Listening to their banter, I was relieved Ethan wasn’t there. I knew how it would have gone. Ethan would have done his best in the face of a barrage of little jibes and criticisms from Nick, designed to deflect responsibility for his son’s imaginary shortcomings. If they were lucky, they might have made it through the morning; if not, if Ethan had made some more conspicuous gaffe – mishandled a tool say, or twisted a guy rope (which his father’s ungenerous scrutiny would have made more likely), Nick might well have lost his temper and given Ethan a public dressing down. I had heard – or more precisely, not quite heard – such confrontations too many times over the years, hovering on landings and in doorways, eyes closed, fists clenched, trying to summon the nerve to intervene; to remind Nick that carping criticism was not necessarily the way to bring out the best in an insecure adolescent. I shut the window with a defiant bang and went over to my wheel. It was too late to be the parent I’d like to have been.
I just about managed to screen out the background noise after that. Only once did the ballyhoo break my concentration mid-throw. I was nine-tenths of the way there on what would (I had counted) have been my forty-third pot, all told, when a collective shout of consternation went up, followed by a pause, a creak and then the faint tinkling of glass.
There goes the Orangery, I thought, with some satisfaction, before slowing the wheel and gathering my clay back into a formless lump, ready to start again. But it could only have been a setback, because twenty minutes later I saw the pinnacle of the marquee swaying drunkenly back and forth above the hedge as its central support was hoist aloft. There was a brief babble of excitement, then a long and suspenseful pause, and finally, an almighty cheer. You would have thought they had raised the Titanic.
I was loading a couple of bone-dry pots from the rack into the kiln when I heard a tactful cough from behind me.
I ignored it and carried on with what I was doing.
‘It’s up!’ Nick said, his tone somewhere between pride and prickliness.
‘Great,’ I replied, closing the door of the kiln and ostentatiously devoting all my attention to setting the timer.
‘Brought you a little treat to celebrate.’
I turned round. Nick was propping up the doorway, hair dishevelled, sweat patches ringing his T-shirt, a plate in his hand and a winning grin on his face. Seeing him, my breath caught in my throat as it had that first time, as it did still, whenever I was ambushed like this by the sheer fact of his physical beauty, his ease.
‘What is it?’
‘A croissant.’
‘Where’ve you got a croissant from?’ I narrowed my eyes. Don’t flirt, I said to myself. Don’t succumb.
‘They be from ’Er Ladyship,’ he said, tugging his forelock comically. ‘’Er at big ’ouse. Workers’ perks.’
Of course! A second-hand croissant. Leftovers. I carried on with my task, pointedly refusing to make allowances for his presence.
‘No?’ he wheedled. ‘I can make you a coffee to go with it. We could sit on the steps and shoot the breeze.’
I turned back to my work.
‘I’m busy, Nick,’ I said.
I continued to ignore him, but still he loitered in the doorway.
‘So, it starts in a couple of hours…’ he said.
‘I’m not coming,’ I said.
His face fell.
‘What do you mean? You can’t not come.’
He grew petulant now, like a child used to having its own way.
‘You’ll be letting people down. They’re expecting you. It’s for charity.’
He pulled a booklet out of his back pocket and chucked it on my work surface. ‘You’re in the catalogue, for God’s sake.’
Now I saw. None of this was about me – his visit, the second-hand croissant, the making-nice. It was all about him. If I didn’t turn up to the Auction of Promises he would look bad. People would talk behind their hands; speculate. He had become the sort of person he used to ridicule. Perhaps he had been that person all along.
‘I have no desire,’ I said, ‘to sit around with a bunch of people who think I’m crazy, drinking sherry and making small talk to raise money for the church fucking roof, while my son’s sleeping in a doorway somewhere, thank you very—’
‘Karen!’ he barked, and I winced. ‘Karen… love…’
He took a step towards me, his tone already more reasonable, but beneath the surface I could sense pent-up rage, carefully mastered – the scariest kind. He came over to where I was squatting beside the kiln and, taking my hands, pulled me upright, holding my wrists gently. I felt my pulse quicken. I think he did too.
