Walcot

‘They’re for counting,’ you said, sulky under such interrogation.

And the two boys had laughed. They showed you a blackboard in their den. On the blackboard, cabbalistic signs mixed with numbers. Some signs were enclosed by chalk squares. Arrows indicated directions. You were impressed that they had various coloured chalks.

‘What’s all this “DOBD” in these red squares?’ you asked.

Terry sniggered behind a grubby hand. ‘Do or Be Done, of course.’

Summoning a protective indifference, you remarked that that was silly.

‘It’s our future. It’s our system. We don’t expect you to understand.’

But you had stayed for lunch in their house. Aunt Ada served cold stuffed veal with small new potatoes, cold, and a salad of crisp, sharp cos lettuce. Ada was a little woman with pale lips, very neat with her hair and clothes. Later on, not very surprisingly, Claude would leave Ada.

To see these two boys now in your own house, rapidly gobbling the snacks, aroused your hostility.

‘Are you two still playing about with your stupid system?’ you asked Joey.

‘Our dad met Bertrand Russell,’ Joey said, proudly.

It seemed unanswerable at the time.

Accompanying Claude and Ada were the Frosts. Joy Frost with pigtails, tied for the occasion with black ribbons, was Claude’s younger sister. Her husband, Freddie Frost, adolescent in appearance, was regarded by the Fieldings as being rather loud. He was being rather loud now, saying cheerfully to Archie over his shoulder, as Emma poured more wine into his glass, ‘Well, there’s another one fallen off the old perch, eh, what?’

He nudged his brother Archie in the ribs in order to encourage him to share in the joke – Archie being always, in Freddie’s judgement, too serious and quiet.

‘Show some respect,’ said Archie. ‘Try the sausage rolls and shut up.’

You heard a good deal of shutting up in those days.

Of these Frosts, Joy at sixteen seemed to suffer the most grief. Her nose had been reddened by constant applications of a small handkerchief during the funeral. She confided now to her Aunt Ada, ‘I’ve never been touched by death before – apart from the odd hamster.’ Ada pressed her niece’s hand. ‘I know, my dear.’ She repeated herself, saying, ‘“In the midst of life we are in death” – including hamsters.’

Meanwhile, Mary was welcoming in her stodgy older brother, Jeremy, who was looking about him for the fount and source of alcohol. ‘Poor old pop, Mary,’ he said heavily, laying a hand on her shoulder. ‘Gone to his eternal rest, as they say. Still, not a bad life, I suppose. He certainly came up in society, didn’t he?’ He gave a short laugh.

‘That’s not a very nice way of putting it.’ But it appeared your mother’s thoughts were elsewhere, for she went on to say that she had heard on the radio that when certain kings could no longer satisfy their wives, they were put to death, or else the crops failed. She believed this was in some African tribe or other.

‘Don’t see what you are on about,’ said Jeremy. ‘We’re no African tribe. Pop wasn’t black, thank goodness.’

His younger brother Jack agreed, but said, sotto voce, ‘No disrespect, please, Jeremy. Not in Mother’s hearing.’ He nodded towards Elizabeth.

‘But I didn’t respect him. He gave me a rotten childhood.’ However, Jeremy had lowered his voice to make this pronouncement. ‘Poor old bugger, all the same.’

Claude was interested in another kind of respect. He grabbed his two sons and addressed them confidentially. ‘You two better behave respectfully to your grandmother. I happen to know that all of Granddad’s money is left to her, so be nice to the old girl.’

‘Will she be rich, dad?’ Joey asked.

‘Stinking rich, my boy. Stinking rich. So watch it!’

‘Will we be rich, dad?’ Terry asked.

Claude closed one eye. ‘You go to work on it, old lad.’

All round the room and into the nearby breakfast room, muttered family conversations went on, the family being semi-glad to be called together.

‘I don’t know Hunstanton,’ Jack Wilberforce proclaimed, as if bestowing a signal honour on the town he named.

Jeremy said, before holding out his glass for a refill as Emma came round with the bottle, ‘I always felt a bit sorry for mum.’

‘He gave Liz a hard time,’ Flo agreed. ‘She had more intelligence than Sidney, that was the problem.’

The lady referred to as Liz was the newly widowed Elizabeth, sitting alone in a corner of the room. Mary and Martin had escorted Elizabeth to a sofa, donkey brown and genuine leather, where she sat poised and elegant in her sweeping black dress. She wore a wide-brimmed black hat with a white rose attached to the brim. Elizabeth was in her late forties; her face, with its sharp features, was utterly pale, utterly composed, as she looked about the room.

Since her stroke, the old lady kept her ebony walking stick to hand; but the sofa suited her well enough because it had a high seat, from which it was easy to rise without assistance.

You went over to speak to her. ‘I’m so sorry, Granny dear. Granddad will be greatly missed.’ You added, ‘By you, most of all.’

‘It is character … istic of your mother,’ she began, ‘to wear a dress which fits – which does not fit, I should say – her. Properly.’

‘Yes, Granny, but –’

She reached out and clutched your hand. ‘Yes, it’s about your granddad sad. But the over war … the Civil War Spanish is over. We must be small mercies. Grateful for –’

She paused, gazing upwards, searching for a word.

‘Small mercies?’ you suggested.

Later in life, you would come greatly to respect your grandmother. Moreover, it grew to be your opinion that Elizabeth was the one scholarly member of the family, apart from Jeremy’s wife, Flo. Your grandmother, in your view and that of others, had not been well treated by her husband Sidney. Sidney had been too busy making money to care properly for his grand wife – or for her intellect.

Elizabeth had suffered her stroke three years earlier. Her intellect had carried her through. Sonia affected to be scared of the speech impediment. As Sonia happened to be passing, you grabbed her arm and made her say hello to her grandmother.

‘Oh, I thought you didn’t want to talk to me, Granny,’ said Sonia, grinning and rocking her body back and forth in an idiotic way.

‘Why should I … why not wish … to talk to you, child?’ asked Elizabeth, scrutinizing Sonia with some interest.

‘I thought perhaps you did not like hunchbacked children, Granny.’ Sonia made an awful grimace as she said this.

‘On the cont … on the contrary. I adore hunchbacks, child. Remind me of your name.’

‘Oh,’ Sonia gazed at the floor. ‘I am sister to the adorable Valerie, who was perfect and not hunchbacked. Little Valerie-Wallerie was the world’s most perfect child.’

You reassured your grandmother, pointing a finger to your temple, working it back and forth as if to drill into your brain. ‘Sonia is a bit touched, Grandma. It runs in the family.’

Elizabeth made no direct reply to this remark, although she flashed at you something that could have been a smile of understanding. She fished in her handbag, took out a cigarette case and extracted a cigarette. When she had lit it and blown a plume of smoke from her nostrils, she said, not looking at you, but gazing rather into the room, where her relations were milling about, ‘Why are your Uncle Bertie and Auntie Violet not here? Why did they not attend Sidney’s funeral?’

‘I’m afraid Mother doesn’t approve of them. Well, at least she doesn’t approve of Auntie Violet. She told Auntie she was not welcome.’

You did not add that you had asked your mother why she did not want Auntie Violet in the house. To which she had replied, loftily, that she was a good judge of character.

‘Violet wears good clothes. Wears well. Them well,’ said Elizabeth, now.