Roger CO Genealogy

Tribute by Nicholas C-O read at Pat's memorial service, 9th December, Yarmouth IOW.

Before reading the lesson I would like to pay a short tribute to my aunt.

As a very young girl she was known as Patsy; for most of the rest of her life she was called Pat, until at Kinloch Tay nursing home she was called Patricia, and I was always grateful for the respect implicit in that name. To me of course she was always my Auntie Pat!

Now that she has gone I am amazed how little I know about the facts of her life. She was always a presence in my life who I got to know increasingly well through the medium of her character and personality, rather than via the specific facts and events of her life.

I know that Pat was born in India, in Nainital, which was one of the Himalayan hill stations of the British Raj. At a very young age she suffered a severe illness – possibly cholera, perhaps typhoid. At any rate Pat’s mother had to bring her, a nd her brother, my father Michael, home to England. During and after the First World War they lived a rather nomadic life in accordance with the demands of my grandfather’s career in the Army, moving from London to Windsor, to Lancashire, to Gar boldsham in Norfolk, and various homes here on the Island.

Pat went to school in Bognor Regis and old photos suggest that she excelled at sports – hockey, tennis, lacrosse, and even cricket. Subsequently she went to finishing school in Paris and Switzerland.

The focus of Pat’s family was always the West Wight, specifically Yarmouth. Her grandmother lived in North House in the High Street and later moved to what was then Mount Cottage, also in the High Street. Various cousins lived in the area too – the Dashwoods at the Mount, and the Burrards, Croziers and Hammond-Grahams whose presence is now remembered in street names around Westhill near Fort Victoria.

Family photos – grainy black and white or beautifully tinted with watercolours by my grandfather – show Pat’s teenage world, on the Island, in the 1920’s: picnics on Compton Beach, swimming at Totland, tennis tournaments and house parties, going over to Freshwater Bay for tea in a pony trap, and later driving down the Military Road for dinner dances and variety shows in Shanklin.

Family and friendship seem to have been of paramount importance to Pat during these years. Her parents were usually present at the picnics as were members of the Brent-Good family from Norlands, and they all often holidayed together on the Conti nent – Normandy, the South of France or skiing in the Alps.

Looking at these photos Pat is always the one who is looking out at the photographer. Her gaze suggests someone calm and confident with herself; resolute but not challenging, determined but not aggressive. She appears as a decent, sincere and g enuine person, who looks out at us with all the calm certainty imbued by her world of close family and friends. In the 1930’s Pat went with a friend by ocean liner to the United States for an extended tour. In later years I remember her saying that she was taught to ride by cowboys in New Mexico, and she told me how she rode a mule all the way down the Gr and Canyon in Arizona; they camped at the bottom and then she rode back up again. She used to tell me that in those days she could ride a horse, holding the reins in one hand, and in her free hand she could role a cigarette which she would light by a match struck on her denims!

During the War, Pat worked with nurses in the Voluntary Aid Department. Group photos from those years again show her as the one looking out, with an uncomplicated stare, at the camera.

After the War Pat joined the Foreign Office. She worked in London and abroad, including several years in Cyprus in the 1950’s, when she was part of the exotic Mediterranean world depicted and recreated by Lawrence Durrell in his book “Bitter Lem ons of Cyprus”.

Before retiring from the Foreign Office Pat lived with her mother at Kew in London. At the time of her retirement Colonel Brent-Good gave Pat what became the Stables Cottage. It was a surpassing act of generosity for which Pat in particular and my family as a whole were and remain deeply grateful.

It was really from this time onwards that I got to know Pat myself.

I think she was a woman of spirit and a woman of substance. She was strong without being forceful; she was independent without being rebellious or tomboyish. She was a creative woman who designed and made many of her own clothes and those of he r friends. Old photos show her style and panache – black dresses, strings of pearls, fox fur stoles and modish hats. She loved laughter and company, and while the outer woman became increasingly shy socially, as she grew older, I think it must have taken enormous courage and fortitude within to have lived alone, confronting the future, until her 98th year.

Whenever I went to see Pat her face would light up and glow with a beaming smile, and she would say “How lovely to see you”, followed in more recent years by “Was I expecting you?”! And then when I came to leave, on every single occasion, withou t exception, she would thank me for my visit. I knew that she would always look forward to my next visit, but she would make no demands as to when that might be. She never demanded, and she never imposed.

After many years living alone, I think that the last five years of Pat’s life were very different from what went before. That her last years were as full of happiness and companionship as they were, was really due to the arrival of Richard and M arion Heming in her life. Marion became like her guardian angel during those years, and the love and friendship you both gave her, as well as the practical assistance and support, ensured that Pat was able to enjoy her last years feeling loved, valued and cherished.

I think that Pat responded to this by opening up and sharing her thoughts and feelings in a way that I do not believe that she had had the opportunity to do for a very long time, and that must have brought her a deep sense of happiness and fulfil ment.

Lynne Shaxted also became a dear and sincere friend to Pat during these years; she continued to visit Pat in Kinloch Tay and took it upon herself to keep Bluebell in food and supplies, for which I am sure Bluebell was deeply appreciative, as inde ed am I. (Bluebell being Pat’s cat!).

In her 98th year Pat was not at all pleased to be moved to a nursing home. I am afraid that there were occasions when she was quite outspoken on this point with the staff at Kinloch Tay! I am really delighted that Maureen and Teri and Elaine fr om Kinloch Tay wanted to be here today – and I would like to offer my most sincere thanks not only for the superbly professional way that you treated Patricia, but also for the kindness, tact, understanding, compassion, dignity and respect that y ou showed her in the final months of her life.

Several weeks before she died, Patricia and I drove out to Compton Beach, the same beach where she used to picnic in the 1920’s. We parked in the front rank of cars by the cliff edge, looking out to sea. As we sat in a companionable silence, mu nching our prawn sandwiches, we watched a group of 20 or 30 surfers bobbing up and down in the waves. At length Patricia said – “I think I would like to be in the sea”. I asked her “Why would you like to be in sea?” and she said, looking at the surfers, “They look as if they are having such fun; I wish I was amongst them”.

The next day, we drove down to Totland Bay and parked beside the sea. As we sat sipping our tea, a number of seagulls landed on the railing directly in front of the bonnet of the car. Patricia watched one particular sea gull for some time and t hen she said, “I wish I was a white bird”. I turned to her and said “Why do you wish you were a white bird?”, and looking at the particular sea gull, she said “Well, he does not look as if he has any worries; he does not look afraid”. And we ta lked about fear for a while, and eventually she said – “I would like to be free – I would like to be a white bird, flying over the sea, in all that sky”.

And then, with characteristic concern, she turned to me and she said – “And what about you?”. And I replied, “Well, maybe one day, I’ll be a white bird too”. And I said to her, “Maybe that’s what happens to all of us; maybe eventually we all be come white birds”. And then I said “Maybe one day, you and I, we’ll be white birds together”. And she said “Yes … I’d like that”.

And so – that’s where I would like to leave her – Patricia Frances Creagh-Osborne – floating free, over the sea, like a white bird.