Rachel Sarah Denise Infield nee Michaels
A celebration of her life
27 October 2024
Written and read by Neil Infield
Many thanks for joining us today to celebrate the very full life of Denise. Although the last few of her 97 years were not the happiest for her, or friends and family, the rest were lived with great vivacity and fun. She really did live life to the full, and that’s what I’m going to focus on today.
Denise was born on 13 of December 1926. To give you a sense of how long ago that was, it was the same month that Agatha Christie mysteriously disappeared for 11 days. And the same year John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of television. She was born in Montreal, Canada. Both her parents’ families had originated in Eastern Europe, or possibly Russia. Her father’s family had moved to Canada and started a tobacco company best known for a ten cent cigar called the Stonewall Jackson.
Her maternal grandfather Samuel Freedman first immigrated to Dundee in Scotland, and after a few years moved to Antwerp Belgium, where by coincidence Denise’ great granddaughter Nora currently lives. Here he set up what became a very successful diamond business. His family consisted of nine children, with the six boys being sent all over the world to sell the diamonds. This included to Maharajas in India and wealthy landowners in South America. The eldest son, Isadore, went to Canada where he settled and married Rosie Michaels. Denise’s mother Rebecca went over for the wedding and met Rosie’s brother, Alfred.
They fell in love and married in 1909. Seventeen years later Denise was born. Soon after they nearly lost her to an ear infection. This was the cause of her partial deafness, and why she always insisted we walk on her left side. As a result they considered her too delicate to go to school (hard to imagine for those who remember how robust she was in later life). She was educated initially with private tutors, some of whom became lifelong friends.
Her mother never really felt at home in Canada, and so after crossing the Atlantic 22 times, the three of them returned to Europe in 1932 and settled in London. When the Second World War started her father was sent to Bermuda to act as a censor (including letters written by the infamous Duke of Windsor). Later Denise and her mother travelled on the last convoy across the Atlantic to join him. They spent most of the rest of the war in sunny Bermuda living something of an idyllic life. Here she discovered her love of tennis, winning their junior championship in 1943. She rode horses on the beach and swam in the sea. Her bad back resulted from being thrown by waves onto a coral reef.
Denise went to Bermuda High School where she got a first class education. On returning to England towards the end of the war she was offered a place to study history at Cambridge. But was determined to study economics and government, and so chose the London School of Economics. There she attended lectures by the influential Marxist economist Harold Laski who made a lasting impression on her. Ralph Milliband (father to David and Ed) was a fellow student and protege of Laski.
Denise met Brian just after the war at a dance party at the Rubens Hotel in London. Her cautious parents were wary of boyfriends, so they had to keep their motorcycle rides secret. They married on 1st September 1953.
David, the first of her four children, was born two months “early” in Paris in March 1954. It’s too complicated a story to go into here, but having a child seven months after wedlock would have embarrassed Alfred and Rebecca. The rest of us followed really quite quickly, meaning that Denise was soon looking after four children under the age of six . Quite a challenge for any mother, but even more so as Brian was often working abroad for several months at a time.
I think she really enjoyed family life, which comes through in many of the photos. She was always very interested in what her children and grandchildren were doing and what they were thinking.
After graduating from Denise became a probation officer in the East End of London. A challenging role and one that introduced her to a lot of new words. She would return home in the evening and ask Brian “what does bollocks mean”.
Although money wasn’t an issue, it was important to her socialist principles to work. After the move to Spanden in 1965 she worked for the Child Guidance Clinic in Crawley and enjoyed her job there until having to retire at 60. She still wanted to keep active and so undertook two years of training as a Marriage Guidance Counsellor (now Relate).
She was heavily influenced by her time at the London School of Economics and became a committed supporter of the Labour party. Promoting Labour was something of a lost cause in the deep blue Mid-Sussex ward which had been staunchly Conservative for as long as people could remember. But that didn’t prevent Denise from regularly hosting Labour Party meetings at Spanden, and leafleting houses in Forest Row during elections. She would enlist help from whichever of us children were around at the time. Once she even stood as a Labour candidate in the general election, on the understanding that she couldn't get elected.
Politics was one of the regular topics of discussion around the crowded and noisy kitchen table at Spanden. I recently bumped into a friend I hadn’t seen since primary school and he has clear memories of these boisterous debates.
In addition to politics Denise had a wide range of passions in her life. Here are a few:
She had an eclectic taste in music which included Bob Dylan, Buffy Saint Marie, Leonard Cohen, the Beatles, and pretty much any ballet music.
She attended ballet classes from an early age and continued these into her 70s. She was a regular at Covent Garden and watched all the important ballets and dancers over the years, including Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev. Her favourite ballet was Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. At the end she would cry, shouting Bravo, between sobs. Rather than waste money on expensive stalls seats, she would sit high up in the Lower Slips. Seat 98 now has a plaque with Claire and Olivia’s names on it. I well remember getting neck-ache from craning forward trying to see more of the stage when I went along.
Musical intermission… Romeo and Juliet by Serguéi Prokófiev
Many of the paintings you see around Spanden were painted by Denise at her weekly art class. She had a passion for oils and would toil over canvases for hours struggling to get the result she wanted. She also loved taking her Olympus camera with her and took many impressive photos. In particular an image of the Seven Sisters at Cuckmere Haven which the National Trust used for one of their posters.
