L’enfer c’est les autres

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Bradford on Avon, ergonomic stool, Gap Year student, John Hurt, Kim Kardashian, l'enfer c'est les autres, maxima culpa, moveable feast, penny dreadful, QE2, Sartre, The Inferno, Thornton's chocolate, Underworld

Drusilla Fotheringay, Housemistress at St Vitus’ School for the Academically-

Gifted Girl lifted the post from the entrance hall.  There was a personal letter

addressed to her in spidery writing.  She felt curiously excited, as when she

had anticipated a pound note, or a book token on her birthday, as a youngster.

It was so rare to be sent snail mail.  The stamps were curiously lumpy.

Obviously they been steamed off and re-used.  They depicted the QE2.

Hang on!  They are pre-decimal!  How did she get away with that? Dru

exclaimed.

Fortunately she had a free period before the onslaught, so she sat down in the

office and looked at the postmark.  It was from Rochester, Kent.

Aunt Augusta!  she sighed.  She had been meaning to write to the old bird, but

had been so busy.  No doubt she wanted her to visit, but she was supposed to

be clearing out her things in Bradford-on-Avon before Mum handed over the

cottage to its new owners.  Thank goodness she had already moved her harp

into the boarding house.

There was no pound note, but there was a Thornton’s voucher for a discount

on a second Easter egg, if you bought more than one.

Dru supposed that it was a hint that she should bring some chocolate down

with her on her next visit.  Easter might be a moveable feast, but there wasn’t

going to be too much leeway as far as dutiful attendance went.

A newspaper cutting fell out of the envelope.  It was headed The Rochester

Messenger and dated the 30th March, 2014.

Dru cast her eye over the column and nearly fell off her ergonomic stool.

Wasn’t that a bodily excretion peculiar to vegetarians? No, don’t go there!

The cutting was an obituary for Anthony Revelly, the man whom they had

identified as being her grandfather.  They hadn’t had time to work out a

strategy for revealing the information they had pieced together on their visit

to Wyvern Mote.

Mum!

Yes, dear.  Why are you phoning me now?  Aren’t you at work?  Are you all

right?

Mum, I’ve just had a letter and a cutting from a local penny dreadful from

Aunt Augusta.

You mean Great-Aunt Augusta, don’t you?

Whatever. (This lazy way of speaking was rubbing off on her from her

teenage charges.  It was technically called convergence, according to the

pedantic English teacher) Mum, Anthony Revelly is dead.

The Anthony Revelly from the nursing home?  Your-em-grandfather?

He died at the end of March.  Aunt Augusta has enclosed his obituary.

Did she know..?

No, we hadn’t told anyone, so that’s why we hadn’t been informed.

Why is she sending you the cutting then?

Because…well, it’s a bit awkward.  The truth is..

What?

..that she complained because he was suffering from dementia and wandered

around at night and attempted to get into bed with her.  He obviously thought

that she was her sister, Berenice.  They were so alike.

Tragic, said Diana.  I bet he didn’t get a very good reception.  From what you

said, she seemed to have never really cared for men.

She seemed to have never really cared for anyone, Mum, though she is rather

keen on herself naturally!  To be fair, she cared for Dad practically when he

was at prep school.

Poor old Revelly was lonely, vulnerable and frightened.

It’s so sad and final.  Suddenly Dru brimmed over.  I never got to know him.

Diana felt guilty.  If only she had been honest about Dru’s real father being

Augustus, instead of fabricating her deception which had taken in Murgatroyd

Syylk and led to his honourably, if unwittingly, taking responsibility for Dru as a

daughter.

She had deprived Augustus of paternity rights and kept her daughter from her

grandfather. There must be a special circle in Hell for women such as herself.

(She had just been listening to a Radio 4 adaptation of The Inferno.  She

thought John Hurt was rather good in it; he was rather good in

everything..)

Mea culpa!  Mea maxima culpa, she beat her breast.  Ouch! She might

have to share a gyre, or spiral thingy with Kim Kardashian.  That would be

a just punishment.  Who was that Kardashian woman again? Someone she

knew instinctively that would make her repeat Sartre’s statement: L’enfer

c’est les autres for all eternity.

Mother and daughter sobbed together.

Dru!  Come over to Sonia’s.  We need to sort this out.

But I have to teach at ten o’clock.  How am I going to cope?

You tell them that you have just had notice of a bereavement and the rest is

their problem.  They can double up the little blighters with another group. 

The Gap Year student can make up the extra adult presence, surely?

But she’s got a mental and emotional age of fourteen, Dru protested.

Just do it! She’s got the edge on them by a couple of years and at that age,

it’s a gulf never to be bridged.  Oh no, that sounded like a geophysical

feature of the Underworld again!

Okay, Mum.  I love you.

Sonia’s already worked out what’s happening, Diana soothed.

Well, she is supposed to be a clairvoyant.

Never mind that now.  Just get over here and we will think of how to

tell your father.

Okay, Dru sniffed.  She would just about have time to call into Thornton’s

on the way.

Boy, did she need some chocolate.

 

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Bingo!

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Diana Fotheringay-Syylk was feeling like the fishy guest who putrefies after

three days.  Not that Sonia had hinted that she had a sudden need to reclaim

her spare rooms, but it was just that both women required their own space.

Diana felt that it was a bit like sharing The Winter Palace with Catherine the

Great, and it sometimes felt like a similar temperature too.

