Thoughts.com Blogs - It was a privilege to have known her

View Blog

It was a privilege to have known her

Isn't it amazing that there are certain people you meet in your life that leave such wonderful impressions. I met a wonderful, elderly lady called Marjorie Kirkpatrick nearly 20 years ago. She lived in a fascinating house, right on the edge of a cliff overlooking a beautiful bay called Port Bradden. She found the house when she visited Ireland on a holiday once, travelling round in a converted ambulance. She vowed to come back some day and live there and so she did. She arrived in the late 60's at the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland. She immediately set about opening her home to underprivileged children living on the edge of the peace line in Belfast. She was an English aristocrat, they were working class children, many of whom had never left home before. She fed them and took them round her garden and onto the shore and tucked them up at night in a bedroom with the window open so they could hear the sea.

Each time I visited I would bring a huge bag of turf for the open fire which rarely went out. She was stiff with arthritis and found it hard to carry heavy loads, but she worked in her garden for hours every day talking to the robins who became so tame they would sit on her spade and follow her into the kitchen. Marjorie had been brought up in India where her father was a surgeon and had returned to the family home in Surrey, England in her teens. Her strict upbringing had left her anxious for freedom which she did not find until she herself was in her 60's. She left home only after both her parents had died, anxious to discover her 'Irish' roots. Her grandparents had been Anglo Irish landowners before the potato famine.

She had not washed her hair in over 20 years but she brushed it a hundred times every night. It was shiny, white and down to her shoulders but was always worn up in a bun by day. She had one good tweed suit which she wore to the little Anglican Church on the first Sunday of the month when she would take communion. She shopped in Bushmills, the nearest town, just once a week on a Friday. Often by Wednesday the bread would turn mouldy, but she would cut it off and toast it. She grew all her own vegetables and cooked every part which was edible, including the leaves. Her one luxury was a stair lift which she bought when a cousin died and left her a small legacy. This meant she could still enjoy a bath every morning upstairs which was one of her few comforts.

She loved to have me visit and when I did she would open up the 'good room' at the front of the house. A fire would be lit and she would serve Earl Grey tea in a solid silver pot which was kept warm on a tiny burner. We drank it out of tiny, china cups. She often told me how her mother would have her Amah bring her to tea most afternoons when they lived in India and her mother would pour the tea from the very same teapot. When they returned to England, her mother had no idea how to look after two little girls and so they were sent to boarding school. Marjorie cried for a year, missing her Amah so much. From there she went to Oxford University and only got to know her mother when she returned home during the second world war. We would sit by the fire and she would tell me tales of India, of nights in the dorm as a girl at school and of her joining the Debating Society at Oxford, a daring thing for a girl to do in the twenties. She once bought herself a painting. It was of a Burmese Boy sitting in a grey shirt under an exotic tree. She used to pass the little gallery every day where it hung on her way to the munitians factory were she worked as part of the war effort. When she had saved enough she picked up her courage to buy it and bring it home. Her mother was horrified and ordered her to get rid of it immediately. Apparently the idea of having a painting of a coloured boy was quite unacceptable. She hid it for twenty five years under her bed. In Port Bradden it hung in pride of place over the fire which never went out.

One day she 'phoned me to tell me she was 'not too well' and had to go into the little cottage hospital in Ballycastle. 'Just in case you tried to contact me and wondered where I was,' she assured me. I went to see her that weekend and she was so thrilled that I came. It was odd to see Marjorie lying so helpless and unable to do anything for herself. Her fierce independence had gone and she was greatful for the care she was receiving from the nurses and doctors. 'Lovely to have my food made for me,' she told me and it was probably the first time anyone had since she left home with the exception of the very few times she visited me. On the third weekend she scolded me for coming such a distance to visit her and giving up my weekends, but it was obvious she was delighted to see me. She asked me to ring her sister, her only relative, and tell her how things were. She managed to raise her hand to wave as I left the ward and turned to say goodbye. It was the last time I saw her.

She was buried in the little graveyard in the grounds of the church at Port Bradden. It was the most glorious day I can remember on the coast that day with the visibility stretching so clearly to Scotland that we could see the cottages on the coast there. A day she would have loved. Her sister had never visited. She was too busy with the Pony Club she had told me. There were just myself and my husband and a few of her neighbours with whom she had not seen eye to eye. They had resented her living in the tiny community of half a dozen houses as she was not 'one of them' and there had been a dissagreement over a right of way through her land. But, she had a good funeral and the rector chose his words carefully.

I always knew Marjorie had intended leaving her house to the National Trust. She had intended other people to be able to enjoy the magical views it held. There was nothing of any particular value in the house with the exception of the silver teapot. She had lived with only the basic necessities of the fire, her bath and a very old cooker where she made her pots of soup from the vegetables she grew. Her sister phoned me some time after to tell me that Marjorie had left everything to her with the exception of the house. She had left millions. She had made a special request for myself. The painting of the Burmese Boy. I had it cleaned and discovered that his shirt was actually white but had been covered with years of smoke and soot. It hangs in my living room and I cannot look at it without thinking of the pleasure it gave her. Her sister died just one year later leaving a small fortune to the housekeeper who had looked after her ever since Marjorie had left her.

I don't know anyone else quite like Marjorie. She came from an era I can only read about. She had been regarded as 'too plain' to make a good match and so she had remained single and I honestly believe she had never been out with a man. But her kind heart, her beautiful voice and her tales of India and of Jersey where she was a teacher before the island was occupied, live on with me ever since.

Posted by overthehillandfaraway on 2007-10-21 13:52:53 | Rating: