Campari for Breakfast Read online

  This is the plan of action which Aunt Coral has cooked up: the Admiral will collect me from the restaurant at 6.30pm prompt, and then take me on to the party for 7.00pm. This will give me approximately three hours with Icarus for the loving. Meanwhile Aunt Coral will entertain Dad and Ivana back at Green Place. Then the Admiral will pick me up again at 10.00, leaving time for cognacs with everyone in the drawing room at 10.30 before Dad and Ivana leave for their flight. On paper at least it looks fluid.

  I’ve been so worried about my wardrobe that at one point I nearly decided not to go. I considered spending decadent sums of money on a fabulous new dress, but Aunt Coral urged me not to.

  ‘Young men are piglets and you should find out if he’s worth it before you spend your pennies,’ she said.

  Icarus Fry a piglet? As if she’s any kind of judge, for heaven’s sake – she fancies the Admiral!

  In the end I decided on my most devastating pinafore with a pair of Aunt Coral’s jazzy high heels, though I’ve had to leave wet potatoes in them all night, which Aunt C told me would stretch them. Delia has helped me with my hair and face. I just hope Icarus will see through the packaging.

  Sunday 15 Feb

  Morning

  At four o’clock yesterday, I went down to the drawing room for an apairoteef with the others. I couldn’t decide which feeling was worse, the thought of seeing Dad and Ivana again, or my nerves about how I would come across to Icarus. How I would look, how I would walk, how I would sound, whether I’d be sweating, all the things a girl considers when faced with a potential future husband.

  I kept thinking about how my mum would have been so good at all this. Her absence was galloping. She used to send me to school with an embarrassing ribbon in my hair, but I never took it off after she’d gone, because she put it there. It was the mark of her. It was the same yesterday evening with Delia’s coiffure. She had put my hair in hot curlers and combed it out to look poof, signing it with her friendship. Normally I have just my home bob that I’ve had since I was young. I keep meaning to grow it into glamour locks, but it gets hot on the back of my neck. I don’t normally do much to it, Aunt C says it dries like I’ve just been swimming, and so to be honest Delia’s styling was somewhat bigger than I enjoy.

  As I entered the drawing room, it was like a beautiful dream. The Admiral stood up and the ladies caught their breath.

  ‘Oh Sue!’ said Aunt Coral, and she rushed to the side board to fetch her camera.

  ‘You’re a knockout,’ said Delia.

  ‘A smasher,’ said the Admiral and he went to the bar and fixed me a Pimm’s.

  Funny how two old ladies and an old boy can make you feel great, much more than anyone in youth can, although I am not so unwordy as to not know that Aunt Coral thinking I look pretty and Icarus thinking I do are subtly different matters. And this was no childish party, this was a big late night adult party with boys and a bar. This was what all the poets went on about. Oh, love, love.

  The only thing I still hadn’t resolved when I left the house was what I would say to Joe, but I decided to cross that bridge when I came to it.

  At 4.45 when the Admiral took me into Egham it was already dark. The trees whisked past the Bentley window so dark and glossy. The sky was damp, but I could smell the summer coming, and in the magical twilight the early stars were just showing off in the gathering evening sky.

  I looked across at the Admiral and for a strange second I thought he was Mum. She wore gloves with a hole in the back of the hand for driving, with a clicking button. She would glance over her shoulder and smile at me, like a beautiful face from a woman’s calendar.

  The Admiral dropped me bang on time and then went on to his club, yelling ‘Avery Little helps!’ out the window. He doesn’t miss a chance for his motto.

  At 5.23 I was still waiting for Dad and Ivana to arrive. The maître d’ had brought me some bread and I’d nearly eaten the whole basket when they finally turned up. Ivana minced over, as croquettish as the day is long, and Dad followed behind and we all had the soup.

  As I was rushing my soup so as to be ready to leave on time, I noticed that Ivana had white gloves on. In fact her whole get-up was a total decision on white lace. Now, she is well known in Titford for her stupid fashion choices, but I did think it odd that she hadn’t taken off her gloves to eat her soup, and her hands slithered over her spoon.

