Society Girls

by Sarah Mason

  “What temperature do you think it will be in the south?” I ask, thinking about my bikini.

  “Definitely T-shirt weather,” says Sam.

  I eye the rain doubtfully and then return to my huddled position. “I hope Holly will be okay. There's an awful lot of people mad at her.”

  “There's always people mad at Holly. She should make a career out of it.”

  “I hope she won't lose her job though. She loves it so much,” I say wistfully.

  “Joe won't sack her. He has a complete soft spot for her.”

  “I'm not sure that James has at the moment.”

  “I must call Gordon as soon as I can reach a phone,” says my mother. The wonders of modern technology are lost on her. She used to have a mobile phone but she didn't know how to use it, kept locking it inadvertently and could never hear it when it was ringing. I accessed her message service once and there were forty-six messages waiting. When she left it in a taxi, my father didn't bother getting her another one.

  “Did you tell him you were going away?” asks my father.

  “Yes, he's probably hoping the Channel Tunnel has caved in or something. I must also call Barney.”

  “Why do you want to call Barney?” asks Sam.

  “I want to make sure that Norman is all right, of course! There might be a frost so I do hope he remembers to bring him in tonight to sleep in the kitchen.”

  “If Norman has any sense he'll be better off staying outside. He'll probably catch food poisoning in that kitchen of theirs,” says Sam. My father's eyes light up at this possibility.

  “Barney is probably too busy mooning after that girl of his to worry about Norman,” I say, having just taken a quick swig of my whisky.

  I stop mid-swig as everyone looks at me. It then occurs to me that the combination of gin, wine and whisky may have caused me to cock up.

  “What girl?” asks my mother.

  “Yes, what girl?” echoes Sam.

  “Er, no girl. No girl at all.”

  “You just said there was a girl,” demands my mother.

  “Girl? I didn't say there was a girl.”

  “Don't be silly, Clemmie. I heard you.”

  I rack my brain for the name of an ex-girlfriend of his. “I meant Lucy.”

  “Lucy with the nasal problems?” says my mother.

  “Nasal problems?” queries my father.

  “Yes, she always had this large bogey on her nose. I kept trying to give her a tissue but she wouldn't take the hint.”

  “We keep telling you, it was a nose stud,” I say.

  “Darling, I really don't know the trendy slang for it, but in my day it was called a bogey.”

  “But Barney hasn't seen Lucy for months,” says Sam in puzzlement. “He finished with her and he's never mentioned her to me since.”

  “Clemmie meant someone else, didn't you, Clemmie?” demands my mother. Dear God, the woman has just sunk a couple of gin and tonics and a bottle of wine. Can't she just leave it? “Does Barney like someone?”

  I carefully avoid looking at my father who I know will be glaring at me. “He likes a girl, but he won't say who she is,” I mumble in a small voice, cursing my lapse. Barney is going to kill me. And then my father is going to kill me again.

  The other two seem elated by this admission. “I knew something was up,” says Sam. “All this cricket stuff and talk of a new job.”

  “Who on earth can it be? How absolutely thrilling! A secret amour!”

  “ANYWAY,” says my father. “Time for bed, I think. Come on, Sam.”

  My mother doesn't really notice them leaving, she is too busy staring at me with her eyes aglow. “So is this why he's joined the cricket team and cut his hair? To impress a girl?”

  Now the rather ominous presence of my father has gone, I feel quite happy talking about it. It's not as though I know the identity of the girl, is it? Barney deliberately didn't tell me for this very reason. How very perceptive of him.

  “I think the problem is that she doesn't like him.”

  My mother looks at me in extreme horror. She seems to be taking this as a personal insult to her. “Doesn't like Barney? What do you mean she doesn't like Barney? How can you not like Barney?”

  “I don't know. She just doesn't like him in that way.”

  “Well, really. Why on earth is he bothering with her?”

  “He really likes her. Enough to cut his hair and play for the cricket team when he doesn't really like cricket.”

