Meddling mother Madge + dutiful daughter Alice = , livre ebook

Troubador Publishing Ltd - Liz Vincent

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151 pages

English

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Madge, from a Dorset farming background, fancies herself as a lady, so she marries Geoff - meek, malleable and minted. All she needs now is a son, but when a daughter turns up instead, Madge is incensed. Alice grows up amid her mother's clumsy attempts at social climbing, being largely ignored. In her teens, she meets Joe - who becomes the love of her life. Having decided he's not good enough for her daughter, Madge plots to break them up. When Alice receives a letter from "Joe", ending their relationship, she is devastated. Malicious Madge. Discovering that Madge has kept big secrets from her, specifically grandparents she never knew existed, Alice secretly visits them - only to find out that her father, Geoff, has died unexpectedly of a heart attack. Anger burns once more as Alice tries to escape the control of her mother. A story spanning six decades, the author has taken inspiration from any daughter that has never, or does not, get along with her mother. Meddling mother Madge + dutiful daughter Alice = Malice will appeal to those who enjoys reading about families and the troublesome relationships that can ensue.

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 janvier 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781784627386
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Meddling mother Madge + dutiful daughter Alice =
Malice
Liz Vincent

Copyright © 2015 Liz Vincent
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.
Matador ®
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Fax: (+44) 116 279 2277
Email: books@troubador.co.uk
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
ISBN 978 1784627 386
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

Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB

To my mother, whose funny little ways
inspired this story
Contents

Cover

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER ONE
“I wanted to go to the Festival of Britain,” Madge said to the midwife as her body was gripped by another contraction. “Aaagh. ” She screamed in pain, which seemed to be getting worse by the second. “Will this take much longer?” she asked once it had eased off.
“Babies take their own time, Mrs. Harwood,” the midwife answered, glancing at her assistant and rolling her eyes towards the ceiling. “It’s the pain,” she explained to the bemused nurse. “It makes them say strange things sometimes.”
“It’s coming, I can see the head.”
Madge was overtaken by the mother of all contractions and she was urged to push with all her might. Tears ran down her face as she did so. There seemed to be a second’s respite, then she fainted with exhaustion.
The midwife did her job, then laid the baby in the waiting cot.
“Let her sleep for a while, this was a long one. Then she can see her beautiful baby,” she said as they both walked away.

*
Just before she slid into unconsciousness, Madge remembered the last time she had felt so much pain. It was in June 1939. She had been fourteen and the year was memorable for two reasons. The outbreak of World War Two and her accident. She had been playing tig in the school yard with her friends May and Doris when it had happened …

