Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose Read online

  Four hours later, when the King was speaking to the nation, they heard a key being tried at the front door. Wendy switched off the wireless. The door took at least three attempts to open before Frank and Polly stumbled into the hallway. Frank stood swaying, a bottle in his hand and a paper hat cocked ridiculously on the side of his head.

  His sister-in-law clung to his coat, convulsed in laughter, a pair of ankle-strap shoes dangling from her right hand.

  “Happy Christmas!” he roared. “Peace on earth and goodwill to all men except the Jerries and the lot next door.”

  Polly doubled up in uncontrollable giggling.

  “Let me take your coat, Polly,” Wendy offered. “Did you remember the pudding? I want to get it on right away.”

  Polly turned to Frank. “The pudding. What did you do with the pudding, Frank?”

  “What pudding?” said Frank.

  Maud had come into the hall behind Wendy. “I know she’s made one. Don’t mess about, Frank. Where is it?”

  Frank pointed vaguely over his shoulder.

  Wendy said despairingly, “Back at Polly’s house? Oh, no!”

  “Stupid cow. What are you talking about?” said Frank. “It’s on our own bloody doorstep. I had to put it down to open the door, didn’t I?”

  Wendy squeezed past them and retrieved the white basin covered with a grease-proof paper top. She carried it quickly through to the kitchen and lowered it into the waiting saucepan of simmering water.

  “It looks a nice big one.”

  This generous remark caused another gale of laughter from Polly. Finally, slurring her words, she announced, “You’ll have to make allowances. Your old man’s a very naughty boy. He’s took me out and got me tiddly.”

  Maud said, “It beats me where he gets the money from.”

  “Beats Wendy, too, I expect,” said Polly. She leaned closer to her sister-in-law, a lock of brown hair swaying across her face. “From what I’ve heard, you know a bit about beating, don’t you, Wen?” The remark wasn’t made in sympathy. It was triumphant.

  Wendy felt the shame redden her face. Polly smirked and swung around, causing her black skirt to swirl as she left the room. The thick pencil lines she had drawn up the back of her legs to imitate stocking seams were badly smudged higher up. Wendy preferred not to think why.

  She took the well-cooked bird from the oven, transferred it to a platter and carried it into the front room. Maud and Norman brought in the vegetables.

  “Would you like to carve, Frank?”

  Wendy started to say, “But we never . . .”

  Frank had already intoned the words, “Dear Lord God Almighty.” Everyone dipped their heads. “Thanks for what we are about to receive,” Frank went on, “and for seeing to it that a skinny little half-pint won the meat raffle and decided to donate it to the Morris family.”

  Maud clicked her tongue in disapproval.

  Polly began to giggle.

  “I can’t begin to understand the workings of your mysterious ways,”

  Frank insisted on going on, “because if there really is someone up there he should have made damned sure my brother Ted was sitting at this table today.”

  Maud said, “That’s enough, Frank! Sit down.”

  Frank said, “Amen. Where’s the carving knife?”

  Wendy handed it to him, and he attended to the task, cutting thick slices and heaping them on the plates held by his mother. “That’s for Polly. She likes it steaming hot.”

  Polly giggled again.

  The plates were distributed around the table. Not to be outdone in convivial wit, Polly said, “You’ve gone overboard on the breast, Frankie dear. I thought you were a leg man.”

  Maud said tersely, “You should know.”

  “Careful, Mum,” Frank cautioned, wagging the knife. “Goodwill to all men.”

  Polly said, “Only if they behave themselves.”

  A voice piped up, “Billy Slater says that—”

  “Be quiet, Norman!” Wendy ordered.

  They ate in heavy silence, save for Frank’s animalistic chewing and swallowing. The first to finish, he quickly filled his glass with more beer.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, son.”

  “Would we have won the war without the Americans?”

  “The Yanks?” Frank scoffed. “Bunch of part-timers, son. They only came into it after men like me and your Uncle Ted had done all the real fighting. Just like the other war, the one my old Dad won. They waited till 1917. Isn’t that a fact, Mum? Americans? Where were they at Dunkirk? Where were they in Africa? I’ll tell you where they were—sitting on their fat backsides a couple of thousand miles away.”