  “I knew he didn't play cricket but I kept thinking I was mixing him up with one of your other brothers. Now who on earth do you think it is?”

  “She lives in the village, whoever she is.”

  My mother stares excitedly at me until the expression slowly dies from her face.

  “What?” I ask. “What is it?”

  “I think I know who it is.”

  “Who?”

  “It's not good.”

  “Who? WHO?”

  “It's Catherine Fothersby, isn't it?”

  “Catherine Fothersby? What on earth makes you think that?”

  “Darling, it has to be. She doesn't like him back which can only mean one of the Fothersbys because EVERYONE loves Barney. He's doing all this self-improvement stuff to try to make himself more worthy of her. Dear God help us. It's bloody Catherine Fothersby.”

  I stare at her in horror. Catherine Fothersby? Could it be? He certainly comes to quite a few rehearsals and he is quite defensive about her.

  “But why?” I blurt out. “Why?”

  “I don't know, Clemmie. I dropped him on his head once when he was a baby. I've always been worried about that.” She puts her hand to her head. “I think I might be getting a migraine. I simply must lie down.”

  All in all it isn't a fun night. My mother insists on lying down which leaves me to take Morgan out to wee when we stop at various stations. The ruddy animal just refuses to do anything at all at the first two stations; as soon as we reach terra firma he simply flops over onto his side and pretends to be dead. I know he is doing this deliberately to annoy me because he wouldn't dream of doing such a thing to my mother, but at last his bladder defeats him and he has to do his stuff, and I can get to bed. I lie, fully dressed, on top of my little bed, intending to have a think about things before undressing, but the swaying motion of the train has a soporific effect on me and I fall asleep with my boots still firmly attached to my feet like all good cowboys.

  I dream that Emma is Barney's secret amour, but she in turn only loves Sam and nobody loves me at all. I wake up upset and quite confused until I realize where I am. I am in France and on holiday! All dreams forgotten, I immediately leap up and peer out of the window, forgetting that I didn't actually manage to get undressed last night. It feels as though I have been amputated at the knee—pesky, bloody cowboy boots—and I collapse in a heap on the floor. When I do manage to scramble to my feet, I look out at a wide expanse of bright blue sky. The landscape is desiccated, desert-like and mountainous with dry, dusty little bushes and trees dotted everywhere. This is definitely T-shirt weather. Hooray!

  I just about manage to brush my teeth in the little basin but feel so grubby from sleeping in my clothes that I resolve to have a shower as soon as we reach our hotel. Our steward brings us a breakfast of brioche, orange juice and funny little biscuits, all of which my mother thanks him for in her pidgin French. She seems amazingly cheerful this morning; she says she is simply not going to think about Barney and Catherine because she is positive that Barney will see the light, especially when she starts working on him.

  “But you won't mention anything to him, will you?” I plead. “He'll be cross that I told you and never tell me anything again.”

  “Don't worry, darling. I'll be subtle. I am a mother of four . . .”

  “Five,” I correct her.

  She looks thoughtful for a moment as she mentally counts her brood and then says, “Well, there you are. I'm a mother of five which makes me even better
qualified to handle these sorts of situations.”

  “I think that's what worries me,” I murmur.

  “I won't say that you told me, I'll just pretend I found out from my mothering intuition.”

  Barney simply won't buy this at all. My mother hasn't got any intuition, mothering or otherwise. “You weren't being very intuitive when you forgot how many children you had.”

  “I temporarily miscounted.”

  Sam knocks on our door to ask us if we're ready and starts dragging some of my mother's luggage toward the exit.

  “How was last night?” he murmurs to me.

  “Morgan snores.”

  “I mean your mother and Barney. Did she worry?”

  I start to follow him down the corridor. “She thinks it's Catherine Fothersby,” I whisper. He stops and turns toward me with a frown. We both gently sway on the still-moving train. “She what?”

  “She thinks it's Catherine Fothersby.”

  “Is she mad? Barney doesn't like Catherine Fothersby!”

