“Well why on earth didn’t you say so?” Lesley was beside herself. “They’re bringing Posy, and the nanny. I can’t think where they’re all supposed to sleep! Have you told Mrs. Arncott?”
“No.”
“Why ever not?”
“I couldn’t face any more of you,” William explained simply.
Lesley gave a small shriek of frustration and stalked out of the room again.
“Oh dear, she’s upset,” said William happily.
Julia’s imminent arrival precipitated a family conference in the dining-room, to which Frances was not invited. She was beginning to feel hungry, but she wasn’t sure whether she was expected to eat with Tobias, or Stephen and Lesley, or perhaps with Mrs. Arncott in some equivalent of a servants’ hall. She finished feeding Tobias, who was actually quite taken with the alphabet spaghetti, and tried to avoid listening to the raised voices.
Unlike her employers, Frances had been greatly relieved to hear that another family was coming - with a nanny. It would be wonderful to have someone normal to talk to, to have a giggle about the Shirburns and exchange moans with. Posy’s nanny was apparently being made to work over Christmas as well, and was probably as fed up about it as Frances was. “What’s Posy like?” she wondered aloud. “Is she prosy?”
“What’s that?” Tobias asked, amused at the sound of the word.
“Sort of good, I suppose.”
“No, she’s bad. She’s a bad influence,” he informed her carefully. “I hope she comes soon.”
Eventually the dining-room door opened, and William could be heard announcing that it was all a plot to kill him off so his relatives could inherit his money. Kath, who had attended the meeting in her role as chatelaine, bounced into the kitchen looking smug.
“Well, we’ve had to change everything round, of course, now his daughter’s decided to join the party. You’ll be sharing with the other nanny now - dare say you won’t weep over that.” She made a face at Tobias’s back. “He’ll have to go in with his cousin Posy.”
“I’m not having that pooey room,” Tobias stipulated.
“No, Mummy and Daddy are staying there,” said Kath, having taken care to ensure this. “And Posy’s Mummy and Daddy will have to go on the floor below. …Lovely couple, Julia and Tony!” Kath’s face took on a rapt expression. “Not a bit snooty. You’d never think she was his sister.” She nodded towards the dining-room to indicate Stephen. “Older, too, but you wouldn’t know it - dresses beautiful!”
She lowered her voice to a hiss designed to by-pass Tobias. “Young Posy’s a bit of a madam, but I dare say their nanny will keep her in order. He’s okay - Tony. Very good-looking!” She winked at Frances. “We always have a bit of a laugh and joke, me and Tony. Think he fancies me, to be honest. Come on, young man! Better get your nanny to help you move your things.”
Frances obediently carried Tobias’s belongings across to the little box-room Kath had decreed to be ‘nice and snug’ for two children, wondering vaguely why he wasn’t staying in the one originally assigned to Stephen and Lesley. Tobias, however, seemed quite happy with the arrangement.
“Which is my bed?” He bounced on both.
“Well I expect you can choose, as you were here first.”
“I’ll have this one. No…this one.” He lay down and pretended to be asleep, with huge artificial snores.
“Here you are!” Lesley came in looking anxious. “Mrs. Arncott couldn’t seem to remember… Oh, what a pokey little room! - I’m really not sure this is a good idea, you know. Posy’s quite a bit older than Tobias and…well… Such a pity they decided to come and disrupt everyone’s plans!”
Frances remained silent. She didn’t think Lesley would quite have the nerve to move things round again.
“I’m sleeping in this bed,” Tobias informed his mother, shutting his eyes again to illustrate the point.
“That’s right. Why don’t you snuggle down and have a little nap.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Daddy and I are going to have our lunch, and a little chat with Grandpa.”
“I might be lonely on my own,” Tobias ventured.
“Nanny will stay here until you’re asleep.”
Frances’s jaw dropped. She would have forgone the chat with Grandpa, but she could have done with some lunch herself. Tobias didn’t seem in the least sleepy to her, and he certainly wouldn’t drop off while he still had an audience.
