Sweets From Morocco

by Jo Verity

  ‘So, it’s an early night for you two. In the morning you can help me get the place ship shape and set up the cot in our bedroom. The little chap’ll be sleeping in with us for a while.’

  Lewis was optimistic, at least for the first five minutes. Their mother looked pretty much as she had before she’d swollen up and, as soon as she came in, she pulled him and Tessa down to sit either side of her on the sofa, hugging them and laughing. ‘I’m sure you’ve both grown an inch while I’ve been away.’

  He longed to tell her how much he’d missed her and that Gran’s mashed potato wasn’t quite right and how Dad had given him such a scrubbing at bath time that he’d skinned his neck. But Tessa jumped in first, with a rambling request to spend the night at Diane’s and he was content to flop against his mother, inhaling lavender, perspiration and something half-remembered.

  ‘So, can I go, Mum? Please?’

  ‘Don’t pester your mother, Tess.’ Their father came into the room with something large, wrapped in brown paper.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Tessa noticed that the white bundle on her grandmother’s lap was moving but, determined to ignore it, she concentrated on the parcel. ‘Is that for us, Dad?’

  ‘Hold your horses. Aren’t you two going to say hello to your new brother?’ He placed the parcel on the floor, pushing it under the table with his foot.

  ‘Don’t rush them, Dick…’ her mother’s voice was barely audible.

  Lewis stood up and sidled across to their grandmother but Tessa stayed where she was. ‘What’s the point of saying “hello” to a baby? He won’t understand, will he?’

  ‘Tessa!’ Her father grabbed her bare arm, hauled her to her feet and pulled her across the room.

  ‘Don’t, Dick, please.’

  ‘You’re soft on her, Peggy. She’s getting too old for this silly behaviour.’ Squeezing both her arms, he shook her.

  At school Tessa was forever protesting against accusations of misbehaviour – talking, passing notes, that sort of thing – but, having issued their verdict, the teachers never budged. Finding herself once again up against the injustice of an adult’s demands, knowing that it was a waste of time trying to make her father understand, she shut her eyes and screamed, her voice sliding from one penetrating note to another in a blood-curdling yodel. ‘Aaagh. Dad. Aaagh. You’re hurting me.’

  The baby joined in, letting out a high-pitched wail, his red hands jerking haphazardly. Gran got to her feet, jiggling the baby and making soothing noises but his crying continued, growing louder and more desperate. She glared at Tessa. ‘See what you’ve done, madam?’

  ‘You. Upstairs. Now.’ Her father pushed her towards the door.

  ‘Please, Dick. Don’t…’ Their mother half rose then seemed to surrender, sinking back on the sofa, her hand clamped over her mouth.

  Tessa dashed upstairs and slammed her bedroom door, whilst the baby, seeming to sense that he was centre stage at last, continued his bawling and Peggy Swinburne, whose hand was no longer adequate to stifle her misery, began sobbing.

  Unable to stand the noise, Lewis escaped into the garden where he spent the rest of the afternoon pretending that he was on a desert island, the sole survivor from a crashed Spitfire.

  Chapter 2

  Tessa spat out the toothpaste, watching the river of froth meander towards the plughole. ‘Gordon. Yuck. What a disgusting name. Don’t you think it’s bloody disgusting, Lew?’ Tessa found swearing exciting but the bad words – damn and blast – and the really bad words – bloody and bugger – didn’t sound casual enough. She needed a lot more practice. ‘I think we should make them change it to…’ she wrinkled her nose then struck the side of the washbasin with her toothbrush ‘Jim.’ She was reading Treasure Island for the third time and was captivated by its hero.

  It was nine days since their mother had brought Gordon home and Tessa was still refusing to get involved with, or show any interest in, her new brother. Lewis was less uncompromising and when Tessa abandoned him, going off to play with Diane or Susan, he often knelt on his parents’ bed, peering into the cot and watching the strange little creature run through his repertoire of twitches. Lewis was a patient observer. He noticed how Gordon barely blinked his dark eyes and how he craned his head slowly from side to side, revealing folds of slack skin at the base of his neck. It reminded Lewis of Speedy. He also discovered that if he placed his index fingers against the silky-smooth palms, the baby clung to him, impossibly small fists gripping so tight that he could pull him up into a sitting position. During those intimate moments, Lewis decided that ‘Pete’ would be a much better name for his brother.

