It’s never easy to honestly discuss the quirks and shortcomings of your own family and the Constants were invariably tribal in this regard with an oddly ambivalent outlook on anything that even vaguely hinted of insider criticism or disloyalty. One moment they would appear to be stuck one to another like an advertisement for epoxy resin and in the next they would be slandering all and sundry with reckless abandon. Never knowing exactly what the current mood of any close kin might be, it paid to be hypervigilant at all times. This meant always agreeing, or appearing to agree, with the views and opinions of the person you happened to be talking to at any one moment, however distasteful you might find them, and waiting until an opportunity presented itself to tear them safely to shreds – behind their back!
My mother, always affable in conversation with her older sister, Mag on our regular visits to the house in Iron Mill Lane, Crayford, would express her true opinion on the bus ride home to Northfleet, acquainting me at the age of five or six, with what she really thought of `Mag’s tomfool ideas as far as her Ann is concerned’, that she was `spoiling her rotten and making a rod for her own back.’ An inevitable side issue, she believed, where babies born in wartime were concerned and Mag would have plenty to regret when her Ann got a bit older. Furthermore she felt the practice of allowing Young Harold and Young Leslie to play with guns and shoot rabbits down by Crayford Creek was courting disaster when they were barely teenagers. What’s more she was convinced they had both taken up smoking and that couldn’t be good for them when there’d been so much TB in the family. The mention of TB was made in a lower, conspiratorial voice because it didn’t do to broadcast health facts such as this too far and wide and most especially on a crowded 480 bus. She may well have been correct in all her observations but she would never have made any derogatory comments directly to my aunt. This was particularly so when assessing Mag’s housekeeping skills, noting to my six year old self that it wouldn’t hurt to pour a bit of bleach into the Khazi once in a while but that didn’t suit Mag, who could be a slovenly cow at times.
Similar about turns of opinion happened between the many Constant sisters on a regular basis and of course their mother in the background, endlessly knitting like a latter day Madame Defarge held a great deal of emotional control over them all and effortlessly pitted them one against another until she finally died on Christmas Eve 1965. By that time the family habit was well ingrained and most unlikely to undergo any dramatic change.
In the intervening years the next generation, whilst striving to do better in life than their predecessors, and mostly succeeding – some more dramatically than others, carried the flag for deception, defamation and deceit into the latter decades of the twentieth century. Misrepresentations, inaccuracies and dishonesty marched forward together with the better educated collective of Constant cousins and flourished though it would be true to say that here and there you could find the occasional fearless Truth Teller. For that reason it is never totally easy for those investigating family history to actually uncover what are completely reliable facts. True parentage of some family members cannot be altogether trusted because dates of marriages and births can appear variable depending on who is issuing the information. A number of nine pound infants were unsurprisingly perhaps, apparently very premature.
Possibly more emotionally draining than anything else is the drip feeding of certainty and accuracy in pockets here and there so that all are forever wary as to what might be said to who and what must never be revealed. Ours has always been a family where a mere handful of members know everything, a few more know something, and most know very little on whatever sensitive topic is under discussion at any particular time. Therefore normal conversation can become like navigating a minefield. None of us want to be the one who is later pinpointed as revealing part of a secret to someone else who was never, ever supposed to know. Such a precipitous fall from grace will not be easily forgotten by the irritatingly high principled majority. This keeping of family secrets has become such a trial of memory over the years that more ordinary slander and character assassination seems like light relief.
Fortunately, a number of the family descendants are possessed of a certain amount of charm and appeal together with not inconsiderable intelligence and this combination of attributes renders the regular about-turns of face completely unanticipated. It can take quite some time for their unhappy targets to actually come to terms with what has taken place and even then they can be loath to accept the reality of the betrayal. A charismatic and outwardly amiable individual might use a cutting wit in criticism of those engaged in determined pursuance of their approval and friendship because he who has a habit of picking up entire bar and restaurant bills will never be short of disciples. Acolytes will never be completely cognizant of the pleasure that is taken in systematically denigrating them one by one to other. A manipulative miscreant can always be sure of nudging general disapproval to the surface of those who are usually censured only in whispers - the uncle with a back injury that has ensured he has never been able to work is universally disapproved of – the talkative cousin who simply cannot help name dropping and advising the world at large that she is allowed to Christmas shop for the rich and famous is ridiculed by all and sundry.
It is a fact, however, that those who seek to step aside from whatever the accepted traits within a family might be, choose to walk a risky path. Those who tell the truth will never be thanked for it and are far more likely to be labelled as Liars ….. Troublemakers …… Stirrers. But only in undertones of course or in more recent years via brave messages on social media, Never face to face!
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