Oxford, February 2005
That Marcel Moment
Sod the dunking madeleine in the lime-flower tea. A gust of harpic and scratchy bronco brought it back to me.
A minute white-tiled lavatory – maybe six-foot three? Arctic cold, like all the house, despite a coke-fired boiler, panting, noisily.
“You only need one sheet.” Outside the door, my father, gloomily.
And then the bathroom, colder still I swear.
A geyser coy as a girl, trickled hot water mournfully, like tears.
In and out, we four girls, arguing. Quick as light. No-one wallowed there.
“Hot water isn’t cheap you know, it costs me dear.”
(Poor man. His natural northern closeness compounded by two wars, an uncle’s bankruptcy, a widowed mother, two sisters and four children on his hands.
Let alone his wife.
He never could refuse her any thing, not once in all his life.)
One day I bust the basin with my heel!
Sometimes we splashed our feet in it to save the bath.
Appalled, I saw my father kneel, and patch it up, with putty & with cloth.
Then I knew it wasn’t funny to go short, and worry, with so many to support.
So now I’m old and do the same. My grandsons make good sport:
“Don’t scuff the paintwork with your great boots”
– hyena-like they imitate my bawl.
“Mind my wall-paper! Sit on the sofa!”
Hilariously they howl.
No doubt their turn will come when they’re no longer louts; and careful thriftiness will irk their offspring.
The ghosts of ancestors will smile “I told you so.”
While echoes haunt the memories of time’s old roundabouts.
Virginia Barton
test from erik
test 2 from erik