“I don’t like Grandpa,” he told them. “He looks at me.”
“Oh darling! Of course you like Grandpa!”
Frances was surprised at her tone. She hadn’t thought Lesley was all that keen on Grandpa herself.
“Wouldn’t you like to live in this nice house when you’re big?” Lesley bent down to kiss him.
“No,” said Tobias.
His mother tittered and raised her eyebrows at Frances. “Settle down then, precious. Do you want a drink?”
Tobias decided that perhaps he did. Frances could feel Lesley’s eyes on her, and busied herself unpacking some things into a drawer.
“Oh well… Mummy will fetch you one, then.”
Frances grinned to herself. This talk with Grandpa must be pretty important if Lesley was prepared to go down three flights of stairs to the kitchen and back to keep Tobias out of the way. She and Stephen obviously wanted to get William on his own before the other relatives turned up. She would have felt sorry for the old man, being bullied by his son and daughter-in-law, if it hadn’t been obvious that he was quite capable of giving as good as he got. William Shirburn was a tease, and Stephen and Lesley played up to it beautifully. She suspected that most of the time he did exactly as he liked, and moreover that he wasn’t above stirring things up a bit occasionally for his own amusement.
She wondered what they were so keen to talk to him about. Money, probably. For some reason people always seemed to feel the need for secrecy where money was concerned, even when the facts were really boring. Perhaps Stephen was tired of university life, and they wanted a loan to start some exciting new venture - an escort agency or something.
“Why are you smiling?” asked Tobias.
“I’m not. My lips made a funny face by mistake. Hurry up and go to sleep, then I can go and get my lunch.”
“What are you going to have?”
“Beefburgers and custard.”
“No, you’re not.” Tobias had as much sense of humour as the rest of his family. “What are you going to have?”
“I don’t know. Whatever your Mummy and Daddy leave me, I suppose.” She indulged in a pathetic picture of herself condemned to starve in a garret, but actually she wasn’t sorry to have been let off eating with the Shirburns. With a bit of luck when Posy and her nanny came, they wouldn’t be expected to sit down to formal meals with the other relatives. They sounded distinctly intimidating.
“What’s the elderly lady like who’s coming?” she asked, wondering how ethical it was to pump Tobias. “- Grandpa’s sister. She must be your great-aunt.”
“She’s Great-Aunt Margery,” Tobias confirmed. “I don’t like her.”
“You don’t like many people, do you?”
Tobias considered this. “I like Grime and Brine,” he said after a moment. “We had a good game last time, with them and Posy, only Mummy and Daddy stopped us doing it.”
“Who on earth are Grime and Brine?”
“Their Mummy’s Mrs. Arncott. I don’t like her.”
“And what about the lady who can’t spend Christmas on her own - Hilary?” Frances decided she might as well get the full score.
“Auntie Hilary’s nice.”
Her opinion of Tobias’s judgement was such that Frances immediately pictured an over-fond maiden aunt, gooing over Tobias and showering him with unsuitable presents, and so over-sensitised by whatever traumatic event had happened to her three years ago that she dissolved into tears at the least excuse.
“Christmas is going to be a laugh a minute, isn�
��t it?” she sighed.
“I thought you said you weren’t laughing,” said Tobias.
Lesley bustled back with some orange-juice, which Tobias ignored. “All ready for sleep now, darling?” she asked optimistically. “Where’s your special blanket? There we are! And you haven’t got Cuddly Rabbit, have you? Where’s Cuddly Rabbit, Nanny…?”
Tobias sat up surrounded by toys, his eyes bright and eager for action.
“Night-night then, precious.”
“It’s not night.”
“You have a nice little nap, anyway. Can I speak to you for a moment, Nanny?”
Frances obediently followed her onto the landing.
“Er, I do hope you find your room comfortable.”
“Yes, thank you.” Frances had been surprised when Kath had shown her to a much nicer room than the others they had seen, with two good beds and a large window overlooking the garden. Lesley seemed uneasy. Frances wondered if she was trying to engineer a swap.
