The Future Homemakers of America. Laurie Graham

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      Gayle didn’t come with us that day. She said she’d sooner stay behind in Lois’s nice warm quarters and mind Sandie than wave off some old king, and that suited Lois just fine. ‘I’d go and watch for a freight train to go by,’ she said. ‘Anything to get off this God-forsaken base.’

      I wasn’t so sure, myself. It was a raw morning, misty too, and there was some creature out in that fen making a unearthly noise. Vern reckoned the whole place belonged under the ocean. He used to say, ‘They took this place from the water, and one of these days that water’s gonna come and take it right back.’

      He left me to answer the tricky questions from Crystal, such as would it come higher’n our house and how could fishes breathe?

      Me and Betty took our girls to school, and I don’t know who was more excited, Deana and Sherry ’cause they got a extra Milky Bar in their lunch-pail, guilt candy from mommy, or Betty because she was getting out from under.

      Then we picked up Lois and Audrey and there were sharp words, on account of Lois wearing a red windbreaker and Betty suggesting she could have showed more respect. I drove and Betty sat up front with me, and she never stopped yammering.

      ‘The Duke of Windsor,’ she said, ‘he’s come sailing in from New York. He’s got some nerve, I must say, running off with that home-wrecker, leaving everybody in the lurch. Ask me, he as good as killed his poor brother, and the queen, of course, the old queen, she’s not been seen. She’s at … hold on, here, let me get this right …’ She’d brought her newspaper clippings with her. ‘Marlborough House, that’s where she’s at. Must be heartbroken…’

      Audrey, being no slouch, had been following all of this, but she said, ‘Whoa, Betty, just back up, would you? You just lost me. I thought the old queen was gonna be on this train we’re heading to see?’

      ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I see where you’re getting confused. Okay. At this time, they have three queens. There’s Queen Mary. She’s the one at Marlborough Castle. Then they have Queen Elizabeth, who was married to the king, just passed away. She’s the one we’ll be seeing.’

      I said, ‘What about Queen Mary? Didn’t she get a king?’

      ‘Of course she did. He was King … something, I’ll remember it in a minute. Then, there’s the new Queen Elizabeth…’

      Lois said, ‘Are we seeing her?’

      ‘No, no. She’s gonna be meeting the train when it gets to London. See, she’ll have had to stay there, attend to affairs of state an’ all. We’re gonna see, okay, the old Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. And they are…?’ She gave us time, see if we could come up with the right answers. We couldn’t. ‘…the mother and the sister of the new queen!’

      Betty should have taught grade school. She was a natural.

      I said, ‘Can you hear that? Like something…booming out there?’

      Lois lowered her window. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s the Thing. Herb warned me about it. It hides out in these swamps, and when it smells prime American steak, it starts hollering.’

      Audrey said, ‘Okay, so we’ve got the new queen and she’s waiting it out in London…’

      ‘Yeah, right,’ Lois said. ‘She’s smart enough not to come trailing up here. She’s sitting at home, trying on all her jewels, got the royal furnace turned up high as it’ll go.’

      ‘…so who’s gonna be the new king?’

      Lois said, ‘Now, even I know the answer to that. His name’s Prince Philip, and he’s a doll.’

      I said, ‘Lo, close up your window. I don’t like that noise.’

      ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘You worried that the Thing’s getting closer?’

      ‘It’s a bird.’ Audrey leaned forward to tell me. ‘I read about it. It’s just a big lonely old bird.’

      Betty was handing round pictures. ‘Now, this is the Duke of Cornwall. He’ll be the next king, after his daddy. And this is little Princess Anne. Aren’t they cute? I just love these darling coats they wear. Gee, I hope Sherry and Deana are gonna be okay today. Deana looked a little sad when we dropped them off. And Lois…’ She turned right round in her seat, so Lois’d understand that what she was about to say wasn’t to be taken lightly. ‘…do you think little Sandie is in safe hands with Gayle? I mean, I’m not one to sling mud but she does suffer with the nerves and sometimes, well, I’ll speak plainly here, she takes comfort in alcoholic drink.’

      I took a look at Lois in my rear-view mirror.

      ‘Betty,’ she said, ‘you’re right. You don’t sling mud. You just kinda creep up behind a person and smear it. Matter of fact, I think Sandie’ll be just fine with her Auntie Gayle. Way I look at things, anybody married to an airman needs a little something to get them through the day. Huh? Bottle a booze, photo album of Princess Margaret, the sound of Frank Sinatra’s sweet voice, it don’t have to look like a crutch to be one.’ And she dropped the pictures of the little Duke of Cornwall right back into Betty’s lap.

      ‘Why, Lois!’ Audrey said. ‘That’s almost profound!’

      She was sitting forward, peering through the windshield with me, and I was driving like a real old lady, what with the mist and the ice and the fact that over there another vehicle was liable to come at you on the wrong side of the road. One minute they weren’t there, next minute they were, about ten or twelve of them, grey as the day itself, stamping their feet, hugging themselves in their poor thin coats, standing right there by the railroad crossing.

      Audrey whistled through her teeth. ‘Well, look at that,’ she said, and they all turned together, СКАЧАТЬ