Slipstream (71 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Jane Howard

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With my brother, Robin, and Si, my grandfather’s monstrous mongrel (c.1929).

At Lansdowne Road, aged about eight (c. 1931). I was steeped in Andrew Laing fairy-tale books, and the problem of living half by fairy formulae and half by the
strict justice demanded between cousins and siblings occupied me for some years.

My father loved sailing (c.1930). He was one of the most gregarious people I have ever known, and behaved, at the slightest encouragement, as though it was his
birthday.

My father’s mother, Florence Howard, with the reprehensible Si. She was invariably called the Witch because she had such an unwitch-like nature.

My father’s father, Alexander Howard, almost always called the Brig, because he had never been in the army.

The Beacon, our family’s holiday home in Sussex (c. 192,7). It stood on the top of a hill and was called the Beacon because beacon fires had been lit on
the site since the arrival of William the Conqueror.

Home Place, my father’s parents’ house, 3½ miles from the Beacon.

My mother with Colin, shortly after his birth (c.1932). His face was the colour of a pale tomato and his wispy damp hair grew in all directions. I loved him on
sight.

Edith Somervell, my mother’s musical mother. She was called Grannia by the family.

With Colin at Lansdowne Road.

A very small selection of family at the Beacon, Robin is two in front of me and Colin is in the first pram. Colin’s nanny is in the white hat.

Peter Scott and Lady Kennet, his mother, known as K.

Peter, my first husband (1942).

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