TO
THE DEAR MEMORY OF
RANDOLPH ADOLPHUS
TURPIN
DEVOTED HUSBAND OF
GWYNETH
AND FATHER OF
GWYNETH, ANNETTE,
CHARMAINE & CARMEN
WHO PASSED AWAY
17 MAY, 1966. AGED 38
World middleweight
boxing champion 1951.
*
Annette is the older of the two Turpin girls sitting before me. Both Annette and Charmaine are now in their forties, and there is a joy to their faces and demeanour which immediately challenges any notion of seeing the story of their father as a tragic one. Charmaine's eleven-year-old son Ieuan sits to her side. Opposite him, and next to me, sits sixteen-year-old Rachel. She is Carmen's daughter, and both she and her cousin are quiet and conscientiously polite. It is now forty years since Randolph Turpin died, and on this hot July afternoon we are having lunch at an Italian restaurant on London's South Bank, only a few hundred yards from the National Film Theatre where some twenty-one years ago I watched a poignant documentary film about Randolph Turpin. Annette smiles. She informs me that she too was in the audience that day, and she liked the film about her father. But that is all that she says; that she liked it, nothing more. We decide to order lunch.
Annette lives in South London, where she is a psychiatric nurse working with children and adolescents in a hospital outpatient department. Charmaine has travelled down with the two children from Prestatyn in North Wales, where she is employed by a company that manufactures military equipment. She is planning on spending the weekend with her sister. Carmen was due to accompany her, but she has recently found another job and so she has decided to stay behind in Wales. Gwyneth, the oldest sister, died of Hodgkin's disease in 1987, and their mother Gwen died in May 1992. She never remarried. As Annette and Charmaine study the menu, I look closely at the sisters and can see that they both have something of the Randolph Turpin twinkle in their eyes. They lay down their menus and then break into charismatic smiles which remind me of the film footage I have seen of their father being interviewed as he prepared to board the Queen Mary and sail to New York for the first time. However, it is the young boy, Ieuan — the grandson — who is truly blessed with his grandfather's features. I wonder how much he knows about Randolph Turpin, or if he is even interested. 'HMS Belfast and the Imperial War Museum,' says his mother, 'that's what Ieuan likes to visit when he comes to London.' Did Ieuan know that his grandfather, and his grandfather's brothers, served in the military during the Second World War? Did Ieuan know that his West Indian great-grandfather was wounded in the First World War and suffered wounds that later killed him?
Having ordered lunch, the children now begin to talk to each other. Suddenly I feel the pressure to pose a question to the sisters, but it is Annette who asks the first question. 'Do you think my dad would have got proper recognition if he wasn't black?' I have to think for a moment for this is a somewhat blunter version of a question that I was hoping to pose to the sisters. 'Although,' continues Annette, 'somebody told me that there are only two statues to black men in England. One is just along the river here, the one for Nelson Mandela, and the other is of our dad. The one that's in Warwick.' For a moment it occurs to me that in a sense she has answered her own question, but she continues. 'But there should be more recognition for black people, shouldn't there? And the one in Warwick has happened relatively recently.'
Two days after winning the world middleweight title, twenty-three-year-old Randolph Turpin found himself on the balcony of Leamington Spa Town Hall with a microphone before him and being asked to make a formal speech. He began, but clearly he was not comfortable with the situation he found himself in and so he departed from the text and decided to thank the crowd in what he called 'me own language'. There was nothing pretentious or affected about Turpin. He was a working-class kid who was neither overly proud of, nor ashamed of, his roots. He was not hoping to secretly ascend through the ranks of the class system and become 'accepted' by the middle or upper classes. I suggest to the sisters that a combination of race and class probably operated against their father being fully recognised, and I ask them what they think he would be doing now were he still alive. Both are sure that he would still have something to do with boxing, probably working with youngsters as a trainer of some kind. 'How about media work?' I ask. They think for a moment, but I quickly continue. 'His face wouldn't have fit, right?' Charmaine nods. 'Yes, that's probably right.' In England issues of race and class frequently operate hand in hand, and had Randolph Turpin lived it seems clear to me that he would undoubtedly have 'suffered' as much for his class as for his race.
Annette steals a quick glance at Charmaine. 'You know, our grandmother had to deal with a lot of racial abuse after her husband died. She got it because she had black kids. Five of them, but she always stuck by her children. Mum told us that. Mum never told us anything about anybody that was bad. When we were growing up she just let us make our own minds up about things.' Charmaine nods, and then takes over from Annette. 'But if we wanted to know then she would tell us her opinion, but only if we asked. After our dad died we left Leamington Spa, but we would sometimes come back and see people. Our mum would bring us from Wales, but she didn't badmouth anyone.' Annette's eyes light up. 'For instance,' says Annette, 'I idolised my Uncle Dick.' She stops abruptly. 'Mum never said anything to me until I started to ask questions about what had happened with the family, but even then it was just her opinion. You know, you should see pictures of her back then in the fifties. She was beautiful and glamorous, just like a film star. But when it came to family and questions about our dad she just let us make our own minds up.'
Shortly after her husband's death, Gwen took her four daughters back to Wales where she once again became part of a Welsh-speaking community. But none of her daughters can speak Welsh, which leads me to wonder if they consider Wales to be home. Charmaine casts a quick glance at the two children, who are now listening carefully. 'In a sense, yes, of course, but Leamington Spa is also home. Maybe it's really home.' Annette looks across at her younger sister and picks up her cue. 'When we go there we always take flowers for the grave, and the last time we were there we went for a walk down the street we used to live on, and it felt strange. Of course, the café is no longer there as it's now a car park, but the place is full of emotions, both good and bad. It's still home, though. At least to me.' She pauses. 'Mum told us that towards the end she would have preferred to sell up and go back to the Great Orme. This was when they still had both the café and the Great Orme, but for some reason Dad made his choice and he chose the café and Leamington and Mum went along with it. But when we did go to Prestatyn after his death we were never made to feel like outsiders in Wales.'
After we have all finished eating we pause for a moment and think about ordering dessert. It transpires that only the children are interested and Charmaine begins to guide them through the choices. Annette is deep in thought, and then she looks up. 'You know what my mother's father said to my dad when he told him that he was going to marry Mum? He said, "Just take care of my daughter." That's all he said. "Just take care of my daughter." My dad was the only black man around that part of Wales, and maybe the only one some people had ever seen, but in Wales everybody accepted him for what he was. They were friendly and generous, and he didn't get any abuse. They didn't care that he was famous, and they didn't want anything from him. For the first time in his life he was free, and he was also among nature. He liked to work on the hay in the fields and do farm work on my granddad's farm, but when he was in Leamington if he had a fiver in his pocket they'd want £4.50 of it and you know he'd just give it to them. In a way he could be happy in Wales because he could just be himself, and for him it was really a big change from Leamington. I reckon things might have been different if they'd left Leamington and gone back and took over the Great Orme again like Mum wanted. But that's not what they did. They stayed in Leamington.'