Swan River Read Free Page A

come to look after them, and how they had had two servants who lived in the attic. After a while his father got fed up with the sister because she drank too much gin, but by then Sis, my grandmother, was a teenager and she took over the running of the house. She was a bossy type of person and bossed the servants and everyone else, except for her father, but then her father was often away selling furniture which was how he earned his living.
    It took Uncle George a long time to tell me all this. I was fascinated – I had never heard anyone talk about things that happened so long ago – but what I really wanted to know was where did my grandfather go when he had to leave all the rest of them, and what did he do then. Eventually, though, I just had to have a pee and that made Uncle George think that it was time for me to go home. He would tell me more another day, he said.
    Walking home, I thought about Uncle George and his eyebrows and my long-dead grandfather, whom Uncle George had called ‘poor’. At the corner of Lock Road and Station Road I met Patrick and Dennis; they were leaning against the wall sharing a cigarette. Patrick held the packet towards me, but I said I was in a hurry and just took a quick pull on theirs.
    When I got home I told my mother that I had been to see Uncle George. She told me I was sweet, and asked how the old man was.
    â€˜Fine,’ I replied.
    She had just got in from work and was standing at the kitchen table with an apron over her work skirt. It was Tuesday, so she was mincing the leftovers of Sunday’s joint to make rissoles.
    â€˜I’d better go and do my homework.’
    â€˜Just a minute.’ She quickly rinsed her hands; then kissed me on the side of my mouth. I could smell her lipstick, and hoped that she couldn’t smell tobacco smoke. ‘It’s so nice of you to go to see Uncle George.’ She reached into her handbag and gave me a Penguin biscuit. ‘Here – a treat.’ She smiled and went back to turning the mincer.
    Penguins, which cost threepence each, were an extravagance; squashed flies or bourbons from a packet were an acceptable expense. My mother was not mean – in spirit, she was generous – she was simply parsimonious, the product of the times and of years of living with a man who saw money simply as something to spend, preferably as soon as possible.
    I took the Penguin up to my room and ate it slowly, staring out at the few cars parked in the street.
    * * * * *
    I called in on Uncle George a week later, again at about tea time. Orange squash and cakes were produced again, and he seemed pleased to see me, but he looked tired and was less talkative.
    We talked about school and football and my father and mother, especially my mother this time. He told me how fond of her he was, and how my father and I must look after her. There were silences while he stared out of the window across the river to the tree-covered slope beyond, and he held my hand some of the time, something he had never done before.
    After a while, he screwed up his eyes, stared at me and said, ‘You know, I first met your mother in 1933.’ He closed his eyes still tighter. ‘Your father brought her to Sudbury to meet me and dear Marie.’ He opened his eyes and smiled. ‘Such a polite, quiet, gracious woman.’ He tapped my knee. ‘Now, is she happy?…I know she was upset when she had to sell the shop.’
    She had sold the shop two years before. It was in the High Street and we had lived in large, airy rooms on the two floors above. I told him that I thought she was happy. I didn’t tell him my worry about the way my father was sometimes unkind – even cruel, I thought – to her.
    â€˜Good. She deserves to be happy. She’s a woman with a great sense of duty… It comes from her upper-class English upbringing.’
    I had an idea of what he meant, but he seemed to have forgotten that my granny, my