Tears of the Moon - Di Morrissey [3]
Lily wished she had known her mother’s family and also her father, or his family. Georgiana had discarded several husbands, including Lily’s father. They had met during the war. He was a charming American serviceman and she was young and ready for adventure. There was a swift courtship and what her mother dismissed as a ‘low-key wedding’ before boarding one of the war-bride ships.
Lily had been born in 1947 but apparently life in Torrance, California, was not the life Georgiana had been led to expect after a diet of American movies. Georgiana divorced when Lily was a toddler and saw no reason to maintain any contact with her ex-husband. She gave Lily the impression that he’d never shown any interest in a child he had barely known. And as for in-laws, Georgiana had shuddered and stressed again how they were the lucky ones, to be as free as birds and able to choose their friends instead of being burdened with unpleasant relatives.
Lily’s memories of her youth were of boarding schools and holidays in exotic places with her mother. These were treasured times with just the two of them. Georgiana never inflicted ex-stepfathers on Lily and Lily was always broken-hearted at leaving her fun-loving mother at the end of the holidays to return to school.
Georgiana made no secret of the fact she had been a difficult and rebellious child and had given her mother hell.
‘I was happier in boarding school than stuck over in the west. You’ll thank me one day for sending you to good boarding schools,’ she told Lily.
Georgiana refused to discuss ‘family’, except for flippant remarks and anecdotes that were generally unflattering. She did once say she’d had to keep her family background ‘a bit quiet’ when she went to America as a war bride. ‘Not that it mattered as it turned out. His lot were Orange County hicks.’
So Lily’s childhood had been spent in the care of other people, punctuated by periods of travel, with pauses in pensions and tropical Somerset Maugham hotels. Within minutes of arrival anywhere Georgiana had admirers, help from all quarters and entertaining company.
The only reference Georgiana made about her own parents was that her father had died in France during the First World War before she was born and that her mother had lived in the west, a place Georgiana hated. Georgiana caused everyone such trouble that she forced them to put her in boarding school, in Perth, which she far preferred. As soon as she could she moved to Sydney, worked as a secretary and met her American husband-to-be.
That was the sole extent of Lily’s knowledge of her family. She had only vague memories of one occasion when they visited an old lady, her great-grandmother in Perth. She recalled being in a beautiful garden with a sweet and loving lady. She had always wanted to go back there but it never seemed to fit in with Georgiana’s plans and then Lily had been sent to an expensive private girls’ school in Sydney and had never seen her relative again, Georgiana declaring the west to be even more behind the world than the rest of Australia.
With the self-centredness of children, Lily had never questioned her mother about their family. When pregnant with her own daughter, Samantha, Lily wrote to Georgiana asking if she knew of any possibly inherited medical problems. Georgiana dismissed Lily’s fears by pointing out she knew next to nothing about