The Comforters

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On the first day of his holiday Laurence Manders woke to hear his grandmother’s voice below.

‘I’ll have a large wholemeal. I’ve got my grandson stopping for a week, who’s on the B.B.C. That’s my daughter’s boy, Lady Manders. He won’t eat white bread, one of his fads.’

Laurence shouted from the window, ‘Grandmother, I adore white bread and I have no fads.’

She puckered and beamed up at him.

‘Shouting from the window,’ she said to the baker.

‘You woke me up,’ Laurence said.

‘My grandson,’ she told the baker. ‘A large wholemeal, and don’t forget to call on Wednesday.’

Laurence looked at himself in the glass. ‘I must get up,’ he said, getting back into bed. He gave himself seven minutes.

He followed his grandmother’s movements from the sounds which came clearly through the worn cottage floorboards. At seventy-eight Louisa Jepp did everything very slowly but with extreme attention, as some do when they know they are slightly drunk. Laurence heard a clink and a pause, a tinkle and a pause, breakfast being laid. Her footsteps clicked like a clock that is running down as she moved between the scullery and the little hot kitchen; she refused to shuffle.

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