Search for a Soul

By Susan Appleby

Our life experiences always impact on us, influencing who we are and how we relate to others. When reflecting on her life, Susan has gained knowledge and understanding of herself and her family relationships and the hugely significant impact that living within and without the strict confines of a religious organisation had on them.

 S

• Language: English
• Publisher: Linellen Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781922343284

Book preview

Prologue

My first intention in writing these memories of my earlier years was to centre them around my father and family entitling the result His Quiver Full from Psalm 127: 3-5. However, on reflection, it became clear that what was crying out to be written was my own personal battle in emergence from childhood and to make known the excesses of this childhood dominated by the unrealistic and even outrageous demands of the extraordinary sect (aka cult) known as the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren – Taylor Party.

In 1831 a group of Christians loyal to J N Darby broke bread together in Plymouth giving birth to a religious group known as The Brethren. Over the next 100 years a series of amoeba-like binary fissions occurred until by the 1930’s there were several offshoots. One was described as ‘Exclusive. Mid-century, a ‘leader’ James Taylor Snr, emerged in USA, adding, Taylor Party" to the description. Senior was superseded in the mid-1950’s by his son, JT Junior. This event, including his ‘Ministry’ of separation from evil and his well-documented, seriously questionable behaviour in Aberdeen in the excess of another kind of spirit, resulted in a sizeable division in the 1960’s. Over the ensuing ten years this gradually climaxed by 1970 into a huge exodus world-wide.

Long since my upbringing among them, in order to gain charitable status, they added ‘Christian’ to their description although having little, if any, ecumenical or other interaction in their Meetings or social lives with Christians, churches or even family members who were unconnected with them. Hopefully also, these pages will be a warning to religious parents over-concerned for their children’s ‘spiritual’ development or conformity.

As one wise friend said to me several years ago, Speak to God about your children, more than you speak to them about ‘God’.

In the late 1820’s, this group, possibly one of George Eliot’s "… preposterous sect(s) unknown to good society", was birthed gaining considerable infamy by its actions through the years, which in the 1960’s reached Britain’s and the International Press. These actions brought into disrepute not only the name of Christ but also other innocent Plymouth Brethren with whom they claimed no relationship except by name, having serially over the decades separated their gatherings from them through divergence of views regarding biblical interpretations on which most Christians would agree to differ. Thus, His Quiver Full became Search for a Soul - my search for myself, my own identity and to find an answer to the question – is entire escape possible? This could be called The Story of Everyman. All of us face the battle of life. For many it is more tranquil.

For historical purposes it may be helpful to note that Part 1 (1940-1961) was written in 1970, fifty years ago, nine years after the event which concludes it. I was newly married. My first daughter was born. I knew I had to get those early years out of my system in the hope that its conditioning would be ameliorated. The happier years of Part 2, until the section entitled A Two-tier Family?, was written at the same time. These sections were read fifteen years ago by a friend who himself had been a member of the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren. He was so moved by them that he made a bound copy saying These memories should be published.

The remaining section of Part 2 covers the next eighteen years (1961-1979) as I began to engage with the life of ‘freedom’. Part 3, recording more recent events, was written (during the Spring and Summer of 2019) while recovering from a knee transplant with a view to completion, if one’s life story has completion while still being lived!

I have analysed my life in these years, as best I can, taking into account contextually relevant activities and concomitant reflections. This may account for a certain lack of cohesion and a small time warp. It reads to me like a litany of failures. Possibly that is what it is. Who knows? You, as a reader, are the judge. We have only one life. I have responded to its challenges but for good or ill the past leaves its imprint. The complete work, God’s work, will be finalised when the mists clear and all will be made plain and, mercifully, healed.

It should be noted that several times in the narrative I resort to being an observer writing in the third person. Each diversion had its particular reason. At the very start (Spring 1954), my memory remains so vivid that it seemed appropriate to make myself an observer. It was an extraordinarily panic-stricken event which those conversant with J N Darby’s writings on the Second Coming and the Exclusive PeeBs will know about and understand – the dread and fear of every child. Another occasion, six and a half years later, Chapter 18 – Called to Trial, is where I record the last events surrounding my release, aka ‘ex-communication’. The ‘fly on the wall’ style fitted this scenario better.

