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  The Commonplace Book of Coral Garden: Volume 1

  Green Place, May 22 1929

  (Seven years today)

  Hickory dickory dock, this is seven o’clock. I am an early riser, a lark while the others are owls, so I am being trained to stay in my bed until 7 and have been given a clock for my birthday. I have learnt the time from the hickory mouse that runs around the clock face, before I had only the sound of Mother’s passing slippers to tell me it was a polite time to get up. The long hand must be straight at the top and the short hand must be about where a mouse’s nose would be if it were running away from the top. And then the second hand must be as one with the long hand and not a tick before.

  Birthday news

  Father called me into his study just before breakfast today. I was concerned that I might be in trouble, because he caught me up and about at a quarter to six. I knocked on his door, and the great handle turned. I was expecting a scolding, but he was there sweetly in his singlet and pyjamas and he presented me with this Commonplace Book. He has already put in some cuttings for me, which are about something called ‘The British Empire’.

  Mother bought me a sailor suit, the one on the dummy in Thomas Tyrelle. It is of a poplin of cornflower-blue, with salty white anchors on the pockets. This was in addition to a new frock and bloomers to wear when we’re walking the dogs. She says Green Place girls are fashion plates even in ruftie tufties.

  Nature news

  There was a slow worm on the pipe outside my window earlier, but before I had time to draw it, Terry and Ross had a fight. Ross is jealous of Terry for many reasons, not least his shiny red coat. We have to paint Ross’s bald bits with eczema cream, while lucky Terry gets to sleep in the laundry. I am sorry for Ross, because he’s treated like a dog, while Terry is treated more like the third child. Mother and Father bought Terry from Red Setter Rescue, but Cameo and I found Ross straying and we begged for him to be given a home. Cameo is so affable, she has M and F round her finger, although she’s only two! Even when I am just pushing her around the garden in her pram, I find her really good company.

  Sue

  Monday 26 January

  WELL YOU SHOULD have seen their faces when I got out of the Bentley at the Toastie this morning! Mrs Fry’s eyes bulged as though she had a condition.

  ‘Pick you up at eleven Sue, I’m looking forward to Group!’ yelled the Admiral as he bay parked.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ I shouted.

  ‘Avery Little helps!’ he bellowed, calling out his motto.

  So as I approached the toaster on my seventh day as canteen apprentice, I was relishing in the triumphs that had already featured that morning. I’d got out of a Bentley, I’d get back in one too and, though they were seniors, I now had a group. I went straight on to the toaster and of course Mrs Fry could not stop goggling at me.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Joe, passing me a cappuchino with his signature chocolate twist.

  ‘Was it your Grandpa?’ asked Michael.

  Icarus asked the same question, but silently and with nicer trousers.

  ‘That? That’s just the Admiral,’ I said. Mrs Fry was straining.

  I thought about asking Joe if he wanted to join the group, but though he is beyond a gentleman to me, I think he is still a bit young for that sort of thing. Actually we are the same age, but everyone knows how boys lag.

  Poor Joe is a boy whose body doesn’t belong to him. He is even taller than Icarus but not half as well-built. I could never see Joe in the same way I see Icarus, because, for someone like me who is quite strapping, Joe is the sort of boy I could injure, whereas Icarus is much more the type who will throw you on the floor and ravish you census without so much as batting an eye.

  Friday 30 January

  The Inaugural Egham Writing Group

  Aunt Coral suggested that our newly formed writing group should meet, when availability allows, on select Fridays after dinner. I think it’s a good idea, although the after-dinner slot has been worrying me, as it’s a time when I am capable of little else than digestion and sleep. Aunt Coral also decided, after a great deal of thought, that we should meet in the conservatory, which has far-reaching views out over the pool and down to the Egham borders. So this evening, after another sumptuous Mrs Bunion dinner, Aunt Coral, Delia, the Admiral and I made our way to inaugurate.

  Aunt Coral had freely offered herself as guru, which was a load off my mind because I thought I might have to. But everyone knows the best gurus in the world are the people who have lived.

  ‘Good evening, Group,’ said Aunt Coral.

