“I’ll just go announce you to your parents,” Janine said (without a trace of humour), before disappearing through a hand-carved door. The silence, and the scent of the 20 roses in the Beswick vase on the hall table, was almost suffocating.
Dorian looked at me, completely unfazed by our surroundings, as well he might. His home in New York was probably filled with thousand dollar trinkets, ermine trimmed pouffles and genuine Matisse bidets.
I felt a little thrill as I remembered that I had to ask Dorian about the possibility of us living together. I was about to say something to break the silence when Dorian frowned at the door.
“I’ll see what’s taking so long,” he said.
Dorian abandoned me in the wood panelled hall, with a glassy eyed fox frozen in the act of pawing at a stuffed finch, and a collection of umbrellas worthy of the V&A. Alone, I tapped the heels of my cheap shoes on the marble floor, adjusted my skirt and tweaked my wedding band on my finger.
A sound like a unicorn dancing the fandango startled me. Clopping towards me scattily, a woman my age tripped down the stairs. Her stiletto brogues tippetty-tapped on the steps, a long gypsy skirt in the same alarming russet colour chasing after her like a whippet.
“Oh poppet, aren’t you just the darlingest thing!” She exclaimed, clapping leather gloved hands over her silk shirted chest. A gold ring winked against the buttery leather of the glove.
And that’s all you need to know about Dorian’s sister.
Except her name, obviously.
“Fifi honey,” she said, so quickly that for a moment I thought it was double barrelled.
I should mention, for posterity’s sake, that Fifi Foffaney had epic quantities of hair, long and straight and silky. It was the kind of blonde that English poets might have called ‘flaxen’ or ‘like rays of yonder sun’ and that L’Oreal continued to use to tempt people into gambling at follicle-frying-dye-roulette. I was instantly certain that I was going to despise her- as I tend to strongly dislike flashy blondes with no grasp of reality and a weak sense of humour, but her next words endeared her to me.
“What a clever outfit,” she trilled, examining me with unconcealed delight. “You look utterly adorable.”
From anyone else, I would have taken it as an insult; ‘adorable’ was a word for pudgy toddlers in bunches and pregnant women in ‘Bump on Board’ t-shirts. But from Fifi the word was a genuine compliment.
“I love your hair,” I said truthfully, wanting to reciprocate.
“Oh, it’s dull as, I’ve always wanted to be a redhead, or a French brunette. Nothing worse than having a natural hair colour which hair dressers refuse to mess with. It takes all the variety out of one’s adolescence.” She grinned at me with such blindingly white teeth that I half expected to see a Wedgewood stamp on them. “How did you come to meet Dorian, then? I’ve been dying to hear the whole story; you’re the first interesting thing to happen around here in yonks!”
I highly doubted that, from the looks of the place I could imagine that biannual Royal visits kept the Foffaney clan occupied.
Dorian returned from wherever he’d gone to find his parents, and greeted Fifi with a smile.
“The Mini treated you well, then,” she observed.
“Better than Freddy, at any rate.”
“Oh,” Fifi laid a hand on my arm, “was he frightful?”
“As per,” Dorian shrugged.
It was like being in a Famous Five adaptation, only with the roles being played by grown-ups in fabulously expensive clothes. I felt opening my mouth would ruin the ambience- like a Somersetian drunk caterwauling outside the Theatre Royal.
Dorian and Fifi kindly shepherded me through the door, into a sitting room wallpapered in pale blue silk, and on into another room (which also had sitting room-esque chairs, but had a piano and a harp for added effect).
Finally, Dorian eased open another door, whispering “the drawing room. Just smile and guard your jugular.”
The drawing room was of mammoth proportions, easily as big as my entire flat. It had a fireplace with life-sized marble maidens on each side, paintings as big as doors (each depicting a stern older gentleman or a milk-faced boy) hung on the walls and the four couches arranged in the centre of the room were so deep that their occupants had to perch on the edge of their seats, just to have their feet reach the floor.