*
Running and getting up a good speed was no problem for Madge, who towered above most of her classmates due to her long legs. She was beating May easily when she realised that the classroom window was right in front of her and she couldn’t stop in time. Instinctively she took a deep breath as she approached it at full pelt. She raised her left arm in a vain attempt to protect herself, then it went straight through the window with a glassy crash. There was blood everywhere and she fainted. As she did so, she heard Doris scream.
When she came to, Madge was lying on the ground. Doris and the teacher were gazing down at her. The teacher looked annoyed.
“Can you move your arm, Margaret? The left one?”
Madge didn’t know. Now she felt the pain, but bravely looked across at her badly lacerated arm as she remembered what had happened. Using her right arm she struggled to push herself into a sitting position, shoving her gas mask in its box out of the way, then tried to move the injured arm with limited success.
“She’s alright,” said Doris breathlessly as she glanced at the teacher.
“Yes, nothing broken. Honestly Margaret, you always were a big, clumsy lummox. You’d better get off home, get that bandaged up.”
Madge pushed her heavy brown hair out of her watering grey eyes. Everyone said the same about her, but it wasn’t her fault she was so tall. She blamed her father. He was over six feet.
“Go with her, Doris,” the teacher said over her shoulder as she walked back into the school.
“Yes, miss.” Anger clouded Doris’s clear blue eyes as she helped Madge get carefully to her feet. Then they began the slow walk back to the village.
Ingelfield was a small farming community in darkest Dorset where everybody knew everyone, their everyday lives and murky secrets intertwined in an inevitable sort of chaotic pattern. Madge lived in one of the new council houses on the far side of the village, and knew she was the envy of her friends because of this. Doris’s dad had a tried farm cottage with less than primitive facilities, whereas Madge’s father Albert had been lucky enough to qualify for one of the newer properties that had been built a couple of years ago. Madge could well remember their dreadful old house. If anything it was worse than Doris’s.
Bert, as he was known, was a cowman. Anything and everything to do with cows and he knew it inside out. He had never done anything else in his hard working thirty-seven years. His wife, Eliza, was Ingelfield born and bred but they had met when she had been in service with a family near his home town of Devises. They had married, son Fred had arrived fairly quickly, followed two years later by Madge. Eliza had wanted to be near her mother and now things were going well for the Day family. Fred was working in a garage and Madge was due to go into service when she left school. The only cloud on the horizon was all this talk of a war coming. And the worst part about it was that no-one knew exactly when.
Doris opened the small wrought iron gate with Madge still leaning heavily on her shoulder, and led her up the path to the back door. The front door of the small three bedroomed semi was only ever opened for visitors and was largely ignored. The back door led into the kitchen and once she had got Madge through it, Doris stood to one side to watch the reaction of Eliza Day, a gentle kindly country woman with salt and pepper hair.
“Oh Lord,” exclaimed Eliza, the blood draining from her face as she took in the sight of the sorry pair. “What happened?”
Doris explained while Madge sat down at the scrubbed kitchen table. She was feeling faint and sick. As her mother ran some water into a bowl, Madge glanced over at Doris, her best friend. Did she have to stand there looking so petite and pretty with her long blonde hair and bright blue eyes? She was everything Madge wasn’t and sometimes, like right now, Madge hated her.
“Shall I go for the doctor, Mrs. Day?”
Madge’s spirits lifted when she heard these words, then they sank again as her mother answered.
“We’ll see, Doris. Wait till her dad gets home.”
Madge sat miserably and made no objection as she saw the bottle of purple iodine come out of the cupboard. Doris helped her mother clean the wounds, then the whole arm was swathed in coarse white bandages. On the way home she had lost quite a lot of blood and now she felt light-headed. To her, getting the doctor seemed like a very good idea. The family paid their weekly subscription to the Ancient Order of Foresters but nobody liked to bother the doctor unless it was serious. To Madge this felt very serious indeed.
“She’s been ever so brave.” Doris smiled at her. “Hasn’t cried or anything.”
When Madge heard this her courage failed and she burst into tears. Quiet ones. She knew there was no use in making a fuss. Crying to get attention never worked.
“I should go home now Doris, or your mum’ll be wondering where you are. Say hello for me.”
“Yes, Mrs. Day.”
“Now then Madge.” Eliza turned to her as Doris left. “What are we going to do with you?”
“I feels bad,” she blubbered.
“Of course you do, you’s had a nasty shock. Go lie down for a while, I’ll call you when tea’s ready.”
Madge nodded tearfully then walked slowly from the kitchen, through the spotless front room and up the steep stairs to the smallest bedroom on the back of the house. Her arm felt like a dead weight and was still smarting from the antiseptic iodine as she lay on her narrow bed and cried some more. She wasn’t sorry when she eventually fell asleep.
Three days later it was her birthday. She had got to the ripe old age of fourteen without too much aggravation, and would soon have a long working life to look forward to. Madge actually wasn’t looking forward to it at all. Her future had already been decided for her without so much as a by-your-leave. She had been put into service with the Carringtons, a rich family in a big house on the edge of the village, and was dreading it. It was bad enough she had to do chores for her mum without having to dress up like a penguin and wait on posh people hand and foot. She had even been told she would be expected to curtsey every now and then and Eliza had made her practice in the front room until the cows came home. Well, her dad anyway.
On the morning of her birthday her mum insisted on changing her bandages and Madge was both pleased and scared at the prospect. They weren’t white any more and were beginning to smell. Eliza said she was worried about the wounds going bad ways and Madge made no reply, thinking her mother was quite right to be concerned. The grotty bandages came off, the iodine reappeared and the arm cleaned up painfully again.
Madge got through the morning somehow, helping her mum as best she could with only one useable arm. It was baking day, bread, cake