This is a short story originally written for The Sketchbook Project.

A mother and daughter at great variance with one another find common ground in their preference for having marmalade for breakfast on a Sunday. 

A Preference for Marmalade on a Sunday

She had never seen eye to eye with her mother. At just shy of five foot and four inches she was an entire four and one quatre inches taller then that diminutive matriarchal figure and the elevation had dealt them emphatically different views of life. They argued most days. Not between nine and half past eleven because that was when they ate breakfast and did their correspondence but directly that was disposed of they had full reign till four o’clock when they regularly entertained for tea. There was no topic too trivial to be disagreed upon. On Wednesday last they’d had a blazing row about whether a pink rose in an arrangement of lilies and white roses coloured the whole visual spectacle with a heavy fore-shadowing of the blood of Christ spilled on the cross.

A servant was called to rule on the matter and when they “could not really say madam” both women, short and otherwise, had sworn never to talk to each other again, ever, so long as they lived. Doors had slammed. Skirts had flounced. Feet had cluttered the stairs with overly zealous thuds upon the thick carpet. Until nine minutes passed four when Mrs Thisdale had arrived for an appointment with a large plate of buttered crumpets and a little idle conversation.

“Do you take sugar?” asked mother, her eyes blinking four and a quatre inches lower down the brown buttoned Chesterfield sofa then her obligingly benign daughter who sat beside her.

“Just one please” replied Mrs Thisdale.

“Would you kindly pass this to Mrs Thisdale.”

“Yes mother.”

The sugar lump slopped syrupy in the tea amidst the tinkle of silver. The cup was duly passed.

“Now I swore I wouldn’t breathe a word of this to anyone but I simply can’t keep it to myself any longer,” enthused Mrs Thisdale. China clinked with expectation, “and you’re not just anyone are you,” two heads shook themselves from left to right, from left to right. A rustle of unison, “well there. James Pursby has run off to Vienna with a French chorus girl. Mrs Kline told me on Tuesday. Can you imagine; Elinor Pursby with an eloped son!”

Celia’s eyes widened to their fullest and nose and mouth were reduced to a tiny corner of a face now almost fully occupied with containing eyes as round as saucers and almost as large. Mother sucked on her tea.

“Is it to be believed?” asked she.

“But my dear, of course it is,” came the response through a quantity of moist buttered crumpet, “and, what’s more, it appears they don’t even intend to marry. That would be the honourable way out but even that last shred of dignity is to be denied them. The Pursbys will never live this down. I’m afraid to say it but the stain is permanent.”

“Do people care so very much?” asked Celia.

“Yes they do” responded her mother.

“Silly really, if you ask me.”

“Well we didn’t.”

“I was only giving my opinion.”

“Another crumpet Mrs Thisdale?”

Why, yes please.”

“It’s romantic. Fleeing the certain derision of you class and the sneering rejection of society to discover a new life together with love the only protection you had time to take with you against the sights and sounds of a different world.”

“What nonsense” said mother.

“I might have said the same thing at her age. Love is for the young is it not Mrs Tollomei? Nowadays it’s the inconvenience of it all that I most notice. I’m sure neither of them remembered to pack a pair of slippers. I couldn’t even begin to have a truly nice time till I’d made sure I had a pair of good slippers for indoors. And a hot water bottle.”

“They’ll keep each other warn now,” pipied Celia, “their hearts bottled up close and beating hotly.”

“Celia!” her mother exclaimed.

The tea table shuddered beneath the hint of scandal. Mrs Thisdale turned an intrepid pink and fanned herself. Celia said nothing to the reproach but her look behind her lashes blazed eloquently enough. The patter of pleasant conversation would be upheld only as long as it took for dear Mrs Thisdale to put on her coat and take her leave.

“Well I really must be going” she said.

“Next week?” Mrs Tollomei inquired.

“Lovely.”

She was shown to the door. There was a bleak thud as it closed.

In the drawing room Celia reclined on the divan. One hand trailed the carpet while the other ran languidly across her string of pearls.

“Very tidily taken care of mother” she sighed upon Mrs Tollomei’s re-entrance.

“All thanks to you really. Now, can you please ring for Bartle, there’s a dear. I hope the post hasn’t gone. I think we must cross the Pursbys from our party on Saturday. It really won’t do.”

“You can’t be serious,” Celia sat up; pale petal feet found the floor, “it’ll throw my arrangement out completely.”

“Yes, well if I might be permitted to say, I really wasn’t happy with your layout at all. Now we can sit Count Locksheath beside Mary Charton at least and they may be allowed to converse on their shared interest of gardening.”

“If you move Mary Charton then there will be nobody to sit between Captain lace and Mr Gregory.”

