by Sara Crowe
Some time later after old flames had been recollected, we were sitting down to eat the cake, when suddenly Aunt C bellowed, ‘Stop! No, wait!’ she said. ‘We never take them alive.’
For the Admiral had forgotten himself and was about to hoover a spider. I think, compared to the mystical Johnny, that the Admiral is somewhat an unlikely possibility for Aunt Coral. But a possibility in itself is obviously no bad thing. And Aunt Coral thrives on possibilities, almost more than on realities. Maybe if she grows to be fascinated about parking spots, and the Admiral becomes more romantic and learns some respect for spiders – maybe then they’ll be one of those couples who’ve been friends for years and then suddenly marry. Whereas someone like Admiral Ted did it the other way round, and was married for centuries before spending the rest of his days with the cricket. And someone like my mother had what they call a clandestine relationship, which means hidden, and someone like Nana Cameo had only the briefest passions, and before any of these things happened, they were all just possibilities, and I think I agree with Aunt C, that possibilities can be preferable to outcomes.
Coral’s Commonplace: Volume 5
Green Place, Jan 6 1988
(Age 65 but look older!)
A new year, a new illness. My ear has erupted with a savage gunge, and there is no doctor unless it’s an emergency. During a fitful sleep I dreamt Green Place was a college, of Romance, Literature and Chivalry; Father wouldn’t approve. Nor would he have approved had I kept Sue’s inheritance. Talking of which – there’s something I need to do. I will star it on my list.
I have spent many hours crying over the past week, as I have not cried for years. Johnny unlocked all my lost ones.
Sue asked me once: ‘Why do you think we have a memory? Is it so we can remember who we are and how to get home, or is it so we can live on after we’ve died, in the memories of the people who love us?’
Dear me, she’s too young for this sort of thing.
Still, it is a New Year and I shall not give into black dogs. The sun is burning like a giant strawberry in the sky, crimson as of 7am, and I have a date with the Admiral this afternoon, to walk into town for the band.
I wish I had known him longer, wish that when he looked at me, he recognised all these lines as visitors, remembering the radiant twenty-five-year-old I was, and always having that in mind when he sees me. I litter the place with snapshots of myself in my heyday, to display the full gallery of Corals he has not been acquainted with, but it doesn’t have the same impact as long-term knowledge, or remembering. Perhaps Johnny might see me this way? But it seems his eyes were always for Cameo.
The difference between us has taken forty years to merge. If anything he looks the elder now. A woman of sixty-five and a man of sixty-three is nothing, but a girl of sixteen and a boy of fourteen, not so. And the difference between coal boy and Green Place girl is also not what it once was. Though we were not ‘born equal’, we have become equal through the small battles and triumphs of our own lives.
There goes Sue, she just walked down the drive in a peachy little outfit, her limbs full of bounce and vigour, and I find myself thinking that it will only take a few good nights’ sleep, and the skipping of dinner, followed by a brisk run down the drive before I will look like that again too. But even if that were actually possible at sixty-five, I still want to eat and drink till I’m full and stay up late drinking cocktails. I remember I asked Father on his eightieth birthday, how it felt to be eighty, and he replied, ‘I don’t know.’
But I’m so glad Sue’s been with me this past year. It’s wonderful to live with the hope of youth, even though she has been to a dark place already. Her innocence, and her way of seeing the world as if she were an alien just landed. She makes me remember to wonder and to look.
‘Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.’ (Anaïs Nin)
MOSCOW SLAMMER
(for the Common Cold with Ear Infection)
1 Boil: Fennel seeds, Methi seeds (from Indian shop), 6 lemons, chunk of ginger
2 Steep
3 Add honey
Drink at least 3 cups
After a few hours the patient shall feel much friskier and be able to get stuck into life.
