Penelope Bennett

I am a potter and writer and have written a novella (An Endangered Happiness) and short stories published by Hamish Hamilton,

a children's book (Town Parrot) published by Walker Books, Candlewick Press, USA and also in Taiwan and Korea,

a gardening book Window-box Allotment published by Ebury Press/Random House (French translation published by Marabout),

My work has appeared in The Weekend Financial Times, The Times, The Observer, The Guardian, The New Statesman, BBC Worldwide Website, The Daily Telegraph, Harpers and Queen, Al-Ahram Weekly, The Oldie, Food and Travel, Encounter, Contemporary Review, Modern Painters, SAGA website magazine, Macmillan's Winter's Tales, The Atlantic Monthly, Mademoiselle, etc., and on Morning Story.

An album biography was commissioned by Real World Records/EMI. A novella and short stories was published by Hamish Hamilton; a children's book by Walker Books, Candlewick Press USA, and also in Taiwan and Korea.

'Window-box Allotment’ was published by Ebury Press/Random House; French translation published by Marabout.

Blind Mans Buffet
Originally published in 'Food and Travel' magazine

Question: why would anyone get up at five a.m. in the dark, leave the house during the pre-dawn chorus, fly over sea-water and Alps to have lunch at the 'Blind Cow' restaurant in Zurich, arriving back for the pre-dusk chorus? It would not be for the food which, though good, is not of Michelin star variety. The answer lies in where, and by whom, the food is cooked and served: in pitch blackness in a converted Lutheran church.

The founders and staff at the 'Blindekuh' (Swiss equivalent of Blind Man's Buff), all of whom have varying degrees of blindness, believe it is important to show people that the visual world is not the only world - there are others.

The church porch is now a foyer with cash-desk and blackboard-menu. To the rear are two thick curtains behind which is the dining room. The man at the cash-desk hands the clients a counter with a number, inscribed on the back in Braille. This is used for identifying customers, placing orders and for the final reckoning.

'I know - but I have a 'system', ' I explain, hoping this will disguise the disgrace of being a pen-less writer (I'm here to write about this restaurant after all) and appeal to the orderly Swiss mentality. It does. The 'system' is a notebook whose pages have been divided horizontally by giant paper-clips which act as tactile 'fences' separating the lines.

Irene, an English-speaking waitress, is called and the adventure - a journey into another world - begins. She asks me to rest my hands on her shoulders. Moving one behind the other resembling a slow, single-carriage locomotive, we progress towards the curtains and an area of semi-darkness. Before leaving the world of light and sight and passing between the curtains which separate the two, we pause, 'To adjust the balance from eyes to ears.'

Then in we go: here is real blackness - blacker and denser than when the eyes are closed and the fingers placed over the lids. It has become a substance, almost tangible - something one could grasp by the handful. My feet shuffle, keeping close to the ground, anxious of tripping or bumping into something; I wish they could be exchanged for hands which are better at dealing with darkness. Irene walks with assurance, promising there are no hidden, millimetre-high steps. Her kind, nurse-like rather than waitress voice contains authority. She seems to have become taller and fuller in physique - and character. For a change it is she who is guiding.

After what seems both a long yet short walk, we reach a table and chair. I start to lower myself into a seatless, bottomless abyss, until she directs my hand to the curve of the chair's back and the table's rim. From here the hands discover the four sides of a tablemat by which, for the time being, my world is circumscribed. The hands then find a knife and fork which act as handrails. Now the rest of the table can be explored. Normally accustomed to part-time work, the hands (since entering this dining room) are now in full-time employment, moving, warily at first, palms low, like five-footed creatures. The more they work, the more adept, inquisitive and adventurous they become, almost scampering at times with a life of their own. What intelligence one possesses seems to have moved from the eyes to the hands and skin.

Sixty-two people can be seated here, but how many are present now? It's difficult to tell. On the left is a boisterous gaggle of girls - but how far away are they? Their laughter is edged with hysteria; is the darkness the cause of this? On the right are two men with sympathetic voices. But are they at the same or at another table? My arm is tempted to stretch and find out, but being a British arm doesn't care for the idea of touching strangers.

