Notes From a Small Island Read Free Page B

trio a warm adieu when the door opened and Mrs Smegma came in with a tray of tea things and a plate of biscuits of the sort that I believe are called teatime variety, and everyone stirred friskily to life, rubbing their hands keenly and saying, 'Ooh, lovely.' To this day, I remain impressed by the ability of Britons of all ages and social backgrounds to get genuinely excited by the prospect of a hot beverage.
'And how was World of Birds tonight, Colonel?' asked Mrs Smegma as she handed the colonel a cup of tea and a biscuit.
'Couldn't say,' said the colonel archly. 'The television -' he smacked me in the side of the head with a meaningful look '- was tuned to the other side.' Mrs Smegma gave me a sharp look, too, in sympathy. I think they were sleeping together.
'World of Birds is the colonel's favourite,' she said to me in a tone that went some distance past hate, and handed me a cup of tea with a hard whitish biscuit.
I mewed some pitiful apology.
'It was puffins tonight,' blurted the red-faced fellow, looking very pleased with himself.
Mrs Smegma stared at him for a moment as if surprised to find that he had the power of speech. 'Puffins!' she said and gave me a still more withering expression that asked how anyone could be so lacking in fundamental human decency. 'The colonel adores puffins. Don't you, Arthur?' She was definitely sleeping with him.
'I do rather,' said the colonel, biting unhappily into a chocolate bourbon.
In shame, I sipped my tea and nibbled at my biscuit. I had never had tea with milk in it before or a biscuit of such rocklike cheer-lessness. It tasted like something you would give a budgie to strengthen its beak. After a minute the bald-headed guy leaned close to me and in a confiding whisper said, 'You mustn't mind the colonel. He hasn't been the same since he lost his leg.'
'Well, I hope for his sake he soon finds it,' I replied, hazarding a little sarcasm. The bald-headed guy guffawed at this and for one terrifying moment I thought he was going to share my little quip with the colonel and Mrs Smegma, but instead he thrust a meaty hand at me and introduced himself. I don't remember his name now, but it was one of those names that only English people have -Colin Crapspray or Bertram Pantyshield or something similarlyimprobable. I gave a crooked smile, thinking he must be pulling my leg, and said, 'You're kidding.'
'Not at all,' he replied coldly. 'Why, do you find it amusing?'
'It's just that it's kind of ... unusual.'
'Well, you may think so,' he said and turned his attention to the colonel and Mrs Smegma, and I realized that I was now, and would doubtless forever remain, friendless in Dover.
Over the next two days, Mrs Smegma persecuted me mercilessly, while the others, I suspected, scouted evidence for her. She reproached me for not turning the light off in my room when I went out, for not putting the lid down in the toilet when I'd finished, for taking the colonel's hot water - I'd no idea he had his own until he started rattling the doorknob and making aggrieved noises in the corridor - for ordering the full English breakfast two days running and then leaving the fried tomato both times. 'I see you've left the fried tomato again,' she said on the second occasion. I didn't know quite what to say to this as it was incontestably true, so I simply furrowed my brow and joined her in staring at the offending item. I had actually been wondering for two days what it was. 'May I request,' she said in a voice heavy with pain and years of irritation, 'that in future if you don't require a fried tomato with your breakfast that you would be good enough to tell me.'
Abashed, I watched her go. 'I thought it was a blood clot!' I wanted to yell after her, but of course I said nothing and merely skulked from the room to the triumphant beams of my fellow residents.
After that, I stayed out of the house as much as I could. I went to the library and looked up 'counterpane' in a dictionary so that I might at least