The Colonel's Cottage Receives Visitors

10

The Colonel’s Cottage Receives Visitors

June 14 Not. We’d had a week at the Colonel’s cottage and he was getting very fed up with being incarcerated, when the Egg rode over to see us. Funnily enough not on the Slug, perhaps he didn’t want to spend half a day getting there and the other half getting back. No: Jackanory, the Chestnut hack with the white Blaze.

    “What-ho, Sister Bean!” he greeted me, grinning. “Everything toll-loll here?”

    “Oh, rolling along like Old Man Whatsisname, y’know,” I replied.

    “Good show! The miniature legume surviving, is he?”

    “Flourishing like the green bay thingummyjig, old man. Gone all green and hairy: grubbing in the dirt, propping up peas, sort of thing.”

    “Request that one to canter by me again, would you, there’s a good chap?”

    “He’s found the ruins of a vegetable garden—tho there are no vegetable marrows, which I had a hazy idea one had to have in an English vegetable garden—and he’s been tidying it up and picking the whatsaname.”

    “Er… peas?” he hazarded, dismounting and tying the creature to the Colonel’s ricketty picket gate.

    “I’ll give you five to one against the gate, Egg.”

    “You mean it will not hold? Like the centre?”

    I must have looked as blank as I felt because he then added: “Misquotation. Forget it.”

    Which of course gave me the opportunity to reply: “Forget what?”

    “Uncle,” he sighed.

    Hah, hah! It’s not often I manage to score one against the Egg. “Not only peas,” I said kindly.

    “Huh?”

    “Bean Minor: the whatsaname he’s picking.”

    “Oh! A dim illumination begins to trickle through, as it were! Ah… green produce?”

    “That’s it! There’s green beans and all sorts of stuff. Well I’m not sure about the parsley: the Colonel said if those were carrot leaves they’d probably poison us, so he chucked that lot out. But definitely green produce. He found a lettuce yesterday.”

    “Oh yes?”

    “Yesterday. Fullstop,” I explained.

    “Oh! Got it! I say, how are those Mrs B.-type casseroles going?”

    (Cough.) “Jolly well.”

    “And?”

    “Well there’s half of two and a whole one left. And a big flat dish of possible lasagna.”

    “Can’t be bad.”

    “No, quite. And Bean Minor’s really up with the play when it comes to techo stuff like making the stove and the washing-machine go.”

    At this point in the sparkling narrative the Egg might have been seen to gulp. “Good show,” he said weakly. “I say, that thing by the gate’s a bloody buttercup! Doesn’t Colonel Raice know that?” He gave it a vicious glare.

    “Put it like this, he didn’t know there were peas, beans, and potatoes in his back garden, so what odds would you offer, oh ovoid one?”

    “Got it.”

    “If you’re afraid the horse will be stupid enough to eat it tie him up somewhere else.”

    “He is pretty thick… Yes, I will.” He untied him, led him up the path and then over to a bent thing that might once have had a claim to be an apple tree, and tied him to one of its low, sagging, lichen-y branches. “Is this an apple tree?”

    “If those green knobbly things with the Black Spot are apples, yes. Otherwise not.”

    “Oh God, he’ll definitely eat those!”

    “Impasse, Egg.”

    “Rubbish. Just nip off and fetch Bean Minor, would you?”

    “Great idea!” I rushed off in the direction of the hairy green wilderness at the rear, yelling: “OY! BEAN MINOR!”

    Sure enough, the innocent sibling bent to it, very pleased to be doing the Egg’s bidding, assuring him as he did so that he’d make very sure he picked up every one and picked any on the tree that Jackanory might reach, too. They could go in the compost! he finished brightly.

    Placing a hand to his now clearly fevered brow, the Egg tottered inside.

    “Did I hear that aright?” he whispered, sinking onto Colonel Raice’s huge leather chesterfield. “Compost?”

    “Like I said: all green, hairy and rustic.”

    “God.”

    “Yes.”

    “You wouldn’t care to do a fellow an immense favour in the direction of flagonly staying, would you, old chap?”

    “My pleasure! Lucozade?” I asked brightly.

    He choked, hah, hah!

    “Bean Minor loves it. The Colonel’s so pleased: he’s going to tell Mrs Blake that he drank it all up like a good boy.”

    “Yuh—uh—certain confusion of the personal pronoun, masculine singular, there, old chap. He who?”

    “Colonel Raice, of course. –That he drank it himself.”

    The Egg grinned. “I was hoping that was your meaning! Jolly good show!”

    “Yes. Fancy some of his Perrier that I’ve been enjoying?”

    “Bring it on, by all means. Anything in the way of cake or biscuit would go down jolly well at this juncture, too.”

    “I suppose you’ve been up for hours mucking out and riding work,” I conceded.

    “Correct.”

    “Well I’ve just vacuumed the place and hung out a load of washing and of course Bean Minor’s been beavering away like anything. Fancy a little something now, and then the remains of a casserole for lunch? There’s one with chicken and bacon!” I offered.

    This offer was not spurned. I didn’t think it would be. The word “bacon” is mesmeric to the male half. They’d fall off a cliff like the lemmings if you pointed out to sea and said: “Bacon.”

    The casserole dish went into the oven, and then the minuscule legume, having completed his task, was marched by the auditory flap into the laundry, forced to strip off the coating of filth, the said revolting garments then being consigned to the washing-machine (not by my ladylike fingers, no) and told to rinse those hands and then go upstairs and have a shower immediately. Not touching anything on the way.

    “I see why you spend a certain amount of your valuable time hanging laundry on the line,” noted the brilliant Egg.

    “Quite.”

    Oddly enough once the smell of the bacon in the casserole heating up had begun to percolate upstairs there was an agitated rattling sound.

    Egg jumped violently. “What the Hell was that?”

    “Don’t panic: it’s Colonel Raice rattling his tin instead of using a walkie-talkie or carrier pigeon.”

    “Rattling his… There wouldn’t be a reviver in the house, would there?”

    “Not unless he’s hidden it somewhere.”

    “I’ll just expire quietly, then.”

    “Do that.” I went to the foot of the stairs and bellowed: “WHAT?”

    There was a sort of hooting in reply which oddly enough seemed to incorporate the word “bacon”.

    “WHAT?”

    “ARE YOU COOKING BACON?” he boomed.

    Jesus! What was that, his parade-ground voice?

