Читать книгу Notes to my Mother-in-Law and How Many Camels Are There in Holland?: Two-book Bundle - Phyllida Law, Phyllida Law - Страница 11

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 I got from Molly gets me down. Can I rip off that yellow leaf now?

I’ve washed the fanlight at the front door and emptied the bluebottles out of the lampshade. What’s more, I’ve given the door itself a coat of linseed oil because I found half a bottle in the hall cupboard. Used the paintbrush Dad ruined creosoting the deckchairs. Very successful. The linseed oil has softened the bristles. Also, which is good news, the holes in the panelling are not woodworm but marks from the drawing pins we used to put up the wreath at Christmas. Ha!

Mrs Wilson sends love. Her arthritis is being kept at bay with some injection or other. Do you fancy a go?

Mr Wilson fell down the tube-station stairs at Trafalgar Square last week and ‘came to’ in the Middlesex. He has a lump on his head the size of a cricket ball and the bruise is slipping down his face. Mrs W says he may have to have it lanced.

Dr P says you might think about getting up and sitting in your chair tomorrow afternoon.

The girls will re-open lessons with ‘the Box’.

Normal service should resume on Monday.

Coming down the hill from the cleaners I saw Larry T on his front steps with a dustpan and brush, wearing yellow rubber Marigold gloves. He was about to clear up the corpse of a rat that had walked up the stairs, looked at him piteously and died on his doormat.

I had a friend who was having a bath when a rat came out of the loo, collected a bar of soap and went back down. She keeps the complete works of Shakespeare and a huge family Bible on the loo lid in between times. The rat apparently lived in the flat below where it ate a cardboard carton full of tampons, and built a brilliantly comfortable nest with the contents. They are clever creatures. Mr Richardson used to keep pet rats. They used to sit on his chest and nibble sugar off his moustache.

Shall I leave Boot in your room tonight?

Darling, do try not to worry about it. I’m sure that’s part of the problem. Any sort of tension or trauma seems to seize one up. I can never go when I’m visiting. Think of Dad. He comes home from New Zealand to go to the loo. Release of tension, you see. Some people don’t go for days together and it’s quite normal. Queen Victoria was always writing to her children about constipation and fresh air. Then Albert died from bad drains. Ironic.

They did a lot of research on it during the war because of lifeboats. I mean people didn’t go for three weeks or more. When you come to think of it, just a bucket on a boat. Maybe not even a bucket.

I think the Navy is an authority on constipation. It was a naval doctor who wrote that book on bran. Let’s have another try. If I put it in soup it wouldn’t make you cough. Or if I squidged it up with All-Bran, cream and sugar?

I don’t want you to get like Uncle Arthur wandering about in his pyjama jacket eating Ex-Lax.

An Indian with a strong Welsh accent has just come to read the gas meter.

I put the bed mat on the lawn because I felt it couldn’t stand being on the line while still wet. Some of the stitching is very rotten. It’ll be an enormous task mending it, darling, but I’ll bring the bag of bits and it’ll be something to do while you are sitting.

Boot was sick again, but very neatly, and there was a little patch of fur in the middle so maybe the vet was right after all.

Sorry I didn’t tell you about the dentist. I thought you looked a bit bleak when I got home. Forgot. Sorry. Of course, I was late leaving and I couldn’t find my keys. (They were on top of the fridge.) Then I lost my handbag. (I’d put it down by the front door.) I didn’t have time to come up.

I was running down Fawley Road when I noticed something odd about my left leg. A certain stiffness about the knee. I slowed down a bit and walked briskly on, thinking bleakly about old age. It wasn’t till I was sitting on the tube that I noticed a dingy clump of cotton sticking out of my left trouser leg. I tried to pretend it was perfectly normal to pull a pair of knickers out of my trouser leg and push them into my handbag.

I once dropped my handbag on the tube whereupon it burst open and scattered a packet of Tampax all over the floor in front of a large class of small boys from that posh prep school in Hampstead.

Do you think we should manufacture a pocket on your pinny a little higher up? For the aid, I mean. When you sat down at lunch it was under the table. You’ll have to bring it out and lay it down, trying always to have the little round speaker bit facing upwards—or outwards if it is clipped on to your pinny, and I think above waist level. (‘Where is that?’ you cry.) Up the ’orspital they said you might hear swishing noises from some materials you wear, and some fabrics crackle.