I prayed the spotlight’d swivel its gaze towards Julia. I prayed Mum wouldn’t mention the poetry prize, not in front of Hugo.
‘Jason won the Hereford and Worcester County Libraries Poetry Prize,’ said Mum. ‘Didn’t you, Jason?’
‘I had to write it.’ Shame boiled my earlobes and there was nowhere to look but at my food. ‘In English. I didn’t’ (I tested the word know a couple of times but saw I was going to stammer spastically on it) ‘I didn’t realize Miss Lippetts was even going to enter it.’
‘Don’t hide your light under a bushel!’ cried Aunt Alice.
‘Jason won a splendid dictionary,’ said Mum, ‘didn’t you, Jason?’
Alex the Git fired his sarcasm below adult radar. ‘I’d really like to hear your poem, Jason.’
‘Can’t. Don’t have my exercise book.’
‘What a pity.’
‘The Malvern Gazetteer printed the winning entries,’ said Mum. ‘Alongside Jason’s mug-shot, in fact! We can dig it out after dinner.’
(Even the memory was a torture. They sent a photographer to school and made me pose in the library reading a book like a complete gaylord.)
‘Poets,’ Uncle Brian smacked his lips, ‘so I’ve heard tell, catch naughty diseases from Parisian ladies of ill repute and die in draughty gavottes by the Seine. Quite a career plan, eh, Mike?’
‘Wonderful prawns, Helena,’ Aunt Alice said.
Dad said, ‘Frozen, from Greenland in Worcester.’
‘Fresh, Michael. From the fishmonger’s.’
‘Oh. Didn’t know there were still any fishmongers left.’
Alex dug up the poetry prize again. ‘At least tell us what your poem was about, Jason. The blossoms of spring? Or was it a love poem?’
‘Can’t see you getting much out of it, Alex,’ said Julia. ‘Jason’s work lacks the subtlety and maturity of The Scorpions.’
Hugo spluttered, to niggle Alex. And to tell me whose side he was on. I could’ve kissed Julia out of sheer gratitude. Almost.
‘Wasn’t that funny,’ Alex muttered at Hugo.
‘Don’t sulk, Alex. It ruins your good looks.’
‘Boys,’ warned Aunt Alice.
The posh gravy boat was passed around the table. Between my creamed potatoes and my miniature Yorkshire puds I created a Mediterranean of gravy. Gibraltar was the tip of a carrot. ‘Dig in!’ said Mum.
Aunt Alice was the first to say, ‘Divine chops, Helena.’
Uncle Brian did a crap Italian accent. ‘Dey melt-a in da mouth!’
Nigel grinned adoringly at his dad.
‘The secret’s in the marinade,’ Mum said to Aunt Alice. ‘I’ll let you have the recipe afterwards.’
‘Oh, but Helena, I’m not leaving without it!’
‘A smidgen more wine, Michael?’ Uncle Brian topped up Dad’s glass (from the second bottle) before Dad could answer, then his own. ‘Don’t mind if I do, Michael, thanks. Here’s looking at you, kid! So Helena, I see your mobile pagoda hasn’t gone up to the great Oriental junkyard in the sky yet?’
Mum put on her polite puzzled face.
‘Your Datsun, Helena! If you weren’t such a wonderful cook it’d be difficult to forgive you for breaking the First Law of Automobiles. Don’t trust a Jap or the tat he churns out. The Germans’ve got the right idea for once. Seen the new Volkswagen adverts? There’s this pint-sized Nip, running round trying to find the new VW Golf, then it drops from the ceiling and flattens him! Wet myself first time I saw it, didn’t I, Alice?’
‘Isn’t your camera,’ Julia wiped her mouth with her napkin, ‘a Nikon, Uncle Brian?’
Hugo said, ‘Nothing wrong with Japanese hi-fi technology, either.’
‘Or computer chips,’ added Nigel.
So I said, ‘Their motorbikes are pretty classic as well.’
Uncle Brian did this disbelieving shrug. ‘Precisely my point, boys and girls! Japs’ll take everyone else’s technology, shrink it down to their own size, and then sell it back to the rest of the world, right, Mike? Mike? You’re with me on this one, at least? What do you expect from the only Axis power that never apologized for the war! They got away with it. Scot-free.’
‘Two hundred thousand civilians killed by atom bombs,’ said Julia, ‘and two million more, incinerated by fire-bombs, is hardly what I would call “scot-free”.’
‘But the fact of the matter is’ (Uncle Brian doesn’t hear what he doesn’t want to) ‘the Japs are still fighting the war. They own Wall Street. London’s next. Walking from the Barbican to my office, you’d need…twenty pairs of hands to count all the Fu Manchu look-alikes you pass by. Listen to this, Helena. My secretary bought herself one of those…whateverthehelltheycall’ems…y’know, those motorised rickshaws…a Honda Civic. That’s it. A turd-brown Honda Civic. She drove it out of the showroom and at the very first roundabout – I jest not – it’s exhaust dropped – clean