A snapshot of the Egham borders
Early moon in the afternoon sky, ping pong in a distant garage. Fern fronds uncurling, carpets of snowdrops. Patches of bracken flanked by yesteryear hazel. I once pressed a switch from that hedgerow. I keep it in the back of my book and it often falls out when I open it, a little bit of 1930 in 1988, like the whisper of distant voices in this building, never to be forgotten.
Sue
Mon Jan 11, 3 days to go
I WENT TO Titford today to make amends. The town was basking in a morning of unseasonal sunshine which would no doubt be the subject of many a resident’s diary. Dad said he thought it was because Ivana had brought it out; I had to hold myself back. I felt sad for them after the grandiosity of Green Place, with their little dishes and papery doors.
I didn’t tell them anything about what I found in the locker – I expect they just thought I’d come round – but Dad was relieved and delighted we were speaking again, that was for certain. He kept on and on embracing me, as if I were a long-lost collie who’d been found at a neighbouring farm. He even seemed interested in my scholarship, and asked if I would read them my story.
Remembering Ivana’s comments on my previous efforts I prefaced it: ‘Please don’t interrupt.’
‘I will not,’ Ivana said. ‘I will listen and then I will say something.’
I read them ‘Brackencliffe’, from start to finish, glad that I’d decided to take it – I nearly didn’t, because I didn’t want to be disappointed if Dad hadn’t wanted to know.
‘The End,’ I said as I reached it, and in unison they both decided to clap.
‘That’s wonderful darling!’ said Dad. ‘Why don’t you ring up the bookshop?’
‘What for?’
‘To ask if they want to sell it.’
Sometimes I think that he has no idea how the world works.
‘And I have cousin in Denmark,’ said Ivana, ‘who has poem in print in a book.’
I do believe they were trying, but somehow they always manage to put out my fire.
After an eternity Ivana left Dad and me alone and we did some hard talking and fast, assuming she would not be away very long. I said I was sorry for missing the wedding and for rifling through his correspondence. Then he revealed something that completely blew all of my preconceptions out of the water: he had known about Mr Edgeley – but Mum hadn’t known that he knew.
How can husbands and wives not know such glaring enormous things about each other? Yet they share the same bed, the same fridge, the same table. Aunt Coral is right that you never really know a person.
‘Does Aileen know?’ I said, jumping ahead into the ripples in the pond.
‘I don’t—’
He mimed zipping up his mouth as Ivana returned with some snacks. It was something Danish on specialist un-bread which Dad found dangerously nice.
We resumed our conversation again later, when Ivana had taken the plates to the kitchen.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked.
‘I wanted to, but you wouldn’t talk to me. I did try.’
‘Why did Mrs Edgeley give you that birthday card?’
‘I think perhaps she found out and thought she should let me know. And Sue, there’s something else. Ivana’s having a baby.’
Ivana’s having a baby. It was like being concussed by four little words.
‘She’s having a baby? Are you sure it’s yours?’
‘Of course it’s mine! Come on darling, you’re going to have a sibling!’
‘Congratulations!’ I said, but I didn’t feel like celebrating.
One is expected in such instances to take these things in one’s stride, behave in a grown-up way,
at the same time as your whole world turns upside down and you have to re-identify yourself.
‘Congratulations,’ I said when Ivana came back. ‘Dad’s just told me your news.’
‘Thank you. I was worried, you know, because in the last chance salon you must act.’
Their news made me think. It is odd the way that families develop traditions such as age gaps. I’d always wanted a sibling, but of course, one that was born of my Mum.
Aileen rang, very late after I got back to Green Place, and we talked about her father and my mother. Of course Aileen had guessed.
‘Your Mum did that over my Dad. I’m so sorry,’ she said.
‘No, it was a build-up, there were many reasons,’ I said. ‘I’ve accepted as much. And with all the limitations of her seriousness, I know that she did her best.’
‘Yes, of course she did,’ she said, like she was talking about someone who’d just popped out to pick up the milk. I’m almost certain she hadn’t understood what I meant.