It's time to order: mineral water, mixed salad, baked fillet of 'Zander' (salmon I presume) in a wine and herb sauce accompanied by spinach and rice. Irene can memorise ten different orders. It's difficult to judge how big the restaurant is: it could be vast or it could be a garden shed; the mysterious packaging of blackness creates intimacy, hugging one like a garment.

A basket of bread arrives; hand hovers over it then lands. Now comes the noisily bubbling mineral water in a dangerously tall, skyscraper glass. As though conjured out of air, the salad and main course arrive. Before venturing in with knife and fork, I find the rim of the plate. At the bottom left is the rice: hillocks of bumpy granules. To its right are smooth lowlands of spinach bordered by marshy wetlands of sauce through which the fork wades, before ascending to the summit of the fish. The plate containing this edible landscape is presumably of average size, though the fork's journey across it was quite a trek. Once inside the mouth, the rice isn't as bumpy as when touched with the finger, which is surprising knowing how the tongue can create chasms out of the smallest dental cavity. Spinach, when deprived of colour, is less spinachy, a large part of the pleasure in eating it being its deep greenness. And the fish? It is not salmon, so what is it? A fish quiz commences.

The mystery fish remains unidentified but our laughter sounds particularly buoyant in the blackness. Untrue to character, I decline the homemade chocolate mousse: the experience of being here is sufficiently nourishing and filling. After coffee, Irene asks,

'Would you like a small, warm surprise.' (I confess to my invisible neighbours that I had automatically put on my specs to see the surprise.) She tells me to open my left hand. Into it is placed something small, warm but damp - the dampness causing an exclamation. Right hand examines it: it is grainy and rough-ish - 'un-harmonious' might be Irene's description. Only its smell reveals what it is: a refreshing, rolled-up towel!

'Yes. They can eat with their fingers and leave their spinach. Men are the difficult ones. They speak loudly while saying they're comfortable, but we can feel their hands shaking.'

There is something restful about the absence of the myriad sights which bombard our eyes making them blasé - not so restful, though, if this were a permanent state. When one sense is absent another becomes present: the ears are wide-awake, the skin more alert, and other people are felt more intensely without the distractions of sight.

'Pet,' Irene, his owner, reveals, 'was in the dining room - under the piano.' Both Pet and piano were invisible. Irene finishes her lunchtime guiding shift. Pet begins his.

'On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur.
L'essential est invisible pour les yeux.'
(Only the heart sees well. The essentials are invisible to the eyes)
Saint-Exupery

Sitting upright on this machine, I could just as well be sitting at a table holding the knife and fork of the handlebar - except that my knees are moving up and down.

What an admirable invention this is: two wheels, zigzag of steel frame, wave of aluminium for handlebars, chain necklace and two thin circles of rubber for tyres. Its only connection with the ground - and that very brief - is the small percentage of wheel (a matter of inches) which touches the road in an almost silent communication between tyres and tarmac.

Cyclists are pedalling trapeze artists, suspended in mid air, relying on that mysterious phenomena, that unacknowledged act of faith: balance. While turning corners, bicycles tilt, lean on the air, the corners invisibly upholstered. Or, when forced by motorists towards the kerb, they wobble along the thin black strip between double yellow lines, becoming tight rope pedallers, circus cyclists.

Returning, after shopping, to a bicycle is a much friendlier feeling than returning to a car; one cares more for it, it is more personal.

Although this machine is much thinner and lighter than its rider, it can carry twice as much weight, effortlessly, on its steel-instead-of-bone skeleton.

Cycling Dogs
Each morning, at nine a.m., a rough-haired dog travels down the Kings Road in a basket attached to the front of a racing bike ridden by a youngish man, a hood protecting the dog, not man, from rain. The dog's presence can be heard long before its arrival, when, leaning forwards - ears, whiskers and fur blown back - it appears, barking enthusiastically.

There's also an elderly woman (who has a trailer attached to her tricycle) who transports bored twin dogs which sit back to back, one looking right one left, resembling old retainers being taken for an outing.

