Campari for Breakfast

by Sara Crowe

  She has written to me from Knightsbridge, from a flat with bars on the windows and only a courtyard garden. She has to share her bedroom with Daphne’s cat and she is very agitated about her clothes. Not surprising when she packed near to two hundred dresses, in the hopes of being invited to all the functions of Belgravia Square.

  In order that I should still have a part of her with me, as if being in Green Place isn’t enough, Aunt C has left me her Commonplace Book for my bedtime reading. Five volumes of thoughts and cuttings about her life. I’m finding it riveting. But it’s funny to think of Aunt Coral having a past. That’s one of the problems of ageing, it can look to the people outside you that you were born the age you are now.

  Dad left a phone message to say that he is always around if I want to talk, and asked me to reconsider not coming to the wedding. I’m glad I did not pick up the call, but I wish I knew if they have any plans to go away. I constantly dream of collecting the key and finding mum’s secret treasure.

  I have now been here on my own for just over two weeks and I have finally become used to all of the nocturnal noises, for which I have built up a placenta of explanations . . . pipes, creaks, drips, damp, bats, badgers, perhaps the slipping of a workman’s tool.

  Sometimes from my bed at night, I travel Green Place in my mind, passing around the building, stopping to snap some pictures. Delia’s bathroom with the tortoise tank, the Admirals’ towels as they left them, Aunt Coral’s pink bed with one swaying tassel, the conservatory hung with doilies of frost and laced with tingling spiders.

  When the power is on the lights flicker, especially when it is stormy, struggling to keep their connections. At these moments I feel certain that the ghosts of Victorian school children are running into wardrobes the minute I turn my back, and I have to reassure myself.

  Coral’s Commonplace: Volume 4

  Cutting from the Egham Echo, November 18 1955, ‘Births Marriages and Deaths’:

  It was not a shock, and in a way it was a relief. She rallied for a time after coming home, but the fevers kept on coming back. It’s so rare here, perhaps she wasn’t given quite effective enough treatment. But they tried, we know they really did try.

  And as having to die goes, I could not have hoped for better for Mother. She did suffer a bit, and I wish that she hadn’t, but there was time to say goodbye and to prepare ourselves. We had some nice trips to the coast and there were hours to reminisce and to fit in all she wanted. She was a chipper soul, and a great valuer of life’s little things. In winter she liked to leave one of her feet out of the covers in bed, just for the sheer pleasure of tucking it back in again.

  Towards the end, when she became very ill, she decided she wanted to return to Green Place to die. Not in her bed, as everyone had expected, but out under the stars, and she asked to be carried to the Croquet Hut with a view out over the world.

  She was my echo, sometimes loud, sometimes soft, but always gently around me, calling me to the sun.

  Sue

  Wednesday 21 October

  IT WAS ABOUT ten to nine when it happened. I had just finished dinner in the conservatory, which I had eaten with a blaze of small candles, when I heard the sound of footsteps upstairs. It didn’t concern me at first because I had trained myself to think logically. Maybe Glenn had forgotten something – maybe it was a badger – but as I listed the options the footsteps came downstairs, and this time it was more worrying, as there was no way they weren’t human. I ran outside, where I hid behind a mound of clippings, expecting to see the ghost of Cameo. But it wasn’t a lady in a filmy gown or a ghost or a ghoul or a spirit, but a man I saw coming out. A man with a full beard, long hair, and a long coat. He walked briskly down the drive and towards Clockhouse Lane where he was swallowed up by the shadows.

  I waited for some moments, and when I was certain he wasn’t coming back, I went straight and rang the police, hovering all the while between calm and terror.

  ‘It sounds like a tramp, Miss Bowl,’ said PC Pacey, arriving within twenty-two minutes of my call. ‘And he went out the front door you say?’

  ‘The front,’ I said.

  ‘Brass neck! What I advise you to do is keep a close watch on security. If he went out the front door, he may come back in that way. He might even have got a key.’

  Then he filled out some forms, before leaving me with a radio and heading out into the night.

