The Fettered Past by Netta Muskett

Author:Netta Muskett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Stratus

Chapter Nine

The Taines’ bungalow was a long, sprawling collection of rooms which opened out of one another, the only connecting passage being the veranda which ran right along the front of it and which when it rained was so inconvenient that Gail soon caught the habit of passing from room to room with little regard for other people’s privacy. As a consequence, her first feeling of shyness at being with Isobel, in her new capacity of wife and mother, and with Jeffery, of whom she had seen very little in the past, soon passed off, and in a few days she had merged into the life of the family.

The Taine babies were enchanting, Marcus (called Mark to distinguish him from his grandfather), who was three, and Laurie, who had just had her first birthday. Mark was like his father, dark-haired, thin as a lathe but tough as steel wire; Laurie was the golden-haired replica of Jeffery’s dead mother, after whom she was named, and whereas Mark was already a purposeful, trustworthy person, Laurie even at a year old was a bundle of mischief and invention and even had to have a string tied on her to keep her from crawling on swift hands and knees, or wriggling along on her fat little bottom, outside the bungalow and into the various dangers of the compound. The two native servants, Missa and Sixpence, adored her and would at any time neglect their work to carry her about in their arms or on their backs, doing the imperious behests which she was able, without more than a few unintelligible words, to make plain to them.

There was always plenty to do, especially in a place where there was no electricity, and Isobel had her hands more than full, looking after her husband, her children and her home, in that order, and always with the need to see what the servants were doing or, more usually, what they should be doing but weren’t. They had to live chiefly on tinned food which had to be bought once a week from the food store in the S.L.S.T. compound, known as ‘the camp’, and it took skill and ingenuity to make the meals varied and appetising. Isobel did most of the cooking since they could not afford more than the two boys, and Gail was lost in admiration for the way in which she coped with the smoky wood fire which heated a temperamental oven, saw that the house was kept clean and reasonably tidy, the children out of too much mischief (she explained her care of them as being largely merely keeping them alive and comparatively whole), harrying the servants, mending and making clothes, and doing such small entertaining as was unavoidable. In addition she acted as an unofficial doctor to the Africans, men, women and children, who trailed up to the back door with various complaints, ranging from the horrible yaws, which she greatly feared might infect the children, to ulcerated legs and feet and even occasionally snake-bites.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.