An Unconventional Love. Adeline Harris

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ by religion.

      Tea was served and Dad came in to sit with us and my ears pricked up when the Reverend asked about his plans.

      ‘I’m looking for work,’ Dad said. ‘Something in engineering. It would have to be in a good area for the family to settle, and of course I want to uphold the standard of living we enjoyed in India. I’m hoping to have a job by the end of the summer.’

      Why would he be getting a job if we were only in England for a holiday? I didn’t understand. When were we going back to Beesakope? When would I see Clara again? I looked round at Mother in panic but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

      After tea, Dad announced we had to be going, it was time to get back to Clumber Cottage.

      ‘Do you like butterflies, Adeline?’ the Reverend asked me. ‘Why don’t you come again next week and I’ll show you my collection? I have lots of very pretty ones.’

      ‘I’d like that,’ I said politely.

      ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Your father can bring you over.’

      Even I picked up the implication that Mother and Harold weren’t invited and I was pleased to be singled out, although it was Harold who was named after him. All the way back in the taxi, Mother complained to Dad about the Reverend’s rudeness towards her, while I sat, warm in the knowledge that he liked me, he hadn’t been rude to me.

      Dad and I went back to visit a few times that summer and my grandfather showed me his collections of butterflies and bees. I’d been imagining them as pretty creatures fluttering around in the air, but in fact they were dead ones pinned onto felt boards that he kept in thin drawers in a tallboy. I dutifully admired the pretty colours while feeling that it was a bit creepy to keep dead insects. He took me down to his musty cellar to see bottles of wine stacked in niches in the walls, stretching all the way up to the ceiling, but I didn’t find that very impressive. I was more interested in the art-covered walls, grandfather clocks and statues that made the house seem like a miniature museum.

      Outside in the gardens, he showed me his beehives and his apple trees and vines and a well with a big handle that you could pump to bring up some drinking water. All the time I chattered away to him because, unlike Mother and Dad, he seemed to like my chatter. I told him about Clara and our life in India and we talked about Jesus and God. He even laughed when I made my funny faces for him, especially the one where I went cross-eyed and pulled the corners of my lips down.

      When we got back after a trip to Woodbridge, Mother would be silent and disapproving and there would be a tense atmosphere between her and Dad. I felt special, though. My grandfather liked me and I felt very proud of that.

      The days started to get cooler, and at dinner one night Dad had an announcement to make.

      ‘I’ve accepted a job in Crewe,’ he said. ‘We’re moving there next week.’

      He explained that he’d also been offered a job in Coventry but he thought that Crewe would be a nicer place for us children, and he’d found a lovely big house for us to live in, called Oaklands.

      ‘But when are we going back to India?’ I asked, my lip trembling. I missed everything: the oil lamps twinkling at Diwali, the processions of elephants adorned in turquoise and silver, the brilliant colours of the saris, all the elements of my enchanted childhood.

      ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘It’s not safe over there yet. But don’t worry; you’re going to love it in Crewe.’

      I wasn’t convinced, and when I looked at the grim expression on Mother’s face I could tell she wasn’t convinced either. But we had no choice, so our summer clothes were packed away into cases, and I said goodbye to the beach and the owners of Clumber Cottage, and we climbed into a taxi to take us across the country to our new home in Crewe.

       Chapter Six Oaklands, Crewe

      Oaklands was a big two-storey house in a district to the west of Crewe called Woolstanwood. As soon as Dad unlocked the front door, Harold and I dashed inside to explore the maze of empty rooms with bare wooden floors and to scramble up the creaking staircases with a clatter of feet. We were exhilarated at the sheer amount of space after months in a poky room in a boarding house, and we ran round and round burning off energy after the long taxi ride. There were seven bedrooms and several reception rooms, and outside there was an acre of garden with four lawns, an orchard and a vegetable patch.

      ‘Can I have the big bedroom at the back?’ I begged Dad.

      ‘But I want that one,’ Harold whined, in his babyish three-year-old’s voice.

      ‘You’ll both be sharing the little front bedroom,’ Dad told us.

      ‘Why can’t I have my own room? There’s loads of space.’

      ‘There won’t be space for long,’ he said, and he explained that eight of our relatives were arriving soon from India: Aunt Muriel, Mother’s sister, with her husband Charles and teenage daughter Margaret; my grandparents on Mother’s side; my grandfather’s two sisters, and the grown-up daughter of one of them. How would we all fit?

      ‘We must be kind and welcoming,’ Mother told me. ‘They’ve had to leave their homes to come here because it wasn’t safe in India. They’ll be homesick and sad, just as we were when we arrived.’

      Harold’s and my room was so small that there was only just space for two twin beds side by side and nothing else. I wasn’t happy about this, as I found my brother intensely annoying and preferred to keep as far away from him as I could. There was a cupboard outside on the landing where we were told we could keep our toys, but we hardly had any. We didn’t have many clothes either. It was part of the strict ethos our parents lived by: ‘You only need one shirt on your back,’ Mother would say, ‘and you can only read one book at a time.’ They were very, very religious.

      A flurry of builders and decorators arrived, bringing the sounds of banging and crashing and the smells of paint and new carpet and wallpaper paste. Mother sat at the top of the stairs and cried in the midst of the chaos, but I loved to watch the men at work and asked them endless questions about what they were doing, and why.

      ‘We’re building a partition, to make this into two rooms,’ they told me. ‘This is where the door will go.’

      Dad’s new job was as Group Engineer and Building Supervisor for the South Cheshire Hospitals Management Committee and he managed to get the contractors working on the hospitals to come and do building work for us. By the time the relatives arrived, they not only had their own bedrooms, but private sitting rooms downstairs as well, all smartly decorated and carpeted and furnished with reproduction antiques from a furniture showroom. Dad bought a big oak refectory table with twelve leather studded chairs so we could sit down to have dinner together in the evening. The polo trophies appeared, along with the silver hors d’oeuvre trays and knives and forks all engraved with the Harris family crest. And the crucifix that had saved Dad’s life in the Family Miracle was given its own place in the hall, surrounded by candles, just as it had been in Beesakope.

      When I looked at that precious crucifix, a thought came into my head: ‘We’re not going back.’ Up till then it had been a holiday in London, and a holiday in Felixstowe, but now it seemed as though this was real life. We were going to stay here. I gave a little scream and ran upstairs to bed in tears. СКАЧАТЬ