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Authors: Gillian White
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Family tradition! Family name! Georgie was tempted to laugh. A military family until it came to Daddy with his poor eyesight and his hip. In spite of family tradition the Army refused him. And yet photographs of men lined up glowered from the walls of Harry Southwell’s study, jutting chins, ruddy faces, ranked in military or sporting rows, which did not matter. Guns replaced cricket bats, khaki berets replaced caps with a smooth indiscrimination. Yet Daddy had not inherited those fat shiny knees, those tuberous thighs or those clothes-hanger shoulders. Oh, he had the rigid stance, the love of discipline, the yearning for rules. Daddy was a walking moustache, twitching and twirling at the edges. Routine. Order. Duty. But courage and medals and mentions in dispatches don’t make for money. Not a generation later they don’t, and the worn leather chairs and the threadbare carpets said as much. It was years before Georgie realized that her childhood was spent in genteel penury.
Daddy, working permanently at home, dealt in stocks and shares not terribly successfully. Sylvia, with her respect for worldly position and wealth, called his projects hare-brained schemes, told her friends he was empty of enterprise. But the lady of a house never lifted a duster, never plugged in an iron, these were the jobs of the live-in maids, and they came and went back to their homes in Wales in regular succession, probably because of the surfeit of work. Sometimes they could light fires in the autumn, sometimes they could not, depending on the market. Cauliflower cheese, bubble and squeak, rice puddings, meat rissoles, brisket and fish pie were regulars at the table, all well browned on top. School uniforms came second hand and Georgie suspected her fees were paid by some kind of military trust. Trimming the sails and making ends meet were constant irritations, but Sylvia kept accounts at all the best local stores while bitterly resenting her restrained circumstances. Such mortification. She had a real horror of poverty, of eventually having to sell the house and lose face in the neighbourhood. Oh yes, at all costs, the image must be preserved.
So on that first night at Furze Pen Cottage, pouring her baked beans over her toast, Georgina Jefferson shivered. She had escaped from all that eventually, but not quite soon enough. She wished she’d had Stephen’s determination.
She decided to drag the mattress downstairs and sleep beside the fire tonight, next to Lola. She needed warmth. She needed light. But the most disconcerting thing was the silence.
Georgina desperately needed sound.
SIX
P LEASE BE PATIENT. WE must proceed slowly and with caution because of Georgie’s frail state of mind.
So, she was housebound. It was no longer a matter of strolling up the street to collect the dreaded papers, far from it. She looked upon a snowy world spangled with winter sunshine and saw the pint of milk on her step, as promised. And that slim white bottle was the one firm thing which gave her a sense of contact with this new and extraordinary world.
Melting snow dripped off the thatchy overhangs. The tall tufts of grass in the garden turned asparagus green at the tips. Birds flashed from branch to branch between statuesque apple trees, and she prayed that the thaw would continue so she could get out tomorrow.
Her radio was a life-saver. Plugging it in and turning it on made Sunday familiar again. She fixed some breakfast on the mean, cream cooker in the starkest kitchen imaginable and opened the stable door to let Lola out. Slowly. Slowly. To fill out the time. To adjust to this new pace of life.
Apart from electricity the cottage’s one concession to the twentieth century was the tiny shower in the whitewashed bathroom, an outhouse stuck to the side of the kitchen. You squeezed yourself small to get inside, but merely to see it in this freezing weather raised goose pimples everywhere. The frosted window, an odd gesture to modesty here,
Family tradition! Family name! Georgie was tempted to laugh. A military family until it came to Daddy with his poor eyesight and his hip. In spite of family tradition the Army refused him. And yet photographs of men lined up glowered from the walls of Harry Southwell’s study, jutting chins, ruddy faces, ranked in military or sporting rows, which did not matter. Guns replaced cricket bats, khaki berets replaced caps with a smooth indiscrimination. Yet Daddy had not inherited those fat shiny knees, those tuberous thighs or those clothes-hanger shoulders. Oh, he had the rigid stance, the love of discipline, the yearning for rules. Daddy was a walking moustache, twitching and twirling at the edges. Routine. Order. Duty. But courage and medals and mentions in dispatches don’t make for money. Not a generation later they don’t, and the worn leather chairs and the threadbare carpets said as much. It was years before Georgie realized that her childhood was spent in genteel penury.
Daddy, working permanently at home, dealt in stocks and shares not terribly successfully. Sylvia, with her respect for worldly position and wealth, called his projects hare-brained schemes, told her friends he was empty of enterprise. But the lady of a house never lifted a duster, never plugged in an iron, these were the jobs of the live-in maids, and they came and went back to their homes in Wales in regular succession, probably because of the surfeit of work. Sometimes they could light fires in the autumn, sometimes they could not, depending on the market. Cauliflower cheese, bubble and squeak, rice puddings, meat rissoles, brisket and fish pie were regulars at the table, all well browned on top. School uniforms came second hand and Georgie suspected her fees were paid by some kind of military trust. Trimming the sails and making ends meet were constant irritations, but Sylvia kept accounts at all the best local stores while bitterly resenting her restrained circumstances. Such mortification. She had a real horror of poverty, of eventually having to sell the house and lose face in the neighbourhood. Oh yes, at all costs, the image must be preserved.
So on that first night at Furze Pen Cottage, pouring her baked beans over her toast, Georgina Jefferson shivered. She had escaped from all that eventually, but not quite soon enough. She wished she’d had Stephen’s determination.
She decided to drag the mattress downstairs and sleep beside the fire tonight, next to Lola. She needed warmth. She needed light. But the most disconcerting thing was the silence.
Georgina desperately needed sound.
SIX
P LEASE BE PATIENT. WE must proceed slowly and with caution because of Georgie’s frail state of mind.
So, she was housebound. It was no longer a matter of strolling up the street to collect the dreaded papers, far from it. She looked upon a snowy world spangled with winter sunshine and saw the pint of milk on her step, as promised. And that slim white bottle was the one firm thing which gave her a sense of contact with this new and extraordinary world.
Melting snow dripped off the thatchy overhangs. The tall tufts of grass in the garden turned asparagus green at the tips. Birds flashed from branch to branch between statuesque apple trees, and she prayed that the thaw would continue so she could get out tomorrow.
Her radio was a life-saver. Plugging it in and turning it on made Sunday familiar again. She fixed some breakfast on the mean, cream cooker in the starkest kitchen imaginable and opened the stable door to let Lola out. Slowly. Slowly. To fill out the time. To adjust to this new pace of life.
Apart from electricity the cottage’s one concession to the twentieth century was the tiny shower in the whitewashed bathroom, an outhouse stuck to the side of the kitchen. You squeezed yourself small to get inside, but merely to see it in this freezing weather raised goose pimples everywhere. The frosted window, an odd gesture to modesty here,
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