by Sarah Mason
Inside is fairly chaotic and most of the action seems to take place in the big old kitchen at the back of the house. I really don't know why because very little cooking seems to take place there but Barney did set light to a Pop Tart in the toaster last week and had to douse it with the fire extinguisher.
A big dresser dominates one wall of the kitchen, and it is draped with dog leads, party invites, a rope of garlic from our recent French trip, photos and postcards, dodgy props that my mother collects from each play run and all manner of other trivia. A large sofa sits across another wall—the material is worn from countless bottoms and the back of the sofa is piled high with colorful cushions.
The rest of the house is decorated in my mother's usual distinctive style. A sort of Cath Kidson crossed with Liberace. Yes, quite scary.
Our family are a gregarious bunch who have never really identified with the concept of being alone. Probably due to the fact that in a family of seven it's never been possible to be alone. You can't even sit on the loo without someone shouting at you through the door. But it does mean that someone is always around for a friendly card game such as Slam! (until Barney renamed it Slap! with the obvious accompanying permutations) or a trip down to the pub.
I have just got changed from work and am wandering back down to the kitchen. The phone has been ringing since I came out of my room and I pick it up in the hallway downstairs. I really hope it's not my mother's agent because he is really scary and tends to shout at everyone (except my mother and father because they are both inclined to wander off and leave him to it whereas the rest of us stand, shaking in our boots).
“Hello?” I say tentatively.
“Clemmie!” exclaims my sister. “It's me!”
“Holly!” I say in sheer relief. “I thought it might have been Gordon.”
“Well, I can shout at you if you want me to.”
“No, no. Mr. Trevesky has been shouting at me all day as it is.”
“What for?”
“Oooh, nothing.”
“Come on, Clemmie. What did you do?”
“Okay. I went the wrong way through the kitchen doors and managed to punch Wayne in the face with a tray.”
“Well, I'm sure it was an accident.”
“For the third time this week.”
“Oh. Well you probably needed a bit of a shouting at then.”
“Yes, but there are limits. And Wayne's nose has always been wonky. In fact, I might have straightened it up for him. Anyway, when are we seeing you next?”
“Well, that's why I'm calling. James is working this weekend so I thought I might pop down and see you all.” Holly is my younger sister and we're really close but I haven't seen her much since I got back from my trip. I have yet to meet James, her rather exciting-sounding boyfriend who she got together with while I was abroad and the story of which my mother told me in snippets during the three-minute conversations whenever I called home.
“That would be lovely!” I say with genuine pleasure. “I'll ask Mr. Trevesky for a day off.”
“Why don't you ask him for a couple of days and come back with me to Bristol? I could take the afternoon off and we could go shopping or something?”
“That would be nice but I really ought to use my holiday to look for a proper job.” I try to sound more responsible than I'm feeling.
“Why don't you have a look in Bristol? It's a fantastic place!” Holly lives in Bristol so she is somewhat biased.
“I haven't really decided where I want to settle yet.” My last job was in Exeter and believe me when I say that I simply cannot return there. Ever.
“Well, I would love to have you here and there are some really great people. Why don't you come up and see how you like it? It could be a fact-finding mission.”
“Okay, that would be really good actually,” I say, my conscience slightly mollified. “I'll ask Mr. Trevesky tomorrow.”
“Besides, it's really exciting at the paper at the moment!” She lowers her voice. “Emma has resigned!”
“Emma? Does the social diary thing?”
“She not only covers our illustrious society pages but does a bit of PR work as well. She knows everyone there is to know in Bristol.”
“Daddy is the QC?” I remember her well. Really snotty. One of those I-don't-need-to-work-I-just-bash-the-keyboard-for-a-lark people. Most of the people at Holly's paper are familiar to me as I have been to a couple of their work parties.
“No eyebrows,” adds Holly as a further aide mémoire.
I nod understandingly. “I remember, difficult to trust someone with no eyebrows.”
“Exactly my opinion! James says I'm being stupid. Anyway, she's just handed in her notice.”