“My dear, why would you put poor Mary between those two men in the first place? She has a delicate constitution. She would not have survived the ordeal. No, she must be moved. Who is on the right of Count Locksheath?”

“Lady Steer.”

“She may sit between Captain Lace and Mr Gregory.”

“That makes no sense. Employ a little logic, please mother.”

“Me employ a little logic? Celia darling, presently this table arrangement looks like it’s been put together by a blind man and he at least would have had the advantage of chance. It’s a complete mess.”

“Only because you decided it would be best to un-invite the Pursbys. Until your moment of wretched stupidity everything was fine.”

“You rang madam.”

The women turned. Silence fell too like a ravenous beast. Lips pursed over the desire to throw a few more verbal punches.

“Yes Bartle, come in.”

His feet stepped together and he chalked himself up to his full height, a stiff pillar of unshakeable attention.

“Has the post gone?”

“I took it myself this morning.”

“HA!”

An upward expulsion of hysterical air was propelled with expert precision from the thin dark lips of Celia. Her body burrowed forward across her knees. Hands slapped her shins. On it’s own an undisputed moment of delight but sunk between the sharp edges of its context it was sliced into a picture of triumphant sarcasm.

“So, the table stays” she intoned superciliously.

Bartle blinked. Perplexed, because he had taken the post himself there was now no need to re-arrange the furniture? Which table had they intended to move?

“I trust I did nothing wrong?”

“Fine, fine, fine. No, it’s fine” said Mrs Tollomei.

“Not at all” reassured Celia.

“Will that be all?”

“Yes Bartle, that will be all thank you.”

“Miss Robin wished to ascertain if dinner was to be served at the usual time?”

“Yes, the usual” repeated Mrs Tollomei.

“And would haddock do as well as salmon? Only there was no salmon to be had this morning anywhere.”

“Yes” and “No” came the unified reply.

Eyes darted penetrating glances of petty disdain.

“Yes.”

“No.”

The flick of a hand, the glitter of rings. A flexing of feet on the carpet.

“Haddock is fine.”

“Salmon is best.”

Bartle coughed. Scrunched his nose in a way that could be misinterpreted as a superiority complex, particularly when matched with the low slant of his eyes and the sharp angle of his brows.

“Celia. Bartle, please tell Miss Robin that haddock will do just as well as salmon.”

His head inclined. Dismissed. He left to relay what information he had gleaned from that confusing exchange.

For the Tollomei women the situation was startlingly clear. They were being seriously undermined and simply because the other was refusing to admit they were wrong. Each were quite prepared to forgive, quite ready, they shared the same familial spirit of generosity, but it depended entirely on the realisation, on the part of the other one, of their folly. In this state of affairs the evening proceeded with the one interruption a dispute about the likelihood of rain tomorrow and the chance of a ride. Eventually they retired to bed early.

It was difficult to determine who was most at fault. Generally it could be agreed upon that to inherit a family trait was an occasion to celebrate. To discover your love of painting, talent for sewing, large nose, straight back, had descended from a great-grandmother, father’s uncle or great-great aunty usually brought a feeling of pride. Onlookers liked to comment upon the close resemblance, mothers and fathers desperately sought to establish that their blood, sweat and good head for numbers had been passed on to their children. But for the Tollomeis and those that knew them, the single minded, rigidly stubborn natures that mother and daughter shared was a cause for despair. A most unfortunate transferral. People only half jokingly speculated that that was what had done for poor Mr Tollomei in the end. Having a wife so unreserved in her outspokenness was really quite bad enough but discovering over time that his only daughter had been moulded in her mother’s image would be too much for anyone, let alone a man with a pre-disposition towards bouts of extreme illness. It had all been too much.

Of course, being a daughter of Matthew Okren, the celebrated writer and philosopher, nobody ever said anything to Mrs Tollomei’s face and the two women were quaintly ear-marked as eccentrics.

If Celia had known she might have been perversely pleased by such a title. She often sat on her bed and wondered what the world thought of her. What she most feared was that anyone should think her ugly, boring or stupid. As she lay on top of the covers after retiring early she began quietly inventing conversations in which it could be proven that she was neither boring or stupid. With a little pinching and prodding she might even be able to work in something about her being at least pretty enough for her not to be called ugly. If she mentioned poetry, somehow alluded to Shakespeare’s sonnets or something then the unspecified male companion might suddenly compose a spontaneous little poem about her, using metaphors to describe her beauty. She imagined it happening and felt tears well up from the deep basins of her eyes. It was so deliciously romantic it should be real. It would. So long as the unspecified male was not taller then her father, who had been very tall, but just tall enough that their eyes should be almost level when she was in heels, with dark hair, blue eyes not too close together, a smile not exceeding two inches and an endearingly wicked laugh. That was the absolute minimum. Oh yes and a pleasing disposition, the details of which she was vague. She had other criteria, a good surname, one that suited Celia, a well maintained job, clean shaven, but none of these she considered deal breakers. Thus occupied she presently fell asleep still in her underwear and woke somewhat later in the night to the cold cutting hands of chill darkness slicing at her bare flesh. Too sleep addled to change she slipped as she was beneath the sheets and would later recall her actions as a strange and nonsensical dream.