‘… Just please come along. Not for them, not for the church roof, not for appearance’s sake. For me. Because I’m proud of you. Because the pot you’ve pledged is going to raise a lot of money and put you on the map. Because you’re the best. Because I love you.’
An hour and a half later I was making my way downstairs, showered, coiffed, as made-up as I dared and sporting the strapless stripy jumpsuit I had bought in the Stella McCartney sale and fallen out of love with when Nick said it made me look like Andy Pandy. I could hear voices coming from the living room, not just Nick’s and Gabe’s, another voice too.
‘Cath!’ I said, and my surprise must have been almost as obvious as my pleasure. The three of them were sitting stiffly around Nick’s coffee table chatting awkwardly like wedding guests.
‘Well, hello!’ said Cath, turning round and giving my outfit the once-over. I could feel myself blushing, not only with the mortification of Cath’s very evident approval, but also with the fear that it might be misconstrued. To my surprise, however, Nick joined in with a wolf whistle of his own, half satirical, half genuine, as far as I could tell, and I blushed a shade darker.
‘Bit of Dutch courage before we brave the Gaineses’,’ Nick said, waggling his open beer bottle at me.
‘I’m on Earl Grey,’ Cath pointed out, as if to deflect any criticism. I shrugged and smiled.
‘Can I get you a drink, Karen?’ Gabe made to get up.
‘Oh, no. No thanks,’ I said, still trying to work out how this unlikely pow-wow could have come about. Nick seemed to read my mind.
‘I bumped into Cath earlier on and we agreed it might be a bit less daunting if we went to this shindig together; safety in numbers type of thing…’
I gave Nick a sceptical smile. The idea that a man who’d been touring the conference circuit for a decade might need his hand held at a country garden party was ridiculous, but that only left the theory that he had joined forces with Cath for her sake, or mine, or both – all three possibilities recasting him in a more favourable light than I had been prepared for.
‘Have you seen this?’ Cath waved the auction catalogue at me.
I gave a noncommittal shrug.
‘Some of the lots are hilarious,’ Gabe said. ‘Listen to this: “an antiques valuation in your home, offered by Marlowe & Foulkes, specialists in antique jewellery, Fabergé, Tiffany glassware and Russian antiques”.’
Nick looked around the living room with narrowed eyes, as if trying to recall where he’d left the gold-plated samovar and we laughed obligingly.
‘Or if that doesn’t appeal,’ Cath picked up her own copy and flicked through the pages, ‘how about a wine-tasting tutorial with Jacinta Berryman, food and drink correspondent for The Country Gazette.’
‘Oh, we should definitely bid for that, darling,’ Nick said to me, drolly. ‘We totally need to be refining our palettes now we’re in the county set.’
I stretched the corners of my mouth.
‘To be fair though,’ he added, ‘there’s some pretty decent stuff in here. I thought when they said “Auction of Promises”, it’d be like the ones they used to have at Inkerman Street,’ I stiffened slightly at the mention of Ethan’s school, ‘you know, “lot twenty-three, a baby-sitting session from the childminder from hell, lot twenty-five, a romantic dinner for two in the Salmonella Tandoori…”’
‘There was some good stuff,’ I chastised him gently. ‘There was a Reiki massage one time, I remember, and a nice lino-block print. We got outbid on that one.’
‘Thank God.’
Gabe, who had been flicking through his copy of the catalogue, looked up and shook his head in amusement.
‘Dad, there’s stuff in here you literally could not make up. Listen to this. “A circus skills workshop with Hengist Debonair.” I mean, what the fuck…?’
‘And if you do yourself a mischief on Hengist’s unicycle,’ Cath put in, bashing her own pamphlet triumphantly with the back of her hand, ‘a two-hour healing with crystals session from Marion Baverstock should do the trick.’
Once our guffaws had died down, there was a pause and we all sighed and shook our heads, the smiles of amusement fading from our lips and a slight awkwardness descending again.
‘Well… shall we?’ said Nick, standing and crooking his arm with exaggerated courtesy for Cath to take it, which she graciously did. Gabe turned and offered the same gallantry to me, and feeling foolishly overdressed, and in spite of myself, not a little curious, I took his arm.