Night Riding
The faint buzzing vibration of the glow-worm dynamo whirls through wheels, frame and rider: road, wheel, motion and a bulb creating light. Some people ride without lights, being almost invisible - just passing swishes which make others jump and swerve.

Winter
The tides of wind in the streets flow sideways through the spokes.

On very cold days, when riding towards the north, back bent, head lowered into the wind, one's aching forehead feels as though it is bandaged with headache. Facing south, you sail down roads, pushed by the February wind, not one revolution of the chain is needed.

Another pleasure is free-wheeling on the flat - being carried along by energy stored mysteriously within the cogs and wheels.

Quite a different world is inhabited when riding, suspended between heaven and earth, feet no longer touching the ground, head higher up in the sky. Is any other simple form of transport closer to flying? The rider becomes a glider on wheels - a velocipedic angel. The time spent in walking is shrivelled up, the yards flowing out behind.

Dangers
Some cars drive so close, they are more like salami slicing machines. Parked cars fling open their doors while traffic continues to flow past.
Suddenly the rider and his dignity are horizontal, head close to moving car wheels, hard asphalt instead of soft air. What absurd vanity and stupidity prevent us from always wearing a safety helmet, despite having seen examples of split helmets which resemble split craniums. These episodes create fear in the rider - a sensation which is both hot and icy.
To compensate for these shocks, there's always the two-wheeler's triumphant satisfaction when, at red traffic light car queues, one can dismount and wheel the bicycle neatly round the corner into a green traffic-lit road.

Lean, fit, not necessarily young men, their thin-framed-and-wheeled machines extensions of themselves, buy skin-tight, insect-like clothes, the haut couture of velocipede fashion.

It is equally enjoyable to return from the annual service, when the freshly oiled chain, hubs and gears glide unctuously along.

Unenjoyable Aspects
Apart from certain motorists, there are oil-smeared hands, when the chain slips and has to be replaced; screaming brakes and crevasse-sized potholes.

Spring
Through the polished air one rides; it is warm and gentle on the arms, softer than cashmere. It is the time when the chrome and paint is cleaned - rather like grooming a horse - and countryside maps are brought out, though we have our own London map which has "Leisure and Pleasant Routes" and "Advisory Cycle Routes".

Summer
When riding over the hump of Albert Bridge under a low sky, its woolly clouds entangled in the hair, fidgety little waves glint below, while basking mud banks glisten and the briny wind buffets. This could be the seaside, but it is not: it's a whiff of salt and ocean-ish waves in the heart of London.

Parks
The great stored-up quietness and aquarium stillness emanating from within a park is held between its trunks and leaves and rises from lawns and tennis courts.

Streets
There's the coolness of fresh, empty eight o'clock streets on Saturday morning. At midday, as the heat swells, one peddles from one pond of shadow to another, breezes entering and puffing up sleeves, elbows raised, wing-like, to cool.

Rain
The rider looks forward to cycling after a summer downpour in the refreshed streets, whose air has been enlivened by all the drops which have passed through it. The wheels, spraying out, trickle through shining shallow puddles, while drops fall singly from branches onto the forehead.

Crisis

A shorter version was originally published in the New Statesman

9.15 pm, Christmas Eve
I’m driving to Southwark where, in a warehouse, this year’s Crisis Open Christmas is being held. I particularly want to do the Christmas Eve night shift, 10.0pm - 8.30 am.

The roads are almost deserted. It’s like driving on a child’s unused motorway toy. I imagine the eight hundred or so Crisis ‘guests’ (as they are called) making their way – not, like me, by car - from the different compass points towards Southwark.

In the darkness the warehouse appears vast. It’s surrounded by high clanging metal fences and lit by ice-blue and white arc lights. Yellow-jacketed volunteers holding walky-talkies guard the entrances. Guests lean against the fences, beer cans gleaming, the tails of their bewildered looking dogs wagging. On a notice is written: ‘All we ask is: No Violence, No Weapons, No Alcohol, No Drugs. Thank you.’ By mistake I enter through the guests’ gate and to my surprise am immediately frisked. Obviously the line between guest and volunteer is finer than I’d imagined.

