Hastings

A soft-boiled egg sits before me. It has been carefully placed in a white china egg-cup with precision from a dented saucepan. I give my mother a sideways glance to check that it is OK to get stuck in - a tiny nod in return indicates her permission. I have to get this right, as my great aunt is fastidious about table manners. I tap on the speckled brown shell with a tarnished silver-plated spoon. “With it,” Aunt Ruth murmurs, as she serves an egg to my mother. I peel off the shell as carefully as I can with my stubby eight-year-old fingers. I spoon out the goopy yellow and springy white, taking care to set my spoon on the side between mouthfuls, then nibble on paper-thin white bread and butter. The egg has a slight metallic taste, which I blame on the spoon. An ancient cruet set is passed by: salt, pepper and crusty English mustard. Uncle Wright dusts his egg with pepper. I sneeze. Over my egg. Aunt Ruth will never truly absolve me. 

Our great aunt and uncle live in Hastings, or, more correctly, St. Leonards. They are quite particular about that. We go and visit them every few months, and sometimes stay for a few days. Great Aunt Ruth has steel grey hair in a no-nonsense pudding basin cut. Probably done with a pudding basin. She stoops as if she has dropped something in front of her, and shuffles in her sensible shoes along the worn linoleum from kitchen to dining room. Mum says that Aunt Ruth has a “dowager’s hump”, but I don’t really know what that means — well, I do know what a hump means (camels and whatnot) but I have no clue about dowagers. Aunt Ruth has a reddened nose and sad, watery eyes that are not dissimilar to those of her ancient Cocker Spaniel, Bess. Bess is most often found in front of the electric fire in the small dining room that adjoins the kitchen, since it is the warmest spot in the house. 

Aunt Ruth and Uncle Wright live frugally, like elderly church mice. They have married late in life, and are devoted to each other, although I notice that Wright does most of the talking and Ruth does most of the work. Uncle Wright has a lot of interests: football, painting, politics, and goes down to The Railway pub with Dad after dinner to, “put the world to rights.” He has a thin white moustache and a habit of blinking several times behind his spectacles. Supper is always a grand affair, but the best part is the orange jelly with tinned mandarin segments. My portion (in a pretty glass dessert bowl) is gobbled up quickly, but I dare not ask for a second helping as Aunt Ruth is always a touch snippy with me, and I want to avoid being chastised. 

When Dad and Uncle Wright go to the pub, we are allowed to watch television in the front room; as this is Saturday night, we can catch the latest Dr. Who in the front room.We gather around the black-and-white set, ready to be scared out of our wits by the Cybermen. This is my favourite part of our outing to Hastings, as I am allowed to have a small sherry, always served in crystal glasses. Aunt Ruth countenances only one brand -  Tio Pepe Extra Dry Fino - which I sip, together with handfuls of salty peanuts.

Aunt Ruth and Uncle Wright’s house is on three storeys –– the top floor is a self-contained flat: bedroom, living room and kitchen. This is reached from the top landing (where the bathroom is also located). Mum and Dad have the bedroom, with its narrow single beds, ochre-satin eiderdowns and starched sheets. Us kids have camp beds in the living room. These beds are an eclectic mix: my older sister has an ex-army camp bed with khaki canvas and wooden frame. It wobbles and creaks when she clambers in. My oldest sister has an orange canvas beach lounger, that has a death wish on all its occupants: it will either squash your fingers in its mean-spirited hinges, or upend you if you don’t sit exactly in the middle. It is something like a giant Venus Fly Trap. My bed is a quieter specimen, made from several metal tubes that have to be connected together before a royal blue canvas cover is fitted over it. It is only a few inches off the floor, but at least it is quite sturdy and doesn’t object to being slept on. Once we are in bed, mum gives us sugared hot milk, in cups and saucers. She tucks us in with a waft of Blue Grass perfume and her goodnight blessing: “Kiss Mama, kiss Dada, snugglies Grandma.” We fall asleep quickly. 

I am woken by the cries and squawks of the local seagulls. If nobody else is awake, I lie in bed, examining the wall paper. The wall paper is very fancy, given that this room is rarely used. It has a diamond and stripe pattern in grey and burgundy. Each diamond is made up of a series of dots, but each dot is slightly misshapen, and none are the same. A bit like snowflakes, I think. 

We spend our days in Hastings mostly on the beach, or walking along the esplanade. Sometimes we take a detour along Bottle Alley: a walkway underneath the main promenade that is lined with panels of pieces of coloured broken glass stuck into concrete. Sometimes we browse in the tourist shops along the seafront; there is one shop that we return to year after year. I peer into the window, watching the glass-maker at work. He forms tiny beasties by heating rods of different coloured glass, producing ark-fulls of animals: turtles and angelfish, rabbits and swans. I have a favourite: an octopus, a blue, luminous creature with fragile spaghetti legs and startled, googly eyes. At home I have him sing along and do the actions with me, “Swimming, swimming, in a swimming hole…” 

Sometimes we walk to the end of the town to the fishermen’s huts and boats. There are tall, fishing net huts here that tower above the beach like a rows of black-frocked guardsmen. There’s a smell that pervades this narrow wedge of the town: a mixture of fish, seaweed and oil that seeps out of the brick and wood. We scrabble over the drifts of cobble stones to reach the fresh fish stands. Mum likes to buy fresh fish here: cod, sole and plaice, and prepare it back at the flat for supper: fresh fish and vegetables, because we are not one of those fish-and-chips-bread-and-jam families. We have our meals at the table, with a table cloth and napkins, wedding-present cutlery and somewhat battered table mats. We have salt and vinegar, but not tomato ketchup. Our meals have strict rules of behaviour that are always enforced: “Get your elbows off the table!” “Put your knife and fork down - are you conducting an orchestra?” I pick through my food, eyes down, looking out for needle-like bones. Every scrap is eaten up; guilt and fear drive me to push down the flaky fish and stringy beans. 

One summer, we take a day trip to Hastings. The weather has been warm and dry, and we are looking forward to a day on the beach, sunbathing and swimming. I spend the day splashing in the waves and wandering along the strands of seaweed, nose-down looking for sea shells and pretty stones. Mum has brought a picnic with our favourite goodies: cheese and Branston pickle sandwiches, sausage rolls, crisps and Penguin biscuits. The chocolate sticks to the Penguin wrapper, so I gobble mine quickly, and then lick the wrapper clean when my mum isn’t looking. Mum has brought the sun-tan lotion, but I am careless in its application, and, since there is a brisk sea breeze, I don’t notice that my skin is cooking. On the way home, we huddle together in the back seat, shivering under a green tartan blanket. To keep us entertained, we play “Little Blue Light.” This involves asking questions of the little blue light on the dashboard: if the answer is “yes”, the light comes on. If “no”, then the light goes off. “Do you like sausages?” “Do you like ice-cream?” It never occurs to me that this light has anything to do with the operation of the headlights. Once home, we help mum with the unpacking and tumble into bed. During the night, the extent of my sunburn becomes clear. My back and legs are red raw, and my shoulders are starting to blister. I cannot sleep, and by midnight I am throwing up in the bathroom. My mum hears my distress and calms me down, saying that I will be, “as brown as a berry in the morning.” She puts Nivea cream on my tender skin, and tucks me back into bed. The next morning I am not as brown as a berry, but as red as a pomegranate, and thoroughly miserable at my own stupidity.