Rain Before Seven
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Dales Large Print Books. ISBN 1-85389-579-2 pbk 318 pages. Published by Magna Large Print Books
Comment: This is an altogether delightful story, full of colourful detail and humour often reminiscent of Gerald Durrell. One of the most entertaining novels I have read. CHM RAIN BEFORE SEVEN CHAPTER ONE. This is the full text of the first chapter 1 People: are they here to stay?
My
grandmother, Matilda Horton-Phillips, always kept her pipe in the
right hand pocket of her apron, and her teeth in a small black bag
which I, her granddaughter, never understood why Tilly's addiction to shag didn't interfere with her curriculum for being a lady since, according to her, any woman who smoked cigarettes was an abomination. So was any woman who did not bath at least once a day, supported the Labour Government, or scratched in public. People came to our house much more frequently than they left and when taken by surprise, without time to stow her pipe in her pocket, Tilly thrust it between her feet and talked wisely and smiled graciously while smoke, strong as black coffee, curled under the hem of her long black skirt. For
all the years I remember, her style of dress remained unchanged.
Until I was seven, I thought she was Queen Victoria. Way back in
1906 she swore allegiance to a certain paper pattern and together
they marched sturdily down the years. She always wore a blouse with
elbow length sleeves, pleats at the front running high up to the
chin, and fastened at the back with hooks and eyes. Of these blouses
she had 'best' and 'workaday.' The workaday ones were not best ones
grown shabby but were made from drab material that could remind her
of nothing but work. One I remember was in swamp coloured gingham
patterned with wood lice. Best blouses grew from gayer stuffs;
brightly coloured balloons sailing away into a blue Tilly was a widow and always lived with us. My father was tall and thin like an old fashioned clothes peg. My mother was plump and comfortable like a velvet cushion. My sister Vicky was thin and later grew fat. I was fat and later grew thin. Tilly was like Queen Victoria wearing a black straw boater trimmed with sunflowers and smoking a pipe. Really we were a small family but because mother said to everyone she met, especially down and outs, 'Well, come and live with us,' and because most of them did, we occupied to the last window ledge a rambling house cum bungalow with a multitude of bedrooms but only one room upstairs where the previous owner used to watch the stars. On a hill it was, in the suburbs of a large industrial town. It was a place that might have grown into an ivory tower had it not been squashed early in life, throwing its tentacles outwards. On the end of each one grew a room for storing bicycles and onions, or a porch, or a window revealing factory chimneys, rows of houses, and a Y.M.C.A hut at the end of the road. A
canal, known as The Cut, ran behind our house and wound its way
somewhere into the country. For a small annual sum father
rented the fishing rights of a short stretch, although he never
actually fished or allowed anyone else to do so. He considered the
offering of a baited hook to be the dirtiest trick a human could
play on a dumb creature. But h If you followed the Cut long enough you eventually came to the country. We knew it was there for we could see from the dining-room window, away in the distance, a round-shouldered hill where rhododendrons bloomed in May, looking like spoonfulls of pink blancmange aimed haphazardly and left to trickle down the sides. In winter, if the clouds were high, we could see an orchard of apple trees with bare arthritic limbs, and we were content to leave them there. Not that we had anything against the countryside and fresh air. We knew some people liked it and we were big enough to tolerate such eccentricities. As a town family though we preferred our air slightly tainted and that was the way we got it, mainly because of Tilly's pipe backed by the factory chimneys. Whatever the atmosphere, polluted or not, our place on the hill abounded with people. Mother had a flair for people. I feel sure half the people on the police Missing Persons list were up at our house. When I write about my family it is people, not great events, that come most easily to mind. Like other families we had our quota of holidays, Christmases, and funerals, especially funerals, but it is people I remember. Sick ones and healthy ones; funny ones and sad ones. We all lived together in terrible confusion without developing any neuroses or suffering any major crises, if you don't count the time father dropped his spectacles