Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

Stuart continued his search for upper class ‘blondes’ when we moved south. Cath was certainly ‘upper class’. Her father owned a design-factory specialising in the production of ‘Scandinavian-inspired’ glass, and the family lived in ‘posh’ Hampstead, London. Cath’s mother was descended from Baltic aristocracy. 

Cath’s father came to visit us in Billericay, arriving in his Alvis. I don’t think there was a single person in the whole of Billericay town that owned such an exclusive car!

However, this was the only time I saw him. I think he looked down on our family – he probably thought his daughter was moving down a class. To make things worse, in his speech at the wedding, he mumbled something like, “I hope my daughter is not ending up with ‘half-a-loaf’.” This almost resulted in my father resorting to fisticuffs I remember; but the ambiguity of his ‘half-a-loaf’ utterance was not completely understood at the time. Although Cath’s father was rich, my brother never saw any of his money. But I won’t dwell on this here, but perhaps write about it later in Volume VI of “No Woman, No Cry” (my mother’s ‘family scrapbook’).