    “NO!”

    Silence from upstairs. One could only hope it was a baffled silence.

    “My God, you’re a hard-hearted woman, Sister Bean!” said Egg with a laugh. “I’ll put the poor blighter out of his misery, shall I?”

    “Very well; but don’t for God’s sake let him attack the stairs with those bloody crutches.”

    “Oh, starting to get silly, is he? Right; count on me.” He ran upstairs looking determined.

    I wandered back into the kitchen, wondering vaguely if perhaps that lettuce discovered by Bean Minor ought to be picked and combined with some of the Leaning Tower of Tomato, which hadn’t noticeably diminished over the past several days, tho the Colonel had had a couple of fried ones for brekkers several times now.

    “Do you like tomatoes?” I asked as Egg reappeared.

    “Uh—don’t dislike them, I suppose. They never strike as a necessary food, however. Why?”

    I pointed.

    “Good God! Don’t tell me they came out of the hairy green wilderness in the back yard.”

    “No, Mrs B. left them.”

    At this juncture a panting and dampish Bean Minor hurried in, informing us that Marthe had once thrown a tomato outside because it had gone soft and it had landed in the herb garden and next year it had produced a magnificent plant covered with tomates cerises!

    “Cherry tomatoes,” I translated kindly for the benefit of the Anglophone in our midst. “It’s the same expression exactly.”

    “Oh. So if we chuck this lot out, Bean Minor, are you envisaging a tomato forest in the Colonel’s garden next year?”

    “I think I might need to dig the ground over and it’ll need comp—”

    We stopped listening and I liberated that chilled bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé, it wasn’t going to keep for very much longer, was it?

    The Egg was slightly disconcerted to find that (a) there was no bread because we’d eaten the last of it, (b) Bean Minor had been entirely responsible for boiling up the potatoes which we were having with rather a lot of butter in place of bread, and (c) altho we did have a lettuce and tomato salad there was no sauce vinaigrette because the Colonel didn’t have any olive oil (an oversight which Bean Minor had found very hard to credit indeed).

    He insisted that we couldn’t leave “the poor chap” upstairs on his lonesome while we stuffed our faces downstairs, so we all ate in the Colonel’s bedroom, Egg helpfully transporting a couple of chairs up there.

    The chicken casserole with the generous helping of bacon in it proved so absorbing that it was quite some considerable time before Colonel Raice noticed in horror that “that child” was drinking Pouilly-Fuissé. Rather than Lucozade, as it were. Oh, dear.

June 20 Not. Having more or less settled the Colonel’s hash in the matter of stairs—some gentle walking along the upstairs passage to get used to the crutches, and NOT overdoing that either—the Egg capably winkled some money and his credit card out of him and, having first sent him firmly to the loo, no arguments, removed the crutches bodily. Then he, Bean Minor and I set off for the village shops.

    Luckily for certain small siblings the Egg is not a martinet in relation to such matters as Mars Bars, choc ices on sticks (not real chocolate, brown flavouring, the expert decided, nonetheless lapping it up), and emergency packets of Smarties for later consumption. And agreed amiably that as neither of us had a clue how to cook le rosbif anglais or anything else in the butcher’s window we wouldn’t bother.

    Then we attacked the real object of the exercise, id est bread—gosh, could you really freeze it? Okay, there was plenty of space in the freezer now that there was only the one casserole dish in there plus of course a great deal of ice cream, in spite of depredations. Marg was also acquired, the Egg carefully explaining that endless butter was all right for Young Persons but slightly contra-indicated for the elderly such as the Colonel, and this was the brand that his mum always bought (meaning  during the absence of vague fits, as all present tacitly acknowledged). Eggs and bacon? Of course, why not? (Yes, well, the magic B-word again, but one has to eat something, after all.)

    And, since there was a rather new Olde Village Emporium as well as the very ordinary little grocery-cum-post office that had been there forever, a good olive oil and some decent wine vinegar were chosen, the small sibling inspecting with a sort of detached interest which sat oddly with the smears of choc ice on the cherubic countenance the rival offerings of sherry vinegar, tarragon vinegar, rice wine vinegar (Huh? Okay, rice wine vinegar), and summing them up as “What Grannie calls”—pause for mental translation—“frightful muck.” Well yes, the French was much, much worse but I think he was too young to have learned those words in English yet.

    The balsamic vinegar, on the other hand, rated a genuine recoil and a startled and very rude French imprecation which fortunately the ladylike shop assistant didn’t seem to understand.

    Then he asked: “Do you have any moutarde de Dijon?”

    Unfortunately he’d pronounced it as he’d learned in France and she didn’t understand.

    “Deed-jong mustard,” I explained.

    “Oh! Yes, we always stock that, it’s very popular with the retirees.”

    It got the nod so we bought it.

    “Er… There is the point, Bean Minor,” said Egg cautiously, “that we’ve eaten the bally old lettuce, don’tcha know.”

    “Salade de tomates à la sauce vinaigrette,” he replied tersely.

    “It will brighten up your average tomato no end,” I conceded.

    “Er—I’m sure. But what about greens?”

    Bean Minor muttered something rude in French incorporating the words “the English” and “no understanding of,” more or less.

    “Ta gueule,” I ordered, reddening, tho I didn’t think the Egg had understood the idiom.

    From his vastly superior height the Egg looked down at him in considerable amusement. “I’ll take that one as read, old chum. But one could at least look in the greengrocer’s.”

    The tiny sibling gave a horribly Gallic shrug, worthy of Grannie herself, but duly accompanied us to the establishment of one, Melvyn Potts, Prop. The last strange syllable possibly not being part of the name, no, tho that was what it said over his doorway.

    Bean Minor eyed the lettuces on offer without favour.

    “Ça, c’est une romaine,” I offered.

    He said a Rude Word. Fortunately in French—there were other people in the shop.

    I sighed. “The implication is,” I said heavily to the Egg, “that the dicotyledonous offering in Q. would scarce merit the application of an excellent sauce vinaigrette.”

    “I think I did grasp that, but thanks anyway, Soeur Haricot Vert.”

    We bought some potatoes to supplement the ones found in the Colonel’s back garden (tho the minor sibling didn’t look enthusiastic about them), and exited the shop.

    Outside Bean Minor eyed the swollen vegetable marrows on display thoughtfully. Both green and yellowish, and a couple were striped, too. Very possibly supplied by local home gardeners whose wives had ordered them summarily to get rid of the things?

