The Late Hector Kipling Read Online Free PDF

wicker chair.‘What do you think, then?’ she says, putting her hand over her mouth, like a schoolgirl who’s just sprayed something rude on the wall. She’s chuckling.
    ‘You’re knocking down the fireplace?’
    ‘We’ve decided it’s old fashioned.’
    Dad’s got his head down and he’s preoccupied with breathing.
    ‘Shouldn’t you be getting someone in to do this?’ I say.
    ‘Oh, your dad’s strong,’ she says, ‘he’s knocking on but he’s still got some energy left. Haven’t you, Derek?’
    And Dad looks up, all red in the face, mouth open, fist to his chest. ‘Eh?’
    ‘I was just saying to Hector, you might be seventy-eight but you’ve still got it in you.’
    ‘Oh aye,’ he says, ‘I’m not beat yet.’
    I worry about this.
    ‘Do you want some breakfast?’
    ‘In a minute.’
    ‘Bacon?’
    ‘Don’t start, Mum.’
    ’Is Eleni getting up?’ and she’s all frisky, like she’s excited just to say her name.
    ‘I think so, yes. The hammering woke us both up.’
    Mum scampers over and takes me in her arms. She smells all clean. I return the embrace. ‘Oh, and I do love you, Hector. I’m so glad you’ve come up to see us. I do love you.’ She’s got me in a clinch and I can barely move. ‘Don’t we, Derek? Don’t we love him?’
    ‘Oh aye,’ Dad says, and grips onto his sweating purple head, staring at the floor. Always did.’
    ‘I love you too, Mum,’ I say, ‘I love you both.’
    ‘And we love Eleni. She’s smashing, is Eleni. You can have right nice natural conversations with Eleni.’
    Right nice natural conversations are important to Mum. She neverhad right nice natural conversations with Sheba. I had right nice natural conversations with Sheba, at first. And then ...
    ‘What do you think?’ says Mum, nodding towards Dad’s demolition. ‘Do you think we’re mad?’ She hugs me again and I hold my breath cos I don’t want her to smell last night’s beer on me.

    Eleni’s put on her best clothes and we eat our toast and beans in the conservatory. That’s what Mum calls it: The Conservatory. Basically it’s a little extension built onto the back of the house overlooking the small lawn and rockery. Mum’s filled it up with plants. They’re everywhere, climbing up the walls, twisted around the brass light fittings. Mum’s good with plants. And whenever she mentions me and my painting and says, ‘Eee, I don’t know where you get it all from,’ I always credit it to her and how she’s so good with plants and how that’s a sort of art in itself. I don’t say this as a platitude. I mean it. I’m useless with plants. Eleni’s useless with plants as well. They die. Perhaps it’s the fumes. Or perhaps it’s just that we’re useless.
    ‘I was just reading this, Eleni,’ says Mum, pointing with her big bitten finger to the newspaper.
    ‘What’s that, Connie?’ says Eleni.
    ‘About some woman called Frida Kahlo,’ says Mum, rhyming it with callow.
    ‘Ah yes,’ says Eleni, smiling, beautiful, uncomplicated in her enthusiasm for whatever Mum is about to profess.
    ‘Madonna’s got a lot of her paintings, it says here.’
    ‘Ah yes,’ says Eleni, awaiting Mum’s point.
    ‘It says here that she was Mexican.’
    ‘Yes,’ says Eleni, realizing that there may not be a point after all. Or perhaps it’s just me who realizes this.
    ‘She was knocked over by a bus,’ says Mum, stroking her chin like she’s a man with whiskers, ‘like Beryl next door.’
    ‘What?’ I say.

    ‘Beryl Short next door.’
    ‘What about her?’
    ‘Beryl was knocked over by a bus. She’d gone all giddy on medication and just stepped out. She told me she thought she was stepping out to take a little paddle.’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘A little paddle in the sea. But she wasn’t. She was in the middle of Waterloo Road.’
    Eleni and me look at each other and smile. I take a sip of my tea. Mum takes a sip of hers. And she’s off again ...
    ‘Now you see she was very personal