Remembered Dreams

Emma Dally

Description

A sweeping family saga about four generations of women in one family. Josie Knight delves into her family's rich but troubled history to discover the scandal behind her grandmother's transformation from vivacious Southern Belle to affluent mistress of a beautiful English country house.

Informations

• Publié par: Hornbeam Press
• Date de parution: 17 avril 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780956523624
• Langue: English

Extrait

Remembered Dreams
EMMA DALLY
Days after her mother dies, Josie Knight makes a startling discovery among her personal effects. Secreted within the clutter of the London house she will soon have to sell, lies a yellowing envelope in the folds of a treasured rocking chair. A gift that was never sent, a relic of a doomed romance? Somehow Josie is sure it conceals a story.
But there is no one left to tell it. Rumours surrounding her grandmother s transformation from American Southern belle to affluent English lady in the 1920s are part of family folklore. Why did Blanche marry so quickly? What was she running from? The rocking chair was hers, brought over from Savannah, Georgia, to the sprawling house under the South Downs where she lived for the rest her life, and where Josie remembers spending the happiest days of her childhood.
Something else, however, has been passed down through the generations. As she indulges her curiosity into her family s rich but often troubled history, Josie realizes she much act to prevent the dark pattern of her mother s and grandmother s lives forming once again in her own.
Contrasting the fortunes of four generations of women with the search for a family s roots, Remembered Dreams layers past and present with great skill and poignancy, concealing vital truths until the very last page.
Emma Dally has worked as a book editor, journalist and publisher for many years. She was Assistant Editor of Cosmopolitan and then Deputy Editor of SHE Magazine. She is currently Group Director of Books for Hearst Magazines UK. Emma is the author of several novels, a family memoir and a biography of her grandfather, the law reformer, Claud Mullins. Emma lives in London with her husband, the food and drinks writer Richard Ehrlich, with whom she has three children.
Also by Emma Dally
Fiction
Tomorrow s Past The Cry of the Children
Non fiction
A Sister s Tale Claud Mullins: Rebel, Reformer, Reactionary
For my mother, who passed on to me her love of history and family stories

