Beautiful People: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints Read Online Free PDF Page A

It was a combination of things: They were young and in love; they were proud to have helped kill Hitler; and they were happy to haveescaped their respective families. They had yet to encumber themselves with any strange lodgers or mentally ill relatives.
    Terry successfully taught himself Latin but was still unable to gain entry to university. He abandoned his academic aspirations and took a position working night shifts in the BBC news department. His job was to monitor Radio Moscow and keep the world apprized of any Cold War developments.
    During the day, instead of sewing and sawing, he now slept.
    Life, for my sister and I, now took a Dickensian turn.
    Shelagh and I were sent to the Orphanage.
    There was no such thing as day care in Reading in the 1950s. Ever resourceful, my parents went to the local orphanage and made an arrangement to drop us off every day. Cunningly they referred to it as “the Nursery.” Either way, it was a grim, underfunded, state-run institution.
    The orphanage kids were not only violent and unpredictable but also prone to diarrhea and vomiting and dreadful, streaming colds.
    My sister is still furious about the orphanage years. She bridles with outrage when she recalls Johnny, a boy who repeatedly stole, and wore, her red Mary Janes. Johnny’s other favorite trick was to pile us both into a perambulator and push us over a precipice.
    The orphanage was very Lord of the Flies. We even had our own Piggy, a Down syndrome child called Roderick. It wasn’t long before my sister and I joined the unsupervised mob of evil toddlers who persecuted poor Roderick on a daily basis. Shelagh was complicit in a dreadful game where Roderick wasrun over repeatedly by a tricycle. Recalling the drama and cruelty of our orphanage years can reduce the good-hearted Shelagh to tears in about thirty seconds.
    I am definitely less scarred by this period than my sister. Though the orphanage years left me terminally prissy and germ-phobic, I like to think we were somehow privileged. Not everyone gets to hang out with rage-filled, love-starved orphans at such an early age. We were given a perspective on life which is not afforded to every child. At the orphanage we came face-to-face with the hoodlums and grifters and headline makers of tomorrow.
    Saturday was our day to recuperate from the miseries of the orphanage. While Terry slept, Betty racked her brains to think of ways to keep us entertained. With limited resources, the pressure was on. Ere long, our mother had figured out a winning and very unusual formula: she developed a knack for turning mundane events into whirlwinds of hysterical excitement. Under her supervision, the opening of a soup can became the most insanely thrilling movie premiere on Earth.
    “Who wants to watch me put on my bracelet!!!???”
    “Someone in the room is going to paint her nails!! Who is it!!??”
    “Gather round. There’s a bus coming up the hill. You don’t want to miss it!!!”
    We soon got the hang of it. Betty was the M.C. and we were the salivating audience. We understood our role. On cue, and at the drop of a hat, our job was to become totally apoplectic and frenzied.
    “Who wants to play with an envelope?”
    “Yeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
    “Stop screaming! You’ll wake up your father!”
    In no time we had learned to scream silently.
    One rainy Saturday there was a lull in Betty’s fun factory. She seemed to have run out of ideas. Panic-stricken, she scampered downstairs to the shared kitchen. She returned seconds later carrying the battered tin which contained our favorite food: miniature chocolate Swiss Rolls. Extracting one small log, she proceeded to cut it into minute slices. She then arranged them enticingly on a bright pink plate. With a bold flourish, she placed her offering on one of Terry’s occasional tables. Without further ado, Betty tore my teddy bear from my arms.
    “Today is . . . Teddy’s birthday! ” she hissed, in a stage whisper which raged with pent-up