After the Party

by Cressida Connolly

  ‘You must pick the redcurrants, while you’re here,’ said their father after he’d kissed them hello. ‘It’d be a shame to let them go to waste.’

  ‘After lunch, shall we?’ said Patricia.

  He led the way into the morning room, where their mother was sitting. She looked vaguely at her daughters. Her feet, in grubby tartan slippers, poked out from the old green rug on her knees. It was possible to see her ankles, which were swollen and a mottled, purplish colour.

  ‘Look, darling, here are the girls to see you,’ said their father.

  ‘Have they brought the post?’ said their mother.

  Patricia laughed. ‘No, are you waiting for an important letter?’

  Their mother smiled ruefully.

  ‘It’s a pity Penelope couldn’t have come with you,’ said their father.

  By Penelope he meant Nina. She had stopped using her given name in her schooldays. Only their father called her Penelope now. Their mother didn’t call anyone anything.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said Patricia. ‘She’s frantically busy with her summer camps.’

  ‘She’s a very capable young woman,’ said their father. His middle daughter had always been his favourite.

  ‘She’s certainly a bossy-boots,’ said Patricia. ‘If that’s what you mean by capable. She practically goes about with a whistle on a string around her neck, these days.’

  Before her fall their mother might have murmured some light remonstration, but now she said nothing.

  ‘Penelope likes to get things done,’ said her father.

  ‘Has she brought the post, then?’ asked their mother.

  Phyllis had not spoken since entering the house.

  She knelt beside her mother’s chair. ‘How are you, Mummy?’ she said. Her voice sounded much louder than she’d meant it to, as if she was talking to a foreigner.

  ‘Well, you see, this wretched door won’t open,’ her mother said sadly. Phyllis looked over her mother’s head at Patricia for a clue.

  ‘Which door is that, Mummy?’ said Patricia.

  ‘It’s … I don’t know,’ said their mother. She shrugged.

  ‘Never mind. We’ll get it sorted out later,’ said Patricia.

  ‘What door does she mean?’ Phyllis asked her father.

  ‘I’ll just go through and see what Mrs Manville has arranged about something to drink for you after your journey,’ he said.

  Phyllis stood. She and Patricia loomed on either side of their mother’s chair. ‘Has the post been, do you know?’ their mother asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Mummy. Shall I go and see?’ said Patricia. She went out into the hall. Phyllis was left alone with her mother. She knelt beside the chair again.

  ‘I’ve come back to live here, Mummy. We’re not living abroad any more,’ she said. She tried to bring brightness into her voice.

  ‘Here? Are you living here now?’ said her mother.

  ‘Well, not actually here, not in this house. In a house of our own. Near Patricia and Penelope. In Sussex. Not too far away though.’

  Her mother looked intently at her, like a robin watching a gardener. Phyllis felt two things at the same time. The first was that her mother was very present and could see clean through her, was perfectly aware of all the reluctance and false cheer in her. The second feeling, just as strong, was that she could grasp nothing whatsoever, as if she lived in another language, another territory. The place where these contradictory certainties met and could not be made to tally was forlorn. It was a relief when Mrs Manville came in with a tray, followed by her father and sister. If there were enough of them in the room at any one time they could muddle along, papering over the cracks.

  They got through what remained of the morning. Before lunch they went out into the garden, their father leading their shuffling mother by the arm, still in her slippers. Her feet were too swollen to fit into her shoes. There was nothing very much to look at but the few remaining flowers of the stiff hybrid tea roses and the handful of plump bees hovering over the lavender bushes. The lavender had faded to the colour of ash. Phyllis pinched a papery flower between finger and thumb and sniffed, but only the faintest trace of its scent clung to her skin. There was a crack on the stone plinth of the sundial.

  ‘Shall we go up to the kitchen garden now?’ Phyllis asked her father.

  ‘Rather far for your mother. You girls can go up after luncheon,’ he said. ‘Take a trug for the fruit.’

