Welcome to Sleep Stories with Steph.
It is time to relax and fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.
Close your eyes and feel yourself sink into the support beneath you and let all the worries of the day drift away.
This is your time and your space.
Take a deep breath in through your nose and let it out with a long sigh.
There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.
Happy listening.
Chapter Ten Bless this food to our use and consecrate our lives to thy service,
Said Uncle Herbert briskly.
Aunt Wellington frowned.
She always considered Herbert's graces entirely too short and flippant.
A grace,
To be a grace in Aunt Wellington's eyes,
Had to be at least three minutes long and uttered in an unearthly tone between a groan and a chant.
As a protest,
She kept her head bent a perceptible time after all the rest had been lifted,
When she permitted herself to sit upright,
She found Valancy staring at her.
Ever afterwards Aunt Wellington averred.
She had known from that moment there was something wrong with Valancy Stirling.
In those queer slanted eyes of hers,
There was an odd gleam of mockery and amusement.
Such a thing was unthinkable,
Of course.
Aunt Wellington at once ceased to think that.
Valancy,
However,
Was enjoying herself.
She had never enjoyed herself at a family reunion before.
In social functions,
As in childish games,
She had only filled in.
Her clan had always considered her very dull.
She had no parlour tricks and she'd been in the habit of taking refuge from the boredom of family parties in her blue castle,
Which resulted in an absent-mindedness that increased her reputation for dullness and for acuity.
She has no social presence whatever,
Aunt Wellington had decreed once and for all.
Nobody dreamed Valancy was dumb in their presence merely because she was afraid of them.
Now she was no longer afraid of them.
The shackles had been stricken off her soul.
She was quite prepared to talk if occasion offered.
Meanwhile,
She was giving herself such freedom of thought she had never dared to take before.
She let herself go with a wild inner exultation as Uncle Herbert carved the turkey.
Uncle Herbert gave Valancy a second look that day.
Being a man,
He didn't know what she'd done to her hair.
But he thought,
Surprisingly,
Doss was not such a bad-looking girl after all.
And he put an extra piece of white meat on her plate.
What herb is most injurious to a young lady's beauty?
Propounded Uncle Benjamin by way of starting conversation.
Valancy,
Whose duty it was to say,
What?
Did not say it.
Nobody else said it.
So Uncle Benjamin,
After expectant pause,
Had to say,
Time.
And felt his riddle had fallen flat.
He looked resentfully at Valancy,
Who had never failed him before.
But Valancy did not seem to be aware of him.
She was gazing round the table,
Examining relentlessly everyone in this depressing assembly of sensible people and watching their little squirms with a detached,
Amused smile.
So,
These were the people she'd always held in reverence and fear.
She was now seeing them with new eyes.
Big,
Capable,
Patronising Aunt Mildred.
She thought herself the cleverest woman in the clan.
Had not her son Howard been all through teething at eleven months and could she not tell you the best way to do everything?
What a bore she was.
And what ugly moles she had on her face.
Cousin Gladys,
Who was always praising her son,
Who had died young,
And always fighting with her living one.
She had neuritis,
Or what she called neuritis.
It jumped about from one part of her body to another.
It was a most convenient thing.
If anyone wanted her to go somewhere,
She didn't want to go.
She had neuritis.
And if any mental effort was required,
She had neuritis.
You can't think with neuritis in your head,
My dear,
She would say.
What an old humbug,
Thought Valancy.
Aunt Isabel.
Valancy counted her chins.
Aunt Isabel was the critic of the clan.
She had always gone about squashing people flat.
More members of it than Valancy were afraid of her.
She had,
It was conceded,
A biting tongue.
I wonder what would happen to your face if you ever smiled,
Speculated Valancy unblushingly.
Second cousin Sarah Taylor,
With her great pale expressionless eyes,
Who was noted for the variety of her pickle recipes and nothing else.
So afraid of saying something indiscreet,
She never said anything worth listening to.
So proper she blushed when she saw the advertisement picture of a corset,
And put a dress on her Venus de Milo statuette,
Which made it look real tasty.
Then there was little cousin Georgiana.
Not such a bad little soul,
But so dreary.
Always looking as if she'd just been stretched and ironed.
Always afraid to let herself go.
The only thing she really enjoyed was a funeral.
You know where you were with a corpse,
She'd say.
Nothing more could happen to it.
But while there was life,
There was fear.
Uncle James.
Handsome,
With a sarcastic trap-like mouth and iron-grey sideburns,
Whose favourite amusement was to write controversial letters to the Christian Times,
Attacking modernism.
Valancy always wondered if he looked as solemn when he was asleep as he did when he was awake.
