thoughts too thick to penetrate. Eventually Georgie was forced to ask, ‘So you don’t know where he lives now?’
Mummy cleared her throat delicately. She answered her daughter with cold dignity. ‘No, and we have no desire to.’
This was so unsatisfactory. ‘Why are you still so angry with him?’
‘Because Stephen is still hurting me. You can’t lose a child and forget. Even a child such as that.’
‘You made a good attempt at it.’
‘There is no need to be offensive, Georgina. You know nothing about it at all. You are still a child, too young to understand, I see. And already I am regretting the fact that I told you.’
The conversation was just too awkward. Neither of them could cope with it.
Tall, dark conifers, their heads oddly detached in rows behind the high garden wall. Symmetrical. A square lawn. Chimneys, also detached, and everything in shades of brown. Even the house was a brown one, and the chips in the driveway were fawn.
A house in uniform.
Through the brown study door and into a totally brown hall, banisters leading up, wooden floors with matching rugs, a tall brown settle next to the telephone, and a brown umbrella and hat stand full of walking sticks and brown macs.
When the sun shone through the landing window that overlooked the hall, it glowed russet.
Immediately she entered Georgie wished she had gone to Daisy’s, but the fact was she hadn’t been asked. Not again. Not a fourth time. But what would she do all alone for three days, here, in a house which was full of things, and hung with pictures of her father’s father? And how could she possibly invite her friends?
Mummy was wicked to suggest it, knowing how impossible it was.
She knew every stair that creaked in that house, she knew every giving floor board. Born in it, she was one with it, it and its smell of pipe smoke and polish, and she hated it. She would have half an hour to go upstairs and familiarize herself once again and then it would be four o’clock and the gong would go for tea, splitting the silent house with its summons. She would have to come down for tea, that brown interlude of tea and paste sandwiches and moist fruit cake. Fascinated, she wondered which of the five bedrooms had been Stephen’s. Perhaps this one? Perhaps this very bed she lay on with her arms behind her head, perhaps this had once been his and all his things filled the cupboards?
Georgie could well understand why Stephen had fled. She had always sworn she would leave herself the moment she was old enough. She imagined a wild boy playing in the garden, messing it up, pulling up the flowers and scattering the petals about, cutting the square lawn into circles, smashing the panes of greenhouse glass.
Bravely. Gloriously and mightily. Not in the cowardly way she had broken the flower pots and hidden them afterwards.
An artist in rebellion against the sordid values of everyday life. Free from the tyranny of property and praise.
If Stephen lived here for sixteen years then he must have gone to school. It was awkward for Georgie to raise the subject again, difficult and embarrassing. She could see that, as with the facts of life, once her mother had raised the matter, it was dropped and done with for ever. But over tea, alone with Mummy after Gwyneth the maid had gone, she tried to press her once again.
Sylvia eyed her crossly. Her daughter was breaking the rules. She poured tea from the silver pot and her handkerchief trailed from her sleeve like disappointment. She answered Georgie’s question abruptly, and the bitterness, it was almost hate, crept back into her tone. ‘Stephen went to Grantly House until he was thirteen, and then he was sent to your father’s school, Stoyle. At both schools he disgraced us. I’ll say no more than that. They only kept him on because of the family traditions, but in the end he was too much for them and he was expelled. Of course, that nearly killed your father.’ And she patted a pin-curl into
Mummy cleared her throat delicately. She answered her daughter with cold dignity. ‘No, and we have no desire to.’
This was so unsatisfactory. ‘Why are you still so angry with him?’
‘Because Stephen is still hurting me. You can’t lose a child and forget. Even a child such as that.’
‘You made a good attempt at it.’
‘There is no need to be offensive, Georgina. You know nothing about it at all. You are still a child, too young to understand, I see. And already I am regretting the fact that I told you.’
The conversation was just too awkward. Neither of them could cope with it.
Tall, dark conifers, their heads oddly detached in rows behind the high garden wall. Symmetrical. A square lawn. Chimneys, also detached, and everything in shades of brown. Even the house was a brown one, and the chips in the driveway were fawn.
A house in uniform.
Through the brown study door and into a totally brown hall, banisters leading up, wooden floors with matching rugs, a tall brown settle next to the telephone, and a brown umbrella and hat stand full of walking sticks and brown macs.
When the sun shone through the landing window that overlooked the hall, it glowed russet.
Immediately she entered Georgie wished she had gone to Daisy’s, but the fact was she hadn’t been asked. Not again. Not a fourth time. But what would she do all alone for three days, here, in a house which was full of things, and hung with pictures of her father’s father? And how could she possibly invite her friends?
Mummy was wicked to suggest it, knowing how impossible it was.
She knew every stair that creaked in that house, she knew every giving floor board. Born in it, she was one with it, it and its smell of pipe smoke and polish, and she hated it. She would have half an hour to go upstairs and familiarize herself once again and then it would be four o’clock and the gong would go for tea, splitting the silent house with its summons. She would have to come down for tea, that brown interlude of tea and paste sandwiches and moist fruit cake. Fascinated, she wondered which of the five bedrooms had been Stephen’s. Perhaps this one? Perhaps this very bed she lay on with her arms behind her head, perhaps this had once been his and all his things filled the cupboards?
Georgie could well understand why Stephen had fled. She had always sworn she would leave herself the moment she was old enough. She imagined a wild boy playing in the garden, messing it up, pulling up the flowers and scattering the petals about, cutting the square lawn into circles, smashing the panes of greenhouse glass.
Bravely. Gloriously and mightily. Not in the cowardly way she had broken the flower pots and hidden them afterwards.
An artist in rebellion against the sordid values of everyday life. Free from the tyranny of property and praise.
If Stephen lived here for sixteen years then he must have gone to school. It was awkward for Georgie to raise the subject again, difficult and embarrassing. She could see that, as with the facts of life, once her mother had raised the matter, it was dropped and done with for ever. But over tea, alone with Mummy after Gwyneth the maid had gone, she tried to press her once again.
Sylvia eyed her crossly. Her daughter was breaking the rules. She poured tea from the silver pot and her handkerchief trailed from her sleeve like disappointment. She answered Georgie’s question abruptly, and the bitterness, it was almost hate, crept back into her tone. ‘Stephen went to Grantly House until he was thirteen, and then he was sent to your father’s school, Stoyle. At both schools he disgraced us. I’ll say no more than that. They only kept him on because of the family traditions, but in the end he was too much for them and he was expelled. Of course, that nearly killed your father.’ And she patted a pin-curl into
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