Mara and the Bombardment of Hartlepool.

Venue:  Central Library Hartlepool 21st October 2-4pm

Join me in Hartlepool at for my talk about my novel Children of the Storm. This story starts one morning with pupil teacher Mara Scorton, walking to school in Hartlepool  on December 18^th 1914, the day Hartlepool was bombed by the Germans. Her pupils are coming from another direction. He headmaster, the fearsome Mr Clonmel, is in the school, preparing for his day,

My novel re-imagines these events through the eyes of young Mara.   Extract :

‘Mara turned a corner by one of the shipyards and nearly tripped over a man in working clo thes. He was kneeling by another man who was lying white and still in the road. Beside him stood a much younger man nervously clutching his cap. The man in the ground croaked something, but the man tending his shook his head. ‘Ah canna make out a word he’s sayin’, Tadger,’ he said,

‘The gadgie’s a Frenchie,’ said the younger man. ’Ah seen him down the dock, unloading, working like fury. The lads telt us he was a Frenchie, like.’

‘That’s what he’s talking,’ said Mara. ‘French.’

‘D’yer ken that crack, hinney?’ said the old man. ‘A bairn like you?’

The Bombardment

Hartlepool was the first place on mainland Britain to be bombed by the Germans. In the bombardment  over 100 people died as more than 1,000 shells rained down on the town for about 40 minutes from the three heavy cruisers Blucher, Seydlitz and Moltke which emerged from the mist shortly after 8am on December 16 1914. Amongst the casualties was Theo Jones, the first soldier to die on British soil in the Great War.

At dawn, six miles east of Hartlepool, shots were exchanged between them and the destroyers of the Local Defence Patrol who left to raise the

alarm. No-one in the town heard anything. The ‘Seydiltz’, ‘Moltke’ and ‘Blucher’ continued to steam towards the nearest target and the rest headed for Scarborourgh.

At 8.10 a.m. as the inhabitants were readying themselves for the day’s work, the first shell was fired. They were aiming at the shore batteries and the Lighthouse. The shell cut all the lines of communications between the batteries throwing them into confusion.

By 8.25 a.m. most of the ships had come as close as four thousand yards and had begun to pour their fire into the gun emplacements and the docks. Some of the armour piercing shells had delayed action fuses and a number bounced off the batteries into the town.

Henry Smith Terrace was dangerously close to the action. There were hundreds of people milling about, taken totally by surprise, the coastguards were doing their best to evacuate everybody safely. The air was filled with black smoke, the screams of shells passing overhead and the cries of children separated from their families. For about three quarters of an hour the bombardment continued, 1,150 shells were fired into the area killing 112 and wounding over 200.

 Amongst the casualties was Theo Jones, the first soldier to die on British soil in the Great War.

Note:  Children of the Storm is the middle novel in

Wendy Robertson's Kitty Rainbow Trilogy.

.

Details of Event:

Date: 21st Oct 14

Location: Central Library, 124 York Road, Hartlepool, TS26 9DE

Phone:01429 272905

Time: 14:00 - 16:00

Cost: £2.00

From the brochure.

‘A talk with local author Wendy Robertson.

Wendy Robertson is a renowned local author of historical family stories, she will be talking about her work and reading from her early novel Children of the Storm, which opens with the Bombardment of Hartlepool.'

Refreshments will be provided.

Copies of the novel will be available

Skating, Stanley Spencer and Perceptions of Heaven and Hell

The Christmas tree lights were twinkling and the skaters were already skating at Somerset House when Gillian and I arrived to take a look at the surreal, intricate canvases created by Stanley Spencer for Sandham

Sandham Memorial Chapel

Memorial Chapel to honour the dead.

Inspired by his experience on the Salonica Front and here as a hospital worker caring for the wounded in an asylum used as a hospital, the paintings chart Spencer’s inner and an outer journey mapping the experience of soldiers under fire and in the asylum where the wounded may make their journey of recovery.