She loved hill-walking, especially in her much loved Lake District. I remember walking the South Downs Way with her, and camping in North Wales during the drought of 1976. With Brian she explored parts of Greece, New Zealand and Scotland. But they always returned to their favourite Langdale Valley and the Elterwater Hotel for many many years. She also loved to walk in the fields around Spanden with our various dogs.
France was their next most popular destination with yearly summertime visits, always exploring new regions on their bicycles. She was the lightest packer I have ever known, with just a change of skirt, a toothbrush and a few items of underwear for a week or two on the road. Her French was excellent, helped by weekly conversation sessions in East Grinstead. I remember her speaking to Brian in French if she didn't want us children to understand what they were talking about.
Swimming in the sea was a popular activity, and we often went on trips down to her ‘secret’ beach near Seaford Haven. There she would enjoy bathing in the chilly Channel waters.
Denise’s love of tennis continued throughout her life, so having a grass court at Spanden was a real treat for her. I suppose it helped that she had four young workers to hang the nets every spring, cut and roll the lawn every week, and mark out the court whenever the lines started to fade. She taught us all how to hit the ball as hard as she did, but was not a fan of the new-fangled top-spin approach to forehands. Nor was she interested in competitive tennis. So although we all became good at hitting the ball really hard, we couldn’t serve or cope with match tennis. She also loved watching Wimbledon on the BBC and encouraged us to go up to watch in person. In those days you could join the queue at 6am, head off for breakfast with your queue ticket, and be standing watching Bjorn Borg or Ille Nastase in the grand final a few hours later for the price of a standard entry.
I would say that Skiing was her second greatest passion. She was only two years old when she first skied in Canada. But she waited until I was six before whisking all of us away for two weeks on the Austrian slopes. I found the challenge of heavy leather boots, cable bindings and long wooden skis a bit too much to handle. Surprisingly there is a photo from that holiday where I look as though I am enjoying myself. These trips became our main family holidays for many years. And as a result we all became reasonably accomplished and enthusiastic skiers. Despite breaking her achilles tendon she never hung up her skis, as you can see from the photo of her skiing down to Forest Row in her eighties. She was embarrassed when this amazing photo appeared in the local paper!
Gardening was definitely her number one passion, one might even say obsession. On moving to Spanden she was disappointed with the heavy clay soil. So for the next thirty years she had a tonne of horse manure dumped on the track. She would proceed to load up the wheelbarrow and then dig it into the vegetable patch. This was hard physical work, and her hands were often callused and dirty, despite liberal use of Norwegian hand cream. At various times she employed help to do some of the heavier work, and they would become part of our extended family. She loved roses, particularly scented ones, and planted them all around the garden. And she liked planting trees, and watching over the years as they grew and grew into unmanageable monsters threatening the house. She was often in correspondence with the Royal Horticultural Society trying to solve a plant problem. And loved to visit the gardens at Wisley, Wakehurst and Sheffield Park for inspiration.
She was definitely a bit eccentric. Brian remembers an occasion when she wore her smart dress inside out to a posh event in London, she said she preferred it that way. Then there was the painting Denise bought of three boats. You can see it on the landing upstairs. She didn’t like one of the boats…so got her oils out and painted over it! She didn’t have much time to watch television but did enjoy equally the films of François Truffaut, spaghetti westerns, and the Dirty Harry trilogy starring Clint Eastwood.
Denise would warmly welcome friends and relatives into the house and made them feel part of the family. We had several young people come to live with us for months or even years. Which meant they had to help out with the household jobs. In fact all visitors to Spanden had to help out, whether they wanted to or not. Denise would allocate tasks to everyone. A memorable occasion was asking kosher Michelle to cook bacon for breakfast.
A more challenging eccentricity was her approach to present receiving. Buying a surprise for birthdays or Christmas was always something of a risk. If she didn’t like a present her expression really said all you needed to know, but would often be followed up by; “Do you still have the receipt?” Another time she might say “ It's rather nice but aren't you sure you wouldn't rather keep it?”.
She became obsessed with the idea of having a flock of beautiful white doves at Spanden. So for her sixtieth birthday we all clubbed together and had a large dove-cot built. From there things went badly wrong. The first set of doves flew away. The second set were joined by horrible grey pigeons. And then grew into such a number they started nesting and spreading their hazardous droppings all around the house. Brian attempted to manage the numbers by boxing them up and releasing them many miles away. But as you can guess they came back. Eventually the cot was given away, although the birds continued to nest in the garage and poo on the car.
Cooking was something of a chore for Denise. She hated complicated recipes, so we always ate simple food, often with vegetables or salad from the garden. We had a very healthy diet but did not always appreciate the number of times runner beans, courgettes, tomatoes, stewed apple, or lettuce with caterpillars were on the menu. In the summer we often ate late, as she could not tear herself away from the garden until the light was fading. Baked potatoes were a regular, but luckily delicious from the Aga.
Perhaps it was a combination of her activities and inherited genes that gave her body such amazing resilience in the last few years of her life. At times she seemed truly indestructible. It was not unusual, in her eighties, to find her climbing a ladder and reaching a little too far for an apple or a plum.
I feel it's fitting to end with this memory. Denise once told Claire that if it was possible, she would like to be reincarnated as a skylark. So, we should all keep our eyes and ears open, and perhaps we will see her flying high up above us
Finally I would like to thank all those wonderful carers who made the last ten years of her life comfortable. Every one of you did an amazing job looking after her so well and enabling her to stay in the home she loved so much. But a special thank you to Sophie who we have all come to rely on. The four of us really appreciate just how much you have done for Brian and Denise over the last few years. Thank you so much.