern Manitoba the winter of 1906-07 was hard, but not exceptionally so. The snow began at the end of the second week of November, and within a fortnight lay deep throughout the valley and all around the new buildings and shacks that made up the town of Durban. The homesteaders, who had been in the district for seven or eight years, knew that the freeze-up could be endured, but the newcomers drawn to the booming town by the new railway shivered in the dry, cold air and thought of returning to the east or the south. There were two trains out every week, so for some it would be easy. Others had no choice.

  In the middle of a night in early January Tom was woken by the cold. Since winter began, he had slept fully clothed, but the fire had died. He had forgotten to replenish it before retiring; he had been too drunk to think ahead. Wrapping a blanket around him, he forced his stiff limbs a few strides across the floor; then returned to the bed to pull on his boots. He took two mouthfuls of whisky from the bottle, stared at the thermometer which showed 60 degrees below zero, the coldest since his arrival the previous summer, and began to remove the ashes from the stove with a shovel. He quickly built a fire, and walked up and down his tiny board cabin, flapping his arms as he waited for the warming blaze.

  He sat down with the bottle
and a packet of biscuits; then remembered that he was due to take the sleigh to his workplace on the track at 6 am. He put the whisky down and gained comfort from the biscuits alone. He sipped a little freezing water instead, holding it in his mouth until it was warm enough to swallow. He was close to the kind of desperation that produces total inertia, and had a headache that stretched from the front of his head to the nape of his neck. He was forty-seven years old and had spent most of his life in north London.

  1

  A Quiet Day at the Lock

  There was nothing happening at the lock that afternoon. Two swans, their wings arced upwards, paddled upstream towards the bridge. The lock-keeper looked up from a pile of ropes and waved. It was the end of March. In a few weeks there would be sunshine and pleasure boats. Then we would push the grey-painted beams against the current to close the lock gates. And the ice-cream van would wait where the gravel path met the road.

  It was our favourite place to hang around, kids let out from school at 3.30, mostly boys though Richard often brought his little sister, Kay. Adam, my other close friend, sometimes came with his big sister, Sarah; at thirteen, she was taller and stronger than any of us. Patrick and Dennis, the Irish brothers, who went to the Catholic school, were often there before us. Dennis was our friend. Patrick would walk with Sarah and even put his arm round her shoulder to show off.

  That day I sat on one of the beams and waited, but no one came. The swans flapped up from the water and flew under the bridge, necks urgently outstretched, heading upstream. Staring down into the water outside the lock gates, where brown foam and waterlogged sticks collected, I had an idea. It was nothing much, the product of boredom, curiosity and just a little affection, but years later I see that this was a moment – an arbitrary decision – whose consequences would endure.

  I had met the old man hundreds of times, usually with my dad, sometimes with my mum, occasionally with both, but I had never seen him alone or really talked to him.

  The red-brick mansion was a little way up the road behind a huge, billiard-table lawn, featureless at this time of the year but for a giant cedar at the farther corner towards the house; in summer it would be dotted with chairs, tables, and green and cream umbrellas. A young nurse opened the door and led me down the polished corridor to the day room. She said he’d be glad to see me; no one had been since the previous weekend.

  Four old people were playing cards. Others were sitting about reading, chatting quietly and drinking tea. Uncle George was in his usual comfortable chair by the window, a book in his lap, a pot of tea and a slice of fruit cake at his side. He was gazing across the lawn to the river and the wooded hills beyond.

  ‘David! Did you come by yourself?’

  He was a little old man, terribly old, with brown skin and thin white hair cut short at the sides. He heaved himself up on the arms of the chair and craned round to see if I was alone.

  I told him I was and that I’d been to the lock. ‘There’s nothing happening there, so I thought I’d come to see you.’ Not very polite, I realised too late, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘That’s very nice of you. You must come more often, whenever you like. I’m always here.’

  He had been living there since 1951, almost ten years. At first, he had treated it like a hotel, always out around the town, shopping, calling in for a half of bitter at the George and Dragon, dropping in on friends most of whom he had met through my father; he had joined the local fishing club and a bridge club.

  My father was his nephew and, when Auntie Marie died, had suggested this luxury old people’s home instead of the house in which the old man couldn’t bear to be alone. Even though it had meant moving a hundred miles to Marlow, a town where he knew no one except us, Uncle George had made a quick decision and had got on with enjoying the rest of his life.

  Now well over ninety, he stayed at the home all the time except for an excursion by taxi every Tuesday to his friends, the Browns, a couple in their sixties who ran the grocery shop in the High Street. There he played bridge, always partnering Mrs Brown’s spinster sister, whom he called Miss Robson. He even stopped coming to see us, although he would have been very welcome; my father’s theory was that he was ‘sweet on Miss Robson’, a handsome, somewhat melancholy retired nurse.

