Campari for Breakfast (20 page)

In my experience I have noticed that the backs of drawers seem to be a good place to find things, so I started my note hunt there. A lot of Ivana’s rubbish had to be gone through, nasty bedside potions, a letter from the doctors, and one of those Red Indian dream catchers for the prevention of nightmares. But at the back of the chest, in accordance with my theory, I did find a clump of paper. It was one of those fortune tellers you make at Christmas, with my hopes for the future written under the blue flaps and Mum’s written under the green. Mine said things that I wanted to happen like, passing my driving test and falling in love and getting a puppy. And Mum’s said, ‘Grow old gracefully and keep jogging’. If those were her hopes for the future, no wonder she did what she did.

I finished upstairs, having ploughed every furrow, including behind books, under the mattress, and in Dad’s papers, where I found a box labelled ‘Blue’, which when I opened it, proved to be empty. Where had he put the contents? Had he thrown away her old letters, the ribbons from her bouquets, the birthday cards she treasured? The thought was so overwhelming that I had to sit down for some moments.

Downstairs I continued and my eye fell on two photographs on the mantelpiece, one of Dad and the Dane at a dinner, and the other of him, Mum and me when I was a baby. In between the photo and frame, there was a yellow piece of paper. I had to sit down with it in my shaking hands. Could this be it? Could this be what I came for? There aren’t many situations in life where you can feel such dread and excitement. The familiar threads of the sofa tickled the back of my calfs and I held my breath as a voice inside said,
open it, open it, open it
. I unfolded the paper and gasped to see her handwriting, but then immediately was disappointed as I realised it was only a label for the picture.

‘This is Sue!’ it said. I must have been only a few months old at the time when the photo was taken, and she was very pleased with me.
This is Sue!
And the ‘S’ was super flamboyant and the ‘e’ was close up against the ‘u’ and it had a flourish through the bottom and to the right that was utterly unique and enviable.

I had thought about spending the whole day in Titford, but when it came to it I didn’t even stay the afternoon, and I spent no time at all in my bedroom. It was so small and suffocating and like a coffin compared to Green Place, and in the backyard a weed had grown up round a broom where it had been left standing still for too long.

The front door gave its familiar plastic click as I left like a thief with my treasure: the fortune teller, the birthday card, the label, all of them messages from the other world.

I passed by the library on my way back to the station and planned to go in and check in all the sleeves of the Poets, but it was no easy place for me to go to, so I stalled for a while in Je T’aime. Aileen used to treat herself from Je T’aime all the time with the money she made from begging.

I thought about what Aunt Coral would do in such a distressing situation and so I bought a dress. It was pink and lacy and frilly, and made good company for me as I finally plucked up the courage to go into the library, holding the raspberry coloured Je T’aime carrier bag for security. The first thing I saw was Mr Jewell with his feet up on the desk, smoking. But as I walked up, he stubbed out his cigarette and flapped at the smoke, embarrassed at being caught with his trousers down.

‘I do apologise Miss,’ he said, briefly glancing towards the smoke alarm which was covered with an Elastoplast. ‘I know I shouldn’t, but I’m not allowed to leave my desk, not if I’m here on my own. I do apologise, I’m trying to give it up!’

He cleared his throat and flapped at the smoke again then resumed his librarian’s air.

‘What were you looking for?’ Then he looked at me closer. ‘Do I know you …?’

The sight of him just as in my dream was so unnerving that I had to excuse myself and go, which left him bewildered. How do you find the words to say,
Yes you do know me, I am the daughter of the woman that you found – the woman in the incident – and I would like to check in the sleeves of the poets to see if she left me a suicide note
. It was like a gloved hand held hostage my vocal chords.

I practically ran back to the station, where there were leaves on the tracks and pigeons were grumbling in the concourse rafters, and in the distance the top of the Titford church tower was the only thing left in the sun.

Back on the train I watched out of the window as the sheep went past from county to county, and the buildings changed and grew less provincial, for Titford is nothing like Egham. And when I got off back here at Egham I couldn’t wait to get back to Green Place, where Aunt Coral ran out to meet me.

‘Sue, I’ve been so worried about you,’ she said, ‘Loudolle said you had a skin disease.’

