Bocconcini

By Christopher Elliott

Bocconcini, a cornucopia of stories, a horn of plenty: youth, art, love, life, Ireland, Italy, Thailand, the macabre, the forbidden, age, and much else. 150 dives into other worlds, other moments, emotions recollected in tranquillity. Points of departure, reflection, possibly even action. New insights into the familiar, a new friend warranting a place among earlier friends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Apr 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528975056

Christopher Elliott

CHRISTOPHER ELLIOTT is a nationally acclaimed consumer advocate who is National Geographic Traveler's Editor-at-Large and resident ombudsman. He writes their "Problem Solved" column, a nationally syndicated weekly travel column, a regular USA Today column, and a daily blog focused on solving consumer travel problems. Elliott writes a weekly column for The Washington Post and is a personal finance blogger at Mint.com. He's hosted a cable TV show and a nationally syndicated radio show, and was an independent producer for NPR and a commentator for both NPR andMarketplace. As a pioneer in digital journalism, he founded the Internet's first business travel website in 1994 and began blogging in 1996, before it was called blogging. He became ABCNews.com's first travel columnist in 1997, and his work has since appeared in a variety of major news outlets, including CBS Interactive, CNN.com, MSNBC.com and USAToday.com. As an early adopter, he was one of the first journalists with a presence on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. Currently, his family is on an open-ended journey around the world, covering the adventure for nationalgeographic.com and the Huffington Post.

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Copyright Information ©

Christopher Elliott (2021)

The right of Christopher Elliott to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528975032 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528975056 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2021)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Youth

Stealing

My friends mostly stole. It was political. Property is bourgeois. Taking is revolutionary. But I appreciated efforts by Mrs Jones to keep her corner shop surviving and liked her small white dog and the smile she usually wore.

So, I didn’t steal even when egged on by Simon and Bartholomew. I rather disliked them for their stupidity for they stole useless objects and usually threw them away. But for days afterwards, went around with an ‘I’m super cool’ attitude which was worse than their usual ‘I’m just a lout’ slouch.

But it began to irk me somewhat. I mean, did I not steal because I thought it was wrong or was I just chicken? Actually, I have always been very chicken and never really doubted that, so perhaps stealing would be a chance to put this right. I’d steal and then I’d know I was brave.

So, one cold, grey, drizzly November night, I went to Mrs Jones’ shop with a one-pound note in my pocket and asked for a four-penny lemon lolly. I did this because I knew she’d have to go behind the shop into her rooms at the back to get some change. This she did and I seized a second lolly and slid it hastily into the pocket of my shorts.

Outside in the cold clamminess of the suburban night, I stood beneath a street light and counted my change: a crisp new fragrant pale magenta 10 shilling note whose purity lay like a beacon of wealth in the misty air, two fat solid half-crowns, two comfortable two-shilling pieces, a neat perky threepenny bit and an old battered penny. Total 19 shillings and four pence…19 shillings and four pence…but a lolly was only four pence. Where were the missing four pennies?

A chill caught my ankles and I swung round amazed to look back at the light from the shop door for yes, it could only be that. She had charged me for two lollies.

So she must have seen me, seen but said nothing. I never knew for sure but the smile, the welcome and the shop remained a most lovable haven for little chicken boys.

Jack-in-the-Box

Wendy slid her infant legs over the polished mahogany boards, lifted the gleaming brass head and laid the needle down carefully into the spinning black groove. The nursery was full of evening sunlight and doves calling in the elm by the window. The gravelly rasping gave way to a light ironic voice and a lilting gay melody:

I’ve got a lazy Jack ’n the Box

He won’t just do a thing

He’s always fast asleep in the box

Whenever I press the spring

He won’t go up and down

The way he used to do

I only hope when I grow up

I won’t be lazy too.

Lazy daisy,

Lazy Jack ’n the Box.

No, I shan’t. I shan’t, shouted Robin.

But Wendy was muttering what seemed to him prayers, stopping only between verses to lay touches of vermilion to the already immaculate pink of her nails, and ignored him totally.

He looked about him. Where was it? There, there on a low table between bowls of daffodils and hyacinth. He seized it, pressed the silver spring and out flew Jack, brightest green from the red box, garlanded with roses and myriad other flowers.

Thank God for that thought Robin. Maybe she was praying for him. Oh Lord, keep me from sloth, oh Lord. Let me burst up out of the box.

