T he house was one of a number of red brick Edwardian villas creeping steadily up Ulwell Road in the first decade of the 20th century. Edward VII reigned from 1901 to 1910: I think the Deeds dated it 1907. Ours was one of the smaller villas, north-facing and dressed in local cliffstone. One of its pretentions was a bell system for the servants; as long as they weren't very deaf, none ever could have been beyond calling distance. There was pretty coloured tilework on the hall floor and decorative glass in the front door. My father, carryng something into the house, used his elbow to prevent the door slamming on a brisk wind. The glass broke, slashing his elbow. That blood was an early memory; so was coming home to find a big, cuboid biscuit tin inside the door which opened to reveal a hoard of little cakes topped with icing, each with a glace cherry at its centre; left-overs from a family wedding, pure treasure in a time of post-war sugar rationing, which continued until the Coronation.

There was a garage next to the house but it was some years before my father filled it. The first car was an old, green Bradford Jowett van with, on its sides, 'Southern Electricity' thinly painted out and no windows in the back. We kids had little idea where we were bound until he opened the rear doors to let us out. There weren't any seats for us, either, only the covers of the rear wheels and assorted cushions chucked in before we set off. It spent much of its time unused, since he alone could drive and, serving in the army, was away for long periods of our youth folding up the map of Empire. There was India: Delhi, where he commanded young British soldiers keeping order at the time of the Indian National Army trials, certain those boys would run if there was a riot: it never came. Instead, there was religious conflict leading to Partition and eternal strife. Then he was in Palestine, where Zionist terrorists were bombing the British and ethnically-cleansing the land of its Arab inhabitants. British policy, faced with a flood of European refugees, was to keep Palestine united unless a democratic majority would agree to a Jewish state. But they handed the problem over to the United Nations, which decreed a still-unresolved partition and eternal strife. When my father applied for a compassionate home posting they sent him to Malaya for three years.

So the car stayed in the garage until, when Malaya became Malaysia, he finally came home and again could take the family out for weekend drives. I was rarely went with them, resenting his absences, preferring to spend free time with friends bird-watching. My mother suffered most from his spells abroad. She was intelligent, had aspirations but, at eighteen, with her father's death, had to help support her mother and siblings. In 1940, at 22, she was married and, faced with the shortened life expectancy of war, launched straight into a family of four. She must have thought wistfully of what might have been. But it was a happy marriage so, despite following his chosen career, my father, too, must have suffered the separations.