  ‘Why is she wearing gloves?’ I asked Dad when she went off to the toilet.

  ‘I’m glad you asked darling,’ he said. ‘We wanted you to be the first to know . . . Ivana and I are engaged.’

  Just like that he said it, in the same way you might say ‘pass the vinegar’.

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ I said, ‘what’s that got to do with her gloves?’

  ‘There’s a ring under those darling, but she’s sensitive to your feelings, so she wanted to hide it.’

  Ivana came back from the loo and Dad nodded to her in their hideous love language, and she took off her gloves and demonstrated a diamond ring on her courtship finger.

  ‘Ta da!’ she said, waggling it.

  I wanted to snap it off, but I couldn’t because we were in a restaurant.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. But it wasn’t my voice, it was the voice of politeness, allowing me to continue to function in society.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said again. And I went into the loos where I exploded. I held on to a basin and then through a rampage of tears the memories came flooding back.

  I remembered Dad and Ivana’s first few visits to the cinema together last summer, which they claimed was because they were both Film Noir enthusiasts. (But my mother liked Film Noir too!)

  I knew that mum knew that Dad was seeing a lot of Ivana, but she never let on if she knew. But on the very day she died, Dad and Ivana were at a ‘conference’ together, though Ivana was nothing to do with the firm and didn’t speak very much English. Shortly before they got back, Mum walked into the library in Titford to the back section on the poets, and, having at some point swallowed her pills, she lay down on the floor to sleep. The librarian found her and the doctors were called, but they were too late. And she didn’t leave us a note to explain.

  My mind can sweep me back in a flash to that awful day in Titford, and to that police car outside our house, and the grim expression on the officers’ faces inside …

  But I wasn’t back in Titford, I was in the restaurant toilet in Egham, and the feel of the cold ceramic basin brought me back to the present, and I had to reassemble myself. I don’t remember the exact details of events as they continued to unfold after that, but somehow I went back to the table, and at some point the Admiral came to fetch me. And Dad and Ivana went on with their meal as if everything was all right.

  How angry I am with them for getting engaged. How angry I am that they are together at all. Words fail. It is despicable, dreadful, disloyal, dire, disgusting, wicked, wrong. My poor mother, driven to her desperate action by Dad’s infidelity, and now her memory trashed, as though she never existed.

  If it hadn’t been for the fact that Icarus was waiting for me I would certainly have gone home. But as I said before, I have realised that life goes on and Sandy’s party was waiting for me. It was at a trendy café called Christine’s, a big place and full of bikers because Sandy is in a gang. The Admiral offered to walk in with me, but I knew that would be embarrassing, so I walked in on my own and awaited at the bar. There was no sign of Icarus.

  After a short time Joe bounced out of the shadows and came up to the bar with his wallet. ‘You decided to come!’ he said, breathless from disco dancing.

  ‘Two drinks please,’ he said to the barman.

  ‘What kind of drinks?’ came the reply.

  ‘We’ll have two wines,’ said Joe, after looking at me in the manner of a gallant cowboy growing concerned. Then he moved me off into the body of the room and we sat at a table and shouted.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t I look it?’ I
said.

  ‘You look lovely . . . but pale.’

  There was a pause, then: ‘What’s your favourite film?’ he said, out of all congruaty.

  ‘E.T.,’ I replied shakily.

  ‘No way,’ he said, ‘I had to have the day off school after I saw that.’

  Then the DJ started playing ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’ by The Bangles and Joe did a little Egyptian dance in his chair, with his arms above his head, and swivelled his eyes like the singer. But I felt too sad to join in, and so he stopped and grew embarrassed.

  ‘Um, just tell me if you’re not all right Sue and we’ll go somewhere quieter,’ said Joe.

  I looked in my hand mirror and realised that I looked like nothing on earth. My make-up was smudged, my hair was matted, and the shock of Dad and Ivana seemed to have actually altered my temperature.

