HAPPENINGS
IN A MUSEUM

Roma Tearne,
Artist-in-Residence.

A Report on Conditions in Antiquities (continued)

'I was so very young, so impressionable and although the war ended soon after he left, I was unable to erase from my mind the young man and the few short weeks we spent together. Most of my adult life was spent in the shadow of that encounter.

History, I do believe, repeats itself more than we give it credit. Our beloved son, now a composer and collector, lives in Paris. Of his origins he knows nothing since I married while he was still an infant and my husband adopted him. Shortly before my father died he told me an extraordinary story. It seemed that my paternal great grandfather was a member of the British aristocracy with a house somewhere in Oxfordshire. What could this possibly mean to me? Events in my life were tumultuous enough so I never investigated the matter further. Nor did I wholly believe the story. Recently, however, after my husband's death I came back to Britain in order to trace my ancestors. Walking into your museum one morning I picked up a newsletter. What I read left me shaking. Who was the writer of this letter? Could it be the same John Ash of all those summers ago? He had never mentioned anything about a country house, but then again we had had so little time together. I went in search of the photographs and when I saw them I was so distressed that one of your kind gallery staff had to look after me and make me sit down. As a result of all this I feel compelled to write to you. One of the photographs on display is similar to one in my possession. On our last day together it was given to me by the man I knew as John Ash. I now wish to tell you that Ashmole House was probably the home of my great, great, grandfather. I have, it seemed, found the house that my father had vaguely talked about. If that is truly the case, then somewhere buried in the south part of the building is a box that contains documentary evidence of this fact.

For too long I have lived with my father's bitterness, as he in turn lived with his mother's sorrow. (My great grandmother, Margaret, disgraced her family by having a child out of wedlock. That child was my grandmother who was not accepted by the family at Ashmole House). It is time to end this, both for the sake of their memory and for my son who remains in ignorance of these matters.

I also have another intensely personal motive. I am an old woman now who more than anything else wishes to meet the owner of that photograph. To ask him if he can remember a river by a stone mill in the region of Falaise. Whether he, too, remembers the tall young man who, fearing capture, would swim only at the dead of night in the warm moonless waters of the Orne.'

Thus ended the letter. Emotions, as we said, have been running high and shortly before the New Year a decision was taken to find the missing box.