Campari for Breakfast
About the Book
Life is full of terrible things. Ghosts of dead relatives, heartbreak . . . burnt toast.
In 1987, Sue Bowl’s world changes for ever. Her mother dies, leaving her feeling like she’s lost a vital part of herself. And then her father shacks up with an awful man eater called Ivana.
But Sue’s mother always told her to make the most of what she’s got – and what she’s got is a love of writing and some interesting relatives. So Sue moves to her Aunt Coral’s crumbling ancestral home, Green Place, along with an ever-growing bunch of oddballs and eccentrics. Not to mention the odd badger or two . . .
Contents
Coral’s Commonplace, 3 June 1986
Coral’s Commonplace, December 1986
Coral’s Commonplace, 22 May 1929
Coral’s Commonplace, 29 September 1930
Coral’s Commonplace, 23 February 1987
Coral’s Commonplace, Christmas 1932
Coral’s Commonplace, July 1933
Coral’s Commonplace, Autumn 1935
Coral’s Commonplace, 6 November 1935
Coral’s Commonplace, 30 May 1936
Coral’s Commonplace, 12 March 1938
Coral’s Commonplace, 12 September 1938
Coral’s Commonplace, 3 July 1940
Coral’s Commonplace, 12 August 1944
Coral’s Commonplace, 5 August 1946
Coral’s Commonplace, 15 May 1947
Coral’s Commonplace, 16 June 1947
Coral’s Commonplace, 4 July 1954
Coral’s Commonplace, 18 November 1955
Coral’s Commonplace, 2 December 1962
Coral’s Commonplace, 5 April 1968
Coral’s Commonplace, 30 December 1987
Coral’s Commonplace, 6 January 1988
Coral’s Commonplace, 15 January 1970
For Allen and for Neta
The Commonplace Book:
The Commonplace Book was not only a diary, but a scrapbook and book of wisdom. It was often given to encourage learning and interests in children. A most personal journal in which quotes and comments are collected along with cuttings, letters, recipes.
Essentially one’s own book of life.
Giovanni Rucellai was an Italian poet from the olden days.
He described his Commonplace as ‘a salad of many herbs’.
The Commonplace Book of Coral Garden: Volume 5
Green Place, 3 June 1986
Newspaper Cutting, ‘Births, Marriages and Deaths’,
Egham Echo
, May 20
th
1986:
We do not expect our deaths, though they are inevitable. Had he known he would die on Tuesday, I’m sure he’d have cleared things on Sunday, just as you would if you had a meeting to prepare for.
He left me instructions to destroy his papers. But as my shredder only takes one page at a time, Buddleia came to help me with a bonfire in the garden. It had a sad flame that hissed quietly, its smoke hung in the sunbeams. Beams that prevailed against the odds on that unsteady morning. We each managed our side, in case the wind should catch it. Four score years’ worth of papers; the towering blaze of his life.
I prodded gently at piles of old cards, Easter rabbits, Christmas angels, a dental appointment slip from the back of a diary, receipts and vouchers. And then, through the heat and haze, I noticed Buddleia pick up an envelope. It had fallen away from the other documents in the thick of the pyre and lay at the edge of the bonfire on a bed of last autumn’s leaves. Perhaps providence made it suggest itself and curiosity made her retrieve it – because there shrouded in the remains of a plain envelope we discovered the truth.
The Commonplace Book of Coral Garden: Volume 5
Green Place, December 1986
Copy of letter:
Green Place
Clockhouse Lane
Egham
Dear Nicholas,
I’m writing to tell you that it would give me great pleasure to have Sue to stay with me at Green Place. I know that these are trying times for you both and I humbly offer such support as I am able.
My companion has a daughter who is with us in the holidays, so you may reassure Sue that she would not always be surrounded by the elderly.
I would be delighted to offer her an allowance of £50 per month for such modest needs as she may require. I am sure she would be like a sunbeam around the house, as I hope I may be to her.
My heart is with you at this dark time.
