It began when they moved house of course. They had all been quite settled as their Aunt Dorothy used to say to anyone who would listen during her weekly trips to the supermarket. After all it had been such a relief to be so settled after what had gone on before. The time before was always understood to have been distressing because Dorothy had that special way with her voice, cultivated as a child and never abandoned as she grew up, into this fine woman who could take over any place with her character if she so wished. For she had character because she had faced challenges head on. She had prevailed, where others, sometimes, it had to be acknowledged, were a little disappointing.
Her Words would hang like small nooses above the heads of friends, shoppers and visitors alike, defying anyone listening to stop her mid- sentence and to ask her what she actually meant. But they never did stop her and they never asked and George would watch her words hanging there in the air, waiting to come down, talons ready.
Aunt Dorothy had no time for George. No time for a boy who had always preferred her cousin Gertrude to her. Even now, when she was dead, and dead in such, unusual circumstances, he loved Gertrude. Gertrude who had never married, who had smelt of cinnamon biscuits and well….there was that summer with all those people staying, everywhere. A short, knowing smile and then that rather pretty tilt of her head.
She didn’t mind him coming to stay at the cottage with the rest of the family, but somehow George let everyone down. He was not an easy child you see.Perhaps it was the past, she accepted that, but he was not transparent, he remained outside of everyone except her. But families all had their characters didn’t they, and one day she hoped, usually when she found Carol Marshall in the fresh food department, George would grow into a rather worthwhile, if rather quiet young man.
George stayed out of Dorothy’s way when he went to stay at the Cottage. He would arrive with a small case, filled with books, ink and plasticine. Dorothy never read for she was too busy living and plasticine smelt cheap and out of date: Like cheap and out of date, fun.
She wanted to read his poems, mind you, to find out about Gertrude, but George kept his book deeply in his pocket when she approached. Such a secretive, very private child she declared archly as if she knew something more and just wasn’t sharing just yet.