![]() ![]() In late 1918, the family sailed from India to New York City on a ship called The City of Lahore to make a fresh start. Greave’s childhood was punctuated by abrupt moves as his father fled the police and creditors or pursued ever-riskier ventures. He would ask his wife to play something on the piano to keep her occupied while he strolled out to their porch and exposed himself. It wasn’t just that his father (who is unnamed in the book) was a swindler, he was also a chronic exhibitionist. ![]() That haven was soon destroyed, however, by his father’s predilections. Born in Bombay in 1910, Greave spent his first years in the comfort of a villa surrounded by a lush garden and cared for by Indian servants. The Seventh Gate has the grim fascination of a car crash. I first came across Peter Greave in a battered Penguin paperback copy of his 1977 memoir, The Seventh Gate, that I’d found at the Montana Valley Book Store, a marvelous storehouse of books in the little town of Alberton, Montana. Gerald Wilkinson and his parents, Bombay, India, 1914. ![]()
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