Read Online The Dressmaker's Daughter by Kate Llewellyn - Free Book Online
Authors: Kate Llewellyn
Ads: Link
don’t faint sitting down. They have fits sitting down. To faint, you must be standing. I have my doubts about this.
Once, when I was married, I was out to dinner in a new house and fainted into the iced soup. Waking up on the hosts’ double bed covered with a hand-crocheted white spread, I saw that the burgundy wool of my dress had soaked and stained the cover. While I was unconscious, I had been incontinent.
Martin Begley, a friend of ours and a physician at the hospital where I had trained as a nurse, was bending over me. ‘How are you?’ he said.
‘I’m fine. I just fainted. It’s nothing. I’ve been dieting, that’s all it is.’
‘No, you didn’t faint; you had a grand mal fit.’
‘Nonsense! It’s just a strict diet, that’s all. My blood sugar must be low.’
‘Look, Jill, you can’t diet so much that you lower your blood sugar to the extent that you have a fit.’
‘Well, I did!’
‘No, you didn’t! Later in the week, you are going to have to go into hospital and have some tests. You can’t faint sitting down.’
‘Oh all right.’ So with that, I stood up, and, to my surprise, wasn’t driven home but was, I saw, expected to sit up at the table and continue the conversation as if nothing had happened. And this I did.
Later, when the tests were done, it was proved that I did not have diabetes, or a brain tumour, which musthave been at the back of Martin’s mind, but had simply dieted so much I had induced the fit.
Granny Shemmeld’s house was the last house at the northern end of the main street of Angaston in the Barossa Valley. Called ‘Ivy Holme’, it still stands on the corner of Murray Street and Truro Road. After returning to Angaston from Pyap, she had saved up and bought it in one of those miracles of frugality and good fortune that occur sometimes. With a deposit of two pounds, this old house, which had been a manse, was secured from the auctioneer John Dallwitz, who, to his lasting credit, refused a later offer for cash and let Granny pay off the house. It had a stile on the side entrance and as a child I was fascinated by this gate. An old white cockatoo sat in a cage on the back veranda, shouting as people passed.
Once, one of my brothers caught one of the ducklings in the backyard and ran with it, its neck hanging from his hands, shouting, ‘Look what I’ve got, Granny!’ Three months old and not quite ready to eat, it was dead by the time he reached the back step.
Granny Shemmeld’s house was immaculately clean, with polished brass light-switches and shining linoleum. The feather beds were high, white and fluffy. I remember climbing into one in the room that had been mymother’s, wearing a white nightdress and having to make an effort to climb so high. There was a spare elegance to the house with a smell of floor polish and the yeast from the German cake she made when we came to visit. She also had the scent of yeast on her skin, which came, perhaps, from brandy and the cake. That smell never left her skin, even when she was ninety and lying in bed on our property at Gawler, with my mother crying in the kitchen, not able to care for her properly. ‘It is a terrible thing to be old when your children don’t care,’ Granny said to her one day. My mother, distraught, ran and got a handful of new chickens. She put them into her mother’s hands and said, ‘Mum! It’s me – Tommy. Don’t you remember me? See, here are my chickens!’
My mother’s sister Nora came and took Granny to Angaston Hospital, where she died. She was buried in the local cemetery.
CHAPTER TWELVE
On Being German
O ne day my mother’s schoolmaster called her ‘a flatfooted, little German’. Her brother Otto was fighting for Australia in Flanders at the time, and Granny Shemmeld, hearing of what the schoolmaster had said, said she would pull his ear off.
Because our mother’s mother was German, we were reared on a mixture of German and local Australian – mainly British – food.
Once, when I was married, I was out to dinner in a new house and fainted into the iced soup. Waking up on the hosts’ double bed covered with a hand-crocheted white spread, I saw that the burgundy wool of my dress had soaked and stained the cover. While I was unconscious, I had been incontinent.
Martin Begley, a friend of ours and a physician at the hospital where I had trained as a nurse, was bending over me. ‘How are you?’ he said.
‘I’m fine. I just fainted. It’s nothing. I’ve been dieting, that’s all it is.’
‘No, you didn’t faint; you had a grand mal fit.’
‘Nonsense! It’s just a strict diet, that’s all. My blood sugar must be low.’
‘Look, Jill, you can’t diet so much that you lower your blood sugar to the extent that you have a fit.’
‘Well, I did!’
‘No, you didn’t! Later in the week, you are going to have to go into hospital and have some tests. You can’t faint sitting down.’
‘Oh all right.’ So with that, I stood up, and, to my surprise, wasn’t driven home but was, I saw, expected to sit up at the table and continue the conversation as if nothing had happened. And this I did.
Later, when the tests were done, it was proved that I did not have diabetes, or a brain tumour, which musthave been at the back of Martin’s mind, but had simply dieted so much I had induced the fit.
Granny Shemmeld’s house was the last house at the northern end of the main street of Angaston in the Barossa Valley. Called ‘Ivy Holme’, it still stands on the corner of Murray Street and Truro Road. After returning to Angaston from Pyap, she had saved up and bought it in one of those miracles of frugality and good fortune that occur sometimes. With a deposit of two pounds, this old house, which had been a manse, was secured from the auctioneer John Dallwitz, who, to his lasting credit, refused a later offer for cash and let Granny pay off the house. It had a stile on the side entrance and as a child I was fascinated by this gate. An old white cockatoo sat in a cage on the back veranda, shouting as people passed.
Once, one of my brothers caught one of the ducklings in the backyard and ran with it, its neck hanging from his hands, shouting, ‘Look what I’ve got, Granny!’ Three months old and not quite ready to eat, it was dead by the time he reached the back step.
Granny Shemmeld’s house was immaculately clean, with polished brass light-switches and shining linoleum. The feather beds were high, white and fluffy. I remember climbing into one in the room that had been mymother’s, wearing a white nightdress and having to make an effort to climb so high. There was a spare elegance to the house with a smell of floor polish and the yeast from the German cake she made when we came to visit. She also had the scent of yeast on her skin, which came, perhaps, from brandy and the cake. That smell never left her skin, even when she was ninety and lying in bed on our property at Gawler, with my mother crying in the kitchen, not able to care for her properly. ‘It is a terrible thing to be old when your children don’t care,’ Granny said to her one day. My mother, distraught, ran and got a handful of new chickens. She put them into her mother’s hands and said, ‘Mum! It’s me – Tommy. Don’t you remember me? See, here are my chickens!’
My mother’s sister Nora came and took Granny to Angaston Hospital, where she died. She was buried in the local cemetery.
CHAPTER TWELVE
On Being German
O ne day my mother’s schoolmaster called her ‘a flatfooted, little German’. Her brother Otto was fighting for Australia in Flanders at the time, and Granny Shemmeld, hearing of what the schoolmaster had said, said she would pull his ear off.
Because our mother’s mother was German, we were reared on a mixture of German and local Australian – mainly British – food.
Similar Books