    “Don’t say it!” I warned.

    “I was only going to say ‘Why?’, Sister Bean,” he protested.

    “There is no answer to that save Grannie’s one.”

    He nodded. “Les Anglais sont fous.”

    “D’ac. As hatters,” I agreed.

    “I thought that meant they didn’t give a—er—four-letter word?” ventured the Egg foggily.

    My Francophone sibling and I looked at each other blankly for a moment. Then we burst into roars of laughter.

    “Okay, I suppose I’ve just confirmed it,” the Egg admitted, grinning.

    “Yes!” we gasped.

    “They can’t hear the difference between ‘sont’ and ‘sans’, can they?” I noted.

    “No, or conjugate French verbs!” he choked.

    “True,” Egg agreed, unmoved. “On the other hand I thoroughly agree that the huge, or distinctly English, vegetable marrow is an excrescence upon the face of the earth.”

    “Hurray!” cried Bean Major shrilly, jumping a bit. “Three cheers for the Egg!”

    “Ra! Ra! Ra!” I agreed, laughing.

    The Egg bowed. “Thanks frightfully.”

    And, leaving the horrors of English food shopping behind us, we departed thankfully for the Colonel’s cottage.

June 24 Not. The Colonel had dozed off by the time we got back so we left him to it, Egg being very relieved to hear that the pills were safely in my pocket. And went downstairs for a foray amongst the bookshelves, Egg coming up with a real find, a very, very old PGW which absolutely must have belonged to an ancestor, it was something like three times the Colonel’s age, and me deciding to try another Lucia book, why not? All are good. Bean Minor sat on the floor with a very old Vegetable Grower’s Guide which was about as old as the PGW epic. And judging by the amazed exclamations even odder, tho scarcely as amusing.

    He’d just decided that it had a few good tips, but les Anglais were besotted by huge vegetables, something which after those marrows didn’t need reinforcing, really, when there was an agitated rattling from upstairs.

    “I’ll go!” He bustled off.

    He was back in approx. two seconds flat, rather red about the physiog. “I say, where are his crutches? He shouldn’t be hopping over to the bathroom, y’know!”

    “Oops,” I noted as the Egg, clearing his throat, retrieved them from behind a large wing chair which managed not to match the big old brown leather chesterfield or indeed anything else in the room, covered as it was in a hideous faded magenta brocade.

    “You know,” said the Egg thoughtfully, apropos, as Bean Minor lugged the crutches upstairs—BANG! CRASH!—“as I was saying before so rudely, that chair would look rather good if someone did something drastic to it.”

    “Like burning it?” I replied politely.

    “No, you cretin! Like covering it in something bearable.”

    “You could try suggesting it, but it’ll turn out to be a beloved ancestral artefact that’s always been like that and he’ll dig his toes in forever more. Ask your mum if you don’t believe me. Well, when she’s out of her vague fit.”

    “Dad’s predicting it’s going to last for ages. She’s found these damned American websites that are lunatically keen on indigo.”

    “Does it come from there?”

    “Er… long story!” he admitted with a laugh.

    “Then don’t tell it, thanks.”

    “Good, I shan’t,” he murmured, reburying himself in PGW.

    “I say, Egg,” I ventured after a while, “you wouldn’t fancy wearing a nice little short cloak, would you?”

    “Hey?”

    I read out the appropriate passage. The Egg goggled.

    “What? Is this chap not, er, not one of the chaps, so to speak?”

    “Um, well yes, I mean no, he isn’t, but—”

    “My dear misguided sister in Junior Droneshood, a chap does not wear cute little abbreviated cloaks,” he said firmly.

    “Oh. I thought it sounded like fun.”

    He shuddered.

    “So would any sort of cloak be beyond the bally old P.?” I asked sadly.

    “Er… A gent’s full-length evening cloak, aka opera cloak, would be acceptable provided it wasn’t lined in anything putrid. One would have to have the gibus to go with it, of course.”

    Er… I broke down and asked: “What’s a gibus, Egg?

    “Opera hat.” I must have looked as blank as I felt because he elaborated: “A top hat that can be collapsed to lie flat.”

     “Ah! J’y suis! Un chapeau claque!”

    “Er… I’m sure,” he said politely.

    “It makes a noise, right? Like—” I clapped my hands smartly together. “Claque!”

    “That’s it. Well a newish one, I should think. But yes. Snaps out, snaps down.”

    “Oncle Patrice has got one. I’ve never seen him wearing it, tho. Maybe when they’re in Paris and they go to l’Opéra.”

    “In the posh seats that would still be acceptable, I think,” he allowed.

    “Les fauteuils,” I agreed.

    “Oh?”

    “I’ve never been, but he described it all to me because I’d found a picture of the lovely ceiling by Marc Chagall. Well they’re like big padded easy chairs downstairs, at the front.”

    “Got it,” he said, grinning.

    “Yes. …Oh, help.”

    “What on earth’s up?”

    “I’ve just had a vivid vision of Tante Élisabeth gussied up for the opera,” I admitted.

    “Ah. Dare one hazard a guess? Cross between a Titanic-sized iceberg and Billy Bunter, wedged into tight brocaded satin?”

    “Jesus, Egg!”

    He grinned “Spot-on, was it?”

    “Her to a Tee!”

    “Remind me to avoid the opera if ever they’re in Paris when I am,” he murmured.

    “Would you go otherwise?” I asked dubiously.

    “It’d depend what was on, but yes, in principle.” He looked at me in some amusement. For a moment he seemed thirty years older than me, drat him. “Would you perhaps prefer a pop concert, gig, or rave?”

    “No!” After a moment I admitted: “I don’t really know much about opera.”

    “They don’t introduce you to it at Merrifield?”

    “Not so far. Maybe for the girls who choose music as their extra-curricular thing.”

    “I see. So what’s yours?”

    I made a face. “The Brain said I’d better use the time profitably, as I was so behind in Eng. Lit., and some extra history wouldn’t hurt, either. She meant English history, of course. I bet I know more about the battle of Sedan than she does!”

    “Undoubtedly. Well that’s rather a pity.”

    “Ye-es… But I don’t think I could play a musical instrument. Most of those girls started when they were five or six.”

    ‘’I see. So you don’t have any sort of music appreciation classes?”

    “Do you count being rounded up and taught to sing C. of E. hymns?”

