A Charmed Life: Growing Up in Macbeth's Castle by Liza Campbell

Author:Liza Campbell [Campbell, Liza]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781250096654
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2015-09-07T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

All those moments, like tears in the rain.

Philip K. Dick

My parents sent their five children to four different boarding schools in four different counties; only my brothers shared a school career. We all stayed in touch, haphazardly, by letter.

I was sent off aged eleven to Cobham Hall, an all-girls school at the other end of the country, in Kent. Emma had gone off to school with our Gordon Cumming cousins, so I was on my own at Cobham and did not enjoy it at all. I still cherish a grudge against the entire county. My letters home were full of complaints and wistful hopes.

Darling Ma,

I am writing to cheer you up a bit. Thank you so much for my lovely holidays. I saw you getting into the car after you had said goodbye, so I banged on the coach window but you didn’t see me. I still hate Cobham and I always will. I am dreading this term; I suppose you won’t be able to take me out as exeat is on January 30th. Our dorm is so cold (the heater is working for the second time this term) you have to take a deep breath before you come in … I pulled my tooth out last night but no fairies came.

I love you so dearly,

Your second, unmarried daughter, Liza

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

P.S. Please send special love to old Findlay.

A volatile parent creates children who want a quiet life, and none of us was badly behaved at school. But, having excelled in the vibrant atmosphere of Hanford, I slumped at Cobham, and felt very far away from home. My mother came down to the school once or twice while I was there, but my father not at all. Unbeknown to me down in Kent, he had got into the habit of taking Emma out, accompanied by various women he always introduced as ‘Olga Nethersole’. Emma didn’t care that the face of Olga was ever changing, or what they were doing with him; she was just overjoyed to see Hugh. But it meant she was drawn into a partisan subterfuge of keeping secrets from Cath. Years later, when Emma was reading a James Thurber short story, she came across the joke my father had been making. A character called Elliot Vereker introduces a young woman as ‘my niece, Olga Nethersole, despite being neither his niece, nor called Olga Nethersole’.

* * *

To assist with all our different half-term and holiday schedules, and to cope with stopovers on our way up to Cawdor, Pa bought a flat in London. It was in Embassy Court, a 1970s high-rise on a busy main road that connected Baker Street with Finchley Road. Down the road was a graveyard, and opposite it was Lord’s cricket ground. Pa was not a cricket fan and my mother shopped in Chelsea – a three-mile drive across the city. The only reason we were in St John’s Wood was that my father’s current Olga Nethersole lived around the corner.

Our roadside bunkroom was unbearably noisy and we had to wear wax earplugs to get any sleep at all.

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