Excerpt
Alec was amusing then, a droll comedian, his wit as yet undulled by the dreary monotony of his married life. He introduced the Anderson boys to the excitement of poker and pontoon, and they were learning fast and winning back their money when Morag burst into their room and pulled the rug out from under their casino. Ian had thought that night that there would be no wedding in the autumn. Alec stood in his pyjama trousers in a scatter of playing cards and coins, holding the returned engagement ring in one hand and Morag’s hand in the other, trying to convince her that he meant no harm and begging her to let him put the ring back on her finger. She did; but not until the following day when they were alone and she could nag and bully him into agreeing to her unconditional surrender terms without fear of intervention by her brothers. Alec was never the same after that. He became a brow-beaten Anderson, crushed by Morag and quelled into a submissive jelly by her mother.
The war did not bring has many changes as one might have expected. The family still went to Brodick and somehow or other Ian frequently managed to have leave around the first two weeks in July; if not for the whole two weeks, then at least for part of them. Only in 1941, when he was in Egypt with the Fourth Armoured Brigade, did he miss his summer in Brodick. That was the year that saw the arrival of Little Miss Shrew.
‘Little Miss Shrew’ was Ian’s unspoken name for his unspeakable niece Rowena. If catastrophes did come in threes, then she was Alec’s third, taking her place behind her mother and her grandmother. She was girny and demanding, a thrawn little vixen who needed nothing more than a man’s heavy hand applied hard and often to her skinny little backside. Last year at Brodick, when they were all cooped up in the guest-house sitting room, staring out in sullen silence at the heavily pouring rain, Rowena lifted Ian’s cigarettes from the side-table she was pretending to dust.
‘These are a filthy, dirty habit,’ she said in a perfect imitation of one of her mother’s termagant tantrums. ‘I’m taking them away and you’re not having them back. Not ever.’
‘Put them back, Rowena,’ Ian said sternly, lowering a three-month-old back issue of The Scots Magazine.
‘No. They are filthy and dirty and smell horribly.’
‘Put them back, you little bitch, or I’ll give you a thrashing.’ Ian was rapidly losing his notoriously quick temper.
‘I sha’n’t,’ Rowena screamed, stamping her foot. Then she ran out of the room, taking the cigarettes with her.
Libros Libertad 