LIVING THE GOOD LIFE - MEET BERYL BROOKMAN, A MARAZION QUAKER

 

Beryl Brookman is now 83. Louise and I have known Beryl as a Quaker of deep faith and strength of character for the four years we have been attending the Marazion Meeting. I interviewed Alan Newton, her husband, and wrote up the outline story of his extraordinary life last year (see the blogpost here); now it is Beryl’s turn .

 

Beryl and Alan in their Gonewoods home in April 2024

Beryl Brookman was born in 1942 in Lancashire. Her guardian angels sprung into action immediately. Unresponsive, the doctor resorted to giving Beryl, the newborn baby, the ‘kiss of life’, a technique then new to the world. Beryl had had her first lesson in the art of survival and passed with flying colours.

 

Beryl was born into adversity. She was the second child of her mother, Betty and her father’s first and only child. Mum had married Jack who worked on the Manchester Ship Canal and they lived in Manchester. Then in 1939 came a tragedy which was to have such ripple effects. Jack suffered a broken neck in an industrial accident when a load fell on him. As he lay on the ground dying, he turned to his best mate, Henry Tobin, and said: ‘Look after Betty’. Betty was eight months pregnant. Henry was a

good man and married Betty. It was a disaster for both of them. Somehow Beryl emerged as a grounded person through all the confusion and tension of her childhood years. In Beryl’s words, ‘My father got hell because he wasn’t Jack.’ Henry suffered; so too did Beryl. When Jack’s mum visited, she paid scant attention to Henry or Beryl. It was Margaret, the daughter of Betty and Jack - Beryl’s elder sister by around two and a half years, who was fussed over.

Betty, Beryl's mother 

 Home was now in Oldham where Henry was developing his building business. Betty had a greengrocer’s shop and was focussed on ‘getting on’ and ‘improving’ her place in society. Beryl had been born into a working-class family whose roots were in Ireland and in a mining community in Durham. Her mother had been in service and had ‘illusions of grandeur’, convinced she had royal links to the Bowes-Lyon family. Beryl can’t bear fur coats and knows that this is rooted in her mother’s love of them. Her mother insisted that all her own shoes should be specially made in a specialist shop in the centre of Manchester. Meanwhile, in the real world, there was war with Germany which left the infant Beryl crying through air-raids as bombs dropped around the communal shelter where she had been taken with her gas mask and in slippers. Beryl remembers the black hole at the point where the light in the shelter vanished. It was a very scary start to life. As a baby, Beryl was banging her head constantly against the sides of the cot. ‘Total insecurity’, in Beryl’s words.  

 

Beryl’s dad, Henry, was a lifeline for Beryl. He was gentle, funny, and hardworking. Beryl’s mother did not approve of them spending time together but allowed the two of them to make the family breakfast on a Sunday when her father who had a lovely voice would croon ‘Sailing Down the River’. ‘Bing’ Tobin was in his element and Beryl was happy. Her sister, Margaret, thin and tall, found it much more difficult to be happy despite her mother’s favours. Beryl says she saw her smile so seldom.  

Henry, Beryl's father

 Henry’s business prospered. They were surrounded by the cotton mills of Manchester (think of Lowry’s paintings of those factories). These mills were fired by steam – and Henry won a contract for servicing the boilers during Wakes weeks when the workers enjoyed their holiday and the mills shut down. He was an enlightened man, humane enough to employ Wilfie, an ex-convict, on his merits. ‘You’ve served your sentence – that’s enough’. Wilfie adored him. Betty was furious when she found out. There were strict limits in her form of Christianity. Going to church was a family obligation but the churches attended did change, in part because the family moved houses several times and in part because mother would decide a new version of God and his truth would be a good thing.  

 

Margaret was sent to a private school, Beryl too. Climbing the social ladder required this financial outlay. Beryl rather liked school and learning. Margaret did not. The alarm bells began to ring for mother. ‘Don’t you dare pass that 11 plus examination!’, Beryl was told angrily. Beryl sat down in the classroom and began to read the exam questions. ‘I know the answer to that’, she thought – and slipped into rebellion. She passed and was accepted into Heywood Grammar School for Boys and Girls. Mother was furious and Beryl was never forgiven. Mother could never let go, though. ‘Don’t get good marks’ became her next line of attack and it worked to an extent. Beryl found herself in the ‘C’ stream in the Grammar School and coasted along, liking learning yet disguising her own brightness. But Beryl remained a target. Her homework would be destroyed, a cup of tea spilt ‘by accident’. As Beryl says, ‘You just accept it – you know it’s not going to change – you just find ways around it.’   

