Read Online Basil Street Blues by Michael Holroyd - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michael Holroyd
Ads: Link
have no photographs of my father at Scaitcliffe, only one of a school group taken in the grounds shortly before he arrived, with my Uncle Kenneth standing eyes half-closed in the back row, and the formidably handsome Ronald Vickers seated at the centre, the solitary adult, with a cricket ball in his hand: an intimidating figure.
*
Between the ages of seven and eleven my father didn’t notice the Great War much. The same seemed to hold true for Fraser. His brother Pat, having been transferred to a regular battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers in 1915, made his Will and went off to fight in France. By 1917 he was back with the reserve battalion and retired after the war while in his forties. It was said in the family that he suffered, this amiable man, from shell-shock and that this was aggravated by domestic warfare. Certainly his career was modest by the standards of the two major-generals, his father and father-in-law, and he seems to have been a disappointment to his wife Coral who, according to my father, taught both their children (in particular their son Ivor) to despise him.
Coral already despised Fraser who took no part in the Great War allegedly on account of his varicose veins. So how, apart from fathering his three children and being ‘of independent means’, did my grandfather occupy himself in the first twenty-five years of his marriage before the big disaster?
At the beginning he seems to have had a notion of taking up the law. On 22 November 1899, some seven months after his marriage, he entered Gray’s Inn (where George Sowley Holroyd had been admitted the previous century), enrolling at the private college run by the Bar Council. The Register of King’s College, Cambridge, has a note of his studentship, and the Uppingham School Roll notes that he went on to qualify as a barrister. Actually he took no law examinations but shortly after the death of his first son he left the college to look after Adeline.
Over the next fifteen years he seems to have done very little but look after Adeline. She needed looking after – indeed she insisted on it. All the children could see what was going on. Their mother got more attention at home than any of them did. She was their rival. Whenever she didn’t get her own way, she would have violent hysterics – like firework displays they were – and Fraser, who was a naïve and kindly man, was pricked with self-reproach. For he had really married the Corbet family, and the barometer of his happiness shot up whenever he was among them en masse . Bang wasn’t allowed any of her tantrums when her sisters were around – they teased her too much. ‘What’s the difference between a man and an umbrella?’ her sister Lizzie called out at one of Bang’s bridge parties. All the card players stopped and looked up. ‘Really, Lizzie, whatever are you talking about?’ Bang answered. ‘I’m sure I don’t know.’
‘Well, you damn well ought to – you’ve been under both of them.’
The implication was that sex was as enjoyable for Bang as a rainy afternoon. She lusted instead after a refined life. When none of her sisters were at Brocket, Adeline would put on operatic performances, crying out that she was not long for this world, that people would miss her when she was gone. She would send up many quivering Hail Marys and pray for the good Lord to take her – she was still playing these scenes fifty years later when I was among the audience. Alarmed by her mysterious illnesses, Fraser sent her to many specialists. They gave her their most expensive attention, but the mystery of her illness remained unsolved.
In 1900, after leaving Gray’s Inn, Fraser had been made a director of the Rajmai Tea Company and would regularly see his brother Pat at the board meetings. These meetings were pleasant social affairs, spiced with tales from the East. Pat and Fraser enjoyed spending this time together without their wives.
But everything began to change in 1914. Adeline
*
Between the ages of seven and eleven my father didn’t notice the Great War much. The same seemed to hold true for Fraser. His brother Pat, having been transferred to a regular battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers in 1915, made his Will and went off to fight in France. By 1917 he was back with the reserve battalion and retired after the war while in his forties. It was said in the family that he suffered, this amiable man, from shell-shock and that this was aggravated by domestic warfare. Certainly his career was modest by the standards of the two major-generals, his father and father-in-law, and he seems to have been a disappointment to his wife Coral who, according to my father, taught both their children (in particular their son Ivor) to despise him.
Coral already despised Fraser who took no part in the Great War allegedly on account of his varicose veins. So how, apart from fathering his three children and being ‘of independent means’, did my grandfather occupy himself in the first twenty-five years of his marriage before the big disaster?
At the beginning he seems to have had a notion of taking up the law. On 22 November 1899, some seven months after his marriage, he entered Gray’s Inn (where George Sowley Holroyd had been admitted the previous century), enrolling at the private college run by the Bar Council. The Register of King’s College, Cambridge, has a note of his studentship, and the Uppingham School Roll notes that he went on to qualify as a barrister. Actually he took no law examinations but shortly after the death of his first son he left the college to look after Adeline.
Over the next fifteen years he seems to have done very little but look after Adeline. She needed looking after – indeed she insisted on it. All the children could see what was going on. Their mother got more attention at home than any of them did. She was their rival. Whenever she didn’t get her own way, she would have violent hysterics – like firework displays they were – and Fraser, who was a naïve and kindly man, was pricked with self-reproach. For he had really married the Corbet family, and the barometer of his happiness shot up whenever he was among them en masse . Bang wasn’t allowed any of her tantrums when her sisters were around – they teased her too much. ‘What’s the difference between a man and an umbrella?’ her sister Lizzie called out at one of Bang’s bridge parties. All the card players stopped and looked up. ‘Really, Lizzie, whatever are you talking about?’ Bang answered. ‘I’m sure I don’t know.’
‘Well, you damn well ought to – you’ve been under both of them.’
The implication was that sex was as enjoyable for Bang as a rainy afternoon. She lusted instead after a refined life. When none of her sisters were at Brocket, Adeline would put on operatic performances, crying out that she was not long for this world, that people would miss her when she was gone. She would send up many quivering Hail Marys and pray for the good Lord to take her – she was still playing these scenes fifty years later when I was among the audience. Alarmed by her mysterious illnesses, Fraser sent her to many specialists. They gave her their most expensive attention, but the mystery of her illness remained unsolved.
In 1900, after leaving Gray’s Inn, Fraser had been made a director of the Rajmai Tea Company and would regularly see his brother Pat at the board meetings. These meetings were pleasant social affairs, spiced with tales from the East. Pat and Fraser enjoyed spending this time together without their wives.
But everything began to change in 1914. Adeline
Similar Books