For personal and other reasons, I decided to change the names of my siblings. If they ever read these memories (please remember this is my life story) I leave them to work out from the meanings of their ‘new names’ why I chose them. Quentin was an obvious choice although I did debate over that with Hector as an alternative, possibly for subconscious motives.

No doubt I will be challenged left, right and centre but all I say to them again is that these are my memories and apart from Abigail (Joel is no longer with us), the very first of them did not appear on the scene until I was nearly five and a World War had just begun and was shortly to end in that space of time.

In 1961, compared with street-wise teenagers and young adults in 2020, we were all babes.

My life is but a weaving between the Lord and me.

I may not choose the colours, He knows what they should be;

for He can view the pattern upon the upper side

while I can see it only on this the underside.

Sometimes he weaves with sorrow, which seems so strange to me

but I will trust His judgement and work on faithfully;

‘tis He who fills the shuttle, and He knows what is best,

so I shall weave in earnest, leaving Him to do the rest.

Not till the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly

shall God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why -

the dark threads are as needed in the Weaver’s skilful hand

as the threads of gold and silver in the pattern he has planned.

- Author unknown -

In the Beginning –

A Blank Canvas

Part 1

1940 – 1961

Your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained for me were written in your book

before one of them came into being.

Psalm 139:16 (NIV)

You have kept record of my days of wandering.

You have stored my tears in a bottle and counted each of them.

Psalm 56:8 (CEV)

Chapter 1

Spring 1954

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If she were to commence her narrative with the date and place of her birth there would be every reason to disbelieve what follows for which of us, except some psychoanalyst seeking proof of his theories, can elicit remembrance of their birth? What we may know of it are the imparted memories of others. Thus, she starts at an event in life which she does remember, an event conditioned by her growing years and the stage where childhood is merging into approaching adulthood. With it came her first conscious realisation of the unusual size of the family to which she belonged: the birth of her youngest sister – fifth girl, ninth child.

She is fourteen and sensitive to what is going on around her and knows a ninth pregnancy must be fraught with certain tensions. A few days earlier she had wandered into her parents’ bedroom and, seeing a tall, black, bomb-like cylinder, had asked her mother what it was; (she was born into the earliest days of WWII). Her mother replied, It’s oxygen. The doctor is trying to frighten me from having any more babies.

It is five o’clock on 28 May 1954. The loud banging of the outer double front door and her father’s joyful voice echoing in the still air pulls her from her bed as nothing else could. In her half-conscious state, she is convinced it is the Second Coming and that her father was greeting the Lord – her parents were going, leaving her behind. Every scriptural detail of that Return had been repeatedly impressed upon her fertile memory – Christ’s descent from heaven with a shout, the voice of the Archangel and the trump of God – noise and voices everywhere. But whereas the reminder was a ‘comfort’ to her parents it was an advent of terror to her and, with a half-formed, last desperate plea on her lips, she flung open the bedroom door.

Outside, the landing is alight – a strange necessity if the Light of the World has come. At her mother’s bedroom door, she collides with Nurse Olive emerging from the room. Everything falls into place. Nurse Olive has, with the now-departed doctor, safely delivered her sixth B – – baby.

After a moment, Nurse Olive ushers her with the familiar but dire threats about noise, nuisance and ‘cleanliness being next to godliness’ (and that’s in the Bible), into the presence of the newest, tiniest baby she has ever seen – the half-hour old Louisa Jane – fifth girl, ninth child.

There at the crib side, she paid the age-old homage of wonder at new life.

Although Biology lessons had been thorough, if not explicit, she had little knowledge of the how, why and wherefore. Despite her fecund cats and white mice, this closest encounter was not particularly meaningful in terms of the processes of human birth and its subsequent responsibilities. Its effect became more personal and importunate in later months and years for babies need feeding and afternoon walks, this latter being one way of occupying restless children. When nappies needed changing, the performance of this task could be avoided by disappearing at the crucial moment. Babies and small children need bathing and dressing, activities which were meted out to whoever was on hand at the time in a way that would have horrified the fond mother of one.

Not infrequently in the past, she would wake up to find two-year-old Hannah dumped beside her in bed plus her clothes for the dual purpose of getting both of them up and dressed. Experience had taught her that delay could result in a wet bed.

