‘Interesting.’
‘Interesting.’ He interprets this, correctly, with the Australian meaning of the word.
‘Yeah.’
‘What do they do?’
‘Um … nothing, really.’
‘Nothing? How can they do nothing?’
‘Well, they have this property, and—’
‘OK. So, what? If they do nothing, I guess they must be worth a few dollars. This husband of yours – he don’t do nothing either?’
‘Yeah – yeah, he does. He sort of runs things. His dad’s largely retired.’
‘Ah. So they’re farmers.’
‘No. Not really. It’s really historic, like I said. It’s open to the public in the summer.’
‘Like a hotel?’
‘No. Not really. More like a theme park, only no rides.’
‘They got food?’
‘Sort of. Scones. Those sort of bready buns with the raisins in. Oh, and fruit cake. Things called Melton Mowbray pork pies. Tell you something. British food is every bit as good as they say it is.’ Says the girl from the land of the lamington.
‘What, they don’t do any hot food?’
‘You know what, Dad? It’s out of season. I don’t really know.’
I hear him take time to digest this. To my father, a place of entertainment that doesn’t also sell meaty treats is an opportunity wasted. My new family has just plummeted in his estimation to somewhere roughly on the level of The Vegetarian Society of Australia.
‘So how,’ he asks, ‘are you getting on with the family? What are they like?’
I’m cautious. ‘I’ve not been here long enough to get to know them. They’re OK.’
I can tell he’s not convinced.
‘Well, OK. I think the mother-in-law’s got a bit of a problem.’
A sigh, and a chomp on the cigar. ‘Don’t they all?’
‘I guess,’ I say doubtfully.
‘If you think it’s bad now, just wait till you have children.’
‘Thanks, Dad. That’s a great help.’
He does one of his cough-laughs. ‘I know my girl. She ain’t going to put up with no shit from nobody.’
‘Glad I’ve got your confidence, old man.’
‘Give ’em hell, Melody.’
‘I’ll do my best. Hey, where’s Mum?’
‘Where you think?’
‘Oh. OK.’
‘She took your yaya down to Sydney for a couple of nights. I think she needs some more black sacks and armour-plated control pants.’
‘Hell. So you mean you’ve got the place to yourself?’
‘I know. I’m surprised she trusts me after the last time.’
‘You’re not going to do it again, are you?’
‘No. No. She confiscated the air gun, anyway.’
‘Well, you’re not going to let the opportunity pass completely though, are you?’
‘’Course not. What do you take me for? I know I’ve been married to your mother for years, but my balls aren’t completely gone. So when we going to come and see this famous property, then?’
I’ve been sort of ready for this. It’s not that I don’t want to see them – God, I want to see them – but I’ve got to get a few things sorted out before they come. ‘Anytime. Just give me the word. But I’d wait until the spring, or even the summer. It’s really cold right now. And there’s this rain – I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s not like proper rain. Doesn’t come down and then go away. It’s more like being stood in front of a windscreen mister. All the time.’
‘Sounds awful.’
‘It’s been like that every day since I got here. Trust me. You don’t want to come while it’s like this.’
He catches something in my voice. ‘Melody? You OK?’
‘Yes,’ I say quickly. ‘Yes, I’m fine. Really.’
‘You don’t sound OK.’
‘I’m fine, Dad.’
He gets that don’t-lie-to-me tone. ‘Melody?’
‘Just leave it, Dad. I’m fine. Just a little bit homesick. But I’m fine.’
‘We’ll come, right now.’
‘Don’t. Just give me a little while to get settled in. And then I’ll be fine.’
‘No, but—’
‘Dad. No. You’ve got to let me do this by myself.’
‘I don’t like to think about you, all by yourself …’
‘I’m not. I’m not all by myself. I’ve got Rufus, remember? That’s why I’m here.’
‘You know what? I don’t know this man. He could be doing anything, and I wouldn’t know.’
‘Dad? I’m hanging up now.’
‘Don’t do that, Princess. You can’t blame me for worrying. After what happened the last time …’
‘I’ll talk to you soon. Don’t worry about me. I’m absolutely fine.’