    “Definitely not,” he said, wincing.

    “I didn’t really think so. Well, I quite like some of the Christmas carols but somehow they make them sound as mournful as the hymns.”

    The Egg was observed to shake all over. “Yes! The C. of E. syndrome! It’s a law!” he gasped.

    I brightened. “So it’s not just me, or Merrifield’s so-called choir! I say, have you ever heard a recording of Carols from K—”

    “Don’t say it!” he gasped, clapping his hands to his ears.

    I concluded he had. “Well there you are,” I said mildly.

    “Uh-huh. Musicality, A-plus. Jollity, F-minus.”

    In a nutshell.

    We returned to our sparkling examples of Eng. Lit. Well the Brain also reads E.F. Benson, doesn’t she? Don’t know about Marbledown’s Head and PGW, tho. Best not to ask…

    The Egg stayed for dinner, because the evenings were so light at that time of year and he’d easily be home before dark. Funnily enough neither he nor Colonel Raice thought we needed another casserole after that sustaining lunch. So Bean Minor made proper sauce vinaigrette and we had salade de tomates plus lots of the crustiest of the bread we’d bought, with Lucozade for Bean Minor and Perrier for the rest of us. And there was, of course, ice cream for those that fancied it.

    Colonel Raice sighed. “I shouldn’t, y’know. My muscles are wasting away with this damned leg…”

    “The chocolate one’s not bad, sir,” Bean Minor offered. “It has got a certain amount of real cocoa in it besides the brown dye.”

    Unfortunately this last phrase was one calculated to make older persons wince, which he did.

    “Er… no, think I might settle for vanilla, thanks. And, uh, just a little raspberry ripple, if there’s any left.”

    “Yes, lots, Sister Bean likes strawberry best,” the blabber-mouthed sibling informed him, dashing off to the freezer.

    The Colonel looked at my cheeks, which had become considerably brighter than the said frozen confection, in fact a bright peony hue, and smiled. “Of course! Pink for a g—”

    “DON’T SAY IT!” I bellowed.

    Oops. Huge faux pas. They were looking at me with identical tolerant older-male smiles on their mugs.

    “I’ll give Bean Minor a hand,” I growled, hurriedly exiting.

    Behind me I heard Colonel Raice give a little laugh. Then dashed Egg said: “I say, sir, did you know she’s practically a musical illiterate? Bloody Merrifield doesn’t seem to have music appreciation cl—”

    By that time I was on the stairs, my face and ears no longer peony but burning red. Why do the blighters always have to stick together? And what business was it of Colonel Raice’s whether I was a musical illiterate or not?”

    “I say, what’s up?” said Bean Minor in fright as I scrubbed furiously at my eyes over the freezer.

    “Nothing. Stupid males being superior,” I growled.

    “I wouldn’t’ve said they were that type,” he said in astonishment.

    “They all are, Bean Minor, mon chéri, and give you a year or so and you’ll be one of them!”

    “I think I’ve grown this year,” he replied.

    “I know.”

    “Um, well I’m sure Colonel Raice wouldn’t be mean to you on purpose, Mel. Nor would Egg, he’s not like that. Did you, um, overhear them?”

    I sighed. “Yes. That bloody door catch doesn’t work properly, have you noticed?”

    “Yes. I said maybe I could fix it with a screwdriver but the Colonel just said don’t worry about it, old chap, and he didn’t want to be, um, something about closets and virgins,” he ended dubiously.

    “Eh?”

    “Well something like that.”

    Er… a closet virgin? Hardly. Not at his age. And not with his known track record. Um… Oh! “Something like ‘closeted like a virgin,’ would it have been?”

    “Yes, that’s it! –Are they?”

    “Uh—well in some countries, definitely.”

    “I see. Have some chocolate with the strawberry, they’re good together,” he said kindly.

June 28 Not. Continuing straight on: I’d have preferred all strawberry but for several reasons gave in and let Bean Minor dig me out giant portions of both. –I once involuntarily caught a bit of one of the chick flicks that the bimbos adore, where the presumed heroine and her presumed pal were eating ice cream (the actresses not swallowing) to console themselves, probably over something to do with a boyfriend. Now I began to see that the thing had had a point. Ice cream is jolly consoling.

    “I think I’ll stay down here with my book. You chaps can have a good old chin-wag, okay?”

    Agreeing happily to this, the innocent sibling headed upstairs weighed down with a Royal Corgis trayful of heaped bowls.

    I sat down, sighing, and dug into the strawberry…

    Not bad. I still felt very tee-ed off with the pair of them, tho.

    Next morning Colonel Raice grimly practised walking with his crutches up and down the upstairs corridor. Bean Minor supervised: what either of them imagined the child could do if the idiot fell over, God alone knew. Scream for help? No way could he have hauled that weight to its feet.

    Was the porpoise of the exercise, I wondered, to show Egg that he could bally well get fit and tackle the stairs? Because I was in no doubt that if the Egg had decided to speak to him on that matter he would have done so.

    When he at last gave up I waited for a while, then went up with a mug of tea.

    “Thanks awfully, Mel.”

    He was looking a trifle blue, but as he’d shaved it wasn’t that. I eyed him narrowly.

    “What?” he said defensively.

    “You’ve overdone it, haven’t you?” I produced the pill bottle from my pocket and handed him a dose. “Swallow them. No argument.”

    Sighing, he swallowed them. “If I shut my eyes I’d swear I was back in the bloody base hospital with a giant six-foot-four orderly looming over me. ‘No leeway’ was his motto, too.”

    “Yes? Which part of your anatomy had you broken, cracked, or scored a bullet hole in that time?”

    He smiled weakly. “Other leg. Chipped kneecap and fractured tibia. Lungful of bloody Afghan dust, too. They shunted me back to Blighty and after the damned infections had cleared up and the obligatory spot of leave, gave me a desk to drive.”

    “Good. –I’m not knocking the bravery of the individual soldier but none of you had any right to be in the putrid country in the first place.”

    “Mel, fighting the Taliban couldn’t be bad, surely?”

    “No, but it hasn’t done any good, has it?”

    “Not observedly, no,” he sighed.

    “Just drink your tea.”

     He drank his tea.

    “Thanks. The universal panacea, eh?” he said, handing me back the mug.

    “Not quite. I don’t think it’s a cure for plain stupidity.”

    He winced. “Okay, what am I being accused of now?”

