Home life
Umbrella cover
Alice Thomas Ellis
Ibelieve I am responsible for the recent pleasant weather. A couple of weeks ago when it was still relentlessly raining I penned a few words on the subject and before they went to press the fine spell was upon us. Human nature being what it is, once the sun came out everybody forgot what it was like when it was raining, so my words appeared dated, meaningless and perverse. I wish I'd thought of doing it earlier. We could have had a longer summer. It's not as though I didn't know what would happen. It's the same sort of thing as carrying an umbrella before the day has decided what type of day it should be, which is not so much insurance as a kind of primitive magic. Before the rain stopped we were driving down Harley Street on our way to John Lewis in the pursuit of hooks-and-eyes and passed Janet's favourite inscription announcing that Florence Nightingale left her hospital on this site when she went off to the Crimea. Janet observed that it was jolly considerate of her because otherwise the people we saw ascending the steps would have been sitting in the pissing rain as they waited to consult a medical person.
The third son has been in the hands of medical personnel in France. The good news is that he is still alive and the bad news is five cracked ribs. It seems that the car in which he was being driven turned over three times (bad news) but that a party of off-duty ambulance men was passing at the time (good news). The awful thing about having a lot of children is that one has so many lives to lose. Even your own takes on added importance as you reflect that should you get reaped they will never be able to find their clean socks or remember to carry an umbrella.
I wish I could shake myself free of blind superstition. It was the third son upon whose window a magpie tapped earlier in the year. I hold magpies in fearful respect, bowing to solitary ones and uttering in- cantations and prayers. I know the wretch- ed creature was either engaged in combat with its own reflection, or trying to eat the putty which holds some hidden attraction for all the birds of the valley, but am not reassured. After the euphoria induced by the news that the boy still lived I began to flap about internal injuries and wonder what the Frogs call lungs and spleen. The eldest son reminded me acidly that his brother was the guest, not of some twit, but of darling Professor Sir Alfred Ayer, who is the cleverest man in Europe if not the world, and if he said all was well then I could surely take his word for it.
I know, I know, but what a wonderful target for free-floating anxiety is an acci- dent to a loved one in a foreign country. When the dishwasher contrived to expel water from some unsuspected orifice all over the adjacent china shelves I took it very coolly, merely standing ankle-deep in suds and wondering whether ribs heal straight, now that it is no longer medical policy to bind them up or encase them in plaster. I am sunk in depression at this gratuitous reminder of the frailty of flesh and bone. I have also just finished a novel — writing one, not reading one. I can read two in a day with no trouble at all, but writing the things takes time and thought, and now that Someone has sent if off to the printer I feel like a dog whose bone has been stolen. I can't think quite what I'm for, except to be a machine for worrying.
Oh, well, the school holidays have be- gun, so it's back to the country next week and the magpies. The only good thing is that I seem to remember that as the summer draws on they get more sociable, cease going around on their own, and flock in fields in great numbers leaving silver and gold and a secret never to be told welt behind. And if I take an umbrella even the rain may hold off.
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