Fresh tomatoes and bread

Fresh tomatoes still on the vine with a sprinkling of sea-salt, one of life's little luxuries, and add a few slices of cold chicken and some fresh bread and one is in heaven. No butter (too much saturated fat) but this modern stuff is palatable; besides, it's the baking of my own bread that's the pleasure. My mother's old mixing bowl still does service but I use this dried, easdy-mix yeast that works well enough so long as you use twice the amount that you should. It's nearly seventy years now since I used to watch my mother mix up the fresh yeast. I remember it came in a slab, wrapped in greaseproof paper and stank out the kitchen until it was mixed with the dough and then the smell was transformed into something magical. A packet from the supermarket isn't quite the same but it does have the advantage of being quick and certain.
There's music on the radio (Radio Three) and while I slice the tomato I listen to Elgar's musical picture of Sir John Falstaff. What an old fool he was: Falstaff not Sir Edward; all that debauchery and display and for what? Prince Hal might be his comrade in wine but King Henry denied him; such is life and such are self-delusions.
The front door bell rings. No one there again so it must have been the local kids playing their version of "Knocky-nine-doors". I eat and wash the plate then consider the evening that stretches ahead. Is there anything on the telly worth watching? Nothing but the usual rubbish: cook this, makeover that, buy this house and sell a few family treasures, try and sing some inane song in front of a panel of rude people, beat up your wife and confess all to the nation or be part of a drama in which a disconnected and drunken copper catchs you. Oh, good, there's a programme about loosing a couple of stones and fit into a new dress to energise a lazy husband; it's all the bloody same!
Thank God there's still a library in the village though now it's mostly full of kids doing their homework on the internet or women who should know better t their age trying to keep fit. Now, don't get me wrong, I've nothing against wmoen keeping fit but some of the ones that frequent the community centre-cum-library should learn to grow old gracefully. If yhou don't have the legs then don't wear the short skirt and as for the over-tanned and wrinkly cleavage,,,,,
Suduko done, the chess problem too demanding and I'm stuck on three clues in the crossword so it's time for a read. Whoever said they prefered radio to television because the pictures were better had a point. What he/she should have added was that the pictures in a book are better still! Some time ago I got rid of the coal fire and invested in a coal-fire effect gas contraption. It still fools me everytime I look at it, yet it's warm and convenient and I don't have to worry about cleaning it out every morninjg before I can lay it. Besides, I used to hate going into the back yard when the rain fell or the snow lay on the ground just to get another shovel-full from the bunker.
Sibelius on the CD player, the fire warming the room, subdued lighting shining onto my chair, a glass of Bowmore whisky on the side table and a book to read. What more could an old man like me want? Granted, there's no cat curled up on the hearth rug and the old dog died six months ago but they would only be the icing on the cake. What makes this really complete is the lashing of the winter rain on the window and the slushing noise of the occasional car as it passes down the road. I feel safe and warm and vindicated in my indulgence.

The murder had been committed and Chief Inspector Maigret has plodded his was down many of Paris's mean streets and is now idly thinking over the facts of the case in a brasserie somewhere close to Notre Dame when the front door bell rings. It's bound to be kids again so I don't bother. Last month it was pennies for the Guy. It rings again so I ready myself for saying "No!" When I get to the door there'll be a trio of snotty-nosed kids trying to sing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and that'll be all you'll get. One of the little cherubs is probably no older than four and topped off with blond ringlets. She'll be standing at the front to soften your heart. Damn!
The bell rings yet again. I leave Inspector Maigret to his cognac and go to the door. It's one of those new plastic ones with dozens of locks that answer to just the one key but I don't have a peep-hole like in my old wooden door so I have to open it before I can tell who it is. There isn't even a security chain; not yet!
"Are you George Houghton?"
"Who is it?" I find it sensible not to reveal too much all at once; you've no idea who the person might be. The night is dark and all I can see is a muffled figure.
"I'm looking for George Houghton. I'm a relative of his." The voice sounds Australian but as far as I know I have no relatives in Australia. I don't have that many in England!
"I still want to know who is asking." I'm not usually so rudely persistent but it's dark out there and the rain is still coming down in bucket-fulls.
"He's my grandfather," says the voice.