‘Mel, I—’
‘Bye, Dad. I love you. I’ll call you soon.’
That went pretty well, I’d say.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Eavesdropping
It’s a Sunday night in The Land That Time Forgot, and I’m on my way down to the dining room when I hear voices at the bottom of the stairs. They’re so intent on each other that they haven’t heard the schlick of my stilettos on the marble. It’s Mary and Tilly, and they’re having one of those ‘the vicar’s here, keep your voice down’ rows. Well, Mary’s having a row: it sounds like Tilly’s crying.
‘Please,’ she says, ‘Mary, I feel awful. I can’t face it.’
It’s odd how Tilly always calls Mary by her Christian name when she’s ‘Mummy’ to Rufus. It’s such a Modern Parent way of going on for such an old-fashioned lady. I feel it says more about the obvious distance between them than pretty much anything else. You’d have to have grown up a long way from human habitation not to notice who the blue-eyed boy was in this family. It’s a testament to the strength of his character that he’s not grown up with Little Emperor Syndrome, really.
‘There’s nothing wrong with you,’ hisses Mary.
‘I’m eight months pregnant.’
‘It’s not an illness. When I was pregnant with Rufus, I was—’
A rebellious interruption: ‘Yes, yes, I know. You were opening fêtes and stalking deer right up until you went into labour. Well, I bow my head to you.’
‘Oh, don’t be sarky with me. Just pull yourself together and come in.’ Mary’s tone is sharp, bullying: like a bodkin prodding the small of a back.
Tilly again sounds tearful. ‘Mary, my ankles have swollen up like balloons, my back’s killing me and I’ve got a frightful headache coming on, and you know I’m not allowed to take anything for it. Please can’t I just go and lie down …?’
‘The table’s already laid. I will not have your grandmother upset …’
‘Granny won’t mind. She’ll understand.’
‘If she thinks for a moment that there’s anything wrong … if she finds out, I shall personally throttle you. I’m not having it.’
‘Mary, she’s going to find out! She can’t possibly not. When the baby’s born and—’
‘No! Do you hear me, Mathilda? If your grandmother finds out what you’ve done, it will kill her! Do you want her blood on your hands on top of—’
Tilly sounds like her blood’s just boiled over. ‘What have I done? What exactly have I done?’
‘You know. Oh, my giddy aunt, you know. We do not have divorce in this family. You can do what you want after your grandmother is dead, but I will not have her heart broken.’
I hear a faint, catching sob. ‘You bitch,’ says Tilly. ‘You bloody bitch. It’s not my divorce. It’s his. Do you think I wanted my husband to run off with some …’
Oy oy. I decide to eavesdrop a bit more.
‘Well,’ says Mary, ‘in my day, women made damn well sure their husbands didn’t. We looked after ourselves. We paid attention. No wonder he ran off with the first woman to look at him. You may be too spoiled to take your responsibilities serio
usly, but if you’re going to come here and sponge off your father, you will have to respect the values of this house.’
A single, strangled sob.
‘Now, come to dinner like an adult and behave. It’s bad enough that we’ve got that …’
I know I’m about to come up.
‘… hoyden at the table, without temper tantrums from you.’
I finish the stairs off in a split second, round the corner in a clack of heels, brightest smile at the ready. ‘Hi,’ I say, wringing every bit of mileage out of the vowel, ‘I’m not late, am I?’
‘No,’ says Mary, and it’s plain that it pains her that I’m not. Then: ‘That’s a … um … interesting dress. Are you sure you won’t get cold?’
Despite Rufus’s promises, we’ve not got any nearer the bright lights than a trip to the woollen-wear shop in Stow the weeks I’ve been here, so I’m wearing my wedding dress. Somehow I didn’t feel like a painted whore in it in Valletta. Though, of course, I didn’t have goosebumps all over my blue-stippled flesh in Valletta. ‘I’d be cold whatever I wore, Mary,’ I say pleasantly, ‘so I might as well wear something nice. This is the dress I wore to get married in. Do you like it?’
‘Very …’ says Mary, and it sounds like the reminder of the solemn occasion makes her sick to her stomach. Then she frowns and picks up a corner of the shawl I’ve wrapped around my shoulders in a vain attempt to postpone the onset of hypothermia. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘The Chinese room. Over the back of a chair?’
