Ghost Variations by Jessica Duchen

Author:Jessica Duchen [Duchen, Jessica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783529834
Publisher: Unbound
Published: 2016-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

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She spent all evening at the Yeatses’ with one ear attuned for the telephone, which stayed mute. Willy Yeats was away in London. George, who was overjoyed to see her, though horrified by the circumstances, cooked a comforting stew; her son Michael chattered away about school, and her daughter Anne, perhaps hoping to distract Jelly, brought out a book of sketches she had made on an academy trip to County Cork. Anne, though only 15, was at art college. Jelly examined page after page, praising the deft curve of a hillside, the balance of perspective and structure in the whole. This young girl had the eye and hand of a woman. Jelly remembered, as if it had all happened to somebody else, that at Anne’s age she herself was on the point of leaving Hungary and stopping her official studies altogether.

‘What does “Sai” mean?’ asked Anne.

‘It’s a little nickname that my family and some close friends use. It’s “shy”, spelled phonetically in Hungarian.’

‘Sai is also a Sanskrit word,’ George told her. ‘It’s hard to explain, but it means something like the divine mother and father rolled into one. So it’s a divine presence. Someone who seems to have – well, something extra.’

‘You’ve gone purple, Auntie Jelly,’ Michael declared, with satisfaction.

‘Well, I’m hardly a divine presence, am I! Anne, Michael, darlings, have you noticed we never choose our own nicknames?’

‘But perhaps that’s how your sisters saw you? How fascinating,’ said George.

‘Nicknames stick,’ Jelly said. ‘It doesn’t matter. Really, it doesn’t mean anything at all.’

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