After a dinner of mince when everyone else had gone to bed, I showed Aunt Coral my cobblers label – my message from the other world. ‘This pair should not be together, because they are a mismatch, one is a 40 and one is a 42.’

‘I’m not sure that it
is
a message from the other world,’ said Aunt Coral.

‘It
is
,’ I said. ‘Because Dad is forty and Ivana is forty-two, they are a mismatch, don’t you see?’

‘You’re being a fool to yourself Sue; you’re looking for a message where there is none.’

‘In order to be a fool, Aunt Coral, you have to
not
know that you are one. So to be a fool to yourself is impossible, if you already know that you
aren’t
one.’

‘I’m not sure I follow,’ she said. ‘I think you’re over-tired. Being a fool to yourself means you are being a fool to
yourself
as opposed to being a fool to
somebody else
. It isn’t to do with
knowing
or
not knowing
that you are a fool.’

Sometimes she can be obtuse.

‘I’m not sure I agree, but I do see your point,’ she said after a pause. ‘And I know you are searching for why she did this, but it may be that unfortunately,
we just don’t know
. Even if you live with a person for years, it’s still possible to not really know them; we only ever know of a person what they choose to let us see. And what is inside can be opposite to what is on show.’

But of course I knew my mother a lot better than she did. I showed her Mr Edgeley’s card.

‘She sent this to Mr Edgeley,’ I said, ‘from number 42. He was her ballroom partner.’

‘Let me see,’ said Aunt Coral.

‘This could have been what she meant by the numbers forty and forty-two. Maybe she is trying to tell me something that I cannot interpret.’

‘Possibly, or it might just be his address,’ said Aunt Coral.

‘You think my messages from the other world are rubbish.’

‘Not if they help,’ she said.

It was going to be impossible to make her see, and I had to forgive her, for I knew she was unable to see things another way. She is just too pragmatic and sciencey.

‘Do you have any idea what she might have meant by the PS?’ I said.

‘It sounds like she’d lent him some cloths,’ said Aunt C.

‘But why would she bother about cloths if she was going to end her life in the afternoon?’ I said.

She gazed into the middle distance. ‘I don’t know,’ she said after a while. Mum leaving me as she did was the
ultimate
in not caring. Sometimes I feel so angry with her, which is then accompanied by guilt. Being angry with a person you love is such a vicious opposite and a never-ending conflict in your never-ending life.

I went off to bed feeling deathly but not so deathly that I didn’t put a note under Loudolle’s door:

Loudolle

Hope you don’t catch my skin disease, which is very itchy. I just wanted to warn you that my face has been up against that eye.

S

The moon is full, the wind tussling the tired leaves of summer, and soon Mr Jewell will appear and light up.

Coral’s Commonplace: Volume 3

Aunt Fern’s, Whistlers Corner, Sleep, Somerset, August 12, 1944
(Aged 22)

Mother suns herself on the beach, seizing the wonderful moment, remembering when the Junkers 88 kept flying over on their way to take part in the blitz. The hamlet here was too small for the Germans to bother with, but they did once take a pop at a fishing boat. Mr Donaldson dived into the sea to slow down the bullets. He was lucky.

Aunt Fern’s boys Alleric and Oliver play nearby, running races through the barbed wire tunnels on the beach in spite of the possibility of mines. They were well drilled in earlier days when the skies were still full of bombers, as to what to do if they discovered a German pilot on the run. Aunt Fern says the drill went like this:

Aunt F: ‘What should you say?’

Alleric and Oliver: ‘You are my prisoner.’

Aunt F: ‘And if he becomes aggressive?’

A and O: ‘I am your prisoner.’

Enemy paratroopers had been known to disguise themselves as nuns and vicars. As a consequence the locals have become highly suspicious of the Church.

The others are well. Mother drives a food truck in the village, and yesterday she misjudged its height and took a short cut under the bridge to make her delivery. The recipients of the food have been complaining of nuts and bolts in their rations.