  ‘Where’s Icarus?’ I asked him, and once again it wasn’t my voice, my voice was somewhere in hiding.

  ‘Icarus?’ said Joe. ‘I don’t think he’s coming.’

  I stared at him with no breath.

  ‘He’s going out with Michael you see and they’ve had some sort of bust-up.’

  ‘But he—’ and without tactics in place for Joe’s feelings, the truth came out. ‘But he asked me to meet him here,’ I said. ‘He never cancelled me.’

  ‘Oh dear, I’m sorry,’ said Joe, although truthfully, he did not look that sorry. ‘Would you like to dance?’

  So there I was, dancing with Joe, and Icarus nowhere. All the hope and expectation of earlier was gone, and nothing was left. A vision of the back sleeve of my first book floated down to me out of the darkness. As Joe danced wildly about, I saw it clearly. It read:

  ‘Her mother gone, her heart broken, her life in taters. What next for Hampshire-born Sue?’

  Then, just as I was about to ask Joe if he would take me home I spotted Icarus on the far side of the floor. He was smooching a girl with long-or-burn hair.

  ‘That’s not Michael,’ I said. And then the room began to spin as they walked over towards us, catching us up in their dazzle. He was beyond a man, and she – she was a nymph. I felt weak. Her hair shone, her shoulders shone, her shins shone. She looked like the fairies had been up all night buffing her. I could see my own reflection in the gleam of her chestnut hair.

  ‘Hi Sue,’ said Icarus ‘this is—’

  ‘Loudolle, Loudolle Shoot,’ she said.

  That’s all I remember until early this morning, when I woke up in Aunt Coral’s pink-tasselled bed, with an horrendous cold, having fainted at the party. Apparently Joe had called out Aunt Coral, and the Bentley had been used as an ambulance. Everyone was brilliant. Even Dad and Ivana hovered till this morning before they pushed off on holiday, but I didn’t want to see them.

  After breakfast I was transferred back here to the Grey Room and Aunt Coral placed a notepad and pen by my bed. There are flowers on the bedside table with a card by them which reads:

  Get Well Sue

  Love Joe

  Aunt C told me that I was completely incoherent, and not only that: in a frenzy of fever I’d torn up the photo of the Toastie personnel which is the setting for Icarus’s eye. The remains are now sewn with used Kleenex under my bed. It is over.

  I must have fallen back to sleep for the last couple of hours because I woke up again at lunchtime. I was just turning my damp pillow when I heard a voice outside my door.

  ‘Shall I take it in mom, or leave it here?’ It sounded like an American.

  As the door opened I pretended to sleep, but I watched as someone came in with a tray. It was the nymph girl from the party. I hadn’t put two and two together until just now. It was Delia’s daughter with the fancy name. This was Loudolle, come from Alpen. Even in her lounge wear she looked amazing. With no make-up she was camera ready. But there were a couple of strands of her hair out of place, just entussled enough to look human.

  She put the tray by my bed and then began a decisive snoop in my things, opening up my draws and fisselling, with a disdainful glance at my clothes. Then she stooped to look under my bed where the torn-up photo lay scattered among wet tissues. My heart was pounding, for I had not yet checked to see if Icarus’s eye was intact. She rifled through the fragments, making scuffling noises under my bed, before getting up and slinking out of my room.

  As soon as she’d gone I plucked up the torn remnants, and found that Icarus’s eye had now become separated from everything else in the picture. I tried briefly to reinstate the eye in situ with the rest of the remains of the staff, before giving up and putting his lone eye under my pillow for safety. I couldn’t quite throw it away.

  For some reason it didn’t seem odd that the nymph girl had frisked me, and I felt this in all six senses.

  When the sun has gone and the night has come and the cold bites you and the rain wets you, you must stay still till it passes. I feel as though I am in a great earthen plot full of weeds and flowers together, but the weeds are choking out the flowers, strangling all their sweetness, and everything hurts.

