Chapter 11: Burned

Gertie experiences joy and agony

After settling the Alverthorpe estate Gertie decided that she should concentrate on bringing up her young family, the twins being 10 years old and would soon be moving on to boarding schools and making the contacts that would carry them through into leading independent lives.

There had already been deaths in the family which had far reaching affects on the Winter family and their core business. Gertie felt she needed to take stock of her life and make her family her first priority.

Firstly, Johnnie’s father Charles Jacob Winter, who was born at Standhope Manor way back in 1886, died at his beloved birthplace after a second stroke in 1950. This meant that Gertie’s husband Johnnie became Lord Standhope and Gertie therefore became Lady Standhope. This also meant that Johnnie’s mother Milly became the Dowager Lady Standhope, although everyone informally around the Manor called her Lady Milly and her daughter-in-law, who Milly regarded as a daughter in her own right, was Lady Gertie or simply Miss Gertie to the servants who had known her the longest.

Some six months after Johnnie Winter died in 1953, Gertie gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. The male twin, the Honourable John (Jonty) Charles Jacob Daniel Henry Winter was declared Lord Standhope, even though his twin sister, the Honourable Mary Muriel Elizabeth Maud Winter, was born half an hour before him. The twins didn’t even share a birthday in the same year as Mary was born before midnight on 31 December 1953 and Jonty was born a little after midnight on 1 January 1954.

Alas, within a few weeks of Johnnie’s death in the summer of 1953, Johnnie’s beloved grandmother Maudie slipped away in her sleep whilst under hospice care, without even being aware that her only grandson had pre-deceased her, nor did she even know that Gertie was expecting twins.

Gertie’s very supportive mother-in-law Milly passed away age 82 in 1972, a couple of years before Joe Alverthorpe died and left his particular ticking time bomb of his secret family that had to be defused by Gertie and Standhope’s loyal staff. Gertie really missed Milly’s influence, advice and affection during this emotional turmoil and suddenly found herself at the head of the Winter family. So, over the next couple of years she groomed her successors at the bank so she could step back from the full time job of manager.

One of the first bank managers to take over from her was actually a Standhope. The male Standhope surname had certainly died out in 1865. when only one of the Lord’s three daughters had a son. Jacob Weinstein was only 5 years old when he became a Lord of the realm.

Jacob Weinstein IV (who lived from 1860-1929) was born to Jacob Weinstein III (1830-1900) and Ellen “Nelly” Standhope (1840-1920) who had married in 1858 in London. It was Nelly’s diamond engagement ring that was passed down to become Gertie’s treasured engagement ring. The centrepiece of the ring was a half carat round cut diamond, 1/5th of an inch (5.1mm) in size that was one of the small bag of diamonds that the first Jacob Weinstein (c1770-1840) brought away from his sacked bank in Mainz in 1798, with his young family, wife Rebecca (c1775-1850) and children, Jacob Weinstein (1795-1872), Solomon Weinstein (1797-1833) and Miriam Weinstein (1802-88) who later became “Molly” Stowell.

In 1865 Charles, Earl of Standhope (1810-1865) died a comparatively young man of 55 and passed the Lord title to 5-year-old grandson Jacob Weinstein. Charles Standhope had already lost his youngest son Thomas Standhope (1842-64) in a ship lost at sea only the year before and his eldest son and heir Charles Standhope (using the honour title of Viscount or Lord Winter) (1836-1862) had died three years earlier during the Civil War in America, an innocent bystander killed when one of the conflicting armies burned his house down along with the rest of his town. By the time the news reached the Manor, it was unclear which army, Union or Confederate was responsible.

Charles Standhope had three daughters: the eldest daughter Elizabeth Standhope, (1838-1902), Ellen Standhope (1840-1920) and Mercy Standhope (1844-1927).

The second daughter Ellen Standhope married ship owner Lionel Evans and they had two daughters, Mary Evans (1863-1918) and Eliza Evans (1865-1928) and, after Lord Standhope died, she had two sons, Lionel Evans Junior (1867-1920) and Charles Evans (1873-1916).

Mercy Standhope married Jose Lopes in 1874 and relocated to Central America initially and later moved into South America; they had several male children, but by then the title of Lord had already passed to Jacob.

Although bearing the Weinstein surname, Jacob was the only male of that generation that could claim the titles, initially Viscount Winter from birth to the age of four after both his uncles died, then on the passing on his maternal grandfather, he became Lord Standhope.

However, there were later grandsons of the other two sisters who were waiting in line to make a claim should the Weinstein male line ever die out. One of these these potential claimants in the 1890s changed his legal name from Evans to Standhope, with the view of being in readiness to make a claim. He also ensured than his own sons worked in either the London branch of the bank or the Orient branch in Istanbul.

So it came to pass that a number of Standhope or Winter relatives became CEO of the bank between 1972 and the present time, a couple of Winters, a couple of Standhopes and even a Challis before Gillian Moorhouse became manager in 2016 and changed her name to Nicholls the following year after her marriage to Gertie’s only grandson Jake.

