point.
One August bank holiday, we would have just turned thirteen, he roared up in a cab. Big hugs. He pinched our cheeks. ‘You look peaky, girlies! Can’t have that.’ He piled us all in the back of the cab, Nora, me, Grandma, not forgetting Our Cyn (‘Oh, Mr Hazard!’) along with a ruddy great hamper from Jackson’s, Piccadilly. ‘Dr Brighton is indicated, my man!’ First the cabby gaped; then he beamed. ‘You’re on, guv’nor.’ And off we went.
There was a linen tablecloth to spread out on the beach over the shingle and Perry and the cabby, bosom chums, by now, toddled off arm in arm to pick up some bubbly while we put out the ham and chicken and cut up the loaf and opened the can of foie gras, nothing but the best when Uncle Perry stood the treat. All the punters stared, I can tell you – three skinny girls and a fat lady in a spotted veil, Perry with his shock of bright red hair and his stevedore’s shoulders and his big, fat smile, and the cabby in the leather jacket. Grandma filled the glasses, gave her toast: ‘Champagne to all here, real pain to the other bastards.’ Perry picked hard-boiled eggs out of our noses and gave us our coffee piping hot poured from the neb of the cabby’s cap.
When we’d all done eating, Perry took hold of the two corners of one end of the cloth and – whoosh! the fine china, the knives and forks (good, heavy silverware, nothing mean), the bones, the crusts, the empties, vanished clean away. He said he’d sent them back to the shop. How did he do it? Search me. Our Uncle Perry knew a trick or two. Bloody marvellous conjurer. Should have set up professionally. Half the beach broke into spontaneous applause and, much encouraged, Perry said: anybody got a saw? If so, he’d saw Grapdma in half. Not on your life, she said, God knows what might come out. She’d tucked up her skirts, shown off her big, red bloomers, had her little paddle. She took a crème de menthe frappé, to settle her digestion, she belched, she nodded off. Our Cyn and the cabby were deep in conversation so the rest of us set off for a walk along the pier.
Perry was the size of a polar bear, bless him, in his vanilla tussore suit and the straw boater with the red and black ribbon and white shirt with a red stripe, stiff collar, red tie. He was huge but dapper. The citric brisk smell of his cologne. Later on, during the war, dragging myself up from my slumbers in the blackout, I got a big whiff of it, Trumper’s Essence of Lime. I thought: I must have had it off with Peregrine!!! Dread and delight coursed through my veins; I thought, what have I done . . . But when I switched the light on, it turned out to be not Perry at all, but that Free Pole.
Peregrine in his ice-cream suit with a girl on either arm, neither of us anything special on our own – skinny things with mouse-brown bobs – but, put us together, we turned heads. Past the donkey rides and the hokey-pokey man and all the minarets, turrets and trellises of Brighton Pavilion, which always reminds me of our Grandma, somehow, although she tended towards the subfusc, she was like the Brighton Pavilion in blackout. Highly unlikely the Pavilion looked, too, that afternoon. Such a lovely day. The shiny, frilly waves; cackling of the seagulls; laughter of little children; plashing of water. And he’d let us have a glass of bubbly, each, at lunch. Everything conspired to make us happy.
I’ve been happy before and I’ve been happy after, but, swinging along the front at Brighton with Nora and our Uncle Perry, not a care in the world, it was the first time I was old enough and wise enough and knew my way about my own feelings well enough, to put it into words: ‘Goodness! I’m happy!’ When I think of happiness, I always think of Brighton, and of that August bank holiday when I was thirteen, because we did the heights and depths, that day. How frail a thing your happiness can be! We went from the ridiculous to the sublime, and broke our
One August bank holiday, we would have just turned thirteen, he roared up in a cab. Big hugs. He pinched our cheeks. ‘You look peaky, girlies! Can’t have that.’ He piled us all in the back of the cab, Nora, me, Grandma, not forgetting Our Cyn (‘Oh, Mr Hazard!’) along with a ruddy great hamper from Jackson’s, Piccadilly. ‘Dr Brighton is indicated, my man!’ First the cabby gaped; then he beamed. ‘You’re on, guv’nor.’ And off we went.
There was a linen tablecloth to spread out on the beach over the shingle and Perry and the cabby, bosom chums, by now, toddled off arm in arm to pick up some bubbly while we put out the ham and chicken and cut up the loaf and opened the can of foie gras, nothing but the best when Uncle Perry stood the treat. All the punters stared, I can tell you – three skinny girls and a fat lady in a spotted veil, Perry with his shock of bright red hair and his stevedore’s shoulders and his big, fat smile, and the cabby in the leather jacket. Grandma filled the glasses, gave her toast: ‘Champagne to all here, real pain to the other bastards.’ Perry picked hard-boiled eggs out of our noses and gave us our coffee piping hot poured from the neb of the cabby’s cap.
When we’d all done eating, Perry took hold of the two corners of one end of the cloth and – whoosh! the fine china, the knives and forks (good, heavy silverware, nothing mean), the bones, the crusts, the empties, vanished clean away. He said he’d sent them back to the shop. How did he do it? Search me. Our Uncle Perry knew a trick or two. Bloody marvellous conjurer. Should have set up professionally. Half the beach broke into spontaneous applause and, much encouraged, Perry said: anybody got a saw? If so, he’d saw Grapdma in half. Not on your life, she said, God knows what might come out. She’d tucked up her skirts, shown off her big, red bloomers, had her little paddle. She took a crème de menthe frappé, to settle her digestion, she belched, she nodded off. Our Cyn and the cabby were deep in conversation so the rest of us set off for a walk along the pier.
Perry was the size of a polar bear, bless him, in his vanilla tussore suit and the straw boater with the red and black ribbon and white shirt with a red stripe, stiff collar, red tie. He was huge but dapper. The citric brisk smell of his cologne. Later on, during the war, dragging myself up from my slumbers in the blackout, I got a big whiff of it, Trumper’s Essence of Lime. I thought: I must have had it off with Peregrine!!! Dread and delight coursed through my veins; I thought, what have I done . . . But when I switched the light on, it turned out to be not Perry at all, but that Free Pole.
Peregrine in his ice-cream suit with a girl on either arm, neither of us anything special on our own – skinny things with mouse-brown bobs – but, put us together, we turned heads. Past the donkey rides and the hokey-pokey man and all the minarets, turrets and trellises of Brighton Pavilion, which always reminds me of our Grandma, somehow, although she tended towards the subfusc, she was like the Brighton Pavilion in blackout. Highly unlikely the Pavilion looked, too, that afternoon. Such a lovely day. The shiny, frilly waves; cackling of the seagulls; laughter of little children; plashing of water. And he’d let us have a glass of bubbly, each, at lunch. Everything conspired to make us happy.
I’ve been happy before and I’ve been happy after, but, swinging along the front at Brighton with Nora and our Uncle Perry, not a care in the world, it was the first time I was old enough and wise enough and knew my way about my own feelings well enough, to put it into words: ‘Goodness! I’m happy!’ When I think of happiness, I always think of Brighton, and of that August bank holiday when I was thirteen, because we did the heights and depths, that day. How frail a thing your happiness can be! We went from the ridiculous to the sublime, and broke our
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