  ‘Good evening, Aunt Coral,’ we chorused, (for everyone, even the Ad, had taken to calling her that. I’m guessing this has been my influence!). She stood framed by the conservatory windows, the lights coming on in the distant houses twinkling all around her. We sat round a wicker table and although Aunt Coral had supplied extra heating, I still felt the need of a hat.

  ‘I’ve chosen for our inaugural agenda some warm-up exercises from Mr O’Carroll,’ she said. ‘It occurred to me in the light of Sue’s distressing letter to herself from Ivana that we ought to leave the deeper work for a later session, and use tonight for fun and games.’

  ‘But I want to write a letter to myself from my ex-husband,’ said Delia.

  ‘In our next session,’ replied Aunt Coral firmly. ‘So tonight on our agenda we have a two point plan: 1, Fun and Games with Dialogue. And 2, Fun and Games with your Secret Sweetheart.’

  I typed out these headings on my typewriter.

  ‘So,’ she continued, referring to her notes from time to time, ‘to kick off, it’s fun and games with dialogue. This exercise is designed to help you learn how to make dialogue jump off the page. Often what makes a character really live is when you can speak its slang. This might relate to a stammer or tic, a dropped “H” or “G”, or might involve low, everyday language that you think you ought not to repeat. So, I want you to imagine a character and write down a line or two of dialogue for them, and then we will share them.’

  The rain hit the roof of the conservatory as the sound of creation began.

  ‘Right,’ said Aunt Coral as we finished, ‘who’ll begin? Delia?’

  Delia stood up and read aloud. ‘Goddamnit, Gedouda here,’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ said Aunt Coral. ‘But we need to know a bit more about who is speaking. Sue?’

  ‘“Fuck me,” said Fiona, “I ain’t never bin so fuckin’ tired in me ’ole fuckin’ life,”’ I said.

  Aunt Coral couldn’t say anything to my ingenuity at first. ‘Good,’ she said eventually. ‘And Avery?’

  ‘Yaroo!’ shouted the Admiral.

  Aunt Coral paused for a breath, and glanced at her notes, unsure momentarily of what to say. ‘Well tried,’ she finally managed, ‘but perhaps a little derivative.’

  At this point, I have to admit I wondered how much use the group was going to be to my progress, but I thought I’d give it another session. They were only doing it to help me after all, and a group of elderly bohemiams was better than no group at all.

  ‘So,’ continued Aunt Coral, ‘let’s get a little more involved now. I want you to think of your secret sweetheart—’

  ‘What if you haven’t got one?’ said Delia.

  ‘Then you can make one up. I want you to think of your secret sweetheart and jot down a few words about how you feel about them, and don’t worry, I won’t force you to read them aloud.’

  Again the noise of creation filled the conservatory, as we wrote by the light of old fringe lamps, while outside the Egham borders lay beyond us in a mournful mist.

  ‘Now,’ said Aunt Coral when we’d finished, ‘who would be willing to read aloud?’

  She was looking expectantly at the Admiral, probably hoping that he’d written her an ode, but he and Delia had both fallen quiet and were looking at their shoes, so I stood up and offered mine:

  ‘I haven’t known you long my dear, hirsute, it makes no difference. Whenever you are
near to me I smell the flowers along the way. I know I shouldn’t tell you this, hirsute, I cannot hide it, for a glimpse of you will linger gentle on my mind all day.’

  ‘Excellent Sue,’ said Aunt Coral, ‘really excellent, well done. Two questions though. One, obviously, who is your secret sweetheart? I’m sure we’re all dying to know, and two, what do you mean by “hirsute”?’

  ‘My secret sweetheart is just someone I made up,’ I said, ‘and what I mean by hirsute is “nevertheless”, of course.’

  ‘But hirsute doesn’t mean nevertheless,’ said Delia, ‘it means hairy.’

  My mind raced back to all the occasions when I had misused the word, with a terrifying awareness of my stupidity. But then it quickly seized on the positive thought that the group had set me to rights.

