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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nerfwright" data-source="post: 3736879" data-attributes="member: 41134">I played Bertram at PCat's Gen Con Saturday evening session:Mr. Bertram FinchleyBritish nephew of the late Sir Oliver HumeThe year is 1921.[sblock]1.      You are over 40. Why do you still live with your mother?Who else is going to? Mummy's become so focused on the... immaterial lately. I frankly worry that her ability to continue to manage materially will suffer. It would look bad for her son to allow that to happen. While Camille is dear to her and takes care of her, she is still just a maid. (Camille clearly has a stake in Mummy's well being even if her motivations could appear, shall we say 'industrious' at times - complicated, that.) Entreaties to the ether will not keep the rain out when the roof leaks, or ensure that the grocer gets paid concistantly. I simply can't let Mummy languish and decay the way she and daddy did with her own parents. (Or the way she has done with me?)2.      What first triggered your interest in photography?I was struck the first time I saw Eadweard Muybridge's (1830-1904) movement studies of people in motion, particularly those of his statuesque workmen. Walking, working, almost living in his photographs like gods of the mundane, caught incipiently aflight as they seem to step off of the earth. Their muscular display underscoring the miraculous structure that is contained within the body of man... ah, of humankind. *cough*. I oftentimes took occasion to photograph workmen on jobsites, or on the street while going to and from the office (always with their clothes on, of course!).3.      Have you ever experienced true love?William and I met in university while I was studying engineering. Upon graduation he stepped in to run ailing uncle's real estate business, and I built buildings for him, which allowed me to start my own firm. We fed each other's enterprises in many ways. Work hard, live close by, visit often. Work hard enough, and maybe sidestep uncomfortable questions about wives, children and all that business. Mummy shunned any reference or contact with either of us once she intuited our 'bond'. This was very painful. Oliver had always been a cad, but was oddly inclusive of William. I have sometimes wondered if he was sympathetic, or or simply enjoyed making us all uncomfortable. With the war over, and life tasted of ashes, and Mummy's affairs were deteriorating, it was an odd cold homecoming. While most of the family may have tacitly understood, I cannot tell. We have never felt that we are a particularly warm lot. The distasteful speculation and slavering over the Finchley-Hume estate has underscored this.4.      Why didn't you enlist during the Great War?I would have gone but William asked me not to. He knew I was thoroughly unsuited for war, but well suited to run a lucrative business in service to Queen and country; Will would fight for both of us, and one of us needed to manage the enterprises on the home front. To my great sadness he never returned from his commission. I shuttered and sold the business assets to provide for a reasonable if somewhat frugal retirement and retrenched at Mummy's home.5.      What's your worst habit?Listening to Mummy and Camille's nattering about the phlogisthon and the afterlife etc when they think I am pretending to putter in the study. It is comforting, to hear my mother to speak truly warmly of something, then suddenly annoying. It makes me mindful of loss and fretful wishes for things that are not to be.6.      Why do THOSE people hate you?William's family. I am a spot of unspoken scandal on their war hero son's reputation. I am at least tolerated by and understood by my own as long as I allow them pretend to tolerate and understand me. I assume that Granby has no fondness for me as a veteran. The Humes are friendly enough if pleasantly distant, and Gerald makes me uncomfortable, what with his unselfconscious attachement to Daniel.7.      Do you like your relatives?Well enough; one doesn't pick one's family, and it is all I have left after I came home from building a my-god-too-many warehouses.8.      How do you spend your days?I laze in the study reading the papers, or in the darkroom compulsively reprinting selections from my cache of negatives, looking for new beauty when I have gleaned all that is there is forevermore. Perhaps this is my worst habit. At least I'm entertained listening to Camille spin her webs.9.      Have you considered hospitalizing your mother?It's far too early for that isn't it? Well, it would be a far sight better than what she did for her own mother, so I suppose it would be an option. I could easily afford a nurse for her if it came to that, assuming one could be wedged between her and Camille on occasion.10.     Do you believe in spirits?I have hope and respect for the unseen and the afterlife, but such things have bred a cloying and lonely bitterness for me. I think Mummy's obsession with the spiritual smacks of self-recrimination for what she refuses to do for her relatives while they're still living. I may be a busy man, but I will see to my mother's care.11.     What scares you the most?With William and the business gone, fear of exposure, discovery and ruin seem remote somehow. Now it seems that I fear being alone even more. I assume my family would hate me like his already does. Mostly I fear that Will went to war because his shame for me became too great.12.     Is it worth having a go at Camille, your mother's French maid?What, dare I pretend? Interesting... She has tried to be conciliatory at times. I honestly do not know if she is using my mother or not, but a semblance of warmth and respectability? Would it alienate Mummy from Camille, or give her the family she always pretended to have?13.     What are you looking forward to?Peace, maybe concern from my mother? I look forward to looking forward to something.[/sblock]</blockquote>

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