Dark Breakfast
(published 'Elegia' 1995)
Paul thought it must be common practice to have early breakfasts.
He didn't mix readily with his peers at school, so he failed to realise that most other families tumbled from their beds in a state of utter disorientation, disorganisation and bitter bleary-eyed reluctance.
Although his own family was, from his standpoint, the supreme model for all others, such a philosophy of Platonic Forms was, in truth, founded on the slow shifting sands of human imperfections: long since abandoned to the unattainable dreams of a disguised antiquity: its cards dealt out face down to an aspiring human posterity merely to find the jaws of raw animal instincts tearing them to shreds like rushed breakfasts.
In Paul's household, there were no blaring radios giving out the pips on the minute nor the mindless chitter-chatter from the disc-throwing heroes of local time. Nor was television allowed until Songs of Praise on Sunday evening. The fastidious alarm clocks tinkled gently at about four eh em, giving Mother time to prepare breakfast. For her, this was the best part of the day - downhill from there.
Paul yawned. He did not find it as easy as Mother, but on the very first shift of gears in the bedside clock's innards, he jabbed the lever at the back of the heavy-duty case to prevent even the slightest tinkle and he rose with straight back from the bed, his brain in serene underdrive. Mother's alarm was set an hour earlier than his: he could smell the breakfast wafting up the stairs.
Hearing Father stir in the next bedroom, Paul hastily donned his white trunks, serge suit and horn-bill glasses. Indeed, life took shape around him, the hall light beginning to filter more and more into his room from the landing. This part of the day, he called the Needle's Breath...
Downstairs, in the brightly lit dining-room, the meticulous table was already laid for high breakfast. The whitest linen tablecloth still showed its proud creases, the cutlery glinted from over-shining, the porcelain crockery wafer-thin. A steaming samovar of infusing tea rested on its plinth, the cereals already poured into the bowls. A jug of milk, still warm from the cow, hid behind the rack which was stacked to bursting with tall toast, the crusts rounded like church arches. He dreaded the entrance of Mother, for she would no doubt ask him if he had done "big lots" ... and he had not ... not today. Even Regularity had to have an odd day off, now and again.
Paul felt the top of his left arm. The BCG injection still hurt a little. Father had accidentally jogged him there yesterday. He wished there were some Cream Crackers on the table which he preferred to toast as a vehicle for the Golden Shred. The golliwog on the lid of that variety of marmalade had recently lost the features of its face, as if the manufacturers pretended that it was not a person at all, but merely a rag doll in silhouette. Life, whilst becoming more civilised, had turned over-modern, too.
Father came in. He was a big man who had not yet shaved. "Good morning, Paul," he said in a religious tone of voice. "Good morning, sir," came the response. No toilet questions about "big lots" from his father. If Paul had attempted to commence an unrehearsed conversation or to dabble in small talk, Father would have used his favourite expression: "Tell me tomorrow." It was always tell Father tomorrow.
Mother then arrived with the large oval plates balanced precariously on the inadequate tray. They had been carefully warmed through and tingled to the touch. So far, they were empty. She scooted back to the kitchen for the comestibles.
Paul pitied his Mother. Routine was her faith, but that left very little time for life. He suspected she had awkward times of the month: not that she realised Paul knew anything about such matters while he himself wondered how he had gained such knowledge. One night recently he had a nightmare about his mother's menses flowing up into her lungs - why her chest sometimes rattled and curdled in the mornings, he mused, and why she submitted to coughing fits in the Necessarium soon after high breakfast.
His preoccupations wre interrupted by the second arrival of Mother. The serving-dishes contained smoking kippers, lightly boiled eggs rolling about (each with a painted Easter face), wedges of black pudding, thick-cut rashers of back bacon, coddled kidneys stuffed with sweetbreads, and tomorrow's fresh milk...
Paul captured a reclacitrant egg after chasing it round the plate and then enthroned it triumphantly into his makeshift egg-cup (the giant's thimble from his Blackjack board game). He cut his toast into planks: egg soldiers. He wondered how much longer he would live, following the recent salmonella scare. Killer "big lots". And other strange boyish preoccupations.
Later in life, he would often recall such occasions with a sense of postboding. Dark Breakfast, he called them. A single everlasting Platonic Model of a breakfast out of many.
One of the mornings, after Father skulked off to work, Paul saw Mother's eyes weltered with tears, her face drained of waking. "I've got something to tell you, Pauly - about me," she said.
"Tell me tomorrow," said Paul, with new-found manly pride.
After all, he was only a pucker-arsed kid, in those far-off days. And he believed his mother would never die. But if she did, it would only be a case of self-perpetuation and blood-pudding.
Paul's school friends would never hear from him how special his family really was. Unlike ordinary people whose tomorrows would end one day.
