Campari for Breakfast (12 page)

Showing such favouritism to Aunt Coral and leaving very little to mum caused a great upset at the reading of his Will – though I suppose now we all know why. However my mother was not left without anything as when Nana Pearl died in 1955, she had requested that her bank accounts were formed into trusts entirely for Mum. There was enough to get a deposit, or do up a small house, and they were set up to become liquid on the ‘second death’ (that was Grampa Evelyn), so both Coral and Mum would inherit at the same time. But as Mum died so soon after Grampa Evelyn’s death the trust money was frozen in probate, and it still hasn’t come through yet due to the complicated nature of mum’s death. By law my father has a claim to this as well as me, but at least the slow probate means that it’s protected from him for now.

Anyway, it struck me that selling some shares would pay off a small amount of Aunt Coral’s debts, but when I brought the matter up last week, she was adamant they remain as rainy day funds, in case she needs her hips done, or has some sort of medical emergency. She also argued that while the money was still in shares it is difficult for her to spend it, as converting shares involves a great deal of admin, and the reading of the
Financial Times
. I think she just likes to know they’re still there.

However, I have also found out that the Bentley doesn’t belong to the Admiral but is in fact Aunt Coral’s. She just loved the idea of having a driver so much that she lent it to him and bought him a chauffeur’s hat. In real life the Admiral only has a Rover, so driving a Bentley’s a coo! But I think he’s a very nice guy to go along with the hat.

So today I moved on to other tactics, and suggested that the sale of the Bentley would pay off some of her store cards, but she argued she has a very good reason to keep it. The reason is the Nanas. Though she is approximately over sixty-five herself, (which she smallens to sixty-three), Aunt Coral likes to help the aged, and once a week she goes to the home in Egham and takes three of the Nanas there out on a drive: Mrs Dryberry, Mrs Scott, and Mrs Viller. Because of their habitual clothing choices we call them Georgette, Print and Taffeta. They come for lunch once a week which they take on the terrace alf rescos. They share a lot of her interests, such as rambling and Nana Mouskouri. Apparently driving the Nanas gives Aunt C’s life meaning. I also think that because they are so ancient, they make her feel young.

I worked and worked on her this morning as we sat out by the pool, trying to persuade her that the Nanas would just as soon be driven in the Rover as the Bentley, but she just doesn’t know how to think like a parson. I realised that I would have to explore a more heavy approach.

‘If you cut Mrs Bunion down to two days a week, you and Delia could clean for the other afternoons instead of shop,’ I said. You can imagine what sort of a face this was met with.

‘Pat’s been with me for ever, I’ve known her for years, she’s part of the building, and there’s her family to consider.’

‘We are all affected by your fiscal position, Aunt Coral, even Mrs Bunion, and there’s no point in pretending otherwise. I’m sure she’ll understand, you just need to talk to her about it.’

‘I can’t talk to Pat, she’s the cleaner,’ said Aunt Coral.

‘But you just said that you’ve known her for years!’

‘Exactly,’ she said, implying she had just won the argument by reacting as if I was agreeing with her. A clever trick of hers.

‘Just tell her that you have to cut back for the restoration of the East Wing. You don’t have to tell her about your shoes.’

There are going to have to be big changes at Green Place if we are going to make ends meet, but Aunt Coral seems to be in complete denial and preoccupied with other things.

‘They didn’t need to lie to me you know, I wouldn’t have told anyone about Laine,’ she said, revealing her hidden inner dialogue in an involuntary change of subject. (It seems a person can be talking about one thing and thinking about quite another.)

‘Maybe they thought I couldn’t be trusted not to run off and get pregnant myself. But the thing that hurts the most is that
Cameo
didn’t tell me. I can at least understand that Mother and Father, however painfully, were trying to do their best, but Cameo had no reason on earth not to tell me the truth.’

‘Weren’t you very close?’ I said.

‘We were terribly close, always,’ she said. ‘She was a wonderful sister.’

And then as so often happens, the Admiral pulled up a chair, and Aunt Coral turned her attention to the come hither of her de collage. He himself had changed into a gaye cravat to come down to the pool side. It is difficult at times for us to talk at all, living in a public house.

Coral’s Commonplace: Volume 2

Cuttings from the Willow Lodge School Reports, Autumn Term 1935:

Sue

Tuesday 19 May

T
ODAY
I
INADVERTENTLY
discovered the way to get Icarus’s attention. The morning was breathtaking, one of those mornings when everyone is singing, and with Loudolle back at college I’d been reinstated on the toaster. Anyway, I had an accident with the frother which was turned the wrong way up and milk spurted out on my top. I had to borrow one of Michael’s from her gym bag, which was a sort of a bra-cum-vest. I put a clean apron over the top of it but much of my cleeverage showed. Icarus couldn’t keep away from me, helping me with the buttering and worrying about the toast. Delia says Icarus’s what’s known in the classics as a tit man, which I always thought meant some sort of idiot.

With the extra money from Loudolle’s Easter time, Mrs Fry has decided to start opening the Toastie at luncheons as a jacket potato bar, and she’s invested in some new ovens. She also wants to branch into Bistro for the evenings. This has given me the perfect opportunity to become a full time girl, and help carry the can at Green Place.

