Campari for Breakfast (22 page)

(I suspect Aunt Coral dictated it!)

Egham Hirsute Group

Early Autumn Special

‘Continuing from our last session, I’d like us to share our letters,’ said Aunt C, at the hottest group of the year. ‘And just to remind everyone, our letters are from someone we’ve been longing to hear from. So who’d like to begin? Avery?’

The Admiral stood and read aloud.

Dear Rear Admiral Little,

It is with great pleasure that I am writing to you to confirm that there will be traffic calming measures in place in Clockhouse Lane by spring 1988. We agree that most motorists have no idea of the quiet residential nature of the Clockhouse and need clearer signage.

Any further comments will be respectfully taken on board.

Bill Rigger

Egham District Council

Aunt Coral was a little taken aback at first and didn’t know what to say. She was clearly expecting our letters to be of an emotional or romantic nature. At least it wasn’t a letter to himself from Loudolle, which would have been embarrassing.

‘Excellent Avery, well done,’ said Aunt Coral after a while. ‘Yes, you have had a long battle haven’t you?’

She paused for a moment, still thwarted by the ordinariness of his material. Where was the cousin of Lord Byron that he’d shown himself to be? Had he been replaced by the most boring man on the planet? But because she is such a brilliant guru, she quickly recovered her face.

‘Delia?’ she said, after a sip of her nourishing Sapphire.

Dear Delia,

I’m so sorry about Ralph. I had no idea what a twat he was and can now only sympathise with what you must have gone through.

I hope that it is some consolation to you to know that after the accident on the mountain he suffered a lot before he ran out of oxygen, and that his girlfriend, Hilary Shitface, left him for dead, making her own way down from the hillside, where she went off with a Brazilian.

He hadn’t updated his will, and so everything, including the house and all his assets, naturally pass to you.

I hope that this letter finds you well and looking forward to your future.

Kind Regards,

Mrs June Colbourne

Solicitor

‘Excellent Delia, well done,’ said Aunt Coral. ‘Managing to get Ralph in somewhere . . . and not so much someone who you long to hear from, but some
thing
you long to hear. Right, yes . . . and Joe?’

And Joe stood up and read his letter.

Dear Joe,

I don’t want to be your ‘better than nothing person’; I want to be the one. I don’t want to be your ‘she’ll do for now’ person; I want to be the one.

To me, love is phone calls followed by letters because you cannot bear to say goodbye. Beating down my door, not knocking on it.

Whoever it is that is filling your head is a very lucky lady. I can wait.

Love and feelings,

Kate

xxx

‘Excellent Joe, really excellent. Goodness! From Kate Bush, I presume? And if she is your better-than-nothing person, then who is your number one? Excellent Joe. Full of longing, and, may I say, mystery.

I was wondering who his number one was too, with Kate Bush in the queue. Joe has stopped looking my way, and it’s hard to tell what his feelings are now that he’s become so good at hiding them.

‘Sue?’ said Aunt Coral, ‘have you written a letter to yourself?’

Of course I had, but I had gone down the emotional route, and I was worried about reading it. I wrote it one night after a nightmare, and it seemed to calm me down. I was going to write one from Mr O’Carroll but I thought I might be too harsh on myself. Sure enough, as soon as I stood up my knees gave way and I had to sit back down again.

‘I can’t read it,’ I said. ‘Could someone else?’

Joe was on his feet in a nanasecond.

‘Sue’s letter,’ he said.

Dear Sue,

I am sorry I left without saying goodbye. I had expected to be resuscitated. I never meant for this to happen, or I would have left you a note.

I want you to know that I am all right, that I live in Heaven with all my dead relatives, and dream in vales of buddleia, which are blue. I have sent you messages from the other world and hope that you understand them.

Although I cannot visit the earth, because that is a rule of Heaven, I can still hear you, I listen with the ears of a spirit. It’s like when the clouds are very still and high, but low vapour is blown fast across them – I am the Eagle that’s coasting on the current between the two. I watch over you.