down the lavatory or the time my sister cut off aunt Mary Ann's hair. Mother hauled people in and eventually sent them away fed, clothed, healed, or buried, according to their requirements. It is difficult to find the best way to describe my mother. I could tell you she was an inveterate hoarder and for years saved teapot lids hoping one day to meet up with someone who saved lidless teapots. I could tell you she is the kindest person I have ever known. You won't believe this but I swear it is true. She once gave winter lodgings to a snail. It entered attached to the outer leaves of a cauliflower, carrying a very pretty black and white shell. An east wind was blowing at the time and mother thought it would be bad for a snail's bronchitis. So she settled it on the shelf wrapped in a lettuce leaf, and it worked its way twice down the table leg and three times round the sugar tin before spring came and Tilly threw it out. Perhaps you will get a correct impression of my mother if I tell you that she brought up one untidy husband, one inflammable grandmother, a tribe of nomads, and two untidy daughters without once raising her voice or feeling obliged to tell us the facts of life, for which I am very grateful. By the time I was fourteen mother had salvaged several aunts and set numerous tramps on their way dressed in father's plusfours. She took in an out-of-work trick cyclist, a drummer from Hollywood, and gave somebody contemplating suicide a good talking to. The trick cyclist was a wonderful liar. He told us about a tight rope walker he once knew who fell from her rope and saved herself by grabbing it with her teeth. We believed this in the same way we believed about the cow jumping over the moon. Mother's first salvage job was aunt Mary Ann. Aunt Mary Ann was ninety-two, small and frail, and had beautiful long white hair. 'That's where all her strength has gone,' Tilly explained. 'That's why she is so shrivelled up.' Apparently being ninety-two in no way contributed to her frailty. Mother heard that aunt Mary Ann was unhappy living in a dowdy tenement with a woman called Miss Hookin, so one Saturday morning we set out to fetch her to be unhappy with us. Nobody had thought to inform aunt Mary Ann of this arrangement and she seemed surprised to see us. She soon caught on to the idea, however, and began collecting her belongings. 'It's all those pictures,' she said, indicating several heavily framed pictures hanging on the dark walls. One depicted men in comic opera uniforms thrusting swords in each other and bringing forth gushes of comic opera blood. Next to that was a seascape showing disembodied limbs floating in on the tide. It was called 'The Sea Gives Up Its Dead.' 'They depress me but Miss Hookin won't take them down,' aunt Mary Ann went on. I couldn't agree with her. I was six then and considered the pictures extremely moving. Aunt Mary Ann tied a few china figures in a red flannel petticoat as Miss Hookin came into the room. She was a tall angular woman, a dressmaker by trade. Without speaking, she sat down and her grubby hands worked deftly on a white wedding dress. We took aunt Mary Ann home. I carried her red flannel parcel while mother helped her on and off trams. She soon settled down with us and quickly made it apparent that, apart from not liking the sea to give up its dead, she didn't like children either, except my sister who was two years older than I and had probably reached the age of discretion in aunt Mary Ann's eyes. Aunt
Mary Ann had a deep croaky voice and never tired of telling us
frightening stories of the time her husband, Benjamin, went insane 'Poor little girl,' aunt Mary Ann said. 'I hope you never suffer the way I did. Yes, cut a bit off, dear, it's too long anyway, and I said to him Benjamin, put down that axe but he didn't take any notice and chased me from room to room. Mind you, children, he wasn't in his right mind.' We listened breathlessly. Snip, snip, snip, went the scissors. In our imagination we followed aunt Mary Ann and locked ourselves in the woodshed away from poor crazed Benjamin and his axe. By the time he had calmed down enough for us to come out, it was too late. Aunt Mary Ann's beautiful white hair lay groaning on the floor, and the bit left on her head looked as if it was sprouting through a colander. She lost more by the scissors than she ever did by the axe. 'Now don't you be cross with that poor little girl,' she said, seeing mother about to explode. 'It will grow and she enjoyed it.' Vicky enjoyed it all right and it did grow, but in the meantime, and as a penance, mother made us knit a woollen cap for aunt Mary Ann to wear. 