The Collector: Memoir

My maternal grandfather flew from Britain to New Zealand when I was eleven, and never got off the plane, thanks to a heart attack.  My grandmother was waiting to greet him in Arrivals, little knowing she would never speak with him again.

He was an interesting fellow, my grandfather.  We called him 'Bim' and my grandmother 'Mim', and I still have no idea why.  I barely knew him, as it happened, but his work was known by many. There is a book on him called The ImageMaker by J R Tye, primarily about his designs for New Zealand stamps and coins between 1933 and the seventies: the ten and fifty cent piece are still in circulation today.  He was even awarded an OBE and has a Wikipedia entry, as I discovered only today, when googling the author of his biography.  I remember going to the book launch of The Image Maker, and meeting my school caretaker, of all people, who apparently was an avid stamp collector and long-time fan of my grandfather's, and being so surprised that in the all the years I knew him (the caretaker, that is) I had never known this.

I often visited the basement where he toiled away on plaster casts of the Queen's head, and Captain Cook's sailing ships. It's just that he was rarely there himself, in later years.  He travelled abroad so much that I suspect my grandmother raised their six children single-handedly.  He would arrive from some faraway country with his latest acquisitions, and the basement would swell and swell with more and more extraordinary junk, until it was creaking at the seams.  

After he died, word spread.  Mim was living in the house by herself, on top of a hill with half an acre of native bush that ran vertically down to a busy road near the beach.  She heard them one night, and peering down through a window, saw torchlight.  Sensibly, she rang the police.  The police chased them down through the bush (one of the thieves lost his shoe) and apprehended one immediately, and the other a little later trying to hitch a ride on the main road.  One of them even had a gun, which was pretty rare back then.   We all joked that the thieves must have been dismayed when faced with the overwhelming reality of what Bim had actually collected.  Yes, a few rare objects here and there, but mostly worthless bric a brac, and great deal of it.

However, this prompted us to move my grandmother to a less remote location, and clear out the basement. 

Some of Bim's favourite things to collect were antique clocks, and some of these were valuable.  I was allowed to choose one of these clocks for myself.  I chose one with an antique globe on top of it, which turned at the same speed as the earth,  in accordance with the clock hands.  I have no idea what happened to it, but I loved that clock, and put it into my story,  All the Time in the World.  That story is also about a collector, but a much more sinister one than my grandfather.  I also chose some random pieces of cardboard with precious stones attached to them, and a watch with gems inside the back.  No idea what happened to those either.  I'd like to write a story about the clock, though, about its maker and its convoluted journey to wherever I imagine it is now.  Something like The Red Violin, but shorter.

I like to think I inherited something of Bim's artistic abilities.  My mother certainly did.  I know I draw the human eye exactly as he did, because I have since seen his line drawings, so anatomically correct.  But here is a curious fact: he was also colour blind, and liked to paint landscapes.  He would ask his wife if there was too much red, or blue, in his paintings.  I remember them well: there was always too much red, or too much blue.  And somehow this memory is the one that makes me love him most.

RIP, Reginald James Berry.