This is the first time I am participating in this challenge, so we'll see if I have the stamina to complete the whole month !
I am also, very ambitiously, writing for the April NaNoWrite ! So the challenge is
twofold !!
Hang on to your horse and enjoy the ride. And good luck to all my fellow participants.
If you would like to know more, and maybe join in the future go here
K is for Kathleen ARTER
Kathleen is the name of my big sister, who died in 2011.
But she was named after my mother's mother Kathleen ARTER, from Yorkshire, born 12th December 1901. She grew up just outside of Malton, East of York, on the road to Scarborough, on the North Sea. My great-grandfather, Charles Arter was a coachman and gate-keeper.
Kathleen Arter's mother was Ada Arter, born Clarke. My grandmother had many
brothers and sisters. I remember two mostly: Nelly and Edward. When we were little, my sister and I used to spend a month in the summer in Bournemouth, where my mother was born and raised. A few times we visited Aunt Nelly, as she was called, in Yorkshire. I remember her Yorkshire teas fondly : cucumber sandwiches and all sorts of cakes and buns. A real High tea !
brothers and sisters. I remember two mostly: Nelly and Edward. When we were little, my sister and I used to spend a month in the summer in Bournemouth, where my mother was born and raised. A few times we visited Aunt Nelly, as she was called, in Yorkshire. I remember her Yorkshire teas fondly : cucumber sandwiches and all sorts of cakes and buns. A real High tea !
In 1993, just after I married, I took a trip to Yorkshire and met up with both Aunt Nelly and Uncle Edward who were still alive, but very old. They both lived in their own homes though and were fairly fit. Kathleen Arter, my grandmother had died young, in 1969, at age 68. We were living in New York (Staten Island) at the time and she had visited us with my grandfather the year before. I do have a few memories, kept up thanks to photographs. I remember playing in her garden on the swing and she used to cuddle me a lot. My sister had many recollections and she was sorely affected by her death.
Kathleen Arter lived with her family in the lodge of a Manor House. Uncle Edward's son Peter took us there in 1993, but unfortunately I haven't got a picture on paper, only in my mind.
Kathleen Arter lived with her family in the lodge of a Manor House. Uncle Edward's son Peter took us there in 1993, but unfortunately I haven't got a picture on paper, only in my mind.
One day, when Kathleen was small, her father Charles went out early, as was his custom, to hunt in the nearby woods, part of the domaine. There were probably hare, small deer and also pheasants. He never came back. The alarm was raised. They searched high and low but never found a body. There were marshes in the area and they supposed he was probably swallowed whole. When I tell this story to my children, my husband jokes and says that Charles Arter abducted and moved to Australia where he had a whole new family ! That's just darn cruel, I say, to smear his memory like that ! I don't think my mother appreciates either...
Anyway, here Ada was, with a flock of small children, no husband, no place to live and no means. She had to work to make ends meet but I don't know what she did, maybe she took in laundry.
Kathleen Arter moved to the South as soon as she could and started working at Woolworths in Bournemouth as a shop clerk. She met my grandfather Albert Dunckley in Bournemouth. Albert was from Hackney, East London and an electrician. His father had a shop in Hackney, repairing wheels, bicycles and then the first cars.
Albert was four years younger than Kathleen, so she lied about her age, saying that she was born on 12th December 1905. Nobody ever found out in our family until her death in 1969, when going through her things, Albert found her passport and looked at the dates. It was a shock for her husband, Patricia (my mother) and her little sister Ann (may she rest in peace).
Patricia Baury, my mother, will be 87 this year and still going strong but she lost her mother when she was only 37, her husband Jean-Louis Baury, when she was 73 and her eldest daughter, the second Kathleen, at age 79. She has me...and I'm not going anywhere ! And her three grandchildren, mine.
©susanbauryrouchard
On the Yorkshire coast, Whitby, 2016.
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