Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,7

the edge of her sleeve with my outstretched hand I would have to say something, a word invented by me, but if she saw me coming she could free herself by screaming ‘Hideous!’ or ‘Kinky!’ or both a second before I touched her, thereby freeing her to race away between the tables and chairs while I panted behind – running good words over in my head.

It was at the height of this game that a man stopped me as I hurtled past his table. He held on to my arm and looked at me full in the face. I gulped. I was sure I had been swearing. Bea sidled back and stood behind me.

‘Why don’t you both sit down and take some tea with me?’ the man said in perfect English. He stretched out his hand to Bea and introduced himself. ‘My name,’ he said, ‘is Luigi Mancini.’ He was tall and thin with pure silver hair that slicked back from his temple to the nape of his neck. ‘So you are English,’ he smiled. ‘What shall I call you? The English Children?’

We told him our names and he leant back in his chair, drawing on an ivory cigarette holder. He exhaled a gentle line of blue smoke into the air. ‘I used to know your father,’ he said. ‘In London, in the forties, when he wore silver and gold waistcoats.’ Luigi Mancini chuckled to himself. ‘Does he still wear these waistcoats in silver and gold?’

I wanted to ask whether he meant one silver one and one gold one, on different days. Or whether it was a mixture. One silver-and-gold waistcoat for Sunday best.

‘Probably,’ Bea said.

I tried to picture my father in London dressed in clothes that sparkled. All that came to mind was a colour illustration from ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’. A man in his forties with pockets full of treasure. I had forgotten that I even had a father.

‘I hope you will come and stay with me. I have a house not far from here,’ Luigi Mancini was saying. ‘With a beautiful garden. Will you visit?’

‘Oh, yes,’ we both said in unison, and Bea jumped down and ran and found Mum and led her back to the table.

‘This is Luigi Mancini. And this is our Mum,’ Bea said, and Mum sat down and smiled while a waiter came and poured us all mint tea.

‘Can we go?’ I asked, when the invitation was presented again, and to my relief she said, ‘Of course, we’ll go this weekend. If that’s all right with you?’

Luigi Mancini waved a hand heavy with rings and said he’d be delighted.

Luigi Mancini was a Prince. There was everything but his crown to prove it. I wandered with Bea through the cool dark rooms of his palace. There were gold-framed mirrors and candles, unlit in every room. I slid over polished wooden floors that creaked between one flying carpet and the next. ‘Luigi Mancini, Luigi Mancini,’ I hummed as we explored the upstairs corridor.

‘Do you think maybe Luigi Mancini will ask Mum to marry him?’ I said as we watched them from a bedroom window. They were deep in conversation as they walked in a slow curve around the rose garden. ‘Then I could be a Princess and you could be my lady-in-waiting.’

Bea stared out of the window.

‘Or if you wanted, you could be a Princess too.’

‘Just think, we’d have cornflakes every morning for the rest of our lives,’ she said, and we both sighed.

For the last two mornings we’d sat down to breakfast at a table heavy with linen and silver, in the centre of which was a giant box of cornflakes. ‘Shipped from England,’ Luigi Mancini had said. ‘Especially for my girls.’

There was a host of silent servants, all men, who kept the silver shining and the meals flowing and the beds crisp and turned down. They were not the same men who clipped the rose bushes and collected the petals that sat in bowls around the house or mowed the lawn and mended the fences so that the peacocks didn’t stray too far.

Luigi Mancini and our mother walked back into sight along a gravel path. He was, as always, dressed in white and Mum looked like a Queen in her purple caftan.

‘Anyway, Mum wouldn’t want to marry Luigi Mancini and stay in this house for ever and ever.’

‘Why not?’ I pressed my face against the window-pane to try and lip-read their conversation.

‘She wants to have adventures,’ Bea said. ‘She told me.’

‘When?’

Bea