Once again as a family they watched, laughed at, wondered and rejoiced in the developing abilities of a tiny child. They laughed at her unselfconscious antics, encouraged her first steps towards inevitable independence and guided her noises into more euphonious sounds. All were involved. Louisa Jane was part of ‘Us’.

However, it was not only at the birth of Louisa Jane but often in earlier years, terror would pluck at her heart when, on returning from school, the house was empty and she had been expecting to find her mother. Or, in the quietness of a winter evening when the light had been put out, she would lie awake thinking about how she could possibly persuade the returning Christ that she did believe in Him even if she was not very good at living like Him.

What would she do if her mother, who was her whole life, abandoned her suddenly? The mind of a child could not encompass the Mind of God.

No-one ever said anything about that Other Life and yet death, that great dividing mystery, was eagerly awaited especially by her father. She could never understand this for it seemed that people who died were often ill and in pain beforehand. When her paternal grandmother died she could not believe it was good or that she would not see her again. As she looked out of the window of the big black car, the tears trickled down her cheeks. How could her father prefer a burial meeting to a wedding meeting? She preferred her mother’s hope that Christ would come again during the Breaking of Bread for surely there and then she (hopefully) would go with her.

So great was her fear of this terrible God, who had in His hands the power to decide her eternal happiness or otherwise, that she wanted somewhere to hide. She could not escape from the fear that in the final decision God’s choice for her would be arbitrary. She feared that regardless of how much she wanted to do the right thing, God to prove His absolute command might damn her to an eternity apart from those she loved. She found it so difficult to ‘be good’ in the terms required of her.

Another thing she could not understand was how this life, this here and now, was a waiting room for an existence beyond imagination. It was beyond imagination for she wanted to live now.

Thus, began the years which eventually led to a cataclysmic reshaping of life and adjustments which, in the normal tenor of life, not many people have to make in quite the same way. Unwittingly and unaware, the experienced terror of the Second Coming, was actually the first step towards freedom.

Her story is neither typical nor unique. Many others who were brought up among the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren will identify with it. This, then, is my record of experiences, personal responses, and insights. There must be many who, having brushed with similar experiences in other religious groups, will be able to say those words which mean so much when spoken sincerely, Yes, I understand. It was like that for me. They also have a story to tell.

For the rest, this may contribute a little towards sympathising with what may seem strange actions, reactions and thought patterns of people we meet who, unbeknown to us, have lived through and emerged from dark times.

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Chapter 2

Our Family Life

We were a large family by contemporary standards but not unique. Large families were quite usual among the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren (PeeBs).

PeeB and Peebery were the commonly used vocalised version of PB – Plymouth Brethren or Brother.

My father’s brother had seven children, all named after commendable Biblical characters. My mother’s sister had six. Among our friends were several families with seven or more children. No doubt, these tribes were attributable to an unwritten (but implicit) PeeB Law about birth control, although analysis might show that deeper factors were at work. At least some were doing their part in peopling an isolated and world-denying religious community – a latter-day Children of Israel or PeeBery.

To understand the background in which we grew up one must imagine a group of people made up of a mixture of Judaism and Christianity with an authoritarian Roman Catholic and Islamic style of control – a community where one’s code of conduct was written in the Bible, its interpretation by the ‘leaders’ of the community. It was not like that in the days of my grand-, great-, and great-great-grandparents. It devolved into this after the war, during the 1950s when life ran smoothly, provided one obeyed and followed unquestioningly. Question, disobey or flout the rules and trouble swiftly followed, sometimes to the dreaded extreme of ‘Withdrawal from fellowship’ – ex-communication in religious lingo. This involved a complete end to all communication, spiritual and social – the ending of all friendships – a removal from the community. Judged as a contaminating and corrupting influence. ‘Peebery’ is as much a way of life as a mode of worship, therefore, the fear of this ultimate act of excision is so great that the authority of the group extends right into the home where discipline is of a rigid, Victorian kind.

This is their interpretation of the teaching of one of St Paul’s co-workers, who wrote that church elders must be blameless, once-married and with believing children who are not wild or disobedient. As there was no named hierarchy every ‘brother’ (male-member) who was serious about his commitment to the PeeBs was the equivalent of an ‘Elder’. All of St Paul’s teaching in the New Testament was standard and everything deemed relevant from the Old was added as the conditions by which they lived. Jesus’ teaching was not obviously to the fore.