Cameo had a job for a short time, driving the pilots to the airfield. That was until they discovered that she had lied about her age to get it! (Her driving was self-taught in the Bentley up and down the drive at Green Place. Mother and Father didn’t know!) Her cunning plan was to meet all the pilots and get invited to all the dances and it worked. Now she has an American boyfriend who has taught her ‘the jitterbug’. He thinks the Somerset accent and the American accent are similar! His name is Lieutenant Chadwick Clements. She waits for him in the woods behind his barracks . . . oh my! She explained that nearly every time his squadron flies out on a mission, somebody doesn’t come back, and the ones that do have lost a friend who didn’t. They drink gallons because of the pressure. It’s not surprising.

Before the war we knew very few men, and now there are all these soldiers. It’s hard not to fall, with the constant reminder of the shortness of life intensifying every moment. If I thought it was my last day on earth, I would want to spend it in love. The most popular woman in the village is the seamstress, Mrs Allsuch, who can remodel your dress and make even a frump feel pretty. A new collar here, a contrast belt there – it all saves on the ration book. Yet it seems so shallow to be even thinking about romance, when every day, people are giving their lives.

I wish it were my turn to wait in the woods for a pilot. Almost everyone I know is having some sort of dalliance; even Mother has a General with a twinkle in his eye who makes sure he passes when she’s gardening. I must have an invisible sign on my head which reads, ‘Desperate, Proceed with Caution’. I worry that it’s because I’m too old, the plain one, the swot, the geek, one of the privileged few who are lucky enough to study, who are expected to deliver honours unto their family. I must try and rewrite the sign on my head so it reads something less unsettling. I must not look like I’m searching, in spite of the fact that I am.

Johnny Look-at-the-Moon is stationed in Dorset. Father saw him on a trip to Bournemouth. He told Father he had dreamt the date of the Normandy landings, but he couldn’t tell anyone sooner because it was an official secret. Father passed on a message from him that he hoped the tide would bear him back to sail again in our waters.

He’s a true Celt, Johnny, a dreamer and a poet, and now because of this war, he’s a warrior too. He is with the sixth battalion of the Dorset Regiment, which is soon being sent to the front. The local girls plan to line the street and sing to them as they march. I wish I were in Dorset.

Perhaps I might write to him? Perhaps it would boost his morale? No one would ever know except Johnny, and it doesn’t have to be a love letter, but then again, I might die tomorrow, so perhaps it should be? I’ve admired him since I was a girl, what’s the harm in confessing? But expressing emotion is not something that comes easily to me. I prefer other people to do it for me.

Cameo is much better at these things, and she says she thinks that I should. ‘What’s the worst that could happen? It would make Johnny smile?’ she said, before she skipped off to meet her Lieutenant.

When Father writes to Doctor John they use a code that they agreed on last time they met, in which the first words of certain sentences, a certain number of sentences apart, spell out another sentence. Father won’t tell me what it is! They came up with it to outwit the censors. Maybe I could do something like that, or, I don’t know, maybe not. I wish I didn’t torture myself over men so much.

Cameo and I both thought for ages that a censor bar was where the censors met for drinks, but censor bars are actually black or grey boxes which obscure sensitive words in documents. Of course in the current climate they cover everything, because, ‘Loose lips sink ships’. The wireless frequently goes quiet with broadcast delays, especially before the news. We are now used to sudden birdsong or music over the airwaves, usually right in the middle of a good bit. There’s no way to ensure privacy. The world is a web of scramble.

Alleric and Oliver are now sitting on a towel eating Bournville sandwiches. They break the chocolate up into loaves of bread to make it go further. Sweet coupons are like gold dust, so chocolate’s a big theme in their day. It’s the same for the other side, where I read that the Hitler youth are encouraged with extra rations of sweets.

Things are quite different in Oxford. I flash my torch on the ground in the dim yellow light they allow on the street at night and hurry home for the curfew. And Somerset may be awash with exotic soldiers, but at college there’s a sorry lack of male undergraduates. Most of the girls have now been conscripted, but only to work in reserved occupations so that the men who were previously exempt can now go to war. I volunteer at St Hugh’s, which is a women’s college that they’ve turned into a military hospital specialising in head injuries. They produce the metal plates for skull repair at the Morris car factory locally in Cowley; all car manufacture has been halted. The rear gunners fare the worst, because of their position in the aircraft. They get shot to bits. The children visit with flowers; they think the men without faces are ghosts.