    “Behaving like an adolescent. All that frantic crutch manipulating was because Egg told you not to tackle the stairs, wasn’t it? You’ve made up your mind that you’ll bally well show him, so there—haven’t you?”

    “I—”

    “Grow up, John Raice,” I said, walking out on him.

    He was fast asleep by lunchtime so Bean Minor and I had cheese sandwiches followed by just a small(ish) helping of ice cream because there was an awful lot of it to be eaten up.

    Bean Minor had just reconnoitred and returned to report that he was awake and shouldn’t we give him something to eat when there was a knock at the front door.

    “I’ll go!” He rushed over to it.

    “Oh! It’s the little boy!” cooed a horribly saccharine voice. “How are you, dear? So you’ve come to pay Colonel Raice a sick visit too, have you?”

    “No. Me and Mel are looking after him,” replied the minor sibling firmly.

    Trill of laughter. “Really, dear? How sweet!”

    And with that, brushing Bean Minor aside like the traditional F., in she came.

    Frightful Mrs Berrington. In full panoply. Apparently to go sick-visiting in rural England one wears a frilled floral thing that would do a Buck House garden party credit, plus a giant pastel pink straw hat with a giant floral scarf round it, fancy earrings, extremely high-heeled pink sandals and a non-matching huge leather handbag in a putrid shade of mauve.

    “Looking after him, are you dear?” she trilled, catching sight of my dumbfounded form. “Keep up the good work!” And with that she was up the stairs.

    “It’s that lady that made him get drunk and have a hangover!” hissed Bean Minor.

    “Quite.”

    “Well shouldn’t we rescue him, Mel?” he hissed.

    “I don’t see how.”

    He looked helplessly at the staircase, whence now floated considerable high-pitched trilling and if one listened closely a sort of baritone croak in the background.

    “Um… Pretend we’re taking him up a cup of tea?” he hissed frantically.

    “He hasn’t had his lunch yet,” I replied numbly.

    “Come on, then!” He rushed into the kitchen.

    I followed slowly. It was a reasonable excuse but not if one knew he had a visitor, which unfortunately we did. Bother.

    The resultant Royal Corgis tray contained a pile of slightly crooked English-style cheese sandwiches, three Chocolate Digestives (huge sacrifice on the minor legume’s part, bless him) and a mug of rather stewed tea, as Bean Minor, having reboiled the kettle, had topped up the dead contents of the teapot before I could stop him.

    And up we went.

    “Good Heavens! What’s this?” she trilled.

    “It’s the Colonel’s lunch. We’ve had ours,” replied Bean Minor sturdily.

    “It isn’t much, because we thought we’d have a casserole for dinner,” I added lamely.

    “Oh, dear!” she cried, inspecting it. “Really, Johnny, why didn’t you phone me? I could have dashed over with something at least palatable, darling!”

    “I like cheese doorsteps,” he replied valiantly. “Golly: chocolate Digestives as well, eh? Can you spare them, Tommy?”

    “Yes. They’re for you.”

    “We can always get more: the shop’s got lots of biscuits,” I offered weakly.

    “My dear child, none of you should be living on biscuits!” stated La Berrington firmly. Oh well done, Mrs B., that really put me in my place as a very young and ignorant infant, didn’t it?

    “We don’t usually have them for lunch,” said Bean Minor valiantly, not getting the full implications, but enough. “This is a treat ’cos he overdid his practice with the crutches this morning and my sister had to give him some pills.”

    Oh, Lor’. He meant well but this gave her the opportunity to say: “Johnny darling, is this wise? Just these children to keep an eye on you?”

    “They’ve been keeping me in order jolly well, actually. And as I explained, Mrs Blake loaded the freezer up with casseroles before she took off for her summer hols., so we’re eating like kings.”

    At this point I sent Bean Minor frantic thought waves to the effect of shutting up about how many casseroles, i.e. how few, were left, and mercifully they seemed to have reached him. He went rather red and looked at the floor, but didn’t speak.

    “Casseroles? Well that’s protein, I suppose… It doesn’t sound a very healthy diet. What about vegetables and fruit?”

    “Huh uh delish-uff—tomato salad—yesh’day,” replied the Colonel somewhat thickly through a cheese sandwich. (If this valiant effort was supposed to give her the impresh that he was more interested in his lunch than in her, it wasn’t going to work.)

    “And?” she pounced.

    “Well, y’know. Peas and beans, that sort of stuff.” –The which remark was as near to a guilty wriggle as I have ever heard proceed from an adult human being.

    She pounced again. “No fresh fruit?”

    “His apple tree needs spraying,” offered Bean Minor.

    “What? –Never mind, dear. Just run along, you two.” She turned her back on us, sure that this edict would be obeyed. “Well at least one can solve that, Johnny darling. I’ve brought you some lovely fruit!” –Delving in the giant mauve fourre-tout which, it now appeared, was serving the dual purposes of handbag and shopping carrier. Sure enough, she then produced bags of fruit, and turning back to us, since we hadn’t vanished, ordered us generally, not meeting anyone’s eyes, to pop downstairs and find a fruit bowl.

    “Come on, Mel,” said Bean Minor glumly.

    I couldn’t think of a good reason to stay, and as Colonel Raice, far from supporting us, was now protesting weakly that she shouldn’t have, we went.

    Downstairs we looked at one another blankly.

    “What’s an English fruit bowl look like, Sister Bean?” ventured Bean Minor at last.

    Er…

    “Um, the tomatoes are in a big bowl,” he offered.

    “Yes, but what do we put them in if we use that?”

    Stalemate.

    He looked around the sitting-room… “That’s a bowl, isn’t it?” he offered at last.

    I eyed it warily. A rather effete offering, very probably donated by one of the many over-lipsticked bimbos that had come and gone regularly, or possibly irregularly, at John Raice’s cottage over the quite some years that he’d owned it. Put it like this: anything in the same generic area, if questioned, had turned out to be foisted on him by one of them, so— Quite.

    “I think that might be meant to be an ornament. Or a vase,” I offered weakly.

    He looked hard at it. “It’d hold fruit okay, tho.”

    Er, ye-es…

    “We’d better look in the kitchen!” he decided happily, forging off there.

    I followed him without hope. True, Marthe’s kitchen at the Château LeBec was the fount of all good things, animal, vegetable or mineral. Also true, this was not, alas, Marthe’s kitchen.

