(1958) Robinson by Muriel Spark

Author:Muriel Spark [Spark, Muriel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-09-24T12:29:49+00:00

Journal, Thursday, 1st July —Jimmie Waterford was born in 1919. He is a second cousin of Robinson, having been brought up in Gibraltar by Robinson’s mother, his father being dead, his mother having disappeared.

The circumstances of Jimmie’s mother’s disappearance were this. Soon after her widowhood she went on a visit to her parents in Namur, leaving Jimmie with his nurse in Holland. In her father’s household was a chef of whom he was very proud. He set so much store by his chef’s cooking that he would not permit his family to season their food according to taste. Few guests came to his table, lest they should require salt and pepper, and then only those who understood and acquiesced in their host’s rule, for this father held that the food was excellent without additional seasoning, but with it all would be ruined, the chef insulted.

Invariably, however, the ancient silver cruets were caused to appear on the table, for form’s sake. Regularly, they were emptied and refilled, any laxity in this respect being a high domestic crime.

On the first evening of her visit, Jimmie’s mother casually reached for the great heavy salt, and ignoring the choking cries which proceeded from her father’s throat, ignoring his bulging eyes and her mother’s fluttering hands, she placed a little salt on the side of her plate. The father turned her out of the house that very hour. She was not impoverished, she went to an inn for the night, and might well have returned to her home in the north of Holland the next day. But the being turned out on the streets with all her baggage seemed to give her the idea, and she remained on the streets for the rest of her known life.

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