Campari for Breakfast (15 page)

‘Lot 192,’ said Admiral Ted. ‘Strappy geranium slingback with matching silken clutch,’ and once more he added in a sombre tone: ‘unused. Do I hear thirty-five pounds for the set?’

More gasps were to follow again and again in wonder at the items. Aunt Coral has impeccable taste. In her imagination she’d been expecting a million invitations, but in life she’d been a lonely lady in a mansion with her cleaner, laying out the doilies, spending her money on dreaming. But now I hope that her lonely days are ‘Going going gone’. (I intend to put the money into a high security account, requiring two signatures and two passports for withdrawals.)

Sunday 5 July

Excerpt from Delia’s calendar
(by kind permission)

It was Joe’s football match this morning and it was pouring with rain. So I rang him hoping it would be called off, but he said that they play in all weathers. Aunt Coral preferred to remain in bed mourning her shoes, so I had to go on my own. Though the sale made a whopping £2,000 they had cost her more like £20,000 to buy, and so the £2,000 back was a drop in the ocean, and she’d rather have had the shoes. I reassured her that investing it in more rooms meant she’d make the money back in rental within a year, and that she’d have the £2,000 back to buy herself more shoes, but she declined into her bed jacket and I didn’t see her again till lunchtime.

At the match, Joe was gangly and kept on slipping over. Icarus was the winger and best-looking player on the field. It was freezing cold and I was glad when the whistle blew because my anorak was soaked through to the lining and I needed to go in and get thawed. They lost 4-nil and Joe gashed his knee and had to be seen by a matron. But over orange segments afterwards it was he who enquired after my health, which Aunt Coral has trained him to do.

‘You look tired Sue,’ he said. ‘Have you not been sleeping? You’re shivering, take my jacket.’

He is becoming Aunt Coral’s protégé; I think she is grooming him to be a good boyfriend. (I wish she’d go to work on Icarus.) Joe always makes me feel like a lady, although sometimes he takes it too far and becomes winsome and unmanly. I don’t actually like too many poems, I prefer a bit of tension, a bit of a challenge in a man. It’s not that exciting if you think someone will marry you tomorrow and follow you about crying.

I told Joe over orange segments, all about my nightmares and he was riveted and offered to drive me over to Titford on his bike to help me to hunt for a note. He really, really likes me, there is no doubt about that. I wish I felt the same. But I decided to take him up on his offer of a lift to Titford (when the next good opportunity arises), so I suggested lunch at Green Place, and when we got back we were welcomed and sat down to Mrs Bunion’s Sunday cuisine.

‘Rainy isn’t it?’ said Joe.

‘No, it’s Sunday,’ said Admiral Ted, who is a little hard of hearing because he has tittinus.

‘Delia, I thought you were going to luncheon today at the Jeffreysons?’ Aunt C said casually.

‘No I wasn’t,’ said Delia.

‘But it says on your calendar that you have luncheon today at the Jeffreysons,’ said Aunt Coral.

‘I must have forgotten to cross it off then,’ said Delia, taking back the paper. Delia has her own private calendar hanging on the wall in the kitchen and there are often things written on there that bear no resemblance to what she actually did that day. Like Aunt Coral, I think she would enjoy a great many more appointments to go to and so I think she makes some up.

There was an awkward moment filled only with the sound of Joe and I at our dumplings. Joe was scraping his cutlery over Aunt C’s special plate.

Aunt C realised she had inadvertently exposed Delia’s calendar, and so attempted a rescue. ‘Careful of the porcelain Joe, it’s rather valuable. Porcelain is the most delicate and expensive form of pottery you see. It comes from the word
porcellana
which is Italian for seashell. If the pottery’s not translucent, and doesn’t let light shine through, then it’s not porcelain. You are eating off the finest Queen’s china in the south.’

‘Wow,’ said Joe, obviously very impressed. He placed his knife and fork solemnly on his plate without further scratching.

‘I was thinking of getting a cat,’ said Delia, unimpressed with Aunt C. ‘Mr Waiting has just had kittens.’

‘Oh Delia, don’t get a cat,’ said Aunt Coral, ‘that means that you’ll never get married.’ She wasn’t normally so tactless.

Delia arose complaining of heartburn and was shortly followed out of the room by Admiral Gordon, his stomach protruding through the gaps in his Sunday waistcoat.

Ever since Loudolle was here I’ve noticed that Aunt Coral and Delia have had some friction. Loudolle has driven a wedgie between them because, in Delia’s eyes Loudolle could do no wrong, and in Aunt Coral’s eyes
I
couldn’t, and so they have had to take sides. As Aunt Coral has not had her own children – she always says it would have taken a team of PHDs to get her pregnant – the bond between us is very close. I am like the daughter she never had, so of course she would take my side.

‘Is your young man spending the rest of the afternoon with us?’ she asked me after a short pause.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Joe at the same time, and we both laughed, a bit too much.

‘Why don’t you show Joe around,’ she said, ‘show him the cobweb kingdom?’

So I took Joe around and had a good look myself at some of the rooms I’d not yet been into, in the house that goes on for ever, room after empty room.

‘You could have boat people living in here and never know they were there,’ said Joe.

He was right; it would be easy to hide in Green Place. I spooked myself with the notion. I showed him the locked-room door, which always has an atmosphere, and then I took him up to my room. As we entered something happened to him – his colour changed and he grew quiet.

