When Godden was five and her sister, Jon, six, the pair were shipped to England to stay with their grandmother and four maiden aunts in a tall dark house in west London. The way of life they encountered came as a tremendous shock. "For the first time we had to live by rules, strict rules. To begin with we were banished to certain rooms, a night nursery at the top of the house and by day, to what had been the morning room in the basement. I remember the extraordinary silence in the house between, a silence which quelled us--not always: Jon was once driven to dance like a dervish on the morning room table, breaking Aunt Mabel's magnifying glass which had been left in the drawer. 'Why dance, dear"' asked the puzzled Aunts. Only the kitchen was lively but we were not allowed in the kitchen except now and then, invited by Polly the cook who had been Fa's old nurse and had a soft spot for us.
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