  “Are you sure? Because he has been behaving quite strangely. Why wouldn't he tell you? He normally tells you everything.”

  Sam frowns some more and we start our journey again. We reach the exit doors and he piles the bags up. “You're right, it is strange that he hasn't told me. Why wouldn't he say anything?”

  “Because he thinks you might not approve?”

  “God, it can only be someone horrific.”

  “Like Catherine Fothersby.”

  “He wouldn't,” he says, staring at me in shock. “Would he?”

  “Hello!” says my father, making us jump, so entranced are we in our little world. “Are we all ready for the off? I'll just go and collect Emma.”

  We are soon all gathered on the platform in Nice with our pile of luggage and one grouchy dog. We haul the bags to the entrance of the station and Morgan and I sit on them while my father goes off to hire us a car. My mother is busy telling Emma all about her five pregnancies, which, according to her, were all dreadful, especially Clemmie, even though I am sitting right in front of her.

  We seem to be sitting by the side of a particularly busy one-way system which spreads across three lanes and is crisscrossed with other streets. Horns blare at pedestrians who dare to try to cross the road, and the bright sunshine makes everything dazzle.

  Eventually my father comes to collect us and we make our way to a multistory car park to locate our rental car. When we find it, I risk a look at Sam and feel an attack of the giggles coming on.

  “It's all they had left,” says my father defensively. “We hadn't booked.”

  “Darling, you might as well have hired us all bicycles. Like the bloody Von Trapps,” says my mother.

  I take a quick look at Emma's face which is absolutely devoid of any humor at all. I don't think the Von Trapps had Sulky Spice in their midst. My father starts to load some of the bags into the boot. It takes a grand total of two.

  “Shall we put the luggage on the roof?” I ask tentatively.

  “Get in the back, Clemmie,” says Sam firmly with a grin.

  “Or perhaps we could trail it behind us?”

  “In you go,” he says, starting to hustle me toward the door. “I'll pile the surplus on top of you.”

  Why are people always trying to put me in the back of cars?

  “I could drive,” suggests my mother, clearly seeing that Emma, being pregnant, will immediately win the front seat.

  We all stop where we are and look at her. My mother and driving are not natural bedmates. She once arrived home and casually dropped into the conversation that she had accidentally knocked part of the trim off the car while parking it. When my father went out to inspect the damage he found the whole bumper on the backseat.

  “You're wanted for motoring offenses in various countries,” says my father. “Not least your own.”

  “Darling, I did try to explain to the officer that it is terribly difficult to drive with Morgan on my lap.”

  “And what about that man you knocked over on the zebra crossing?” asks Sam.

  “I didn't knock him over, I playfully tapped him. He was from China and very charming.”

  “You're not driving,” says my father firmly. “In the back with Clemmie, please.”

  Eventually we're all piled in with Morgan and the bags spread across the back and all I can say is I'm very glad Emma is in the front because this is very intimate and not something you could do with a relative stranger.

  I think the rental firm must have felt a little bad about the situation because they have presented my father with five maps so we all have one each. Something I think my father now regrets as we all suddenly decide we are experts in negotiating the tricky one-way systems of Nice.

  “Where are we staying, Sam?”

  “A hotel in Cap Ferrat.” We all frantically consult our maps and start yelling directions at my father, who completely ignores the rest of us and only listens to Sam and his softly spoken instructions. I hate it when men bunch together.

  We start off down the massively busy one-way street and then my father makes a right turn toward the seafront. We have a nasty moment as my father waves an elderly woman across a pedestrian crossing and then accelerates straight at her. She nearly has a heart attack on the spot but manages to make it to the other side.

  “What the hell are you doing?” yells my mother.

  “It's very confusing!” my father yells back. “I don't know whether to stop for the ruddy pedestrians or mow them down.”