  At the same time my head was also swimming with Icarus. I’d just said I’d made him up, when of course he is more than real. But now I was wondering: what if it was the other way round? What if what I made up became real? Now that would be interesting. I jotted down a private fantasy, while the Admiral and Delia offered their work. Here it is transcribed:

  The Wounds of Love

  By Sue Bowl

  It was January the 27th and we were sitting as usual in the drawing room after dinner, when suddenly the Admiral came running into the room.

  ‘It’s Icarus Fry. Come quickly!’ he shouted.

  ‘What has happened?’ said Aunt Coral and Delia as they ran into the hall.

  ‘I knocked him off his bike,’ said the Admiral.

  So we took Icarus up to a West Wing bedroom and the Admiral went for the Doctor. It was very late. Aunt Coral and Delia fell asleep in their chairs immediately, with their heads lolling. But I watched over Icarus as he lay wounded and cradled him in my arms. I could have stayed like that for ever, but he awoke and became arouselled. Lost in the warmth of my cleeverage, he began to gently stir. How I wish that the Doctor had never come.

  ‘Well, my secret sweetheart is Marlon Brando,’ said Delia, bringing me back to the present. ‘You can’t judge a book by its cover,’ she said.

  Much later on after Group I was laying in bed in the dark, making figures out of the furniture, when I was startled by the familiar tap of a sensitive hand at my door. Aunt Coral slipped into my room, tweed skirt brushing against her good tights, making my bedcover erupt with electric shocks as she sat on my bed with a crackle. She inspected my face for signs of life, so I pretended to be asleep, which I do when I don’t feel like chatting. I had committed to the charade, so I couldn’t change my mind when, through my shuddering lashes, I noticed she was holding some papers and had on her special glasses which magnified her eyes like an owl’s.

  After a while she left me, closing the door behind her, in expert and silent control of its usual heavy clunk. I wonder what she wanted?

  The Commonplace Book of Coral Garden: Volume 1

  Green Place, Sept 29 1930

  (Age eight)

  Writing

  I decided to start usimg Mother’s old typewriter for my momthly mews letter to the relatives. The omly fly im the oimtmemt is that it has mo letter before M. Mother was mot calm about this and told me mot to write to Umcle Meal.

  Pepsi

  We went for a walk today, Cameo was in her pushchair and I was leading Terry and Ross. We went to Donal Brown’s kiosk in the park and Mother bought us a can of Pepsi each, which we drank with two straws!

  Housekeeping

  Mrs Morris (our housekeeper) is going down the garden to be with the fairies according to Mother. This is because it so happens that at the present we have four maids working here, two upstairs and two down, and all four are called Mary. Mother is convinced that Mrs Morris chose them deliberately, that she only employs girls called Mary. But this is not true, they are known as Mary because Mother can’t remember anyone’s name.

  Father

  I was in the Drawing Room with Father as usual before bedtime, in the middle of doing my sums. He sets me work every night before bed, when I’d much rather be read Winnie-the-Pooh. Rare are the moments when he allows me to stray from the path of great learning. But tonight a poor blackbird crashed into the window, and so we abandoned mathematics and went to bury it, scooping it up from where it had fallen to the ground. Father offered some words of comfort, for I was more than a little distressed. He said I was to try not to worry because he felt certain that the bird had been so stunned that the last thing it would have remembered was flying.

  When we had finished we had a little evening stroll around the grounds of Green Place. He told me what all the flowers are called and how the roses bloom one after another, so that there’s always one that is out. He said that the Michaelmas Daisies are so called because they are in full swing on the feast of St Michael. He told me that badgers dig for bees’ nests underground, and that squirrels catch fish from the pond. It is wonderful being with Father, even if he does turn life into lessons! I asked the name of the purple trees that line our borders and he says they are called buddleia. He said that they love to grow by the railways, where the speeding trains cast their seeds into the air, to be caught up on the wind and scattered afar.

  Sue

  Tuesday 3 February 1987

  FEBRUARY IS A MONTH that is all about the promise of the year to come, about the buds that haven’t opened yet, poking their tiny shoots out of the ground.