    As the tiny leguminous one quickly discovered.

    “Um, no,” he decided, straightening from the last empty cupboard, rather flushed.

    “No. Well, the only other choice would seem to be a saucepan. Or possibly an empty plastic ice cream carton fished out of the poubelle.”

    “I don’t think that lady would like that.”

    No? Personally I’d like to see her choke on it, but on the other hand, it’d be kind of Letting the Side Down, wouldn’t it? And idiot tho he was, one didn’t want to do that.

    “No, I suppose not,” I admitted. “Okay, that bowl thing, putative ornament, from the sitting-room.”

    So we took it upstairs, Bean Minor firmly taking possession of it and reminding me kindly that I suffered from what at one stage, not having understood the term that he’d found in The Boy’s Own Beano or some such, he’d named “dropsy”. Well it was a jolly good name for it, actually. So far I’d only broken one empty jam jar and one mug here, quite a record. (On this visit, I mean.)

    “Will this do, Mrs Berrington?” piped the minor one.

    “Oh splendidly, dear! –Johnny sweets, where did you find it? It’s charming!” she cooed.

    What? I refrained from rolling my eyes frantically but only just. Bean Minor was just standing there with his little mouth open.

    The Colonel was seen to flounder. “Er… Can’t remember where it came from, actually, Daphne. Had it a while, I think,” he produced feebly.

    “Darling, you should treat it as a conversation piece and design the décor of your sitting-room around it!”

    What? I was gobsmacked. I mean, I’d known she was bad, but… Okay, that was how it was done. One decks oneself in frills and souses oneself in scent (any moment now Bean Minor, who has a terrifically sensitive nose, it goes with the chocolate-differentiating, wine-tasting thing, was going to start sneezing), swans into the chap’s home, throws the “darlings” around like confetti, and proceeds to decide on his “décor.” It’s known as a takeover.

    Why couldn’t the woman be content with her own husband?

July 3 Not. Continuing straight on: Not to mention with that palace he’s widely said to have over-extended himself in purchasing for her.

    “Not really into décor, Daphne,” the Colonel was protesting weakly.

    “Nonsense, darling! It was different when you were away with the Army all the time, but you’re settled now, aren’t you? –Well,” she added on an airy note, “at least it wasn’t the leg with the pin in it, I suppose that’s a blessing, but you do need someone to take care of you!” Trill of girlish laughter.

    Oh, look! The woman’s pushing fifty, according to Mrs O. in an expansive mood. Plus details of what she spends on Named shoes, “Imelda Marcos reincarnated” being the phrase used. And John Raice, please note, according to dear Mr Lamont, is still under forty.

    So I took a deep breath and said: “You’re right, Mrs Berrington. He does need someone like you to mother him. None of those London girlfriends of his have bothered to turn up, but then they’re all young, I don’t think they’ve got the right maternal instincts, like you. It’s the older woman’s touch he needs.”

    There was rather a sticky silence. Added to which I could see the Colonel was trying not to laugh, help!

    “Yes, and you could give him a proper wash, too!” added Bean Minor eagerly. “Like the nurses do in the hospital. ’Cos I could wash his back, only he said he can do it himself. And he won’t let Mel help at all and I said was it because she’s a girl and he said yes so I said what if it was your mother? And he said that would be fine. So you could be like a mother, couldn’t you?”

    My God! Was that on purpose or entirely innocent? I examined the cherubic countenance but it revealed nothing save a slight smear of chocolate ice cream.

    Mrs B. gave a very weak laugh. “What children you are, my dears!” she fluted, not altogether convincingly.

    “Mm. Well Mel has reached the age of consent,” noted the Colonel, horribly dry.

    I tried to stop my jaw from sagging. Gosh, he really didn’t like the woman, did he?

    Mrs B. attempted to rally. “Honestly, John! That’s not very nice! –Are you sixteen, dear?”

    “Sixteen and a half.”

    Happily Bean Minor revealed: “Yes, her birthday’s in March. Our big brother, he’s eleven months older than her and he’ll be eighteen in April.”

    “Really?” said the Colonel in surprise.

    “Yes, he’s a little bit older than his classmates, but not all that much. They couldn’t put him up a year, he was behind in everything,” I explained in relief that at least we were off the topic of mothers, ’cos at one point in my sibling’s earnest speech I’d thought the woman had been going to explode.

    “Her School put Mel up, tho, but she has to do extra Eng. Lit. ’cos she was behind in that, they do French Lit. in French schools,” Bean Minor added. “She didn’t start until the Fourth, y’see, Grannie wanted her to have a proper grounding, but then she found out she was seeing too much of the cousins in Paris ’cos old Tante Émilie wasn’t keeping a proper eye on her, so she decided on Mum’s old School.”

    “We get it, Tommy,” said the Colonel kindly. “Why don’t you hand Mrs Berrington the fruit—carefully, old chap, don’t bruise it—and she can arrange it in the bowl.”

    Mrs B. was seen to hesitate. “Are your hands clean, Tommy dear?”

    “Yes, Mrs Berrington, I washed them before I made the Colonel’s sandwiches.”

    “Good boy. Well, come along, then!” She’d obviously decided the poor child didn’t know what he was talking about, with that speech on mothers. Tho I was jolly sure she’d spotted me.

    The fruit was duly arranged to her satisfaction. Well it was nice fruit, but in that bowl…

    She didn’t stay long after that. Possibly fearing the subject of mothers might resurface? Added to which it may just have dawned, when Colonel Raice made the remark about the age of consent, that he wasn’t entirely pro her.

    “Have some lovely fruit?” he offered into the resultant silence.

    “Ooh, thanks!” beamed Bean Minor. He eyed the bowl longingly. “Grapes?”

    “By all means: help yourself.”

    Eagerly he did so.

    “Mel?” offered the Colonel.

    “Thanks very much. But I think I’ll just open the windows wider, first.”

    “Good idea,” he sighed. “What does the woman souse herself in?”

    “Drain cleaner?” I suggested.

    Bean Minor obligingly sniggered but offered somewhat thickly: “M’ame Uh-chas.”

    “Pardon?” said the Colonel on a weak note.

    He swallowed. “Gosh, these grapes are super, sir! It’s Madame Rochas.”

    “Yes it is, actually,” I admitted.

    “Too much of it,” the invalid noted sourly.

