The Ugly Sister Read Free Page A

plenty of discarded, out-of-work soldiers and dispossessed sailors from a number of countries for the hazard to exist. But I do not remember the two marines, and the only guard we had when I was growing up was the lookout who manned the signal station at the head of the promontory about half a mile from the house.
    Once when I was about ten Mama came home for Christmas and stayed on well into the New Year. There was no doubt that she had for some time looked ambitiously at Cornish society, for she must have seen that it would be much more likely to be open to her than London society would ever be. A beautiful woman who knew her manners and brought with her an air of metropolitan sophistication and with Place House as a springboard, Mrs Aubrey Spry would be quickly welcome almost everywhere. But the fact that she was an actress, which had a raffish not quite respectable implication – quite different had she been just a singer – her frequent and haphazard absences, the peculiar unwelcoming circumstances of the house in which she lived, together with her own chronic shortage of money, put a brake on what she had so far been able to do.
    But now, evidently better off than usual, she began to go about. Taking the bit between her teeth, she went uninvited to Tregolls in Truro, to meet some of the rest of the Spry family. On her way home she called at the new house, Killiganoon, and discovered why Uncle Davey had bought and rebuilt it.
    She invited herself or contrived to get invited to a number of the great houses flanking the River Fal, and the new houses – not so great but large and substantial – being put up along the coast between Falmouth and the Helford River, mainly by the Foxes, a large Quaker family who had settled in the district in recent decades and were making fortunes from the shipping and ancillary trades of that prosperous town.
    Possibly too by this time she was beginning to have thoughts for the future of her daughters – or at least one of them – who were growing up and who in the course of time she would want to see launched and favourably married. So whenever she could she took us with her, and we met young Foxes, young Boscawens, young Warleggans, young Carclews. Parties were held in the vicinity of Falmouth and Truro, but for me these largely tailed off. During that winter I overheard two of the Carclew boys discussing a party they were going to hold. One said: ‘ What about the Sprys? Tammy is excellently beautiful.’ The other said: ‘ Oh yes and jolly too. But do we have to have the fat little one? She’s so exceeding disfigured and monumentally dull.’ ‘ I’ll see what my mother says. Maybe we could have one of ’em without t’other.’
    When the invitation came it was for both of us, but at the last minute I developed a severe toothache and could not go.
    A succession of ailments began to plague me when other invitations were about to be accepted. Of course Mama soon saw through the deception, but what was she to do – take a miserable daughter with tears of pain streaming down her cheeks? Perhaps, I thought, when I was thankfully alone with Sally Fetch, that Mama and Tamsin were also thankful – to be rid of me and my ugliness while they went to enjoy their party.

Chapter Two
I
    D URING MY childhood changes occurred in Place House, particularly to Aunt Anna. My early memories are of tottering naughtily into the north drawing room when three tables of whist were being played, and being hauled out by Sally Fetch as if I’d wandered into church in the middle of the service. Whist was sacrosanct; whist was played five days out of seven. Aunt Anna never went out to play: it all happened in the house. Sometimes while playing, apart from sitting on her handkerchief for luck, she would smoke a cheroot. The smell of that smoke will bring back my childhood almost more than anything else.
    One splendid Christmas Uncle Davey arrived