Diana’s estate agent was frantically sending her texts, reporting on the

positive viewings on her cottage in Bradford-on-Avon.  Prospective buyers

adored the quaint windows- as far as she could recall there were none.

Couples loved its tranquil position in a quiet village.  ‘Bustling town‘ was how

she would have described its location.  And why did they mention the river

after the worst flooding in a century?  She was in an elevated position and

hadn’t had a teaspoonful of groundwater in her cellar.  So far there had

been no second viewings.  Still, it wasn’t Easter yet.

Sonia kept wanting to play Cribbage, Bridge or a variety of Bingo every

evening.  Diana didn’t care for these games and would have been happy to

provide the canapes for the occasion, if only George Osborne, or

Nick Clegg could have dropped by, so that she could sit the session out, like

some kind of Madge to Edna’s grande dame.  She had a sneaking

suspicion that Sonia would have eaten the politicians up as efficiently as

she disposed of a box of Bridge Mints and that she would probably have

preferred Potemkin to drop by unannounced for a game of Poleconomy.

Apparently the Chancellor and the Deputy PM love Bingo– so much so that

they were right behind tax reductions of 50% on the game. (David Cameron

was less enthusiastic. He prefers a night in with a pasty.)

Just as well that Sonia had given up driving, after she embedded her car in the

frontage of Costamuchamoulah, must-seen cafe.  Otherwise she might have

been tempted to cash in her annuities to purchase a Lamborghini to roar up

High Street.

Diana could imagine other old biddies, such as Ginevra, being all too keen to

make a black hole in their pension funds in order to subsidise a Martini habit,

or worse.

It wouldn’t take too many cashed-in ISAs to buy a toy boy and it would

probably be more short term fun than having to fund an Eastern European

carer.

Diana was beginning to realise that she wasn’t as young as she had been.  She

had been planning a Sagbag cruise to somewhere culturally interesting, such as

St Petersburg.  It would have been something to look forward to after the

house sale and removal stresses.  She quite fancied listening to some minor

celebrity rabbiting on about Faberge eggs, or leaning over the deck rail with a

George Osborne lookalike..(No, she meant Clooney, surely?), night after White

Night, or Knight after White Knight, not necessarily in white satin, or even

statins.

Now Putin had put paid to that Baltic fantasy.

Really someone should put the ‘Ras‘ back into his name.  She held him

personally responsible for preventing her from viewing The Hermitage.  How

one small man could spoil everything was very irritating.  If he had been a

pupil in her class, she would have told him not to be so greedy.  The lion’s

share was not his to grab.  She would have made him put it back and go to

the end of the queue.

He would have to have said, Thank you, Mrs Fotheringay-Syylk, with no

repetition, hesitation, or deviation.  And if she had detected any hint of

sarcasm or impertinence in his tone, then he would have been the last to

leave the classroom and may have even had to stay behind to help her

tidy up Lost Property. (But how do you tidy up Crimea?)

Sanctions!  She knew all about them.  Charging round the hockey pitch

twenty times would have sorted him out.  As for the Tuck Shop– out of

bounds till the end of term!  Or maybe till the end of time.

She absent-mindedly bent down to pick up the mail from the doormat.

There were two letters, both addressed to herself.

There was an envelope stamped with the estate agent’s logo.

She ripped it open. She was being offered a record price for the cottage!

Bingo!  Drusilla had been right.  It had flown away.

She opened the other missive.  It was from Sagbag Cruises and included a

published list of floating lectures.  Geophysicists, Religious Affairs

Broadcasters….

Where was Bendor Grosvenor?  That was what she wanted to know.

Maybe he didn’t do Sagbag. What about Neil Oliver?

Oh, wow!  Waldemar Janusczak on The Missing Amber Room.  A cruise to

Tallinn. Sign me up, Scotty! she screamed.  I’m definitely going for that one,

whether he was born in Basingstoke, or not.  I must ask Drusilla if she wants

to go too.  I mean to Estonia, not Basingstoke.  Imagine sailing round all those

roundabouts!  You’d feel seasick!

I can’t understand why Dru prefers Andrew Graham-Dixon.  He showed himself

up on University Challenge.  No, even Jeremy Paxman giving his fly-fishing tips

on a nautical jaunt round the Inner Hebrides isn’t as good as Waldemar on a

Kit-Kat wrapper.

And by the look of the price offered for my erstwhile humble abode, I can

treat my dear daughter too.

By George-bingo!

Apres le Deluge

Tags

Annunciation, Bradford on Avon, crocus, Eeyore, Loreto, Nazareth, saffron, Santa Casa

Mum, said Drusilla, talk about bad timing for a house sale.

The weather couldn’t be worse!

I know, I replied, but though Bradford-on-Avon was partially

submerged at Christmas, we appeared to get away with it,

being further up the hill.  And, anyway, prices seem to be rising

and there is a little flurry of activity.

The estate agent said we should have no trouble come the

Spring, as lots of people want to live in the Avon Valley.  Some are

even converting a property in the centre of town into a Buddhist Temple

and two monks are going to live above the meditation room, with their

saffron robes etcetera.  And talking of saffron, I saw a few crocuses

raising their little heads today and there were a couple of daffs too.  So,

maybe the worst of winter is over.  Or maybe not.  Hmm..