It does not require much imagination to understand why the Brethren have so much power over members’ lives, for when all one’s relations and life-long friends are in the one community, one thinks several times before kicking over the traces. The conditioning of one’s life is such that, to seek friendship ‘outside’, that is ‘in the World’ which is ‘enmity against God’, is unthinkable.

A Chosen People?

The Exclusive Brethren see themselves as a ‘Chosen People’, ‘elect before God’ and no-one, however dedicated a Christian they may be, can be considered ‘safe’ or a suitable friend or companion.

Less brainwashed members, of which there were a few, joked among themselves of a glass box specially reserved for them in heaven. Although they joked, everything in their way of life confirmed that this was to them a reality. God had a ‘peculiar’ (special) interest in them. ‘In the world but not of it’ was their oft-repeated maxim. The whole of life, attitudes, and belief revolved around the expectation of an imminent Second Coming when they would be welcomed and rejoiced over as God’s holy and sinless people. This ‘Here and Now’ was but a waiting room for an existence beyond imagination.

However, before I set out the background to my panic and launch into what life among the Exclusives involved, those ‘almost normal’ earliest years must be retold.

Summer, 1955

Abigail, Susan,

Joel, Benjamin,

Quentin, Kiff,

Hannah, Amelia,

Louisa Jane

Chapter 3

Those Innocent Early Years

The later ensuing recall of life and its organisation among the Brethren in my teenage years will be easy compared with the reliving of my earliest years as ‘second’ child in a steadily expanding family. However, even more traumatic and painful will be the eventual investigation into the effects of this upbringing which was so powerfully influenced by the evolving ‘teaching’ of the Brethren.

Some of these earliest memories may be the recounted memories of parents and relations. My father’s cine films prove that I had an older sister, Abigail, and that I existed before the age of two or three. Maybe, I shall have to reach my late nineties before the mists clear and I relive those earliest years. For this very reason, I must concede that my childhood years were secure (within insecurity) and happy. The sinister incursions of the Brethren into family life came several years later. In those days of WWII, everyone gave great support to each other, preoccupied with the demands of staying alive, managing on reduced resources and the importunate knowledge that death was a factor to be constantly taken into account.

Daddy Goes to War

The main difference between my father and the majority of conscripts was the fact that along with other eligible Brothers he applied to and was received into the Non-Combatant Corps and, on 20 February 1941, a year and seventeen days after my birth, he was called up. He was stationed in England and was able to return home from time to time. ‘Daddy’ and NCC became synonymous. It must have been an anxious and distressful departure as bombs had been falling since October 1940 and continued into June 1941. This was in southeast London, Greenwich, and Woolwich where the Arsenal was sited and an obvious target. One bomb almost destroyed the railway line and four fell close to the road in which we lived. It was several years before I understood the horrendous significance of a huge gap in a row of houses.

It must have been an incredibly difficult time for my mother, not only living in fear of what might happen next but caring for two small daughters alone despite her grandmother living a few doors down the road. So, for my first few years, I was hardly aware of having a father. My mother, deprived of his loving support, lavished her love and attention on her children, some have said on her younger child – but I doubt it as the firstborn is nearly always prima donna – and if this was so I was unaware of any excess until possibly the arrival three years later of a brother, Joel, who was an ailing baby.

Handicapped shortly after birth with acute eczema and asthma Joel presented as a needy newborn and, I suspect, a shock as the firstborn son to a proud father on compassionate leave from the Forces.

The constant attention Joel required soon necessitated my being sent off to the Nursery section of the private school where Abigail was a ‘Big Girl’.

SMILE PLEASE!  

The bottle feeding that was obviously necessary 

may explain the acute allergies that Joel developed.

A Handful?

Legend has it that school was the only solution as I was a ‘handful’. Reflecting on this I was probably lively, adventurous, explorative of a rapidly expanding world, and eager to learn by investigation – a normal child – clearly more than the mother of a sick child could cope with alone.

