Salmon for Breakfast<\/p>\n
January; crisp frost on the lawns and hedges; a cold, clear, blue sky.\u00a0 Leila looked out of her bedroom window. Everything\u00a0 looked clean and sharp like a picture postcard; no one about, no insanitary dogs, no sign of the spandex jogger, no nosey tourists.\u00a0 The village was getting back to its proper, ordered, peaceful self. After breakfast she would do her rounds.<\/p>\n
She went downstairs and checked her pantry. No bread; no milk in the fridge either. Leila frowned breakfast was becoming a problem. There was no more liberating from next door since her appalling neighbor had moved into town to live with her daughter; no breakfast prayer group or coffee mornings either since the minister had moved away, and with her, it was rumored, that interfering social worker.\u00a0 May be there was a swig of sherry left, that would be enough to start her rounds and if the village shop was open on the way back, Gladys might give a her a free coffee. She usually made one for the bus driver, but often he hadn\u2019t popped in so she gave it to Leila, \u201cShame to waste it,\u201d she always said.<\/p>\n
There was just an inch in the sherry bottle, Leila swallowed it down and swilled the bottle out with water for a second taste.\u00a0 She pulled on her boots and her old sheepskin coat and, taking her plaid shopping bag, set out. Her neighbor\u2019s cottage had a \u2018For Sale\u2019 sign propped against the hedge. Leila had pulled it down twice already, now she wrenched it down again and carried it round to the back where she shoved it into the untidy forsythia hedge that separated the properties. She was hoping her friend Monica would be able to move in.\u00a0 Monica, always generous with sherry and meat pie suppers, had often spoken of moving to the village. The rest of the gnomes had gone from the front garden, thank goodness; perhaps Helena, from the village committee, had got someone to remove them.\u00a0 She made her way across to Helena\u2019s lovely house standing back from the end of the green. There was a big blue car parked on the gravel drive. Her husband must be home again.\u00a0 Leila checked the basket hanging on the gate post where Helena left money for the paper boy. No money, but yesterday\u2019s paper, good, something to read anyway.\u00a0 Leila tucked it into her shopping bag and moved on. She crossed the stream and went up the lane. According to Gladys, people had just moved in to one of the two new houses at the top. The place had a haphazard air \u2013 no curtains, boxes stacked on the porch.\u00a0 A jumble of bikes sprawled between the house and the garage. Leila was alarmed. Bikes usually meant youths and youths meant trouble \u2013 she would have to keep an eye on the situation.\u00a0 A cardboard box lay by the gate post full of potatoes and onions. Leila helped herself to several potatoes and an onion; lunch taken care of. She stowed them away in her bag and headed back down the lane turning left on to the graveled path that ran in front of the cottages on this side of the stream.<\/p>\n
These cottages had been the original village street, together with the pub, the church, the vicarage and the old smithy which was now the village shop. Leila never had to worry about these cottages, they were always well kept, gardens ablaze in the summer with flowers and ancient twisted fruit trees. Leila respected them and had only ever helped herself to an apple or two, nothing else. She passed old Margaret\u2019s blue front door remembering how Margaret had made such a fuss last summer saying someone had broken in and been in her bed too!\u00a0 Poor old thing.\u00a0 She turned up the track to the older buildings at the back. They had been small stone barns at one time and were now let out some times to holiday makers, but Leila was not in favor of that. That nosey social worker had rented one. Leila wondered if she had left anything behind. She went round the back and looked in the kitchen window the table was covered with piles of crockery and pans. She pushed open the door, it stuck on the uneven tiles, but Leila wriggled around it. She looked in the pantry, empty, not even a tin of cat food. Leila shrugged, you couldn\u2019t always be lucky. She rather liked the mugs on the table though, they were pretty, little village scenes. She took two, one for her and one for Monica. When the weather got better they could have coffee in the garden. She didn\u2019t bother going into the other cottage, it was being done up and there was building material piled up in front. She didn\u2019t want to get caught by early workmen.<\/p>\n
The shop wasn\u2019t open yet. She could see a light in the back, they must be getting ready, Gladys and Agnes. She would go up the lane opposite the bus stop and look at Jennifer\u2019s house and then come back past the bungalows. Sometimes Ron, next door to the Harrison fellow who was so ill, would be in his garden, he often gave her a handful of beans or peas, but of course it was way too early in the season for that.<\/p>\n
