Food for a Feast
The next morning I told the idea to the others.
“Let’s have a midnight feast!”
“With what food?” Jennifer said.
We talked it over: It wouldn’t be as much fun with food from our meals, and we weren’t allowed to go into the village. Then Clare said, “My parents are coming to take Carol and me out one Saturday. Perhaps I could go shopping.”
We made a list of all the things we’d LIKE to get: lemon squash, Cadbury’s chocolate fingers, butter, and lemon curd. Jennifer said that if Clare could get butter and lemon curd, the rest of us could stuff bread into our pockets at tea.
Clare told me privately that her parents had said that she and Carol could each bring a friend, and she had already decided to invite me. She had just been waiting for her parents to tell her when they were coming.
Lemon curd comes in a jar and it looks like bright yellow jam. You put it on bread. It tastes kind of like sour lemon candies, or a lemon meringue pie filling that’s not very sweet. Like many English foods, it sounds strange but tastes very good.
Finally the day came and Clare and I were sitting at a table in a restaurant with her parents, Colonel and Mrs. Sweeting, and Carol and her friend Georgina Miskin.
It was the first time I’d ever been to a grown-up restaurant without my parents. I think I did everything politely and ate everything properly.
Mrs. Sweeting did most of the talking. After a while she paused in her conversation and looked at Georgina’s plate. Georgina had eaten everything except her Yorkshire pudding.
“Don’t you like the Yorkshire pudding?” Mrs. Sweeting said.
“Actually it’s my favorite thing,” Georgina said politely. “I —”
“You like to save the best until last,” Mrs. Sweeting said. Then, with a big smile, “How wise you are!”
I started to say that I did, too; and then I thought it would be better not to, so I didn’t. That’s one of the only times that I’ve started to say something and then stopped myself: I did it because I realized (very quickly, it was as though suddenly I saw myself from the outside) how — unbecoming, I guess you could call it, that remark would be: it would make me seem so pushy and greedy for attention!
The thought was much faster than that explanation, though. Afterwards I felt quite pleased that I had had the thought quickly enough to keep quiet.
Meanwhile, Clare’s mother was talking about saving the best until last in life as well.
When we had put our knives and forks together, Clare said that we had an errand to do for the girls in our dormitory and could we go to the shop by ourselves, while everyone else had dessert?
Clare’s mother and father both looked mildly surprised; Carol and Georgina looked at each other. Georgina (who I decided I didn’t like very much) was smiling in kind of a superior way.
“It’s rather a private errand,” Clare said firmly, giving her sister and Georgina a cold look.
Her parents looked at each other, and then Mrs. Sweeting said we could go.
“Thank you very much for the lunch — dinner,” I said. “It was delicious.”
“I’m so glad you were able to come,” Mrs. Sweeting said (in England they don’t say “You’re welcome”).
Clare and I didn’t talk to each other until we were outside.
“Do you feel proud to be out in your uniform?” she said. I thought about it.
“Yes,” I said, finally. “Do you?”
She nodded.
We were in a little village, with a green in the middle of the street and old-fashioned shops with big windows divided up into lots of little panes. One had sweets in the window — we went in and found all the things.
While Clare was paying, I saw a little white box with pale shapes in different colors — hearts and bells and horseshoes — and CONFETTI in pale blue capital letters.
“What is this?” I said eagerly. “What do you use it for?”
The woman smiled at me. She looked very nice, I thought.
“It’s for weddings — when the bride and groom leave.”
“People throw it,” Clare said.
“That sounds fun!” I said.
The woman smiled again, opened the box, and gave it a little shake: Pale shapes floated slowly onto the counter — hearts and horseshoes and bells and what I now saw were meant to be wreaths, in all different cheerful colors.
“How beautiful,” I said and then, thinking how perfect it would be for the midnight feast, “Let’s get this, too!”
“But, it’s for weddings.”
“We can still throw it up in the air at our party!”