  I fetched an upright chair and sat in front of him, though I was careful not to block his view through the window. He pushed a button that dangled across the arm of his chair on the end of a lead attached to the wall. A foreign man in a white coat appeared.

  ‘This is my great nephew, David. He’d like orange squash and some cakes.’

  When the man had gone, Uncle George smiled and leaned forward. ‘Tell me David. Are you a happy boy?’

  I told him I was. Like all adults he asked if I liked school and we talked about my efforts as centre forward in the school football team. Then he asked about our house, which he hadn’t visited in four years, though it was less than half a mile away. Which room did I have? Did my father still write in the room at the top in the front, and paint in the room at the back? Did my mother still work in the shop? What job was my father doing now? Was he still repairing televisions?

  Repairing televisions had been my father’s job before last. He had moved on from that to driving an ice-cream van about three years before: Eldorado ice-cream. There had been three vans and because he was new my dad had had the oldest, which didn’t play music. He had to stop the van, lean out of the window and ring a bell. I had often gone with him, rung the bell, and served ice-cream and lollies from the other side of the van, back to back with my father, when things had got busy.

  Now though, he worked for a nation-wide company driving around selling seeds to farmers, and, again, I went with him sometimes, just for fun. Uncle George seemed interested, though it surprised me that he didn’t know this, since my father visited him at least once a week. I told him through mouthfuls of sponge cake where we went, at what time and for how long. His wiry white eyebrows waggled up and down as I spoke.

  ‘He’s always been full of energy, your father. Never gives up. Keeps on trying.’ He tapped me on the knee, then leaned back and lowered both eyebrows. ‘A bit like his own father, poor man …but different.’

  ‘Why was Dad’s dad poor?’

  Eyebrows up again, he gazed out the window, then turned to me. ‘He had a hard time, married to my sister. Your father doesn’t really understand, but it’s not his fault. Not Tom’s fault either, not entirely, come to that.’ He spoke slowly and thoughtfully, as though unsure whether he should say such things to an eleven-year-old boy.

  ‘What happened to him? Dad hardly talks about him, except he says he drank too much whisky.’

  ‘He’s right about that. But why did he? That’s the question.’ He looked out of the window again, before turning back and staring at me as though this was a matter of importance. ‘Your father should think about that. I’ve told him, but he won’t listen.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It upsets him. He was very young when Tom went away.’

  Some rooks cawed loudly somewhere outside. A swan rose from the river, straightened out and glided away over the weir. The man in the white jacket appeared again and filled my glass from a jug, without being asked.

  ‘Why did he go away?’

  Uncle George stared at me for a few moments, and then spoke quietly. ‘Because he drank too much, too often.’ He drew a long breath, while still looking me full in the eye. ‘He sometimes,’ he breathed deeply again, ‘upset your grandmother, my sister. We had to make him go away.’

  I was interested in this family mishap, even though it had happened such a long time ago. My father hadn’t told me about his father upsetting his mother, whatever that meant. Uncle George was looking across the river to the hills again; his thoughts seemed to be many years from now. I interrupted them. ‘How do you know about it? Were you there?’

  He smiled and raised one eyebrow; the other seemed to droop as if to balance its partner. �
��I was there. We all lived together, you know.’

  I did vaguely know that, a very long time ago when Queen Victoria, whose face was on the oldest, smoothest pennies, still reigned, my father had been a child in a house full of adults, and that when he was ten his father had disappeared from his life for ever. ‘So who lived there? And where did dad’s dad go to?’ This last question interested me particularly; where would a person go – a person who for some reason had to leave their home and family – what would a person like that do next?

  The eyebrow went up again and Uncle George leaned sideways towards me. ‘All right. I’ll tell you all about it.’ The foreign man appeared again; this time he filled the teapot with hot water and poured tea into Uncle George’s cup. Uncle George just went on talking. ‘My mother died when I was nine, in 1878. My father, your great-grandfather, had the same name as me, George Thompson. I had a younger brother, Ernest, and we had an older sister, Millie, which was short for Amelia, but everybody called her Sis. She was your grandmother, though you never met her.’

  ‘Why was she called Sis?’

  ‘When he was very small, my brother Ernest called her that because she was his sister. After that everyone called her Sis, even our father.’

  I waited as he drank some tea and gazed out of the window.

  Eventually he put his cup down on the saucer with a clatter. ‘When my mother died, my father rented a new house – almost new anyway. It had been built about ten years before, in a road full of new houses in Dalston, east London.’ He tapped my knee. ‘That’s why your dad supports the Spurs. He grew up a penny ride from the ground, and Tom took him before he went away. The Arsenal were still in south London then. That’s why the Spurs supporters have always disliked the Arsenal supporters; they’re interlopers, you see.’ He chuckled quietly which made his eyebrows shoot down; he peered out at me through the stiff white hairs.