I just wanted to let you know, as I know that you have been longing to, that although I do not suffer, I THINK OF YOU ALL THE TIME.

Mum xxxxxx

When he’d finished everyone was emotional, except the Admiral who must have still been thinking about the council.

‘Excell . . . rea . . . exce, w . . . done …’ said Aunt Coral. ‘Goodness . . . wel . . . do . . . S …’

We disbanded early, as the group were too moved to continue. Aunt Coral had prepared a whole section on interpretation which would have to be postponed.

I am lying in bed now, caressed by the heavy summer air which is laced with the scent of the buddleia from the trees down Clockhouse Lane, my thoughts drifting from Group to death and then to the loss of the eye.

I can’t tell you how much I’d love to lie with it, to hold it in my hand. Until it was gone I never knew how much I’d miss it, or what a comfort it has been. Maybe I am as sad as Delia, building my future on something so small. But it’s surprising how little a thing you need to do it: a tortoise, an eye, a handbag. I dread to think what Icarus would say if he ever finds out that I kept his eye. He would think I was mad, but worse, he would think I was
sad
. Most girls my age have got real boyfriends’ eyes to look into, but I have been reduced to a relationship with a small piece of photo. Just what sort of woman am I to get excited over so little? But then I have never even been kissed. Aunt Coral says it’s because I am innocent, and I’m still young enough to be getting away with it. She makes me sound quite saintly.

But there is no way on earth that I will
ever
let Icarus find out about his eye, so, short of stealing his eye back, I will have to pander to Loudolle. It has just occurred to me that the eye, which has given me so much joy and pleasure, has now become a source of evil. Hold on, there’s somebody at my door.

How ironic. It was Loudolle, with another demand.

Coral’s Commonplace: Volume 3

Green Place, Aug 5 1946
(Age 24)

Green Place has been returned to us in a shocking state of repair. It seems the troops found it hard to keep warm, so they put a random mix of wood up the chimney, including some of the back stairs, wall panels, banisters, floorboards, some furniture, and a thirty-foot beech from the garden, which was the only giant beech in Egham. But we try not resent it; our home is as nothing compared to the millions who have died in the war.

Despite that, F and M are naturally heartbroken and struggling to come to terms with it, and have been further crippled by the new taxes brought in by Mr Attlee. They have to pay ninety-five per cent on their savings and sixty-six per cent on their income, and if they die the government get sixty-five per cent. Britain is bankrupt. Father’s aristo friends the Oziases have had their assets stripped by two sets of death duties – poor Julius himself and now their eldest Julius Caesar. I don’t think Mr Attlee approves of the rich at all.

Mother has not had a banana for seven years, and is now in the grip of a demoniac craving for one. A sure way to create a luxury item is not to be able to get it.

‘This war wasn’t fought so that you could enjoy a banana,’ said Father.

It is one of his favourite ways of coining the greater perspective. And we do feel guilty, and lucky to be standing here, free and full and alive.

Mother replied with poignancy, though it was after he’d left the room.

‘Yes it was.’

Joy, pleasure and abundance are all part of freedom’s gift. But the lights in the world are still on, and there is a naked lady in red pen on my bedroom ceiling. There are also the following inscriptions on the walls:

Arthur Marks, 8th United States Army Air Force. 400 days.

Flight Lieutenant Dorian Campbell loves the WAF in the secret bunker.

Sweet voice in the night.

Squadron Leader Benedict Dunford. Balloon Squadron supreme.

Pilot Officer, Colin Anderson, no 615 Squadron RAF.

James Anderson, Royal Auxiliaries. RIP my brother.

I have added two of my own:

RIP Sayler

RIP Daniel Morris

It really feels in both a great and a small way that the old world has gone for ever.

