The Poppy Factory [antikvár]

Mv beginnings were hardly auspicious. My father was killed in the battle for Caen in the late summer of 1944 just six months before my birth and I was plucked into the world by Caesarean operation because my mother's doctors considered her in too weak a state to survive a normal delivery. Their diagnosis was undoubtedly correct but their skills failed to save her. She never left the hospital and died there when I was six weeks old. I still dream of her but cannot see her face. I don't dream of my father. They are no more than a pair of photographs in a folding red leather frame, its edges fraying, old, but their eyes remain youthful and smiling, alive with confidence and hope, those of two strangers, dead now for more than thirty years.My paternal grandfather, General Adrian Garrard, took immediate possession of my infant self on the grounds that he enjoyed far better financial resources than my mother's parents, and, furthermore, that I bore his name. He was a formidable adversary if baulked and I doubt if plain Mr and Mrs Simms living in a semidetached in Rickmansworth put up much of an argument, but, if they did, I am sure he would have clinched his victory by reminding them that their daughter had spent the last five years of her life under his roof, first as his secretary and finally as the wife of his son, my father.I was installed in his large Cornish manor house under the immediate care of his housekeeper, Miss Hilda Wilkins. She had a purple birthmark on her left cheek, jet black hair, green eyes and I decided early on that she was a witch. There seemed no reason to revise this opinion when I discovered later that before entering my grand-Y11