  “From what I remember, Frank,” Maud interjected. “You were sitting on yours in the snug-bar of the Valiant Trooper.”

  “That was different!” Frank protested angrily. “Ted and I didn’t get called up until 1943. And when we were, we did our share. We chased Jerry all the way across Europe, right back to the bunker. Ted and me, brothers in arms, fighting for King and country. Ready to make the ultimate sacrifice. If Dad could have heard what you said just then, Mum, he’d turn in his grave.”

  Maud said icily, “That would be difficult, seeing that he’s in a pot on my mantelpiece.”

  Polly burst into helpless laughter and almost choked on a roast potato. It was injudicious of her.

  “Belt up, will you?” Frank demanded. “We’re talking about the sacred memory of your dead husband. My brother.”

  “Sorry, Frank.” Polly covered her mouth with her hands. “I don’t know what came over me. Honest.”

  “You’ve no idea, you women,” Frank went on. “God knows what you got up to, while we were winning the war.”

  “Anyway,” said Norman, “Americans have chewing gum. And jeeps.”

  Fortunately, at this moment Frank was being distracted. Wendy whispered in Norman’s ear and they both began clearing the table, but Maud put her hand over Wendy’s. She said, “Why don’t you sit down? You’ve done more than enough. I’ll fetch the pudding and custard. I’d like to get up for a while. It’s beginning to get a little warm in here.”

  Polly offered to help. “It is my pudding, after all.” But she didn’t mean to get up because, unseen by the others, she had her hand on Frank’s thigh.

  Maud said, “I’ll manage.”

  Norman asked, “Is it a proper pudding?”

  “I don’t know what you mean by proper,” said Polly. “It used up most of my rations when I made it. They have to mature, do puddings. This one is two years old. It should be delicious. There was only one drawback. In 1944, I didn’t have a man at home to help me stir the ingredients.” She gave Frank a coy smile.

  Ignoring it, Wendy said, “When Norman asked if it was a proper pudding, I think he wanted to know if he might find a lucky sixpence inside.”

  With a simper, Polly said, “He might, if he’s a good boy, like his Dad. Of course it’s a proper pudding.”

  Frank quipped, “What about the other sort? Do you ever make an improper pudding?”

  Before anyone could stop him, Norman said, “You should know, Dad.” His reflexes were too quick for his drunken father’s, and the swinging blow missed him completely.

  “You’ll pay for that remark, my son,” Frank shouted. “You’ll wash your mouth out with soap and water and then I’ll beat your backside raw.”

  Wendy said quickly, “The boy doesn’t know what he’s saying, Frank. It’s Christmas. Let’s forgive and forget, shall we?”

  He turned his anger on her. “And I know very well who puts these ideas in the boy’s head. And spreads the filthy rumours all over town. You can have your Christmas Day, Wendy. Make the most of it, because tomorrow I’m going to teach you why they call it Boxing Day.”

  Maud entered the suddenly silent front room carrying the dark, upturned pudding decorated with a sprig of holly. “Be an angel and fetch the custard, Norman.”

  The boy was thankful to run out to the kit
chen. Frank glanced at the pudding and then at Polly and then grinned. “What a magnificent sight!” He was staring at her cleavage.

  Polly beamed at him, fully herself again, her morale restored by the humiliation her sister-in-law had just suffered. “The proof of the pudding . . .” she murmured.

  “We’ll see if 1944 was a vintage year,” said Frank.

  Maud sliced and served the pudding, giving Norman an extra large helping. The pudding was a delicious one, as Polly had promised, and there were complimentary sounds all round the table.

  Norman sifted the rich, fruity mass with his spoon, hoping for one of those coveted silver sixpenny pieces. But Frank was the first to find one.

  “You can have a wish. Whatever you like, lucky man,” said Polly in a husky, suggestive tone.

  Frank’s thoughts were in another direction. “I wish,” he said sadly, holding the small coin between finger and thumb, “I wish God’s peace to my brother Ted, rest his soul. And I wish a Happy Christmas to all the blokes who fought with us and survived. And God rot all our enemies. And the bloody Yanks, come to that.”

