Tangled Dynasty , livre ebook

eBookPartnership.com - Jean Chapman

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

114 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Eleanor learned the reality of life at an early age. From her father she learned about cruelty and hatred from the world she learned about poverty and war... But from her mother she learned about hope - and the courage which would never allow her to bow in defeat, or give up her struggle for dignity and love. Fate might destroy the things she treasured most and take away the people she loved - but it would never crush her spirit or her dreams...

Sujets

Sagas

Informations

Publié par	eBookPartnership.com
Date de parution	29 septembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783015375
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

TANGLED DYNASTY
Perhaps father will go into town to work, like the other men have done, Eleanor suggested hopefully. They say small shops like ours are finished now the factories have all the machinery to make men s woollen stockings in big quantities.
No, no, Amy was despairingly sure this would not be so. He ll start in that old shop again, and I shall have to be here with him all day long. After all, he gets my labour free. Amy covered her mouth as if to hide the expression of dread from her daughter.
Eleanor slipped her arm around her mother s waist. I m older now, I ll be able to help you. She gasped in surprise as her mother pushed her violently away.
No, don t you interfere! Do nothing and say nothing, understand? Amy s face was pale and almost wild-looking.
Eleanor nodded, but the rejection hurt.
Don t you worry, Amy s smile was rueful and her voice more normal as she went on, it ll just be a bootlace job, that s all.
A bootlace job? Eleanor had no idea what her mother meant.
When I m really down, I tell myself I have to make more effort, heave myself up with my own bootlaces!
T ANGLED D YNASTY
J EAN C HAPMAN
This edition first published in hardcover format in Great Britain 1984 by SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of 4 Brook Street, London W1Y 1AA with acknowledgement to Hamlyn Paperbacks
Copyright Jean Chapman 1984
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Chapman, Jean
Published in eBook format by eBookPartnership.com
First published and printed in eBook format in 2014
Tangled dynasty.
I. Title
823 .9I4(F) PR6053.H35/
eBook ISBN: 978-1-78301-537-5
ISBN (print edition) 0 7278 1057 X
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Anchor Brendon Ltd, Tiptree, Essex
For my beloved parents, Albert and Elsie Clowes of Countesthorpe, Leicestershire, my own country boy and city girl.
How creeps the past upon the present, its long dead fingers tangling the future.
Jean Chapman.
Contents
TANGLED DYNASTY
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
1
It was the dawn of the first winter frost when Eleanor came downstairs to find her mother leaning over the shallow brownstone sink, staring out of the kitchen window. She looked over her mother s shoulder to see a great crow sitting on the nearest ice-bloomed post of the clothes-line. Amy did not turn her eyes from the black carrion, and Eleanor thought she looked pale and sickly.
Your father will soon be home from the war, Amy said quietly. It s a sign. Then she caught her breath as a second crow came slapping its wind-tattered feathers, squabbling and cawing as it tried to land on the same post. Two bad omens coming to roost in the same house!
You surely can t believe all that superstitious old nonsense, mother. Anyway, I thought another crow meant the first didn t count! . Then Eleanor was silent, shivering in the ice-cold kitchen, as she too fearfully anticipated the return of her father to the house. She had read of the spontaneous demonstrations of joy in the big cities when, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh month of 1918, hostilities had ceased. Many families in their small village were planning parties and hanging out red, white and blue bunting to welcome their menfolk back. Eleanor thought it would be more appropriate if they hung black crepe outside their cottage.
She had not forgotten the nights she had crouched on her bed fearfully listening as her father threatened, and her mother pleaded to be left alone, begging him to keep his voice down. She remembered the unexplained noises, the sudden thumps and worse, the evil-feeling, near-silences, when alternately she thrust her head beneath her pillow or, holding her breath, listened until she was so chilled she had to creep beneath her blankets once more. On mornings when her mother could not hide her bruised face, she prayed harder than ever before in her young life, prayed that he would die - even though she feared holy retribution.
When conscription had finally caught her father and many other men in its net in 1916, the women and young boys of the village had stepped into their roles overnight. The work-load had been heavy before, and there had never been a village boy who declared he had nothing to do in the hearing of an adult, for he was immediately found a task - chopping wood or collecting horse manure for the garden. As the everyday tasks were taken up by this new work-force, yokes carved to fit far broader shoulders had their chains shortened, to ensure that the buckets of water cleared the ground as they were carried from the village pump.
