LITMIR.BIZ

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are going to have to close down on Saturday week,’ said Miss Atkins, with a sad smile. ‘It is very inconvenient. You would like the usual cream tea, I expect, Mrs Fielding?’

      Sonia’s sharp eyes had noticed that bales of barbed wire were being unloaded on the harbour behind the teashop. ‘Is all the barbed wire going to spoil your business, Miss Atkins?’ she asked.

      Miss Atkins looked flustered and adjusted the bun at the back of her greying hair. ‘Barbed wire? Oh yes, they are going to do some repair work. They say it will take quite a long time. I’ll get your order.’

      ‘I heard they plan to extend the harbour,’ said Mary, in an artificially loud voice, staring loftily ahead as if gazing into the future.

      A man and his wife were sitting at the next table. Overhearing Mary’s remark, the man turned, licking his thumb, and said, ‘It’s not that, my dear, it’s the new defences –’

      ‘Oh, quite right, quite right, I had forgotten,’ Mary said. Extending her neck, lowering her head, she hissed across the table at Sonia, ‘Just a typical vulgarian. He shouldn’t be in here. Take no notice.’

      ‘But what defences does he mean, Mummy?’

      ‘Didn’t I tell you? A gang of local men have been trying to steal the boats in the harbour … Oh, here comes our tray. Good. I’m terribly peckish, aren’t you?’

      ‘Can we go afterwards and see them putting up the barbed wire, Mummy?’

      ‘We may not have time, Sonia, dear,’ said Martin. ‘Work is waiting for me. Pleasure must be sacrificed for duty, you know.’

      Sonia looked across the table at you, her lips forming the word ‘Shuggerybees’.

      Miss Atkins arranged the spread on the table. Brown pottery teapot under its cosy in front of Mrs Fielding, hot water jug next, then milk jug. Sugar bowl with sugar tongs. Plates before each person. Pretty plates with floral decorations, now destined for Kendal. A dish with a pile of crisp light brown scones, still warm from the oven. A little pot of strawberry jam, with accompanying spoon. A large pot of whipped cream with a Devonshire motto on the outside of the pot, saying ‘Goo Aisy on the Crame!’ in rustic brown lettering.

      ‘I’m sure we all will have to go easy on the cream in future,’ Miss Atkins found herself murmuring, with another of her stock of sad smiles. ‘Just one of the sacrifices we shall have to make.’

      ‘Shuggerybees!’ shrieked Sonia. ‘Why does everyone keep on about sacrifices?’

      ‘Be quiet,’ Martin told her. ‘Remember where you are.’

      ‘Where am I?’ Sonia asked, looking about in simulated terror. She waved her hands in front of her. ‘Is it all a bad dream?’

      ‘Yes’, snapped Mary, ignoring her daughter, with a look to Miss Atkins which clearly implied, No Tip Today! ‘We had heard of the terrible cream shortage in Kendal.’

      ‘And not just in Kendal,’ added Martin loyally.

      ‘Where else?’ Sonia asked, excitedly. ‘Hunstanton? Are the cows dying?’

      ‘We export most of our cream to France. And elsewhere,’ said Mary. ‘Perhaps to Sweden.’

      ‘And Poland,’ you added, helpfully. ‘Because of the inv –’ You stopped just in time, to add instead, ‘the invalids there.’

      Miss Atkins looked sad when she said goodbye to you all, standing at the door of the teashop, wringing her hands in her apron – much to Mary’s annoyance.

      On the drive home, progress was impeded by an army convoy of five-ton lorries travelling slowly along the road to the port. The troops in the rear vehicle shouted, whistled and gestured rudely at your family.

      ‘They’re laughing at my hump,’ said Sonia. She waved happily to the men.

      ‘Rubbish. They’re just rude young men, like all soldiers.’ Thus Martin, feeling uncomfortable about some of the ruder gestures.

      ‘What are they doing, pa?’

      ‘Doing? Doing? What do you mean? They’re soldiers being taken somewhere to have a nice summer holiday.’

      At last you arrived home. Gyp came out to greet you, wagging his tail. Sonia was still worrying about the soldiers’ vulgar calls.

      ‘I think I’m the prettiest hunchback in the world, ma. Why isn’t there a beauty contest for hunchbacks?’

      ‘Because you’d lose,’ you told her, exasperated by her fantasies.

      Mary told you both to be quiet and marched into the house, calling for Jane to get you all a pot of tea, despite the cream teas you had recently consumed.

      Her daughter followed her, complaining. ‘My hump is really pretty. The nurse told me so. She promised that when I die she will have me stuffed.’

      ‘Shut up, Sonia. Valerie never had a hump and nor do you. You know mummy sacked that silly nurse.’

      ‘She said that there were angel wings inside my hump and one day it would break open and then I could fly up to heaven.’ She paused. ‘I bet there’s going to be oodles of blood when it does break open.’ Pulling her little blue coat off and flinging it on the floor, she added, ‘Hope I don’t meet boring Valerie up there in heaven.’

      Mary slumped onto her leather sofa and regarded her little daughter. ‘That’s all pure nonsense. Valerie would never have said anything like that. In any case, there’s no place called heaven. Heaven is here in our nice home.’

      Sonia sat on the curled arm of a second sofa, this one covered in viridian green satin, put her feet together and clutched her toes, so that her folded legs stuck out like wings to either side, and made a goblin face at her mother.

      ‘If I haven’t got a hump, then why don’t we have any mirrors in this nice home of ours?’

      ‘That’s a silly argument. It’s like saying that because we saw one convoy of troops on the road, England is at war.’

      ‘Ha ha, what’s that got to do with it?’

      ‘Sonia, I love you dearly, but you are making me cross and you are ruining that sofa.’ Mary pulled her regular, utterly-fed-up face. ‘And pick your nice coat up off the floor.’

      Jane entered with a tray of tea, set it down on a side table, opened a gateleg table and moved it to Mary’s side. She set the tray down on the table.

      Sonia, who had not moved from her position said, ‘Jane, I’m a hunchback, aren’t I?’

      Jane hesitated. Sonia laughed contemptuously. ‘Oh, you can tell me the truth. Ma won’t sack you for it.’

      Before the maid could answer, Mary said, ‘Jane, you know very well Miss Sonia is telling fibs.’

      Caught in the cross-fire, Jane said, mainly to the child, ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Miss Sonia.’

      As she beat a hasty retreat, Sonia stuck out her tongue at the maid’s back.

      ‘Your sister Valerie would never behave like that,’ Mary scolded.

      ‘I hate that Valerie. I’m glad she’s dead! I’d pull her hair if she was still alive.’

      Next morning, Mary drove into town to buy groceries, and you and Sonia went with her. They passed the post office, which was newly barricaded behind a wall of sandbags. Sonia asked why this had happened. Her mother told her that the post office was being rebuilt; the sandbags were to stop hundreds of letters from drifting into the road.

      Mary parked the car outside Randall’s, the grocer, after dropping you off at the railway station. She ordered Sonia to stay in the car while she shopped. Sonia sat and fidgeted and read her comic. She became aware of a curious object rising in the sky above roof level. It was grey and

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