Sunday, 25 August 2013

{A trip to Scotland [continued]}[16th August 1971]


[Redbook1:214-215][19710816:2300b]{A trip to Scotland [continued]}[16th August 1971]

Monday 16th August 1971
11pm
[continued]

            The family fascinate and intrigue me, and I'm not quite sure why.  Father [N], [...], is apparently teased by his [colleagues], (who are fond of him, I am told) but revered by at least one of their wives, possibly more, in a peculiar way: he is thought to be one of the kindest people, which is true up to a point, but only in a selective sense.  He has certainly been very kind to me, refraining from returning my remarks in kind as I know he can.  He stayed with us for several weeks ([...?]).  He seems recently to have pulled off one of the cleverest tricks I have seen:  he has moved his family permanently into the country, where only one of them really wanted to be, (himself protesting the while that he didn't want to do it) and has procured for himself, alone, a flat in London.  I don't know one other [of his colleagues] who could have pulled that one off, though God knows some of them would like to.

            I am told that D, his wife, is in fact painfully shy.  Of course it is nice to say that of people who frighten one so that one can pity them; it may be true.  She frightens me sometimes.  She has been at times very unkind to N in the hearing of others.  But she has always been very nice to me, on the few occasions when we had met; in some ways I prefer her to N.  I cannot remember her face.


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