Read Online Till We Meet Again by Lesley Pearse - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lesley Pearse
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as often as possible for long walks on her own.
Last year had been truly awful though. Because she hadn’t been in Bristol very long, she quite relished time alone in her new flat. There was an office party in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and as it was such a short walk to her flat, she drank far more than she would normally have done. As she went rather unsteadily up the stairs to her flat, she fell and broke her arm.
It was bad enough having to wait over six hours at the Royal Infirmary down the road to get it x-rayed and put into plaster, but then she spent the next four days in pain, totally alone and unable to do the simplest thing for herself. She didn’t know anyone in Bristol well enough to call them for help or just some comfort. That was when she discovered what it meant to feel suicidal.
As Beth drove out through Bristol, she thought how often her clients had remarked with some pique, ‘It’s all right for you, born with the silver spoon in your mouth.’ It was laughable really that people jumped to such conclusions, just because she was a solicitor, and well spoken. She knew it would never occur to a battered wife from a council estate that domestic violence could also lurk behind solid oak doors and tree-lined drives. Nor would a burglar imagine that there could be poverty in a seemingly grand house.
But Beth knew better, for she had experienced both these things at first hand. Her father was a bully, a fearful snob and a charlatan. He always implied that he came from an illustrious background, but the reality was that his great-grandfather, Ronald Powell, was just an illiterate working-class man who had made good by buying cheap land and building little terraced houses in London’s Kentish Town, then selling them on at a vast profit. He repeated this again and again, shrewdly buying land no one else wanted, then building little houses that were just what people did want.
Ronald was already quite wealthy when he married in 1870, but his wife Leah came from a more aristocratic family. Perhaps it was her influence that made Ronald build Copper Beeches, the house in Sussex where Beth grew up. It had the classic style and elegance of Georgian country houses, and Leah and Ronald planted the avenue of beech trees which now lined the drive.
They had three boys, two of whom were killed in France in the First World War, but Ernest, Beth’s grandfather, survived, and came home to take over the thriving family business and to share Copper Beeches with his now ageing parents and his wife Honor. Beth’s father, Montague, was born in 1920.
Beth had been brought up with tales of the big parties they had at Copper Beeches when her father was a boy, of the stables full of horses, the servants and the fine gardens. The stables were still there, though empty, and what had once been extensive lawns were now pasture, sold on to a neighbouring farmer. But there had been no money since long before Beth was born in 1951. The house was in dire need of repairs, it was always cold and damp, and there wasn’t even any help for her mother with the cleaning.
Beth had never been able to find out why her father hadn’t managed to continue making money after his father died. She knew that the post-war years, right up to the Sixties, were boom times in property development. She could only suppose it was incompetence or laziness, because her sister Serena, who was ten years older than her, said she couldn’t ever remember their father working. He was always at home, sitting reading the paper, pottering around in the garden, checking their mother’s household accounts and berating her for extravagance.
Beth had asked her mother, Alice, to try to explain the mystery of it to her, some fifteen years ago, but all she’d got was the same pathetic excuse she’d heard so many times before: ‘Monty was brought up to be a gentleman, he was never taught how to run a business. It isn’t his fault.’
‘Gentleman!’ Beth muttered
Last year had been truly awful though. Because she hadn’t been in Bristol very long, she quite relished time alone in her new flat. There was an office party in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and as it was such a short walk to her flat, she drank far more than she would normally have done. As she went rather unsteadily up the stairs to her flat, she fell and broke her arm.
It was bad enough having to wait over six hours at the Royal Infirmary down the road to get it x-rayed and put into plaster, but then she spent the next four days in pain, totally alone and unable to do the simplest thing for herself. She didn’t know anyone in Bristol well enough to call them for help or just some comfort. That was when she discovered what it meant to feel suicidal.
As Beth drove out through Bristol, she thought how often her clients had remarked with some pique, ‘It’s all right for you, born with the silver spoon in your mouth.’ It was laughable really that people jumped to such conclusions, just because she was a solicitor, and well spoken. She knew it would never occur to a battered wife from a council estate that domestic violence could also lurk behind solid oak doors and tree-lined drives. Nor would a burglar imagine that there could be poverty in a seemingly grand house.
But Beth knew better, for she had experienced both these things at first hand. Her father was a bully, a fearful snob and a charlatan. He always implied that he came from an illustrious background, but the reality was that his great-grandfather, Ronald Powell, was just an illiterate working-class man who had made good by buying cheap land and building little terraced houses in London’s Kentish Town, then selling them on at a vast profit. He repeated this again and again, shrewdly buying land no one else wanted, then building little houses that were just what people did want.
Ronald was already quite wealthy when he married in 1870, but his wife Leah came from a more aristocratic family. Perhaps it was her influence that made Ronald build Copper Beeches, the house in Sussex where Beth grew up. It had the classic style and elegance of Georgian country houses, and Leah and Ronald planted the avenue of beech trees which now lined the drive.
They had three boys, two of whom were killed in France in the First World War, but Ernest, Beth’s grandfather, survived, and came home to take over the thriving family business and to share Copper Beeches with his now ageing parents and his wife Honor. Beth’s father, Montague, was born in 1920.
Beth had been brought up with tales of the big parties they had at Copper Beeches when her father was a boy, of the stables full of horses, the servants and the fine gardens. The stables were still there, though empty, and what had once been extensive lawns were now pasture, sold on to a neighbouring farmer. But there had been no money since long before Beth was born in 1951. The house was in dire need of repairs, it was always cold and damp, and there wasn’t even any help for her mother with the cleaning.
Beth had never been able to find out why her father hadn’t managed to continue making money after his father died. She knew that the post-war years, right up to the Sixties, were boom times in property development. She could only suppose it was incompetence or laziness, because her sister Serena, who was ten years older than her, said she couldn’t ever remember their father working. He was always at home, sitting reading the paper, pottering around in the garden, checking their mother’s household accounts and berating her for extravagance.
Beth had asked her mother, Alice, to try to explain the mystery of it to her, some fifteen years ago, but all she’d got was the same pathetic excuse she’d heard so many times before: ‘Monty was brought up to be a gentleman, he was never taught how to run a business. It isn’t his fault.’
‘Gentleman!’ Beth muttered
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