Ghosts at the Strand

The land beneath Pwllheli's railway station was reclaimed from the sea in 1907 when building on the new harbour began. The latter turned out to be somewhat of a white elephant as it wasn't deep enough for the new steamships already plying Cardigan Bay and the Menai Straits. Also it soon began to silt up and the tide withdrew the water from it for several hours a day, as it still does.At the time it seemed a splendid achievement, promising prosperity for the little town, where several other building projects were taking place, many initiated by the Cardiff businessman Solomon Andrews who had bought the old Plas Glyn y Weddw Dower House in Llanbedrog and made it his home. Across the road from the station a short terrace of shops with 3-storey, 6 bedroom houses above a pillared, glass-topped verandah, were completed in 1909. To one of these my mother's newly married parents moved with her paternal grandfather, Robert Isaac Jones, and her father's single brothers and sister: Robert, Stanley and Lydia-Kate. The house was named 'The Strand'.

Here Robert Isaac relocated his joinery and cabinet-making business from Gaol Street (where his china-shop remained), his three sons working in the business with him. At the Strand they had a new big, plate-glass shop window to show off the furniture. The business closed in the thirties. (By then my grandfather Thomas John and my great-uncle Stanley were both dead. Robert Isaac's last son, Robert, was killed in a hit and run accident during the 1940 blackout.) After that the shop was rented out to become Bon Marche, but our family stayed on in the house.

I was born at The Strand and lived there until I married at 20, though I spent little time there after going away to college at 18. By the time of my appearance we were a family of women. My father was still alive, but came home only on occasional leaves. I never remember seeing him out of uniform. In fact I have only one real memory of him: when he rode my little horse. I had this little red toy horse on wheels with a wooden seat on which I could propel myself around the large kitchen floor, and a handle at the back which had helped me learn to walk. To my great astonishment and indignation this stranger in uniform appeared one day and sat on MY horse, his long legs buckled up awkwardly at the sides. It was obvious even to my baby mind that it was too small for him. Then my mother grabbed the handle and pushed him round and round the kitchen which rang with their laughing voices. This was all very strange to me as I hadn't heard laughter very often. Normally the house was serious. Several times a day the radio would be switched on and everyone who happened to be present gathered round it with solemn faces to listen to a man speaking in sombre tones. Sometimes a different, high-pitched man's voice with a sneering drawl would cut in and my mother would gasp, 'Switch it off, switch it off!' and somebody would.

My mother always said that I couldn't possibly remember the day we heard of my father's death because I was only 18 months old. But I remain convinced that my memory of it is real, and not the result of someone telling me about it later. My mother and I were in the dining room with two friends of hers in WAAFS uniform, all chattering. My Great-Aunt Kate came in holding an envelope and everyone went quiet. I was sitting on my mother's knee and I felt her body convulse with great racking sobs beneath me. Feeling frightened, I began to cry. One of her friends picked me up and hugged me to her while the other tried to comfort my mother. After a while someone said, 'Look, Anita's crying too. She must know that her daddy's dead.' The words didn't mean much to me at the time, but I looked across at my mother's face and saw her trying to smile at me through her tears. I felt relieved, that she was noticing me once more.

News travelled fast in Pwllheli. That very same evening a local headmaster came to ask my mother to teach at his school (Penlliniau) as it was difficult to fill the vacancy with so many teachers having joined the armed forces. My mother and her brother had both won orphan scholarships to Bangor University and she had also completed her teacher's training before her marriage. She agreed and began the next day. After a while she left to take up a post at a private boarding school in Abersoch, Craig y Mor, then when I was four obtained another post at Porthmadog Grammar School where she remained until her retirement.

So my Great-Aunt Lydia-Kate, who had brought up my mother and her brother after the death of her sister-in-law from TB when my mother was 5 months old, was left holding a baby for the second time. She had apparently had a sweetheart, not quite a fiance, who was killed in the first world war, so her role as family help-meet was mapped out from then on. She once told me how she didn't want to take on my mother at first, 'because I didn't know anything about babies', although she was happy to take on the eight year old Uncle Robin, of whom she was very fond. My mother's mother's family was willing to take the baby, but not Uncle Robin, who was reputed to be the naughtiest boy in Pwllheli. However, my grandfather was unwilling to separate his two children and so Auntie Kate relented and took them both. At the time she was nursing her father who also had TB, so she had to wash and change all her clothes before seeing to my mother and then go and serve in the china shop. My grandfather died of TB when my mother was six and Uncle Robin fourteen.

Lydia-Kate, ever conscious of our manless state, lived in fear of burglars. To deter them, she kept a great, mahogany-dyed pitch pine hallstand on the ground floor hallway. On this hung the black overcoats and bowler hats of her three dead brothers and her father. How many potential burglars they scared away we will never know, but as a child I found these very frightening and hated having to walk past them. As we didn't live on the ground floor, however, I only had to pass these 4 'ghosts' when going in and out of the house. And of course when I was very young this was always with Auntie Kate or my mother. Later, though, this hallstand was brought upstairs to the first floor landing and placed in a dark corner between the drawing-room and parlour doors. I'm not sure why it was moved there. I vaguely remember some conversation with a facetious visiting relative who asked what if the burglars used a ladder and broke in through a first floor window, thus omitting to be intimidated by the apparent presence of four men in the house, so maybe Auntie Kate took that seriously.

This dark corner had to be passed in order to reach the parlour, which had been turned into a playroom for me, with my bedroom directly above it. I also had to pass it every time I went upstairs to the bathroom. I remember, around the age of six or seven, trying to persuade a visiting aunt (one of Lydia-Kate's many cousins) to accompany me to the toilet as I was 'afraid of the ghosts'. Sometimes I took the cat with me for moral support. On the second floor we had four bedrooms and a bathroom. From there a steeper staircase with lino instead of carpet led up to the attic where there were two further bedrooms. One of these had been turned into a junk room, and the other was only used in the summer when Uncle Robin and family came to stay for a month (he was a teacher in London) and his two sons slept there.

As I got older I found the attic junk room and eaves cupboards a fantastic store of old treasures of all kinds. But when I was still at infant school it was a bit scary. There were two green wooden chests filled with wood-working tools. And in the night I sometimes imagined I could hear the sounds of my dead great-uncles sawing and hammering, making tables and chairs ... and coffins. They always wore black overcoats and black bowler hats.