I get one of those caught-the-sneak-thief vibes. So much for the old all-my-worldly-goods malarkey. ‘It’s very old,’ she says. ‘Valuable.’
‘Oh, right,’ I reply. ‘I’ll try not to get any fag burns in it, then.’
Write out five hundred times: do not attempt to bond with your mother-in-law by making jokes.
Another acid pause. ‘Well, never mind,’ says Mary. ‘It’s too late to change. Tilly’s feeling under the weather. So we’re all late now.’
I catch Tilly looking at me under her eyelashes. Her eyes are reddened and her nose looks like it would probably do as a traffic beacon. ‘Poor old you,’ I say kindly. ‘We’ll see you right.’
Tilly looks startled, like a guppy. I think she’s afraid I might touch her or something. She attempts to shoot off. Does more of a lumber, what with the stomach and the floor-length maternity smock that ties her ankles together.
Mary stands to one side, face like stone. I stop; sweep my hand through the air, towards the dining-room door, like a ballerina; say: ‘After you, Lady Mary.’
She says nothing, simply wheels on her heel and precedes me into the room.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Drinkies
So poor old Tilly’s getting about as much support from her olds as she would have got if she’d been cuckolded by a Royal. I’d managed to work this out already but I hadn’t realised the reason they were all keeping it under their hats. I’m shocked, though, at what seems to be Mary’s idea of loving motherly behaviour. I’d have had her kiddies taken away years ago if I was Social Services.
They’ve got the vicar to dinner. The vicar and Mrs Vicar, and that guy Hilary, who’s wearing a spotted cravat, no less, and two sets of people of indeterminate age – it’s so hard to tell when the complexion’s been eroded by driving rain – who talk like they’ve got raw eggs lodged between their back teeth and don’t want to break them. They’re called Patrick and Daisy Trice-Rickard and Jimmy and Patsy Something-Hyphen. I’m not sure if Patsy’s the same one I heard on the stairs, but decide to give her as wide a berth as possible. Oh, and Roly Cruikshank. He looks like he’s brushed his hair down with a nail brush and water. Looks like someone who deals in antiquarian maps.
She’s done it again, of course. Ignored me right up to the door – she doesn’t seem too bothered about Tilly knowing how the land really lies – and then slipped her arm through mine the moment it opened and paraded me around the drawing room with my bicep brachius pressed disturbingly against her right breast as though I was her new best friend.
I’m regretting the decision to wear the dress. I’m not sure what else I could have worn under the circumstances, but I feel virtually naked when I see that the A-line velvet is out in force tonight, combined with stark white blouses titivated by frilly jabots. Among the eight women present, four are wearing just that: one black skirt, two bottle green, one claret. Tilly’s smocky thing is made of velvet, slightly jaded by a liberal coating of long white hair that I suspect must come from Perkins. Beatrice wears something floaty in layers of peach and orange chiffon, which admirably hides the effects of ten decades of gravity by making her look like a caper blossom. Of course, they all know better than me. I’d naively thought that, with guests in the house, they might have indulged in some form of heating in the entertaining rooms, but aside from a two-log fire in the ten-log grate, the place is still cold as the grave. My nipples feel like walnuts.
‘Well, how do you do?’ asks Mr Hyphen, staring at them as he shakes my hand. ‘And congratulations.’
Why do people keep congratulating me? Surely they’re meant to be telling me how lucky Rufus is?
‘We were sorry we didn’t get to meet you the other day,’ says Patsy Hyphen. She has a bananawood complexion and the Klingon head ridges of one who discovered Botox early. ‘You seemed to vanish. One minute you were there, and the next – poof!’
I make a joke of it. ‘You can always rely on me to be the party pooper. I sort of got lost for a bit.’
‘Oh, my dear,’ says Daisy Trice-Rickard, ‘that’s happened to me here so many times I can’t tell you. I always make sure I have a piddle before I come, just so I can avoid having to go to the lav.’
‘Tell you what, I almost gave up and went to the pub.’
