Just days before the Christmas of 2004 Jim Perrin decreed that there would be ‘no Christmas’ that year. It would, he said, remind him of his last Christmas with his son, Will.

Jac’s ‘Welsh’ sister was there on the evening when the announcement was made and hearing raised voices she went through to the kitchen. She found Jim Perrin looming over Jac, who was slipping down, little by little, in the wooden kitchen chair… Her immediate thought was of her sister’s fragility and her seeming inability to withstand the verbal onslaught of the man standing over her, but there was reticence too, a fear of intrusion into what might have been a matter for them only.

‘Is this private? she asked — ‘shall I leave you together?’  Jim Perrin said forcefully, ‘Yes it is’. She got as far as the kitchen door before turning on her heel and saying ‘I don’t care if it is private — you are not to shout at my sister!’ — and questioning Jac she asked again, ‘Do you want me to stay?’ — ‘Yes’, she really would prefer it. Continue reading →

As the year of 2004 drew to its troubled close, things had reached such a pitch in Jim Perrin’s increasingly resentful behaviour and envenomed accusations against our sister’s sons that she began to dread the meetings between them.

To put this into perspective: it was not the case that either son still lived at home, although their own bedrooms were there for them whenever they returned.  One son was by now teaching in Sheffield and the other was completing his course at University in London; and too, with their free time taken up with travel and other youthful involvements, they were not all that often in Wales.  When they did go home they were frequently ‘out and about’ locally, meeting up with their old school friends.  Normal life, in other words, for those in that age group, and a pattern which will be recognised by parents everywhere.  They were initially, as we all were, really very happy for their mother, ref. our post Jac’s relationship with Jim Perrin, and completely supportive, and they just got on with their lives as before.

Nevertheless Jim Perrin had very soon, after moving to our sister’s house in the Autumn of 2003, convinced himself that her sons were, in his words ‘against’ him — simply not true; and attributed to them all manner of misdemeanours and disrespectful and insulting behaviour.  He managed always to imbue their home-comings with feelings of unease. Continue reading →

When our sister, with very good reason, left her home (and Jim Perrin) and stayed away for three days at ‘Swallow Falls’, things were never to be the same between them: she had lost all faith in him. After this most serious rift Jim Perrin wrote in a letter to her: ‘When you walked out on me for three days… ‘ However, in his book he puts a very different slant on it:

‘At one point she disappeared for a couple of days, ‘phoned friends from a ‘phone box to tell them she could not bear to burden me further…’  Ref. page 258 of West.

This was utter rot. It was not the reason that she went away, (and she certainly had no notion of ‘not bearing to burden [him] further.’) — he knows that it was not, and he knows exactly why she left him when she did! Ref. our post Swallow Falls.

She was wearied by his implacable dislike of her sons; by his self-righteousness and his constant hectoring. She was desperately ill and needed to retrench, and had no wish to fight with the partner who by now was exerting such control over her life. It was essential that she should conserve her energy for her battle with the cancer; she fully intended to win this battle, but it was in the end to be  with a mortal enemy. Resigning herself, as she saw at that time no other way than to return to her home, she left ‘Swallow Falls’ and prepared to brave out the inevitable incriminations which she knew she was about to face… Continue reading →