No wonder his wife died young.
Valancy remembered her in a pretty sensitive little thing.
Uncle James had denied her everything she wanted,
And showered on her everything she didn't.
He'd killed her,
Quite legally.
She'd been smothered and starved.
Uncle Benjamin.
Wheezy,
With great pouches under his eyes that held nothing in reverence.
Uncle Wellington.
Long padded face,
Thin pale yellow hair,
Thin stooping body,
Abominably high forehead with such ugly wrinkles,
And eyes about as intelligent as a fish's,
Valancy thought.
He looks like a cartoon of himself.
Aunt Wellington.
Named Mary,
But called by her husband's name to distinguish her from Great Aunt Mary.
A massive,
Dignified,
Permanent lady.
Splendidly arranged,
Iron grey hair,
Rich fashionable beaded dress.
She had her moles removed by electrolysis,
Which Aunt Mildred thought was a wicked evasion of the purposes of God.
Uncle Herbert,
With his spiky grey hair.
Aunt Alberta,
Who twisted her mouth so unpleasantly in talking,
And had such a great reputation for unselfishness,
Because she was always giving up a lot of things she didn't want.
Valancy let them off easily in her judgement,
Because she liked them,
Even if they were,
In Milton's expressive phrase,
Stupidly good.
But she wondered for what inscrutable reason Aunt Alberta had seemed fit to tie a black velvet ribbon around each of her chubby arms above the elbow.
Then she looked across the table at Olive.
Olive,
Who had been held up to her as a paragon of beauty.
Why can't you hold yourself like Olive?
Why can't you stand correctly like Olive?
Why can't you speak prettily like Olive?
Why can't you make an effort,
Doss?
Valancy's elfin eyes lost their mocking glitter and became pensive and sorrowful.
You could not ignore or disdain Olive.
It was quite impossible to deny she was beautiful and effective and sometimes she was a little intelligent.
Her mouth might be a trifle heavy.
She might show her fine white regular teeth rather too lavishly when she smiled.
But when all was said and done,
Olive justified Uncle Benjamin's summing up.
A stunning girl.
Yes,
Valancy agreed in her heart Olive was stunning.
Rich gold brown hair,
Elaborately dressed with a sparkling bandeau holding its glossy puffs in place.
Large brilliant eyes,
A thick silken pair of lashes,
Face of rose and bare neck of snow rising above her gown.
Tall,
Queenly and confident.
Olive was everything Valancy was not.
Olive was only a year younger than Valancy although a stranger would have thought there was at least ten years between them.
But nobody ever dreaded old maidenhood for her.
She had been surrounded by a crowd of eager beaux ever since her early teens.
Just as her mirror was always surrounded by a fringe of cards,
Photographs,
Programmes and invitations.
At eighteen when she'd graduated,
Olive had been engaged to Will Desmond,
Lawyer in embryo.
Will Desmond had died and Olive had mourned for him for two years.
When she was twenty-three,
She had a hectic affair with Donald Jackson.
But aunt and uncle Wellington disapproved of that.
And in the end,
Olive dutifully gave him up.
Nobody in the Stirling clan,
Whatever outsiders might say,
Hinted she did so because Donald himself was calling off.
However that might be,
Olive's third venture met with everyone's approval.
Cecil Price was clever and handsome and one of the Port Laud's prices.
Olive had been engaged to him for three years.
He had just graduated in civil engineering and they were to be married as soon as he landed a contract.
Olive's hope chest was full to overflowing with exquisite things.
And she had already confided to Valancy that her wedding dress was to be ivory silk draped with lace,
White satin court train lined with pale green georgette and heirloom veil of Brussels lace.
Valancy knew also,
Though Olive had not told her,
That the bridesmaids were selected and she was not among them.
Valancy had,
After a fashion,
Always been Olive's confidante,
Perhaps because she was the only girl in the connection who could not bore Olive with return confidences.
Olive once told Valancy all the details of her love affairs from the days when the little boys in school used to persecute her with love letters.
Valancy could not comfort herself by thinking these affairs mythical.
Olive really had her affairs.
Many men had gone mad over her besides the three fortunate ones.
I don't know what the poor idiot silly she was wont to say.
Valancy would have liked to say I don't either,
But truth and diplomacy both restrained her.
She did know perfectly well.
Olive Sterling was one of the girls about whom men do go mad just indubitably as she,
Valancy,
Was one of the girls at whom no man ever looked twice at.
And yet,
She thought,
Summing her up with a new and merciless conclusiveness,
She's like a duelist mourning there's something lacking in Olive Sterling.