  Thinking about it as a logical adult, I told myself that this tramp, whoever he is, has been taking great care to be avoided, so he obviously isn’t an axe murderer, as he’d have already pounced by now. He is probably a very nice person who just needs somewhere to live, and he probably wandered in one day, and saw that the place was empty. He is probably very spontaneous, as I imagine most tramps would be. In fact if he is hungry and poor I should share my wealth. Maybe I should leave him a picnic in the hall and show him I am a friend?

  The power of this theory reassured me to the point where I felt calm enough to get into bed, where I tried very hard to distract myself with the correspondence of the day. It isn’t until you are in a situation like that, that you realise that courage is a decision.

  The first was a letter from my dad:

  Dear Sue

  I was devastated to get your letter. I’m so sorry that you feel that way. Whilst I do understand how angry you feel, and that the wedding may seem sudden, I want you to know that your mother and I had grown apart long before I met Ivana. And your mother, God rest her, did not know. I know you will find it hard, but I feel that it’s time for the truth.

  I hope that you will reconsider coming, it would mean the world to me. There is nothing but love for you in Titford, and the truth, if you want it.

  Don’t be a stranger.

  Dad x

  After I finished I tore it up, and went to leave a ploughman’s in the hall for a tramp, with a notelet saying simply ‘peace’. It was the action of my inner Caroline, and made me feel serene. (NB Aunt Coral has a strong temperament which if I had to name it would be a ‘Caroline’ – someone very cheerful, who advises the picking of flowers. Following this theory on, I think the Admirals would be Brians, who are calm and advise reading books, and Delia would be an Ogera, being prone to the melancholic.)

  I have now returned to the attic to lose myself in ‘Brackencliffe’ and escape any thoughts of doom. But as I write, a dark patch of thunder is building up behind the trees down Clockhouse Lane. The leaves look like they are about to fall from the trees more from fright than because of the season.

  All my life I’ve wanted to write about how it feels to be alive, and I hope it will be reflected within the walls of ‘Brackencliffe’. I intend to fully subjugate myself to it while I am here in splendid and squalid isolation.

  Friday 20 November

  The weeks have flown past and Dad’s nuptials are hanging over the horizon. But on a positive note, the opportunity I have been waiting for has finally arrived.

  Aunt Coral rang this morning to tell me that she’d spoken to Dad, and found out that he and Ivana are going to be away for the weekend. Something to do with some hideous joint stag and hen night, which they are having in a hotel.

  Loudolle has been at home for a college break. Mercifully she isn’t staying at Green Place, not being one for the icy conditions. She is staying with the Frys, on a futon with mirrored wardrobes and pot pourri. Mrs Fry is always talking about her ‘luminous elsewhere quality’, but what use is that in the café or helping around the house? She tails me like an odour, following me at my chores, her eyes craven and watchful and full of her plans.

  Early this morning I was in the Gents hanging up some hand washing signs for Mrs Fry. She is keen to take part in the government’s hand washing scheme, encouraging people to wash their hands, especially the gentlemen, who, she said, were ten times more likely to have poo particles on their hands than the ladies!

  I was thinking about how to get myself to Titford, what with my work and Green Place duties, so I had much
bigger things to think about when Loudolle came into the loo. She put some air freshener into the cubicles, and then looked me over slowly, before her eyes finally alighted on the top of my head. This made me fall into a self-conscious coma about my hairband, which earlier I had thought so jazzy, but which was such a decision for work.

  ‘How are you Sue?’ she said, addressing my hairband sympathetically. ‘Getting ready for the gala? I really think you could win.’

  For a brief moment I was flattered, but I knew she was just being creepy, because she risked the wrath of Aunt Coral if she tried any business again. She went for a piddle in a cubey, I could hear her fierce tinkling, and then she left the room without washing her hands, ignoring the expensive new signs.

  ‘Clever you,’ she said in farewell to my hairband.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when she was gone. She doesn’t have any power over me any more.

  It was some time before I returned to the café, minus my hairband. It was crowded with heavy German teenagers; the air was thick with hormones. They had teamed with a Group from Oxford, who were wearing long jumpers and looking intelligent, debating about the menu and asking for things chargrilled.