The volunteers’ area has a concrete floor, square concrete pillars and dim lights. It resembles an underground car park. The night shift volunteers queue to be given their badges - to be worn at all times. Some will be doing night shifts for the whole week. Some have been volunteers for many years.

Using a pallet as a rostrum, a volunteer leader tells us what we are going to do. Each shift, shared by ‘partners’, lasts about an hour and is either in or outdoors, one of the latter being the Marigold shift which sounds rather appealing and poetic until it turns out to be cleaning the lavatories and showers.

“Don’t put your hands into places you can’t see into, they may contain discarded injection needles. Only lift blankets by their corners. Never stroke or pat a guest, there may be needles in their pockets.” We are shown the different fire extinguishers, one of which has a spout, which must not be held because it causes the hand to freeze to it. I’m beginning to feel slightly apprehensive and we haven’t even started yet.

“Keep it safe, friendly and welcoming and remember that what the guests need as much as shelter and food is being spoken to. Some may not have had a conversation since last year.”

My ‘partner’ is Roddy, a young, kind-eyed man. We have been given the emergency ward. This consists of four beds filled with three men whom we have to watch over in case they need medical help. This will be provided by two doctors, a charming husband and wife (she a cancer specialist, he a consultant gynaecologist) who, together with their son, have come from the north of England to do two night shifts.

We are looking after James and William, both recovering from drug or/and alcohol excess. The third man, Brian, is asleep. James is barefooted, a very young man or old-ish child who can’t stop talking and moving. William (only close friends are permitted to call him Bill) has a lean, refined face and lies stretched out on the bed resembling a tomb effigy. Every now and then, despite blankets, he shivers and his hands shake. Is this what they call DT’s? William’s not certain if he’s going to stay at Crisis for the whole week; what is the alternative? Peace of mind is what he wants most to find here. In and out of sleep he drifts. It was the death of his mother that precipitated him (and his sister, he says) on the downward slope. He can remember coming to a performance of Pericles in this warehouse. It seems an odd venue; but what’s the point of doubting what people say?

In this ‘medical’ part of the warehouse there is also a dentist, optician, masseuse, nurse, pedicurist, dependency service and needle exchange, Samaritans and nearby an AA and NA centre. Waiting patiently for treatment for painful legs is May, a short almost spherical woman with large spherical eyes, which have a veneer of sadness through which occasionally, a mischievous smile brakes. May has obviously spent considerable time dressing up for Christmas.

By the time our shift ends, James and William are peacefully (?) asleep, worry momentarily absent from their faces. What are they dreaming?

Back in the volunteers’ area, we help ourselves to coffee, tea or juices (many donated by M and S) and nibbles. While waiting for the next shift we hand-roll cigarettes for the guests, tobacco and papers also having been donated.

I ask a not so young cigarette roller if this is her first time at Crisis and if she would come again.

“This is what Christmas is all about!” she replies enthusiastically, “I’ll definitely come again.”

“At least it gets me through Christmas,” another volunteer comments, indicating that Crisis is as important for the volunteers as it is for the guests.

The next shift, with Gerald, is outdoors guarding a gap between the fences. I didn’t realize there was outdoor work and have come without a proper coat. En route to the gap, we pass through the enormous main day room which is packed with guests, lying on bean and sleeping bags against the wall, sitting at tables talking, reading or being solitary. I feel slightly uncomfortable being able to look so closely at them, like a licensed voyeur. One has to remind oneself to keep the Lady Bountiful smile in check, though what it’s often hiding is apprehension. Two rival televisions blast out their programmes. On the wall is a menu of the day’s TV programmes, plus times of bingo, disco dancing, funk animal sculpture and T’ai Chi/Qigong. Also on the walls are coloured Missing and Murder posters and Christmas cards from various churches; on one someone has written ‘Christmas always so difficult, so painful.’ In this room there’s a somewhat inflammable atmosphere. It probably wouldn’t take much in the way of ignition for rows to flare up. An hour ago a diminutive blond Irish woman tried to attack someone with a chair.

It’s freezing outside. The generators hum and a soprano-voiced dog in the nearby dog shelter howls, wolf-like, hating being parted from its owner. It’s doubtful if either gentle Gerald, who would probably have difficulty saying boo to a gosling, or I would act as deterrents to anyone wanting to break through the fencing.