“Why? Did she find another job?”
“Well, that's what's so strange. No one knows. She didn't mention to anyone that she was thinking of leaving. She just didn't turn up for work one morning and the next thing we know she sends in a letter of resignation by fax. But she's left all her stuff here. Even her lunchtime shopping, a lovely little Whistles top from the sale . . .” Holly sounds incredulous about this as she rightly should. There is no way I would leave any of my sale purchases lying about. “She's just gone.”
“Well, what does Joe say?” Joe is the editor of the paper.
“He says to mind our own business. Ha! Fancy saying that to a bunch of reporters!”
“Oooh. Something might have happened to her,” I say, intrigued. “What does James think?” James is a detective in the police force so surely this would be just his tipple.
“James says to mind my own business too.”
“Oh.”
“At least it makes work more interesting.”
“How's it going at the moment?”
“I need a story,” says Holly gloomily. Holly wrote an incredibly successful diary for the paper while I was away about shadowing a detective from the police force. James was said detective and that's how they got together. The paper wanted her to do another diary but she opted for a senior place on the features team instead so she could stay in Bristol with James. “Anyway, how's everyone? Mother okay?”
“They've just started the main rehearsals for Calamity Jane. Dad is hoping they'll all shoot each other.” Only a few weeks into her annual summer holiday my mother got bored and became involved with the amateur dramatics society.
“Oh God, that sounds a nightmare.”
“It is a bit. Barney and I sometimes pop down to see the rehearsals. Sally is really good.”
“What is Catherine like?” Catherine Fothersby is one of the leads in the play too and let's just say our two families have never seen eye to eye. Mostly because the Fothersbys wouldn't even dare look at any of us properly in case we curse them or something. They're a bit godly and seem to think we're the spawn of the devil. Goodness knows where they have got that idea. It can't have anything to do with my mother dressing up as a she-devil on Halloween and then rattling chains outside our local, reputedly haunted pub at two in the morning. The vicar thought that was hilarious.
“Very good as Katie, actually, which will pain the Fothersbys to think their daughter has some acting talent.”
“She doesn't have as much as the other one,” says Holly darkly.
“You mean Teresa?” Teresa lives in Bristol. I haven't heard the entire story but I think Holly and she have recently crossed swords.
“I'll tell you about it when I see you. How are Barney and Sam? Recovered from France?”
I told Holly about the arrest the night we got back from France. “Barney's still a bit sheepish about it. We've got Charlotte here again on Friday.”
Charlotte is Sam's new girlfriend. Her parents have a weekend house in the village, although I'm not convinced it actually exists as she spends most of her time here eating supper with Sam. I'm being a bit mean as there is nothing wrong with the girl at all; in fact, she's frightfully, frightfully nice.
“I quite like her.”
“Ra-ra Charlotte? You
like ra-ra Charlotte?”
“Why don't you like her?”
“For starters she sends our mother into melodramatic overdrive. I think it must be her accent because mother starts speaking the same way and behaving as though we're all in a Noël Coward play. She says things like, ‘Isn't the honeysuckle just too, too sublime at this time of year?'”
“She wouldn't know honeysuckle if it throttled her. She hasn't set foot in the garden for years.” My mother's complete aversion to flora and fauna is bizarre considering she has named one daughter after a fruit and the other after a bush.
“And she called me Daphne the other night.”
“God, Noël Coward crossed with Calamity Jane. It must be terrifying.”
I giggle and think how much I miss having Holly at home. “When are you coming back?”
After we have said our good-byes, I wander through to the kitchen. It's early evening which means that most of the family will have congregated here with their grasp firmly on a large drink. This tends to include Barney and only marginally less often, Sam. Which is ironic because neither of them actually live here.
