Family Sketchbook

Stephen Gorringe

Description

The tale of the various participants in this kaleidoscope of unreality, given as they are to flights of fancy and daydreams ranging from the absurd to states of overwhelming bewilderment, begins with Cedric, incarcerated from time to time in a caring but confining institution that offers him the best, albeit rudimentary, treatment available earlier in the twentieth century for those suffering 'nervous afflictions'. The unfolding of his predicament and the involvement of his immediate family lead us back and forth over generations as they cope either successfully or disastrously, deludedly or occasionally murderously, with their lives.How will the corrosive lies and concealments, variously enacted by and visited upon this family, affect them as they pursue their ordinary lives, filled with hopes, preoccupations, successes and failures? The saga unfolds, peopled by a medley of exuberant, ribald and confused characters, revealing how the foibles and derangements of one generation can have unfortunate and unforeseen consequences for their successors.

Sujets

• France

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 04 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800466913
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2021 Stephen Gorringe

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Matador®
9 Priory Business Park,
Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,
Leicestershire. LE8 0RX
Tel: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
Twitter: @matadorbooks

ISBN 9781800466913

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd


Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven


Chapter One
c. 1915
Here she comes, walking along the corridor, rubber soles squeaking on the polished parquet, and on hearing this familiar sound I begin to play my guessing game; which one will it be this morning? Perhaps Mabel, whose severe uniform does little to conceal her charms, which admittedly are the major part of her attractiveness, and who once sang to me, demonstrating, as she thought, the beauty of her voice. Sadly she sounded like someone closing the door on ash, although obviously I was expected to show appreciation, but all I could offer was a feigned fit of coughing and a lone tear which I hope she mistook for a moment of pleasurable emotion on my part. It might be Beatrice, who once showed me a photograph from her wedding day with her resplendent in what I took to be a white two-tiered bell tent. Or Gertrude of the severe mien and the softest heart of them all.
She, whoever, brings me my mid-morning medication designed to keep me placid until my nighttime dosage, not that I am ever violent or unruly, just lost in my own bemused world, except for the occasional moments of lucidity when I am able to appreciate the full misery of my predicament. At those times I am fully aware of who I am but not of how or why I came to be here. It is then that I become most distressed, anxious and fearful, wondering what has become of my family, and consequently am more heavily sedated.
The nurses approach with their smiles of pity and I am soon returned to my insulated world. I do not resent my confinement here; conditions are very pleasant, I am well fed, I have a room of my own with a comfortable bed and for most of the time I am free to wander the carefully tended grounds. It is out here that I frequently meet with others, some of whom I vaguely recognise; I must assume we are acquainted since we have an easy rapport and our conversations are of common familiarity. One face that is better known to me here than others is Walter’s and like me he is sometimes visited by a person I take to be his wife, a large but pleasant-faced woman who appears more regularly than my own, not that I criticise my wife, whose burden must be unenviable.
It was during one of my occasional stays here, a while back now, that the nurse informed me one morning that I was to have a visit later in the day from my brother-in-law, Reginald, who managed to see me irregularly, no doubt because of his busy occupation as a doctor and I believe he was working a lot of the time at his local hospital on account of the war. His visits never failed to lift my spirits, although I believe the same might not be so for some of the staff and my fellow patients.
It was during one of his infrequent visits that he encountered nurse Mabel as he moved along the staff corridor towards the toilets as directed by matron. On seeing him in a prohibited part of the building Mabel began berating him in extremely coarse language, disbelieving all he said in his defence, convinced he was one of the patients. He felt obliged to call out for assistance, not wishing to manhandle a young lady, and matron soon appeared in response to the disturbance. This behaviour of Mabel’s was added to a litany of misdemeanours which included frequent tirades against other members of staff and singing lullabies that brought on terrifying nightmares for some of the distressed residents. Her dismissal from the clinic took place not long after and it was generally believed she had returned to London, although what became of her I never discovered.
