Notes to my Mother-in-Law and How Many Camels Are There in Holland?: Two-book Bundle. Phyllida Law
Читать онлайн книгу.
to hear that I have found bits of carpet in the stair cupboard. How apt. They were behind the boxes of Carnation milk and sugar that Dad bought against famine. Do you remember when things were short in the shops a year or so ago? There was a spate of panic buying. Someone in Japan got crushed to death queuing for toilet rolls, and sugar was rationed for a spell here. Someone punched the manager at Cullen’s.
Wash day again. Time flies. I will do fridge and disgusting oven in the morning. Must get another packet of bicarb.
Sophie has gone out to meet Beattie and was so late leaving she asked me to tell you she was sorry not to see you.
I was rather relieved. On her top half she was wearing a T-shirt in blotchy eau-de-nil and her denim pea jacket with the badges. Bottom half was sandals and a white cotton petticoat. She looked as if something frightful had happened when she was half dressed and she’d dropped everything and rushed out. I told her she might be a bit chilly from the waist down and she said she got an A in Art.
She has left three gnawed spare ribs on the kitchen table, which she had put in her bag at the restaurant last night to give to somebody’s dog. I don’t know whose dog. They weren’t even her spare ribs.
Herewith:
bottle of Gee’s Linctus
some Shield tablets
wine gums
Bourbon biscuits
Of course you can’t hear anything—you’ve got cotton-wool in your ears.
Bit worried about Boot. Does she still meet you in the morning as usual? That strange third eyelid seems to be a bit stuck on her left eye.
Eleanor is much better. She rang me today. She is consumed with guilt about Mother’s birthday. She sent a letter, and a parcel was to follow but her local PO was broken into the afternoon of the day she posted it. Men with guns. And it’s a tiny place, she says. The sort that keeps dog biscuits in the window. The owner has shut up for a few days to recover. Eleanor says he looks awfully ill. Meanwhile the parcel is either still sitting there and the gunmen have got away with lavender talcum powder, some after-dinner mints and a tin of truffles.
I’ve found the keys. They were in the bottom of my wardrobe. Can you beat it? I had to sit down for a minute. What I think must have happened is that I hung up my cleaning holding the bunch of keys and let them go as all the hangers were put in place. Of course, the bottom of our wardrobe is full of shoes and scarves and old plastic bags and aprons so I didn’t hear them fall. I might never have found them. But they’re no use now and X pounds down the drain.
I am a dizzy tart. It runs in the family. Mother lost a pair of tights she’d bought in Dunoon and rang the shop fussing and furious only to find them in the fridge. There was one wet winter when she put her shoes to dry in the bottom oven of the Rayburn and forgot for weeks. Dinky little stone shoes they were.
No, I won’t tell you how much. Put your pension to better use.
No, darling, I don’t think there is any question of your having a cataract. I think that some of those library books have very small print, and the doctor feels the mistiness is to do with your general health, but we’ll check at the op-thingummy.
You can see a cataract. My granny’s was very noticeable.
I don’t know why Aunt Min can’t get hers done. Perhaps it’s because of her diabetes? It’s as simple nowadays as a tonsillectomy but I remember Granny’s was a grand affair when you lay bandaged in a darkened room for ages. Of course, Granny refused. She got up immediately and wandered about the ward in her flannel nightie removing everyone’s bandages as well as her own. In the end they sent her home for bad behaviour. Mother always says she got into an old gentleman’s bed, but I don’t think the old gentleman was there at the time.
We had to ban Granny as a subject of conversation because she was so appalling everyone wanted to know about her latest iniquity and other concerns were elbowed.
Do you know, she used to turn the electricity off at the mains if she felt people had overstayed their welcome. And when we had a visitor I would be sent upstairs to light the gas fire in their bedroom (the house was always freezing). When I’d done it I’d slide under the bed until I saw Granny’s little black shoes tip-tapping to the fire to switch it off. Satisfied and breathing heavily, she would trot away to her room and I would emerge to relight the fire. She must have been ninety. My brother said she would live for ever because she ate all the mould off the top of the jam pots. My other job was to hide behind the curtains in the dining room to collect the dirty plates she carefully put away. She called it ‘clean dirt’ as she wiped them with a licked finger.
She put great faith in spit. I was about six when I fell heavily on a cinder path and a little cinder embedded itself in my forehead. Granny cleaned it up and spat on the wound. ‘There now,’ she said. ‘That’ll heal over nicely.’ And it did. I had to go to the doctor’s to have the cinder dug out. You can see the dent in my forehead to this day.
Around this time Gran had the first of her many falls. I found her on the loo floor with one little foot in its size-three shoe wedged around the lavatory pedestal. I couldn’t pick her up because she was laughing so much. Eventually I managed to pull her into a sitting position and give her a cup of sweet tea.
‘Oh, thank heaven I’ve been,’ she said, hiccuping.
When I finally had her upright I walked her to her bedroom by placing her feet on my size fives, like you do with kids, and we swayed shrieking across the landing, counting loudly at each uncertain step.
This was when I learnt that severe bruising is more painful than a break, or so the doctor said. Bed rest was prescribed. We rigged up a commode on a dining chair with a Wedgewood tureen shaped like a cabbage beneath it. It sold at auction for quite a lot some time later.
Mother sends acres of healing love. She says she fell down the manse stairs with her portable wireless in one hand and her tea in the other so she knows how you feel.
Uncle Arthur is pretty well, considering. Ma got up the other morning very early and feeling chilly, only to find him kneeling at his open window and just wearing his pyjama jacket. She thought he was dead or praying but he was taking aim at a rabbit. He keeps a shotgun under his wardrobe. Mill’s pet rabbit used to eat the sitting-room carpet. It had to have a hysterectomy and, appalled by its pain, she fed it port and Veganin. Killed it. She couldn’t understand it because her monkey was an alcoholic. They all are, I’m told. When she took him to the pub, folk would ask what her little friend fancied. Port-and-brandy was his favourite.
The girls will serve tea in your boudoir at 4 p.m. or thereabouts. You are getting better, I can tell.
Matron
I got the Baby Bio. It’s underneath the sink. Treated myself to a can of Leaf Shine (very expensive). The flipping tobacco plant