Barney lives in the village with three other boys from the surf shop up at Watergate Bay where he works. Their house is a pit. Believe me when I say this, because I'm not renowned for my purist hygiene attitude. I have been known to pick bits of toast off the floor and eat them, or indeed to eat a yogurt past its sell-by date on the grounds that the manufacturers are being hysterically pedantic and it's probably fine. Whenever I nip down to visit Barney, I always dread going into the kitchen. He really ought to supply those little plastic shoe covers that I could pop over my flip-flops because it is truly disgusting. My mother absolutely refuses to go into the house and insists that Barney talk to her through one of the windows. But what else would you expect of four boys living together?
Barney is a bit of a surf dude. His blond hair is fashionably long and he wears lots of T-shirts over one another. He absolutely loves surfing and thus his job in the little café and surf shop in Watergate Bay is perfect for him. When we arrived in Cornwall in our teens, we quickly picked up that surfing was compulsory. After school, everyone would pack up and rush down to the beach where we would all don wetsuits and leap into the water, paddling out to reach the waves. But those boards were bloody heavy and I needed at least a ten-minute rest on mine after all that paddling before I could get down to any actual surfing so I have tailed off to the occasional boogie board session.
Barney is usually lovely to be around. I have to say he is pretty irresponsible and I normally end up doing stupid things when I am with him but this is all part of his charm. But the last few weeks he has been a bit moody, and not just as a result of his escapade in France. From what I can gather there is a girl involved, who he quite likes but, word has it on the family grapevine, she is not all that enamored of him. Which is absolutely unheard of. Maybe this is the reason he is taking it quite hard—he probably doesn't know what to do. I mean, it's never happened to him before.
This evening it's just Barney and my parents who are present if incorrect in the kitchen. Barney is sitting on the Aga (it is turned off, we're just coming into September) drinking a beer from the bottle, my mother has a gin and tonic clasped tightly to one bosom and a cigarette to the other and my father is drinking his beer from a glass. They are discussing a posh dinner party my parents attended last weekend. Apparently my mother showed herself up appallingly as she was sat between two triathletes and kept asking them when they played the table tennis bit.
“. . . but Mum, you must have known who they were. They're quite famous, you know.”
“Darling, I simply hadn't a clue. I haven't the slightest interest in all this running around.”
“They're triathletes so they also cycle and swim. It's a tough competition.”
“Yes, I know what triathletes do but when do they play the ping-pong? Surely it wouldn't be after the swimming otherwise the paddle would get all wet.”
“No, you're right. It's not after the swimming.” There's a distinct note of resignation in Barney's voice. They obviously have been talking about this for quite some time.
“Can I get you a drink, Clemmie? Was that Holly on the phone?” asks my father.
“Em, yes please, and yes it was Holly on the phone.” I sink into the leather armchair next to the Aga.
“Darling, darling, darling. Darling. What on earth are you wearing?” says my mother, looking me up and down.
I look down at my admittedly eclectic mix of clothing. A pair of cut-offs from my around-the-world trip combined with several jumpers, none of them mine, and a large pair of woolly socks. Nice.
“Whose fault is this?” I say and glare at her. My mother took it into her head while I was away to completely turn out my wardrobe and give whatever items she didn't like to the local charity shop. Which is extremely aggravating, especially when you glimpse various neighbors wearing your old cast-offs.
My taste in clothes is precarious at the best of times but my casual wardrobe seems to have been the main casualty of this little onslaught and has left me with precious little. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love clothes, but they always seem to look different on me to how they look on the hanger. Holly looks fabulous in something and then I'll put it on and look as though I work for a very bad hairdresser. I think I must just be an awkward height or something.
“How is Holly?” asks my mother, blowing smoke rings and watching them float away.
“Needs a story. She's coming down for the weekend.”
“How lovely! I must remember to buy some of that muesli she likes.”
“Which muesli?”
“You know, the crunchy one.”
“That's me.”
“Hmm?”
“I'm the one who likes muesli. Holly hates it.”
“Are you sure?” My mother frowns.
“Quite sure. Anyway, she wants me to go back to Bristol with her and stay a few days.”
“That would be nice and you'd get to meet James too. He is simply divine. Would dear Mr. Trevesky give you some time off?”
