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Authors: Rose Tremain
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Latin. His favourite one was Ama et fac quod vis . He would stop at this one sometimes and say: ‘True, true. All too true.’ Some of the sayings were faded. Grandpa Cord said: ‘Green ink perishes, Mary. As can wisdom. When a saying is faded, it might be time to take it down. Or it might not.’
He lived eleven miles from our farm, in a village called Gresham Tears. His house was flint and brick and square and dark. This was the home where my mother had lived as a child. There were twin holly trees at the gate, their heads shaped into cones by Grandpa Cord’s shears. His address was Holly House, Gresham Tears, Suffolk and he thought this address very marvellous and cheering. It was the third thing that he loved in his life.
I had thought that I would never really know Grandpa Cord. I had thought I would always see him on short visits andhe would pour me ginger beer and tell me about King Ethelred the Redeless, and then he would die. But I was wrong about that. In the summer of 1957 I was sent to live with him. I left the farm and my address became Holly House, Gresham Tears, Suffolk. I took all my clothes and my school books and my Dictionary of Inventions and my green tennis ball. My father said: ‘We’re sending you for the coaching. Grandpa Cord will get you through the Eleven-plus.’
On my first night, Grandpa Cord showed me a theatre programme for a show called South Pacific . It had a picture of Mary Martin in it and Grandpa Cord said: ‘What do you think of that?’ I thought people looked dead in photographs, like they were ancestors of themselves, long departed, but I said the name Mary Martin was a good name and that I would call myself that from now on. And this amused Grandpa Cord. He slapped his old corduroy knee. He said: ‘No one told me you were a good sport, but I can see that you are!’
So I began to live there and to be called Mary Martin. After a week I said: ‘Much as I like Mary Martin as a name, it is rather long, Grandpa Cord. So I think you can just call me Martin.’
‘Plain old Martin?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Very well. A bit peculiar, but who cares? And you call me Cord, Martin. “Grandpa” makes me feel I should have lumbago. Is that a deal?’
I said it was a deal. We shook hands. The skin on Cord’s hands had the feel of medal ribbon, ribbed and silky. He closed his eyes and said: ‘Scouts honour, as they say.’
So then I thought of us as a firm, Martin and Cord, Limited. We were a firm of dreamers. Cord specialised in the past, the long-ago past of Ethelred the Redeless and the middle past of the Battle of Marston Moor and the near past of Livia wearing a shawl from Madagascar and playing Liszt. My department was the future, the future spinning towards me, of Weston Grammar School and the loss of Miss McRae, and the future that sat still, waiting for time to get to it, the future of MartinWard. Cord supplied me with green ink – the only kind he bought – and in it I wrote out my new name hundreds of times in different writing.
No one told me the real reason for my leaving the farm, but I knew it.
Irene, who now lived with Pearl in Mr Harker’s house, had said to me twice: ‘The day may come, Mary, when your mother will have to go away for a bit. Just Until.’ So I understood. I was being sent to Cord’s because Just Until was coming. Because I couldn’t stay alone at the farm with my father and Timmy.
I didn’t want to think about where Estelle was going. On the other side of Leiston there was a place called Mountview Asylum which we had sometimes passed on the way to the sea in Sonny’s van. I whispered once to Timmy that this was a loony bin where boys got sent if they couldn’t learn multiplication. Instead of cringing with fear as I’d hoped, he looked at the place, which was a converted stately home with red walls and flying turrets, and said: ‘Which bit of it is the actual bin?’ And we all laughed. Even Estelle. This is the only time that I
He lived eleven miles from our farm, in a village called Gresham Tears. His house was flint and brick and square and dark. This was the home where my mother had lived as a child. There were twin holly trees at the gate, their heads shaped into cones by Grandpa Cord’s shears. His address was Holly House, Gresham Tears, Suffolk and he thought this address very marvellous and cheering. It was the third thing that he loved in his life.
I had thought that I would never really know Grandpa Cord. I had thought I would always see him on short visits andhe would pour me ginger beer and tell me about King Ethelred the Redeless, and then he would die. But I was wrong about that. In the summer of 1957 I was sent to live with him. I left the farm and my address became Holly House, Gresham Tears, Suffolk. I took all my clothes and my school books and my Dictionary of Inventions and my green tennis ball. My father said: ‘We’re sending you for the coaching. Grandpa Cord will get you through the Eleven-plus.’
On my first night, Grandpa Cord showed me a theatre programme for a show called South Pacific . It had a picture of Mary Martin in it and Grandpa Cord said: ‘What do you think of that?’ I thought people looked dead in photographs, like they were ancestors of themselves, long departed, but I said the name Mary Martin was a good name and that I would call myself that from now on. And this amused Grandpa Cord. He slapped his old corduroy knee. He said: ‘No one told me you were a good sport, but I can see that you are!’
So I began to live there and to be called Mary Martin. After a week I said: ‘Much as I like Mary Martin as a name, it is rather long, Grandpa Cord. So I think you can just call me Martin.’
‘Plain old Martin?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Very well. A bit peculiar, but who cares? And you call me Cord, Martin. “Grandpa” makes me feel I should have lumbago. Is that a deal?’
I said it was a deal. We shook hands. The skin on Cord’s hands had the feel of medal ribbon, ribbed and silky. He closed his eyes and said: ‘Scouts honour, as they say.’
So then I thought of us as a firm, Martin and Cord, Limited. We were a firm of dreamers. Cord specialised in the past, the long-ago past of Ethelred the Redeless and the middle past of the Battle of Marston Moor and the near past of Livia wearing a shawl from Madagascar and playing Liszt. My department was the future, the future spinning towards me, of Weston Grammar School and the loss of Miss McRae, and the future that sat still, waiting for time to get to it, the future of MartinWard. Cord supplied me with green ink – the only kind he bought – and in it I wrote out my new name hundreds of times in different writing.
No one told me the real reason for my leaving the farm, but I knew it.
Irene, who now lived with Pearl in Mr Harker’s house, had said to me twice: ‘The day may come, Mary, when your mother will have to go away for a bit. Just Until.’ So I understood. I was being sent to Cord’s because Just Until was coming. Because I couldn’t stay alone at the farm with my father and Timmy.
I didn’t want to think about where Estelle was going. On the other side of Leiston there was a place called Mountview Asylum which we had sometimes passed on the way to the sea in Sonny’s van. I whispered once to Timmy that this was a loony bin where boys got sent if they couldn’t learn multiplication. Instead of cringing with fear as I’d hoped, he looked at the place, which was a converted stately home with red walls and flying turrets, and said: ‘Which bit of it is the actual bin?’ And we all laughed. Even Estelle. This is the only time that I
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