Near the outdoor lavatories is a rubbish-tip-size object covered by a purple tarpaulin. To my surprise the tarpaulin starts to move and through a flap an elderly man emerges escorted by a large, also elderly Alsatian, its steps slow and patient like those of a carer.

“That’s Bruce,” says Gerald. “He refuses to be parted from his dog and always sleeps outside.”

For a few minutes I desert my post and go and look at the dog shelter. ‘Only two dogs per guest’ and ‘This is a quiet area’ two notices announce. Four volunteers are looking after about ten dogs. Although their cages are large some don’t look particularly happy and move restlessly from side to side or lurk in the back, their wary expressions similar to those of some of the owners’. Some are thoroughly enjoying themselves, being brushed, de-flea-ed, attended by volunteer vets and taken on nocturnal promenades by women with county voices.

Just before our shift ends a young man stops and enquires of us,

“Excuse me, but have you heard of Jesus Christ?”

“Yes.”

“Well I’m a disciple. I’m Anthony.”

“How do you do?” Saint Anthony continues towards the warehouse, his dainty precarious steps trying to follow an invisible straight line. Unfortunately he has missed the midnight mass which was packed and took place in front of a dark star-studded curtain.

The next shift is guarding the fire-exit doors in the main bedroom in which about one hundred and twenty strangers are sleeping on camp-beds, tattooed arms tucked under blankets. (When I was last at Crisis mattresses were laid on the floor, with just enough space between them for two feet to walk). The room is lit by low watt red, blue and orange lights. The different coloured rugs, blankets and pillows make up one vast brilliant tapestry. Most people are sleeping, trying to sleep or telling others to shut up. Two lie side by side like public schoolboys, happily whispering. A little group sits together smoking round what looks like a campfire but must be a torch.

In the bed closest to where we sit is a small man who has neat lively movements. He asks us to guard his plastic bags while he nips out to the lavatory.

“This,” he whispers “is one of the difficulties of this place: having your belongings stolen during the night. During the day there’s a left luggage office.” When he returns he explains, “I’m homeless, but I’ve got a tent and a little gas heater but I can’t carry them round all the time so I store them in Epping Forest.”

“Epping Forest!” I exclaim in a whisper, unable to picture a left luggage office amongst the trees.

“Yes, I hide them under a bush. I’ve got more luggage in…” he mentions another forest. “Sometimes I can’t remember what is where.” He raises his palm to his forehead, attempting to concentrate his memory. “I’ve got cancer,” he adds lightly, as though mentioning a mild headache. “But what I’m looking forward to is when I have the cancer operation. Then they’ll have to find me somewhere to live. I can’t just come out of hospital and sleep on a bench or in the forest.” He then shows us a new mackintosh he received from the clothes store. “It’s brand new! Smell it! And I’ve just bought a collapsible twenty-four feet long ruler!” He proceeds to perform a most realistic imitation of opening the ruler, darting sideways along his bed. Of what use it will be only he knows.

What an extraordinary night this is, I think, looking out over the sea of sleepers. At times I can hardly believe it is taking place. Everything has been arranged so thoughtfully and generously. But how long did it take?

Sleep is becoming the most delectable and desirable of objectives. Quite a few of the volunteers are beginning to droop; in fact we resemble a bunch of flowers badly in need of water. (The following day someone tells me that between 4 and 5am one’s blood sugar is at its lowest; this is the time when people are apt to die). I’m beginning to feel vaguely dizzy. This isn’t helped when, tip toeing through the darkened room between the beds, a sudden loud burst of swear words splits the silence, making me jump. Now and again when counting the number of hours which lie ahead, I think that I could easily slip away without being noticed. But then, shamed, I briskly pull myself together knowing how much I want to see the shift from beginning to end and be here when the dawn arrives.

The volunteer cooks have prepared us something to eat: garlic bread, onion bhajees, vegetarian sausages, vegetable curry, rice and a Harrods-donated chocolate cake. It feels odd munching garlic bread at 4.30 a.m.

