***Chapter 7***
***Uncle Geoffrey***
When the snow falls silent, crisp and new and not a single footprint mars the pure white earth I am alone. I always have been.
Prior to a new posting in Brazil, father and mother, dressed as becomes ambassador and dabbler-in-politics wife, are out on yet another important social gathering where all the right people must be seen and all the right words spoken. While I curl up in jeans and comfy old T-shirt, re-reading Wuthering Heights, my heart free and wild as Cathy's as she gallops with Heathcliff across the Yorkshire Moors though I'm warm as toast, snug as a babe in arms, listening to the loud ticking of the pendulum clock and the scream of the wind as it tries in vain to find a way inside. Should I need them, Sonia Trent, the housekeeper, and her husband John, the handyman, are a phone call and stone's throw away in the gatekeepers' lodge that they will live on in still when my parents are in Brazil and I am shipped out to Uncle Geoffrey's home in some backwoods Yorkshire village called Whistledown.
Uncle Geoffrey, ex-Army colonel, ex-magistrate, ex-beneficiary of the family will is alarmingly eccentric. ("Oh, Good Lord, what would I do with yet more money? Please, Mother, I beg of you, divide the spoils between Arthur, Henry and Charles who all have wives and I daresay will have children too some day. Leave me only father's book collection or, I swear to you, I'll throw every penny I inherit into the Thames".)
Family stories of Daddy's eldest brother abound.
As a young boy he broke down crying when he came across three bugs accidentally squashed beneath a toy box and buried them with all due respect and solemn ceremony. Once he broke an arm and a leg climbing a tree to "rescue" a cat who needed no help whatsoever and jumped down and ran off as soon as he got there. Best of all, when he was six years old and concerned about the nmerous frogs being killed and "families of frogs orphaned" by the increasing number of cars on a nearby road, he decorated the rockery of the garden pond with a grand selection of aquarium ornaments, ships, cannons and anchors, lighthouse, fairytale castle and treasure chest, every week for months spending all his pocket money at the village pet shop, then begged/cajoled/browbeat the bemused gardener into erecting a wooden signpost on which was brightly painted "Home for Unwanted Frogs".
Never married, since his retirement from the Army and the Bench, the mild quirks of youth have become full blown eccentricity in his dotage.
Instead of the residing in comfort in the manor house that graces the large estate of Follyfoot Farm, apparently he only ever uses it in which to sleep, preferring to spend most of his time "hobnobbing with the country yokel hired hands", as my relatives put it, in the old, draughty farmhouse, never seeming to notice that he's often wearing odd socks or some days has even forgotten to eat, despite the best efforts of Bertha Harris, the lady who daily comes up from the village to clean and cook.
Once, having given his chauffeur the afternoon off and permission to drive his daughter and school friends around in the Rolls as a birthday treat, on a whim he asked to be dropped off in a town he'd never been to before, and, approached by animal charity collectors, he happily stuffed every note and coin from his wallet into their collecting tin, then, having no money for transport, managed to get lost several times on unfamiliar, deserted country roads, walking twenty miles or more home in torrential rain, and all but collapsing into the arms of a very relieved Bertha when she opened the door to a very faint knocking and a very hoarse voice pleading to be let in.
My relatives roar with laughter as they swap tales of "poor old Dotty Geoff" when we gather for the one and only time we all try to get together: the Great Xmas Dinner held every Xmas Eve in the Grand Hall of Maddocks Castle owned by Uncle Henry.
Sometimes my cousins, much older than I and strangers to me, are there too: loud, brash Penelope with her broad Texas accent; Winston with his conceited tales of derring-do; nervy, sensitive, skinny Clarissa, who's always too preoccupied with and too anxious about some upcoming music concert to take much interest in conversation; Robyn, who sulks all through the meal because of never being allowed to bring a boyfriend.
I've never met my eccentric Uncle, who's been deeply involved in Follyfoot Farm and Whistledown Village since before I was born. The cousins, particularly Robyn (who caused a scandal in Whistledown when he first visited by arriving at Follyfoot Farm hand-in-hand with effeminate Michael although, probably because Uncle Geoffrey never turned a hair, the gossips tolerate Robyn now) remembering the kindly uncle of their childhood stay in touch; even self-important Winston sends regular letters.
But Uncle Geoffrey himself never attends the Great Xmas Dinner nowadays, partly because the "hillbilly village" as my relatives mockingly like to call the tiny old market town, is usually cut off by snow but mostly because he's far too busy preparing another Xmas Eve Dinner, paid for out of his own pocket, to which all the villagers of Whistledown, young or old, are invited.
And I smile too as everyone, even the serving staff, shakes their heads in amused pity for one so obviously afflicted by some nameless mental malady.
But I like the stories of the Animal Charity and the Home for Unwanted Frogs and the Burial of the Bugs. I like that someone can give away all that they have just to dream dreams. I think he's happier than my snobbish relatives will ever be.
And as I lay down the book to peek through the curtains at the newness of that silent white, untrodden earth, I wonder if at Follyfoot Farm I might find a dream too…