Great Meadow
Page 17
I said it was very kind of him, and I’d get our mother and if there was an answer I’d come back. He’d said he’d be at the Daukeses’ for ten minutes because Ron was very slow in his movements. In the kitchen Lally was drying her hands on a towel, our mother had stacked the washing-up bowls in the sink, and she took the message in its envelope and said, ‘Whatever can this be? It must be from The Times. It’s Daddy.’ She started to read the note, shook her head, put her hand to her face, and said, ‘Oh! Dear Lord!’
‘Is there an answer for Mr Deakin?’ I said. She said no, no answer, so I ran to the Daukeses’ and shouted through their gate (the front door was open), and Mrs Daukes came out with a basket of greenstuff for her rabbits. When I said, ‘No reply, thank you very much,’ she just called over her shoulder, ‘No answer, Ted,’ and I ran away and she went off down the garden. Didn’t even look at me. She really was a bit rude, but I didn’t care.
Our mother was sitting quite still at the table, and Lally and my sister were standing by her looking anxious. She seemed a bit funny, and when I said, ‘Is it about our father?’ she just said yes. And then she read the note aloud.
‘Arriving tomorrow about 10 a.m. Amy in Brighton with pneumonia. Stable but ill. News when I see you.’ Then she laid the pieces of paper on the table.
‘Do you know what it means?’ I said, and Lally nearly raised her hand to give me a bit of a cuff for rudeness, but I was too far away, and our mother said that she thought she knew. But that Mrs Fry had got the name wrong. She had spelled it ‘A-M-Y’ like a girl, but it should have been ‘A-I-M-E’, which was a man’s name. And my sister said but we don’t know anyone with that name, and our mother said that we didn’t at present, but we would pretty soon, because that was our grandfather’s name.
‘But we haven’t got a grandfather in England!’ I said.
Our mother said, with a tired sort of voice, ‘Well, I rather think that you have now. Brighton! I ask you. After all these years. Ill with pneumonia and everyone thought he was long dead somewhere in Brazil. Poor Ulric! My poor darling . . .’
She got up slowly, with the pieces of paper scrunched up in her hand, and went out into the vegetable garden, and Lally said to let her be, it had been a bit of a shock for her, as it had for us all. Who’d have thought it? Let’s just go on as before, and have you dug that hole, I would like to know? And there was a bit of wick-trimming to do before dark. She was being pretty bossy again, but it was quite good to have something to do this time.
A bit later, after we had washed the chimneys and trimmed the oily wicks with nail scissors, I was able to go out just as it was starting to get dusk and the swallows were swooping about after the midges and gnats. Then our mother came back to the cottage and she said that she’d probably have to go to Brighton tomorrow, and she didn’t know how long for but we were to be helpful and not tear about because Lally had the baby to look after. And Lally said she’d deal with its feeds, and she was sure we’d behave. Usually, she said, it was as dangerous as boiling milk with us two. Turn your back for a second and it was trouble. And my sister said it was very exciting to have a real kith and kin grandfather that we never expected, and our mother just nodded, smiling in a very sad sort of way, and went upstairs to the baby.
In the garden the shadows were growing long, and the light was orangy-gold, but far away, right above High-And-Over, there was a long line of dark cloud, quite flat like a cover, drifting in from the sea, and the evening star was burning just on the edge, and then a little breeze came riffling through the sweet-pea canes and jostled the big leaves of the rhubarb clump, and the swallows spun and dived, making screaming and mewing sounds, and I went down to the Daukeses’ hedge to the same place where I had seen Minnehaha all that time ago, and the old flowerpot was still there, cracked, in the long grass. So I sat there. To have a bit of a think.
Up at the cottage I heard a door shut. My sister laughed suddenly, and called ‘Coming!’, and then Lally went past a window singing her new song, ‘. . . a thin golden ring on her finger, dum de dum dum the Isle of Caprieeee . . .’ and it got cut off then, because, I suppose, she went off upstairs. Someone shut a window quite hard, with a bang. And then everything was still.
But I just sat where I was with the shadows getting long.
Having a think.
D.v.d.B
London, 14.3.92
Author’s Note
An evocation, this, of the happiest days of my childhood: 1930–34. The world was gradually falling apart all around me, but I was serenely unaware. I was not, alas, the only ostrich.
I have altered some of the names and amalgamated many of their characteristics, so no single person existed exactly as I have written them to be: they are all part of the evocation. Except, that is, for my own family and that of Lally. The dialogue, of course, is reconstructed to as near the original as I can remember. Events have been slightly rearranged to make the spread of four years containable. But this is how it was sixty years ago. For those who have forgotten, or those who never knew, here is a modest list which might be helpful.
Fanny Blake, the most valiant of editors, has wrestled hard and long with my deliberately limited vocabulary and removed as many ands, sos and whichs as I would allow her to, and Mrs Sally Betts, after almost sixteen years of perplexity and confusion, most bravely borne, has eventually typed our tenth volume.
My unbounded love and gratitude to them both is herewith recorded.
D.v.d.B.
London
A Note on the Author
Sir Dirk Bogarde (1921-1999) was an English actor and novelist. Initially a matinee idol, Bogarde later acted in art-house films such as Death In Venice. As well as completing six novels, Bogarde wrote several volumes of autobiography.
Between 1947 and 1991, Bogarde made more than sixty films. For over two decades he lived in Italy and France, where he began to write seriously.
In 1985 he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of St Andrews and in 1990 was promoted to Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.
Sir Dirk Bogarde has a legion of fans to this day - an extraordinary commitment to an extraordinary man - do check out his fansite and Facebook page.
Discover books by Dirk Bogarde published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/DirkBogarde
A Gentle Occupation
A Particular Friendship
A Period of Adjustment
A Short Walk to Harrods
An Orderly Man
Backcloth
Cleared for Take-Off
Closing Ranks
For the Time Being
Great Meadow
Jericho
Voices in the Garden
West of Sunset
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain 1992 by Viking
Copyright © 1992 Motley Films Ltd
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make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
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may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
ISBN: 9781448208241
eISBN: 9781448208258
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