The gates to Walford House were thrown wide and adorned with balloons and bunting. A large cardboard sign, coloured in felt pen and propped by the laurel hedge read, ‘AUCTION OF PROMISES OVERFLOW PARKING’. A hectic rainbow-coloured arrow pointed towards the neighbouring farmer’s field, but the overflow parking facility must itself have overflowed, because a number of cars had been left straddling ditches by the roadside.
‘Nice gaff,’ Gabe said, and I thought again how much like his dad he was. He was right. It was a very nice gaff – not the formidable English pile I had been expecting but a simple unpretentious house of mellow stone, with a gabled three-storey elevation on either side of an unadorned square porch. That its sandstone tiled roof sagged, that an elegant arched window on the third floor had been bricked up by some seventeenth-century tax-dodger and that one of its chimneys listed alarmingly, only added to its quirky charm, as did the late-blooming wisteria which rambled all over it.
There must already have been over a hundred people milling around on the lawn, not a familiar face among them. It was a much more mixed crowd than I’d been expecting. There were the usual suspects in flannels and Panama hats and at least two women in the same Boden dress, but there were also hipsters with sleeve tattoos, arty types in vintage clothing and flash-looking youths in Hollister. Cath nudged me and nodded towards a red-faced man in slacks and a navy blazer. ‘I swear he was on Question Time last week,’ she said, in a loud stage whisper. From inside the marquee came not the genteel sound of a string quartet, but the easy-going chug of a blues band. The two little Gaines girls appeared beside us, offering from trays of drinks.
‘There’s Pimm’s or prosecco or beer in the gazebo,’ they chanted in unison.
‘How lovely,’ I said, accepting a glass of Pimm’s from the one who had put the evil eye on me for splashing her dress with chutney. She gave me a chilly smile and turned to Cath who plucked a glass impulsively off the tray and stared at me defiantly. Nick bowed to each child in turn with exaggerated politesse.
‘Thank you, Grace, Honour,’ (either he’d struck lucky or he could actually tell them apart) ‘but I think the beer will be more up our street.’
He clapped a blokey hand on Gabe’s shoulder. ‘Their old man’s a bit of a craft ale fanatic,’ he explained.
‘Ladies,’ he turned to Cath and me, ‘shall we reconvene in the marquee in five?’
I watched them stroll across the lawn, their route taking them directly past Imogen, who despite being deep in conversation with a buxom dowager in a twin-set, plucked at Nick’s sleeve as he strode past. He didn’t break his stride, still less bother to stop and introduce Gabe to his hostess, just cast an amused glance over his shoulder. It was the sort of interaction, complacent and intimate, which you’d expect between very close friends – or lovers. I was still smarting from the pain of having witnessed it when Min appeared beside me, cool and stylish in a cream cotton Nehru jacket and jeans.
‘Hello, Karen,’ she said, ‘I was hoping you’d be here. Haven’t seen you in ages. You look lovely by the way.’
I blushed and stroked the back of my neck, unusually exposed by an experimental up-do, which I was already coming to regret. Given my behaviour last time we had met, I was surprised Min should evince such warmth, but I was grateful too and tried to show it.
‘And as for you,’ Min said to Cath with mock reproach.
‘Aye, yoga, I know, I know…’ Cath said, holding her palms up defensively, ‘I should never have let you sign me up.’
‘You do yoga?’ I said, regretting my tactlessness as soon as the words were out of my mouth.
‘Well, as it turns out, I don’t,’ Cath said ruefully, ‘but I do subsidise the yoga class Min goes to, which is a public service of a kind.’ She gave a wheezy chuckle and I thought how very fond of her I’d grown.
‘Sorry,’ I said blushing, ‘I didn’t mean…’
‘She’s made it to two classes all term,’ Min said, coming to my rescue, ‘but before she starts,’ she raised a warning finger at Cath, ‘she was complimented by the teacher on her exceptional core strength.’
‘That’ll be the gardening,’ I said.
‘It’ll be the reinforced lycra leggings,’ Cath corrected me. ‘If you want to know why I only made it to two classes, look no further than those diabolical things. They all but gave me a hernia. Great for staking fruit trees, though…’
Min and I laughed.