  ‘How about ‘Pete’?’ Lewis ventured.

  ‘Pete?’ She shook her head. ‘That’d be daft. Sweet Pete. Sweet Pea.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Sweet poo.’

  Lewis, hurt by her dismissal of his suggestion yet eager to win her approval, took the game one step further, ‘Smelly poo.’

  ‘Smelly bum.’

  Giggles escalated to shrieking laughter as they chorused, ‘Smelly Gordon. Smelly Gordon.’

  ‘This sounds fun. Can I join in?’ Their mother stood in the doorway, eyebrows raised, a pile of folded nappies clutched to her chest.

  ‘Lewis was telling me a joke.’ Unsure how much her mother had heard, Tessa turned to Lewis for confirmation. ‘Weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes … but I’ve forgotten it,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Well I hope you weren’t being mean about anyone. It’s cruel to say nasty things about people who can’t answer back.’

  Tessa, not caring for the way the conversation was heading, demanded, ‘Can’t we go somewhere, Mum? We’re bored.’

  ‘Why don’t you play in the garden? It’s much too nice to be indoors.’

  ‘But what can we do in the garden? We’ve spent the whole holiday in the garden. We want to go to the pictures, don’t we, Lewis? Why can’t you take us?’ Tessa knew that it was out of the question but it gave her satisfaction to put her mother on the spot and win another battle in her war against Gordon.

  ‘Maybe we could go for a little walk this afternoon. To the park. Take Gordon on his first outing. You could help me push the pram.’

  Tessa and Lewis’s pram had been disposed of years ago, and their parents had bought the flamboyant vehicle now standing in the hall from a neighbour. A few weeks before the baby’s arrival, their father had given it a complete overhaul. After it was duly oiled and polished, he demonstrated manoeuvring techniques – how to lean on the handle to raise the front wheels; how to apply the brake with a stab of the foot. Lewis thought it might be fun to push it along the pavement, fringed canopy dancing as the shiny black pram dipped on its strapped suspension.

  ‘No, thanks,’ Tessa answered.

  With that, Gordon started a fretful grizzle and, without further discussion, their mother left them.

  ‘What shall we do, then?’ Lewis asked.

  ‘Let’s go to Cranwell Lodge.’

  Lewis looked dubious. ‘We’ll have to tell Mum we’re going out.’

  ‘Why? She doesn’t care what we do as long as we don’t pester.’

  They slipped out of the front gate, skipping along the pavement, pausing only to stroke a tabby cat, sprawled in the shade of one of the lime trees that punctuated Medway Avenue. They hurried on in silence, taking the second right into Cranwell Road, keeping up the pace, breathing heavily as the road rose steeply, lined on both sides with identical pebble-dashed semis. They toiled on up the hill until, beyond the last of the boring little houses, they came to the entrance of a detached villa, standing some way back from the road. Cranwell Lodge was inscribed in the rectangle of slate set in one of the brick piers. The rotting wooden gates hung open, revealing a paved drive, green with moss and creeping ivy, which, as it neared the house, was overhung with leggy bushes. It was a sombre place, the kind of place youngsters might scurry past, before a clawed hand reached from the foliage to clutch a tender throat.

  The children slip
ped through the vegetation, following the overgrown path around to the back of the house where Tessa tapped boldly on the glazed upper panel of the door. They waited, ears inclined towards the grimy glass.

  ‘She’s singing.’ Lewis drew away from the door as a voice, thin yet piercing, grew louder.

  ‘It’s “Oh Come All Ye Faithful”,’ Tessa grinned.

  A figure, blurred by the frosted glass, appeared on the other side of the door and, still singing, reached first up then down, noisily drawing back the bolts before unlocking and opening it. The singer was a woman, perhaps seventy years old, wiry white hair cut short in uneven clumps. She wore a white blouse and a black skirt – standard old lady garb had it not been for the crimson satin dressing gown covering it and the matching velvet beret, dipped provocatively over one ear.