  Eventually we start on the coast road toward Cap Ferrat, which seems to be situated on a little island outcrop with just one road leading to it. We climb and climb on a road cut out of the cliffs and I feel like I'm in a movie. Eventually we turn right and begin traveling back down toward Cap Ferrat. It is beautiful. Tall, expensive hedges hide wealthy houses, geraniums spill out from window boxes everywhere, sprinklers are turned on and the birds call loudly to one another. The colors seem to have been washed especially for us.

  Our hotel is situated right in the center of Cap Ferrat and my father has no difficulty parking in a tiny little space that the Range Rover would normally struggle to get a wheel into. My mother and I fall out of the back of the car, giggling madly and wildly excited by the exotic feel of the place. The bougainvillea is in full bloom, bright cerise paper lanterns adorn the doorway, the calla lilies gently sway in the sea breeze and there is the smell of fresh bread and sun lotion in the air.

  We take a couple of bags each and then go to the reception to check in. The people who are taking care of Emma are collecting her tonight at six from the hotel. My parents are staying a few extra days while Sam and I have vague plans to return on tomorrow night's train. However, after experiencing the bright sunshine and heady sea air, Mr. Trevesky has become a distant memory.

  The hotel reception is very smart with a great display of flowers and lots of squishy Colefax and Fowler sofas. The manager is a large lady with short red hair and a rather unfortunate choice of cerise lipstick who asks me how our journey has been and then gives us our keys. Sam and my parents have rooms near to each other on the second floor whereas Madame obviously feels I need more exercise and bungs me up on the fifth floor. Since Sam sets the precedent by taking the stairs (my mother refuses point blank and she, Morgan and Emma get into the lift) I have to yomp all the way up to the fifth.

  In my pretty little single room I swing open the shutters and survey the fabulous view. The sea is a startling blue and the land between us is dotted with extravagant villas. Unlike the mountainous region beyond, this area is lush and green and full of exotic plants that only the rich can afford to buy and maintain.

  Feeling ridiculously excited, I unpack my suitcase, hang a few things in the wardrobe and take a quick shower. I am anxious to get on with the very serious business of enjoying myself.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I pack my little straw beach bag with some sun cream, my bikini and sarong and one of the hotel's
towels. It's not quite hot enough for shorts so I settle for a summery skirt, a little T-shirt and some espadrilles that I found at the back of my wardrobe. These are a little mildewy but no matter. Shoving my sunglasses on top of my head, I'm too excited to wait for the lift and gallop down five flights of stairs to reception.

  Sam is already waiting for us all and he is looking insolently continental in low-slung jeans with a polo shirt that's barely tucked into them and feet encased in Sebago loafers. His hair is still wet which means he's just come out of the shower too. He's talking urgently into his mobile but gives me a quick smile to indicate that he'll only be a minute. Needless to say my parents haven't made it down yet.

  I plonk myself down on a squishy sofa and wait, content to just look around and soak up the atmosphere. However, Sam is true to his word and within a few minutes comes and joins me on the sofa.

  “God, this is nice, isn't it?” he says as he throws himself into one of the corners and stretches his legs out in front of him. “To be away from work for a few days.”

  “Lovely!” I agree. “When did you last take a holiday?” I ask idly.

  “Not for ages. The business has never really been able to spare me. It's only now I feel able to leave the whole firm in someone else's hands for a few days.”

  “How long is ‘not for ages'?”

  “Oh, I don't know. A couple of years maybe.”

  “What? Before I went away?”

  He looks at me thoughtfully. “Yeah, that would be about right.”

  I frown at him while I think back to the days when I was still going out with Seth. Sam was much more like Barney then, still serious about his work but more carefree somehow. Perhaps the strain of running his own firm has worn him down somewhat.

  “You need to take a proper holiday,” I say seriously.

  “I know. Charlotte wants to go away and maybe we will. I've just had other things on my mind these last few years.”

  “I suppose building your own firm has been tough.”

  “I've been lucky. At least I haven't had to pay a mortgage, and I used the money I got from my parents to start up the firm.” He smiles at me and I think he would much rather have his parents back. “But, it's not just been that,” he murmurs, fiddling with a bit of the sofa.