"Books, you've got so many books." After shedding her sodden outdoor clothes I take the girl, my "granddaughter", into the front room to be warmed by the fire. "Nan said you'd have books. She told me you were always reading. You were reading when she met you. Is that true?"
"Depends upon who your Nan is?"
"Was, my Nan died last January." I tell her I'm sorry and offer her tea, or coffee (though I'm not sure I have any). "That's fine, but I don't. If you've a hot chocolate then I wouldn't say no."
One of my little indulgencies is to treat myself to a bar or two of Toblerone chocolate. I open one of their triangular packets and offer her a piece to occupy her while I make her drink. "Do you know who the patent office clerk was when Peter Tobler (or was it Paul) went to register his design?" I don't. "Albert Einstein; how's that for a bit of useless information?" I have to smile. It's just the sort of thing I like to know.
She follow me into the kitchen and leans against the worktop as I fill the kettle. "Not too much water now," she says but I see that she's sort-of joking. She must say this a lot at home. "We have to think of the planet you know." She starts to study some of the pictures I have on the kitchen wall and I look at her. If there's a typical Australian girl then I guess it's her: bleached-blond and wheaten-course hair cut short and practical; a healthy outdoor-skin and an open face full of strength and optimism. She even smells of hot summers and fresh air. Memories stir in me; memories of past summers and joy and laughter but not of a child. I had a long summer made magical by an Australian girl and nights of hesitant passion, but I had no knowledge of a child. There must have been a child for this girl to stand there in my kitchen. No, it can't be! Caroline would have told me if she'd been pregnant, wouldn't she? This is surely a scam, or a mistake? Yet, as the girl stands there I can see something familiar in her profile.
"I'm not here after anything, if that's what you're thinking!" She speaks as if she can read my mind. "I just want to know where I come from, that's all. It's my curse; to be curious."

We sit by the fire in the front room with our hot chocolate and a piece of cake and stay silent while the wind continues to drive the rain against the windows. "Is it always like this in England?" she asks.
"Not always," I say. "There are times when the sun shines and the birds sing."
"I'm so glad," she says and sips her chocolate. "That's good; the chocolate I mean, not the weather." She eats her cake and asks me who made it and is surprised when I tell it's one of mine. "Strewth! A bloke baking a cake," she says and I know she's teasing me by the exaggerated Australian accent she puts on. I smile and she returns the smile and there are more memories. "It's a bonza cake," she says in the same voice.
The plates are taken to the kitchen before I ask her if she has any proof of who she says she is. "I don't want to sound like a misanthropist or a doubting Thomas or what-have-you, but you must see what a shock this has been."
"I feel lucky to have even got over the threshold," she says. "As for proof, I've got some family photographs and copies of birth certificate and so on. I didn't expect you not to ask. she smiles again and there is that tug at my heart.
She starts to spread the pictures out on the hearthrug and I kneel down to look at them. She starts with herself as a child: there's a picture of her at the beach; with a dog; by a garden gate; with a man I take to be her father; and a woman I take to be her mother. If she is telling me the truth then this is the daughter I never knew I had.
"This is my mother when she was younger; before I was born." She hads me a studio portrait of a girl-woman at the end of her teens, looking directly into the camera lens. She is very pretty... no, she is beautiful and reminds me a little of Caroline with her long hair and her stubborn chin but Caroline was blond and this girl-woman is dark. I was dark and so was my mother. About the eyes and the high cheekbones there is something of my mother. I show her a couple of photographs of my mother I've had enlarged. "She's a beaut isn't she!" says the girl and I have to admit that my mother was a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty.
"This is my Nan," says the girl as she hands me a photograph of an elderly woman; still handsome and as open and abrupt with the camera as the girl-woman in the previous picture. "And this is her juswt after my mum was born." I remeber looking up from my book and seeing those eyes. I was on a ferry crossing Sydney Harbour and she wanted to know what I thought of Madame Bovary. She'd just read it and thought herslef the only one in Australia with aliking for French literature.

