Great Meadow by Dirk Bogarde Page A

have Mrs Daukes pinching the pickled onions, and judging by her roving eye and wandering hand we very likely might have, and that would not have pleased your father. Loves his pickled onion, he does. I put up ten pounds in September. They won’t last to Christmas, not with him!’
    â€˜He’ll have my presents,’ said Flora.
    â€˜He simply
hates
Edinburgh rock. All he really likes is wine gums or Rowntrees Fruit Gums. The clear ones,’ said my sister, nodding her head.
    â€˜Who does?’ asked Flora, looking worriedly at me because I had had to lumber her wretched ‘presents’ all the way from Ted Deakin’s cart.
    â€˜Well, our father. He’s particular, he doesn’t like sweet things.’
    Lally got up and began stacking the plates, scraping off the bits into a bowl by the pickled onions. ‘Now, come along! We’ve all had a tiring day, the bricks are in the oven, and all your beds are made down. And they don’tlie, my children, their father can’t abide sweet things.’ She started off towards the sink, making head signs to us to follow. So I scraped my plate, and stacked my sister’s, and reached for Flora’s, who hit my hand and said she’d take it. And Lally said, ‘
No
. No sweet things . . . except of course your actual Rowntrees Fruit Gums, clear, in a tube, and your actual Maynards Wine Gums.
Those
he likes. For all the port wine is green and the sherry is black. But those he likes . . . and hand me over a kettle quick as may be.’
    Flora offered her dirty plate. ‘It’s nothing sweet . . . they are two lovely haggis. And a Black-Man’s-Ear!’ she said.
    Lally had soap suds up to her elbow. ‘Black-Man’s what?’ she said, and you could see she was alarmed.
    So I said, because I already knew, from being up in that dreadful country, that she really meant a black pudding. So that was all right, and our father loved haggis, although Lally said it had taken her a little time to ‘get used to them’. But she only had them once a year, and the getting-used-to was a bit of a shock every time. ‘As long as you don’t dwell on what they are made of, you’ll come to no harm,’ she said. ‘There is a very big difference between the words “composed” and “de-composed”, and that’ll do for the moment. Savoury, that’s what your father says, and savoury they certainly are.’
    When we finished the washing-up, and put the plates and things back on the dresser, had a game of Snakes and Ladders, and two of Happy Families, we had to take the bricks out of the oven in the range, wrap them in bits of an old flannel shirt which had belonged to her father, Mr Jane, and put them in our beds. My sister and I were in our room, the first one, Flora had the second one, andLally was right at the end, in hers. But we all had doors between each other, so when Lally called out ‘Goodnight, be good!’ we all heard her. But this time she called out and said to remember that in two days’ time it would be Christmas Eve, and that our father and mother would be with us, and they’d bring Minnehaha our cat, and a goose and presents, and that we had to be quiet with our mother because she had had a ‘nasty time of it’, and so we were to be respectful and kind. And did we hear all that? And we all yelled through from our rooms, ‘Yes!’, so that was all right.
    My sister huffled and fuffled about in her bed across the room.
    â€˜Whatever are you doing?’
    â€˜Trying to find the comfortable part. I’ve forgotten since last time. Do you like Flora? I mean really
like
her?’
    â€˜Not much. But whisper. She’s next door, and it’s open.’
    â€˜What is?’
    â€˜The door.’
    She huffled and fuffled a bit more. Then she said suddenly, ‘Did you show her her potty? With the pheasant on the bottom?’
    â€˜Yes. She