  “That’s about four wishes,” Polly said, “ and it won’t come true if you tell everyone.”

  Wendy felt the sharp edge of a sixpence in her mouth, and removed it unnoticed by the others. She wished him out of her life, with all her heart.

  Norman finally found his piece of the pudding’s buried treasure. He spat the coin onto his plate and then examined it closely. “Look at this!” he said in surprise. “It isn’t a sixpence. It doesn’t have the King’s head.”

  “Give it here.” Frank picked up the silver coin. “Jesus Christ! He’s right. It’s a dime. An American dime. How the hell did that get in the pudding?”

  All eyes turned to Polly for an explanation. She stared wide-eyed at Frank. She was speechless.

  Frank was not. He had reached his own conclusion. “I’ll tell you exactly how it got in there,” he said, thrusting it under Polly’s nose.

  “You’ve been stirring it up with a Yank. There was a GI base down the road, wasn’t there? When did you say you made the pudding? 1944?”

  He rose from the table, spittle flying as he ranted. Norman slid from his chair and hid under the table, clinging in fear to his mother’s legs. He saw his father’s heavy boots turned towards Polly, whose legs braced. The hem of her dress was quivering.

  Frank’s voice boomed around the small room. “Ted and I were fighting like bloody heroes while you were having it off with Americans. Whore!”

  Norman saw a flash of his father’s hand as it reached into the fireplace and picked up a poker. He heard the women scream, then a sickening thump.

  The poker fell to the floor. Polly’s legs jerked once and then appeared to relax. One of her arms flopped down and remained quite still. A drop of blood fell from the table edge. Presently there was another. Then it became a trickle. A crimson pool formed on the wooden floor.

  Norman ran out of the room. Out of the house. Out into the cold afternoon, leaving the screams behind. He ran across the street and beat on a neighbour’s door with his fists. His frantic cries of “Help, murder!” filled the street. Within a short time an interested crowd in party hats had surrounded him. He pointed in horror to his own front door as his blood-stained father charged out and lurched towards him.

  It took three men to hold Frank Morris down, and five policemen to take him away.

  * * *

  The last of the policemen didn’t leave the house until long after Norman should have gone to bed. His mother and his grandmother sat silent for some time in the kitchen, unable to stay in the front room, even though Polly’s body had been taken away.

  “He’s not going to come back, is he, Mum?”

  Wendy shook her head. She was only beginning to think about what happened next. There would be a trial, of course, and she would try to shield Norman from the publicity. He was so impressionable.

  “Will they hang him?”

  “I think it’s time for your bed, young man,” Maud said. “You’ve got to be strong. Your Mum will need your support more than ever now.”

  The boy asked, “How did the dime get in the pudding, Grandma Morris?”

  Wendy snapped out of her thoughts of what was to come and stared at her mother-in-law. Maud went to the door, and for a moment it appeared as if she was reaching to put on her coat prior to leaving, but she had already promised to stay the night. Actually she was taking something from one of the pockets.

  It was a Christmas card, a little bent at the edges now. Maud handed it to Wendy. “It was marked ‘private and confidential’ but it had my name, you see. I opened it thinking it was for me. It came last week. The address was wrong. They made a mistake over the house number. The postman delivered it to the wrong Mrs Morris.”

  Wendy took the card and opened it.

  “The saddest thing is,” Maud continued to speak as Wendy read the message inside, “he is the only son I have left, but I really can’t say I’m sorry it turned out this way. I know what he did to you, Wendy. His father did the same to me for nearly forty years. I had to break the cycle. I read the card, love. I had no idea. I couldn’t let this chance pass by. For your sake, and the boy’s.”

  A tear rolled down Wendy’s cheek. Norman watched as the two women hugged. The card drifted from Wendy’s lap and he pounced on it immediately. His eager eyes scanned every word.

  My Darling Wendy,

  Since returning home, my thoughts are filled with you, and the brief time we shared together. It’s kind of strange to admit, but I sometimes catch myself wishing the Germans made you a widow. I can’t stand to think of you with any other guy.