Anyway, Dru, I continued on the phone, the agent says the house

will fly.

You mean like the Santa Casa? she laughed.

What’s that?

Oh, Mum, don’t you remember we visited that monastery place in

Prague and they said that a building there was the house of the Virgin

Mary, where she received the Annunciation?  Apparently it had transported

itself from Nazareth by miraculous propulsion.

Oh, yes- vaguely.  No, it was a replica of one which had been moved,

stone by stone, from Nazareth to Dalmatia and then to Loreto, Italy.

Because the name of the family who transported it was Angeli, people

thought it had literally been moved by a heavenly pantechnicon!

That’s right.  Hey, you could move the cottage to Suttonford and then

you’d have the house you want in the location you long for.

Good idea, Dru, but I don’t think it’s logistically possible.  I’ll just wait

for the Easter peak in house sales and it should shift itself. 

Sonia is enjoying having company and isn’t throwing me out-yet!

Dru made a few remarks about guests and fish going off after a few

days, but didn’t really mean it, I felt.

Good, she concluded.  Look, I’ll try to see you on my free afternoon.  Don’t

throw out my knitted Eeyore in your bid for minimalisation, will you?

No, of course no, darling.  As if I would!  See you soon.  ‘bye.

I replaced the handset.

Yikes, I wonder if Sonia can still knit? I’m sure I

left a load of ancient soft toys out for collection by Barnardos and it would

have been included in the bag.  I’d better buy some grey wool asap or I will be

under a permanent cloud, eating thistles for the rest of my life, no make that

‘foreseeable existence’!

I think I’ll need a little purple too and a pattern from the Internet.  Drat!

Diary of a Lax Mistress

Tags

Bradford on Avon, Burns Supper, Calais, clairvoyant, cliche, Dalrieda, diaspora, estuary, Heraclitus, Immortal Memory, lacrosse, Mary Tudor, Nemo Me Impune Lacessit, New Year Resolution, parsing, Robert Burns, St Vitus, straightjacket

Not ‘lax‘ in any moral sense, you understand, Dear Diary.  Just an

abbreviation for that energising and energetic sport which I once

taught all those years ago when I was a fresh-faced sports

mistress at St Vitus’ School for the Academically-Gifted Girl, that

educational establishment now served by my one and only

daughter, Drusilla.

Lacrosse, how indebted I am to you for my trim figure in late

middle- no, change that-early middle age.

My New Year Resolution was to record in your pages an unfolding

record of my life as I turn my back on Bradford-on-Avon and return

to Suttonford, or environs thereof.  I could castigate myself by

declining to add a preposition in the final position of a sentence,

but, Dear Inquisitive Reader, I am not allowing such an intrusion

into these highly personal pages. I can assure you that ‘thereof’

is actually an adverb.  So, Parse that! as my primary teacher used

to say to me.

Apparently all that pedantic wrangling and linguistic strait-jacketing is-

new hate word- ‘prescriptive‘, so we can write what the ….we like!

Having spoken to Sonia, my old friend, ex-colleague and godmother to my

child, I was persuaded to come and lodge with her while my cottage is on

the market.  Diana, she urged, Feel free to stay as long as you’d like.

So, here I am in Royalist House, 3 3/4 High Street. Suttonford.

Will this new chapter of my life include Augustus?  I should ask Sonia; she

claims to be a clairvoyant.

Gus has frankly been a bit of a bore recently.  We were all three en famille at

Christmas and our pre-festivities Turkish trip was delightful, but since he

assumed this Acting Head harness, he has shown a distinct lack of

delegation. I don’t know what he expects his School Secretary to do.

Well, maybe I don’t want to know, Dear Diary!

Last night he was moaning on the telephone about the fixtures list having

been published on the Calendar he inherited. Apparently, he has been left

to fill in the subtle logistical details.

The Fundraising Burns’ Supper for the PTA is a current example.

He hasn’t even booked the speaker for The Immortal Memory yet.

Did I know anyone who could deliver it?  I ask you.  I’ve only just arrived

in the community.

Why should I?

It all leads me to question our compatibility.  I am not that burbling stream

that he once paddled in and which scarcely covered the ankles of his

gumboots.  No, the mighty river of my post-menopausal personality would

probably engulf his emotional waders, to continue an aquaeous metaphor,

and would sweep him off his feet, into a tidal estuary.

Maybe his Classical learning has influenced my subconscious and transmitted

some Heraclitean analogy concerning never being able to step in the same

river twice.  We have both moved on, I fear.

We emerged from the house into the street and immediately were almost

knocked over by a child on an aluminium scooter.  Sonia didn’t see that

coming.

Our physical evasion led us to bump-literally-into a neighbour of Sonia’s,

namely an interesting looking woman called Candia Dixon-Stuart.  She was also

on her way to the infamous Costamuchamoulah must-seen cafe, in order to

meet a friend, and so we fell into step.

Her Jacobite surname, albeit hyphenated, led me to the most serendipitous

idea.

I asked her if she knew of anyone who could give some readings of the Bard’s

works at an impending Burns Supper.

She immediately replied, I can, of course.  Although I live in Suttonford, you

may detect a hint of the Caledonian in my genetic code.  Prick me and do I not

exude a few drops of blue blood from the Kingdom of Dalrieda?!