'Well, thank goodness it was your sister, that's all I've got to say,' Tilly said later as I sat on the floor at her feet contentedly rubbing out tobacco. 'Thank goodness it was your sister and not you.' The following year was the year I started piano lessons and the year aunt Mary Ann wisely died. A few days later there was a funeral from our house and for one afternoon we were all suitably subdued. Miss Hookin took Aunt Mary Ann's place. She quarrelled with the trick cyclist, made four blouses for Tilly, and then went to live with her sister. Mother found aunt Baker next, although she never made it clear just whose aunt she was supposed to be. I can't remember anyone in the family claiming direct relationship. Looking back, it's difficult to believe she was ever related to anyone but a sparrow, so little and fluttery was she. The advent of aunt Baker caused some friction for the sad truth is that when aunt Baker came to live with us she was senile and very fond of throwing her teeth on the fire. Now Tilly refused to pay homage to senility, regarding it as a trap set by nature for the unwary. 'Why that woman can't leave her teeth where they belong is something I shall never understand,' I remember her saying, retrieving aunt Baker's lower set from the embers just as they burst into flames and embraced the poker. 'Beatrice, get the Slippery Elm out.' But perhaps the most striking feature I remember aunt Baker for was her wig, she being rather bald. Like Tilly, she was dedicated to cleanliness and she loved to wash her wig. Now a wig must never be washed. It can be brushed and combed, waved or dry cleaned, never washed. It required all mother's tact and patience to persuade aunt Baker to leave her wig where it was, on her head. As soon as mother went out shopping aunt Baker whipped it off, gave it a good swish round in Persil, and pegged it out on the line to dry. When mother returned Tilly would announce, 'The Apaches have been on the warpath again. Aunt Baker's scalp is out on the line.' Always resourceful, mother unpegged the wig, damped it, and stretched it over a basin, smoothing it down towards the rim. It dried crinkled and several sizes too small. Until a new one could be made aunt Baker went about looking like a child growing out of its hair. One night, aunt Baker died. She died quietly in the middle of the night, without bothering anyone, clutching her handkerchief and with no one to grieve over her except us. Such was my childhood. It seems to me on reflection that teeth and hair played a big part. I suppose I had some too, but it is other people's I remember. I also went to school.
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COVER
BLURB
For Hannah Carlton, the honey days of adolescence ended
as England went to war in September 1939. Life with her large
and gregarious family did little to prepare her for work on a farm
near the village of Saxby Rasen. At Mayhill Farm she finds herself
terrified by the animals and the unpredictable ways of bulls and
tractors but delighting in the seasons and colours of the
countryside, the unchanging factors in a country transformed by war.
And there she meets Jamie Sinclair, a young Canadian airman from the
nearby RAF station ...
hung from her waist in the manner of a bunch of keys. She was unable
to smoke with her teeth in, and being a lady prevented her talking
to people without them. She was a tidy soul, my grandmother, and
having a place for everything enabled her to make the change from
mouth to pocket and from bag to mouth in one breathless swoop,
deceiving no one.
satin sky, or white daisies, stiff with virtue, heavily embossed on
a rich red fabric. Over her long skirt, always black, she wore a
black apron with a life expectancy of almost nil owing to the number
of times her lighted pipe set the pocket on fire.
e
liked to watch the fish darting through reeds, their white bellies
illuminated by sunlight, and feel the thrill of ownership. Here they
were safe until they trespassed downstream and were caught on other
hooks.
and had to be put away. It seemed that Benjamin used to spend golden
moments thinking he was an owl and hooting through a bedroom window.
This didn't worry anybody until one day he stopped being an owl and
took up an axe and chased aunt Mary Ann round the house. That was
the day they carried him away in a straitjacket. We liked this story
best of all. It was during the telling of it that my sister Vicky
cut aunt Mary Ann's hair off. She didn't mean to do it of course and
fortunately I was the happy onlooker. Frequently aunt Mary Ann
allowed Vicky to brush and wield her hair and if a little trimming
took place she didn't mind. At that time, Vicky wanted to be a
hairdresser and had to obtain her experience somewhere.