I remember one occasion when I was helping my mother make Macaroni Cheese for lunch that the milkman called. She went to the door as a bill was due to be paid. Fascinated by the little macaroni tubes, I began to play and experiment. After a short time, I followed her to the door having answered a primitive instinct for self-adornment with a piece of macaroni inserted in each nostril. Feeling proud of myself, I made noises at her but she was far too busy checking pints received and finding money to take any notice, so I trotted back down the long hall passageway, my imagination running riot. When the front door eventually closed and my mother returned to the kitchen, I managed to obtain her attention for the expected congratulations and admiration of my prowess.

I shall never forget her horror and the subsequent battle to remove the offending objects. One tool she tried to use was the red-stained stick of my xylophone hammer. Now, having a child of my own, I can understand her panic except that today we have eyebrow tweezers and am sure they would have quickly solved the problem. However, nothing so worldly as eyebrow tweezers would be found in a real Brethren home.

So, a Miss Sneller, drawn from somewhere in the ranks of the PeeBs, answered an emergency call and, having no known experience with children, was introduced to ease Mummy’s burden and take care of us. This was unfortunate for me as she clearly didn’t know how to relate to children. One day for some minor misdemeanour she put me into the cellar, on the top step of a very long flight down, and closed the door. I have no doubt I howled. I remember the dark. Abigail was most concerned. Miss Sneller suddenly disappeared. As with most if not all of the actions for which I was punished in my early life I have no recollection of the disobedience, only of the punishment.

On Being a Child

Although in these early years any external pressures of the Exclusive Brethren were not in evidence, the war having its distracting part in this, my parents were faithful to their Christian tenets in the upbringing of their children. My father held strongly to a belief in Original Sin, the child being ‘born in sin and shapen in iniquity’, which resulted in the view that a child’s socially inconvenient actions, even though not sinful in themselves, were an exhibition of a basically sinful nature. Thus, the natural exploratory activities of a child, especially when persisted in after an express command to desist, were labelled as ‘naughty’ and eventually ‘self-will’ and, therefore, sinful. It did not appear to them that a child has no understanding of a concept called ‘sin’ or that a more purposefully directed, acceptable action could be introduced for distraction. I was continually told to be good and behave. Regardless of appearances to the contrary, I did wish to please my parents. In this process of upbringing my father’s parents and Charis, his sister, were very much involved.

Every child searching for security will try the strength of its parents’ commands. For me the ‘Thou shalt nots’ and desire to please fought a raging battle with the urge to be myself. This was the battlefield of my early years. That great ‘outside’ influence which would seek to strip me of my identity had not yet unloosed its tentacles or unsheathed its claws.

First Steps into the ‘World’ – Nursery School

So here I was trotting off hand-in-hand to Nursery School with my ‘Big’, and much-admired elder sister. In those days it meant real learning and by the age of four I was an able reader such that when, at the age of seven for financial reasons I had to change from private to state education, I was at least two years ahead of my age group.

As with most things in our law-riddled society it would have caused administrative chaos to place me according to ability and compromise was made; I was placed a year ahead and received the first check to progress. I was bored.

The private school was run by two white-haired sisters, the Misses Langham. One was tall and thin with round tortoiseshell spectacles on her aquiline nose; the other was short, plump and cuddly but she died shortly after my first attendance. I do not remember there being a relation between these two facts!

We were taught more than reading. We had a band of drums and bugles, pipes and triangles. To my disgust I was always given a triangle – there was so little one could do with it. I had not yet learnt that in life one sometimes has to fight for the desired things. Possibly future events were casting their shadows a long way before.

We were taught to sew. The sewing teacher, Mrs McCarthy (with the big boobs and fascinatingly large nipples), seeing a child biting off and chewing threads of cotton told us the story of a friend of hers who was a dressmaker and used to do just that and sometimes swallowed the thread. One day she died and they opened her up to find out why she had died and there, knotted around her heart, were the ends of cotton so tightly tangled that her heart could no longer beat. I pondered long over this story as I cross-stitched my blue and white gingham but could never solve the problem as to how the cotton got round her heart. The food I ate did not appear to do that.

We learned to dance the Sailor’s Hornpipe. My feet still want to recapture the innocence of those days when I hear the pipes.

Self-Conscious and Alone

Mummy gave us Ryvita and cheese to eat with our milk at eleven o’clock. I took them because Abigail did, but discovered that when I ate them, they made a terrible noise. Sitting on the bench that surrounded the schoolroom, looking out