Page 17 of Little Wing
‘Is this yours?’
‘No – it’s for you. I found one – I found it for you.’
Her mother laid the plate gently on her lap, traced her fingertip satisfyingly over the undulating frilled edging. Round and round, anticlockwise as if rewinding memories, as if trying her hardest to wade backwards through the current fug to a time when things were clear.
‘Do you remember how Mother always told us never to cry over spilt milk – but how she would roast us over anything else?’
‘She died, Mum, when I was very young,’ Nell said quietly. ‘I don’t really remember her.’
‘But whose plate is this?’
‘It’s yours now – I found it for you.’
Her mother looked amazed. ‘We were given them, by Grandpa. We were so excited – never mind the street parties and the flags, we were just so excited for the new Queen. And even more so to be given such a, well,grown-upset of china.’
‘A trio.’
‘We were. We were.’
‘It was called the Clarice Clifftrio.’
‘We were all given a set but I broke my plate. The very day I was given it. Gosh, was I told off.’
‘But see – here’s another. So it’s complete again.’
‘Is it yours, Florence?’
Nell took a breath against her mother’s insistence on Florence. As she exhaled, she remembered how Debbie sometimes called her Maude. Sometimes Catherine. Sometimes, Debbie would run through various names including her dog and her daughter before she alighted on Nell. It was Debbie’sthing. Maude Catherine RosieNell. Catherine Nell MaudeRachel. And Debbie would just blame last night’s wine, or the menopause, or the need for caffeine but she’d always laugh it off.
‘It’s yours now,’ said Nell. ‘The trio is complete.’
Nell’s mother looked at her sharply. ‘No, it’s not.’
‘They belong together, don’t they,’ Nell pushed on, marvelling, thinking it was the best £10 she’d ever spent. She put the KitKat back on the plate.
‘Grandpa gave these to us. The new Queen was just so very pretty. Mother kept saying she was far too young for such a role. Dad said, I blame that bloody Simpson woman. He said, poor man, that poor bugger – and we knew he was referring to the late King. He was genuinely upset about all of that but we were thrilled because Dadswore. Bloodyandbugger! So unlike our father. But we didn’t think of the poor King or of his bugger brother and bloody Wallace. All us girls wanted, really, was for our hair to behave so we could style it just like our new Queen’s. Oh, welovedher!’
Nell sat very still, just drinking it all in, willing there to be more. It had been a long time since her mother had spoken so lucidly and at such length. She loved hearing of her swearing grandfather and stern grandmother. She loved to think of her mother as a young girl, willing her hair to stick to a style. She imagined the sisters with their commemorative plates and cups and saucers, gazing at Elizabeth. There was even some enjoyment in thinking of the plate breaking; real times, these true events, something undeniable and not invented.
Her mother was staring at the middle distance, tugging absent-mindedly at her hair. Bring her back.
‘Do you remember if ever I broke something?’ Nell said. ‘Or dropped something? Or spilt something? You were never like that to me, like your mum was to you, when you broke the plate and got a roasting.’
Her mother’s fingers were going round and around the plate again, faster, each direction, agitated.
‘You never told me off for such things,’ Nell continued softly. ‘You’d say oh dear, just an accident. You’d call me—’
‘Butterfingers.’
‘Yes! That’s right! You’d call me butterfingers. Or—’
‘Clumsy clot.’
‘Yes,’ Nell laughed, ‘clumsy clot! Do you remember when we had tea at that extremely posh hotel in London? I can’t remember which. You always said the Ritz was the Pitz – so it can’t have been there. But it was somewhere luxurious. My thirteenth birthday – a few months late, but who’s counting?’
Finally her mother was eating the KitKat and she was savouring every nibble.
‘I sent that dainty tower thing flying,’ said Nell. ‘The tiered plates with the finger sandwiches and the cakes-in-miniature and the scones. All over me, all over the floor. Everything – everywhere.’