‘This is my room,’ I said. And when I turned round he was suddenly in front of me. He leaned in towards me and tried to steal a kiss, but he missed my lips and caught my nose by mistake, and then he trod on my toe.

‘I didn’t bring you up here for that,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it.’

‘Thank you Joe, that’s kind of you.’

‘I love you Sue.’ He looked into my eyes for several moments, waiting for me to say it too, which I couldn’t, because I didn’t, and I couldn’t look away or say something else because he’d just tried to kiss me and so to ignore it or change the subject would be rude, so I didn’t say anything at all, which was awful, and as time went on Joe went more and more red.

‘Why do you like my brother so much?’ he said. ‘He doesn’t respect women.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, but he was already leaving, putting his foot through a tread on the stairs on his way out.

Aunt Coral saw him out and I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in bed with Icarus’s eye, feeling bad about Joe but unable to help but love the man I loved.

It was the perfect night for bad dreams and I had the same dream about Mr Jewell, but with a different ending this time. In this version Mr Jewell did not stay for a cigarette, and got to my mother in time to save her. As he was walking away from the ambulance, he found her note in his pocket. Thinking nobody would read it now, he screwed it up into a ball. I was yelling at him that he should read it but he couldn’t hear me because I wasn’t there.

When I awoke at 3am the rain was falling like a million tears from Heaven. Perhaps she does think of me after all.

Monday July 6

Brackencliffe

By Sue Bowl

Keeper had run far away and lay asleep in a great black cave, spent from his flight o’er the moors.

‘Good boy, Keeper, good dog,’ said Fiona, as she found him and lay down beside him. She placed Cara’s locket round her own bonnie neck, feeding Keeper the remains of her lunch. Then they rested together, but knew not to tarry, for great was their fear of discovery.

Bemeantimes back at Brackencliffe, Van Day reached out to Cara. ‘Comely wench, aren’t you?’ he said ‘whyfore haven’t I seen you before?’

So he can speak if he has a mind to
, thought Cara, defending her maiden’s weeds.

‘Come hither starlight,’ said the Knight and he pressed her close to his westcott. ‘My name is Knight Van Day,’ he said, ‘and I come from wither and yonder.’

Pretafer returned from the water cabinet and ordered Cara fetch her a plate of noodles, for though she had tons of suitors, she was jealous of the maid, and little knew what would have hap if Knight Van Day had tarried.

I read my latest work to Aunt Coral this evening in greatest secrecy in her bedroom. It has to be the last time I read her an extract, as we can’t afford to break the rules. (We are not meant to discuss our entries, so our efforts are entirely individual.)

‘Excellent Sue, really excellent, well done,’ said Aunt C. ‘Did they eat noodles in the seventeenth century?’

‘I’ll change it to barley,’ I said.

It was a good observation, but in truth it dampened my firework, as I only agreed to read it to her because she is still upset about her shoes.

Coral’s Commonplace: Volume 3

Green Place, March 12 1938
(Age 16 but pass for 18)

Until today, it has done nothing but pour for a fortnight. It’s like machines in the sky have been moving the rain sideways instead of letting it drop. This is what’s known as drifts, or swathes. A swathe is a committee of raindrops that have been caught on the wind and blown sideways. Sometimes they form interesting shapes such as gentlemen’s beards or coconuts. I’ve spent days looking out of closed windows, pondering the prospects of adulthood, but there is nothing in the paddock but a slick of water and Cameo’s dear old horse. If the rain continues the sharp fragrance will be rinsed from the tulips and the wisteria will remain a shrill green, sodden and gasping for light.

You can imagine our intense joy at the break in the weather this afternoon, when we were able to sit out on the terrace with Brown Bettys, restored by the sun’s faint heat, with distant rain fresh on the air and water gushing through all the ditches. Such a sensuous moment punctuated an otherwise dully repetitive day.

BROWN BETTYS

Water

Brown

Sugar

Lemon

Cinnamon and cloves

1
Boil in a pot

2
Add contents into warming pan with:

Four bottles of strong ale

Six tots of brandy (per family of 4, or to taste)

Half a dozen pieces of toast spiced with ginger nutmeg ’n’ cloves

3
Float ‘en crouton’

And Mother had an inspired serving suggestion. Surely the best thing in the world is a cocktail that’s poured from a teapot?

Emotional News

Cameo and I, like Lady Chatterley, have both fallen for Sayler. He started gardening for us a week ago, since when we have been keen to assist with the weeding. I work myself into a state of classic gitters at the full panorama of his biceps. I have never known so divine a man and don’t think I shall soon forget him. (I give him 15 out of 10, but he’s potentially out of my league.)

Other men of my acquaintance:

Doctor John – reassuring, brains, nice pocket watch, but confirmed bachelor (7)

Father’s solicitor Howard – Heathcliffian, miscast as a lawyer (a whopping 8.5)

Other charismatic corkers (not to be openly admitted!):

Daniel-the-useless, Mrs Morris’s nephew – good-looking but very resentful. He’s supposed to ‘help as required’, but he won’t iron because it gives him a nose bleed. Mrs Morris loves him like a son. (7)

Mr D’Olivera, our grocer: painfully good-looking, knows the fine line between a ripe fruit and a rotten one and chooses out the best for his girls. (Cameo displays his fruits by her bed and calls this ‘Still Lifeing’. Mrs Morris throws them away when they grow fur. Father rails that it takes three weeks to ship one banana here from the West Indies in a vessel with good refrigeration, and so it is very wasteful of us to let anything rot.) (9)