“I must say, I would have expected Mrs. Arncott to have put the nannies a little nearer the children!” Lesley laughed nervously. She was obviously having difficulty in reaching the point. She cleared her throat and looked down at her sensible shoes, and then out of the landing window.
“Er, I hope you won’t mind, Nanny, if we ask you to use the back stairs.”
Frances gasped.
“You did see them, didn’t you? I’m sure you’ll find them much more convenient - for the kitchen, etc. Perhaps you could mention it to the Britwells’ nanny when she arrives.” She turned away without meeting Frances’s eye, and hurried towards the front staircase.
“So many people on the road are not really fit to drive,” said Leo, coming close up behind a man doing seventy in the fast lane, and flashing his lights.
“No.” Hilary’s leg tensed as she felt for an imaginary brake.
“About time!” grunted Leo, when the man was finally terrorised into cutting in between two lorries and he could get past. “So what do you think’s behind all this Christmas business?”
“What do you mean?” said Hilary, startled. Was Leo embarking on a theological debate in the middle of the motorway? It would be typical.
“Oh come on! Uncle William isn’t exactly one for big family Christmases. What’s the old sod up to?”
“Nothing! I mean, I think it was just accidental. Stephen and Ratso had something wrong with their house, and your mother wanted a chance to show this man round…”
“There’s nothing wrong with Julia and Tony’s house, as far as I know!” Leo’s mouth curled into the self-satisfied expression he adopted when affecting irony.
“I expect, when they heard the others were going…” Hilary wished she’d stuck to the train. She’d forgotten how exhausting it was to be on the defensive all the time.
“A gathering of the clan,” mused Leo, overtaking a Jaguar on the inside lane. “Uncle William sees Father Time beckoning, and is considering the disposition of his estate. Will it be to Gentle Julia, or does he favour male ascendency? Stephen has taken the precaution of getting himself a wife and a male heir to carry on the Shirburn name. That was lucky. It means he doesn’t have to mate with the ghastly Lesley more than once…”
“I’m sure you’ve got it wrong. It was Lesley who was so keen on getting married and having a baby…”
“That’s what I like about you, Hilary.” He took his eye off the road to smile kindly at her. “ - You always think the best of people.”
Hilary drew a breath to defend herself against this unwarranted slur, but caught herself in time.
Leo braked to avoid the car he had nearly ploughed into. “I’m interested in what makes people tick - you have to be, as a writer,” he said, as if it were a chore.
Hilary didn’t break the family rule of never asking Leo how his book was going in case he told you, desperate though she was for a change of subject.
He raked a hand through his rather over-long hairstyle, relic of the teenage-rebel image he had never dropped. “No, you don’t want to underestimate William,” he went on. “Just because he’s old and eccentric, you mustn’t make the mistake of thinking he’s stupid.”
“No,” said Hilary, who never had. “Don’t you think he might divide the estate equally between them?”
“That would mean selling off Haseley. He’d never agree to that. And it would be a white elephant without the funds to maintain it, so the house and William’s money must go as a package deal.”
Hilary turned to admire the view of motorway embankment beside her, and tried to quench the curl of embarrassment she felt at being invited to discuss somebody else’s money.
“Yes, this way Father William gets them both dancing to his tune until they see which way the wind blows.”
Being a writer didn’t seem to inhibit Leo from mixing his metaphors, Hilary noticed.
“I’m sure they’ve got more sense…” she ventured.
“Stephen’s a don, so that precludes him from having any sense by definition.”
Hilary smiled politely.
“Ratso’s only a College secretary or something…”
“Librarian.”
“Julia’s far too soft-hearted to know when someone’s stringing her along. And you can forget Tony - charming, but a total airhead. Oh, they’ll dance all right! It should be rather amusing.” Leo celebrated his forthcoming pleasure by putting his foot down.
Hilary shut her eyes against the bridges flashing past and pretended to doze.
