Campari for Breakfast (2 page)

The East Wing is a kin to the Arctic, even with a blow heater, blankets and whisky, but lucky for them the Admiral is a Naval man, and prefers the great outdoors, so he ended up taking the rooms and sparing their lady blushes.

I had to follow directions to get to his suite. You have to go up to the landing, turn left off the hall, right past the nursery, then left again into the East Wing, first right, and then follow the plates. The celebration pieces depict the royals in front of various sunsets, and act as a guide along the wall in case the Admiral loses his way.

When you eventually get to his suite, it’s a bit like a gentleman’s club, with a bed of Napoleon and a collection of Toby Jugs which belonged to Aunt Coral’s father. It’s definitely worth the journey, if only to view the antiques.

Unbeknownst to the Admiral, Aunt C hides behind the curtains in the mornings, watching in secret as he drives off in his car on errands.

‘Oh Sue,’ she confides, ‘I’m not dead yet.’

The interesting thing about the Admiral is that he is remarkably slow on the uptake and totally blind to Aunt Coral’s feelings for him. She could walk past him with no top on and he wouldn’t even drop his pipe.

Aunt Coral’s favourite daily custom is to have a drink with her tenants before dinner, (especially the Admiral). In winter they sit in the drawing room, where the early evening light is so nice. Conversations are punctuated by the Westminster chimes of the mantle clock: it has a deep tick and whir, and a sixteen-ding chime that’s followed by the count of the hour.

Dinner is quite a big business and is normally prepared by Mrs Bunion. She is cleaner, cook and housekeeper at Green Place and comes several days a week. Her tasks are many and varied, and include some light gardening and fisselling. She is also required to perform the duty of ‘Bat Patrol’, for Green Place houses many bats. Mrs Bunion finishes her work just before dinnertime, when she will leave something tasty on the stove, and then her finale job is to go and ring the dinner gong. The Ad and the ladies then come down and congregate for a drink before dinner. It’s a thousand miles from Titford, the microwave, and Dad and Ivana.

Mrs Bunion comes from a poor family. When she was young she was sent to Egham on an apprenticeship. She learnt her many culinary skills at the hands of a cruel Head Chef at Egham Grammar School, and feels she landed on her feet the day she answered Aunt Coral’s call. She makes all the Green Place food from scratch, even the bread, and every dessert comes with custard.

It’s all right for the oldies, they can eat all the full fat foods and then take heart pills, but for me it isn’t so easy and I am struggling to control my wasteline. Unfortunately nothing makes Aunt Coral happier than watching me eat, and nothing makes me happier either. For don’t the Chinese say ‘when there is sadness in your heart, you should feed your stomach’?

My new bedroom, the Grey Room, is in the West Wing, above the ladies’ bedrooms. It is a small attic room facing the pool, that was used for staff in the olden days. Late at night I conjure the faces of long-dead inhabitants out of the shadows. If I were a more nervy type I would certainly give myself the willies.

But the most unsettling thing about bedtime at Green Place is that Delia curses in her sleep. Sometimes she sounds like she’d like to give you twenty lashes with her bath cap, and I have to reassure myself.

Aunt Coral loves to tell you how her life was incomplete before she met Delia, which is why, after a few trial holidays together, she offered her bargain board to come and live here. Delia, like me, hasn’t got much money, but she’s an excellent and loving companion to Aunt Coral even if she does say ‘fuck’ in her sleep. They compliment each other perfectly: Aunt Coral is a traditionalist, a pragmatist, an hundred per cent Nana, whereas Delia is joyous and o’reverand and brings Aunt Coral to life. They’re both very interested in me and are always asking about my writing.

In spite of appearances, and her big house, I think Aunt Coral must be a little straps for cash, hence her taking in lodgers. And now she has to give me an allowance as well, but I think the Admiral at least pays a hefty rent, which must be where it comes from.

Saturday 10 January

It’s cold and stormy tonight, as is January’s way, so I’ve wrapped myself in old blankets, and I’m listening to the rain hit the pool cover. Here in the stillness of the Grey Room, I’m flooded with memories of mum. I can’t believe she’s not here any more, my mind just can’t absorb it. It would make more sense to me to find her hiding in a bandstand than to accept that she is gone.

