Living Upside Down. John Hickman

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СКАЧАТЬ nods. “Yes, thank you, Zelda, Sweetheart.”

      Zelda moves through their flat to locate Charlotte and stepdaughter June; as she goes she sets her Teutonic antennae onto dust or disturbance alarm.

      Good, she thinks.

      Now her Obsessive-compulsive disorder has kicked in and is operating at full pelt, all the rug fringes appear to be combed in to place, exactly how she likes each one to be. Fluff on the carpet unsettles her most.

      Best I get the girls to re-vacuum the entire carpets, tomorrow! she thinks.

      Paramount to Zelda is that Charlotte is alright and coping well with her homework. Not that she has any reason to suspect otherwise.

      She finds both girls playing quietly together in their shared bedroom. Running a severe gaze over both, she sees little sign of homework being done, which puts her in a darker mood than usual.

      “Vhat is dis? Vhy ist dere kein homevork done?”

      The girls express some rebellion. “We’ll do it later, before bed,” Charlotte giggles.

      “Be sure your homevork is done or de TV vill be verboten.”

      June stares back at the tall, bony woman her Dad chose to take the place of her Mum. If only she had the strength, she would strangle the life out of the cow. Instead, she beams her happiest smile and thinks her Dad is barking mad. Can he not see Zelda is part viper, part fairytale evil?

      ‘A cobra in high heels and lipstick,’ is how her brother Roger describes her. ‘Not unlike the witch out of Hansel and Gretel,’ Roger said. June has learned the hard way. Not every secret shared with Charlotte, stays between them.

      Zelda stares back at June, her dark eyes holding an indefinable measure of unfriendliness. She rummages for her soft pack of unfiltered Camel cigarettes and after finding her Ronson gas lighter, lights up. Her face a picture of displeasure as her exhaled smoke hovers in the air.

      June is seriously hoping that Zelda will spontaneously combust.

      “Your fadder vants a cup of his hot, sweet tea. You vill make it for him, June, and I vood love anudder coffee, just de vay I like it.”

      Turning on her high stiletto heels, Zelda struts back to join Edward.

      June has been a problem for Zelda since marrying Edward. The little bitch kept calling her ‘Thingy’ instead of Mum, Mother, or Zelda. She soon put paid to that nonsense by disciplining the wayward child in a number of imaginative ways, ways that appeared harmless if not examined too closely. She could not help but smile at her own creativeness; excluding June from the clothes buying process by getting Charlotte to try everything on worked a treat, as had giving her stepdaughter more chores, such as making her father’s tea now.

      Oh, how pedestrian is she now? thinks June.

      Zelda sinks back into her favourite luxury leather lounge chair. She breathes in the aroma of Edward’s pipe tobacco hovering in the air like miniature cumuli and considers other battles she has won; such as establishing herself within the family as ‘Nanny’ and not being called ‘Granny’. She gave an involuntary shudder at the thought, but at least that is behind her now.

      “June vants to make your tea, Edvard,” Zelda sighs her deepest sigh.

      Overheard by June, Oh, yes, she thinks, but no, not quite. How the cow twisted that one! Can Dad not see through all this crap?

      Whilst Edward remains paralysed in his memories, hoping his dreams might become realities, Charlotte joins June in the kitchen. Both girls cannot stop giggling.

      “I’ll make Dad’s tea,” June offers, “you make her coffee.” Then, in a whisper, “What will you put in it that she doesn’t like?”

      “How’s about Strychnine?” Charlotte replies with another giggle.

      “No, silly I’m serious. Even if we had any that would show up on a post-mortem. How’s about too much milk, or not enough milk?”

      “What about lukewarm water instead of re-boiling the kettle? We haven’t done that for a while.”

      “No! She’ll catch on when she can’t hear it whistling.”

      “Okay,” Charlotte draws the word out, “I’ll stir in a very small amount of sugar because we know she doesn’t like any at all.”

      “But only add a small amount so it tastes a bit off but isn’t that obvious. And I’ll overfill the cup.”

      Charlotte is no more star struck on her own mum’s behaviour than June is.

      Together the girls make a good team as they enjoy being with Charlotte’s Dad and baiting Zelda.

      Zelda being German had not sat right with Edward. After all, he did bomb the crap out of her country and killed thousands of Germans.

      In bed after their first night, Edward’s husky voice wavered when he confessed, “I dropped my bombs, Zelda, and watched Dresden erupt in flames beneath me; flames a thousand feet high, temperatures of over a thousand degrees, even the air was on fire, the roads melting, rivers and canals boiling. I saw it burning to the ground.”

      “An entire city, Edvard.”

      “Not one combatant among them. Women, old men, and children numbered over 100,000 people dead that night.”

      “Der is no doubt in my mind dat if die Allies had lost the war, Dresden should have been declared a war crime, Edvard.”

      “You’re right. To my mind that deed turned Bomber Command into a byword for slaughter. I felt ashamed, which was why under target in my log book I wrote only three words; women and children.”

      “That vas very clever of you, Edvard.”

      “Clever?”

      “Vell, if de Allies had lost de var dan Germans could have exonerated you.”

      “I never thought of that. But I did check my RAF logbook before proposing marriage to you, just to ensure I wasn’t over Hamburg the night your house was bombed.”

      Unfortunately for Edward, his parents, Roger’s grandparents, were too ensconced, too brainwashed by the British establishment, to accept Zelda. His own mother had said, “Bloody shame you didn’t bomb the house with the German cow still in it.”

      Family wise that was the beginning of their big family split. He could see that now, but even so, then as now, he felt helpless to do anything about it.

      After his hotel business venture failed, with son in tow, he secured a lease on another hotel, and in Zelda’s name. Creative accounting at a high cost helped him with that, but now he and Zelda, married by convenience, are as united as any two people could be. Together there is some financial future. Apart? Well, that is an entirely different story.

      Edward likes long walks and good books, Zelda prefers to party. Where Edward is introspective and brooding by nature, Zelda tends to move at lightning speed and let the chess pieces fall where they may.

      Zelda’s СКАЧАТЬ