THE ENAMEL EYE by Pamela Hill
This could be a satire on every non-Aga saga ever written. For the
literal-minded it is a salacious story of sin, crime, death and disaster over
the century from Waterloo to the First World War. The earlier curse of an
unwilling bride touches all her descendants from her marriage with her
spendthrift Tesson father
’s chief creditor, who also takes his estate. She bears this husband a son, then
elopes with her cousin. The descent of the moneylender become lords of the
manor, while those from the elopement become their servants and concubines.
The estate of Lackmere possesses a floor of Romano-British tiles which are
cemented over as improper by the fourth Lord Corbell. Though he is ordered to
marry a selected cousin to restore the bloodline, the future fourth lord runs
off with a silly young woman who tight-laces, ensuring that the child of the
marriage will be deformed.
This son, Edmund, finds an enamel miniature of his sinful grandmother and is
ordered to sink the smashed fragments in the lake. He manages to secrete one
green eye. Meantime his father, the prurient fourth Lord, succumbs to fleshly
desire for the only woman his son will ever love. The result is a daughter who
is deaf from birth injury, randy and eventually seduced by the black-hearted
cousin Alfred. In revenge, Edmund marries Alfred
’s golden-haired fiancée despite her protests. He also removes the cement from the tiles to expose
their erotic images.
A small plain governess arrives to teach their backward daughter; only to
suffer at the hands of the lecherous lord. Results multiply, and the
manipulative housekeeper, formerly a Tesson, who has borne a child to the third
lord, determines that through her brain-damaged grandson, last of the old line,
Tessons shall again become squires of Lackmere.
It is a story of much wanton lust, well set against the historical backdrop of
the 19th century
.
Pamela Hill
Full-time writer Pamela Hill was educated in Scotland and originally trained to
be a teacher. She has written around 91 books in various different categories
of fiction and non-fiction, but it is her historical work which now takes
precedence. From her home in Hertfordshire she is presently working on her
latest work of non-fiction, with recent published titles including Lady Kate,
the story of Lady Katherine Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Huntly; Prinny
Remembers
– the Private Reflections of His Majesty King George the Fourth and A Tale of
Strawberries
– Shakespeare’s Journeys in Scotland.