Around him stretched a sea of forgotten toys: Albert, the stuffed duck discarded in the dust beneath the sofa, Brenda, Wendy’s first love now legless and going bald, the snakes-and-ladders board stained yellow, the spinning top, the soldiers, the tanks, the cards, old toffee papers, paper clips, hair rollers and headless Loon, the stuffed clown.

I think you will be lazy, Robin.

His cheeks blazed, his pouting lips fell open and he turned on her the full blaze of five-year-old fury. But no words came.

’Cos you’re lazy already.

He continued to stare at her.

Yes, you are. Yesterday at the pool. You remember, yes you do.

He shook his head violently.

Yes, yes, yes you do. You do.

You mean…

Yes, I mean.

Willy?

Yes, Willy, that poor old man, our sweeper at the pool. And you just sat there in the car picking your nose while poor Willy had to come across the parking lot for at least five minutes, and he not walk easily, to give you back your forgotten Jack-in-the-Box. Lazy daisy, lazy daisy, you horribly lazy, lazy, little man.

Poor Creases

A Thursday afternoon, but I am not on the playing fields chasing the lumpen leather ball. I am in detention. I am in the prefects’ study toasting crumpets for Willoughby Vernon-Smythe. Outside a storm is breaking.

The five-bob electric heater has two bars broken, the crumpet toasts reluctantly. Willoughby pretends to read. It was he who engineered the detention – detained for having poor creases.

Willoughby wouldn’t know the difference between one crease and the next. Poor sod. Look at him: holes in the elbows, coffee stains or worse on his trousers.

Willoughby, sorry, the crumpets are taking so long.

That’s all right, quite all right, Clive. His hopeless longing eyes swirl up from the book, fix me in a desperate plea for understanding and cooperation. It has grown very dark and the thunder peals around us. The one electric bar the only source of warmth.

Clive…

Yes, Willoughby?

There is a long pause, the wind rattles the panes, flings the rain down in fury.

Clive, do you think…?

Think what, Willoughby?

There is no answer.

Willoughby, we have four different jams: quince, marrow and ginger, or just boring old plum.

No answer.

There is also honey.

Clive…

Why not honey, Willoughby? It’s good for you.

Clive…

Yes, Willoughby? Honey or jam?

Rose

Well, there she was. She’d done it. And Ethel had said she never would. She’d be too scared. But she was a Cuthbertson and Cuthbertsons do not scare easily.

Ethel and she had been having spooky chats in the morning break. They had been doing this for some months and were now good at it. Good enough to get the hairs on their arms moving and induce a tingly sensation of living dangerously.

Ethel had maintained that certain death awaited those that ventured out of the house before dawn, and should that person find themselves among trees, the death would be particularly horrible.

But Rose was not to be impressed. She did not like Ethel impressing her in that way. She felt small and she wasn’t small. She was a Cuthbertson, daughter of Lorna and Jim Cuthbertson. And nothing scared them.

So she told Ethel that but Ethel just laughed, said she’d never dare.

But Ethel had been wrong, for here she was standing with her feet wet in the long grass surrounded by tall forms that she could see were trees, though there was very little light in the sky. She had long left the porch light on the farmhouse behind her, had gone slowly down the path through the patches of cabbages and currants, out through the garden gate and on down a rutted lane that led to the glen where she now stood waiting.

Waiting for what? Well, perhaps for that terrible promise made by Ethel. That she would die. But would it be terrible? Would it be wonderful? She didn’t know. And so, she waited.

Then slowly, she saw that the tall forms, the trees, were moving. At first slowly but then gradually faster until a low heavy sound of branches, thrashing in a wind, grew and became a roar – but there was no wind – only the roaring of the branches.

Then suddenly, that ceased and a total silence fell. The sky lightened and a single bird began to call insistently, to repeat a single sound, time and time again:

Rose… Rose… Rose…

The light grew, the tall forms became the trees that she knew well. The bird ceased calling and she went back up the lane, triumphant for the glory of it all but angry, angry for Ethel would never believe her.

Coveting

William Wilberforce was small, pink, blond and fourteen and for four full years now had lived for his trains. It had started on his tenth birthday with a gift from his uncle Robert, a small four-yard-long track, one blue diesel engine and two wagons. Then later that year at Christmas, his aunt Rose had supplied a fine station with a bridge over the track and a porter and station master. And then, not to be outdone, his mother and father had paid a local carpenter to mount a scenic platform complete with rolling green fields, tunnels, trees, sheep and of course people.