I took this as an affirmative and she drew my attention to a clan badge that

she wore on her lapel.  I did not know if this indicated an invitation to

remove it and plunge its pin into her soft and yielding flesh.  I did not

doubt that, eviscerated, her remains would bear the motto: Nemo Me

Impune Lacessit just as indelibly as that other Mary had the word:

Calais stamped on her heart, or running right through her like a stock

of seaside rock.

Over a couple of cappuccinos, she introduced us to her friend, Carrie,

who turned out to be half Italian and half Scottish.  Gosh, these Scots

certainly had some diaspora and spread their seed around like some

blown thistledown.

Carrie told me that her mother- Morag!- a stereotypical name- would have

come down had she not been performing at various Masonic associations

and venues north of the border.

Very kind, but somehow I think Candia is our woman and she will ‘step up

to the plate‘ to re-circulate a current, over-used metaphor: isn’t that a cliche?

I gave her Gus’ number and am half-inclined to allow him to take me along as

his guest of honour.  There are bound to be some spare tickets and, frankly,

this new acquaintance intrigues me.

Judge Not That Ye Be Not Judged

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Augustus Snodbury had returned to school early, in order to oversee

the logistics of the opening of the new term.  This left Dru and her

mother to have a final girlie weekend in Bradford-on-Avon.

After the Christmas tree needles had been vacuumed and the baubles

and wreaths put away, Diana burned the card from her ex-husband on

the open fire.  She always recognised who its sender was as, apart from

the calligraphic penmanship, the subject was always vaguely Anglo-

Catholic, High Renaissance and probably came from The National

Gallery‘s sale.  The Holy Family or something deeply ironic, given

their own dysfunctionality.

She never returned the compliment.

Was that the one from that odious and oleaginous man who once lived

with us?  Dru asked her mother, over a sloe gin.  I often wonder why

you married him.

I often wonder that myself, but at the time, I didn’t feel that I had many

other options, Diana confessed.

What really happened, Mum? Dru leant forward, picking a pine needle

off the rug.

Well, I only married Murgatroyd on the rebound.  You see, being in a state

of infanticipation, I was very vulnerable.

Why didn’t you marry Dad?

Wounded pride, Dru.  I was mortified that I had sent him a declaration of

love in the form of a Valentine card, and he hadn’t returned one.  It’s like

revealing your hand and no one shouting: Snap!

But we’ve been through that, Dru broke in impatiently.  He had. You

just didn’t get it.  Delivery malfunction.

I know that now, but, at the time I was distraught.

And so how did you become involved with that man?  I’m referring to

the one who has ensconced himself in a converted Pele tower in the

Borders and is trying to live the aesthetic life of Tam Dalyell, or Grey

Gowrie, but sans the brain cells, or political acumen.

As for ‘Grey’- that sounds like a wolf, doesn’t it?

It’s a long story, but I suppose I should have told you ages

ago.  Mind you, you never asked.

I’m asking now.

All right.  The boarding house accommodation was rather bleak and

so I had attended a local mid-week auction on my free afternoon..

You had free afternoons then?  Dru was amazed.

Technically, but it was rare for one to be able to take them.  Anyway,

I bought a self-portrait by Angelica Kauffman, to cheer myself up.  The

one over the mantelshelf in my bedroom.

But it’s only a print, Dru observed.

Yes, but I liked the frame, though it required a bit of restoration.

So you took it to Quarto Street, to Syylk, for re-gilding?

Precisely.  I stood in a short queue, waiting to see the restorer.  I

thought he’d be an elderly gentleman, since it was his name over

the shop. As it was, it turned out to be his son’s business.

I began to feel queasy and faint and he sat me down on a Louis XVI

repro sofa (everything was fake about the man, as I subsequently

discovered) and he gave me a glass of water.

He identified my picture as a Giclee print by Bartolozzi, and said that the

title of the picture was ‘The Angel’, punning on the name of the artist.

He then flattered me by saying how appropriate the picture was for one

so angelic and other nonsense:  ‘A charming image for a heavenly

customer.’

Not Snod’s style then!  He wouldn’t know how to be smarmy.

No.  Syylk was so smooth that, after he had ministered to my

needs.. No, not in that way!  Diana was shocked.  He took me out a

few times in his open top Sports car and the proposal was rapidly

forthcoming.

You accepted to spite Dad?

In a way, but motivation is always more complex than the outsider can

interpret, Diana replied wisely.

Dru had been overseeing her girls’ homework on ‘To Kill A Mockingbird‘,

so she was familiar with the concept.  You have to walk in someone

else’s shoes..

..before you judge them- yes.

I’m not judging you, Mum- except that it was harsh to expect a man to

bring up another guy’s child.

But, he never knew!

Then I am judging you, Mum!  Heavens to Murgatroyd!

Well, I paid the price in an unfortunate marriage. At least Angelica

Kauffman’s husband died in 1795, but my ex persists.

Yes, he hung around too long- like an egg tempera which has gone off,

to use a technical term congruent with his profession. I will admit that.

I suppose that was your penance.

Oh well.  ‘Post Tenebris Lux’, as Calvin said.

Calvin?

The Reformer.

Oh yeah. Not Klein?

Not Klein and not Coolidge, nor a cartoon jungle feline.