I recommend to you the Somerset House Website which gives a good account of this exhibition.  

 As for me I tried to make sense of the profound experience of Spencer’s indosyncratic vision as I sat drinking coffe and  underlining phrases that jumped out at me from the modest clearly written introduction to the exhibition.

Putting these phrases together now I seem to have a ‘found poem’ which more clearly expresses my impression of the exhibition than some immodest critique.

In the exhibition, entitled The Heaven and Hell of War, Spencer’s paintings treat  us to images from the Macedonian Front and a home-front camp and Asylum where the wounded and the mentally ill live  separately but side by side. This seems to me to be a tidy comment on the confusion and pain of war. The underlying meaning of the paintings can apply equally to the soldiers and the insane.

So, with apologies, my ‘found poem’ inspired by Stanley Spencer:

Routine chores.

Tweseldown, the camp near Farnham

The hospital serve a  dual purpose during this war

A bus forces its way through rhododendron bushes and

a newly arrived convoy of soldiers settles in a bleak courtyard

The keys connect the painting to its location

Soldiers struggle to flatten out blankets. They live

repetitive insular lives. This one obsessively scrubs the floor,

sorting through blankets and spotted red handkerchiefs

dreaming of respite from unwelcome chores

painting Iodine onto a wound and

painting different materials and surfaces

The lives of mental patients -

they were all padlocked

Young Stanley. Self Portrait

A small figure - someone filling

urns with tea for one of the asylum wards -

in two different worlds.

A scene on the Macedonian front:

‘Stand to Order!’ The officer is camouflaged

with fern fronds. Piles of barbed wired appear

like black thunder clouds,

The resurrection of the soldiers -

each cross serving as an object of devotion

In a mesh of white crosses,

a soldier emerges from a grave

a cross serving to frame

his bewildered face

Children of The Storm; Stage Six in My Novel Marathon

Second in Kitty Rainbow Trilogy
Click to obtain

How does a trilogy happen? In my case it certainly was not planned. 

When I completed the novel Kitty Rainbow instead of the sense of closure which can come at the end of a novel I was haunted by the still powerful presence of the charismatic and complicated Kitty Rainbow. There seemed to so much story untold.

I was compellers by this feeling made me to embark on a sequel with the idea that this novel should stand alone, apart from Kitty Rainbow but could also be read in sequence. Hence I embarked on my only trilogy.

So it happens that Kitty Rainbow emerges again, dominating the background of Children of the Storm. Kitty learned her lessons in life from retired fighter Ishmael Slaughter and has become the proprietor of Rainbow and Daughter a very successful draper’s shop in the Durham market town of Priorton. She is life partner (but never married – very scandalous in those days) to William Scorton inventor and manufacturer whose factory in this novel has been turned over to the making of shells in the Great War.

In the foreground of the novel are her stepsons, Samuel, Michael and Tommy, and Leonora and Mara, her children with William.   Taking place between 1915 and 1921 the novel tells the story of this complex family, set against the dramas of war on the home front, on the Somme, and on the bloody Russian Front where Russia is slowly disintegrating into full scale revolution.

In her fifties now, Kitty is very involved with her business, William has retired to make clocks and invent a signalling mechanism for railways, middle-aged Michael is running the armaments works, Left-thinking thirty eight year old Samuel is in Russia writing journalist, acting as a go-between and perhaps a spy, thirty seven your old Leonora is working for the Russian Red Cross in field hospitals, seventeen year old Tommy  is kicking his heels dying to be a soldier and  fifteen year old Mara is a pupil teacher in a school in the coastal port of Hartlepool.

The event at the beginning of the novel – the bombardment of Hartlepool – sets away events impact this  family to its core and reflect the destructive ripple, rippling impact of war on the individual.

For You, if you have just a few more minutes

Some Extracts

In Hartlepool fifteen year old Mara arrives at school early in the morning reflecting on the difficulty of the task she has taken on and the fear she has of the domineering head teacher Mr Clonmel.

