She looks kindly in this photo. She’s standing on her own back steps. It can’t be our Windsor Avenue flat. My dad would have repointed those bricks and repainted the banister. I’m surprised he didn’t.
Most of what I know about her came via my mother, who rarely joined us on our visits to her in-laws. My mother was always dutiful so this was surprising. As a teenager I assumed this was due to prejudice. The Rileys were Catholic. We were Church of England, then Methodist. Much later I learned that Margaret hadn’t wanted her son to marry. She warned my mother he wouldn’t live long, as had been a sickly child. This wasn’t an effective argument as my mother had survived German Measles and pneumonia. Margaret herself had never converted to Catholicism, but had agreed to bring up her children in her husband’s religion. She kept her promise for her two oldest, Ethel and Jim, but not the youngest, Violet and Ken.
None of this comes across in any of the photos. We seem to have had more contact with her in the early days of the marriage. There are a few photos of her holding me as a baby. We used to visit my dad’s aunts, her sisters. They still lived the genteel life, with nice homes and compatible husbands. Margaret liked people to think she was a widow. I find this deeply shocking. Granddad Riley had a hard life. Living with a wife who was constantly ill-wishing him can’t have been easy.
There are no photos of James Patrick Riley. There’s no picture of him in my memory either. His wife wouldn’t let him attend any of their children’s weddings. He must have been a broken man, as obeyed her sanctions. He retreated to the pub across the road.
Margaret’s power was often self defeating. When she had to go into hospital for a minor operation, she announced that if she went she was going to die. She did go, and she did die. It’s possible that she wanted out of her difficult and disappointing life.
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