‘How about you, Karen?’ Min said. ‘It’s Hatha yoga, the gentle kind; a dozen middle-aged hippies in the village hall. Thursday mornings, nine-thirty…?’
I raised my eyebrows challengingly at Cath.
‘Aye, go on then,’ she relented, ‘I will if you will. We’ll get some of them hareem pants off the market. Sign us up for next term, Min.’
People were starting to move towards the marquee in greater numbers now, willowy well-spoken Charlottes and gangly blushing Rufuses, sandal-wearing Ziggies and blue-haired Skyes. Min took my arm and we filtered into the procession behind a gaggle of sweary young Irish grooms from the local racing stables.
‘Is Ray not with you?’ I asked, furrowing my brow. She jerked her head towards the marquee from where a husky, booze-soaked voice could be heard growling, ‘I laid in bed so long that I damn near saw another day come back round.’
‘No!’ I stared in delighted disbelief at Min and then at Cath for corroboration. But of course, it wasn’t such a stretch that Ray the petrol-head should also be Ray the bluesman. He wasn’t bad either.
‘Always one to make the most of a captive audience,’ Min said wryly, with just a hint of pride. ‘Well done for getting your menfolk to show up, by the way. Not an easy task when the football’s on telly. Ethan looks well.’
‘Ethan…?’ I said, looking around me in hopeful bewilderment. She waved vaguely towards the terrace.
‘Oh, that wasn’t Ethan,’ I said quickly, ‘that was Gabe, Nick’s other son.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know he had a… they’re very alike, aren’t they?’
Were they? I wondered. They didn’t seem so to me. The head-shape perhaps and the broadness of the shoulders. It wasn’t that you’d call Ethan less handsome – the opposite if anything; there was a fullness, a slightly female prettiness to Ethan’s looks which neither father nor half-brother possessed, but where Nick and Gabe bestrode the landscape like lions, easy and unselfconscious, Ethan’s gait was alert and defensive, as befitted one used to slinking in the wake of mightier creatures, scavenging their kills.
‘I suppose,’ I said doubtfully, ‘but Ethan’s not… around at the moment.’
‘That’s funny,’ she said, looking at me curiously, ‘because Ray said he bought him a pint up The Fleece the other night. Him and his young lady…’
22
The marquee was already packed. We were lucky to get the last few seats
at a plastic table near the back. The atmosphere was a cross between a society wedding and a folk festival. Barefoot primary school children chased one another round the tables and elderly couples sat behind untouched drinks, tapping along tolerantly to the music with slightly wistful smiles on their faces. At the margins of the tent, shifty-looking teenagers clustered in their different tribal groups.
Ray Chaney and The Sprockets were coming to the end of their set. They finished to cheers and foot-stomping from the audience and Ray slid his kerchief backwards off his glowing head and mopped his neck with it, before stowing his guitar and making his way towards our table, where Min had a chair and a pint of Bishop’s Mitre waiting. We all sat forward, eager to congratulate him on the band’s performance but he waved away our praise. An announcement over the PA system brought the last stragglers in from the garden, including Nick and Gabe, who edged their way through the throng, each bearing a plastic garden chair above his head. They had no sooner manoeuvred their way over to us and sat down than Melissa and Luca arrived, homing in on us as if there were only one place to be. Ever the gentleman, Nick sprang up and offered his seat to Melissa, who accepted with more eyelash-fluttering than seemed strictly necessary. Luca turned down Gabe’s offer of a seat, choosing instead to kneel on the grass beside me and prop his arm on the edge of my chair. I inched my thigh surreptitiously away from his elbow, which he took as an invitation to encroach a little more, darting me a grateful smile for my trouble.
Douglas Gaines bounded onto the stage, adjusted the height of the microphone on its stand, tapped it and then recoiled at its amplified stutter.
‘Always wanted to do that… Well, what can I say? What a turnout. On behalf of Immie and myself, oh – and the girls of course – welcome to Walford House and to our third Auction of Promises, once again in aid of the church roof restoration fund and the Saint Aloysius Hospice.’
The Move Page 19