‘Well, bully for you,’ says Mr Hyphen. ‘Quite possible you’d have ended up there by accident anyway. There were always rumours that Edmund’s father had a secret tunnel made leading straight to the Wattestone Arms.’
‘You know, I’d never come across a family that was named after a pub before I met Rufus,’ I tell him.
He bellows with laughter. ‘Just wait till you meet the Duke of York,’ he replies.
‘Dear girl,’ interjects Mary. ‘Did you know, she’s been clambering about on the roof like a little monkey?’
‘Haveya?’ cries Mr Hyphen. ‘Haveya? Good for you! Didn’t know you had it inyer! Thought you looked a bit delicate in that dress.’
He claps me about the shoulder, making me very glad I’ve got the shawl on. Even through the cloth, it stings like rubbing alcohol on a carpet burn, but I’m pleased to bear the pain. It’s a noble scar of amity, after all.
‘Have you met Paddy Trice-Rickard? He was always out on the tiles at Cirencester.’
Jimmy unclamps my mother-in-law’s grip and leads me over to where Patrick Trice-Rickard is hogging the fireplace.
‘Blushing bride,’ he says, pumping my hand, ‘how d’ja do? Very fetching frock, I must say.’
‘Thank you. It was my wedding dress.’
‘Jolly good. Must’ve looked splendid. Bit thin for church, though,’ he says meaningfully. ‘Must have given the vicar a bit of a thrill.’
‘Registry,’ I tell him, trying to draw the shawl a bit further across my décolletage without being too obvious about it. ‘And it’s still pretty warm in Malta in October. But I don’t think it’s going to do for the rest of the winter. I’m going up to London tomorrow. Do some shopping.’
‘Poor old Rufus.’
‘Naah. He’s staying here.’
‘That’s the spirit. Just land the old man with the bill afterwards.’
‘I was thinking of using my credit card.’
‘A feminist!’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Burned my bra only the other day.’
‘So I see,’ he says. And the look on his face suggests he’s glad of it.
From the corner of my eye, I notice that Beatrice is pull
ing some sort of face at me. I guess maybe she thinks I shouldn’t be fraternising. What with being a servant and all. A week of sitting next to her at interminable family dinners, and she still thinks I’m her nurse. I mean, I don’t mind cutting up her food for her, but when someone consistently dismisses you by saying, ‘Thank you, you can go now’, it can get a bit irksome.
Rufus arrives at my side, hands me a gin and tonic that’s so strong I choke.
Tilly waddles over. ‘I hear you’re off to London?’ she asks.
‘Yeah. Just for the night. I’ve got to get some clothes in. Going to go to – where was it you said, Rufus?’
‘Harvey Nicks.’
Tilly gets a dreamy sort of look. ‘Ohhhh, Haaaahvey Nicks,’ she says. ‘I remember when I could get into clothes from Hahvey Nicks. Dreadful shoes, though. You must go to Bond Street. It’s only a bus ride. The 137. Goes all the way. Oh, lucky you.’
‘I’ll pick you something up if you like.’
Tilly shakes her head, mournfully. ‘No point. Once I’ve spawned it’ll be corduroy the colour of babysick all the way.’
She’s still looking horribly pale. There are lines of strain round her eyes and mouth.
‘You look like you could do with a sit-down,’ I tell her. Not that I fancy one myself, of course.
She glances surreptitiously at Mary over her shoulder. Beatrice and the vicar are the only people in the room who aren’t standing up.
‘I’ll come and sit with you.’
‘I … yuh, OK. That would be nice. Perhaps we can talk to Granny.’
I wait for Tilly to hoist her stomach over a Louis XV gilt armchair, follow her over to where Beatrice perches on the very edge of the sofa, nursing her gin and talking to the vicar.
‘Good evening,’ says Beatrice, with a gracious inclination of the head. ‘So glad you could join us.’
‘How are you this evening, Granny?’ asks Tilly, parking herself on the far side of the vicar. I pull up a Victorian nursing chair and make a fourth.
‘Very well, thank you,’ replies Beatrice. Then again, she’s the sort that would say that if her left leg were hanging off. ‘And how are you?’
‘Your grandmother was telling me,’ says the vicar, ‘about the war.’
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