Although Jonty failed to respond to all of Gertie’s efforts to put him on the straight and narrow, by the time he was 22, in 1978, he dropped out of college at Cambridge and decided to spend time travelling the world as a poet, only self-published, using his Trust Fund which he had limited access to, basically just the interest without touching the core investments. Although the income was kept relatively small, designed to minimise temptations of excess, Jonty dropped out of society to the extent that he needed very little of the Trust’s income to live on. Travelling in the Far East he experimented with drugs and eventually became a heroin addict.

Shortly before dropping out of college, Jonty had actually been caught red-handed paying a male prostitute for services rendered in a London park, a prostitute working with a society photographer in order to make money from victims. This was too big a scandal for even a family as powerful as the Standhope Winters to hush up completely. He later admitted to his mother Gertie that he was confused about his sexuality, that he thought he was more attracted to men than women and wanted to experiment. He visited a gay bar in London and was targeted and seduced.

“Jonty, dear,” Gertie said to her son, “I’m sure that a short stay in a specialist hospital will help clear up your ‘confusion’, there’s this wonderful clinic in Switzerland that can do wonders with electro therapy—”

“What, Mother?!” Jonty exploded, “you think that connecting my bollocks to the mains will be the perfect cure-all and I’d emerge from a shower of sparks ready to hunt for totty? We are not in Victorian times anymore. They did that sort of thing in Bedlam and Nazi concentration camps, for fuck’s sake!”

“Language, Jonty, language,” Gertie soothed, “all right, I spoke out of turn. I’m not an expert on sexuality matters at all and what just popped into my head was probably picked up from a silly woman’s magazine article from the 1950s about curing queers. But, I’m sure we can get a modern doctor who specialises in this particular disorder—”

“I’m not suffering from a bloody disorder Mother, and nobody uses the term ‘queers’ any more!” Jonty interrupted with a sigh, “I’m just not interested in girls. There, I’ve said it. It’s no secret any more. I’m not attracted to women at all, never have been, and I don’t think I ever will be. All my life I’ve been under this pressure that the whole family expects me to produce an heir to bring another Lord-fucking-Standhope into the world and there’s absolutely no ... no ‘standing hope’ of that happening unless I dupe some poor cow into marrying me and try not to vomit whilst attempting to put a bun in the poor bitch’s oven!”

Jonty’s twin, Mary was also in the room, and she put a hand on Jonty’s arm, “Enough, Jonty, please calm down, Mum is just trying to get her head around what to do in this awkward and, embarrassing for her, situation.”

“Honestly, Jonty,” Gertie said, also trying to calm things down, thinking her son looked cornered and ready to run away, “if that is the way you feel then I really wouldn’t want you to deceive some poor girl just to get an heir. At the end of the day, if you are clearer now about who you do or do not want a relationship with, then I will be happy to support you. We are not in the 1950s any more and you can just ‘come out’ and be done with it.”

“Look, I still don’t even know if I am gay or not,” Jonty said, his voice still full of anger, “I only went to that gay bar in town to see if I fitted in as I don’t seem to fit in anywhere else. And the place was full of cross-dressing weirdos wearing clown make-up. That’s not me either. The only normal person, if you could call him normal, seemed pleasant enough and, after a few drinks, persuaded me to go off with him. It was so embarrassing. He must’ve recognised me from the society pages and it turned out he was from the press or something and they took photos of me with my trousers down and published them with my face exposed and just the naughty bits covered up.”

“Were you aroused, Jont?” Mary giggled.

“Shut it, Mare,” Jonty snapped, “You’re only making it worse. Besides, I may have had my secret life that has been exposed to all and sundry, but what about your private life, eh?”

“Oh?” Gertie pricked up her ears, “What have you been getting up to, Mary?”

“Nothing, well, nothing as embarrassing as Jonty’s being caught with his trousers down,” Mary insisted, jutting her usual stubborn chin out, “my knickers have never been on the Daily Mail front page with an ‘Oh my Lord! What a Banker!’ headline.”

“Well, if we are confessing to Mum what her children have been up to, maybe it’s time you told her your secret about Colin, or are you just stringing Cole along because you don’t think Mum will ever approve of him?”

“So who’s this Colin character?” Gertie asked, “you haven’t brought a boy to any of our parties during term breaks since ... well since you started at Cambridge. Have you been seeing this Colin boy for long?”

With Mary now in the spotlight, and hesitating replying, Jonty jumped into the pause—.

“She’s been seeing him for at least four years, Mum, she’s in as serious a relationship as you can get without being married, and she still hasn’t brought him home to introduce to her mother. I think she’s just keeping him around as a ‘bit of rough’ until she tries of him. Anyway, I’ve had enough of all this bullying, I’m going back to London.” Then he stomped out of the room.

“Don’t you do this, Jonty, drop a bombshell and then run away,” Mary snapped after her disappearing twin, then turned to Gertie.