Earlier today Dr John looked in to pass on his condolences about Daniel and Sayler. It is believed that Daniel ‘had become separated from his unit’. Mrs Morris will not hear of anyone putting it another way. In the last Great War, desertion carried a maximum sentence of death, as did cowardice. Leniency is thankfully shown nowadays, except for treason and mutiny. Whatever has happened to him, Daniel is still lost, and so therefore is Mrs Morris.

It turns out that Dr John’s unit was part of the team sent in to recover bodies on D-Day, and he spent thirty-six hours operating nonstop, one man after another after another. Not surprisingly he is even now a little done in.

Mr D’Olivera has not come back. He is MPD, and my heart goes out to his family.

But as the grim news trickled in about all our missing friends, thank God there has been some good news about Johnny. Although he has been held as a Prisoner of War, he was apparently liberated from a German Stalag. I didn’t even know he had been taken as a prisoner of war. But our only link with Johnny is his Father, Jackie Isles, and it was not until Mr Isles called in to the house that we knew a thing about it. Mr Isles was brimming over with pride and joy to have his son back. He said that when Johnny was sent to the front, he wasn’t expected to make old bones. So understandably Mr Isles is now unable to contain his relief. It is like a miracle. He has visited everyone he could think of. He wanted to tell the whole world.

He told us Johnny is still weak and suffering greatly from shell shock. He’d been living on a bowl of gruel and a pound of bread a day – that is, if he completed his work. If he didn’t, his rations were diminished, and the hungrier he got, the less he was able to finish his work. Such tortures. And his feet are in a terrible state from jungle rot which took hold because he got too tired to take his boots off. If you don’t take your boots off, your feet are constricted and damp, and when sores develop they can turn to gangrene. The condition can occur with as little as one day’s exposure, so he is lucky to have any feet left at all. I hope they will be warm and dry for the rest of his life.

Mr Isles said Johnny wakes in the night with a desire to end it all, because he feels he cannot recover from the horrors he has seen. It seems that even though he is home and safe, that still the danger threatens. I wonder if he ever got the letter I wrote to him while I was at Whistlers Corner? I hope that it gave him some cheer.

Hundreds of children rescued from the camps have been brought to London. It was announced on the radio and makes a very harrowing story. Most of them were very weak, and some were close to death. The stronger ones carried the bags of the weak, tiny heroes supporting each other. They assembled at Victoria station and were taken to a nearby church hall, where they were lined up and instructed by gymnasts to do star jumps. This seemingly cruel exercise was a short cut, designed to determine which of the children needed emergency treatment, and the ones that collapsed were taken straight to hospital. But the remaining children began to cry, believing after their long journey that their friends were being taken away to be killed. Most had grown up in the camps, and did not know of any other reason for a person to be ‘taken away’.

Rumours abound that the man responsible for all this terror, Adolf Hitler, is working as a waiter in Switzerland, though this probably came from the Department of Liars in an attempt to catch other criminals.

With the economy on its knees odd things are happening. Photographic film and the metal it comes in has been reused and sold again, so you can get photographs of strangers coming up on your family shots. Dr John showed us some of his pictures of the war, and there are also some pictures of a pale stranger photographed holding a baby. They are under the trees in a forest; Dr John thinks it could be in Poland. She looks afraid. Was she in hiding? Could it have been from the Nazis? Could the picture have been taken by her husband, who feared they were close to capture? Is she still alive? And what of the baby? I dream of her being reunited with all her loved ones who may’ve been stolen away. How lucky I am to be here. But for an accident of birth, it could have been me.

And I have nothing but respect for Winston Churchill, whatever his cost to the economy. His booting-out has shocked the whole of Europe, especially Mother. It was a sad day for the man who’s achieved so much. And I will never forget his talent for comedy either – ‘Hitler’s tattered lackey Mussolini’!

But enough of war. I have got a degree! Although my class two did not meet with much approval. But I can say hand on heart that I tried. There are other things in life besides reductionism. You are reading the words of the woman who has read
Anna Karenina
three times.