All the full time girls are called ‘Potato Maids’ and she has had it professionally sewn on our pinnys. I like to think that looking back years from now my grandchildren will say that Nana Sue had to support herself before she was published, and had many jobs including canteen apprentice and potato maid.

I am finding Joe somewhat irksome because he’s always following me around at work or writing soppy poems at Group, which make Aunt Coral and Delia behave badly. The more he tries to make love to me, the more I feel attracted to Icarus. It’s the strange occasional quirk of love that the more someone loves you, the more you go off them. I wonder whether I should try to pretend I don’t love Icarus and see if that would help.

At least I have managed to bond with Michael. She reminds me so much of Aileen. Like Aileen, Michael’s mother is her father’s second wife, and like Aileen, Michael’s got scattered siblings.

Aileen and I were like sisters to each other when we were growing up in Titford. But of course we weren’t sisters and it was hard to say goodbye at the end of a top notch day’s play. So we made our own telephones out of old tin cans, with a hole drilled in the end for string to be poked through like phone wire, and we hung out of our respective windows, two houses apart and pretended to be on the phone. It did make my mum laugh.

There have been so many times when I have wished for those days again. Whoever said ‘be careful what you wish for cos you’ll get it’ was a liar.

Coral’s Commonplace: Volume 2

Green Place, Nov 6 1935
(Age 13)

Home news

It was bitterly cold today, especially inside. I woke very early to sunrays spread on the horizon like a fan; these are known as corpuscular rays, such as the ones that shine through the trees at sunset.

Cameo had cut the arms off my ball gown while I was asleep, so we went out to Crimson and Hopper this afternoon to buy me another. Cameo said she did it because she was feeling unhinged, and was eaten up with worry over a rare infection believed to be spread by paperclips. Mother was not calm. It took twenty-five minutes for us to talk Cameo past the paperclip pot in the hall on the way out. Mrs Morris was doing the polishing, and found it so entertaining that she polished the same figurine for the whole time. We shouldn’t indulge Cameo’s attempts to be arty, it takes us so long to go out.

I know I have no need of a ball gown quite yet, but confess I did enjoy wearing it round the house.

Emotional news

I want to have six children, in three sets of boy-and-girl twins, Robin and Robina being my first name choices. Cameo wants to be a pilot, like Amelia Earhart, or a racing driver, like Helene Delangle, who has a hundred boyfriends and is a nude dancer part time. ‘There are two things I want to be when I grow up,’ she said to me. ‘One is a great adventurer, the other is taller than Dad.’

We have started ballroom dancing together in the woods on days when the weather permits. I am much smaller as Cameo’s such a colt, so she has to be the man, which is very nice for me. It is wonderfully private doing it outside where Mother and Father can’t see us. We foxtrot and waltz and tango, and Cameo likes a smooch. I have to be the man for this one so she can practise her ‘things’ on me.

Last night she crawled into my bed, as she often does and said, ‘What shall we talk about? Boys?’

‘Let’s talk about going to sleep.’

‘Why can’t we talk about boys?’

‘Because you’re 8,’ I said.

School news

We have a new class entitled ‘Good Grooming’. The first lecture was taken up mainly with telling us not to pick at our spots. I resent the insinuation that I have any, and Cameo is the number one pin-up, in spite of her glass eye. They also talked about the importance of the frequency of washing the weevils from your hairbrush and the necessity of sleep as a beauty aid. What would they turn us into? Mrs Pankhurst would turn in her grave. If we followed their advice we might never know the ecstasy of intense moments spent on a blackhead, of a sleepless night following a pillow fight, or a rarely washed hairbrush kept in a secret drawer, and anyway, a Green Place girl’s hair is self-brushing.

This is a two-minute puzzler by Cameo that she wanted me to add:

Can you spot the odd one out?

SUN

MOON

STARS

SOCKS

Sue

Wednesday May 27th

A
DVERT FROM THE
post office window:

The income from the West Wing lodgers has solved our immediate cash flow problems, but when the winter comes round again it is likely the three of us in the Arctic Wing might perish. I am hoping that the auction of Aunt Coral’s shoes will generate enough money to restore and let out some other rooms, but there is a lot that we need to achieve fiscally before that could happen. The squirrels have chewed their way through a lot of the wiring and we’ll need to pay for electricians, plumbers, plasterers, painters, to mention a few.

The bank won’t go near Aunt Coral and she won’t go near the bank, having previously exhausted every possibility of each other. So I made enquiries into every lodger’s skills and it transpires that Delia has a secret she had not revealed because of laziness. The secret is that she can sew. I have encouraged her to take orders from the wealthy Egham ladies by advertising in the post office and she has been able to get a couple of commissions. The choosing and sourcing of fabrics, the shapes, textures and colours etc., have really made her thrive. She also employs the labour of Georgette, Print and Taffeta, who are fashion freaks too. They sit out by the pool because Nanas love to be out in the open, and they gossip, eat sandwiches and sew. It is a cracking cottage industry and our best shot at serious money. The first gown they made was sold to a Mrs Fury of Virginia Water and netted a whopping £198. It was an aqua silk-satin dinner gown designed and cut by Delia, with sequin specks by Georgette, appliqué godets by Print, and matching beading by Taffeta. Job done. Mrs Fury was a head turner.