“Okay Mum, my boyfriend for the last four years is a man named Colin Nicholls, who is the older brother of Christina Nicholls, who was my roomie and best friend at Cambridge. I haven’t brought him home yet because he’s a British Army soldier and is often way training on some special training or other thing. Currently he’s in the Arctic in Norway learning how to survive in those conditions, so I expect he’ll be posted to somewhere in Africa for the next six months. At Easter when we got together here he was in Hong Kong on exercise with the Australian Army and last Christmas he was in Germany finishing off a two-year tour of duty there.”

“So, is this a serious boyfriend or, as Jonty hints, a filler until you find someone else that you are more prepared to introduce to your mother?” Gertie asked.

“Oh, he is ‘the one’ as far as I’m concerned but, well, he’s six years older than me, he’s an enlisted soldier, a corporal, who joined up when he was 17 and he’s nearing the end of his second seven-year tour and already agreed to sign on for another seven starting next year. Oh, and he’s from the East End of London and—”

“Well, young lady, I’m from the East End of London, as is your Gramps and Nanny Thornton,” Gertie pointed out, “so don’t go turning up your nose against East Londoners.”

“I’m not, Mum, really I’m not, but Gramps and Nanny have lived on the estate here since they retired and any rough edges they might have had once have had the edges smoothed off. Colin is still a little ... undiluted.”

“Do you love him?” Gertie asked gently.

“I do, Mum. If he ever gets around to asking me to marry him, then I will whatever anyone says.”

“Well, next time he comes ashore, bring him here or to the London flat and introduce us. I’m sure that Aunt Mildred would love to meet him, they could count each other’s frostbite scars.”

“They’ve already met, Mum. Aunt Milde told me to tie him down before he gets away.”

“When was this?”

“January,” Mary replied, “we were in a little pub in Portsmouth and she turned up out of the blue, paid for our drinks, bought a round for the bar and within twenty minutes had everyone up dancing ‘knees up mother brown” after they cleared all the chairs and tables out of the way, before leading everyone in a conger around the block, then back to the pub for another round of drinks and a few raucous songs that I was shocked she knew all the words to. Colin thought she was absolutely great. Aunt Milde admitted to me that she thought Colin was the perfect choice for me. She invited us to her apartment in Paris on his next leave and we had a great week there in March, she knew all the places to go and everyone knew her so we were treated like royalty.”

“I don’t know,” Gertie shook her head laughing, “your Aunt Milde spends half the year in another country and she still knows more about what’s going on in my family than I do, and seems to be having more fun doing it than I do.”

“That’s because you are juggling all the family balls in the air, Mum, Aunt Milde picks and chooses where she concentrates her focus. How she knew about Colin and that we’d be in that pub at that time is a complete mystery to me.”

Well, Jonty was sent into a foul-tempered rage when Gertie suggested that they get psychiatric treatment for him. In Gertie’s defence, at the time it was still thought that homosexuality was a mental condition that could be “cured” by extreme psychiatric procedures. Having complained that his Mother just didn’t get him at all and stormed out of the room and very soon after left the country. He got as far away from the influence of his family as he could get, never to return until after his death.

Towards the end of 1978 Gertie married for the third time, at the age of 48, to a younger husband, Jonathan Albury (1940-2014) who was sweet and honest, describing himself in terms of being a little useless in practical terms but supportive and faithful. He was originally apprenticed as an engineer, but created a comfortable and undemanding career for himself as a freelance writer of technical manuals, be it motor vehicles or manuals for repairing the many electrical and electronic devices and household aids that were coming onto the market from Far Eastern countries and desperately needed manuals written in understandable English.

Being tall and slim, Jonathan was in looks a little like Johnnie, but he wasn’t at all athletic, nor did he have Johnnie’s luxuriant head of dark hair, Jonathan had thinning sandy-coloured hair at the time of his marriage and was virtually bald by the time he was 50. Jonathan was lean and fit though, being a keen walker and hiker, and Gertie developed an enjoyment of walking as a means of keeping herself fit by worthwhile exercise as well as enjoying fresh air at weekends after spending five days and nights in London.

The Alburys had long been friends of the Standhopes and then the Weinsteins, as both families were landowners in the Midlands during Victoria’s reign. Whilst the Weinsteins were involved in banking rather than farming, the Alburys were more mechanically minded and one of the sons set up a small bicycle factory in the Midlands in the 1880s. Eventually they introduced motor bicycles to their range in the early 1900s and by the start of the First World War were producing engines for military vehicles that were starting to replace the horses that had served the Army so well until that terrible war took such a toll on men and horses. After that war the Alburys concentrated on making larger engines for aircraft as well as powering delivery trucks, they even built a limited amount of workhorse diesel-electric engines for shunting engines around railroad yards, most of which were exported to Europe and Asia. Naturally, the Alburys needed capital for these ventures and they used the Standhope Winter bank for launching new projects and for loans.