5.0 a.m. Fourth shift: tidying up. At one end of the day room is what resembles a sheep pen behind which guests sit and queue, waiting for the clothes store to open.

While clearing up I meet Mr Night Rider, a middle aged man who keeps himself to himself. He doesn’t want to get involved with alcohol or drugs.

“I had to walk here in the rain from Charing Cross because I’ve only got 30p left in my pocket. It wouldn’t have been so bad in clement weather.”

The night buses are his ‘home’. He sits at the back, feet up against the warm engine, and catnaps. He knows his nocturnal timetable by heart. From Aldwych the N 9 takes him to Heathrow; this takes 1 1/2 hours. From Heathrow he catches the N 140 to Harrow Weald. This ‘gets rid’ of about three hours of night. During the daytime he buses all over London stopping off at museums and libraries, “It helps kill the boredom”. One of the things he is looking forward to most at Crisis is speaking to the social security volunteers in the hope that they will advise him how to get a bus pass. His costs about £8 a week but is going up in price. I know from the way he speaks that he is not directly or indirectly asking me for money.

“And where do you eat?”

He relays the timetable and menu of the different soup kitchens: Noon, Kentish Town, Hari Krishna centre, vegetable curry and rice. Or 12.45pm, Arlington Road, Camden Town at the Church of Hal, sandwiches tea and coffee…. The evening meals are less certain. 6.30pm, the Strand, the Simon Community, sandwiches, tea and coffee.

Our kind-hearted Socialist government threatens to close down the soup kitchens to discourage people from this type of life - as if anyone could ever be ‘encouraged’ into it. They make it sound like a temptation or an addiction.

Mr Night Rider shows me his split rucksack.

“The people who do the alterations here say they’ll be able to mend it today!” he tells me with pleasure. He thanks me for talking to him.

The night shift comes to an end.

As soon as I reach home, I arrange to do a day shift to make the picture more complete.

Boxing Day, 4.0 pm
There’s quite a different atmosphere during the day, not as haunting as the night but equally interesting. The midnight mass area has been turned into a disco. From the back of the room a man on crutches watches the dancers, seemingly mesmerised.

The team of professional hairdressers is busy washing and snipping. Some of their clients look as though they are undergoing an ordeal, others are beginning to smile.

Part of the warehouse has been turned into an artists’ studio whose walls are covered with the day’s work. On the floor a long picture is still being painted. At tables people are busy drawing, painting, making Plasticine figures.

At one end of the room professional volunteer dressmakers sew, machines whirring as they alter the guests’ newly acquired clothes. At the other end, jugglers patiently teach the manipulation of crystal balls. There’s also a computer drawing and painting area.

A youngish man works on a large oil painting of the Thames, obviously not the work of a beginner. He spent two years at art college then gave up to become a scenery painter using giant size pots of paint instead of small tubes. He lives in a garage which has no water, warmth or light, but his main concern is not being able to give his three teenage children the presents they would like.

“Do they come and see you?”

“No,” he confesses ruefully but with understanding. “I see them at my wife’s house. She receives me with frosty politeness!” A small part of his painting is still unfinished.

“What are you going to put in there?”

“A tea stall with a glowing red interior and chubby owner.”

On another wall is a series of pencil portraits of very ‘Wanted’ looking men.

There’s also a vast finished picture of a roaring sunrise above a lake bordered by green shrubs. On the lake float two swans, swimming far apart.

There’s an older man whose face has deep track-marks in the cheeks. He wears a baseball cap with ‘Panther’ printed on it and shows me his work: small lyrical brightly coloured paintings one of which has four very white clouds above a flowery field in the midst of which is a small friendly cottage I’d rent immediately. It is strange to look at this scene and then to look at the place from where it has come: a face which has long ago forgotten how to smile.

Almost every day Panther, who lives in a hostel, goes to Crisis Skylight (‘a centre where homeless people get active and inspired’) to paint, from 2.30pm to 9.0 pm.

Just as I’m leaving someone points out an ex-guest who is now a volunteer.

