Kay Merriweather (nee Drummer)

Kay Merriweather  Character Post 43

Kay Drummer was born in 1943. Since she had no brothers and her father was an only child, her surname effectively died out upon her marriage in 1963 to young trainee architect  Russell Merriweather. Kay never regretted marrying Russ, but later in life she did come to wish they'd waited a few more years before settling down. Nevertheless, they made themselves a home, and Kay, a music student,  continued her studies after their son Thomas was born in 1964. Kay loved music, and she planned to have a large family of children and give them musical names. Tom's birth was complicated, though, and he was to remain an only child. Had Kay known that at the time, she might have stuck more firmly to her guns about his name. She wanted to call him Tom-Tom, (though even she was never sure how serious she was about that). Russ talked her out of it, and they settled on Thomas, with Tambourine as his second name. Kay often called him Tom-Tom anyway.
Kay quite often played with ensembles and chamber groups, but she was primarily a music teacher. As she said, this allowed her to enjoy her favourite pastime while helping support the family. She enjoyed gardening and had a succession of pet terriers to which she was devoted, but she was always an indifferent cook. Luckily, Russ was handy in the kitchen.
Though disappointed in having no more children, she loved Tom dearly, and even when he moved out to flat with his best friend Simon at the age of eighteen, she made sure he came over for family dinner once or twice a week. 
Kay's life wasn't exciting, but she found it satisfying. Now and then she travelled to jobs with Russ, but mostly she stayed at home, secure in the knowledge he'd be back in a couple of weeks. 
In her forties, Kay kept her figure and dressed casually but smartly. She favoured gemstone colours, and habitually wore a perfume called Violet Veritas... her favourite flower. 
When her son Tom accompanied Russ on an unusual architectural consultancy job, Kay was pleased her men had some time together. She was much less pleased when Tom returned from one of the trips to the site wearing a ring. He broke it to her that he was in love and that it was for keeps... Kay surprised herself as well as Tom with her bitter reaction. She had never even met the object of her son's devotion but she realised, belatedly, that she did still resent settling down so early herself and she wanted Tom to enjoy his freedom. It took some time for her to become reconciled... and she was touched when Tom informed her that  he and his wife-to-be would keep the musical legacy in the family names. They did, too.

Kay Merriweather appears in The Kissing Ring.


ABOUT THE BLOG

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, anthologist and reader. She runs  Prints Charming Books. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)

The goal for 2017 was to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist. 2017 is now behind us, but I ran out of year before running out of books. As of February 18th 2018 I STILL haven't run out of books, but many of those still to come are MIA by which I mean I don't have copies and remember little about them. There are more new books to come, and I'll certainly showcase those, but in between times, I'm profiling some of my characters, just for a change. Thank you so much to everyone who's come along on this journey so far!