  At the Toastie, Joe and I are getting along, which is intriguing as I’d thought that I was going to get along with Nina Scrafferton, but it turns out she is a closed-in sort of a girl and not a ‘woman’s woman’. Perhaps she sees me as competition because she likes Icarus as well. You can tell because she simply thrives when he talks to her, and indulges all his jokes, then when he leaves the room it’s as if she suddenly ceases to exist. I understand the syndrome because I feel it too. One look from Icarus can keep me thriving for days.

  In an attempt to drum up business, we all came into work in fancy dress for Mrs Fry’s birthday last week and she took a photo of the Toastie personnel and gave us all a copy. So I got my hands on a picture of Icarus, even if he was mostly obscured by his mother’s horns. I put the photo up on the wall in the Grey Room, just level with my eye line as I was lying in bed, so Icarus’s face would be the last thing I saw when I went to sleep at night and the first thing I saw in the morning. Aunt Coral raised an eyebrow at it, because the photo predominantly features Mrs Fry in a tarty costume, but if you look twice you can just see Icarus’s right eye.

  I have spent many an hour gazing in that eye and so it is a hundred per cent distressing when Icarus is offish with me at the café. He isn’t a man of many words, but I’m afraid this only adds to his allure. I have been nearly a month at the Toastie and I can’t tell if my feelings are reciprocal, but I live in all the agonies of hope that they are.

  As I have said, Joe is the opposite of Icarus and always chats to me, as long as Mrs Fry isn’t looking. For some reason unknown to herself she does not approve of her boys fraternising.

  ‘What sort of things are you into?’ Joe asked me one morning last week, while he was on the frother.

  ‘I’m into writing,’ I said.

  ‘No way,’ he said, ‘because that coincides with me being into reading.’ He is an interesting boy, but quite square and with a collection of earnest shirts.

  After hours, I have been working hard on stories for my leading characters, the protagonists for my book: Cara, Pretafer, Fiona and Keeper. Cara is a skinny, simple farm girl and Pretafer is a beautiful seventeenth-century heiress and Cara’s nemecyst. Fiona is Cara’s servant friend, who is forced to dress in weeds, and Keeper is Cara’s spaniel.

  Wednesday 11 February

  Something I so wanted to happen has finally happened. And something I didn’t want to happen at all has also happened.

  Today, being a Wednesday, was the last day of my week at the Toastie. It was getting on for 10.00am, and I was expecting to finish my work and go back to Green Place as usual, a
nd settle down to some writing.

  ‘Are your Mum and Dad coming down to visit you at all?’ asked Joe as we toiled with the toast, the froth and the steam.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Dad doesn’t like to leave the house at Titford, and my Mum is . . . not alive any more.’

  I deliberately didn’t use the ‘D’ word – I don’t like it much anyway, but also I knew it would come as a shock to a boy still blessed enough to have his mother just along the counter.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Joe. ‘Whe— when did she pass away?’

  ‘September,’ I said.

  He squeezed my hand on top of the toaster. ‘I lost my Dad when I was ten, I understand what you must be going through.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, and then there was a pause. Joe seemed unsure what else to say.

  ‘What happened?’ he continued unexpectedly. ‘Was she very ill?’

  ‘No, she committed suicide,’ I said.

  Poor Joe was so shocked that for a minute every cappuchino went cold and every slice of toast went hard and everything was still.

  In real life though, nothing ceases, except your loved one. You struggle on and nothing stops for a moment. Life inside you has changed for ever, but life outside goes on the same as before, and you have to go on living with that riddle every single day.

  ‘Do you need to go home?’ asked Joe then, looking grave.

  ‘No I’m fine,’ I said, ‘but let’s not talk about it now.’

  He squeezed my hand again over the toaster and then changed his tack. ‘Sandy’s having a party on Saturday night,’ he said. ‘I was wondering if you fancied coming?’

  ‘What a shame, I can’t,’ I said, ‘my Dad is coming over.’ Then I realised that I’d only just told him my dad didn’t like leaving the house, but it was out of my mouth before my editor was on to it. I just knew I couldn’t risk saying yes to Joe and possibly spoiling my chances with Icarus.