    “Much too much—yes.” I breathed in fresh air gratefully.

    “Have a peach, Mel, I don’t think they’re the sort of fruit that’ll keep,” he prompted.

    “Thanks, I will. What about you?”

    “Don’t really fancy anything, to tell you the truth.”

    “Um, actually she’s probably right about your diet, well, our diets, I s’pose. I think you’d better.”

    “I could probably manage a few grapes. –Thanks, Tommy,” he said as Bean Minor self-sacrificingly handed him some. He sighed, and ate one. “I’d say did you have to let her in, only I fully realise that there’s no stopping her.”

    “No,” we agreed gratefully.

    I ate peach thoughtfully. “Yum! Nice peach. Um, where’s Mr Berrington, or is that a rude question?”

    The Colonel eyed me drily. “Very. –No, well,” he said over my sniggers and Bean Minor’s obliging but puzzled laugh, “I presume he’s in his office. What day is it today?”

    “Thursday,” we chorused.

    “Mm. In his office, then.”

    “Poor sap,” I concluded.

    “Yes, well, I suppose no-one was forcing him to marry the woman…”

    I goggled at him. “No? Think about it.”

    He thought. “Oh. Right. Claws well into the poor chap, eh?”

    “Yes. Like Mum and Dad.”

    He winced. “Er—mm. Should think so, mm.”

    “Mum’s like that with all the boyfriends, too, except they’re shorter things. She hunts them down relentlessly and then she plays with them like a cat with a mouse.”

    “Clarence does that,” noted Bean Minor.

    “Exactly.”

    “You’d think he’d eat them.”

    “Too well fed.”

    At this point Colonel Raice collapsed in a gale of laughter.

    “Yes! Absolutely!” he gasped when he could finally speak.

    “Even looks like one,” I added, gilding the lily somewhat but not much. “You expect her to purr any minute. Specially when she wears that fur coat that she tells the media is fake fur. Just like a well-fed cat.”

    “Clarence is better-looking than her, tho,” said Bean Minor firmly. He was spot-on, as a matter of fact, tho Clarence is more gingery than Mum or the coat.

    “Have some more grapes, Tommy,” the Colonel offered faintly.

    “Thanks awfully, sir!” He took a small bunch. He ate one thoughtfully. “And Cat Ovenden,” he added.

    “To a cat-lover’s deluded eye, possibly,” I allowed.

    “She is. Much. Her fur’s much nicer than that coat of Mum’s.”

    “Fat and stripey?” offered Colonel Raice.

    Bean Minor nodded vigorously round a large grape. “Mm!”

    “Yes,” the unfortunate man said faintly. “I see. Well now the decks are clear perhaps you could go back to Biggles, Tommy.”

    “Right-ho, sir! If you don’t need me?”

    “No, I’m right, thanks, old lad. –Take some grapes with you,” he added kindly.

   July 7 Not. Continuing: With the predictable “Ooh, thanks, sir!” the miniscule one retreated, clutching his grapes.

    “They’ll go well with those Smarties the Egg let him have,” I noted.

    “Never mind, Mel, you’re only young once.” He sighed. “Wish I had something to read. Why the Hell couldn’t the damn Berrington woman at least bring me a newspaper? No, well—functionally illiterate, herself.”

    Damn, I’d forgotten that his village shop had stopped delivering. “We can easily trot into the village and get the papers for you. You should have asked us before.”

    “Thanks very much. But there is one snag.” He made a face. “The incomers who infest the village are grabbers,”

    “Oh Lor’. You mean they get up at crack of dawn just to grab the papers before their neighbours can?”

    “Exactly. I’ve tried getting down there around eight but the decent papers have usually gone. And I don’t fancy the Morning Trumpet. Not into bloody gossip."

    “No. What time does the shop open?”

    “Seven forty-five,” he said drily. “Not officially, but it’s to allow the workers who catch the seven fifty-seven bus to the station to get their papers and/or fags.”

    “We’ll give it a go,” I said grimly.

    “No really, Mel… I’m damn sure Ian wouldn’t approve of me letting you do any such thing. Nor Alan, come to think of it,” he added very drily indeed.

    To which I replied strongly: “I think the Egg would point out we’ve got legs!”

    Colonel Raice produced a very odd grimace. “Mm. Perhaps on Sunday, then? Just The Observer. I can normally get there on time but it’s the blocking technique, y’see. There are four old buggers who huddle round the actual doorway. I know for a fact they’re there by seven twenty-five.”

    “Don’t worry, I’ll get there in plenty of time.”

    “Thanks very much. I can get the news online, but it’s not the same…”

    “No, ’course not. You can rely on me.”

    He made that face again. “I know.”

    “Could I bring you up a book, meanwhile?”

    “No, thanks very much, but I’ve read them all. Several times, most of them. A whisky’d hit the spot about now, l must admit.” He sighed.

    “You shouldn’t have drunk so much of it before. Don’t they teach you tactics at Sandhurst? Forward thinking, or some such?”

    He grinned sheepishly. “Yep. Failed to apply it.”

    I went over to the door but hesitated. “Um, can I ask you something ?”

    “Ask away.”

    “Um, I’m not having a go at you, but… Well Mrs Berrington mentioned a leg with a pin in it. I think she meant it’s the one you didn’t break this time.”

    “Mm.”

    Suddenly I felt really fed up with the silly chump. “Look, John, don’t play silly buggers, thanks. Is this why you’re having such difficulty with the crutches? The other leg’s wonky?”

    “I wouldn’t say wonky… Well yes. Not all it should be.”

    I sighed and came to perch on the edge of the bed. “Okay, you’d better tell me the details. This is the leg that was smashed in Afghanistan, is it? That you got sent home for?”

    “Yes. The kneecap’s no longer mine—titanium or some such—and there’s a bloody great rod down the shin. Er, not all the way,” he said as I winced in spite of myself. “It’s perfectly good for normal stuff.”

    “And did you point this out to the hospital that was fixing the other leg?”

    “Er… no.”

    “Good grief! There is no actual merit in making a martyr of oneself! You’re old enough to realise that!”

    “Mm. Didn't want to make a fuss, I s’pose.”

    “Les Anglais,” I quoted Grannie grimly, “sont fous. It’s the bloody public schools. The Bean’s already absorbed the message. I think the sooner Grannie takes Bean Minor away from dratted Marbledown the better.”

    “But the boy loves it there, Mel,” he protested weakly.