* * *

To volunteer for Crisis Open Christmas, please call 020 7426 3872, email coc@crisis.org.uk or apply online at www.crisis.org.uk

Even at night the Hon. Constance Fann's house could be seen. Its tall walls were covered with Virginia creeper which grew right up to its chimney like a thick polo-neck jumper, causing the house to quiver and undulate, in scarlet. Nearby stood a greenhouse. Some of its glinting panes had fallen out, and lush plants now grew through the gaps. Her car was parked on an old Persian rug, within view of her neighbours' bungalow which crouched, sinking or sulking, in a hollow surrounded by a high, meticulously clipped yew hedge.

Between the two houses an oak tree grew, powerfully, both vertically and horizontally, its roots reaching, and perhaps endangering, the foundations of both houses. Despite the admiration lavished on it by Mrs Fann, there was something both alarming and magnificent about the force with which it grew.

In the top room of the house, on a level with the topmost branches of the tree, Constance Fann slept. Her window was wide open, framing the night air. On the mantelpiece was a clock, which struck four - twice - unnoticed by her. In the corner of the room stood a flock of low- and high-heeled shoes, resembling pigeons feeding.

Constance Fann lay sprawled across the four corners of her double bed. She was large and billowy: a galleon berthed for the night. Her auburn hair (which had streaks of grey) frothed out into a copper halo around her head. Her face was white, all her blood being drained into her hectic dreams. A smell of oranges, mixed with darkness, wafted round the room. Before she went to bed, she usually ate oranges, the bitter fruity scent of peel and flesh being released during the night, until it almost awakened her, as it did now. The intriguing combination of orange groves and the Norfolk countryside which surrounded her house made her smile between the sheets - vermilion sheets above which her olive-green eyes peered. Big and bright they were, as though polished with the palm of the hand. And they grew brighter, as from the dense blackness of the tree the dawn chorus began, starting with small excited pipings, small as unfurled spring leaves. Then one invisible bird sang, accompanied by a half-asleep chorus of young damp birds. Mellifluous, concentrated sounds they were, which she would have liked to suck through a straw. On and on the singing went until, later, in the pale navy-blue light, the whole tree bloomed with song.

Absorbed, she basked in the bliss and excitement of the night. (It was this tree, which filled the front windows with its presence - and which she had observed as a child - which had persuaded her, a few months ago, to buy this house and move away from her treeless garden in London.)

Later, from the oak tree's base, came the sound of cat calls, chilling sounds, strong as ammonia, from her neighbours' cat. She heard the sound and shivered.

There were so many things that she enjoyed doing - apart from her sculpture and the selling of samphire - that she could hardly wait to get up. So she leapt out of the bed, leaving it rocking.

Naked, she strode to the bathroom, the floorboards trembling beneath her powerful tread, the dark furniture seeming to retreat at the approach of her opulent white body which resembled that of a (retired) Rubenesque angel - though she was far from ethereal or weightless. She weighed at least twelve stone and had strong bones.

She turned the bath taps on, poured pine bubble-bath liquid into the churning water, and stepped into the scented cloud of foam. Down the overflow pipe, frothy water gurgled. She lay back and smiled, a charming smile which she might have smiled when asleep. She closed her eyes and behind the shade of her lids imagined she was inside a pine forest, where the spaces between the trees were as thick as trees, with the scent of leaking sap.

'Mrs Fann!' A muffled voice, minus a body, shouted in the bathroom. It came from the garden, up through the overflow pipe. It was the voice of her neighbour, Mrs Perkins. Constance Fann surfaced, whale-like, from the water and, covered in foam, leant conversationally towards the overflow hole.

'Good morning to you,' she addressed it vivaciously, wondering if this was how the previous owners of the house had communicated.

'Pardon me,' Mrs Perkins's refined voice continued in a well-rehearsed sentence. 'But I think I should bring it to your attention, that a flood of your bubbles has reached the outskirts of our yew hedge. Again!'

'Apologies, apologies. I am sorry,' Mrs Fann answered concernedly. There was no reply. 'I fear there's a faulty connection,' she couldn't resist adding. 'But as soon as I've finished bathing, I intend to make Sandel some bread.'

Sandel, Mrs Perkins's only son, was twenty-nine years old and lived and worked at home.