And so, it continued to grow and grow. That is until a March morning, when William read in his monthly copy of the ‘The Young Enthusiast’ that a Scottish company had just brought out a magnificent authentic and totally desirable model of The Flying Scotsman priced at thirty-three pounds, seventeen shillings and sixpence.

Magnificent but impossible. The Wilberforces were comfortably off but not to that extent, not to the point of paying 33 pounds, seventeen shillings and sixpence for a model train. But though William was small, pink and blond, his mind was of the brightest iron and nothing or nobody would impede that totally desirable purchase.

He was a dayboy at the local public school, St Dryads, and spent most of the day avoiding the jibes and jokes of large muscular athletes, who found him an easy target:

Willy, Willy, how’s ye willy, Willy?

Willy, Willy, where’s ye mum, Willy?

Willy, Willy, the Whistler will get ye, Willy.

The Whistler though was not a joke. He was large, tattooed, obese and red-faced with trousers held up with frayed twine. He could be seen around 4 pm most evenings, in the gathering dusk loitering near the entrance to the college drive. He would whistle and then offer sweets, cake and even cash.

Cash! thought William, cash!

And so, he too loitered and when the Whistler smiled at him and whistled, he smiled back and shyly attempted a whistle. The Whistler offered a quid and William said five so they settled for three and went off behind some bushes.

And later, walking home, William did some arithmetic and divided 33 by 3 and got 11. Eleven thought William, that’s not even two weeks and then it’s mine, mine, mine, and he danced and leapt for joy.

Pain

Tom surfaced, awoke, found himself in the half-lit ward, beds stretching away into the darkness, someone sneezing, someone snoring. He was in pain but mildly so, he was obviously not dead, he’d made it.

A thin dark girl dressed in white came up to his bed and stood beside him.

How’re you feeling?

She was very beautiful, dark eyes, white skin, such a smile.

Oh so, so.

She continued to smile.

Any pain?

How should he answer that? He didn’t know so nodded.

I’ll give you something.

She went away, then came back with a small white tray, rolled up his sleeve and he felt a small shock of pain in his arm and then, almost immediately, an extraordinary sense of happiness and well-being, of no-pain, of great energy and health. And he lay back and slept.

The next night, he saw her again and told her he was in terrible pain but she just laughed, waived a finger at him, smiled and he thought she was the loveliest creature he’d ever met. They got to talking, he asked her where she lived and she told him.

But the following night, she wasn’t there so James decided to act, climbed out of bed, went down the fire escape and then, as he was now dressed only in pyjamas, realised he needed clothes and would have to go back to the school and change.

All went well and he was halfway across the grass court at the side of the school, when he saw Middleton Minor and Middleton Minor saw him and began to scream, for they all believed him to be dead. Middleton then ran off and James climbed in through a window, changed and went down into that part of the town where Alice, for that was her name, lived.

He found the street, found the number on the gate, walked down the path to the front door and rang the bell. Alice opened the door and they spent much of the night happily talking but that was all, for Tom was fourteen and Alice said he was a minor and therefore off bounds. James left the house before dawn lit up the streets still carrying his pyjamas in a bag, reached the hospital, changed behind a holly bush, ascended the fire escape, got into bed and fell asleep, very much in love and at peace with the world.

Hates and Loves

My sister’s friend, Ethel, was a pretentious bore, who would serve up warm beer and play rap. She lived on the 40th floor of a new skyscraper, worked in a government office and covered her abundant midriff in pink tulle.

But she did have a tall slender daughter named Belle, who would come out on Fridays to play tennis with me on soft lawns behind the beech trees and hollies of the Hindhead Ladies Tennis Club, whose marble changing rooms and fresh white towels preluded the touch of soft skin and damp hair.

The Ferns, Grayshot

The Ferns, Grayshot, is no longer there. It is now eradicated entirely. A motorway runs over what was in my grandfather’s day, a green world of winding sand paths beneath giant rhododendrons whose opulent white, pink and scarlet mouths broke out above me in scented majesty. Peonies, roses and foxgloves abounded and, of course, ferns, uncurling lasciviously out of the moss. In the centre of this rich wilderness was the lawn where rested my uncle’s balsam-built glider and to the edge, a well, covered with a single slab that could be slid open to peer down through the damp gloom to dark water. For some years, a