dragon-girl, and who was surprisingly ruthless when she found something she wanted.
The Island
âO ne of the ways my father went on controlling me was by putting money into my bank account. There was no pattern to it, he never tried to contact me to say the money was there, though I donât know how he would because he didnât have an address, but I would go and cash a check and the cashier would say, âDo you want to transfer that to a savings account?â And I would say, âWhy?â And they would write down my balance on a piece of paper and push it toward me and I saw that heâd put a thousand pounds in.
âSo this gave me a lot of freedom to travel, but I see now that it meant I always had this safety net, I didnât need to worry about getting a job or starting a career. And I could live very cheaply, I became good at that because I never knew when the next sum would be deposited and I never wrote to him to ask him to put it on a more regular basis. It was like winning the lottery every few months. He must have had some plan in his head precisely because there was no regularity to the payments. He was stringing me along for some devious purpose of his own Iâve never been able to fathom. If he wanted me to be okay heâd have paid it in on some kind of system, but he didnât. It was just about power, his power over me.
âI donât know what my mother thought about, she didnât reallyspeak. My mother was the most silent person I have ever known. If she had opinions, I have no idea what they were. She didnât vote, she didnât listen to the radio or watch television, she just turned brown. I watched her becoming dun-colored, like the earth, and of course my father wasnât attracted to her anymore, why would he be?
âShe wore brown trousers and an old brown jersey and gardening boots and often she didnât bother changing for dinner, because when the days were long sheâd go straight back down to her flower beds. The flowers were her children, not me. She wasnât cold, she wasnât distant and she wasnât unloving. When I was little I remember her being very warm and even playful, we would sit on the grass and sing songs. Which songs? You know, I think they were from the music halls, âThe Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery,â and âAfter the Ball Was Over.â She liked that one because sheâd been at balls before she met my father, she wasnât a countrywoman at all, that was him, the scholarship boy from the hops fields. Sheâd been presented at court. But I donât know the details. I saw my grandparents occasionally, they came down for the weekend, but they were snobs, they didnât like my father, they thought sheâd married beneath her. My grandfather was in the diplomatic service. My mother spent part of her childhood in Rome but it didnât seem to have had any effect on her, unless that was where she first saw fabulous gardens.
âI do know she always expected she would have a large family, she wanted a house in the country where she could bring up all her children and what she got was an Edwardian villa on the outskirts of Sevenoaks and miscarriages, and instead of lavishing her attention on the one child she did have, it was as if she gave up on the whole idea of being a mother and devoted all that fecundity to the garden, where she could make things grow and live. To be honest, I think she more or less forgot about me, especially when I reached my early teens, because I suspect that she was one of those women who only really like babies, and have more and more because they loseinterest when the baby starts turning into an active nondependent child. And I accept that I canât have been the easiest of daughters.
âBut I donât want to talk about my mother.
âLetâs get back to the question of money. These deposits my father kept putting in my account allowed me
The Island
âO ne of the ways my father went on controlling me was by putting money into my bank account. There was no pattern to it, he never tried to contact me to say the money was there, though I donât know how he would because he didnât have an address, but I would go and cash a check and the cashier would say, âDo you want to transfer that to a savings account?â And I would say, âWhy?â And they would write down my balance on a piece of paper and push it toward me and I saw that heâd put a thousand pounds in.
âSo this gave me a lot of freedom to travel, but I see now that it meant I always had this safety net, I didnât need to worry about getting a job or starting a career. And I could live very cheaply, I became good at that because I never knew when the next sum would be deposited and I never wrote to him to ask him to put it on a more regular basis. It was like winning the lottery every few months. He must have had some plan in his head precisely because there was no regularity to the payments. He was stringing me along for some devious purpose of his own Iâve never been able to fathom. If he wanted me to be okay heâd have paid it in on some kind of system, but he didnât. It was just about power, his power over me.
âI donât know what my mother thought about, she didnât reallyspeak. My mother was the most silent person I have ever known. If she had opinions, I have no idea what they were. She didnât vote, she didnât listen to the radio or watch television, she just turned brown. I watched her becoming dun-colored, like the earth, and of course my father wasnât attracted to her anymore, why would he be?
âShe wore brown trousers and an old brown jersey and gardening boots and often she didnât bother changing for dinner, because when the days were long sheâd go straight back down to her flower beds. The flowers were her children, not me. She wasnât cold, she wasnât distant and she wasnât unloving. When I was little I remember her being very warm and even playful, we would sit on the grass and sing songs. Which songs? You know, I think they were from the music halls, âThe Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery,â and âAfter the Ball Was Over.â She liked that one because sheâd been at balls before she met my father, she wasnât a countrywoman at all, that was him, the scholarship boy from the hops fields. Sheâd been presented at court. But I donât know the details. I saw my grandparents occasionally, they came down for the weekend, but they were snobs, they didnât like my father, they thought sheâd married beneath her. My grandfather was in the diplomatic service. My mother spent part of her childhood in Rome but it didnât seem to have had any effect on her, unless that was where she first saw fabulous gardens.
âI do know she always expected she would have a large family, she wanted a house in the country where she could bring up all her children and what she got was an Edwardian villa on the outskirts of Sevenoaks and miscarriages, and instead of lavishing her attention on the one child she did have, it was as if she gave up on the whole idea of being a mother and devoted all that fecundity to the garden, where she could make things grow and live. To be honest, I think she more or less forgot about me, especially when I reached my early teens, because I suspect that she was one of those women who only really like babies, and have more and more because they loseinterest when the baby starts turning into an active nondependent child. And I accept that I canât have been the easiest of daughters.
âBut I donât want to talk about my mother.
âLetâs get back to the question of money. These deposits my father kept putting in my account allowed me
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