Yours truly,
Coral
Sue
Sunday 4
th
January 1987
I
T WAS EASY
persuading Dad to let me leave. In my heart I’d hoped he would object, but since it would give him more time alone with Ivana, he didn’t. Persuading myself was easy too. Stay in Titford or go to Egham? Most of my friends are having gap years picking strawberries, living in communes, whereas I want to go straight into life with no gap, and earn good money doing it. And so Titford holds nothing for a girl of my ambition any more.
It’s an understandable and terrible fact that Dad’s taste has deserted him since we lost mum. I think he just got so lonely that anybody would do. He met Ivana at Titford golf club. She was playing a round with his boss and Dad was to take them to dinner. She’d really been after the boss, but settled for Dad’s attentions because the boss was a terrible lecture. I don’t know much about her, other than she comes from somewhere in Denmark. She just appeared out of nowhere like bad wind.
The only things I have to show for my life so far are a love of words and some interesting relatives, and mum always drilled me to make the best of what I’ve got. So in the end my decision has absolutely nothing to do with Dad or Ivana. Ultimately I think Green Place will be a good place to write.
Friday 9 January
Aunt Coral is my mother’s sister, though they are twenty-four years apart (my mother was a late addition) and this is what makes Aunt Coral a lot more like my nana than my aunt. She’s the sort of person who likes elderly singers in long gowns and floral teapots, so it was with a box of specialist teabags and a bunch of early daffodils that I arrived on her step at the start of the week. I was surprised when she opened the door, I’d forgotten how small she is and how clever, but she’s sociably skilled and made me feel at my ease pretty fast.
My first impressions of Green Place were actually second impressions because I had been taken there as a child to visit the various relatives, although we hadn’t been recently due to my Grandfather’s turbulant Will. It’s a grade two listed building, so big it has to be split into sections like countries within a continent. The West Wing is the only part of the house that’s heated, so I have to wear my coat in the rest of the house as if I am going outside. I could fit my house in Titford four hundred times into Aunt Coral’s; I never noticed how small it really was until now.
You approach off the B4532, Clockhouse Lane, and then towards the bottom you turn right between two brick pillars with lions on the top. The right hand lion is headless, just a body with chipped mossy paws, but the left hand one is intact and looks somewhat smug. Then a long drive bends this way and that for almost a mile, and after the second bend, Green Place comes into view. It hits you like a dream, like a beautiful private Palace, and you get the feeling that it isn’t really 1987 any more once you get to the top.
Glorious gardens flow up in graceful tears from Clockhouse Lane, and crumbling paths lead to sunlawns, framed by flowerbeds that need freeing from the thorns. An old Croquet Hut houses the mallets and hoops that have once seen busier times. There are orchards, rockeries and rose trails, a swing seat, and a house full of chairs. The back faces of the building command the rippling hills, and birds hover on distant currants like little specks of dust on the wind.
To the rear of the house off the kitchen there’s a magnificent sweeping terrace, with a private pool at the heart, where Delia, Aunt Coral’s companion, goes swimming every day, despite it being January. She is a hearty, bohemiam sort of woman, and often swims in the nudey. Her skin tone is peachy and fragrant, like a Victorian soap ad, and her hair looks freshly brunette, though her complexion appears born fair. Two forlorn, round eyes dominate an equally round face, under a holy page boy hair cut that requires daily tucking under.
Aunt Coral on the other hand is quite different. When she’s in her swimsuit she cuts a neat little figure, but is quite self-conscious at the poolside and walks backwards along the terrace if she knows someone is behind her, especially her lodger Admiral Little, who is the apple of her eye.
The first time the Admiral stayed at Green Place was during a blizzard. He’d answered an ad that Aunt Coral had placed in
The Lady
magazine three months after Grandfather died, which said ‘rooms require modest updating, would suit outdoors enthusiast. Two energetic ladies also in residence within the house.’
They weren’t prepared for him to stay overnight, but he had to, because he couldn’t get back down the drive. So they decided to put him to bed in the East Wing as a precaution, for they weren’t sure what to do with a
man
in the house when they hadn’t yet seen his references. (They knew he would never be able to find his way back to the West Wing once he was in the East.)