When I Had a Little Sister: The Story of a Farming Family Who Never Spoke. Catherine Simpson

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      Dad, Mum, Me, Tricia and Elizabeth at Cousin Mary’s wedding

      Maybe in choosing the photographs of her animals to go in her coffin – as her ‘grave goods’ – we had unconsciously acknowledged that animals were a constant source of comfort to her and had never let her down whereas we, her family, had.

      The eventual emptying of the farmhouse after Tricia died, a job we put off again and again for months, was a huge task because my grandparents, David and Marjorie, had moved into the farm in 1925 and it seemed little had been cleared out since; consequently generations of belongings had composted over the years and it felt as though we were unearthing an architectural dig. The process of untangling our past called for decision after decision which seemed to accumulate in weight as we progressed.

      In fact some of the clearing had been done, in 2005, eight years before Tricia died, when we sold the old barns for development. At that time the great hay barn, the cowsheds, the old stables and pig pens had to be emptied of what amounted to my mother’s ‘overspill’. My mother was a shopper. In particular she was a shopper of wool and cloth, sewing paraphernalia and gadgets. She loved gadgets for cleaning, gadgets for cooking, gadgets for sewing and knitting. My mother had an eagle eye for advertisements featuring anything newfangled that came with an instruction book – things that made big promises about saving time and labour – and she would seek out these expensive gadgets and buy them. Her idea of a birthday outing was a drive to Lakeland Plastics in its original Lakeland home to buy more gadgets.

      When it came to the clearing of the barns in 2005 we were faced with chest freezers and suitcases and cardboard boxes full of mouldy wool and bolts of cloth still with their labels attached showing the size and price – which was always startlingly high – plus baffling gadgets that had never been assembled: gadgets for cleaning windows, steaming carpets, cutting out dress patterns, assembling quilts and knitting complex designs.

      Anyone would think my mother enjoyed cleaning and housework, but this was not true; in fact she despised the excessively house-proud. She liked to declare that only boring women had tidy houses. I suppose her constant purchase of gadgets for cleaning was a way to make housework more interesting, or at least put it off for a while in favour of another shopping trip. But she adored handicrafts and, after packing the farmhouse to the gunwales with cotton bobbins, buttons on cards, zips in every colour and endless dressmaking patterns, as well as the wool and cloth, she set to filling the barns and outhouses with her haberdashery as well.

      In the year 2000 Mum and Dad moved out of New House Farm to a newly built dormer bungalow up the lane. Tricia was left to live alone in the farmhouse, much to her satisfaction, although she was less thrilled when she realized the house was to be left still packed with stuff because, as it turned out, although my mother had moved she still reigned supreme – now over two houses – and her possessions left behind in the farmhouse and barns (until the barns were sold) must not be touched. Meanwhile Mum set about filling her new house with stuff too.

      My mother’s mood – often low and downbeat – could be transformed by ‘newness’. She was excited by technology and innovation. She bought shares in the Channel Tunnel as soon as it was possible, went to ‘computer classes’ before I ever did, and invested in bio-tech companies, enthusiastically telling you which diseases her investments were about to cure. She was dismissive of self-appointed gurus who advised you on how to live your life (‘Huh! Who says? Experts!’) but admired inventors and scientists.

      She didn’t like to see me hand-sewing even though I found it satisfying. When I was twelve years old I stitched a patchwork quilt and she would watch me, her hands twitching, frustrated. ‘You’d do it much quicker on a machine,’ she kept saying. My needle and thread flew over the quilt in a ham-fisted front to back motion, producing stitches so neat and tiny they were barely visible. ‘Leave her,’ said Dad. ‘Let her do it if she likes it.’

      When we sold the barns in 2005 we also sold the outhouse that had been used by my Grandad David – Dad’s father – who we always called ‘Gran’. This outhouse, known as ‘Gran’s Dairy’, was Edwardian red-brick and had been used by Gran’s wife, Marjorie, to make cheese in the 1920s and 30s. Inside it was floor to ceiling white tile with a monumental cheese press. When I was growing up in the 1970s the back room of the dairy was Gran’s den and he spent every evening in there sitting in his old armchair, with his fuzzy black and white television, his wireless set, his crate of brown ale and his stack of Westerns from the mobile library.