Best Behaviour

I have known for two years that there is no such thing as the Easter Bunny.

I am now old enough to see through the story, but I don’t let on. To do so might interfere with the supply of chocolate.

There are four of us running through the garden looking for small eggs wrapped in coloured silver paper and hidden at the edge of flower beds, paths and other garden features. My sole aim at this stage is to find more eggs than my sister and my two girl-cousins. I have not totally forgotten that when the search is over, we will share them out, and so having the most is a very temporary affair. The thrill of outsmarting them would last a while longer.

I expect the egg-hiding technique to be similar to last year: round the paving in the rose garden at the end of the big lawn, both edges down the sides of the big border. Don’t bother to look elsewhere.

I am wearing my best clothes and I am on my best behaviour because we are at my grandparents’ house. I am always told to be on my best behaviour when we go to see them. 

We have been here for about an hour, during which time I have been thinking about little else but chocolate. I have learned from past visits that I need to wait so that someone, possibly my mother or my aunt, will go round the garden tucking eggs under the primroses and into the gaps in the paving.

Actually what we are told is that we must wait inside because we would not want to scare away the Easter Bunny who has not yet deposited his confectionery. I don’t know if the three girls believe this tosh, so I do not let on that I know none of this is true. As girls, they are playing ‘nicely’ as usual, while I am pretending to join in while actually attempting keep an eye on what is happening outside in the garden, in case I can see where eggs are being hidden.

But my spying is disrupted by my uncle, who pretends he is understanding about the misdemeanours of his wayward nephew. ‘How are you getting on at school now?’ he offers as if this is a confidence I will share with him alone.

‘Very well. I love it,’ I lie. (Doesn’t he know no one likes school. We are there because we have to be.) But his question misleads me into thinking that grandparents, aunt and uncle have not been told the contents of my far from flattering school report or have even sensed my parents’ concern about my complete lack of progress.

After a few more similarly pointless exchanges, my uncle promises that very soon he will take me with him to watch a football match at Chelsea. It is a promise he has made before and has never kept and never will. Even at my young age I doubt his offer but I thank him, because I am on my best behaviour.

To escape the clutches of his conspiratorial attention, I saunter off into the kitchen where there are large pots of this and that and I don’t have to pretend to be the model grandson I am not. Edith, the cook, talks to me as if I were almost adult. ‘Can you get the big sieve out of the third drawer down?’. ‘Do you think there’s enough salt in this?’ offering a spoonful of glorious whatever. But all too soon my mother winkles me out of the kitchen. ‘Let Edith get on with lunch’.

Actually, I thought I was helping but I slink out a few steps ahead of mother, who for once is wearing lipstick, has dangling earrings and is using that gracious tone of voice that suggests to me that she is also on her best behaviour. I like her when she is like this but I know it will not last, because sooner or later I will be caught doing something wrong and she will be irritated, embarrassed or upset.

But before that the four grandchildren are herded together to be lied to and told the bunny has been, and out we go, running into the large garden with our identical collector’s baskets. I am right about the chocolate eggs being in the usual places, but my older sister and both cousins seem to working as a team. That’s girls for you!

So, as usual, I have not got the most eggs. I hide my disappointment, trying to console myself that at least I will benefit from the adult-supervised sharing. Mother tell us that we can eat just one now because lunch will be ready soon. (I manage to eat more than one before they are taken away, to be given back later ‘if you are good’. I will not be good but I’ll get them back all the same.)

‘You’ll be sick if you eat more’, my aunt says, as if this is in any way comforting. This is another example of Easter-Bunny-fiction. I have never met any boy or girl who has felt the least unwell because s/he ate too much chocolate. Actually, I know I could live very happily on chocolate alone, but I don’t say so because I am on my best behaviour and pretending to be a good boy.

And as a good boy, I am taken into my grandfather’s study where he gives me a small clutch of foreign stamps he has cut from envelopes and tells me to share them with the others. Fat chance. His study, which is out-of-bounds on one’s own, has a different, sandalwood smell from the rest of the house. I ask if I can do sums on his complicated adding machine which has lots of buttons, a spool of paper and a cranked handle. I am shown how to add 16 and 5. Wonderful, but I am not sure why he needs a machine for that. I can do it in my head but I don’t tell him. ‘Thank you,’ I say because I am on my best behaviour, but underneath am disappointed that I was not able to press lots of the number keys to add 3672 to 2819.

Then we are ushered into the large dining room, where we four children are grouped at the far end, to be served last. Edith, having once again excelled at her magic, offers round a large platter of meat and potatoes, but it never comes my way. Instead, my mother decides how much I can manage, and my plate is pre-filled before it reaches me. Actually, I would really like another roast potato and less meat and no vegetables if I can get away with it, but I don’t complain because I am on my best behaviour.  I am sitting next to my sister and one cousin, both of whom do not need to be told to ‘eat nicely’. I, apparently, do, but I cannot see what I am doing that is any different from them, although there does appear to be quite a lot of gravy on the napkin tucked into my collar.

Again, with the dessert of Edith’s world famous plum tart, I am pre-served by mother who you would have thought knows her son well but seems to think that is all the whipped cream I want. Best behaviour has to kick in again!

Lunch over, more ‘nice’ playing is expected, and the good girls comply, while I want to sidle off and eat more chocolate eggs, preferably those of my cousins so that I will not deplete my own hoard. We play a board game that for me at least is a bored game. Mother is talking quietly in the corner to her sister, my aunt, and I bet she’s telling her about my school report. I throw a six and a one on the two dice and move my counter. ‘Seven,’ my sister says, as if the sum is too hard for a younger brother. I stick my tongue out at her, just at the wrong moment, for mother has finished her litany of dismay about her youngest. ‘Behave yourself’, she says, sharply. So we play on for so much longer: a seriously bad diversion from legitimate chocolate-eating-time.

Now at last it is time to go home. Chocolate is put away in mother’s bag ‘until we get home when perhaps you can have a bit more before bed-time’. There are whiskery kisses and pats on the head. ‘Thank you, I have had a lovely time’, I say without prompting. I am only eight-years-old but I know that best behaviour means saying things you don’t mean.