Necessity was a rapid teacher, and women and boys quickly learned to tend the precious vegetable plots and to increase the odds of a hundred to one shot of a piece of meat on their plates by snaring an occasional rabbit. They ate large suet dumplings before their dinners to stem appetites; they tied and dragged their kindling from the fields; and they harvested and gleaned every last berry, mushroom, blue-stalk, hazel-nut and grain from the fields, hills and spinneys within walking distance of their Midlands village.
Eleanor had not cared what extra work, or extra privation, she had had to undertake or suffer, if it meant her father was kept away from home.
Perhaps your father will have changed, after all the fighting, Amy said, breaking into her thoughts.
Let s go, mother, before he comes, please!
Where? For a moment, fleeting panic caught her unawares, then she remembered her role. No, I m being silly! She opened her arms and clasped her daughter, rocking her reassuringly, trying to laugh away their fears. We ll be all right. All things mellow as they get older, perhaps even your father.
Why did you marry him? Eleanor asked as they stood in each other s arms. The question brought a stillness as Amy seemed to cast her mind back a long, long way.
Her arms fell from Eleanor s waist and she went over to pull out the drawer in the middle of the scrubbed pine table. From under an exercise book of recipes and household tips, she drew out an envelope in which had come a rare letter, and a snapshot, of her husband. Eleanor moved closer and saw her father in the uniform of the Durham Light Infantry, and begrudgingly she had to admit that in his cap with the bugle-shaped badge, khaki jacket, breeches and puttees, he looked smart, striking even. His skin was fine and showed his black moustache to advantage, but Eleanor hated the arrogant way he stood, with one booted foot slightly thrown forward as if demanding all the attention and, as she remembered him, he always had done just that. Her heart plummeted as her mother took the photograph and propped it before a jug on the kitchen dresser. She was already making preparations for her husband s return. He would expect his photograph to be on show.
He was a handsome man . . . still is of course, Amy went on as she stood looking at his picture. It was nice to be seen out with him. He liked his own way even then, and we had to be married. Anyway . . . Amy went on hastily, his people had been blacksmiths for generations and he had this cottage with the workshop behind, as well as the knitting machines. Reuben Lewis was considered a good catch.
Eleanor wondered whether he might have been a different man if he too had had an anvil to beat, to work at until the sweat streamed down his huge torso. Even though he had been away nearly three years, and there was an age of growing-up between fourteen and seventeen, she could remember the feeling of frustrated energy, the air of barely controlled impatience about her father, as he had worked over the loom, making the broad woollen cloth for men s underwear, or turning out men s half-hose on circular knitting machines.
The two older men who had worked for Reuben before the war had found jobs in city factories. Eleanor had felt they had been glad to get away from the Lewis yard and its morose master. She could remember her own astonishment when she had first visited another stockinger s shop in the village and found it alive with talk, leg-pulling, political haranguing, and with time to stop the clattering shuttles to praise the little girl who had come with a message from one master stockinger to another. In her father s shop there had never been more than the odd muttered comment or cursory order. Her message given, she was found an apple by one of the men, which he had polished on his shirt sleeve before handing it to her.
Pity she s a Lewis. She had stopped outside, the bright apple poised on her teeth ready to take the first bite, and listened. Old Laxton, the sexton, reckons he s seen three Lewis women buried who still had black eyes as a parting gift from their menfolk. Suddenly she had not wanted his apple, which moments before her mouth had been watering for. She had thrown it away.
Perhaps father will go into town to work, like the other men have done, she suggested hopefully. They say small shops like ours are finished now the factories have all the machinery to make men s woollen stockings in big quantities.
No, no, Amy was despairingly sure this would not be so, and continued as if talking to herself, shaking her head faster and faster. No, I know. He ll start in that old shop again, and I shall have to be here with him all day long, toeing the socks he makes, making up the vests and things. After all, he gets my labour free. All the time -except when he s away selling round the villages, all the time . . . he ll . . . Amy plucked up the ends of her long white apron and covered her mouth as if to hide the expression of dread from her daughter, be here.
Eleanor slipped her arm around her mother s waist. I m older now, I ll be able to help you. She gasped in surprise as her mother pushed her violently away.
No, don t you interfere! Do nothing and say nothing, understand? Amy s face was pale and almost wild-looking as she repeated, Understand?
Eleanor nodded, but the rejection hurt.