There was still no answer. Just a gust of air from the garden below. Constance Fann stepped back into the sinking foam. Her neighbours (at least Mrs Perkins) were not, she had already realized, ideal. But if she remembered to restrain the bath bubbles, she saw no reason why they should not get on amicably. And there was always the presence of the oak tree to divide, screen and pacify. After a few minutes she got out of the bath, dried, sprinkled herself liberally with talcum powder and returned to her bedroom, leaving a trail of white footprints.

Mrs Fann peered as discreetly as she could through the letter-box flap, into a letter basket. This, too, was dark inside. But Dawn heard her and jumped down from the chair.

'Sandel! It's probably Lady Bountiful with your bread!' Mrs Perkins called out, before getting up.

Mrs Fann didn't hear. But when the front door was sharply opened, the smiles of the two women clashed: Joy Perkins's switched-on and immaculate, Constance Fann's ingenuous, its source mysterious. Despite being thin, Mrs Perkins blocked the doorway, her little fistful of hurt-looking features gathered together in the middle of her face.

Reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement by Shena Mackay:
It comes as no surprise to learn that Penelope Bennett is a potter, for she writes with craft and imagination and handles her material with sensuous assurance. An Endangered Happiness consists of the title novella and seven stories which all demonstrate the fragility of joy.

'Between the two houses an oak tree grew, powerfully, both vertically and horizontally, its roots reaching, and perhaps endangering, the foundations of both houses. Despite the admiration lavished on it by Mrs Fann, there was something both alarming and magnificent about the force with which it grew' - just like Mrs Fann herself. She is the oak, splendid but threatened, Mrs Perkins is a bonsaied Serissa Foetida; Mrs Fann is her rambling house decked with scarlet creeper; Mrs Perkins is a fanatically tidy bungalow; Mrs Fann is warm, lopsided homemade bread; Mrs Perkins is Jumbo fish-fingers and Angel Delight. Joy Perkins, while not articulating the identification of Constance Fann with the tree, sets out to destroy it and almost succeeds in demolishing both of them. That she does not, in the end, and is not destroyed herself in defeat, is a mark of the writer's generosity to her characters. Sympathy is engaged as much with the emotionally stunted Mrs Perkins and her twenty-nine-year-old accountant son, who works at home, smells of pencil-shavings and incites his mother's jealousy by his timorous friendship with Mrs Fann, as it is with the abundant yet frail Constance Fann herself.

A Mrs Fann appears in another story, with an authorial note to the effect that although they share a name and a few qualities, the two are not related. The Mrs Fann of Out of the Looking Glass has been overtaken by the madness which almost engulfed Constance. Beauty and precision of image abound here, as in the novella, but because this Mrs-Fann-taken-to-extremes hears only the relentless voices in her head which compel a deranged egocentricity, she is a less interesting creation.

Animals play small but important roles in the novella where Dawn the cat turns in a nice cameo, while Eileen the Mynah bird gets a speaking part: in the two outstanding stories, The Trials and The Butcher's Christmas Story, fur and feather, living and dead, turn the tables on the human characters.

The Trials is a little masterpiece of the theatre of embarrassment. Cynthia Gunn, a galumphing, grey-haired misfit, the most vulnerable of all Penelope Bennett's endangered species, has purchased an already trained sheepdog, Girly, in an effort to win the trials, and thus be accepted as one of the lads. Girly betrays and shames her; the cup is presented to someone else 'See you at home then, lads, as usual, for some grub', she asked rather than stated, in her least successful attempt at the local dialect.' The terrible meal which follows, and Cynthia's collapse, terrorized by Girly, inspire laughter, but Cynthia Gunn is a tragic figure.

The Butcher's Christmas Story, telling of a marriage in which everything from sex to family jokes is informed by the meat trade, is full of horrible felicities: 'He removed two suckling pigs which were suspended by hooks. They still had their eyelashes on, and dressed in their smooth little pink skins which always seemed a size too big for them, it looked as if they were wearing Baby-grow clothes.' The grisly details here used to such effect and the joie de vivre that pervades the writing, the humour and the sometimes painfully accurate dialogue make this a distinguished and distinctive collection.