What do they teach the teachers nowadays?  Diana sometimes

despaired.  She had tried to warn Drusilla off the teaching profession,

but she would bite the bullet, albeit a not too silvery one.  Come to think

of it, she herself had bitten the silver one, but, thankfully hadn’t needed a

magic one.  Maybe she should have had the one inscribed with the Holy

Family’s names, which was supposed to ward off werewolves such as

Syylk.

She looked down at her hands and realised that she was no longer wearing

her wedding and engagement rings.  It wasn’t just all that washing up over

Christmas.  Something Freudian was going on.

Acting Head

Tags

A&E, Acting Head, Bradford on Avon, cook one's goose, Ding dong Merrily on High!, fardels bear, Madeira, redcurrant sauce, St John's Ambulance, University Challenge, wishbone

Augustus Snodbury settled himself into position in the carver chair at

the head of the table.  He had only just made it to Bradford-on-Avon,

his prostate appointment having been cancelled and the queue in the

butcher’s having receded.  He had battled through floods and gales to

bring-not the bacon, but the poultry- to his erstwhile lover’s cottage.

I’ve cooked your goose! Diana announced.

In more ways than one, he mused.  However, he sharpened the knife

and set to, the stupid paper hat falling over his eyes.

Dru held out her plate and it was plenished with succulent breast.

She adjusted her cleavage and leaned back.

That’s plenty! she cautioned.

Diana gave the toast:

Here’s tae us.

Wha’s like us?

Gey few

an’ they’re a’ deid!

Gus and his daughter pulled the wishbone and he won, but

coyly declined to reveal his deepest desire.  Diana observed

privately that it might connote with him having a backbone too.

Wasn’t that the weirdest thing?  Dru announced. At the looks of

incomprehension, she clarified:  I mean seeing that Poskett chap in

the middle of our trip.

Well, I suppose these cultural breaks self-select, her mother

hypothesised.  It’s a niche market.

I wonder how the other poor chap is? continued Dru casually.

Can’t have been much fun being hors-de-combat in the hotel.

Oh, Milford-Haven will be perfectly all right by now, opined Gus.

He’s probably gone off to be looked after by his mother in Cornwall.

Duchy of.

Dru inhaled and some sage and onion stuffing went down the wrong

way. She downed some water as a distraction, in the manner of a shy

University Challenge contestant after he or she has finally answered one

question correctly.

Cornwall, she voiced inwardly.  She fingered the gold harp on its chain.

So, it had been from Nigel after all.  Ding Dong Merrily on High!

The phone interrupted their table talk, ringing insistently.

Typical!  said Diana.  Ignore it!  Let the machine take it.

However, they could hear the rather desperate message, pronounced

by someone who sounded very like the school secretary to Snod, who

happened to be nearest to the handset.

He leapt up, spilling the redcurrant sauce over the antique linen

tablecloth.

Oh do be careful! scowled Diana.

Gus pressed re-play and, to his horror, the tale of tragic woe played itself

out.

Apparently the Headmaster had attended the Midnight Service at his local

parish church and he had keeled over before the seventh Lesson.

At first everyone, including his wife, had thought that he had merely been

prematurely carried away by the spirits of the season, but a member of the

St John’s Ambulance Brigade had detected a tell-tale sign of lopsidedness in

his expression and, before the congregation could snatch a subterfuge

and unmusical breath between ‘verily the sky‘ and ‘is riv’n‘, the Head had

been stretchered out between the pews and was on his way to A&E.

Ashen-faced Augustus sat down on the whoopee cushion.

What’s going to happen?  Dru asked.

Yes, re-formulated Diana.  What’s to be done?

I’m to be Acting Head, replied Gus.  That’s what’s happening

and I wish it wasn’t.  Oh, joy to the world!

Be careful what you wish for! Diana teased, but she wiped her lips with

her napkin when she saw his expression.

Balancing himself by gripping the edge of the table he recited with an

orotundity that matched the profundity of the occasion:

To die, to sleep-

…and by a sleep to say we end

The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks

That flesh is heir to…’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished.

And thus the Native hue of Resolution

iIs sicklied o’er, with the pale cast of Thought,

And enterprises of great pitch and moment

With regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of Action..

Dru found herself appalauding, but he continued:

No, who would fardels bear

[I’d rather}..bear those ills

Than fly to others that [I] know not of..

Here!  Diana thrust a glass into his hand.

Have some Madeira, m’dear!

And so the spell was broken, along with his dreams of a

downhill, easy progression towards his retirement.

Repeating History

Tags

agapanthus, Bosphorous, Bradford on Avon, Caracas, City of Eternal Spring, dianthus, Dux, emporium, entomology, flying carpet, grandiflora, Istanbul, Iznik tile, Jesse Tree, kelim, National Trust, Panama, Simon Bolivar, Turkish Delight

Great-Aunt Augusta unwrapped the Turkish Delight as she sat

in her velours recliner in the private area of the Recreational

Room of her Care Home.

Now, are you sitting comfortably? she addressed her great-niece,

Drusilla Fotheringay.

The exophoric reference wasn’t entirely lost on Dru, so she nodded

and gave the signal for the old bag to commence on the veritable

Jesse Tree of the family genealogy.

(Jesse Tree Chartres: Wikipaedia)

Now, your great-grandmother-also Augusta-was a bit of a goer, or

a flibbertigibbet, as I told you before.  She bounced around the

Bosphorous with her rug seller for a number of years, before settling

down in Istanbul and establishing a kitten sanctuary, once her partner

had flown off on his flying carpet, to that large emporium in the sky.