  Their first meeting with Mrs Channing had been last summer when, against their mother’s instructions, they’d wandered away from home in search of a slope down which to test drive a go-cart, recently acquired from a neighbour who was clearing an outhouse. They were cautious to begin with, starting their ride on the crude contraption a short way up the incline of Cranwell Road, taking it in turns to straddle the rough plank that formed the chassis. As they mastered the steering – a tug on the loop of rope which was connected to either side of the front axle – and brakes – the driver’s heels, applied to the pavement – they grew more cocky until eventually they were careering down the hill, from top to bottom. Lewis was unlucky on his third run, when the front wheel caught the edge of a tilted paving slab, causing the axle to pivot and the wheel to ram into the plank, stopping the cart dead and throwing him off. In putting a hand out to save himself, he grazed his knuckles and twisted his wrist backwards. Tessa raced to help her brother, who was wailing, shock aggravating the actual damage. At that moment a taxi drew up and an old lady got out. Lewis had stopped crying at the sight of the woman, who cut an unusual figure, petite and fragile, in a floaty turquoise coat exactly the same colour as the feathers decorating her wide-brimmed straw hat. More striking than her clothes was the cage, containing a small white parrot, which the driver removed from the seat next to him and placed on the pavement. ‘D’you need a hand with her, Miss?’ the driver asked, pointing at the bird. ‘No thank you, Mr Wilkins.’ Then, as if she’d known them all their lives, she’d nodded towards them, smiling. ‘The children will help me, won’t you, dears?’ Lewis, his injured left hand clamped under his right armpit, sniffed and said nothing but Tessa, sensing one of those moment when something remarkable was about to take place, nodded. Thus began the children’s clandestine association with Mrs Channing and Blanche, the sulphur-crested cockatoo.

  ‘Good morning, Swinburnes. This is an unexpected pleasure.’ This had become the standard greeting whenever they turned up on her doorstep and her choice of collective name delighted them.

  Lewis pointed out tactfully, ‘It’s quite a long time ’til Christmas.’

  ‘Yes, my dear, but when one is as old as I am, there’s no guarantee that one will be around next December. Do come in.’

  They followed her through the scullery. Despite the soaring temperatures, the décor – clinical white tiles to a dado rail, then pale blue walls running up to a flaking white ceiling – gave the impression that the daylight was reflected off a carpet of snow. The faintest whiff of gas lingered in the austere room as she led them, all three singing … Oh come let us adore Him … Oh come let us adore Him … the crêpe soles of the children’s sandals squeaking on the lino. They might have visited the house a dozen times since Lewis’s mishap, but not once had they seen so much as a loaf of bread on the scrubbed table, a vegetable on the draining board or a pan simmering on the spindly-legged gas cooker.

  By contrast, the breakfast room beyond, although spacious, was cosy. Swags of green velvet curtains excluded most of the daylight but the room was illuminated by table lamps stationed on the dark, bulbous furniture. Patterned rugs layered the floor like fallen leaves. The walls, covered with rust red wallpaper, were crowded with paintings and framed photographs of sailing boats and elephants and dreamy-eyed ladies and stern-faced men. There was a sofa and two armchairs, piled with cushions, and a floor-to-ceiling dresser cluttered with mismatched china. From the bay window, shafts of sunlight slid between the curtains and fell across the ruby red cloth covering the huge, round table. The mantelpiece was piled high with fascinating objects: a stuffed squirrel not in a glass case; a marble death-mask; a replica of the Taj Mahal; brass candlesticks and copper bowls – items the like of which the children had only seen in museums. Aladdin’s cave or a Bedouin tent could not have been more engaging. Next to the fireplace, and without a doubt the star attraction, a white parrot with a yellow crest sidled back and forth along its perch, dipping its head and muttering to itself in gentle squawks.

  ‘So, what have you got to tell us?’ Mrs Channing stood next to the parrot, her words suggesting that the creature had an equal interest in whatever the children had to say.

  ‘We’ve got a baby brother now,’ Tessa sighed and stuck out her lower lip.

  ‘And you don’t think much of him.’ The old lady spoke as if it were an established fact.

  Tessa looked surprised. ‘How d’you know that?’

  ‘Well, for a start, you look as if you’ve lost a pound and found a penny. Besides, it’s common knowledge that babies are a pain in the arse.’

  The children stifled giggles, thrilled to hear such fruity language.

