Hello!
Here is a very, very, very long short story which has something to do with Christmas and a lot to do with bigotry. It will be in six or seven parts with the final chapter on Boxing Day.
I hope you enjoy this sad little tale of Eunice and her great-nephew Francis from one of England’s most established families.
Part 1
December 1996
An elderly Dowager and her feckless great-nephew are in a taxi, bound for Kings Cross Station. The Dowager remains unhappy with her luncheon……
“………..Cod! You know I don’t like Cod! Breaded too!”
“Sorry Aunt but as I told you, I thought it was haddock I- ”
“- Breaded cod. Where are we Francis?”
“Tottenham Court Road. Not far to Kings Cross.”
“Cod…..”
Francis and his great-aunt Eunice sat in silence in the taxi. Only the energetic note of the idling diesel engine was audible. Eunice picked shreds of breaded Cod out of her top set, examined them and wiped the findings on the cab seat.
“I must say the driver’s ears are enormous Francis.”
“They don’t look that big.”
“If Father were here he’d be scurrying up wind with the twelve bore to bag the elephantine beast. You’ll have a pair of flappers like that when you reach his age Francis. It’s a trait in all the D’aubisson males. Ears. In fact all of your features seem too large for your face.”
Francis studied the driver’s ears and gently stroked his ear lobes, concluding that there were some similarities, in surface area if nothing else. He didn’t reply but merely flexed his right ankle joint, his perennial subliminal response to her goading. Getting the old girl on that train to Scotland and away for two weeks was central to his plans for a most enjoyable Christmas.
He looked at his watch. Terry, the spot welder he had met at the creative metalwork classes was due in less than two hours for a final fitting. Two blissful weeks of encasement beckoned. Eunice’s jibes were a price worth paying.
The cab crawled forward.
“What time is the train again?” asked Eunice as they passed Holborn station. She kneaded her hands.
“Twenty five past two.”
She looked out of the cab window, aghast to see so many black faces walking the streets of London. She settled into the past to reduce her discomfort.
The summer of 1926. Eight year old Eunice, dressed in her favorite summer frock was taking the train with her parents, her beloved younger brother Bertie and their Nanny to Scotland for the annual sojourn to the family’s Scottish Estates at Moray Castle.
Nanny, a Roman Catholic but that was never held against her, would scold Eunice and Bertie for poking their heads out of the carriage window to wave at the peasants in the fields as the train rushed by. Eunice thought that Father had paid them to stand in the fields for her and Berties’s amusement. The children would also attempt to catch the steam billowing along the carriages from the engine, hands outstretched like little stars waiting for the clouds to come. Another game entailed holding their breath between the shrill blasts of the train’s whistle, a game soon halted by Nanny after Bertie’s Consumption made the game a matter of life and death.
Her darling Bertie. She still missed him and hummed the melody from, “I’m Just a Fascist in Love”, a song from his ill-fated production of, “Mosley: The Musical,” a tribute to one of the greatest ever Englishmen.
The curtain fell after two and a half performances. Bertie had sunk the remnants of the family fortune, so assiduously built up by Great Uncle Percy, into the production. The Scottish Estate had to be sold off to pay the debts.
When the Police called her that June morning in ’59 to inform her that Bertie’s body had been found in the Thames, Eunice’s life spluttered to a broken hearted stop. She retired from the world to reside in heartbroken delusional grandeur. She blamed the French for the show’s demise and the death of darling Bertie. She missed him. Missed his touch and his kisses and the warmth of him next to her at night. He should not have jumped. She would have made sure that he would be fine.
What had that wastrel Tibby done? Nothing. Nothing at all. Oh, there were copious tears at the funeral, a delicate veil covering those ruddy features telling the world of her grief for her husband. Even talk among family members of suicide attempts on her part. Just so that everybody would know that Tibby loved Bertie. But Eunice knew better. She knew that Bertie had only ever loved her.
Eunice seethed.
Part 2 Tomorrow!