My friendship with Reginald had been formed whilst students in Edinburgh many years ago, although I arrived there some time into his medical studies and I was pursuing my academic interest in history. We were introduced to each other by a common acquaintance and hit it off straightaway, although I was always in awe of him. It puzzled me at the time quite why my parents had insisted on me pursuing my studies so far from home, we did live in Hampshire after all, but gradually the pattern of their parenting became clearer. From birth I had been cared for almost exclusively by a series of nannies, none of whom lasted very long due to my parents’ belief that they were overindulgent and showed me too much affection. Thirteen years of boarding school followed and I often did not see my parents during the holidays as they were frequently abroad, but I eventually put all this down to them wishing me to develop as an independent spirit; having no siblings I certainly learned self-reliance. I was also uncomfortably aware that many of the other schoolboys visited one another during summer and Christmas breaks, whereas I was left in the care of old Mrs Gudge, a sour-faced woman employed by my parents as housekeeper-cum-cook, whose meals ran a close second to the school dinners in their sheer awfulness. I never did understand why cabbage needed boiling for an hour before it became edible; perhaps it was poisonous otherwise.
Reginald’s arrival that day coincided with lunch, which we enjoyed together before setting off for a stroll around the grounds, culminating in him choosing a bench to seat ourselves on, which gave us a commanding view over the formal gardens. He had always preferred these observation posts, either publicly or privately situated, from which he would deliver his withering comments on whoever came into view, often larded with vicious invective. Initially alarmed by this behaviour in Edinburgh I had come to accept it as part of his character and on many subsequent occasions found myself to be in total agreement with him; it struck me as a harmless pastime. This afternoon his eyes alighted on Walter and his presumed wife, walking and chatting happily alongside each other, and he pointed his bony finger at her.
“Good heavens, Cedric! Look at the size of that,” he exclaimed angrily. “Eating herself into an early grave I shouldn’t wonder!”
“Surely not, although I’ll grant she is quite big,” I offered gently.
“Look at her! Probably spends her days stuffing chocolates down her throat. Vermin. I’ve seen smaller creatures in a milking parlour. Doesn’t surprise me he escapes here. Gets away from having to look at something like that every day. Don’t expect there’s all that much on his dinner plate either. Happy to come here and be properly fed.”
Reginald was quite capable of continuing these diatribes for half an hour or so, but as I sensed that Walter and his wife were coming within earshot I thought it best we take ourselves off to find a more distant bench, and so we walked awhile before arriving in an area given over to the cultivation of vegetables. Here we saw a young man hoeing between the green rows, and as we seated ourselves on another bench the young gardener paused to remove his cap and wipe his sweaty brow. As he did this I noted that his head was as bald as a ping-pong ball, yet I reckoned he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. This was not unnoticed by Reginald.
“Look at that filthy degenerate,” he exclaimed.
“What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.
“It’s obvious what he gets up to in his spare time. It doesn’t just make you go blind,” he explained.
Reginald had some interesting notions on medical matters, sometimes at variance with established practices, but who was I to disagree? All too soon it seemed his time with me that afternoon drew to a close, and we made our farewells by the large metal gates before I was chaperoned inside for tea and cake. I was unaware that on his rare visits, Betty, his sister and my wife, frequently accompanied him, waiting patiently in his car a little way up the lane, shielded from view by an overgrown hedge and a line of horse chestnut trees.
I suppose she must have found it difficult to visit, to witness my plight and to consider our changed roles. In years gone by it was I who had been instrumental in encouraging her to engage with the world, to lift her from her timidity and take part in society, however bewildering it so often appeared. What began as an academic exercise – I was, after all, employed as her tutor thanks to Reginald’s intervention – turned slowly into a labour of love, teasing her into the daylight and out of the claustrophobic atmosphere of the house she shared with her mother, Mrs Dorcas, as she wished me to address her. She had certainly tri