Page 73 - The English Carnival 7

When we came out of the cafe it had started to rain. ‘We must get a taxi,’ my mother
said. We were wearing ordinary hats and coats, and it was raining quite hard.

‘Why don’t we go back into the cafe and wait for it to stop?’ I said. I actually wanted
another of those banana splits. They were gorgeous.

‘It isn’t going to stop,’ my mother said. ‘We must get home.’

We stood on the pavement in the rain, looking for a taxi. Lots of them came by but they
all had passengers inside them. ‘I wish we had a car with a chauffeur,’ my mother said.

Just then a man came up to us. He was a small man and
What you Think?ou Think?
he was pretty old, probably seventy or more. He raised his What y
hat politely and said to my mother, ‘Excuse me, I do hope Describe the man who
you will excuse me . . . ’ He had a fine white moustache approached narrator’s
and bushy white eyebrows and a wrinkly pink face. mother .

He was sheltering under an umbrella which he held high over his head.

‘Yes?’ my mother said, very cool and distant.

‘I wonder if I could ask a small favour of you,’ he said. ‘It is only a very small favour.’

I saw my mother looking at him suspiciously. She is a
suspicious person, my mother. She is especially suspicious
What you Think?ou Think?
of two things – strange men and boiled eggs. When she cuts What y
off the top of a boiled egg, she pokes around inside it with What was the Golden

her spoon as though expecting to find a mouse or something. rule ?
With strange men, she has a golden rule which says, ‘The
nicer the man seems to be, the more suspicious you must become.’ This little old man
was particularly nice. He was polite. He was well-spoken. He was well-dressed. He

was a real gentleman. The reason I knew he was a gentleman was because of his shoes.
‘You can always spot a gentleman by the shoes he wears,’ was another of my mother’s
favourite sayings. This man had beautiful brown shoes.

‘The truth of the matter is,’ the little man was saying, ‘I’ve got myself into a bit of a
scrape. I need some help. Not much I assure you. It’s almost nothing, in fact, but I do
need it. You see, madam, old people like me often become terribly forgetful . . . ’

My mother’s chin was up and she was staring down at him along the full length of her
nose. It was fearsome thing, this frosty-nosed stare of my mother’s. Most people go to

pieces completely when she gives it to them. I once saw my own headmistress begin to
stammer and simper like an idiot when my mother gave her a really foul frosty-noser.
But the little man on the pavement with the umbrella over his head didn’t bat an eyelid.
He gave a gentle smile and said, ‘I beg you to believe, madam, that I am not in the
habit of stopping ladies in the street and telling them my troubles.’

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The Englsih Carnival-8