JOSIE
CHAPTER 1
London, 1990
The house was quiet. The letters on the doormat made the front door difficult to open as Josie pushed her way into the dark hall. There was a chill in the air as she switched on the light and leaned down to pick up the envelopes from the floor. Most of them were bills. One was a letter from a mail order company informing her mother that the cardigan she had ordered was temporarily out of stock but would be posted to her within the month. Her account, the letter added helpfully, would not be debited until the order was fulfilled.
Josie made a mental note to write to the catalogue company telling them not to bother now. The cardigan was no longer needed.
So much has to be done when someone dies. Letters to be written to the bank, the building societies, and all the shops where her mother had accounts. Josie still felt as if she were in a dream, as if her mother was alive and merely away on holiday somewhere, about to return next week. She had to keep telling herself that she was never going to see her mother again, never talk to her, never hug her or touch her. Her mother had gone.
At the same time, it was a relief, after those draining days at the hospice, watching the life slip away from her. No more visiting. No more of the frightened expressions or the panic about dying. No more worrying, no more anxious ringing up of the hospice first thing in the morning, expecting to be told that she had died in the night. Her poor mother. It was a sad end to what essentially had been a sad life.
The period between her mother s death and the funeral still seemed surreal. Josie had been aware of behaving as normal but feeling blanketed by some close film of quiet shock.
She had taken a couple of days off work to sort out the essentials - collecting her mother s belongings from the hospice, picking up the death certificate from the doctor and registering the death at the register office. She had felt dazed as she answered all the questions asked by the registrar to confirm that the deceased was indeed the person she was supposed to be - her maiden name, her two married names, her divorced status, then widowhood, her age, her address at the time of death. As Josie spoke the words, giving the information, she was aware of how these private details of her mother were becoming part of the public domain. It was the law, it was for history. This death certificate joined her mother s birth certificate in the vast archive of the history of the British people for any stranger to look up. She felt for a moment that she was losing her mother twice over. She no longer belonged to her. But then, over the years, she had actually lost her mother many more times than that.
The funeral had been a horrible event, a sombre cremation in East Finchley, attended by Jamie and Liz but not their children, the grandchildren. (Liz thought it would upset them.) Andy s mother, Helen, had turned up, which was considerate. Josie had been touched by this gesture from the woman she once thought would be her mother-in-law.
Helen had been fond of Josie, and of Evelyn. She had visited Evelyn several times during those bleak last weeks in the hospice. Whenever they met in the corridor, Helen had looked concerned and kind. Josie was pleased to see her but she did not make a pretence of being interested in Andy. She did not bother to ask how he was, and in return Helen kept a tactful silence about her son. It seemed that she had at last accepted that the relationship was truly over. But apart from that small group at the funeral there was nobody else, except the undertaker. Tony was dead and her mother had no other friends to say goodbye.
Now it was over, Josie had collected the ashes and scattered them over Hampstead Heath as her mother had stipulated in the will. She had been surprised by how heavy the ashes were and then surprised by her surprise that her mother could be reduced to two pounds of grey ash and bone, and still seem heavy.
There had been an upsetting moment on the Heath when a large dog, a cheerful panting black labrador, had run over to her as she scattered the ashes over the ground, and begun to gobble them up. Josie had to throw a stone and shout at it before it loped off, licking its chops as it headed in the direction of Parliament Hill.
Now Josie had to sort out the house. The real work was just beginning.
She was early. She had arranged to meet Jamie there at seven o clock but she wanted to have a bit of time by herself before he arrived. She hoped that he would not bring Liz; with any luck she would be putting the children to bed.
She shivered. The house was cold, and there was a mildewy smell in the air. Josie wandered around through the musty rooms, thinking of what had gone on there, imagining her mother slumped in the chair in the sitting-room, her nose stuck in a book, as it always was as she escaped from the world, or just sitting in the rocking-chair, rocking backwards and forwards, staring, staring at the wall, at the packed and warped shelves of books.
In spite of its mustiness the place was clean and tidy because Debby, the cleaner, had come in earlier in the week. The kitchen surfaces were clean and the furniture dusted and neatly arranged.
Josie began to walk through the rooms of the house, trying to see the place through the eyes of a prospective buyer. It was in a good position, of course, in Dartmouth Park, close to Parliament Hill, a Victorian terraced house built in the mid-1800s. It had a pleasant garden, even if it was overgrown. The place had been painted and decorated throughout when Evelyn first moved in in the 1960s (organised by Josie s grandmother, of course, because Evelyn had been incapable of doing such things), but nothing had been done since, apart from the occasional patching up of wallpaper and the repair of a leaking roof. Tony had done a bit of DIY but it was not really one of his great strengths.
Josie walked around the house, thinking back to her life there as a teenager. The kitchen was at the back; the dining-room, where she did her homework, in front. Halfway up the stairs, there was a lavatory on the landing (with a rickety antiquated overhead cistern operated by a chain). On the first floor was the sitting-room, with the old walnut wireless and Grundig gramophone, and book shelves stretching from floor to ceiling, packed with books mainly of art history and French and Italian literature. They would probably fetch a good price from the serious young book dealer in Camden Town, she thought. And she d like them to go to someone who knew something about books.
Standing now by the door of the sitting-room, Josie was suddenly aware of how shabby the place looked, with the worn Persian carpet, threadbare sofa and chairs and rickety lampshades. All good quality but very old, all given to her by Evelyn s mother, Blanche, when she first moved in. Josie liked them all, they were like old friends, part of the family, particularly the upholstered mahogany rocking-chair brought by her grandmother from Savannah, Georgia, when she first came to Europe to escape the scandal. Josie gave the chair a gentle push and watched it rock backwards and forwards with elegant balance, thinking of all the people who had rocked themselves in it before now.
Next door was her mother s bedroom. The bed had been stripped by Debby and the blankets and eiderdown neatly folded on top. Josie had a brief look in the wardrobe and chest of drawers. There were no clothes she wanted. Her mother had never cared about her appearance, even when she was not depressed. The clothes were all clean and in good condition; they could all go to the charity shops.
Upstairs there were two more bedrooms, Josie s and Jamie s old rooms, though Jamie, away at boarding school and then university, had hardly ever lived there. Both rooms were now packed with boxes and trunks and furniture, all from Josie s grandmother s ho