Chingford. The name rings a bell loudly every time I hear it. It is a name I shall never forget. It represents a moment engraved indelibly on my memory, one of the brief moments in my life that I yearn to bring back. It could have been a moment of enlightenment. Instead, it is a moment that will torment me to my dying day, a moment when questions could have been asked that will never now be answered.
I have never been to Chingford but perhaps one day I will go there and wander around and let my imagination flow free as I try to identify a certain house and solve some puzzles.
I learned to drive in April 1966 and my father died in December 1966. During his last months I took him on many an outing. He loved to visit Anglican churches and cathedrals and that September I took him to Waltham Abbey in Essex. He himself was an ecclesiastical woodworker, a gifted craftsman, so the architecture and carvings in the Abbey entranced him. He also possessed a keen interest in the past and the story that King Harold was buried in the Abbey intrigued him. That outing was one he really enjoyed. We ended the excursion by having tea in a restaurant and this was a rare treat for him. I must say that I enjoyed visiting the Abbey, too.
Having a car meant that we could take my father to these places in comfort. However, I have always been a nervous driver. I remain tense and alert, scarcely breathing. In my concentration, I barely hear anyone trying to make conversation. My mind remains focussed on the journey. I usually pore over the route beforehand till I almost know it by heart. Any diversion or deviation throws me off guard and I start to panic. Here I am building up a series of excuses for what happened that day.
It was approaching 5pm, rush hour for the homeward-bound traffic out of London, as we were making our way home through Epping Forest, to Welwyn Garden City. I felt anxious in the heavy traffic. Suddenly, my father asked me: "Are we anywhere near Chingford?"
It was a tentative, seemingly casual inquiry out of the blue. I had never heard of Chingford and I wasn't ready to engage in any conversation that might cause me to lose concentration so I snapped a reply. "I don't know whether we're near Chingford or not. All I want is to be free of this nightmare traffic."
Oh, caustic words that would have been better left unspoken, words that will forever fly about in the air, never to be recaptured and taken back! My father felt rebuffed and rightly so and we continued on our journey in silence.
Safely home and having eaten our evening meal, I felt relaxed but I suddenly was curious about Chingford, so I inquired: "Why did you ask about Chingford, Dad?"
"It's where your mother worked in a big house in 1917 while I was with the Royal Flying Corps in Surrey. I used to visit her whenever I had leave and my regiment gave me the train tickets for the journey. I just wanted to see if I could find the house where she lived in."
I hadn't known till then that my mother had left Ireland with my father when they eloped. Nor had I known that she had been living in as a cook or housemaid in a big house in Chingford.
"Why didn't you tell me why you wanted to visit Chingford, Dad?"
The poor man had received no encouragement from me! Had I known in advance I'd have planned to stop. On looking at the map, I realised that I had been very near Chingford and that my father had probably known that. Was I so distant and unapproachable that he was afraid to ask me beforehand? He must have been longing to find the house and relive in memory those early happy days when he and my mother were newly wed. I can't believe that I was so lacking in sensitivity that I hadn't reacted sympathetically.
How I wish I was back at that moment in time and that I had pulled up on the next layby and taken my road map out to check where I was! I am now six years older than my father was that day and I understand what the past means as one grows old. As I write my own memoirs for my daughter, I suddenly want to know about my parents' early days together. There is no one left who can tell me. Perhaps when I manage to visit Chingford, I shall find some clues.
I shall go on regretting that I didn't find out at the moment when I was so near being shown the house and that I hadn't encouraged my father to speak about those days. He missed my mother dreadfully and none of us understood how he was feeling. We were so engrossed in our own lives that we had little time to notice that he would have loved talking about the past. We had little sympathy for him and less interest in his past at that time. Now I am yearning to find out about those years.
I have been able to trace some of his service records from the Public Records Office and I think I have identified where his camp was on the Surrey Downs. I try to picture his journey by train to Chingford and his and my mother's joy at seeing one another. I have also met someone whose family has always lived in a big house in Chingford and I have learnt from her that there are only five big houses there.
What I will have to do is make a connection between the family my mother worked for in Ireland and the family she went to in Chingford. I can't think how she could have made her way to England and found a position in a house in Chingford except with the help of her Irish employers who were members of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. I seem to remember that they had relatives in Essex but they, too, are no longer around to contact. How much easier it would have been had I stopped that day in 1966 and taken my father into Chingford!
I have tried to ensure that my daughter won't in years to come have to strive at making any Chingford Connection. I have taken her to most of the places connected with my early life and I am writing down all I can remember about the distant past. I am also persevering in gathering information about my family's past, but how I wish I had listened and asked questions and recorded the answers when the generation above me was still around!