subtle feminine puff to the shoulders or a swell to the bosom, but essentially no different from the garb of august parliamentarians. She even wore a fob watch. I never perceived it as mannish at the time. I was too accustomed to seeing Aunt Primrose together with Mama on the divan, laughing and lolling about. In my eyes she was soft and kittenish, a million miles removed from the men who walked stiffly through my daily life, the dour schoolmasters and glum crossing-sweepers and grim policemen. But, looking at a photograph of her at the remove of fifty years, I am startled by the unwomanly directness of her gaze. Who are you to judge me? she seems to be saying to the photographer, as she poses in a dressing-gown, high-collared shirt and cravat.
I always called her Auntie, never Primrose. My mother called her Poss. She called my mother Sophie.
Where did my father fit in this arrangement? Apart, that is, from having made half of me? I am still not sure. He called my mother Dear Heart, always Dear Heart. But he said it somewhat distractedly, the way men talk to themselves when they are busy with an absorbing task. Or he would pronounce it with waggish emphasis, mocking what she was asking of him, and she would respond with an irritable upwards puff from her pouting lip, blowing the loose curls off her brow.
My father, although hairy and deep-voiced, was not very tall, and, like Aunt Primrose, failed to meet the standards of normality set by my English schoolmates. He was an artist, for one thing: a painter. Other people’s houses were full of knick-knacks, china and the smell of potpourri; ours was full of books, half-finished canvases, old rags stiff with dried paint, and the whiff of turpentine. Not that we were any less well-off than the people with the knick-knacks and the china, mind you. We were securely middle-class. But nobody discussed money in those days, so I have very little idea how our comfortable existence was supported, other than that my father would occasionally get a commission to paint someone’s portrait, which would put him into a foul mood and provoke him to impassioned speeches on the sanctity of pure artistic expression. ‘Filthy lucre!’ he would mutter, kicking at any loose object that had the misfortune to be lying on the floor. I guessed that ‘lucre’ must be some sort of dirt traipsed into the house off the mucky London streets.
I think Mama had an inheritance. A sizable amount of money had apparently been left to us by an enigmatic figure called Miss Sugar, who came up in murmured conversation only when I was judged safely out of earshot. Miss Sugar: what a name! Speaking it now, I have to admit it sounds like a figment of fantasy, halfway towards Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy. Can it have been genuine, I wonder? All I can say is that in the late-night reminiscences I overheard in my childhood, Miss Sugar was discussed as a real person, my mother’s steadfast travelling companion during their exploration of the world.
Ah, but I’ve allowed all these larger-than-life females to distract me from my father, as always. My father … what was my father, apart from a painter? He was … he was a bohemian . Again, this was not a word my mother taught me. I learned it from Mr Dalhousie, a master at my school, who pronounced it as if his tongue had been smeared with aniseed. My father was disqualified from the company of men like Mr Dalhousie, because he slept late in the mornings, and spent much of his day squeezing paint onto palettes, scratching his beard, pacing the floor of his studio absentmindedly tossing a peach from one hand to the other, and taking naps.
When I recall him to mind, I rarely see him in a suit, although he was capable of putting on a suit when he left the house. But he rarely left the house. There was almost nothing he wanted to do out there, beyond visiting a few art galleries or popping into the tobacconist’s. Even his art materials he selected by post from
I always called her Auntie, never Primrose. My mother called her Poss. She called my mother Sophie.
Where did my father fit in this arrangement? Apart, that is, from having made half of me? I am still not sure. He called my mother Dear Heart, always Dear Heart. But he said it somewhat distractedly, the way men talk to themselves when they are busy with an absorbing task. Or he would pronounce it with waggish emphasis, mocking what she was asking of him, and she would respond with an irritable upwards puff from her pouting lip, blowing the loose curls off her brow.
My father, although hairy and deep-voiced, was not very tall, and, like Aunt Primrose, failed to meet the standards of normality set by my English schoolmates. He was an artist, for one thing: a painter. Other people’s houses were full of knick-knacks, china and the smell of potpourri; ours was full of books, half-finished canvases, old rags stiff with dried paint, and the whiff of turpentine. Not that we were any less well-off than the people with the knick-knacks and the china, mind you. We were securely middle-class. But nobody discussed money in those days, so I have very little idea how our comfortable existence was supported, other than that my father would occasionally get a commission to paint someone’s portrait, which would put him into a foul mood and provoke him to impassioned speeches on the sanctity of pure artistic expression. ‘Filthy lucre!’ he would mutter, kicking at any loose object that had the misfortune to be lying on the floor. I guessed that ‘lucre’ must be some sort of dirt traipsed into the house off the mucky London streets.
I think Mama had an inheritance. A sizable amount of money had apparently been left to us by an enigmatic figure called Miss Sugar, who came up in murmured conversation only when I was judged safely out of earshot. Miss Sugar: what a name! Speaking it now, I have to admit it sounds like a figment of fantasy, halfway towards Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy. Can it have been genuine, I wonder? All I can say is that in the late-night reminiscences I overheard in my childhood, Miss Sugar was discussed as a real person, my mother’s steadfast travelling companion during their exploration of the world.
Ah, but I’ve allowed all these larger-than-life females to distract me from my father, as always. My father … what was my father, apart from a painter? He was … he was a bohemian . Again, this was not a word my mother taught me. I learned it from Mr Dalhousie, a master at my school, who pronounced it as if his tongue had been smeared with aniseed. My father was disqualified from the company of men like Mr Dalhousie, because he slept late in the mornings, and spent much of his day squeezing paint onto palettes, scratching his beard, pacing the floor of his studio absentmindedly tossing a peach from one hand to the other, and taking naps.
When I recall him to mind, I rarely see him in a suit, although he was capable of putting on a suit when he left the house. But he rarely left the house. There was almost nothing he wanted to do out there, beyond visiting a few art galleries or popping into the tobacconist’s. Even his art materials he selected by post from
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