Then I told her about Johnny Look-at-the-Moon, and she couldn’t believe it! I have to agree that it’s not often you find your vagabond Grandpa hiding in your dead Nana’s room.
Aileen had her own revelations to tell me about in her love life. She has found a new love, who is, of all things, a bricklayer. (It must have brought back memories.)
I still don’t know why out of all the people on earth Mum would have chosen Mr Edgeley. But Aunt Coral says that one can never really know the secret place that is a relationship.
Everything is new, everything old has gone. Different mother, new sibling, new Grandpa – I feel as though I am walking backwards with my socks on back to front.
Tues 12 Jan 1988, 2 days to go
Aunt C and I had a tussle about mum’s money. She wasn’t very comfortable that I had paid Glenn, and straight after the gala night she apologised to him and asked him to put it all back in my bank account. She insisted she couldn’t keep it. I insisted she must. So, we have now come to an agreement that it is a loan, and I am keeping just one kay up front so that I can go on the course. The rest of the money has now been transferred full circle back to Glenn for the works. He is a little confused and bamboozled, and only had two words to say, which were: ‘Blimey!’ and ‘Women!’
Aunt C has since been a whirlwind, planning the reappointments to five of six target bedrooms. If Green Place is going to support itself she will need to use the good suites, and with the nine kay left from mum, which is now officially a loan, she should be able to do it – if she doesn’t paint the walls in gold leaf.
She has yet to do up Cameo’s room, but the door was officially opened as of New Year’s Day. When I went in I realised that there was nothing so mournful behind that door, beyond the usual spots of grumbling plaster and a tan patch of damp here and there. It just looks dingy and tired and smells of sad old dust. A two-seater bench with soft cushions stands empty in the window. It has a bird’s eye view of the buddleia.
My eye rolled round the room, like a camera over the past. The bedcover was bleached thin from the sun, and the coal smudge was as clear as day, which, if you think of it soulfully, heralds the beginning of my creation. Cameo’s dollies were still on the bed and I swear that one of them was looking at me, afraid I might take it to the garden and bury it.
‘You can only shut the door for so long,’ I said.
‘There’s a lot of truth in that,’ said Aunt Coral.
But I think she was actually meaning that while there was a lot of truth in it, there was also a bit of a lie – it could have easily stayed shut for ever, because forgetfulness can be blissful.
‘You’re never going to become one of those ladies who resents sharing her home with strangers are you?’ I asked her.
‘Not even with visitors I didn’t know were here!’ she said.
‘I wonder if Johnny has ever realised what your letter truly says?’
‘He might do some day,’ she said, merrily.
‘I admire your joy de vivre, I don’t think I’d ever be as carefree about Icarus finding out I had a thing with his eye,’ I said.
‘Or Joe,’ she said, flashing me a cheeky wink. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, reversing back to the earlier subject, ‘I like having people around the place, it’s a big empty house without them. We have a Mr Hart from Texas arriving today, a colleague of Mr Tsunawa, and a Hugh from Chertsey has telephoned to say he has recently been divorced.’
‘They all seem to be men,’ I said.
‘Do they?’ said Aunt Coral.
Weds 13 Jan 1988, My Last Day
I woke up this morning with a speck of carrier bag on my face, though how it got there is yet another question.
For leaving presents I bought Aunt C an unnecessary handbag, pink leather with charms. I nearly didn’t give it to her; it would have looked so good on my course, but she loves it because it has multiple pockets to fissel in.
The EHG had a whip-round so that I have some money for unnecessaries.
‘You must do it for Group!’ they said in their card.
Aunt C laid out some things on my bed to pack: lotions, bikini, sarong and some exercises she had designed especially for the Greek climate and written down for me.
There were also some openers for me to finish which I am already eager to start:
She unpacked put on a clean white shirt and fresh lipstick …
‘I always buy my wedding dresses here,’ said Margo Chinnery….
