children to breakfast, two dine in the dining parlour.
To be up and dressed at half past eight o'clock every morning, if later a black mark.
Lessons to be done in the schoolroom, except on those days that the rooms are cleaning, and on that day in the dining room.
Go to bed at nine o'clock.
No one to go up the best stairs whilst cleaning.
If the weather is not fine, business to commence immediately after breakfast. How you must wish for fine weather. How your hearts must sink if you wake up to a black sky and the steady beat of rain. And what about the best stairs? Is there a mad, naughty morning when, giggling, you tiptoe up all the same, trying not to leave a footmark on the freshly mopped wood?
Another journal, kept by your sister Sarah during one of your mother's absences in July 1821, with answers scrawled in pencil, goes like this:
'Did you order dinner before breakfast?'
'Yes.'
'Have you got up in proper time?'
Sarah: 'Yes.'
Jane: 'Yes.'
Harriet: 'Yes.'
'Have you walked five times round the garden before breakfast?'
Sarah, Jane, Harriet, Sophy each signs: 'Yes.'
'Were you ready for breakfast?'
'Yes.'
'At what time did you begin your French and did you do it well?'
Sarah: 'About half past nine but I read before breakfast.'
Jane: 'Ditto. Ditto.'
'Have you taught Anna and Nick and Harriet their lessons?'
'Yes.'
'Did the little ones do good lessons?'
'Pretty well.'
'Have you been ready for dinner?'
All: 'Yes.'
'What time did you breakfast?'
'Nine precisely.'
'What time did you dine?'
'Half past three.'
'Have you been agreeable and polite to Mademoiselle and to each other?'
Sarah: 'Yes.'
Jane: 'Yes.'
John: 'Yes.'
Harriet: 'Yes.'
'Have you behaved well in every respect to nurse?'
Nicholas, Anna, Mary: 'Yes, very well, all.'
And I stop right there. Because this is you. You just moved into the frame. Here you suddenly are, five years old and standing there just behind Nick and Anna, plump hands folded behind your back, joining in: Yes, very well, all. It's the very first time I've heard your voice.
My boy at five years old. Five and a half Summer mornings before school, we have a little routine. After his father has dropped the other two - the two babies - at nursery, we have half an hour in hand, so we have breakfast outside in the garden together - French breakfast! - him drinking hot chocolate and eating baguette, me drinking coffee and reading aloud a chapter of whatever novel we're in the middle of Five Go Off in a Caravan Together. James and the Giant Peach.
I read and he drinks his pink-brown chocolate from a big yellow cup and watches me over the rim. Serious and intent. The sun is hot on the metal table. He has a scratch on his hand. He wears an Aertex shirt. Birds are singing and the underneaths of the leaves are lit up, the lightest summeriest green, and bees are already crawling in and out of the roses.
It's going to be a boiling hot day.
I look at my watch.
When it's time, we go inside - the kitchen suddenly full of shadows, cool and dark - and I wipe his mouth with a flannel and we get his bag and we walk to school together, hand in hand.
He asks me questions about the world - questions he's asked before, and new ones too. I try to answer. When I don't know an answer, I tell him so and he squeezes my hand. He doesn't mind when I don't know things.
I squeeze his hand back.
And I am entirely happy. I think these days will probably go on for ever, that this is how life will be from now on, will always be. I think I will have this same experience with his brother and sister, that I will go on having it, that I have got it all to come.
But in fact that was it. I didn't do the same thing with them. And it was just that one summer when he was five. In fact, I say summer but it was probably just a few weeks of warm weather that particular term. It might not even have been weeks, it might have been days. How many days? How many days did we do this thing of French breakfast in
To be up and dressed at half past eight o'clock every morning, if later a black mark.
Lessons to be done in the schoolroom, except on those days that the rooms are cleaning, and on that day in the dining room.
Go to bed at nine o'clock.
No one to go up the best stairs whilst cleaning.
If the weather is not fine, business to commence immediately after breakfast. How you must wish for fine weather. How your hearts must sink if you wake up to a black sky and the steady beat of rain. And what about the best stairs? Is there a mad, naughty morning when, giggling, you tiptoe up all the same, trying not to leave a footmark on the freshly mopped wood?
Another journal, kept by your sister Sarah during one of your mother's absences in July 1821, with answers scrawled in pencil, goes like this:
'Did you order dinner before breakfast?'
'Yes.'
'Have you got up in proper time?'
Sarah: 'Yes.'
Jane: 'Yes.'
Harriet: 'Yes.'
'Have you walked five times round the garden before breakfast?'
Sarah, Jane, Harriet, Sophy each signs: 'Yes.'
'Were you ready for breakfast?'
'Yes.'
'At what time did you begin your French and did you do it well?'
Sarah: 'About half past nine but I read before breakfast.'
Jane: 'Ditto. Ditto.'
'Have you taught Anna and Nick and Harriet their lessons?'
'Yes.'
'Did the little ones do good lessons?'
'Pretty well.'
'Have you been ready for dinner?'
All: 'Yes.'
'What time did you breakfast?'
'Nine precisely.'
'What time did you dine?'
'Half past three.'
'Have you been agreeable and polite to Mademoiselle and to each other?'
Sarah: 'Yes.'
Jane: 'Yes.'
John: 'Yes.'
Harriet: 'Yes.'
'Have you behaved well in every respect to nurse?'
Nicholas, Anna, Mary: 'Yes, very well, all.'
And I stop right there. Because this is you. You just moved into the frame. Here you suddenly are, five years old and standing there just behind Nick and Anna, plump hands folded behind your back, joining in: Yes, very well, all. It's the very first time I've heard your voice.
My boy at five years old. Five and a half Summer mornings before school, we have a little routine. After his father has dropped the other two - the two babies - at nursery, we have half an hour in hand, so we have breakfast outside in the garden together - French breakfast! - him drinking hot chocolate and eating baguette, me drinking coffee and reading aloud a chapter of whatever novel we're in the middle of Five Go Off in a Caravan Together. James and the Giant Peach.
I read and he drinks his pink-brown chocolate from a big yellow cup and watches me over the rim. Serious and intent. The sun is hot on the metal table. He has a scratch on his hand. He wears an Aertex shirt. Birds are singing and the underneaths of the leaves are lit up, the lightest summeriest green, and bees are already crawling in and out of the roses.
It's going to be a boiling hot day.
I look at my watch.
When it's time, we go inside - the kitchen suddenly full of shadows, cool and dark - and I wipe his mouth with a flannel and we get his bag and we walk to school together, hand in hand.
He asks me questions about the world - questions he's asked before, and new ones too. I try to answer. When I don't know an answer, I tell him so and he squeezes my hand. He doesn't mind when I don't know things.
I squeeze his hand back.
And I am entirely happy. I think these days will probably go on for ever, that this is how life will be from now on, will always be. I think I will have this same experience with his brother and sister, that I will go on having it, that I have got it all to come.
But in fact that was it. I didn't do the same thing with them. And it was just that one summer when he was five. In fact, I say summer but it was probably just a few weeks of warm weather that particular term. It might not even have been weeks, it might have been days. How many days? How many days did we do this thing of French breakfast in
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