Meerkat portrait in a gilded frame on a thigh

You will not believe what Mr Ambrose Fenwick has done with his rent money. He has had his portrait painted, and not by any proper artist from Scarborough but by a sign-writer who came up on the train with a tin of gold leaf and a sack of pink glass beads. The subject, I must tell you, is a meerkat. Mr Fenwick insists he is a meerkat of standing, a retired magistrate from somewhere inland, and he sits in the back parlour every afternoon in a brocade waistcoat that Mother would have called vulgar, staring at the sea through the bay window as if it owed him money.

The frame is the grand part. The sign-writer carved a little meerkat sitting on top of it, looking down at the portrait like a sentry, and at the bottom he lettered a banner. Simples, it says. Mr Fenwick says it is the family motto. I asked him what the family was and he said, Simples, Mrs Pyle, and went back to his tea.

Last Tuesday the tide came up under the pier and took the bathing machines clean off the sand, and the whole street stood on the promenade in their dressing gowns. Mr Fenwick simply lifted his tail, looked at the water, and said that the sea would want a room for the night. I have never been so cross or so charmed in one afternoon.

I have hung the portrait above the sideboard where the Admiral used to be. Come at Whitsun. Bring the good tablecloth and don't mention the rent.

Yours in haste, Edie