She walked round past the war memorial and the bus stop and looked up the lane.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t approve of Jennifer\u2019s house. It was one of four stylish new builds in the grounds of a bigger, demolished house,\u00a0 fortunately on a bend screened by hedges and shrubbery from the old garden.\u00a0 Mostly Leila tried to ignore them, but she couldn\u2019t ignore Jennifer; she was becoming quite a problem in Leila\u2019s opinion, always having parties loud with flashy young people, or weekend guests who filled the pub, shrieking and screaming, playing ridiculous quiz games and crowding out the proper villagers. Leila remembered the red headed musician from last year who had been a frequent weekend guest; she had had to deal with him.<\/p>\n
She reached the house; the gate was open, the garage door too and the car gone; the front door ajar; Leila stepped in. The hall was a mess, boots all over the floor, jackets and scarves tossed onto an old oak pew.\u00a0 Leila sniffed, typical, dashing off somewhere. She supposed Gladys\u2019 mother Joan would be in later to tidy up, but perhaps she, Leila, should just check there was nothing left on in the kitchen. She pushed open the swing door; maybe she could liberate something for breakfast.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoing your rounds are you?\u201d\u00a0 Ron from the bungalows was standing behind the island.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you doing here, where\u2019s Jennifer?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGone on holiday, I\u2019m just unblocking her sink for her, Gawd, knows what she puts down it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leila looked at the state of the kitchen; Jennifer must have been having one of her gatherings. There were glasses and china stacked together messily on the draining board and the island held several foil covered platters. Jennifer\u2019s little cat crouched over one whiskers twitching.<\/p>\n
\u201cGet off you little scavenger!\u201d Ron swiped at it with a dish towel, \u201cSalmon that is, she can smell it a mile away. Go on get off!\u201d<\/p>\n
Leila\u2019s mouth watered. She peeked under the edge of the foil. Dainty quarter sandwiches of smoked salmon on brown bread.\u00a0 \u201cSo wasteful,\u201d she sniffed. Her fingers crept out, perhaps she could quickly liberate just one or two.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere take a few,\u201d Ron was wrapping a pile of the little sandwiches in foil, \u201cmight as well, Joan will only throw them out, and have a bit of this.\u201d He hacked off a lump of cheese from another platter added a handful of crackers and wrapped them in a piece of kitchen paper.<\/p>\n
\u201cPoor old thing,\u201d said Ron to his wife later that morning, \u201cShe looked half famished, twitching at the salmon just like that cat.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe gets by,\u201d said his wife, \u201cI saw her coming back from the shop with her coffee, Gladys always has one for her, we see she\u2019s alright.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back home Leila neatly documented the day\u2019s rounds in her notebook. She unwrapped the sandwiches and opened the bottle of wine she had liberated from a crate in Jennifer\u2019s hall and smiled with satisfaction.\u00a0 Potato fry up for lunch, cheese and wine for dinner \u2013 the village never let her down.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Salmon for Breakfast January; crisp frost on the lawns and hedges; a cold, clear, blue sky.\u00a0 Leila looked out of her bedroom window. Everything\u00a0 looked clean and sharp like a picture postcard; no one about, no insanitary dogs, no sign of the spandex jogger, no nosey tourists.\u00a0 The village was getting back to its proper, … Continue reading “Salmon for Breakfast (short story)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-excerpts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/francesgilbert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/francesgilbert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/francesgilbert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francesgilbert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francesgilbert.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/francesgilbert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":444,"href":"https:\/\/francesgilbert.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions\/444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/francesgilbert.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francesgilbert.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francesgilbert.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}