Great Granny Webster Read Free

which had a hideous stained-glass covered porch full of potted plants that had to be watered day and night by Richards, I was starting to revise this opinion.
    â€œYou realise that it was your mother who asked me if I would take you in to stay with me,” Great Granny Webster said at the first difficult and sparse lunch we had together. “Your mother claims that you have been ill. From my experience it is always better to make young people learn to conquer their illnesses and pursue their studies. Lately it seems that no one any longer agrees with me ...”
    Great Granny Webster gave a heaving sigh and glared irritably into the grate of her unlit fire. Then she added:
    â€œIf your father had not given his life in active service for a cause he vitally believed in ... I have to say I might very well not have gone along with the demands your mother has decided to make on me. But since you are here ... you are here. All I trust is that someone has taught you how to divert yourself.”
    We were served two disgusting little courses by Richards before Great Granny Webster chose to speak to me again.
    â€œWhat is that garment you are wearing?” she asked.
    â€œIt’s my school blazer.”
    â€œBlazer?” she repeated. “Blazer?” Her tiny mouth twisted with disgust and she managed to make the word sound like some foul and crude expletive. “Fortunately I don’t know these modern terms. One thing that I do know is that whatever you are wearing—you have outgrown it. Please look at your sleeves.”
    I looked down at the sleeves of my school jacket, and I saw that there was quite a large expanse of wrist showing between my sleeve and my hand.
    â€œI don’t blame you personally for this,” Great Granny Webster added. “I entirely blame your mother. A growing girl outgrows things. I know that your mother is a war widow, but I still have to say that I find it quite unforgivable that she should have sent you to stay with me attired like this. There is really nothing more unattractive than the sight of a young woman displaying a repulsive amount of arm. I am not going to mention this subject again.”
    Great Granny Webster always told the truth. She never once referred either to my sleeves or to my arms again.
    At the beginning of my stay with her I saw her as little more than a depressing and formal ancient who was much too old for it to be possible for anyone to judge her by human standards. She was identical with all the rickety near-the-grave lady relations dressed in mourning who sometimes appeared in the houses of my school-friends. At that point all I knew about this woman and her effect was that already I was starting to count the minutes of the months that had to pass before I could escape from under her roof.
    Although technically Great Granny Webster could provide sea air, because her house was in Hove, a suburb of Brighton, not a whiff of it ever seemed to be able to penetrate the musty interior with its sealed and heavily curtained Victorian windows. Living in her large cold villa I often felt that I was light-years away from the world I craved and she abominated: the world of the crowded Brighton beach, where children dug moats for sand-castles with elaborate turrets that had been cast out of painted tin pails, where what Great Granny Webster always referred to with a shiver as “trippers” lay, their over-white city bodies under a cold weak sun as they tried to get brown, or ate candy-floss and toffee-apples as they walked along the pier, on which there were Penny Arcades, Punch and Judy shows, Salvation Army bands and postcards of fat ladies in bathing suits.
    I never once managed to get down to the Brighton beach in the two months I lived with Great Granny Webster. I could easily have gone without her, but she made me feel that as her guest it was my duty never to leave her side—as if I was her paid companion. The fact that there might be