Joe arrived a few hours ago carrying Mrs Fry’s sponge bag with his toothbrush and overnight things, looking for all the world like Atlas, who carried the earth on his shoulders. He is going to take me to the airport early tomorrow morning.
‘Three months is no time,’ he said. ‘It’ll be gone in the twinkling of an eye.’
It was a brotherly thing to say but he is much, much more than a brother.
‘Thank you Joe, go lightly,’ I said. I don’t really know what I meant, but I think I was trying to stop myself spilling the beans on my heart.
Thurs 14 Jan 1988, First day in Greece
Joe put a note in my pyjamas, which I found when I got here. It was written on the unused side of an already written card:
Glad you liked these Sue, it was my pleasure. Joe X
And on the used side it said:
Dear Visitor,
Thank you very much for the flowers. I hope you have everything that you need.
With all best wishes,
Sue
They were from Joe all along! Ho! I’m so gullible. I am struck by the unknown effect a person can have on someone’s life, maybe I have effected Joe.
It’s easy to see Aunt Coral’s effect on mine; who knows what would have happened without her. One thing leads to another and the consequences are endless. We can be gods to each other and not know it, though I hope that she might guess.
It’s turning-in time now at Taverna O’Carroll, on the beach at Shabany Bay. The upstairs windows of my dormitory are dittled and dottled with the droppings of Grecian seagulls. Creamy stars pop outside in a twilight of pacific blue. ‘Pacific’ is one of my best-loved words, not only because of the colour but because of what it means – a lustrous ocean packed with mermaids, like silk flowing out to paradise, and those words flow out to other words – to briny, white horses and seashore, words you might not be experiencing at the time and so carry a tinge of longing. ‘Joe’ flows out to dinner, candlelight, man and boy . . . ‘Aunt Coral’ flows out to home, to cave, shelter, slippers and nightie …
But how strange, I thought I just saw mum walking on the sea in the sweep of a ship’s searchlight. She was wearing a kaftan made of rainbows and she was giant, like a legend. The sea air plays tricks, I think.
Coral’s Commonplace: Volume 4
Green Place, 15 Jan 1970
Received a telegram from Buddleia and Nick!
Acknowledgements
Warmest thanks to my literary agent extraordinaire, Charlotte Robertson. And also to
my editor Katy Loftus and to Linda Evans and the team at Transworld publishers, for all their wonderful advice and encouragement and for everything that has gone into bringing this book to life.
To my husband, Sean Carson, for the great gift of all his encouragement and inspiration, thank you. To my Dad, Allen Crowe, and to Roddy Maude-Roxby, for sharing stories and memories of World War Two. To Lizzie Knight, for reading so many drafts and for unceasing hospitality, inspiration, and roast potatoes. Also to Janet Crowe, Siobhan McCallum and Sue Holderness, for their patience and generosity in reading early drafts. To Robin, Siobhan, Mia and Guy McCallum, for all their inspiration and, not least, for allowing me to include some of their best and most wonderful coinages. To Mark Gatiss and Ian Hallard for all their encouragement and support. To Tamsin and Rick Leaf and to Nat, Jacob and Roxie Leaf for all the funny things that they say.
And to: Deborah Crowe, Jeni Hayes, Jim and Anne Carson, Ida and Bill Cochrane, Jessie-May Perry, Annie Michael, Liza Goddard, Michael Hobbs, Angela Annersley and the great many friends who have inspired and helped me along the way. For as the old Chinese Proverb says:
‘When Eating Bamboo shoots, remember the man who planted them’
Last but not least, I acknowledge most of all how much I owe to my Dad, Allen, and to my late Mother, Neta, who told me that as a child she thought scruples were little people who lived under the stairs, and that therefore an unscrupulous person was a person who lived in a flat. I would like to express my deep gratitude that she was such a very special source of help to me, and still is even now in the treasure of my memory.