An Unconventional Love. Adeline Harris

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       Chapter Five Clumber Cottage, Felixstowe

      We were in London for a couple of months, and then Dad announced that we were going to spend the summer at the seaside. We packed our bags, said ‘Au revoir’ to Madame Bobé and took another long taxi ride all the way to Felixstowe on the Suffolk coast. I was excited because I’d never had a beach holiday before and it sounded like a good thing. I’d seen storybooks in which children made sandcastles and played in the water and I was looking forward to that. The headaches had eased by then, the weather had improved and Dad seemed more cheerful.

      ‘This is the area where I grew up,’ he told us as we crossed the river from Essex into Suffolk. ‘This is proper English countryside. Look! A green and pleasant land.’

      We peered out at the fields and hedgerows and had to admit it was a lot prettier than London, although to me it still wasn’t a patch on the view from our plantation house in Beesakope. We checked in to a boarding house called Clumber Cottage, and from our room we could see a glint of blue sea, covered in dancing spangles. Harold and I clamoured for a walk down to the beach before tea and Dad agreed, letting us take off our shoes and run along the sand, and even paddle in the chilly waves.

      I saw some people swimming in the water and pestered Mother to let us go in as well, but she was reluctant. Nice Catholic girls didn’t expose their legs to the world, she said. Modesty is a virtue, she said. Nevertheless we went shopping the next morning and she bought me an oversized ruched khaki-green swim-suit which I could wear pulled down to my knees so that only my lower legs would be exposed. That was the compromise. I had to be as modest as I could and make sure I kept it pulled down at all times, in return for which I was allowed to go in the water.

      At first I was a little bit frightened of the waves, which could push you over if you weren’t paying attention, and I didn’t like the slimy seaweed, but Dad came in with me and held my hand and started giving me swimming lessons. Within a few weeks I’d got over my fear of the unfamiliar water and got the hang of swimming, albeit it with a frantic kind of doggy paddle.

      The boarding house believed in stuffing its guests with food and our days were structured around the frequent meals they served. Breakfast at nine then down to the beach for half an hour before it was time to head back for elevenses; beach for an hour then lunch then beach for another hour then tea; maybe a wander in the gardens at the seafront, then high tea, then Rosary then supper then bed: six meals daily.

      Some days, Dad wasn’t there and Mother decided that she couldn’t cope with my brother and me on her own so she took me to the Jesus and Mary Convent in the town, where the nuns looked after me for a few hours. They were very kind, giving me colouring books and pencils to keep me occupied, but I would much rather have been on the beach and I felt sad that I was locked indoors while Harold was having a nice time with her somewhere.

      When Dad was around, he usually took us to the beach. As he led us back up to Clumber Cottage, we followed a military routine. ‘Stand front, shoulder to shoulder, port hands,’ he would say. We would show him our hands. ‘Dirty. Spit on them.’ So we did. ‘Face inspection. Port face.’ We’d present our faces for his approval. ‘Dirty. Spit on this.’ He’d hold out his handkerchief and we would spit on it and wipe our faces before we were allowed to move on.

      One day we were late coming up for lunch and Dad urged me: ‘Run, run! No time to spit!’ I charged along the pavement and up the path and burst in the door of the boarding house just as the owner emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray of bowls filled to the brim with piping-hot Brown Windsor soup. I crashed into him, the whole lot went down me and I collapsed screaming as it scalded my face and chest.

      I was rushed off to hospital in Ipswich where I was made to lie in a darkened room with cool, damp cloths over my burns and a shade over my eyes. Every now and again, nurses came in and changed the cloths for fresh ones. I was kept there overnight and it must have been horrible for Mother and Dad, who kept saying prayers and lighting holy candles by my bedside, worried that I would be scarred for life. My eyesight wasn’t damaged, though, and the marks faded quite quickly.

      There were so many firsts that summer: first night spent in hospital, first visit to the seaside, swimming, sandcastles and then another, very important first: my grandfather, the Reverend Harris, reluctantly agreed to meet us.

      Harold and I were dressed up in our newest, smartest outfits – a long-sleeved dress for me with little socks and sandals, while he was in a bow tie, shorts and jacket. Mother seemed very nervous, dabbing on some face powder then wiping it off again as if she’d had second thoughts. We caught a taxi to Woodbridge, where Granddad lived in a large manor house called Plummers that was set in some woods.

      The door was opened by a dapper man in a white summer suit and clerical collar, who ushered us into his drawing room and asked his housekeeper, Mrs Smith, to fetch some tea. I liked the look of my granddad straight away. He was slim, with grey hair and a neat grey beard, but he had sparkly blue eyes and I was amazed when Dad told me later that he was in his eighties, which seemed impossibly ancient.

      As we sat waiting for the tea, my eye was caught by some glass cases full of coins and I asked if I could look at them.

      ‘These are thousands of years old,’ he told me. ‘Do you know what archaeology is?’

      I shook my head.

      He told me that his hobby was digging in areas where tribes of people had lived in olden days and finding things they had left behind. He told me about the buried ship that was found at Sutton Hoo, just near his house, full of weapons and helmets, purses and buckles, silver plates and bowls, and he said that’s how we can tell what life was like for these people who probably lived back in the sixth or seventh century. He said he was editor of the Suffolk Archaeological Journal and showed me a copy, so I flicked politely through it looking at the pictures, because of course I couldn’t read.

      Mother kept shifting her knees as if she was uncomfortable or nervous, Dad had gone outside and Harold seemed bored, so I thought it was my responsibility to keep the conversation going. There were lots of thuribles, candles and religious pictures in the house and, on the wall, there was a picture of Jesus on the Cross, so I pointed at it.

      ‘Do you know who that is?’ I asked.

      Granddad looked at me keenly. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’

      ‘He was Our Saviour who died to save us all,’ I recited. ‘He died on that Cross when they nailed him to it. While he was in India he did lots of miracles and that’s why he’s famous.’

      ‘Did he now?’ the Reverend twinkled. ‘In India? What kind of miracles?’

      And I told him some of Clara’s stories about the lions, the tigers and the snakes. As I spoke I got the sense that he was amused but I couldn’t think what I was saying that could possibly be amusing so I kept going, even though Mother was raising her eyebrows.

      ‘Who told you these stories?’ he asked when I’d finished.

      ‘My Clara-ayah,’ I said, tears coming to my eyes at the mention of her name.

      ‘They’re charming,’ he said. ‘Quite charming. But I think you should try going to lessons in an English church, my dear.’

      ‘I do!’ I said. ‘I go to the Jesus and Mary Convent in Felixstowe.’

      ‘Ahem.’ СКАЧАТЬ