Your great-aunt Berenice, my elder sister (God Rest Her Soul!), was a

bit of a gadabout too.  In the genes, clearly.

She used to go to parties almost every weekend, in big, country

houses.

In Turkey?  Dru looked confused.

No.  We had both been sent to boarding schools over here.  She used

to frequent the Wyvern Estate and that was her downfall.  She GOT

INTO TROUBLE.

Difficult in these days, no doubt.  Dru sympathised, as well she

might, given her own personal history.

Not difficult at all.  It happened all too easily. They were pressurising

Berenice to get rid of the ‘problem’.  They offered her a lot of money and

a contact in Knightsbridge.

‘They’?

The family of the alleged father, of course.  Augusta looked at

Dru as if she was somewhat dense.  But I persuaded her to have

it- your father, I mean.

But who was..?

No proof, but someone with an interest in entomology.

Ent..?

Yes, Berenice was a social butterfly and he netted her.  But he couldn’t

pin her down!  None of us could.  She wanted her freedom and so our

mother took the baby for a while, but she felt her own style was being

cramped, so eventually I arranged for your father to start prep school over

here as a full boarder, at St Birinus.

So, Father has spent his whole life at St Birinus?

Except for when he was at University- yes!  He’s completely

institutionalised.

What happened to Berenice?

We don’t know.  She’s one of the disappeared.  The last we heard

of her she was in Caracas, City of Eternal Spring.  El Libertador

was one of her heroes.

El..?

Simon Bolivar.

Ah. Dru’s South American historical knowledge was rather

vague. Who paid Dad’s fees?

The Wyvern Estate and, once my mother passed on, her demise

hastened by an infected feline scratch, I inherited all the antique

kelims and sold them off, as and when, along with some Iznik tiles,

to cover his ‘extras’.

Fascinating.  Did Berenice ever reveal the paternity of her son?

Not exactly, but she did take Gus to the estate very early on,

before she ran off, to meet some gardener or other.

Gardener?!

He lived in a converted stable block at Wyvern Mote.

But that’s National Trust, surely?

Ah, yes, but I suspect that it was grace and favour ‘accommodation’,

in both senses of the word.  He wasn’t much of a horticulturalist; didn’t

know his dianthus from his agapanthus, from all accounts.

Maybe he was a natural son of the old duke?! Dru’s eyes burned with

revelatory fire.

Peut-etre, surmised her great-aunt, who now looked more favourably

at her visitor.  Look, she said, rummaging in a shoe box.  Oh no,

that’s your father aged six months, lying on a sheepskin in his birthday suit.

Dru averted her gaze.

No, here it is!  Augusta produced a faded sepia image of a man remarkably

like Gus.  He was reclining in a striped deckchair, wearing a Panama hat and

he had a glass in his right hand.  There was a large mansion behind him.

So this is possibly my grandfather?  Dru scrutinised the photo. I wonder what

his name was.

Oh, I call him Eamonn Teabag Grandiflora, Aunt Augusta scoffed wickedly.

All these men in Panama hats look the same- ie/ better when they wear

one.  Compare that Kermit MacDulloch who presented a ‘History of

Christianity’ and then the latest posho who is following him around,

probably with the same camera crew.  They visit the same graffiti and

make identical comments. They are all clones!

Grandiflora?

Well, Seaweed Millefiore, or Hymen Montezuma.  Whatever.  Anyway, your

possible ancestor, whom I call Grandiflora, almost certainly spread his seed

around.  Perhaps like the old duke himself.

So perhaps I have links to aristocracy?

Well, Miss Grandiose, I’d let bygones be bygones, if I were you.

But may I ask you one final question?  Dru was conscious that a storm

was predicted and that she had a long journey back to Bradford-on-Avon.

Fire away! replied the elderly one, nibbling on a cube of Turkish delight and

not offering to share any from the box.

What boarding school did you and Berenice attend? Dru asked.

St Vitus’ School for the Academically-Gifted Girl, of course.  But in those days

it was just St Vitus’ for anyone who could pay the fees.  My name is on the

Dux Board over the main stairwell.  Surely you have seen it?

Strange.  ‘Augusta Snodbury’.  Why had she never noticed it? And was there

something in her own genes that constrained her to repeat history?  She

hoped not.

And the way things were going, there may be a future titular amendment

to the establishment at which she earned her crust:  St Vitus’ School might

end up as an Academy for the Academically-Challenged.  Qui sait!

What is the Subtext?

Tags

Blighty, Bradford on Avon, Caligula, Edward Pevensie, fauns, Laocoon, Lapland, Narnia, Queen of Narnia, sheepskin rug, Turkish Delight, White Witch

Drusilla was back in Blighty after her week in Turkey.  Now she

had to post last minute cards and mark a load of mock papers.

Thank goodness her mother was doing all the Christmas cooking

down in Bradford-on-Avon.  She was enjoying being looked after by

Diana, and her father, Augustus, would arrive for Christmas in a few

days, bringing a goose, apparently, as his festive contribution.

Added to the seasonal burden of activity, she had to make a visit to

Great-Aunt Augusta in Snodland Nursing Home for the Debased Gentry.

She had let her father off the hook, as far as accompanying her,

as he had a prostate appointment, but the demanding self-appointed

materfamilias really preferred to have a one-to-one session with her

new-found female relative, Dru suspected.