  But life is full of terrible things: spots, heartbreak, Loudolle. Aunt Coral always says that age and experience will catch up with me, and I’ll laugh about it all one day, but I am currently having difficulties turning it all into the fond remembrance of tomorrow.

  ‘OK Sue?’ said Joe as I walked back in.

  ‘Yes, I’ve just taken off my hairband,’ I said, ‘and it’s left a bit of a shelf.’

  ‘No, I mean you look worried,’ he said, ‘anything I can do?’

  ‘My Dad and Ivana are away for the weekend and I need to go to Titford. There’s something I want to collect,’ I said, knowing that I was fishing.

  ‘I can take you tomorrow evening if you like. We’ll be very quick on the bike.’

  It was with a grateful feeling of uneasy dread that I left Joe on the frother – yet back home all was quiet. There were nothing but the trees standing in the sky wondering what all the fuss was about. I stood for a moment on the terrace watching a spider climbing a strand of human hair. When it got to the top it threw itself off and began ascending again, just for the joy of being a spider. Inside the house was peaceful and the ploughman’s remained untouched. And Glenn had left the hot water on, which meant I had no excuses.

  After my bath I went to place flowers in the Grey Room, which I picked by torch light from the lean pickings outside. (It says in Aunt Coral’s Commonplace that it used to be Mum’s room when she was a little girl home on the holidays, which makes it even more special.) It was a long time since I’d been in there and it wasn’t as I remembered. Rooms suffer from absences and are better with light and footsteps. I placed the flowers on the window ledge looking out at the dusky pool, remembering the waves rippling over the tiles when the water was warm in the summer.

  The bed was slightly pulled away from the wall, and a long black coat lay across it. Glenn Miller’s perhaps. Or a tradesman’s?

  ‘It belongs to Glenn, it belongs to Glenn,’ I repeated to myself as I went back to my room.

  Later on, when I was on bat patrol, I saw a light shining under the locked room door. I thought at first Glenn must have left it on by mistake, but I know that can’t be possible, because there is only one key to the room, which is held by Aunt Coral in private.

  Could it be the tramp who put the light on in the locked room? And if so, then how did he get the key? Or is it really a tramp at all? Could it be a spirit?

  It is now 3am and I’ve just dreamt that it wasn’t a man I saw leaving Green Place, but a woman. But dreams can be misleading and are often badly miscast.

  Saturday 21 November

  I had a surprise visit from the Nanas today, who arrived just as I was finishing my breakfast. I hadn’t seen them for ages, because there’d been an outbreak of flu in the home. They walked up the drive having had their taxi drop them at the bottom. Print was wrapped in a rug and Taffeta was wearing home-made pop socks. Obviously there comes a point where being cosy replaces any desire to look nice. They’d been cooped up for ages, so I toasted some crumpets which I served by the pool under blankets.

  ‘Where are your friends?’ Taffeta asked me somewhat obleakly.

  ‘They only come out in the evenings,’ I said.

  ‘Mine only come out in the afternoons,’ she said, completely missing my joke.

  ‘We came as soon as we could,’ said Georgette. It seemed they had come on a mission.

  ‘You see we were catching up with the papers,’ said Print, ‘and we would not have put two and two together had I not had a visit from an old friend. She was in the area for a bowels match and she spotted your advertisement.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t follow,’ I said, confused by the Nanas’ ramblings.

  ‘Her name is Emily Laine,’ said Print, ‘and Emily is Jack Laine’s widow.’

  It wasn’t long before they were back on their favourite subject, (the Duke of Edinburgh), but all I could think of was Emily Laine amidst the talk of the Duke’s plus fours. They stayed for an hour or so before returning to the home, and their taxi had barely pulled away before I telephoned Aunt Coral.

  ‘Are you going to contact Emily Laine?’ I asked her, once I’d filled her in.

  ‘I don’t see how I can,’ said Aunt Coral. ‘What if she doesn’t know about it?’

  ‘Maybe you could get Print to try and find out if she knew?’

  ‘No, Print knows nothing about Jack and Cameo and I’d have to tell her, and she’d feel awful for Emily. No, dear me, I’ll have to think about it.’

