Read Online Tying Down The Lion by Joanna Campbell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Joanna Campbell
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he’s about to face a firing-squad. The dream he’s living at last seems to be weighing him down. He catches my eye and I see fear. Either that or he’s about to throw up the Dutch toast. No. It’s fear. This is how he looks during the night-terrors.
Grandma offers him a nip of her brandy. Trouble is, she’s not really used to alcohol. She’s only brought it to ward off sea-sickness. And for every nip she offers Mum or Dad, she has one for herself. When Victor’s hamster was ill she gave it a nip. By the time it revived, she couldn’t see straight to put it back in the cage and it disappeared. Dad took the entire settee apart before he found it comatose under the antimacassar.
We try to enjoy the strong cooling wind on the deck, but all the wet wooden seats are occupied and Grandma keeps saying, “Oh bugger, there go my curls.”
After the seagulls quieten for a minute, Mum, her face flushed and girlish, says to Grandma, “I’m so excited, Nell. Soon I’ll be home at last.”
“I wish I bloody-well was, Bridge. All I want is a cup of English tea. Not this foreign gnat’s piddle. And I tell you what, I’m worried sick about Berlin.” Her face looks white and withered and her mouth is folded in as if her teeth have fallen out. I can see her silver moustache. She’s doing her ‘frail old lady’ impersonation, which doesn’t suit a woman built like a Sherman tank.
“Germany is just an ordinary country, Nell,” Mum says.
“What, with all that sausage?”
“Oh Nell, listen. My family are people like you and me. They laugh and cry. Their sky is blue. Their rain makes puddles. Some work in prisons. Some keep pigs. They have dreams.”
Grandma sniffs. “German pigs have dreams?”
“Oh, Nell.”
“Anyway I’ve seen that sausage sliced up in the delicate-nessan, Bridge. Great white lumps of green in it. I don’t trust green.”
“Nell, those are peppercorns.”
“Pepper’s white, Bridge.”
The sea-spray and rain are driving people below again. But in her determined we’re-English-and-won’t be-beaten-by-a-shower way, Grandma unfolds her plastic bonnet, and Mum helps tie it under her chin. The rest of us go back inside. Dad, fortified by the brandy, is trying to pick up the holiday spirit in the way fathers do. While mothers fuss over flasks and wet feet and finding toilets, fathers make it fun. Dad discovers a pack of cards someone has abandoned. They’re a bit battered and damp, but have been designed by fashion-gods.
“Fab, Dad, they’re Biba.”
“I aim to please, Jacqueline,” he says, giving my name a French accent. “Is this what they call a gas?”
“This is definitely a gas, Dad.”
The backs of the cards are decorated with the Biba black and gold pattern and the fronts are all coloured drawings of impossibly beautiful model-girls in not very many clothes. It’s a bit embarrassing to see Dad blinking away at them while we play Newmarket. He holds some of the girls very close. I can actually hear them brush against his glasses. And he looks a bit agitated when he lays down the Queen of Clubs in her frilly white swimsuit, especially when he has to put his threepenny piece on her. But better these girls than the Bad-Moon variety. I hope Mum and Grandma stay on deck for ages. I hope they get swept over… No, maybe not.
Bwa-Bwa and her parents pass by, wild-haired and red-nosed from the deck. Even though she is restrained by a harness and reins, she lunges at us, determined to touch the cards. She pulls free and snatches them, knocking Victor’s money to the floor. She barks. She yelps. She wants Trevor-Keith. While Dad picks up the scattered cards and I lob T-K into the tartan bag, we all launch into endless rounds of English-style apology.
“I think she likes the shiny colours, dear,” the mother says. “I’m so awfully sorry about this.”
“No, no. Not at all. Sorry to spread ourselves all over the shop like this. Er, would you all like to play?” Dad asks.
Grandma offers him a nip of her brandy. Trouble is, she’s not really used to alcohol. She’s only brought it to ward off sea-sickness. And for every nip she offers Mum or Dad, she has one for herself. When Victor’s hamster was ill she gave it a nip. By the time it revived, she couldn’t see straight to put it back in the cage and it disappeared. Dad took the entire settee apart before he found it comatose under the antimacassar.
We try to enjoy the strong cooling wind on the deck, but all the wet wooden seats are occupied and Grandma keeps saying, “Oh bugger, there go my curls.”
After the seagulls quieten for a minute, Mum, her face flushed and girlish, says to Grandma, “I’m so excited, Nell. Soon I’ll be home at last.”
“I wish I bloody-well was, Bridge. All I want is a cup of English tea. Not this foreign gnat’s piddle. And I tell you what, I’m worried sick about Berlin.” Her face looks white and withered and her mouth is folded in as if her teeth have fallen out. I can see her silver moustache. She’s doing her ‘frail old lady’ impersonation, which doesn’t suit a woman built like a Sherman tank.
“Germany is just an ordinary country, Nell,” Mum says.
“What, with all that sausage?”
“Oh Nell, listen. My family are people like you and me. They laugh and cry. Their sky is blue. Their rain makes puddles. Some work in prisons. Some keep pigs. They have dreams.”
Grandma sniffs. “German pigs have dreams?”
“Oh, Nell.”
“Anyway I’ve seen that sausage sliced up in the delicate-nessan, Bridge. Great white lumps of green in it. I don’t trust green.”
“Nell, those are peppercorns.”
“Pepper’s white, Bridge.”
The sea-spray and rain are driving people below again. But in her determined we’re-English-and-won’t be-beaten-by-a-shower way, Grandma unfolds her plastic bonnet, and Mum helps tie it under her chin. The rest of us go back inside. Dad, fortified by the brandy, is trying to pick up the holiday spirit in the way fathers do. While mothers fuss over flasks and wet feet and finding toilets, fathers make it fun. Dad discovers a pack of cards someone has abandoned. They’re a bit battered and damp, but have been designed by fashion-gods.
“Fab, Dad, they’re Biba.”
“I aim to please, Jacqueline,” he says, giving my name a French accent. “Is this what they call a gas?”
“This is definitely a gas, Dad.”
The backs of the cards are decorated with the Biba black and gold pattern and the fronts are all coloured drawings of impossibly beautiful model-girls in not very many clothes. It’s a bit embarrassing to see Dad blinking away at them while we play Newmarket. He holds some of the girls very close. I can actually hear them brush against his glasses. And he looks a bit agitated when he lays down the Queen of Clubs in her frilly white swimsuit, especially when he has to put his threepenny piece on her. But better these girls than the Bad-Moon variety. I hope Mum and Grandma stay on deck for ages. I hope they get swept over… No, maybe not.
Bwa-Bwa and her parents pass by, wild-haired and red-nosed from the deck. Even though she is restrained by a harness and reins, she lunges at us, determined to touch the cards. She pulls free and snatches them, knocking Victor’s money to the floor. She barks. She yelps. She wants Trevor-Keith. While Dad picks up the scattered cards and I lob T-K into the tartan bag, we all launch into endless rounds of English-style apology.
“I think she likes the shiny colours, dear,” the mother says. “I’m so awfully sorry about this.”
“No, no. Not at all. Sorry to spread ourselves all over the shop like this. Er, would you all like to play?” Dad asks.
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