The family kitten

Following my Mother's Monday at the start of the week, I find that Freespiral has taken up my Father's Friday suggestion so I feel duty bound to do likewise.

So - it's Switzerland, 1902, and my father, in lederhosen and aged about 10, is seen with his father and his step-mother and a kitten that may simply be a photographer's prop. Clearly it's Boris who has the claws out and I suspect from the expression on his face that he's hoping it's his step-mother, Suzanne,  who will get scratched.

This is not a scene of domestic harmony. They are in Geneva  whence they had moved from Munich but my father was born in Russia where his family owned an estate. Along the way my father's brother had died of typhoid and then his parents' marriage had broken down; his mother left, taking his sister, who also died young. He never saw either of them again. His father contracted a marriage of convenience to this Scottish governess, who had been drafted in to try and keep the wayward Boris under control. (She was still attempting to do that 50 years later, long-distance in a spidery hand.) Suzanne had hit the jackpot in snagging a Russian land owner for a husband (if only in name) but the family fortune evaporated in 1917 when the revolution swept the gentry class away. The extended family vanished never to be heard from again.

My father fought a running battle with his step-mother and incurred his father's displeasure over and over again as he struggled against custom and convention. He did however grow to love Switzerland and the happiest days of his youth were spent climbing in the Alps - clawing his way to freedom you might say.

Extras: with that kitten again and, more angelic, at a slightly younger age.