  Mrs Manville had arranged a mostly cold lunch on the dining-room sideboard. There were lamb cutlets encased in brown jelly and a cucumber salad. Warm new potatoes had left dewdrops of steam on the lid of the serving dish.

  ‘Tuck in,’ said their father.

  Their mother smiled broadly for the first time. ‘Yes, tuck in,’ she echoed.

  ‘This aspic is like shoe-leather,’ said Patricia. The spoon made a sucking noise, as she lifted it from the firm jelly. It sounded like a boot being pulled from mud.

  ‘The Belgians are mad for aspic,’ said Phyllis. ‘They have it with everything, even eggs.’

  ‘Heavens,’ said their mother.

  ‘Well, of course,’ said Patricia. ‘Oeufs en gelée. Honestly darling, you’d think Belgium was in deepest Zambezi-land, the way you talk about it. I mean, when it’s slap-bang next door to France.’

  ‘Don’t they speak some queer sort of language, the Belgians, as well as French?’ said their father. ‘There were a group of them with us, during the war.’

  Their father had been invalided out early on, when he had been hit in the shin by shrapnel. He still walked with a discernible limp.

  ‘Flemish,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘No, that wasn’t it,’ said their father.

  ‘I don’t know, then,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘I thought I heard the post,’ said their mother.

  ‘That was Mrs Manville in the kitchen. I’m surprised you don’t do something, to stop her crashing things about so. It would drive me mad,’ said Patricia.

  Neither of the older people responded.

  ‘Haven’t we been lucky, with the weather?’ said Phyllis.

  ‘Very good summer,’ their father agreed.

  ‘It’s so nice where we are, at Bosham. We have the most lovely view across the bay and one can have picnics every day, it’s such fun for the children because …’

  ‘Walloon! That was it,’ their father interrupted her. ‘Nice fellows, actually, although they can be rather gruff at first. What were you saying, Phyllis?’

  ‘Oh, nothing really,’ said Phyllis.

  It was a relief when lunch was over and they could get out of the dining room and go up to the kitchen garden, just the two sisters. They had taken a basket and each had been handed a pair of ancient secateurs, but only Patricia had any actual interest in garden matters. Phyllis snipped a few bunches of redcurrants, to please her father. Patricia picked gooseberries, complaining that most weren’t ripe enough. There was a blackbird inside the fruit cage. It looked at them quite boldly with its clear yellow-rimmed eye. They saw that almost all the raspberries were gone. It was disappointing, since their father liked raspberries best, but so it seemed did the birds: there were several holes in the netting, which was intended to keep birds out. After a decent interval – they believed they had given it long enough for their father to feel they’d completed a proper tour of inspection – they strolled back down the mown path that sloped towards the house. Phyllis took a couple of gooseberries. She enjoyed the feel of them – so hairy – in her hand, but when she bit into one it left a streak of bitterness across the roof of her mouth.

  As they came down the grass bank of lawn, a small box-like car came into the drive. There was something not entirely serious, even comic, about the little car. It was as if it were a home-made contraption heroically pretending to be a real, road-faring vehicle. The car came to a standstill by the front porch and a very tall, very thin man got out. It seemed barely possible that someone so long and lanky might emerge from
such a small machine.

  ‘Good Lord!’ said Patricia. ‘It’s Jamie. Look, Phyllis.’

  ‘I can see. I can see who it is,’ said Phyllis.

  Patricia called out to him and the man turned, shielding his eyes from the light with a hand. She almost skipped down the grass towards him while Phyllis held back a little. As she approached she saw that he was blushing deeply. She could feel her own cheeks burning, too. Patricia had already taken his arm and was prattling nineteen to the dozen.

  ‘… so you can imagine!’ she finished.

  ‘Hello, Jamie,’ said Phyllis now.