Her Christian name was Buddleia, after the plant famous for attracting butterflies, but she preferred to be called Blue, as Buddleia is easily mispronounced. You say, ‘Bud-lee-a’, as in ‘bud’, the flower, ‘lee’, the calm side of a ship, followed by an ‘a’. She said that blue was the colour of the flowers, although I used to argue they were purple. We had agreed to differ on that some time before the end.

The long drive running up from Clockhouse Lane happened to be lined with buddleia. Their scent is woodier than the lilac and not so sweet, just as she wasn’t sweet but intense. She met Dad on a plane in the sixties – he was a passenger, she was a stewardess, and almost nine months later they had me, after a shot gun wedding.

I think Mum was rebelling from glamour names in calling me Sue. I think she’d have preferred to come from a line of Sues, Janes and Sarahs, and not from Corals and Cameos. But she had a way of saying it, that still made it sound like a glamour name: ‘Soo’, she said, as though it was the name of a quiet Chinese Princess.

The first time I went on a plane with her, I was four, and anxious when I couldn’t pop my ears. We’d been on a chocolate buying mission to Holland, because she still got the cheap air fares. I remember I’d been crying because my ears were so uncomfortable, so she gave me some tiny chocolate clogs from a packet to chew on. But I put the clogs in my ears.

Yet she was my chief supporter and defender of all my deficiencies, explaining to Mrs Hughson from the maths department at school, ‘Sue is not daft, but talk of algebra and her mind goes the other way.’ She persuaded Mrs Hughson that she just didn’t understand
who I was
, and that the minute she did, a whole new world would appear.

Once at school sports day, I must have been about 7, I was running in the ninety metres and I was a hot tip to win. I was warming up at the start line, all wound up and nervous, and I spotted mum standing by the sideline in front of the crowds watching. I got off to a flying start, leaving everyone well behind me, but trying to run past mum had a peculiar effect on my emotions and for some reason, instead of finishing the race I ran into her arms instead. I was very embarrassed afterwards. The crowds snickered and one Dad said I was a bird brain.

But mum said ‘If I were running, and I saw you standing there, I’d have done exactly the same thing. How canny of you to know, it’s not about winning – it’s about loving.’ She managed to make the silliest thing I’d ever done sound profound.

She was also crafty, and replied to the notes I left for the fairies without my ever finding out. I still check under the watering can – or at least, I did.

And she was chaotic, at a loss in the kitchen, and was always being given joke cookbooks for awful chefs and hapless mums, including one called
This is a Spoon
. So she tended to keep things simple, such as floppy sandwiches presented in a rush to my lunch box. She wasn’t a technical sort of mother, she was more a magician.

To have been the object of her love is the most beautiful thing I have known. Of course I took it for granted. I had no idea it would fade away.

She often used to say to me, ‘You are a joy and a care.’

‘Why a care?’ I would ask.

‘In case I should lose you,’ she’d say. She was born serious.

When people ask me if I’m OK, I say I am, but how could I be? I have seen my dead mother in a box; my live mother has vanished. But one has to lie, to make others feel comfy. One has to join in the conspiracy. It’s a curious phenomena, the unmentionable, and knowing about it makes me feel twice my age.

I can’t tell you how much it hurts sometimes, how tired I get of being strong, and what a relief it is to say I am devastated, if only to a piece of paper. But we are so British about these things in Britain, we try so hard to hold it all in. It makes me laugh sometimes, because when else is it OK to cry? I believe the Italians have it right. I’ve heard that at funerals they even have official criers to help lead the wailing.

When I struggle under clouds like this and I’m full of hopeless longing, what saves me is my writing. I can think about something different and I don’t have to be Sue Bowl for a while.

The Nun’s Bonnet Never Sees Daylight

A SKETCH
By Sue Bowl

It was a navy bonnet with a cherry motif on the top resembling a school badge. She put it on the top shelf as a reminder of her old life.

