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Authors: Joanna Campbell
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bird-table. He lights a cigarette and Victor’s face lights up too because he got the last word.
I keep thinking about Mum’s kind voice when she held the girl’s hand. I wish I could tell her how nice she is. But, apart from in sickening films, no one talks to their parents like that. I can’t remember her being as nice as that to me since I was small. So I sip my tea and try to eat the strangely round Dutch toast from a packet. Dad almost breaks his front teeth on it. “Call this food?” he says, staring at the toast. “I could use it as a tension pulley for the fan-belt.”
Conversations around us heat up. Cutlery clatters. Without Bwa-Bwa’s gruff voice and clacking sandals, people relax. Her world rotates on a different axis from ours, their smug knives and forks say. The two collided for a moment. Now we’re spinning properly again. Normal service resumed.
I wonder if Bwa-Bwa can actually feel angry or sad or homesick. Or if she even understands what home is. Is she ever at home anywhere? And how would she cope without her parents and their aprons and peaches? I don’t know. I reckon they cope with her because they have to, but I suppose it’s mostly because of love.
“What’s this flat sausage?” Victor asks, poking at the round of grey stuff on his plate. “It looks worse than school dinner. Are we going to have to eat this stuff in Germany?”
“It’ll be better there, son,” Dad says, unravelling the plastic rind off Victor’s slice of pâté. “When I first met Mum in Berlin I made us a picnic. We ate it on the banks of the Spree. Blood-sausage from a butcher in a dark alley whose shop survived both the war and the Soviets, and hot tea from the NAAFI mobile canteen.”
Mum takes his hand and she’s talking only to him when she says, “Oh Roy, I thought my stomach was being pulled out of my back.”
“And that was nothing to do with the pickled gherkin,” Dad says. “What was it, Bridge, you always said? Your insides turned inside-out and became all heart.” He kisses her hand.
“Parent-love? Bloody, bloody ugh,” Victor whispers.
“Better than arguing,” I mutter.
“We danced by the river under the moonlight and he…”
“Please don’t tell us any details, Mum,” I shriek.
“I only wanted to say he trod on my toe and thought the German word for sorry was Mistkäfer . That was the moment I fell in love with him.”
“What does it mean then?” Victor asks.
“Dung-beetle,” Dad says, mortified. We all have to put up with Mum ruffling his hair and making horrible fluttery cow’s eyes at him.
Gillian says words are not needed for love. It’s all about looking and trembling and one tongue circling round the other. When we played Do, Dare, Double-Dare, Love, Kiss, Promise in the second year, she had to twirl tongues with Gaye Kennedy and said it tasted of junket gone hard.
“Can I go on the deck?” Victor asks. “That lot over there are eating semolina. It’s got rats’ droppings in it.”
“They’re prunes, Victor,” Dad says.
“You shouldn’t call people prunes, Dad,” Victor replies.
Grandma comes back and chuckles to see Mum and Dad clinging to each other and I remember the time in Clacton when she snorted her top teeth into a samovar. I can’t stop laughing and the holiday seems more bearable now everyone is slightly bouncier, although that could be down to the choppy sea stopping us putting one foot in front of the other without cannoning off the High Tea trolley.
Up on deck, we lean on the rails and watch the ship cutting through the endless water, which is so different from the seaside. Rinsed of colour, it blends with the sky. Gulls circle and squeal, livelier than their murky surroundings. Eventually, the solid mass of the sea seems to heave us along while the ship becomes static.
The wind whips the side-wing of Dad’s black glossy hair out of its Brylcreem and he struggles to smooth it back. He gives up, pulling on his cigarette as if
I keep thinking about Mum’s kind voice when she held the girl’s hand. I wish I could tell her how nice she is. But, apart from in sickening films, no one talks to their parents like that. I can’t remember her being as nice as that to me since I was small. So I sip my tea and try to eat the strangely round Dutch toast from a packet. Dad almost breaks his front teeth on it. “Call this food?” he says, staring at the toast. “I could use it as a tension pulley for the fan-belt.”
Conversations around us heat up. Cutlery clatters. Without Bwa-Bwa’s gruff voice and clacking sandals, people relax. Her world rotates on a different axis from ours, their smug knives and forks say. The two collided for a moment. Now we’re spinning properly again. Normal service resumed.
I wonder if Bwa-Bwa can actually feel angry or sad or homesick. Or if she even understands what home is. Is she ever at home anywhere? And how would she cope without her parents and their aprons and peaches? I don’t know. I reckon they cope with her because they have to, but I suppose it’s mostly because of love.
“What’s this flat sausage?” Victor asks, poking at the round of grey stuff on his plate. “It looks worse than school dinner. Are we going to have to eat this stuff in Germany?”
“It’ll be better there, son,” Dad says, unravelling the plastic rind off Victor’s slice of pâté. “When I first met Mum in Berlin I made us a picnic. We ate it on the banks of the Spree. Blood-sausage from a butcher in a dark alley whose shop survived both the war and the Soviets, and hot tea from the NAAFI mobile canteen.”
Mum takes his hand and she’s talking only to him when she says, “Oh Roy, I thought my stomach was being pulled out of my back.”
“And that was nothing to do with the pickled gherkin,” Dad says. “What was it, Bridge, you always said? Your insides turned inside-out and became all heart.” He kisses her hand.
“Parent-love? Bloody, bloody ugh,” Victor whispers.
“Better than arguing,” I mutter.
“We danced by the river under the moonlight and he…”
“Please don’t tell us any details, Mum,” I shriek.
“I only wanted to say he trod on my toe and thought the German word for sorry was Mistkäfer . That was the moment I fell in love with him.”
“What does it mean then?” Victor asks.
“Dung-beetle,” Dad says, mortified. We all have to put up with Mum ruffling his hair and making horrible fluttery cow’s eyes at him.
Gillian says words are not needed for love. It’s all about looking and trembling and one tongue circling round the other. When we played Do, Dare, Double-Dare, Love, Kiss, Promise in the second year, she had to twirl tongues with Gaye Kennedy and said it tasted of junket gone hard.
“Can I go on the deck?” Victor asks. “That lot over there are eating semolina. It’s got rats’ droppings in it.”
“They’re prunes, Victor,” Dad says.
“You shouldn’t call people prunes, Dad,” Victor replies.
Grandma comes back and chuckles to see Mum and Dad clinging to each other and I remember the time in Clacton when she snorted her top teeth into a samovar. I can’t stop laughing and the holiday seems more bearable now everyone is slightly bouncier, although that could be down to the choppy sea stopping us putting one foot in front of the other without cannoning off the High Tea trolley.
Up on deck, we lean on the rails and watch the ship cutting through the endless water, which is so different from the seaside. Rinsed of colour, it blends with the sky. Gulls circle and squeal, livelier than their murky surroundings. Eventually, the solid mass of the sea seems to heave us along while the ship becomes static.
The wind whips the side-wing of Dad’s black glossy hair out of its Brylcreem and he struggles to smooth it back. He gives up, pulling on his cigarette as if
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