Road to Berry Edge, The

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Book: Read Road to Berry Edge, The for Free Online
Authors: Elizabeth Gill
and went around with girls his mother didn’t like. Really, Rob reflected, he was fairly normal, but they didn’t see it like that because of John, and the more they tried to alter him the worse it became.
    Even now it was difficult to think of John with equanimity.Rob hesitated on the landing outside his parents’ bedroom door, and then went softly inside.
    His father was sitting up, propped on pillows and was a shock. He seemed to Rob an old man, ill but not defenceless, and all the greeting he gave Rob was, ‘So you finally came back.’
    Rob had imagined this, had rehearsed what he was going to say, had thought how it might be, but years of Vincent Shaw as a father figure had altered his perception of these things and he knew immediately why it was. Northern men like his father showed their children no affection for fear it would make them dependent but Vincent, wonderfully strange to Rob, believed in showing love, and Rob knew that Vincent had liked him almost as soon as they met. Vincent admired him, had told Rob many times over the years how brilliant he thought he was and, although Vincent had at various times treated Rob badly in different ways, there had always been somehow a generosity of spirit about it. Rob had never been afraid of Vincent but he was afraid of his father. In his presence Rob knew now that he would always be a child of ten or eleven, sick with fear, unable to speak while his father rolled around him a blinding sarcasm. He was ten, stupid, worthless, evil perhaps and his father was about to put him down across some convenient piece of furniture and thrash him into helpless misery.
    He backed away and banged into the door. The doorknob seemed so sharp it brought him into the present again. He had rarely been in here, his parents’ room was out of bounds. Rob was used to Ida Shaw’s idea of bedrooms and her ideas were very different. There was little privacy in the Shaw house, strangely he thought. For one thing there were servants. Maids went in and out with bedding and towels and cleaning equipment, the male servants brought buckets of coal and Ida waffled about making sure that everybody had every creature comfort. You could be almost sure of not being alone in your bedroom except when you were asleep,and even then if you left your door open you could awake in the night and find a cat curled up against your stomach. Animals were meant to be banished from the house, but if a window was left open or the door ajar it was surprising what happened.
    Parts of the house were old but she would have nothing to do with these except in summer when you needed all the draughts you could get. In the winter Ida believed in fires in every room and hot meals three times a day. Everybody was well fed and well kept. Servants rarely left. Ida treated her maids almost as well as she treated her children; she fussed over their welfare, became concerned about their love affairs, was unhappy when they were ill, made sure they ate properly. On their birthdays and at Christmas she gave them the kind of presents which any girl would have been pleased with.
    The bedrooms were big and airy with windows to let in the light and thick curtains to keep out the draughts. The furniture was modern and the walls were bright. There were dense carpets and pretty bedcoverings.
    This room was small and dark. The furniture seemed huge and ugly and made the room look even smaller and darker.
    â€˜I hope you’re feeling better,’ he ventured.
    â€˜I’ve been ill for most of the past year. Your mother did write several times asking you to come home.’
    â€˜Yes, I … I know.’
    â€˜You must have been doing something very important in Nottingham.’
    They had. Vincent had been excited about the expansion of the bicycle factory and the way that sales were soaring. That spring and summer Ida had designed and built a Japanese garden. Rob had tried to pretend that his parents were not

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