Dru telephoned the care home beforehand, to check that the old

battleaxe was still in the Land of the Living.  No use in wasting petrol.

She spoke to switchboard and was connected to her aunt’s room

straight away.

Aunt Augusta?

Yes, dear.  Did you get that money?  I never trust postmen nowadays..

Yes, thank you. I’ll be down on Tuesday afternoon.

You bought the Turkish Delight I asked you to get me?

Of course.

Good.  Edward Pevensie’s favourite!

Who is Edward..? (Maybe it was some old codger she played

at Bridge.)

Haven’t you read the Chronicles of Narnia?  her aunt broke in.

I give sweet things to the staff here.  That’s what The White Witch

did.  Good for controlling minions.

Drusilla began to have serious doubts that she should have indulged

the old bat’s whims, especially if she was going to be manipulative

with the spoils.

Like The Queen of Narnia, her great-aunt had no children of her own

and was probably making a move to adopt her grand-niece.  Great-Aunt

Augusta seemed to share the evil child enslaver’s regal propensity for

focussing on the negative aspects of others’ characters and playing

down any faults of her own.  But the aged relative was actually openly

admitting to corrupting others by creating sugar cravings.

Dru realised that she was genetically linked to a witch!

The next thing will be that she starts to blame lying fauns for her

detected wrongdoings, Dru mused, while the old fiend rattled on.

I’ve looked out all the old photos, Aunt Augusta continued.  There’s

one of your father lying naked on a sheepskin rug, aged about six

months.

Can’t wait, lied Dru.  Oh, someone’s at the door.  Must go!  See you

on Tuesday.

She wasn’t lying.  A member of the allegedly untrustworthy Guild

of Hermes was holding out a contraption on which she had to inscribe

an identifying mark.  He was standing in a veritable Laocoon of elastic

bands.

Merry Christmas, love!  he smiled, holding out a padded envelope which

should have been able to have been slipped through the letterbox. He

was lingering just a fraction too obviously, in keeping with the time of

year.  Ah no, to be fair, it required a signature.

Thanks! replied Dru.  Same to you.  And she shut the door somewhat

distractedly.

For once, the package was actually addressed to her and wasn’t for

the neighbours. It had been re-directed from the school boarding

house.  Gosh!  The office staff must still be working.

What could it be and who was it from?

At least the postperson hadn’t put one of those wretched cards

through the letterbox, necessitating a scurried trip to the office to

collect whatever it was.

She took a creased fiver from her purse and hurried out in her slippers.

He was easy to spot in his luminous waistcoat.

Merry Christmas!  She tipped him just before he chalked some esoteric

symbol on their gate post, which would have meant that their mail

would possibly have been permanently re-directed to Lapland.

Cheers! he grinned, dropping a couple more elastic bands on the path

in his adrenalin rush of greed and pushing his trolley into the lane.

Oh well, Aunt Augusta’s over-generous paper flourish had come in handy

after all. Yet, every gift seemed to be a bribe of one sort or another.

She looked at the sender label on the back of the package.  Cryptically it

only read: “Caligula” and was postmarked as having originated in Cornwall.

She ripped the padded envelope open.  A little black velvet pouch with

drawstrings was revealed.  She pulled the knotted strings and a fine gold

chain with a tiny gold harp slid into the palm of her hand.  A card

accompanied the gift and it said:

To My Angel xx

What is the subtext? she asked herself.

Dru!  Who was that?

No one, she lied.  Just something for the neighbours.

Delayed Gratification

Tags

Agen, Armagnac, Bradford on Avon, Camembert, Dali clock, Fleury, FT Weekend, Lake Isle Innisfree, Screwpull, Shrink and Sage, tarte aux pruneaux, The Longs Arms, Winnie-the-Pooh, Yeats

Augustus Snodbury was cherishing his final few Saturdays before term

resumed. It had been an eventful summer, but he was a little concerned that

he might outstay his welcome at his erstwhile lover’s cottage in Bradford-on-

Avon.  References to guests and fish past their sell-by dates and the impact of

more than three day visits loomed on the horizon of that giant of a mind.

Ablutions had to be curtailed in the mornings as there was only one bathroom

and their daughter, Drusilla, seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time on

waxing her moustache.

Snod had brought back several packets of his favourite Agen prunes from their

French foray. (I think he had also secreted some bottles of Armagnac, but to

our tale!)  Though an aid to digestion, not to mention that other bodily

function, whose initial letter is also ‘d’, the wizened fruit meant that, at times,

there was a degree of urgency as to access to the ablutional premises.  The ‘c’

word did not even come into it.  The efficacy of these little time bombs could

be cataclysmic, nay apocalyptic.

In spite of all that, Drusilla and her mother, Diana, had become increasingly

relaxed in his company and he had learned to resist asking them a series of

questions which he then mentally scored and graded.

The weather had been superb in England and they had taken to sitting outside

in the evening in the small courtyard at the rear of the cottage, surrounded by

tubs of lavender and Diana’s carefully dead-headed roses.

The French cheeses which they thought they had smuggled onto the coach,

but whose presence was fairly obvious to anyone with a normal olfactory

function, ripened in the kitchen, once they had been taken out of the fridge

and the bottle of red was breathing freely after Diana’s Screwpull had

performed its act of liberation.