 

One way of escape was gifted by her dad. From the 1950s all the cotton mills had pre-school nurseries for the children of their female workers. Beryl’s dad asked her, ‘How do you fancy working in a nursery during the school holidays?’ He knew she would jump at the chance – Beryl loved being with children. ‘Right. I’ll have a word with the mill manager.’ All the children in the nursery where Beryl soon found herself working were Polish, except one. No matter. Who needs language skills  when you’re running a playgroup filled with laughter and love.

 

Back at school, the GCE examinations approached. Mother issued the formal warning. ‘Don’t think of passing any.’ Beryl was tempted to obey but couldn’t resist taking and passing English Literature. She did after all love reading. What now, though? The answer came in the form of the NNEB – the National Nursery Examinations Board. It offered a two year nursery training course, home-based, with an additional baby training course. Between the ages of 16 and 18, Beryl completed the course working in the four mill nurseries in Rochdale. The way was being paved for a career in nursing. The next step was made possible by the encouragement of a Health Visitor who saw Beryl’s potential and her higher education years were spent at the Northern Hospital in Cheetham Hill following a three year general nursing qualification course. These were years of liberation since Beryl was required to live in. The hospital was now her home. She was free of her mother. It was a strict regime – one late-pass a week and back by 11pm - controlled by fierce matrons, but Beryl loved the training. She recalls that a couple of secondments at Booth Hall, a specialist children’s unit for severe burns, were challenging but very rewarding.     

 

It was whilst Beryl was at the Northern Hospital that she met Ken, a Liverpudlian Catholic and research chemist. They became engaged on her 21^st birthday in 1963 and by 1964 Beryl was fully qualified with a medal and certificate – and married. Her first post was in a Family Group Home set up for six children with ‘massive problems’. One of the children had been taken into care when her parents were found to be running a brothel. Beryl loved the challenges – and successes. Soon, Ken and Beryl were expecting their first child. Beryl recalls a health official saying to her, ‘Well, you won’t be staying here now – you won’t want to bring up your children with these kids’. That really wasn’t the way Beryl made sense of the world. Her vision was always inclusive. A year and a week into their marriage, in 1966, Amanda was born and Beryl began working alternate night shifts. Fortunately, Amanda was a good sleeper. Amanda was eight months old when her grandad, Henry, visited in secret and whilst she was playing with his car keys began to complain of heart pains. Henry’s condition worsened. Beryl borrowed a phone to tell her mother that Henry was very seriously ill. ‘There’s nothing wrong with him", Betty insisted. Shortly afterwards, Henry died in hospital. Their second child, Jeremy, arrived two years later in 1968 and wasn’t such a good sleeper. Both babies were delivered at home.

 

Beryl had moved house a number of times as a child and that pattern of mobility became part of her adult life too. She loved the excitement and challenge of a new home and making sense of whatever was ‘around the corner’. Beryl and Ken’s new home had been a derelict farmhouse, near a Roman road. It was half-built into the hillside with the living room view blocked by earth and rock – so they moved into a caravan whilst the house was renovated. The bedroom was moved downstairs with the living room now commanding a fine view of the moors.

 

Jemina was born in 1970. Beryl loved being pregnant and having children but now began to feel a little selfish in a world where so many children would benefit from being adopted. Ken went along with Beryl’s wish to explore the adoption path and in 1972 Ben became their adopted fourth child. By now, Beryl was working in a Leonard Cheshire registered nursing home for the physically disabled. Having been approved as a potential adopter, she told social services to just tell her when there was a baby to be collected. Ben is mixed race with a white mother and Asian father. Later, Ben did contact his birth mother but that didn’t work out. ‘I don’t want to speak to her again’. She had been so negative about everything; Ben had been brought up to enjoy life. Two years after Ben joined the family, Dan – an Anglo-Chinese adoptee – became the fifth child in the family.

Beryl and Ben

 

Ben and his daughter, Anya

Beryl and Dan in December 2009

Dan in March 1975

The wanderlust bit again. Beryl decided she wanted to live in the Orkneys. For the children it would be, in Beryl’s words, ‘a good grounding in a classless society’. A camping holiday there confirmed the choice. It was a dream coming true. The Orkney local paper carried news of a former manse house for sale on Burray, one of the small islands of Orkney. Purchase was through sealed bids. Beryl and Ken’s bid won. By now, Ken was becoming disillusioned with his work at ICI and the family set off for a new life. The old manse was converted into a guest house and restaurant and Beryl who had always loved cooking became a restauranteur. The stage was set for around ten years of life on a remote Scottish island.