Her room was like all the others, bed, book and candle. She had three habits, one in the wash, one in the cupboard and one to wear.

‘Fedora! You are always late!’ called Mother, ‘Why is your head in the clouds?’

‘I am with Jesus, Mother,’ said Fedora.

‘Then you have no excuses,’ Mother said, scurrying off to Maxims.

Fedora glanced up at the bonnet she had arrived in, now in the shadowy recess on her top shelf. The old days were gone for ever, and the new days were yet to be born.

Sunday 11 January

After dinner this evening I was relaxing with my new housemates, the fire was trying to get up and the Admiral was enjoying his pipe, when Aunt Coral was taken by one of her searing insights, which often take place at this sort of time, subsequent to a gin.

‘I think, Sue, that you come from a bygone age, that you don’t belong to your own generation,’ she said. ‘You remind me of a time of seasonal strawberries, a time when briefs were large—’

‘And kept locked,’ added Delia.

My cheeks let me down with a small blush. It is irritating to think they’re so sure that I’m some sort of sexual novice. I have actually had many experiences of desire in my mind and I am easily arouselled by the poets. And back at home I have come close to kissing at least once. So Ivana may proclaim that I am very innocent for a girl of my age, (as if she would know anything about being innocent), but it is not strictly the case. I just don’t like to go on about it.

‘Oh I have my methods,’ I said, trying to move them off the topic of briefs with an enigmatic answer, while the blush possessed my face.

‘Is it love that you like to write about?’ asked Delia.

I thought my answer would have thrown them off the scent of briefs, but Delia had managed to pick it up again.

‘Oh no, not really love,’ I said, ‘I’ve got a book of writing exercises. It’s nothing really, it’s just for fun.’

‘For example?’ she said.

‘Well …’ I went on, with the blush raging across my chest. ‘Well, say you have a list of belongings in your packing …’

‘In your packing?’ said Aunt Coral.

‘The premise is an imaginary holiday,’ I explained, ‘and you have a list of activities you want to do when you get there, and you have to try and put unusual ones together. For example, if you’ve got “book”, “pen” and “flip flops” in your packing, and “surfing”, “dancing” and “skipping” in your activities, you could make up sentences like: “She was surfing through the book”, or “Cara’s flip flops were skipping beneath her”, or “My pen danced down the page.”’

‘And who is Cara?’ asked Aunt Coral.

‘She’s for example,’ I said. I didn’t want to tell her that Cara was the name I have chosen for the heroine of a story which I have yet to put down on the page.

‘Ah ha! So I might say that my feet danced into my flip flops, or the books skipped off the shelf? It’s a beginner’s book then is it?’ asked Aunt Coral.

You can imagine that this revelation quite took my breath away.

Then she rushed off to her study to fetch the manual she considers the world authority on creative writing, and so I have come up to bed with Mr Benjamin O’Carroll’s
The Dorcas Tree
under my arm.

‘Let’s talk about it tomorrow morning after you’ve had a look,’ Aunt Coral called after me. ‘And it’d be nice to have a little talk, just the two of us,’ she added, before returning to her tenants by the fire.

I feel so lucky to have landed in a house with a wordsmith. It is a world away from Titford where I suffered a major writer’s setback on the day that Ivana had the misfortune to read one of my stories. No one was supposed to read them, and well she knew that, but she sneaked under my bed when I was doing my exams and found my secret papers. That was bad enough, but to make matters worse, she had the odacity to give me a review.

‘A hoot!’ she proclaimed. It was very undermining. I had tried to be maganimus and open my heart and forgive, but I was devastated that she’d read it and even more devastated that she thought it was a comedy when it was a drama set in an Elizabethan prison.

Writing is more important to me than anything, though I sometimes doubt anyone will want to read the musings of a seventeen-year-old from Titford.

As I lounge here in the Grey Room, writing up a small section of the story I’m working on, my mind wanders back to the earlier subject of locked briefs, which is a matter that gravely concerns me. Love is just such a private, impossible thing, I wonder how any of us are born.