  ‘Phyllis. How are you?’ he said. She was surprised to see that his hair was long, growing over his ears to well below his collar. He was wearing a corduroy jacket the colour of sand and the top button of his shirt was undone. He looked as if he had been much in the sun. She had not remembered how very white the whites of his eyes were. They were the colour of porcelain, like the eyes of a child.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you. We …’ Phyllis said.

  ‘We came up to spend the day with Mummy and Daddy,’ Patricia interjected. ‘That’s our motor. Hitchens brought us. He’s in the kitchen, I think.’

  ‘We were picking fruit,’ said Phyllis, holding up her basket. The redcurrants were translucent like glass beads, glowing against their pale green leaves.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jamie, grinning. ‘Yes, I can see you have. I was just returning the cylinder of your Pa’s mower. You’re back, then?’ he asked Phyllis.

  ‘Come in, do. I’d offer you some tea, only we’ve not long had lunch and I fear Mrs Manville might cut up rough,’ said Patricia.

  ‘I mustn’t stay,’ he said.

  ‘We came back a few weeks ago,’ Phyllis answered. ‘To Sussex, I mean: not here. The children’s schools, you know.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Jamie.

  ‘I’m sure Ma and Pa would love to see you,’ said Patricia.

  ‘They can see me any time, I wouldn’t want to get in the way,’ said Jamie.

  ‘Oh, but you’re not in the way,’ said Phyllis. She was surprised to hear how indignant she sounded, as if someone had been scolding him, instead of asking him to come in.

  ‘I’ve got to get back, I’ve got someone coming about buying some of the farm equipment I’m not going to be needing any more. Sheep gubbins.’

  ‘Well, next time we’re here we must telephone ahead so you can join us for luncheon. To tell you the truth I simply didn’t think you’d be about. You were away for a time, weren’t you?’ said Patricia.

  ‘I was. But there are things to see to now.’ He smiled a little ruefully.

  After their drive home that evening, Phyllis declined Patricia’s offer of supper. It was unusual for her to have the house to herself, but tonight all the children were ensconced at the camp-site and Hugh was in London, staying at his club. Just for once, she didn’t read. She walked through the empty rooms, not switching on the lights, enjoying the quiet, the almost-darkness. The outlines of the furniture were familiar and comforting. It was cloudy, and beyond the lawn it was impossible to tell where the sea ended and the sky began. She thought about Jamie. It had been he who had found their mother, after her accident. He had run back to the Grange to call for help and then returned to the field where their mother had fallen, to wait with her. It was he who had calmed her horse and led it back to the stables. Phyllis had gone out to thank him and found him in the stall on the hay, standing with his face buried against the animal’s flank, weeping. She had never seen anyone except her sisters cry before. It felt as if she was witnessing something she was not meant to see, something intensely private, and yet she did not turn back to the house. She felt drawn towards him, as if gravity was pulling her, pulling her towards him. She stepped forward and reached out to feel the line of his shoulder blade under her outstretched hand. The heat of his skin through his shirt was startling and somehow surprising to her, as if crying should have made him cold to the touch. Jamie had not said anything, but had turned around and leaned down and in, so close that she could feel his breath against her face. He had cupped the back of her head with one hand and brought his face even nearer towards her. His lips had just found hers when they’d heard Nina calling from the yard. Phyllis had sprung back, alarmed to be feeling such an unexpected sense of deliciousness when she should have been wretched. Neither of them had said a word.

  They had never mentioned what had happened: Phyllis wondered if he even remembered.

