Excerpts from Dearest Milly
Here are a couple of excerpts. In the first we meet the three Millies and in the second, you get introduced to Godfrey, the old boy they set their sights on .......
The Zimmer frame teetered – and with it Millicent Higgs – as one of its rubber leg ends caught in the gap at the top of the minibus stairs.
To say that Millicent’s life flashed before her eyes as she contemplated tumbling to the ground and breaking every one of her octogenarian bones would be untrue. There was no time for such a mental bio-pic before irritation welled up inside her at the fact that Camilla, who had debouched from the vehicle ahead of her with the fruits of their shopping expedition, was not still at the foot of the stairs to break her fall, if indeed the wretched walker launched her groundward. And after this, in quick succession, further irritation caused by a poke in the back from Mildred Chesterton’s stick and the gentle inquiry from the stick-bearer ‘are you stuck again?’ which, though solicitous when leaving the mouth of its deliverer appeared accusatory by the time it reached the ear of its addressee.
Just then the driver, a man whose rotundity falsely suggested joviality, appeared at the bottom of the three steps and relieved Millicent of the need to go on to consider whether she and her Zimmer frame would end up in a pile on the pavement. At the very least the driver would provide some cushioning, she might have thought, had she not been busy addressing herself to the question of Milly Chesterton’s stick.
‘Stop poking me, Mildred, or I’ll have to get them to take your stick away,’ she scolded over her shoulder, at once invoking the idea that there was some higher authority encompassed in the idea of ‘them’ and suggesting that Millicent herself held some sway with that authority.
‘Sorry dear,’ came Mildred’s response, head stooped, face now near hard against her friend’s back. ‘Perhaps the driver can help?’ It was a hope – in truth, their only hope – expressed to the air as much as to the temporarily stationary Millicent, and almost as she gave it voice the driver, scowling, was heaving himself up to the second step and bending down to release the front of the Zimmer frame from the grasping clutches of his vehicle.
Once she felt solid asphalt again beneath her six legs, Millicent, not without a certain grace, gave a short thank you to the driver and, without waiting for her stick-wielding follower, trounced off after Camilla, to the extent that an eighty-three year old woman on a Zimmer frame could be said to trounce off – more a trouncing frame of mind than anything.
‘Camilla Harrington-Thomas!’ she called sternly to the rather statuesque woman carrying an Aldi bag in one hand and resting her other hand on a faded tartan shopping trolley which the Social Committee had some years ago acquired for expeditions such as that from which the trio had just returned – a half day to the shopping centre at Elephant & Castle to purchase the nibbles for the following night’s weekly Happy Hour. Milly Thomas turned around, the look of mild surprise on her face (a look frequently to be seen there) suggesting that she had briefly forgotten where she was and what she was doing there.
Here's the second extract ......
On Wednesday morning, one of the visitors’ parking spaces just near the entrance to the Village Centre was occupied by a white transit van. From the innards of the van there were being carried – self-importantly, by a plumpish man in his fifties who had the look of somebody much put upon – boxes of who knows what and the odd stick of furniture ranging from faux Chippendale to seventies kitsch, a sort of visual commentary on the passing decades of the new resident’s life.
T
he resident of flat 22 heard, and the resident of flat 24 would have heard had she managed to change the batteries in her hearing aids, the heft and shove of boxes being brought into flat 23 next door, followed by a horror movie screech and some effing and blinding as the plump box-carrier tripped over the cat-cage which, still containing its prisoner, had been inappropriately left in the middle of the passageway while its owner, the new resident, went to the loo.
‘What was that?’ called Major Godfrey Ammet (Retd.) from the bathroom as he struggled to do up the fly of his trousers.
‘Bloody cat!’ came the reply from the living room. ‘Why on earth you keep the thing, I don’t know.’
‘She’s got a name, you know,’ said the Major tetchily as he emerged from the loo, only one or two splash marks adorning his fawn coloured trousers. The Major, a veteran of several wars, who had survived battles against the Japanese, the Koreans and two wives, rather doted on the cat. It ranked very highly in the loves of his life, well ahead of any of the members of his grasping family, including the son who was sullenly helping him move into this new flat, and second only to the football club after which the animal was named, the proximity of which accounted for the Major’s reluctant decision, which his son had been urging upon him for some time, to move from his big house in Camberwell into a retirement village at all.
Millwall FC’s home ground had been like a second home to Godfrey Ammet since he was a boy, travelling up to Cold Blow Lane for 3.15 on a Saturday afternoon whenever the team was playing at home, long before they moved to the new Den in ’93. Every match he’d gone up by train with his dad until the old man passed away, from the poorer end of Norwood, where everyone supported either Millwall or Palace and where the rivalries could split whole families apart, especially when they used to be in the same league. He’d never missed a home game except when he was on active service, and he had signed pictures of every captain since 1946. In one of the unpacked boxes now adorning the flat.
It had been a masterstroke, as far as his son was concerned, to find The Everglades, because although Godfrey felt like he was being pushed out of his home and into something different, where he didn’t really want to be, this Village had the advantage that it was right next door to the Den, his beloved Lions’ home ground. Even with his slightly shuffling gait and having to go round the long way to get across the railway line, he could walk there in 15 minutes. So the old man had let himself be pushed, and here he was. And he’d enjoy being close to the club, but he was buggered if his son was going to see a penny of what he’d managed to get for the big house, now ready to be knocked down and replaced with a block of luxury flats for which some hippie types – or did he mean hipster types? – would probably pay a fortune.
‘You can go now, Henry,’ said the Major. ‘There’s no need for you to help me unpack. I’ll take my time and do it over a couple of days.’
Henry didn’t need to be told twice, and within 10 minutes Major Godfrey Ammet (Retd) and his cat, Millwall, were alone in their new home, both wondering what the future held.