and, on it, the old gramophone and the small black typewriter from the fifties on which Mum had taught herself to touch-type.
Now, what had once been the study was cluttered with the dusty, faded and moth-eaten collection of items that was all Grandma Lake had to show for eighty-odd years of living (or was all that Dad had allowed her to salvage from the house in Oakton Way). On the day of her arrival last October they had all been press-ganged into helping to carry her belongings up the stairs: dented Art Deco lampshades, musty wooden bookshelves and boxes of spineless Catherine Cooksons and Dorothy L. Sayers and a Mrs Beeton, an oppressive Victorian wardrobe and a rotting tea chest bursting with heavy silks and tweeds and a number of tatty furry items that looked suspiciously as though they had once been attached to living creatures.
And Grandma Lake had stood in the middle of the room pointing and saying, ‘There, put it there! Oh, that old thing, I couldn’t bear to leave it. You be careful with that! Oh dear! Oh dear oh dear...’ Then she had sat down on the bed and said nothing.
On the mantelpiece and window sill Mum had placed a confusion of music boxes, ugly china and glass ornaments, empty brass candlesticks and yellowing photographs in ornate frames showing babies in long white christening gowns. Charlotte had recognised herself and Jennifer and Graham as babies. There was nothing more recent of any of them. Or perhaps Grandma Lake had a thing for baby photos, for there were photographs of Mum and Aunt Caroline too.
From the bathroom, the toilet flushed a second time.
Jennifer never ever threw up unless she was in the car. She’d been sick in the car on the journey home from Aunt Caroline’s wedding last summer—all over the Ordnance Survey map of Norfolk.
On Grandma Lake’s window sill there were also two much older photographs of people sporting between-the-wars fashions. One group was unmistakably a wedding party, presumably Grandma and Grandad Lake’s. The second photograph, in a tarnished silver frame, showed a pretty young woman of perhaps twenty-one done up in a stiff black skirt and lace-up boots, wearing an armband and a jaunty black cap. Over her left shoulder hung a bulky box-like bag that looked like a gas-mask box but must surely pre-date gas masks by a good ten or fifteen years. The young woman waved a hand rather coquettishly at the camera, the sun in her eyes so that it was hard to tell if she was smiling or frowning. She was standing in what appeared to be a bus depot.
On the day that Grandma Lake moved in Charlotte had made the mistake of picking up the photograph, vaguely wondering if this was Grandma Lake as a young woman. But Grandma Lake had heaved herself to her feet and informed her with some ceremony that she was holding the Only Surviving Photograph of Great-Aunt Jemima.
No one had ever heard of Great-Aunt Jemima.
Grandma Lake had tapped the photograph meaningfully. Great-Aunt Jemima, her only sister, had died tragically during the General Strike of 1926 while on duty as a volunteer bus conductor—hence the bus depot, which was, she had explained, Acton Bus Garage—and during that turbulent and divisive period of Britain’s history this was where Great-Aunt Jemima had been briefly and dramatically stationed.
‘Turbulent and divisive’ was not how Grandma Lake had described the General Strike. ‘That daft strike’ had been her exact words, but if you were studying the Rebellions and Revolutions course in O-level history you had to grant such a pivotal event its full historical significance.
Jennifer had muttered some excuse and fled downstairs but Charlotte, whether due to guilt or embarrassment, had remained.
And so now they had a great-aunt who had died tragically during the General Strike. This was unusual and perhaps mildly interesting, though somehow it failed to have the same pathos as, say, a great-uncle lost at Passchendaele. And according to Grandma Lake,
Now, what had once been the study was cluttered with the dusty, faded and moth-eaten collection of items that was all Grandma Lake had to show for eighty-odd years of living (or was all that Dad had allowed her to salvage from the house in Oakton Way). On the day of her arrival last October they had all been press-ganged into helping to carry her belongings up the stairs: dented Art Deco lampshades, musty wooden bookshelves and boxes of spineless Catherine Cooksons and Dorothy L. Sayers and a Mrs Beeton, an oppressive Victorian wardrobe and a rotting tea chest bursting with heavy silks and tweeds and a number of tatty furry items that looked suspiciously as though they had once been attached to living creatures.
And Grandma Lake had stood in the middle of the room pointing and saying, ‘There, put it there! Oh, that old thing, I couldn’t bear to leave it. You be careful with that! Oh dear! Oh dear oh dear...’ Then she had sat down on the bed and said nothing.
On the mantelpiece and window sill Mum had placed a confusion of music boxes, ugly china and glass ornaments, empty brass candlesticks and yellowing photographs in ornate frames showing babies in long white christening gowns. Charlotte had recognised herself and Jennifer and Graham as babies. There was nothing more recent of any of them. Or perhaps Grandma Lake had a thing for baby photos, for there were photographs of Mum and Aunt Caroline too.
From the bathroom, the toilet flushed a second time.
Jennifer never ever threw up unless she was in the car. She’d been sick in the car on the journey home from Aunt Caroline’s wedding last summer—all over the Ordnance Survey map of Norfolk.
On Grandma Lake’s window sill there were also two much older photographs of people sporting between-the-wars fashions. One group was unmistakably a wedding party, presumably Grandma and Grandad Lake’s. The second photograph, in a tarnished silver frame, showed a pretty young woman of perhaps twenty-one done up in a stiff black skirt and lace-up boots, wearing an armband and a jaunty black cap. Over her left shoulder hung a bulky box-like bag that looked like a gas-mask box but must surely pre-date gas masks by a good ten or fifteen years. The young woman waved a hand rather coquettishly at the camera, the sun in her eyes so that it was hard to tell if she was smiling or frowning. She was standing in what appeared to be a bus depot.
On the day that Grandma Lake moved in Charlotte had made the mistake of picking up the photograph, vaguely wondering if this was Grandma Lake as a young woman. But Grandma Lake had heaved herself to her feet and informed her with some ceremony that she was holding the Only Surviving Photograph of Great-Aunt Jemima.
No one had ever heard of Great-Aunt Jemima.
Grandma Lake had tapped the photograph meaningfully. Great-Aunt Jemima, her only sister, had died tragically during the General Strike of 1926 while on duty as a volunteer bus conductor—hence the bus depot, which was, she had explained, Acton Bus Garage—and during that turbulent and divisive period of Britain’s history this was where Great-Aunt Jemima had been briefly and dramatically stationed.
‘Turbulent and divisive’ was not how Grandma Lake had described the General Strike. ‘That daft strike’ had been her exact words, but if you were studying the Rebellions and Revolutions course in O-level history you had to grant such a pivotal event its full historical significance.
Jennifer had muttered some excuse and fled downstairs but Charlotte, whether due to guilt or embarrassment, had remained.
And so now they had a great-aunt who had died tragically during the General Strike. This was unusual and perhaps mildly interesting, though somehow it failed to have the same pathos as, say, a great-uncle lost at Passchendaele. And according to Grandma Lake,
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