Not forgetting Anthony and Jackie Pargeter, children of Nevill's sister Audrey, who had died whilst the children were still young. Jackie recollected that Sheila and Jeremy didn't really know how to react to them and may have felt jealous at the easiness of their relationship with Nevill and June, as opposed to the adoptees, who were treated in Jeremy's words like "porcelain dolls." It's easy to see how Jeremy fell back on the one constant in his life: not any individual but the thought of his inheritance, which was the reason he surmised why if he garnered no physical affection from his parents he was there to maintain the Farm.
But as he grew older he began to bite the hand that fed him, resenting the interference in his private life as Suzette was driven away, leading to a more furtive relationship with Julie, lest she too be ousted from his life. Nevill had become morose upon the death of his mother, then his second sister Diana, banishing Sheila to boarding school mid-term and failing to communicate meaningfully with June and Jeremy, who was living psychologically ever more in his own world. Glimpsing at the wills written in 1979 Jeremy realized that in order not to share the estate with his sister he must feign an interest in farming, whilst Nevill, reminiscing about his time at Wash Lane with June installed Jeremy at Bourtree Cottage, which proved too much to bear, abandoned to solitude once more.
Thanks for that, Steve. I'd completely forgotten the Pargeter pair. I wonder if they felt forgotten when Jeremy and Sheila took their place. It's easy for a childless couple, who long for children, to take on family children as substitutes, withdrawing attention quite unintentionally, when/if they have their own children.
I don't recall ever knowing that Jeremy had referred to himself and Sheila as "porcelain dolls" -I used "doll thing"- it's interesting that neither is a description of a real child. In these difficult relationships, money -or the promise of it- becomes a reality to hang onto. A little bit of self worth can be clawed back by saying the money isn't important, but one runs the risk of the emotional knot being tightened.
Your second paragraph seems to highlight the emotional and psychological muddle that the family was during that particular period.