There were five people in the room; Freddy leant against the fireplace, smoking another offensive cigarette (and groping the marble bust of the statue with his outstretched hand), the other Poshos from the café sat on opposing couches, Mangy-fox-eyebrows had on a mustard-coloured tweed suit, Bowtie sported a red tie, white suit and blue shirt (making him look like he’d escaped from a particularly tastelessly dressed barbershop quartet). Lastly, Dorian’s parents, Lord and Lady Fleshlight, shared the couch on the left. Compared to their offspring they looked reassuringly normal, albeit with that air of wealth and class that no amount of dressing down could hide. Mrs Foffaney was enviably skinny, and despite having four adult children, she seemed to have stopped aging at thirty nine. She was wearing dark blue skinny jeans and a nautical striped jersey with pearl earrings and Chanel pumps. Her husband, slightly older but nowhere near as old as I’d expected, had on a tweed jacket over a plain white shirt. The strangest, most unexpected thing about them, was that they were smiling at me.
“Annie, dear, it’s so nice to finally meet you,” said Dorian’s mother.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs– ”
“Oh, Alice, dear, call me Alice,” she beamed, “and this is my husband, Jerry.”
Jerry stood and offered me his hand, which I shook, aware that my handshakes were about as practiced as my ballroom dancing.
“You’ve already met Frederick and Felicity,” continued Alice, “these are Dorian’s elder brothers, Cuthbert and Siegfried.”
I shook the extended hands of Bowtie (Cuthbert) and Eyebrows (Siegfried) with the sudden realisation that Dorian had been remarkably lucky when it came to his name. We sat down on the vacant couch.
“Well, now we’re all introduced, I’d say it’s time for some tea, wouldn’t you?” Jerry said, to no one in particular.
As if responding to some kind of maid dog-whistle, Janine appeared with a tray of cups and pots of tea. Even though we hadn’t spent long on tea sets during my degree, I recognised 1920s china when I saw it. As the tray was set down in front of me, I stared down at the bowl of sugar lumps and felt a bolt of nerves. These were sugar lump people- I was clearly punching above my weight, class wise.
“So Annie,” Alice said, faultlessly preparing a cup of tea and passing it to me (I instantly sloshed half of it into the saucer, which to her credit she pretended not to notice), “tell us about yourself. We want to know all about our new daughter-in-law.”
“Dorian tells us you work in a shop,” chipped in Cuthbert, who clearly hadn’t recognised me either.
“How cleverly dull of you,” said Siegfried.
This was the moment, I decided, where a line needed to be drawn in the plush carpeting. I could smile placidly as Dorian’s brothers mocked me, or I could awaken my inner Bristolian and verbally shank them. A voice that was definitely not Will’s (though the resemblance was striking,) whispered “give ‘em hell” in my ear.
“Actually,” I said, sweetly, “I also work in an independent cafe, I helped to create the menu, and it’s become rather successful” I looked each brother in the eye, one after the other, “though, recently, we had some customers who left without paying.”
“Oh how rude,” said Alice, as if she couldn’t comprehend such behaviour. Mind you, she probably couldn’t; she looked like she’d never stolen so much as a sugar sachet.
“Yes, it was... but, you know, I think they’ll live to regret it, people like that always seem to get their comeuppance.”
“I hope so,” said Jerry, and he seemed to mean it.
All of the brothers avoided my gaze. Fifi was grinning.
“This reall
y is a gorgeous tea set,” I said, changing the subject.
“Why thank you,” Alice beamed, “it was a present from the Duchess of Cambridge.”
Despite the revelation of the Royal tea set, the meeting actually went extremely well. Possibly because Dorian’s brothers stayed mostly silent for the whole thing. I discovered that I had quite a taste for completely unironic cucumber sandwiches, and Dorian took my hand in his own (pleasantly dry one) half way through lunch, and held it for the duration of the tea and cake portion of the afternoon, which was lovely (even if it did make it very hard to eat my Victoria Sponge).
But soon the pleasant small talk part of the afternoon began to wear thin, and the dreaded question was asked.
“So, Annie, when shall we be meeting your parents?”
If I was leery of introducing Dorian to my mad Mum, I was petrified that his luvvy parents might somehow end up in her presence.
Unfortuantely, it only took twelve and a half seconds for the decision to be taken out of my hands.
