The Truth is?

The Truth is?

We lay our scene in a small village in England. It’s March,1944 - the war years with the village strangely quiet- like a group of people meeting and mourning the loss of loved ones. Most of its menfolk of fighting age are away on the European continent or further afield.

Today in the village our protagonist, Tilly, is out driving taxis for her father who runs the local village garage. She drops off her passenger in the nearby town , turns and heads for home. She has something to tell her father. She has hesitated in telling, but it will not wait any longer. Parking the taxi, locking the door and placing a hand on the roof of the car, Tilly takes a deep breath, she raises her head and walks to the garage workshop where her father is repairing an engine. She checks that she is away from any curious listeners including her siblings and any customers at the garage. Charles has heard the taxi arrive and notices Tilly as she parks the taxi. He stands up and takes a cloth moving towards his daughter. She sees her father approaching and her body tenses like a sportswoman waiting for the starting pistol. She smiles nervously as he comes near with that well oiled cloth wiping axel grease from his hands. What will she say to him?

Like a summer breeze singing through the trees there is already whispered village gossip about Tilly’s family …the mother of the family has upped and gone for reasons not discussed at the time and made known much later. The absence of the mother leaves Tilly as the eldest girl surrogate mother to her siblings and her father Charles. It’s time to keep the ‘family business’ in the ‘family’ and avoid any more shocks to the system. They say it never rains but it pours -Tilly, who is just twenty years old and single, is pregnant. The downpour has begun.

What is said and what takes place between father and daughter is not known. The conversation was not recorded or overheard and never referenced years later. And the father of this child? …still a mystery. We assume Tilly knows but she has never declared it. Do her siblings know? Or have a good idea but say nothing? As for a wider audience- and challenge- the village community has its cohort of whisperers and curtain turners often setting light to village gossip that like bush fire rapidly goes out of control…do they have any idea? So… bury the news. Move quickly. A plan. The plan, Shakespearean in shape and outworking, goes like this.

First, takeTilly out of the village scene by dispatching her to Kidderminster miles away from the village and set her up in a hostel while doing domestic duties in the town (no details, the less known the better. How did the siblings react or what are they told? A deafening silence. There is no record of village enquiries like,’ Charles, where’s Tilly? we haven't seen her for ages?’)

It's a communication lockdown. Everything on a need to know basis and we, the curious, do not need to know.

March turns to November 1944 and a girl is born, Rose. Her birth certificate puts a hostel in Kidderminster as the place of birth. Mother and daughter stay in the hostel in Kidderminster out of sight and out of mind for the village. In February 1945, Tilly, who had returned to the village minus her daughter, married Derek Mucklow . Derek is a soldier with the The Royal Scots Fusiliers and he is Tilly’s cousin. But we have no photo of him and no family reflections or reminiscences of this agent of change that resculpted the scandalous landscape into something of passing interest only.

In May 1945 adoption papers accompanied Tilly’s daughter back to the village to join her mother - as an adoptee- to meet up with now married Tilly Mucklow. In 1946 Tilly divorced Derek Mucklow. And where does Derek go? Like sailors becalmed at sea in a thick fog you know there’s a land to be explored somewhere but no land can be seen…floating in the Bermuda Triangle where things simply vanish…hmmm, truth and lies.

This agent appears from nowhere in 1945 and disappears in 1946.

Was the original ‘fling’ acted out in the heat of war? And was it a fling or something else? And was Derek doing the family a ‘favour’ in scripting a different story?

Our story set in this small village is not yet done and dusted. In1950 Tilly married Dennis Edward and that union produced a boy, Michael. It is a stormy marriage doomed to failure and divorce. The separation occurs in 1958/59 when, ironically, the family of Tilly, Rose and Michael return to the village to live with now retired Charles. All is quiet on the Western Front until some years later Rose wants to know who her father is and sends for her Birth Certificate and Adoption Papers. She has not seen these documents before and her mother, if she still has copies, has never declared them. The question for her, ‘Who is my father?’ begins with the fact that someone called Mucklow appears on her adoption papers. It’s that man again! That name is a mystery to her. She has never heard the name before. This question, ‘Who is Mucklow,’ is pitched to Tilly and met with a stony silence, the folding of arms and a stiffening of her body. You could feel the stress stiffening her body and freezing her in a fixed position like an ice sculpture. After a prolonged silence Tilly said, ‘My lips are sealed,’ quickly followed by her assertion ,’That will go with me to the grave,’ And it did.

Mucklow must have been known to her siblings and a cast of many but his identity hidden in legal documents and the dust of time. Rose did push the point,’Why won’t you tell me? And, ‘What is so secretive?’ And all angles explored were met with the same silence or blunt refusal to engage in any conversation about the mysterious Mr. Mucklow. It went to her grave with her daughter only able to speculate who, in 1944, enjoyed the pleasures of her mother.

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The stories and legends of families are layered with modifications, alterations, half truths and fiction. Who knows what the full facts are here? Like Chinese whispers. (You remember that game?) A group of you start with a whispered message to your immediate neighbour like, ‘Send reinforcements we’re going to advance,’ That is whispered to the next person in the ring, your immediate neighbour and that becomes at the end of the line,’ Send three and fourpence we’re going to a dance.’ I sometimes think about oral traditions and message veracity ‘Is the 1944/45 saga as stated anywhere near the truth of what really happened?’ All those who could explain more are no more, long gone.

In 1985 there was a play at the National Theatre that starred Anthony Hopkins. The play ,Pravda, pitched a reporter with a scoop and scandal involving the Royal Family against the Editor of the paper ( Hopkins) , who could see that publishing such a scoop would bring down the full weight and power of the establishment onto the paper and him. So, don’t publish! ‘But,’ protests the reporter, ‘It’s true! We can't lie about this.’ To which Hopkins replies,’ Andrew (name of the reporter) I lie, you lie, your girlfriend lies, everyone lies.’ It was a classic battle of truth or lies.

Lies won.

The truth is,’We all lie.’ So for this ‘play’ this story…The Truth is? And who is Derek Mucklow?