Read Online Forged with Flames by Ann Fogarty, Anne Crawford - Free Book Online Page B

with foliage so neat it looked as if it had been trimmed with nail clippers. As I walked in I had to stop myself from staring at the glittering chandelier suspended above a winding staircase. You could stand at the top of these stairs and look down at the elegant entrance, feeling like a film star. Gilt-framed mirrors, lush oil paintings and the occasional portrait of a humourless-lookingancestor hung ponderously throughout the house. Porcelain vases filled with fresh flowers sat on elegant, carved side tables, their arrangements replaced before the first petal curled brown. Entering the children’s rooms was like stepping into miniature fairylands filled with cleverly built child-sized furniture and toys everywhere you looked: darling pink furry toys for their daughter and a collection of beautiful hand-carved rattles, tin soldiers, cars and trucks for the son, and a bookshelf full of hardback picture books.
    Mrs Hyman showed me to my tasteful, rather small bedroom which looked out through a diamond-paned window over floral garden beds to the road. I had my own television set in one corner and, she indicated, a green padded chair for any visitors I might have. Entertaining friends in the family domain was clearly not an option.
    The children’s father, a businessman, was welcoming, too, that evening, but more aloof. The couple, who looked to be in their thirties, exuded elegance. I never saw them looking anything other than smart. I wasn’t sure about their four-year-old son, John, at first—he seemed rather like a mummy’s boy. As it turned out, he was, but it was not a problem. I fell in love immediately though with Emma, a chubby-cheeked, easy-going infant.
    My days at Totteridge were structured, with a clear routine established for the children from the start. My duties were to look after Emma and John, do the laundry, iron their clothes—Mrs Hyman was most impressed with my ironing skills—and prepare the children’s meals if she wasn’t home. She used to get out a bit with her friends though I was never sure where she went—we didn’t discuss our private lives; there was nooverlapping ground to our existences other than the children. She thought it was important that they be taken for a long walk each day, usually in the afternoons. John’s favourite destination was a shallow pond that iced over in winter where we would slide about, laughing. John could be a rather serious little boy so I loved playing games with him that made him squeal with laughter. Mrs Hyman liked me to take him to one of the cafés nearby occasionally, both as a treat and to teach him to behave politely in public.
    Whenever I had some spare time—which wasn’t often—I met Julia to go shopping. This was 1968, the height of ‘swinging London’ and the shops were like nothing we’d ever seen before. We loved going down Carnaby Street, poking around the boutiques and looking at the way-out gear being paraded on the footpaths, even if we never bought anything. Carnaby Street in the late sixties was a kaleidoscope of fashion and people, all colour and movement, and always congested. It was like being in another country. There were posters plastered everywhere advertising bands, and blasts of loud music coming out of every shop. This was the time when the Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Kinks and The Who were on the rise, and when pirate radio stations started to hit the airwaves. I loved listening to Radio Luxembourg and the pop music on Radio Caroline—operated from a ship offshore—on the radio my parents had given me the Christmas before I left home.
    I always felt like an interloper from the provinces when I trawled Carnaby Street, though, passing all these young people in mod and hippie gear. There were women wearing dresses with loud patterns and bubble hats, men wearing frilly, satin shirts, and numerous long waistcoat-type garments with fur trim forboth sexes. The