“Of course, we must have a reception party,” Alice said, with such conviction that I didn’t doubt her for a second. “The family should get together to celebrate,” she beamed at me, “this is the first wedding the Foffaney clan have had since Jerry and I wed in our university days.”
“You met at university?” I asked, politely, trying not to think of Will.
“Oh, it was the only reason I went to the wretched place,” said Jerry, surprising me, “my father was adamant, said I’d meet a better class of woman there,” he smiled at Alice, “he wasn’t wrong. Alice was taking her Masters in mathematics when I was an undergraduate, dithering towards my Third in history.”
This actually seemed to me to be quite sweet (even if Alice looked about as far from a mathematician as it was possible to look without being a member of JLS).
“Our wedding reception was glorious, but then it had to be. After all, we were bringing the whole Oxbridge crowd together.”
Ah, this explained the ‘better class of woman’ comment. It was hard to imagine Jerry finding a prim, well mannered young lady amongst the Bath Spa freshers.
“Wouldn’t it be lovely to open the house up for a party,” said Fifi excitedly, “and you must invite your friends, Annie, they’d have such a wonderful time.”
Their excitement was infectious, but didn’t come close to drowning out the shouts of ‘Bad idea, abort, ABORT’ that zipped through my head as I thought of Will and Dorian’s family mixing.
Another emotion flared in my head, one that puzzled me until I glanced at Fifi. Glorious, blonde, charming Fifi. What if Will met her and forgot all about me? She was like the sun, and on my best days I hung about the territory of Uranus. I knew it wasn’t fair to want Will to be alone, and I didn’t, I really didn’t.
I just couldn’t help wanting him to not find someone who outshone me so utterly.
“So it’s settled,” said Alice happily, “one month from now, we’ll have a spectacular party- for your engagement and wedding combined.”
What could I say? “Please no, I’m worried my boss/best friend who I can never see again will tell you that all that we nearly shagged on a greasy worktop”?
It was doubtful they’d take it well. No, I’d just have to tactfully deny Will an invite.
As teatime wound to a close, Fifi piped up, “Mama, I think I shall have to whisk Annie away for some sisterly bonding. I’m afraid I simply can’t resist any longer.”
Alice smiled indulgently as if Fifi were seven, rather than twenty-five (a guess which was later to be proved as strangely accurate).
“Don’t scare her too much,” Dorian warned, “and for God’s sake, don’t show her your riding rosettes.”
“I wasn’t going to,” said Fifi, blushing furiously.
Freddy coughed. For the duration of tea, he’d been smoking and leaning on the fireplace, now looking vaguely grey he nodded to his brothers and eased himself away from the wall.
“We’re off now, Mother.”
“Do try not to spend all day in that bar of yours,” Alice sighed.
“It’s a five star vodka bistro,” Freddy said, witheringly.
“It’s foul,” Fifi said.
“No one asked you.”
“No, they didn’t, otherwise I’d have told you it was a stupid idea right from the start,” said Fifi, shortly, “you should have stuck with the stock market, Freddy, like Bert and Siggy. You don’t have the imagination for anything else.”
Fifi took my hand and, turning a frightened expression on Dorian, I went with her, out of the sitting room and into the hallway, where she flung open a door to what I recognised as the old, narrow, servants’ stairs.
If the phrase ‘commoners’ entrance’ came into the conversation, I decided I’d flounce straight out of there.
I needn’t have worried; Fifi was as chatty as Dorian was thoughtfully quiet, and she talked the whole way up the stairs. My replies trailed off after a while, mostly because I got the feeling that Fifi didn’t actually need any input from me in order to keep the conversation alive, and also because, after the fifth flight of stairs, I ran out of breath for talking.
“Of course, these were the servants’ stairs,” Fifi continued, brightly, having commented on the wallpaper (Victorian), the panelling (hand carved), and the banister (imported from a centuries old chapel in Sicily)- all of this information having been relayed without a trace of the kind of douchebaggy pompousness that such statements would have been by anyone else.
“When my parents bought the place, we were all allowed to pick our own rooms. Freddy, being Freddy, took the largest, Cuthbert stole the best view, and Siggy snagged the one with the secret passage...”
