The Dragon Lady by Louisa Treger

Author:Louisa Treger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

23

Ginie, Scotland, 1940s

Ginie woke from a dream of swimming in the sea, paddling towards a sun-drenched shore that kept getting further away the harder she tried to reach it. She woke with a start and for a moment, didn’t know where she was. Low, autumn sun crept through the bedroom windows, illuminating the checked curtains. A jolt of recognition: Scotland. She buried her head in the pillow, trying to hold onto the final fragments of her dream as they slipped away.

The Courtaulds had shut up Eltham and moved as far from the bombing as they could, to Muckairn in Taynuilt, on the west coast of Scotland. They had handed the palace over to the army – it was now the Headquarters of the Royal Army Education Corps. The staff were shocked and upset by the news of their sudden departure. It had been a wrench saying goodbye to them and to Eltham, but Ginie’s paranoia and nervousness began to ease as soon as they were across the border.

She got out of bed and dressed quickly in the chilly room, looking at the brass bed with distaste, the graceless Victorian furniture. The beds were damp, the curtains and carpets were damp and there was no drying-room. A pulley was fixed on the kitchen ceiling for wet clothes, which dripped onto the table below. She buttoned her blouse and pulled a heavy grey cardigan over it, shivering.

Despite feeling grateful to be away from the bombs, she struggled to adjust to her new life; the grey, stone house with its long passages and winding shallow stairs, the stodgy food. She had spent the spring and summer trying to recreate a garden that felt familiar. She’d worked for months, digging, planting, and fertilizing under the watchful eye of their gardener, Rob Campbell. Rob was a hardworking, taciturn man with a square head tilted back on a body it seemed too big for, who didn’t bother to hide his disapproval of her plans. Ginie wanted a garden full of flowers and she wanted peppers and aubergines, but the summer had been cold and rainy. Raw skies the colour of wet cement bore down on them and the handful of frail shoots that managed to push their way through the earth wilted before they reached maturity. She had given up, feeling as weak and sun-starved as her plants.

She opened the curtains and felt her mood lift. At least the landscape was beautiful. She had loved Loch Etive from the moment she saw it. Mountains rose from the shore and were reflected in the still water, and a colony of seals lazed on the rocks opposite. Turning to the mirror, she began to do her hair. In the unforgiving morning light, mirrors were dangerous objects, showing only too clearly the signs of ageing. Lines were visible on her face, fanning out beneath her eyes like strands of a spider’s web, tracing a path from her nose to the edges of her mouth. There was something sly about this process, so gradual and so apparently imperceptible, yet so inescapable.

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