  He would be alone at the farm now that his mother had died, after less than two years as a widow. She wondered if he got lonely. Probably not: he had always been self-sufficient, even when they were very young. He liked tinkering with things, clocks and woodwork and mysterious bits of machinery. It was they who had always sought him out as their playfellow, not the other way around, even though he was an only child. Without a brother, or any local cousin, Jamie had been the one boy they knew. Once they’d enlisted him as an unofficial fourth member of their childhood club of three, his natural sweetness of temperament had ensured that he never jibbed at any task they set him. He soon became the Robin Hood to their trio of Maid Marians, in the long involved games which took place in the beechwoods which separated the farm from the Grange. The girls poked pheasant’s feathers into the bottom of their plaits and even smeared a little earth below their eyes sometimes, conflating Nottingham’s heroine with the Red Indian girls they’d seen in their story-books. Jamie was their chief den-builder and principal boy. Later he became their somewhat reluctant practice dance partner. He had been an atrocious dancer: it was like trying to dance with someone made of Meccano.

  ‘How was Daddy?’ Nina asked Phyllis, at the camp-site the next morning.

  ‘Same as ever,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘Oh good,’ said Nina. She didn’t ask after their mother.

  Phyllis decided she wouldn’t tell Nina about seeing Jamie. Her sisters meant well, of course, but they could be so interfering.

  ‘Mrs Manville was pretty surly. I don’t know why they keep her on, frankly. The lunch was awful.’

  ‘Well, because she’s devoted to Mummy. Who else would they find? They’re used to her, anyway.’

  In the half-empty canteen tent that lunchtime Phyllis noticed that Julia had taken advantage of her mother’s absence to curl the ends of her hair and now wore it pinned up at either side of her head. The style made her look older.

  ‘You look nice, darling,’ said Phyllis.

  Julia pulled rather a sheepish face. ‘The girls lent me some Kirby grips. They do theirs every night. They put bits of paper round the pins,’ she said.

  ‘They being nice to you, then?’

  ‘Oh yes. Very nice.’

  ‘And not leaving Frances out?’ There was no sign of her younger daughter.

  ‘Well … she is quite a bit younger. But I think she’s all right. She’s found some boys to play with. I b’lieve they’re playing cricket down by the gate.’

  In fact Frances and one or two other girls, as well as a large gang of the boys, had gone across the lane from the camp-site on to the strip of grass which banked between the beach and the land, where marine flowers stuck up rigidly from the sand-sprinkled turf. They looked unreal, as if they were made of pipe-cleaners. Here the young campers had found an old beach truck on rails, standing at the top of the slope which gave down to the shingle of the beach. It hadn’t taken them long to work out that if three or four of the stronger boys gave it a good shove, several others could pile in and be shimmied, squealing, in the direction of the sea. Once it was at a standstill they could hop out and quite easily push the empty truck back up the rails for another go. Soon a queue had formed, everyone wanting a turn. This they had been doing for most of the morning. One of the East End lads had already named the truck the Shoreditch Express. Phyllis knew that it would take someone with a more forceful nature than her own to make the young campers stop and come back to the dining tent in time for lunch. Let someone e
lse come and fetch them. She strolled off along the beach with her thoughts.

  Half an hour later back at the camp-site all thought of whether the children had eaten their lunch had apparently been forgotten.

  ‘Have you heard? There’s terrific news!’ Phyllis recognized the girl as one of the Cadets Julia had made friends with.

  Phyllis gestured towards the sea. ‘I was just …’

  ‘The Leader is coming! He’s coming to see us all!’

  Phyllis went in search of Nina, whom she found in a state of high excitement. There had been rumours of a visit – always it was said to be imminent – and contingency plans had been made. The wooden huts which were reserved for such an occasion were to be aired and swept, stocked with clean linen and towels. Now the small tent used as a bookshop and library was to be cleared for the Leader’s use, so that he would be able to talk with one or two key people without being overlooked. The whole site was to be neatened up, ship-shape and ready for inspection. The central area by the flagpole was to be mown. Not that the Leader was a stickler: in previous years he’d been more interested in sea-bathing and general fun than in any formality. It was a question of presence, Nina said. That was the great thing about the Old Man. It didn’t matter whether he was addressing thousands in a city hall, or taking to the waves with a handful of campers: there was an authority, an ease, a natural air of command about him in all situations. Soon Phyllis would see for herself.