  My heart aches for news of you. Not a day goes by when I don’t dream of being back in your arms. My home, and my heart, will always be open for you.

  Take care and keep safe,

  Nick

  Nick Saint (Ex-33rd US Reserve),

  221C Plover Avenue,

  Mountain Home,

  Idaho

  P.S. The dime is a tiny Christmas present for Norman to remember me by.

  Norman looked up at his Grandmother and understood what she had done, and why. He didn’t speak. He could keep a secret as well as a grown-up. He was the man of the house now, at least until they got to America.

  THE PUSHOVER

  During the singing of the Twenty-Third Psalm, the man next to me gave me a nudge and said, “What do you think of the wooden overcoat?”

  Uncertain what he meant, I lifted an eyebrow.

  “The coffin,” he said.

  I swayed to my left for a view along the aisle. I could see nothing worth interrupting the service for. Danny Fox’s coffin stood on trestles in front of the altar looking no different from others I had seen. On the top was the wreath from his widow, Merle, in the shape of a large heart of red roses with Danny’s name picked out in white. Not to my taste, but I wasn’t so churlish as to mention this to anyone else.

  “No handles,” my informant explained.

  So what? I thought. Who needs handles? Coffins are hardly ever carried by the handles. I gave a nod and continued singing.

  “That isn’t oak,” the man persisted. “That’s a veneer. Underneath, it’s chipboard.”

  I pretended not to have heard, and joined in the singing of the third verse—the one beginning “Perverse and foolish oft I strayed”— with such commitment that I drew shocked glances from the people in front.

  “She’s going to bury Danny in the cheapest box she could buy.”

  This baboon was ruining the service. I sat for the sermon in a twisted position presenting most of my back to him. But the damage had been done. My response to what was said was blighted. If John Wesley in his prime had been giving the Address I would still have found concentration difficult. Actually it was spoken by a callow curate with a nervous grin who revealed a lamentable ignorance about the Danny I had known. “A decent man” was a questionable epithet in Danny’s case; “a loyal h
usband” extremely doubtful; “generous to a fault” a gross misrepresentation. I couldn’t remember a time when the departed one had bought a round of drinks. If the curate felt obliged to say something positive, he might reasonably have told us that the man in the coffin had been funny and a charmer capable of selling sand to a sheik. I cared a lot about Danny, or I wouldn’t be here, but just because he was dead we didn’t have to award him a halo.

  My contacts with the old rogue went back thirty years. Danny and I first met back in the sixties, the days of National Service, in the Air Force at a desolate camp on Salisbury Plain called Netheravon, and even so early in his career, still in his teens, Danny had got life running the way he wanted. He’d formed a poker school with a scale of duties as the stakes and, so far as I know, served his two years without ever polishing a floor, raking out a stove or doing a guard duty. No one ever caught him cheating, but his silky handling of the cards should have taught anyone not to play with him. He seduced (an old-fashioned word that gives a flavour of the time) the only WRAF officer on the roll and had the use of her pale blue Morris Minor on Saturdays to support his favourite football team, Bristol Rovers. Weekend passes were no problem. You had to smile at Danny.

  I came across him again twelve years later, in 1973, on the sea front at Brighton dressed in a striped blazer, white flannels and a straw hat and doing a soft-shoe dance to an old Fred Astaire number on an ancient wind-up gramophone with a huge brass horn. I had no idea Danny was such a beautiful mover. So many people had stopped to watch that you couldn’t get past without walking on the shingle. It was a deeply serious performance that refused to be serious at all. At a tempo so slow that any awkwardness would have been obvious, he shuffled and glided and turned about, tossing in casual gull-turns and toe-taps, dipping, swaying and twisting with the beat, his arms windmilling one second, seesawing the next, and never suggesting strain. After he’d passed the hat around, we went for a drink and talked about old times and former comrades. I paid, of course. After that we promised to stay in touch. We met a few times. I went to his second wedding in 1988—a big affair, because Merle had a sister and five brothers, all with families. They were a crazy bunch. The reception, on a river steamer, was a riot. I’ve never laughed so much.