I fetched an old biscuit tin from the cupboard. It's a sad place in which to consign so many memories but I never bought an album nor found sorting them something I wanted to do. "This is my Caroline," I say and fish out a picture of my summer-girl from the middle of the pile. The two photographs taken only months apart are laid next to each other.
"There, are you convinced now?" asks the girl. They are beyond doubt of the same woman; the smile and the open and honest eyes are identical. "You might recognise these," she says and hands me a large manila envelope. I fumble and hold it the wrong way round and out fall several letters.
"They're mine!" I say. Pale blue airmail envelopes with matching tissue-thin sheets full of my scrawl: stock news from Papua and intimate details of work I'd done after leaving her. My youth is there and I am looking once more into my past. People and places I'd forgotten about and a love I had lost.
""They're Nan's letters that you wrote to her. Did she ever reply?"
"I received a few but then she just stopped writing and I never knew why. I tried calling at her house but there was no one there; they'd moved. I suppose I know why now."

"How does your mother feel about you being here, looking for me?" She doesn't answer right away. "Your mother doesn't know does she?" The girl shakes her head.
"My mother's name is Agnes. It's not a family name and it's unusual but I like it," she says.
"My mother was called Agnes. Caroline knew that."
"Ah! My name is Alison; Alison Vera. The Vera comes from my Nan's mum."
"I know, I met her." We spend some time talking about the home and the famliy that I knew back then. There was a brother who Alison knows nothing about. "He was killed in Viet Nam," I tell her.
I look through her other photographs and her letters and the documents and I feel warm towards the idea of being this wonderful girl's grandfather, and protective and I fuss and she she laughs and I say silly things like I should try and make the effort to go to Australia and she laughs even more.
"Why did Nan never tell you?" she asks but that's a question I can't answer... not honestly. I say something about it being a great shame to be single and pregnant back in the sixties but I wonder if Caroline loved me enough to wish me to be her life-companion.
"What would you have done had you known?" she asks.
"Married her," I say without any hesitation.
"Would you?"
"Like a shot!" When Caroline and I had parted she'd seemed happy enough for me to go, even encouraging me in my work. We'd spoken of reuniting but that only helped a little to fill the vast emptiness I felt being without her. Only work and tghe daily writing of letters gave me some hope but when the letters stopped coming I sank even deeper. I came home a sick man, riddled with malaria and drifted until it was too late for anything but being alone.
"I do believe that you'd have stuck by Nan. She never married you know. Told everyone you'd died." Knowing that hurt me. "What a pity you didn't get together again!" She surprises me by giving me a great big hug and I see tears in her eyes. "I'm tired Gramps, and I'd like to go to bed if it's alright with you."

In the morning I pull back the curtains of my bedroom and watch the rain still falling outside. There was not one day when it rained while I was with Caroline, none that I remembered. It rained in Papue New Guinea, rain the like of which I have never exerienced before or since. Now, my old joints complain at the damp. Downstairs, I start to make breakfast: for two. The drinking chocolate goes cold and the bacon is dry and over-cooked and still Alison does not appear. I go into the hall to call her but there is no answer and her coat and scarf are missing. She has gone!
I spend the day alternating between tears, the black dog of depression and anger. Alison has left no note. There is not even any sign that she ever salept in the bed in the spare room. Every piece of evidence that she was ever in my house has disappeared. I feel the pain of loss again, and this time it is very sharp. There is a half bottle of whisky on the side table. Did I drink myself silly and dream the whole thing?
Back in the kitchen I eat whatever passes for a breakfast more out of habit than from hunger. The religious glass of orange juice nearly chokes me. There is yesterday's Guardian newspaper next to the kitchen sink, open, and I can't remember leaving it there. The last time I saw it was in the front room. I pick it up and am about to place it in the recycling bin when I notice that it is open at a page of holiday offers and there is one for Australia; one that I can afford. I put the paper back on the worktop. Later in the day I pick up the telephone and dial the number in the advertisement and "yes" says the young woman at the travel agency, there is one seat left if I'm interested; am I interested?