 

The Scottish way of eating, shaped by Scandinavian influences, meant that the last meal of the day was the High Tea; there was no pattern of going out for a main meal. Beryl’s venture had risks. Soon, though, there were two permanent guests – oil-field workers – who started their day with 5.30 breakfasts. Then Beryl would serve the children and Ken their breakfasts and then came the turn of any other guests who were staying. There was also the cow, and the pigs, ducks, hens and goats to attend to on the small holding that was now part of their next house on Burray – a rather respectable ‘Butt and a Bien’ property with a ‘bit in the middle’. The family enterprise was succeeding. Some days, Billy Peace who provided the Burray coach, bus and taxi service would phone and order morning coffee and evening tea for his day-trippers – his coach had room for fifty-one.

 

Life on Orkney was busy and fulfilling and the children flourished. All five still maintain strong contacts with Orkney and its people and life. Amanda, Beryl’s first born child, was ten when the Orkney move was made in 1976 and her Scottish schooling experience was excellent. In 1983, she took up her place in Cambridge, reading modern languages. Ken, however, quite soon decided he would go to Flotta to work on the oil rigs and eventually departed to Saudi Arabia for employment. He had always been more materialistic than Beryl. Their marriage was now in terminal decline and ended in divorce in the 1990s. 

 

In 1986, Beryl began the next phase in her life journey. She was now 44 and applied for and, a little to her own surprise, secured the post of matron at CARE – Cottage and Rural Enterprises – based in Preston back in Lancashire. This was an institution specialising in young adults with learning difficulties. Beryl was in her element. From there she moved on to become the Principal at the National Autistic Society on the Wirral where again she brought her own direct and inspired style of management. She remembers one young man, Mark, who was on the extreme end of the autism spectrum, very tall and at first happy. Then something started to go wrong and he began to lash out. The children would see the bruises on Beryl’s legs where Mark had kicked her as she restrained him and knew that Mark had lost the plot again. ‘We’re doing something wrong’, Beryl insisted, speaking to Gordon, the manager.  ‘We must work out what it is’. In the end, the truth emerged; Mark was being bullied  by a new staff member.  

 

Beryl was very good at her work and in her mid-fifties was head-hunted to become Principal of the Grange Centre in Bookham, Surrey. This was an institution with a distinctly upper-class Council of Management, who had enough good sense to appreciate Beryl’s expertise and wisdom. Beryl remembers one of the titled ladies on the Council board exclaiming, ‘We do have fun with you here!’. These ladies also listened to Beryl when she asked them how much they paid their own domestic servants and then pointed out that the domestic servants in the Grange Centre were earning much less. They got the message and introduced a new fair pay policy. Beryl as Principal had the Bursar and the Secretary as the other key figures in the team. Politely but firmly, the Bursar was made to relinquish her sole control over the petty cash. Sometimes power struggles need to be fought.

 

The Grange Centre today is still going strong and supports 135 disabled people. Its history is remarkable having been founded in Leicestershire in 1927 as the School of Stitching and Lace in order to provide needlework and training for disabled women. In 1938 the School moved to the Grange at Bookham in Surrey and continued its policy of selling some of its products to high-end customers, including royalty. The change of name to the Grange Centre took place in 1972 and in 1992 the Grange Centre took its first male resident and expanded its skills base with the introduction of woodwork training.

 

Beryl tells the story of one resident, Enid, who made quite an impact. Enid was 33 inches tall and a remarkable lady, determined to learn sewing skills. Enid loved watching professional wrestling on TV and Big Daddy was her absolute hero. Beryl was able to take Enid to watch Big Daddy perform in person and remembers Big Daddy making his ceremonial entrance striding towards the ring, pausing, and then moving over to where Enid was sitting to greet her. Beryl had to lean forward to make that embrace possible. A lovely moment – and made even more powerful because years later Beryl shared this story with Alan to discover that Alan had been watching that very same moment on TV himself.

 

Enid

Unfortunately, the curse of ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) was now beginning to afflict Beryl and she retired at 60 in 2002. Her arrival in Cornwall was shaped by her friendship with Betty and Donald Mason. Donald was from Plymouth, a former Methodist minister and a socialist who had found his full spiritual meaning with the Quakers. He and Betty had retired in Cornwall and Beryl followed their path. When Beryl’s ME symptoms settled and became more manageable, she became matron/manager of Benoni Nursing Home in St Just and loved her time there. Marazion and Alan Newton then completed the setting for this current stage in Beryl’s odyssey.  

 

Beryl has always had the gift of friendship. She has made lasting connections with many people in the course of her life. Joyce is one of those friends.  

 

Beryl and Joyce