The rest of the week leading up to the party on Saturday was spent in preparation. The table arrangement remained as it was because Mrs Tollomei had been unable to intercept the mail and the only thing more unimaginably shameful then having the disgraced Pursbys at ones dinner table was writing a note to inform them in explicit terms that they were being cordially un-invited because of the shame they would waft over the good china and silver cutlery.

“We shall simply have to let people know that we support them in this trying time” said Celia.

Her mother merely huffed into her crochet. She was deploying a new tactic in the ever ongoing female Tollomei battle of wills: deliberate ignoring. The servants approved. Miss Robin could finally remove the wool from her ears and the frequent call of distress from Maisy, the new scullery maid, were at last heard and answered.

Celia found herself having to talk for the both of them.

“Why, how refreshing” she said so that mother could hear.

But secretly she resented it.

In fact the first time Celia heard her mother’s voice for several days was at the arrival of the Pursbys on Saturday.

“Elinor, how are you my dear? Lovely to see you. Don’t you look well and that necklace is simply divine, you must tell me who your jeweller is.”

“Thank you Emily, we’re holding up excellently.”

Celia rolled her eyes. Picked at her nail varnish and craned her head to see who was coming in behind the Pursbys.

“Mother, we were talking about the Pursbys only the other day weren’t we. What was it you said now?”

Eyes flared beneath heavy lashes.

“Only how concerned we were and how distressed at news of James.”

Elinor Pursby sucked on a smile and nodded.

“Very distressing” she murmured.

“Celia, why don’t you get the Pursbys something to drink?”

“Yes mother.”

She left, meaning to return with all due speed to witness her mother cringe and crawl. But her was mightily distracted by the image of a tall young man with dark hair and blue eyes pinning itself to the centre of her vision. Her breath also seemed suddenly to be stapled somewhere external to her person because she found herself without it.

“Who are you?” she asked abruptly.

“Hello,” his voice struck her in the pit of her stomach, bell deep, “my name’s Julian Lace. Captain Lace’s nephew.”

“Oh right.”

Teetered backwards in her heels.

“You must be Celia.”

“That’s right. Please excuse me a moment.”

She ran back to her mother.

“I think you’re right about Mary Charton. We should put her next to Count Locksheath. Then Alberta Braithwaite can go in between Lace and Gregory, she’ll keep those two in check.”

“Well,” said Mrs Tollomei, considering, “but who will sit next to you?”

“Right…….” Celia pondered, “gosh well I suppose Julian Lace will need to be seated somewhere.”

“I don’t know, I…….”

“I’ll just go and put out another chair.”

Celia’s evening began to look as rosy as her carefully applied cheeks. She hurried to change the settings while her mother still greeted guests. She had forgotten about the Pursbys. Only remembered about their drinks as they sat sipping champagne at the dinner table. Too late, she guessed, to offer to fetch something now. But she was for too engaged in making herself attractive to Julian Lace to be too concerned. This meant seeming clever and witty, no mean feat when the inner cogs of her brain were turning gelatinous.

“What do you eat for breakfast” she ejected from her lips. Heard it mutate into ash as it hit the table. Die please death take me quickly.

“Well….” He blew out his lips.

“Ridiculous question” she mumbled.

“Toast and marmalade” he said.

“Oh. It’s good of you to answer.”

“What?”

“I mean, everyday? Or only on Sundays?”

“Why would I only eat marmalade on a Sunday?”

“Why eat it on any other day? It tastes much better on a Sunday.”

“Are you being serious?” he couldn’t make out the tone of her voice.

She began to wonder if this spelt disaster for their future.

“Quite serious.”

They sat in silence.

“My dear boy, marmalade should only ever be consumed on Sundays, ask anyone” came Mrs Tollomei’s voice from the other end of the table.

Mary Charton giggled.

“What a strange idea” she said.

The two Tollomei women stared. Firstly at the sage nods of consent amongst the other guests and then at each other.

“But mother,” said Celia, “I concur entirely. Sundays and marmalade are mutually exclusive. I concur. I agree with my mother.”

 THE END