“Secret passage?” I said, unaware that houses on the Royal Crescent had such things.
“Oh yes. The previous owners, Sasha and Nathaniel Billington, frightful people,” she added, sotto voice, as if they were still lingering in the walls somewhere, “utterly ruined the drawing room with ghastly Laura Ashley wallpaper. Anyway, they had the passage added, right from the rear second floor bedroom to the kitchen.”
“Why?” I gasped, my calves cramping horribly.
“So they never had to see Sasha’s mother,” Fifi giggled. “She lived with them, you see, a wonderful five foot battleaxe, always wore hats she made herself, with pheasants and fruit on them. With the passageway, they never had to set eyes on her.”
I really wasn’t sure if Fifi was having me on or not, and I was too out of breath to challenge her, so I let her continue.
“I chose the old servants’ quarters. Blissfully quiet, some good views, and with the new under-floor heating it’s quite toasty in winter.”
Fifi pushed open the door at the top of the stairs. I honestly had no idea what to expect, but I was definitely surprised when the door opened, revealing... nothing.
The room in front of me was completely bare; bare walls, plain fireplace, polished wooden floor. It wasn’t until I looked around properly that I saw the iron framed bed, the small wooden table, and the chipped cabinet discretely tucked to one side.
“Yes, I know,” sighed Fifi, “I’m despicable, but, you know, nothing enraptured me more as a pony club brat than the thought of being utterly destitute. I dreamed of retreating to a hovel on the fells. Whatever they are.”
I fought the urge to laugh. I was caught slap-bang in the middle of being disgusted and finding Fifi oddly endearing.
I sat down on the day bed, and Fifi opened the cabinet to produce a plain tea pot, a mess of pilfered sugar sachets and individually wrapped tea bags. Finally, she pulled out a kettle with ‘Hotel Riverbourne’ printed on the side.
I decided that the scales were tipped in her favour. Anyone bold enough to nick a kettle from an upmarket hotel was cool in my book.
Fifi made us yet more tea, and we sat on the day bed. There was a radio underneath it, which Fifi pulled out and fiddled with for a while, before she turned to me and said, “it isn’t going t
o work, you know.”
“Maybe you should buy a new one?”
“I meant you and Dorian.”
I froze, holding my cup of tea (a cup which had Costa Coffee printed on the side). Until that moment, my opinion of the Foffaney family had been split three ways; evil (Freddy, Siegfried and Cuthbert), lovely (Alice, Jerry and Fifi), and to-die-for (Dorian- my husband). With that statement, Fifi once more slipped into evaluation territory. Perhaps I’d been too quick to approve of her.
She touched my arm, “don’t mistake me, you are absolutely my favourite fiancée/bride Dorian’s brought home so far... But would I perhaps be right in guessing that, while my brother is in your heart, he’s not the sole occupant?”
No one had hit the nail on the head re: my emotional state until she said that. She was right, of course. That was exactly what it felt like.
Fifi offered me a party ring, and I bit into the psychedelically coloured biscuit.
“Mama and Papa love you, of course, and they should. But then, they loathed Opal and Claire. Odious bitches, both.”
The swearing surprised me pleasantly, like biting into a scary, posh main course and finding that it is, at heart, just a pie.
“What was wrong with them?” I asked (as any sane woman would have).
“Oh, you know,” Fifi rolled her eyes, “Opal wanted Dorian for his money, and then it started looking like he wasn’t going to have any, so she chucked him.” Fifi sipped her tea. “Claire, of course, was a raving lesbian.”
I choked on my tea and Fifi slapped me on the back with the strength of a longshoreman.
“How did you know she was a lesbian?” I asked when I’d recovered.
“Because I am one myself, also raving, naturally,” said Fifi. “Her parents know, obviously, but in that awful upper class way where knowing something isn’t the same as feeling it.”
I tried to think of something to say.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Not at present, ask me again tomorrow,” Fifi grinned, “actually, I’m not terribly interested in settling down. I have reason to believe I’d be very bad about it. I’m looking for romance, the whole shebang, and...it seems that everyone else is willing to settle for a flat in Hull with a window box and a cat. I’d be terrible at ‘domestic’.”
Prior Engagements Page 12
