Care Review Creative writing #1 – Care and Careability – Chapter 1

‘June Austin’ 

Chapter 1 – He was coming to review the workings of the estate. 

Heralded by an announcement at Sunday service Mr Caleb McGillicuddy had arrived at the estate house.

The rector had read on behalf of Mr Whitsome, gentleman, that he was coming to review ‘the workings of the estate’.

This not being given further explication it was the talk of the congregation as they left their pews. There were gatherings all around the church, the most voluminous surrounded Mrs Bennett and her daughters.

…… read more in Chapter One here

Jane almost sighing with earnest patience of her family, ‘No I see a man who sees the value of care and how to package it into little parcels of careability’.

Kitty who had been sitting speechless and with her head speeding from one to the other always a little behind as she identified the next speaker a moment after they had started speaking,’ What is that last word? I do not recognise it’.

Jane stood up and faced her family adopting a voice derived as the distillation of her father and sisters, ‘It does not yet exist. But like with any conjurors something can appear where nothing was before. The evidence is before your eyes’.

Elizabeth who was always selecting of evidence, ‘I never believe in what I am told to see. And I never believe in the words people use to describe what I am seeing’.

Jane took a breath and as if speaking each word with distaste spoke in a rarely used declamatory way becoming more certain of her thoughts that were deep within her before that very moment, ‘Careability is a new concept that requires I relinquish my experience of being cared for. It is a feeling and circumstance without equivocation. Careability places the responsibility on me to accept what is being given. It is circumstances made a matter of character rather than environment. It ends with my having to care for myself’.

There was silence. The room seemed uncomfortably cooler.

Mrs Bennett, flushed with her insecurity having risen, spoke almost inaudibly, ‘And if you should not be able?’

Read more on Careability in Chapter One here