Nicola Barker - Burley Cross Postbox Theft

Everybody was (quite naturally) rendered dumb for a couple of seconds by my infallible logic, but then Meredith started muttering something about ‘Tammy being very hurt, very injured , by the mumbo-jumbo comments’.

‘Matthew 6: 7,’ I announced, crisply. ‘“And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many worms.”’

I meant to say ‘words’, obviously (I don’t really know where the ‘worms’ part came from), but, as luck would have it, I was saved from possible ridicule by the sudden arrival of Peter Bramwell (the metallurgist) who came to inform Meredith that the bulb had just blown in the storeroom (which meant he was unable to locate a ladder — I’m not entirely sure why a ladder was required at this juncture).

I decided that this timely interruption presented an opportune moment to beat a hasty (if still perfectly dignified) retreat. (Always quit while you’re ahead, eh?!)

Phew!

So I think that’s pretty much the sum of it, Jess. Sorry if I’ve run on a bit. My fingers are all cramping up — I feel like I’ve been writing this for hours (Crikey! Look at the time! It’s five after twelve and Duncan’s not even had his Bournville yet! He’ll have committed hara-kiri by now!).

I do hope the earring is still intact by the time it reaches you. I’m not entirely sure why you were so desperate to have it back over the festive season — I was under the strong (if possibly erroneous) impression that your mother’s proclivities (fashion-related and otherwise) bordered somewhat on the conservative. If this is the case, then you should definitely think twice about wearing it again until you’ve broken your other piece of ‘Big News’. Let’s hope she takes it a little better than your father did!

I’m very confident (as I said earlier) that he’ll have cooled down enough by now to let you drive at least some of the way to Birmingham.

When’s your test? Jan 5th?

We’ll definitely speak before then –

Happy Christmas, my Gorgeous Boy!

Give ’em hell, eh?!

XXXXXX

Em

PS KIEREN KNOWLES!!!!

‘Professional actor!!’

VA-VA-VA-VA -VOOM!!

PPS Always remember: They only hate us because…

Oh! You know!!

XX

Threadbare Cottage

‘The Calls’

Burley Cross

20th December 2006

Oh Donovan,

How ghastly! Green ink! I’m terribly sorry — it wasn’t planned, I can assure you. In fact it’s given me quite a turn! The pen’s an old favourite of mine which I haven’t used in ages because you can no longer buy the cartridges. Then I found one — this very morning — at the bottom of the pine dresser, while I was hunting down that photograph I’d promised to send you (aren’t you just beautiful in your christening robe? Plump as a plum pudding, cheeks like little apples, huge, gummy grin! And then that brilliantly incongruous black eye — like a miniature Billy Bunter!).

It looked perfectly uncontentious as I popped it in (the cartridge, I mean), the address went off without a hitch, the first half of the date was fine, but then as soon as I hit the year, this terrible green colour exploded from the nib (I say ‘terrible’, although in truth I actually quite like the green myself — in the abstract — it’s just all those unfortunate connotations…).

I’d have started over (of course), but this is Rhona’s best paper (handmade — manufactured in situ , no less — from recycled egg boxes, which makes it ludicrously absorbent and fractionally stiff). There’d be hell to pay if I wasted a piece.

Enough of my waffling, though (I know how much you hate my waffling — my ‘pointless flummery’ as I believe you once called it!). Can I just say how broken up we all still are about your mother? We miss her horribly. Chester’s inconsolable (although he stole — and devoured — a whole partridge earlier. It was sitting on the sideboard, covered with a tea towel, resting, after I’d plucked it. I didn’t think he could get up there — he’s still huge; over three stone, but somehow he contrived to. It’ll be tomato omelettes, all round, for dinner again tonight, I fear). The parrot still won’t speak (and his chest is now completely bare). Even Rhona (who isn’t, as you may recall, much given to emotional displays) was heard to mutter over her salted oats at breakfast how much she ‘missed the silly old trout’.

Of course I don’t mind in the slightest that you didn’t respond to my last letter (although there was the nagging doubt that it might’ve gone astray, but then Mr Baquir, your lawyer, kindly told me that this was not the case. I really appreciated that. And he seems a very charming man, Mr Baquir. He and Rhona spent some considerable time on the phone reminiscing about Egypt. It seems he was growing up in the outskirts of Cairo during the late 1960s at almost exactly the same time she was working as a volunteer there with Christian Aid).

It’s only natural that you would feel angry, Donovan. And, of course, you feel hurt — even betrayed. Anyone would. In fact we were all perfectly miserable when we found out about the funeral — especially Rhona, who sets great store (well, greater store than I do) by these formal occasions. ‘We have an inalienable right to say goodbye,’ she harrumphed, ‘and now she’s snatched that away from us. It just doesn’t seem fair.’

Fair or no — I imagine it must be hard for you to get any real sense of closure. If it helps at all, William Dunkley (the funeral director) told me, in strictest confidence, how he took it upon himself to say a little prayer over the coffin (and recited a Psalm, I think, although I’m not sure which one). He had been strictly prohibited by Glenys — on pain of death (or worse, he said!) — from doing so, but that didn’t deter him.

I spoke to him on Tuesday at the Christmas Fair. He was quite shame-faced about the whole mess, but I assured him that we bore no grudges (although I didn’t absolve him on your behalf, obviously. It would hardly be my place to do so).

He was only fulfilling her wishes, I suppose. He said she had made all the arrangements in mid-2005 (after her main diagnosis), and then had rung him up — twice, on subsequent occasions — to stress the finer details. It wasn’t a fly-by-night decision, in other words. She had insisted on perfect secrecy and he had decided — with some serious pangs of conscience — that it was his professional duty to respect that last request.

Bill was very fond of Glenys himself (I don’t know if you remember him well — he’s quite a few years younger than we are — the nephew of Arthur and Polly). He said she beat him black and blue as a boy after he released her dog — Trumpet — from the special hook outside the shop and he ran riot on the main street, then careered up on to the moor where he savaged a moorland sheep and was shot (this was a while after you’d left home, I think, and some time before Rhona and I arrived at Threadbare, but I know she doted on that dog — he sounds extraordinarily unlovable! — and often referred to the incident in barbed tones).

I asked about the ashes. Bill said they’d been scattered ‘locally’. I tried to press him further on the point but he wouldn’t budge. I’m guessing it was on the moor, near the war memorial (what better place than where your father’s plane went down?). She hadn’t been up there herself since the mid-eighties, when her thyroid first became an issue (and her weight ballooned), but she asked me to take a bouquet most weeks, and I was always happy to oblige her. It was never any trouble.

I have continued to take the bouquets since her death. In fact Rhona has actually accompanied me on several occasions (straight after our morning swim, although she finds the last stages of the hike a little difficult because of the problem with her knee joints). I know your mother truly loved that place.