...

He was nodding now, a slight smile on his face. ‘Then you too are an example to our children Miss Scorton.’

She struggled to think well of this, but was uncomfortable again at how he could turn even this fascinating idea into a lecture. She was relieved of the responsibility of answering by a heavy rumble from the direction of the harbour.

Mr Clonmel turned his head. ‘Guns,’ he said. ‘The soldiers in the battery must be practicing.’ She was just glancing past him, looking for some means of escape when the earth beneath her seemed to ripple like thrown silk and the whole building about her shuddered like a restive horse. For a second even the dust in the air seemed to be suspended. Then there was a creaking and groaning of wood; every pane of glass in the partition cracked like a rifle.

Then everything went black.

When she came to, Mara found she had been flung into Mr Clonmel’s arms. ‘Mr Clonmel!’

There was no reply. Desperately she pulled herself out of his frozen clasp and he fell, insensate. The shriek of a bursting shell pieced the fabric of her brain. She struggled to her feet and looked at the crumpled figure on the floor. She leaned over and then recoiled from the mass of blood and brain matter spilling from the back of his head.

‘Let’s at him,’ Miss Scorton. Give us a see.’ Joe Bly knelt opposite her and put a blackened hand on Mr Clonmel’s scrawny neck.

‘Is he dead, Mr Bly?’

Joe shook his head slowly. ’Nothing so sure, Miss Scorton. Dead as a doornail. Seen a few like that in Africa, fightin’ them Boers.’

Having worked as a governess in Russia 37 year old Leonora Rainbow has volunteered (as some British women did) to work for the Russian Red Cross.

She resisted the temptation to smooth down her grey dress and white apron or to tuck a wandering curl under her white veil. The other fifteen nurses all younger than her stood as still and rapt as the icons around the walls, their eyes glued to the gold-clad back of the priest as he made his way to the alter.

The perfume of incense wafted across and made Leonora’s nose itch. The breath of the priest iced on the air as he made the signs of the cross. She was used to these elaborate rituals, having quite regularly attended services with the Poliakovs. In fact her young friend Lucette Poliakov was here, first in line waiting for the priest’s benediction.

Now the priest was turning to face them, causing a ripple of indrawn breath, a rustle of feet as he held out the crucifix to full view of the congregation. He blessed the heap of red crosses then, having asked the name of each girl, blessed her, presented her with a red cross and offered her his crucifix to kiss. ‘To you Leonya, child of God, servant of the most high, is given this token of faith of hope of charity…thou shalt tend the sick, the wounded, the needy; with words of comfort you shalt thou cheer them.’

…

Standing in the shadow of the great door, and tall man in high boots and a shaggy hat carefully scrutinised each veiled face. Suddenly Leonora’s hands were grabbed and she was pulled against a great chest in a bear hug which brought with it the smell of snow and tallow candles, of pine forest and tobacco. She struggled to free herself and stood back to identify her assailant.

‘Leonora! Leonora! Leo!’ The voice that clipped its way through the massive beard was English and she knew it as well as she knew her own reflection in the mirror,

She drew closer to peer into the man’s face in the pearly half-light that strayed into the cathedral from the snowy square outside. ‘Samuel!’ She finally got the word pout/ ‘What in Heaven’s name are you doing here?’

AND STILL THERE WAS MORE STORY IN THE FASCINATING RAINBOW FAMILY -

SO TO COMPLETE THE TRILOGY I MOVED TO WORLD WAR 2 

WITH THE THIRD NOVEL IN THIS TRILOGY

A THIRSTING LAND:

More about this one anon ....

Scroll down for notes on the Kitty Rainbow novel itself and the Priorton Map and for inside info on Kitty Rainbow 

Riches of the Earth, Under a Brighter Sky,

 Land of your Possession and A Dark Light Shining.

I hope you are enjoying or will sometime enjoy them all