    “He does now, because it’s all new and exciting and he’s got the big boys to look up to. But the Egg and his pals have got one more year and then there’ll be nothing to counteract the brainwashing.”

    “Oh. I take your point. But, er, doesn’t sending him to school in France risk exposing him to the fell influence of the bad cousins?”

    “Only if she sends him to Tante Émilie in Paris. But he could go to the lycée in the nearest town. Oncle Patrice’s niece’d be thrilled to have him to stay.”

    “That sounds all right.” He hesitated and then admitted: “Okay, I’ve been overdoing it like an idiot.”

    “I’ll say! Look, I think you need to talk to the hospital.”

    “I really can’t face another bout of incarceration, Mel. I kept having…”

    “Yes?” I prompted, as he’d stopped.

    “I—” He met my steely eye. “Nightmares. About fucking Afghanistan.”

    Oh Christ! I had to swallow. The more so as he does generally watch his language in front of us, at least to the extent of avoiding the F-word. “I see. And they’ve stopped now, have they?”

    “Mm. Well no guarantees that in the wake of the frightful Daphne B. they won’t resurface, but yes. Last night,” he said with a smile, “I dreamed I was walking in my grandmother’s garden surrounded by roses and her flowering cherries and the big flowering plum. And huge stalks of bulrushes!” He gave a little laugh. “They don’t flower at the same time, and the bulrushes were discovered during my boyhood ventures to the stream way beyond the garden, but it was a lovely sight!”

    “Good. Well you’ll just have to take it very easy. And when you do walk, put as much weight as possible on the crutches. That leg will heal, given time. And at least we can get the papers for you, to help with the boredom.”

    “Mm. Thanks. –Just on Sunday,” he reminded me.

    Something like that.

    Back downstairs I thought it all over very carefully. Then I took a Lucia book up to him, advising him to give it a go, they were always enjoyable.

    “Okay, thanks. And, er, would you mind plugging the laptop in for me? Needs recharging.”

    This marvellous artefact of the Age of Technological Man had a very short cord. And the Colonel’s bedroom featured two power points, both a considerable distance from the only sensible place to put the bed. I duly plugged it in for him. It sat neatly on the floor over on the other side of the room from the bed, between the built-in wardrobe and the door. One could only conclude that whoever had last remodelled this room, he thinks some time in the Sixties, had been an idiot. Probably the grandfather of the designer of the laptop cord.

    After that I went downstairs again and rang the Ovendens’ number and managed to get hold of Mr O. After I’d assured him that everything was okay I told him about the bad leg that the Colonel had been doing too much on.

    “Want me to chew his ear?” he offered cheerfully.

    “No thanks, I’ve already done that.”

    He laughed. “Good for you, Mel! So how can I help?”

    “I just wondered if it’d be any good getting hold of the doctor who operated on him in London and getting some advice out of him.”

    “Hmm… I really think that for the time being the advice would be to take it easy, not try to do too much. But later… The right sort of physiotherapy might be the go. The fellow Devon saw when he took a toss off Red Rambler would be the one.”

    Devon Holmes is one of the jockeys who ride for him regularly. “I see. Is Red Rambler the one that’s Red Racer’s brother?”

    “Yes. Standing at stud now. Devon’s chap’s in London. I’ll get the details and ring you back, Mel. Meanwhile keep an eye on John, won’t you?”

    “Yes, don’t worry.”

    “Good girl!” he said with a laugh and rang off before I could thank him properly.

    He rang back after dinner. Devon recommended his guy highly and would come and visit the Colonel and give us his contact details tomorrow morning.

    July 11 Not. Continuing: Sure enough, next morning the jockey turned up, grinning, with yet more grapes, a bundle of reading matter, largely sporting papers, but never mind, it was a kind thought, and a square-sided paper bag.

    “If that’s whisky you’d better give it to me, thanks, Mr Holmes,” I said firmly. “I’ll monitor his intake.”

    He laughed. “Like that, is it? Right you are!” He handed it over and added: “Call me Devon, for Pete’s sake, Mel, not Mr Holmes, I’m not that ancient!”

    No, he wasn’t, and in spite of being rather short he was a very attractive chap, and knew it. A right lady-killer, according to old Sid. I went rather red. “Okay, Devon it is.”

    “That’s better! –John upstairs, is he?”

    “Yes; go straight up, he’ll be glad to see you. He’s been getting very bored.”

    “Yeah; I know what it’s like!” He ran up, grinning.

    I waited a while and then took them up a pot of tea.

    “Black, no sugar for me, thanks, Mel,” said Devon.

    “Yes, and I think you’d better take the biscuits away, Mel, or they’ll sit here torturing the poor chap, he’s already allowed himself one grape against his better judgement!” said the Colonel with a laugh.

    “Help! I’m sorry, Devon.” Gosh, I’d hate to be a jockey, the tall horses quite apart. I grabbed the plate of biscuits and departed with it smartly.

    As usual the door latch didn’t catch, so I clearly heard Devon say with a laugh: “That’s a bit of all right, John! Pity she’s not a year or two older or frankly I’d be up there like a ferret!”

    And Colonel Raice reply very drily indeed: “I admit the soft impeachment, Devon. Off-limits at the moment, I’m afraid.”

    What? Is there a shade deeper than beetroot? Deep magenta, possibly? I staggered into the kitchen and splashed cold water on my face. Jesus! They’re all the same, aren’t they? Once the bally boobs have grown you’re not a person, you’re merely a female to their tiny hormone-driven minds!

    How I got through the rest of the morning I don’t know. In fact make that the rest of the day. I let Bean Minor take the dratted man up his lunch. And his dinner.

    … What exactly were the implications of “I admit the soft impeachment” and “Off-limits at the moment, I’m afraid”?

    Um…

    On the other hand, did I want to even think about them?

    No, on the whole.

    Next morning Bean Minor reported after delivering his breakfast that he’d like some pills, so I took them in to him. Neither of us said anything much. I got the impression that he was avoiding my eye; and I was definitely avoiding his. Later reconnaissance by the minor Bean produced a report that he was asleep with some grapes and a book and the papers that Devon Holmes had brought on the bed, so I tiptoed up to take a look.

    He was. Okay, better let sleeping dogs lie. I tiptoed out.

    … “Off-limits at the moment”?

    No. Not thinking about it. Plenty of time yet, John Raice.

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