Kindergarten by Peter Rushforth

drawing-room, carrying through the scrapscreen from their living-room, moving the chaise-longue round, and putting Jo’s model theatre on a small tripod table and Cyril—deputising for an aspidistra—on a
jardiniére
from the sun lounge. Wearing Victorian clothes, they performed for an hour, with Lilli as their only audience. They acted part of
Lady Audley’s Secret
, with Jo, who rapidly assumed a woman’s costume, a memorable Alicia. Mum was Lady Audley. They read the death of Little Nell; extracts from a handbook of Victorian etiquette; “Casabianca,” “Lips That Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine,” among other poems—and sang several Victorian songs. The one Corrie remembered best was Mum and Jo singing “Won’t You Buy My Pretty Flowers?”
    Upstairs, Lilli was reaching the end of the story.
    “‘… the heavy stones made the wolf fall into the well, and he was drowned. When the seven little kids saw what had happened, they came running up to the well and shouted for joy, “The wicked wolf is dead! The wicked wolf is dead!” They danced around the well with their mother.’”
    Jo pushed at the bear again, and it fell to the floor.
    He was bending down to pick it up when the doorbell was rung, three times, in a signal they recognised.
    “Sal.”
    Sal had been Mum’s closest friend, and was a regular caller at both houses.
    When Corrie opened the door, she staggered in, struggling with her umbrella and several parcels, as if she had been given a violent push in the back. She groaned, leaning back against the door, straining to close it.
    “What a night!”
    She dumped the parcels into Corrie’s arms, and bent down to kiss him on the cheek. He was still only five feet, three and one-half inches tall.
    “Happy Christmas, gorgeous.”
    She ran her hands through the tight curls of her newly permed hair, shaking out the wetness, and brushed at the front of her clothing. Then she peered closely at Corrie’s hair, assuming a scowl. She claimed to be deeply resentful of Corrie’s dark curly hair, a style she could only achieve by visits to the hairdresser’s.
    “You’re not really letting poor little Jo sing out on the Green in this weather, are you, you rotten swine?”
    “Did you call my name, belovèd?” asked Jo, standing up and striking a dramatic pose.
    “Can it be he?” Sal said, clutching her hands to her heart as she turned to face him.
    “My own!” he called. “I yearn to be with you! Clasp me to your bosom! Madden me with desire!”
    Jo dived into Sal’s arms, and she hoisted him up into the air, his feet dangling, and pressed him against her.
    “My angel!”
    It was a performance they went through regularly, once in the middle of Norwich market-place when they had seen Sal there. A stall-holder had offered Jo a cauliflower to swap places with him.
    “Can we tone down these scenes of unbridled passion?” Corrie asked.
    “Heavens, we’re observed!” said Jo, his voice rather muffled.
    Lilli was coming down the stairs.
    “I like that new pendant you’ve got round your neck,” she said to Sal. It was the first time she had joined in one of their silly sessions.
    Sal started laughing, and dropped Jo.
    “He’s too heavy to wear for long,” Sal said. “You’ve been feeding him up again.”
    “We’ve left you a few scraps,” Corrie said. “Mind that lump in the carpet.”
    Sal stepped over Jo, and took Corrie’s arm as they went through into the dining-room.
    “D O YOU happen to have the time on you?” Corrie asked later, as they walked through Lilli’s kitchen towards the sun lounge. He had been asking Jo the time every quarter of an hour or so since Jo had unwrapped his present. Corrie had given him a combined Christmas and birthday present, an expensive gift that he had been saving up for for some time: a Snoopy wrist-watch, with the dog’s front legs as the hands of the watch. Clutching a tennis-racket in one hand, Snoopy lugubriously swung his arms round and