“I'll ask tomorrow. Have you got a rehearsal this evening?”
“Are you coming?” she asks as my father hands me a large glass of white wine.
Barney and I often wander down to the village hall to watch the am dram society in action, not simply for pure entertainment value, although it is worth it just for that, but because a friend of mine, Sally, is in the troupe. I don't know if troupe is the collective noun for a bunch of actors: I once asked my father what a group of actors was called and he said, “A pain in the arse.”
I look over to Barney, who grins and nods slightly. Maybe his new amour is in it. Actually, she probably isn't. It's pretty slim pickings down there apart from Sally. There's the vicar, who is playing the lieutenant, Catherine Fothersby, who is playing Katie, and a woman called Mavis who plays a lot of the walk-on parts and is so absolutely thrilled to be on stage that she grins inanely throughout all her lines. She delivers the news of drownings and maimings with a broad smile on her face but my mother hasn't the heart to replace her. Sally is actually Calamity Jane. Which is great because she's great.
After supper our father tells us he'd rather slit his wrists than have to sit through another rendition of “A Windy City” so just Barney, Morgan, my mother and I walk down to the village hall. The village doesn't have any street lamps so we have brought a torch. Barney has had to confiscate it off my mother though as she keeps wanting to look at stuff in the trees and won't keep the beam on the ground.
“Are you coming over on Friday night, Barney?” she asks. “I've invited Sam and Charlotte.”
“Aren't you going clubbing in Torquay?” I ask Barney with a frown. Actually it's amazing that Sam and Barney are still such good friends. Sam is an old fuddy-duddy solicitor who works too hard and suppers with my parents on a Friday night while Barney whoops it up at the nearest watering hole.
“We're going Saturda
y now instead. What are you planning to give them to eat?” A very wise and astute question. You see? He's not really stupid. My mother is very hit and miss on the cooking front. Guests never know whether to have a KitKat in the car on the way over here.
“Your father was going to cook a curry.”
“Well, I'm around then.”
“Clemmie? You too?”
Hmmm. An evening with Sam and ra-ra Charlotte or a few drinks with Sally. Oooh. That's a tough one.
“Thanks but Sally and I are going out.”
“Would Sally like to come and have some supper first?” Sally would probably love to come and have some supper first but I hesitate for a second. After being away for a year, it has been embarrassingly difficult to come back and reoccupy my old bedroom at home, even with a family as laid back as my own. Charlotte must wonder what I am still doing here at the grand old age of twenty-six. “Did you have to invite Charlotte?” I ask sulkily.
“She's nice!” protests my mother.
“Why can't they have supper at Charlotte's house? Which one is it anyway?” I demand.
“I've told you. It's the one with the red, you know, whatsit.” My mother hasn't got a clue which house in the village Charlotte's parents own. She never listens when people tell her details like this, she just glazes over and starts sliding down in her chair.
“It's the thatched one, next to Mrs. Fothersby,” says Barney calmly.
“They wouldn't have any food in, they're only weekenders. Besides, you know that Sam is almost family. We always try to support him.”
“Humph.”
Sam was brought up by an aunt after his parents died when he was quite young. The aunt has since died too and now Sam lives in the house he inherited from her in the village. But of course he doesn't actually live there because as far as I can see he lives in our house, littering the place with empty rhubarb yogurt cartons.
Our conversation is brought to an abrupt conclusion by our arrival at the village hall. My mother leads us blinking into the glaring electric light. Barney and I meekly go to the back and sit down as we have been taught to do since the age of zero while Morgan gets to accompany my mother up onto the stage. We are normally in more salubrious surroundings than the breeze blocks and plastic chairs of our village hall. Luckily there is only a small main cast to manage in Calamity Jane, but it does require a large number of extras which wouldn't normally leave a huge number of people in the audience in a small village like ours. However, such is the pull of my mother's name that people literally come for miles and miles to see her productions so she is risking it on this occasion.