  Susan Bowl

  Egham Hirsute Group

  Green Place

  Egham

  Surrey

  Sun 15 Feb 1987

  Dear Mr O’Carroll

  I hope you don’t mind me writing to you, but I am currently working through the coursework in your brilliant book The Dorcas Tree, and I wondered if you could help me with something important.

  I have just lived through a great personal trauma and am desperate to hang on to the one thing I have left, which is my writing. The persisiant question that has been bothering me is thus: is it better for the fledgling writer to write from experience or from the imagination?

  Until recently I have known little of romantic entanglements, but I now have had the misfortune to know more than was called for about heartbreak. However this ‘life experience’ has not affected my writing in a positive way as indicated by the poets and I would be introverted to know your response as I am more than confused and blocked.

  You have many fans in Egham.

  I look forward very much to your reply, when you are not overwhelmed by letters.

  Yours truly

  Susan Bowl

  Sunday 22 Feb

  It’s been a week since that night, the dashing of hopes and dreams. Each day I have been aware of nothing but feeling cold, and the smell of eggs from breakfast. But Aunt Coral has just told me something that has totally shocked me out of my sickbed.

  At about four o’clock she tiptoed into my room, clutching an armful of papers and her Commonplace. I remember thinking it was an odd time for nostalgia as she put a cold hand on my forehead.

  ‘You’ll live,’ she said, before regret ran across her face, because jokes like that are no longer appropriate. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘I’m much better, ready to get back in the saddle,’ I said.

  ‘Good,’ she said, ‘do you feel up to us having a chat?’

  ‘Why?’ I said, because really I’d have preferred to return to convalessing.

  ‘We need to have a chat. I keep trying to find a moment,’ she said.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘sorry.’

  ‘Sue, there’s something I want to tell you. I don’t want you to hear this from anybody else. I want you to hear this from me. I don’t know if your mother told you …’ She was unable to continue for a moment. She laid down the papers, one of which I could see she had written up with a few helpful prompts.

  ‘This will be a bit of a shock and I haven’t been sure how to tell you. I haven’t been sure if your mother told you before she died …’

  ‘What? Told me what?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know how to begin,’ she said, ‘but I am not your mother’s sister.’

  ‘You’re not my mother’s sister? Who on earth are you then?’

  ‘I am your great-aunt. And Cameo was your nana.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand. I thought Nana Pearl was my nana – wasn�
�t she?’

  ‘No, I thought she was, but no. You see, Pearl was not your mother’s mother as we have always thought,’ she continued. ‘She was actually her grand-nana. Your real nana was my sister Cameo and Cameo was your mother’s mother.’

  ‘But my mother was definitely my mother?’ I said, finding it hard to follow.

  ‘Yes, yes your mother was definitely your mother . . . Look, when my father died, your mother came to help me sort out his things and we had a bonfire to burn down his papers. It was while we were doing this that your mother found her birth certificate.’

  ‘And it said that Cameo was my mother’s mother and not my Nana Pearl?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Aunt Coral. ‘It was a terrible shock’.

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘We didn’t know, and Buddleia was naturally very upset.’

  She continued, now unprompted, with a random confusion of memories.

  ‘Of course, looking back there were lots of things that didn’t make sense, but it happened just after the war you see, and you were just so glad to be alive then, you didn’t ask too many questions, especially if you had no reason not to believe what you’d been told.’

  I looked out the window at a stray star which had forgotten itself in the daylight; it had an attitude of faint amusement at what it saw as a pin-prick story.

  ‘But if Cameo was my mother’s mother, then who was my mother’s father?’

  ‘His name was Major Jack Laine,’ said Aunt Coral, as though she’d just said his name was dog poo. ‘He abandoned Cameo and the baby.’

  She put on her close-work glasses and unfolded the birth certificate for me, trying to be reassuring, but her gaze was anything but. ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t know,’ she said.

  ‘You mean you didn’t notice that your mother wasn’t pregnant with my mother, and that Cameo was?’ I said.