The Restless Years [1955-63] by Cecil Beaton

Author:Cecil Beaton [Beaton, Cecil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912546404
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2018-07-10T04:00:00+00:00

My mother now seems contented to do nothing each day. She does not read a book or a newspaper. She has little interest in the garden, and even her dog has become a habit. As she sits on the library sofa, she is perhaps remembering things of the past. She has never been one to confide in members of her own family, and has always dismissed as nonsense or rubbish any reminiscences about life in Cumberland where she was born. Now, however, she finds Mrs Talbot, the cook, extremely sympathetic and she also talks freely to my wonderful Eileen, about the hordes of daffodils that were like a yellow carpet under the windows, about how her mother made cheeses that were like butter and unlike any others today. She tells how as a child she would sit in front of the fire with lanoline on her face, or how she would climb trees until her mother warned her that she would be dressed in pantaloons. Sometimes she talks of my father, and of my brother Reggie and what a sport he was. She has become like a child in the house, and I talk to her with the exaggerated kindness and gentleness that I would if she was a six-year-old.

Yesterday I arrived from London and, standing in the hall in my hat and coat, was greeted by my mother saying: ‘Are you going?’ Sometimes she is amusing. She says in amazement: ‘She’s seventy-six! Good heavens, she’s old!’ Given a letter from a stranger who knew forbears, my mother says: ‘Goodness, that’s going a long way back! I can’t be bothered about that!’

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