A bee-endangered species?-landed on the lavender and took only what its

hive required and no more.  Snod began to silently word lines from The Lake

Isle of Innisfree by Yeats.  But one bee did not produce a glade, nor an

individual pot of honey.

Honey!  Wasn’t it Winnie the Poof- oops, a typo!-Pooh who had said that

although eating honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment

just before you began which was even better than the activity itself?

Snod leant back on his chair.  It was HIS chair now, he felt  He picked up

Diana’s FT Weekend magazine and flicked through its pages in reverse.

There was her favourite article by The Shrink and The Sage.  He must read it

to discover what it was that so charmed her.  He could not believe what he

was reading.  It coincided with his interior monologue.

Snod had had time to reflect on his life, when he had stayed in the monastery

guest house at Fleury. He realised that he did not have to grab happiness in

the clumsy fashion he had attempted at The Longs Arms, earlier in the year.

After all, he had waited thirty odd years for moments such as this.  Why should

he become messily entangled in the lives of others?  Relationships could slowly

ripen like the Camembert which was dripping over the cheeseboard like a Dali

clock.

He took his first sip of wine, not having noticed its arrival on the cast iron

table. Diana came out of the back door, carrying a interesting looking flan.

I hope you don’t mind, Gus, but I made a tarte aux pruneaux with those Agens

that you left in the kitchen.

He resisted his initial irritation and decided to optimise his enjoyment:

Servez-vous, he replied and corrected himself by using the tu form almost

immediately.  Toi, he said.  Toi.  And it sounded very good.

And it tasted very good too.

Transfiguration

Tags

Balaam, Birinus, Bradford on Avon, compassion, Damascene, David Cameron, epiphany, Feast of the Transfiguration, Financial Times, Fleury Abbey, lax, Loiret, Paul Gilbert, Snodbury, St Paul, Sully sur Loire, The Carpenters, The Longs Arms, The Shrink and The Sage, Weekend Magazine

Diana Fotheringay-Syylk, prematurely retired ‘Lax‘ Mistress from St Vitus’ School

For The Academically-Gifted Girl, had been trying to read The Weekend

Magazine from The Financial Times while she was being transported around the

Loiret by her local coach firm from Bradford-on-Avon.  She was staying in a 2*

hotel near Sully-sur-Loire, along with other members of her town’s Twinning

Association.

She had been allowed to bring along a ‘friend‘ and her daughter, since two

people had dropped out at the last minute and there had been seats left

vacant.

Behind Diana was her erstwhile lover, Augustus Snodbury, who was still in

educational harness, so to speak, at St Birinus Middle School.  Their daughter

Drusilla had closed her eyes, but this did not shut out the low, burring sound

which emanated from her father’s rather hairy nostrils.

And what exactly is a Lax Mistress? I hear you question, Dear Reader.

It was a trainer for a particularly vicious outdoor team game played by

innocent-looking maidens, armed with strong lobster nets on poles.

Innocent-looking, in general, but the goalies were of a different, scary

order.

Diana was trying to concentrate on her favourite The Shrink and the

Sage article.

This guide to modern dilemmas by a psychotherapist and philosopher

duo fascinated her.  Diana was looking forward to being a member of the

congregation at The Feast of the Transfiguration in Fleury Abbey and the

rhetorical question which headed the columns struck her with a force as

convincing as the Damascene beam of light which had struck St Paul and

floored him.

It read: Are we compassionate enough?

Diana had been seeking a spiritually significant experience by venturing

on this trip.  Nothing less than an epiphany would satisfy her.  She had

opened her mind and heart to receive any messages that might be

forthcoming.  But could the divine voice speak through The Financial

Times?  She then remembered Balaam’s ass and thought that all things

might be possible.

A psychologist called Paul Gilbert was being quoted as having stressed that

one must be kind to oneself, as well as to others.  He warned against two

evolution-shaped drives-firstly, the detection and subsequent escape from

danger and, secondly, the drive to acquire things we want, such as food

and sexual partners.

The article recommended a David Cameron-like state of sensing that we are

all..on this journey together.

Here Snod’s snoring seemed to rise in volume and objection.  Already she

was in danger of lapsing into compassion fatigue.

When we are irritated by others, Gilbert said, we should remember that

they are mere humans, like ourselves, who cannot help getting things

wrong sometimes.

But she didn’t snore, did she?  She would check with Drusilla later on,

since they were sharing a room.  Come to think of it, she remembered Dru

buying some ear plugs in Boots, before they set off.

Gilbert mentioned something called compassion under the duvet, which

fortunately was only a practice of reminding ourselves to be kind to others

before we climbed out of bed in the morning.

Suddenly, the scales fell from Diana’s eyes and she realised that she could

now forgive Gus for his appalling ineptitude, if not for his snoring.

He had been clumsy at their attempted reunion at The Longs Arms, but maybe

it had been down to nerves and possibly they could travel hopefully together

and arrive at the same destination one day- so long as it did not involve any

sharing of duvets, other than of the moral variety.

The Sage explained the etymology of the abstract noun, compassion.  It came

from com and pati, meaning to suffer together.

Having both taught for a number of years, they could empathise with each

others’ pain.  She determined to avail herself of any lessons that she might

be offered during the service, but she could sense that her transformation

had only just begun.  Pity that it sounded like a song from The Carpenters.