  ‘Babies should be kept in the cellar until they are …’ she put a gnarled finger to her chin as if performing a complex calculation, ‘… three years old. That’s when they start to become interesting.’

  ‘Did you have any babies, Mrs Channing?’ Lewis asked, imagining her slamming and locking a cellar door.

  ‘No. No, I didn’t. But I did have a brother. A younger brother. Harold.’

  ‘The same as the one who got an arrow in his eye?’ Tessa suggested.

  ‘Yes, my dear.’ She turned away, realigning the troupe of ebony elephants that paraded along the mantelpiece. ‘He was killed in battle too, like King Harold. But not by an arrow. By Boer guns. At Ladysmith. He was twenty-two.’ Her voice faded, as if the information was no longer meant for them.

  The children stood in silence but their discomfort was almost immediately dispelled by the sound of enthusiastic nose-blowing from somewhere in the house. It continued, growing louder, until the door on the other side of the room opened and an elderly man, white handkerchief clutched to his nose, came in. Catching sight of the children, he gave his nose a final wipe and stuffed the handkerchief into his trouser pocket. ‘Visitors. We have visitors.’ He smiled, revealing impossibly white teeth.

  Henry Zeal was a scaled down version of a man, barely a foot taller than nine-year-old Lewis. His ruddy face shone as though it had been polished then buffed with a duster and an overly large nose dominated it, rendering his deep-set grey eyes and near lipless mouth even less significant. An abundance of wavy grey hair topped him off, the waves running from side to side, like furrows in a ploughed field. But despite his physical disadvantages, he had the presence of a man twice his size and a full, bass-baritone voice, more fitting a Goliath than a Tom Thumb.

  ‘Henry, these poor Swinburnes have suffered a great misfortune since we last saw them.’

  Tessa was enchanted at Mrs Channing’s and Mr Zeal’s vocabulary. It reminded her of the time a group of actors came to the school to perform an adaptation of David Copperfield. She hadn’t understood a lot of what they said but the sense was made perfectly clear by the way they delivered the lines. In fact it was just as if these two old people were putting on a show for her and Lewis and she wondered if they carried on in the same way once they were alone.

  After a dramatic pause Mrs Channing continued. ‘They have acquired a baby brother.’

  Lewis, who seemed more able in this house than anywhere to speak for himself, filled out the details. ‘We didn’t … whatever-you-s
aid … him. Mum did. He’s called Gordon. He’s okay, I suppose.’

  ‘He’s not,’ Tessa snapped. ‘Mum spends all her time fussing with him. She never takes us anywhere any more.’

  Mr Zeal patted her hand, ‘I’m sure it’s just temporary, my dear, and everything will be back to normal before too long. But let’s forget about Gordon for a while, shall we? Is it too early in the day to offer you both a glass of sherry?’

  Tessa and Lewis giggled. They loved coming to this house where adults and children were treated as equals. And equality encouraged truthfulness. ‘We’re too young to drink sherry, aren’t we, Lewis? I don’t think we’d like it anyway. Dad let us have a sip of beer at Christmas and it was horrible.’

  ‘Lemonade, then? One may be too young to drink sherry but one is never too old to drink lemonade.’ Mr Zeal opened the cupboard at the base of the dresser and took out a bottle of lemonade and four cut glass tumblers similar to the ones that their mother kept locked in the glass-fronted cabinet and which never came out, not even at Christmas.

  Once they had finished their drinks, the children turned their attention to Blanche, offering her sunflower seeds which she took from the palms of their hands, her black beak twisted to the side, transforming it from weapon to tool. Mrs Channing had taught them how to pet the bird, how to run the backs of their index fingers down her white breast and to listen for the burbling that signified contentment.

  The children had managed to keep these visits to Cranwell Lodge and their friendship with Mrs Channing a secret. Even if their mother had heard rumours about an eccentric old lady, there was little likelihood that she would bump into her. Mrs Channing kept herself to herself, rarely leaving the house and when she did – to take Blanche to the vet or to see her bank manager – she went in Mr Wilkins’s taxi. Groceries, meat and bread were delivered to the door and she had no involvement with the neighbours. Despite this, if they were to keep their visits a secret, the children dared not come too frequently or stay too long. As a result, these visits became an exquisite treat to be rationed like a box of chocolates.