  I also told her about the man I’d seen, and the coat.

  ‘Are you sure it was a man? Are you sure it wasn’t a ghoul?’ she asked.

  I found this quite unsettling – that she would rather believe in a ghoul than a man! Seems to me she’ll believe whatever is most reassuring. She’s a Caroline through and through.

  I am sitting up in the Grey Room again, trying to commune with mum and prepare myself for later, when Joe is taking me to Titford.

  In the early evening Joe came for me on his bike, as promised. It was the first time I’d ridden pillion, and a moment I was not unaware of.

  It took us only 45 minutes to get there – it takes an hour and a half on the train. But it feels a lifetime away from Green Place and the Egham borders.

  Once inside, I slipped straight upstairs to retrieve the key as per the instructions on Mum’s note.

  ‘I wish my Dad had left me something like this,’ said Joe, of his own distant grief.

  ‘I’m so sorry, sometimes I forget that you’ve lost your Dad.’

  ‘It’s all right, I’m over it now, I’ve grown up,’ he said, trying to be jolly and manly. ‘So it’s a key to a locker your mum has left you in secret? Goodness me.’

  ‘It’s under a floorboard that only she and I know about,’ I said.

  ‘Wow,’ he said, closely following me upstairs.

  Dad and Ivana’s bedroom smelled like the foyer in a department store, and there was flat champagne in the tooth mug.

  I lifted the board up gently, looking down into the hole underneath it as though I were looking down a precipice from which I was about to fall off.

  ‘Joe,’ I said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s no key.’

  Coral’s Commonplace: Volume 4

  Green Place, Dec 2 1962

  (Age 40)

  I’m off the botanist again; much more off than on lately in fact. Daphne is convinced it’s because he finally proposed, and that if he hadn’t, I would be much keener. The minute I’ve got him, I don’t want him and the minute I haven’t, I do.

  For all these years, when it comes to romance, I had thought that I was quite traditional. But it turns out that I just can’t breathe when I feel tied. And Edgar is so very similar to me; like a cosmic reflection. But am I spoiled? Am
I ill? Am I greedy, to wonder if the grass may yet be greener? Am I to stay a child, when all my friends have grown up?

  As I look out of the window, I can see clouds of smoke from a bonfire. The window pane is misted up, apart from one central patch that’s been blown clear by the new morning. And on the other side of the window, we are totally enmeshed in webbing. Maybe it’s the spiders that have held this dear house up so long. Each frail fingerprint sparkles like fibreglass. It’s as though they have cast their nets in the air and captured the entire house.

  There’s an island off the coast of Madeira they call Spider Island, which apparently is inhabited ONLY by spiders as big as the average boy’s hand. I’d love to go and see them, but who would dare to come with me? Edgar would’ve enjoyed it, but there’s no point in thinking about that . . . Still, at least we only had plans for bonfire night this time and not for the rest of our lives.

  He wrote me a pompous letter about his various reasons for ending it, it was written with a third eye over it, in case his biographer ever gets hold of it. He’s moving to Hampshire with a woman with a pronounced widow’s peak. But if I am forlorn I remind myself that I could never see myself doing his dishes, or feeding his ravening guests, or walking from his bathroom to his bedroom dressed in his flannel pyjamas. I could never live in a flat, and I don’t ever want to leave Father. It’s not hard to imagine why Edgar decided to call it a day!

  My friends it seems are happier with my being alone. Daphne prefers me to retain what she calls my ‘mad Aunt’ status, because it makes the toil of motherhood seem so stable and reassuring. ‘Aunt’; the word conjures to me a tweedy, lonely figure or, God forbid, a type of Miss Havisham. No, if Buddleia ever makes me an Aunt I will not take after Miss H. I am not going to pine over Edgar. Broken hearts do mend, and anyway, one daughter lost too young is quite enough for Father. It struck me last night as I lay in bed, in profound talks with the ceiling, that Cameo lived life so quickly. Maybe she had a notion she had better grow up double fast. Our lives seem like waves, some that will go the distance of all the oceans, and some that will lap gently two or three times before heading straight for the shore.