“Of course you mustn’t forget your interest in all this, Hilary.”
She jumped in spite of herself. “I beg your pardon?”
Leo shot her a satisfied glance, his hooded eyes over that large nose making him look even more like a smug eagle.
“Haseley should have gone to Mother, as the eldest child, not William, merely because he was a boy. It would then have passed to Ben - and, of course, to his widow and son.”
He eyed her again, but this time she had herself under control.
“But it didn’t go to Margery.”
“No, but if William were to pre-decease her, there would be a good case for arguing that she was his natural heir.”
“Oh come on, Leo! Margery’s very comfortably off. She doesn’t need William’s money.”
“No, she doesn’t. So I’m sure she would resign her claim in favour of you and Daniel.”
“What?”
“Ben was her eldest and, let’s face it, her favourite son. …No - I admit it - I’ve always been a bit too much of a rebel to fit in with family conventions. I wouldn’t expect to benefit from anything Margery has to offer - though, God knows, I can’t think how I survive on the pittance a writer can expect to earn - one with any pretensions to literature, I should say. I’m not talking Dan Brown here…”
Hilary knew that Leo’s father had left both of his sons a reasonable legacy. If Ben’s had disappeared into their mortgage, Leo chose to live on the income from his share while he aspired to be a writer.
“And it’s not as if you couldn’t do with the money. I don’t know what you make at that copy-editing, but it can’t be enough to keep Daniel at Medical School. You were still paying off what Ben had borrowed to set up the business when he died, according to what I heard. …I beg your pardon?”
Hilary had made a growling noise in her throat, the remnants of a suppressed scream. If she feigned a heart attack, would he let her off at the next service station? Probably not.
She sighed. There was only one thing for it.
“How’s your book going, Leo?”
CHAPTER 5
Scratch had been excluded from lunch in the dining-room, and was miffed about it. He waited patiently outside the door, hoping to be noticed. But when Stephen and Lesley finally emerged with William they were busy talking, and went straight across to the sitting-room without sparing Scratch a second glance. In fact they were so engrossed in what appeared to be a heated discussion that they forgot to take the e
lementary precaution of either putting the food away safely or shutting the door.
Scratch couldn’t believe his luck. There on the table was a totally unprotected quiche, a bowl of potato salad, and other feline delights such as butter! He leapt onto the table, prepared to sample each one.
Suddenly he was gripped round the waist. He gave a squawk of disappointment as he was lowered unceremoniously to the floor.
“Sorry, mate, but my need’s greater than yours.”
Frances was even more delighted than he was to find a quiche deprived of only two small slices, the potatoes, and, despised by Scratch, a bowl of salad and some tinned fruit. Tobias had taken an age to drop off, and she was starving. There was no sign of the others. They must have adjourned without bothering to fetch her or check that she was fed.
Conscience wouldn’t let her leave the debris as she’d found it, so she cleared the table when she’d finished, put the remains of the food in the fridge, watched balefully by the cat, and washed up Stephen and Lesley’s plates as well as her own. After that, she craved a cup of tea.
There was an old kettle on the stove and mugs on a hook nearby - but teabags? Frances opened some cupboards. Nice china, obviously never used. Food - William apparently lived on tinned stew and packets of curry powder. But here, if she wasn’t mistaken, was a brand new electric kettle, its lead still neatly coiled. She lifted it out from the back of the cupboard, and rinsed it out before filling it and plugging it in to a socket near the cooker. Further investigations led to the toffee tin of teabags, and there were several bottles of milk in the fridge.
“Indulging in a cup of tea, Nanny?”
She jumped guiltily. Stephen Shirburn had come through the open door unheard.
“Yes, I - er… Would you like one?”
“We’d all like some, thank you very much. If you could bring it into the sitting-room.”
He went out again. Frances made a face at the cat. “Where’s my frilly apron and cap?”
She found an old brown teapot and some of the nicer cups and saucers in the cupboard. A tray to put them on was more of a problem, until she discovered one hidden in the gap between the cooker and the fridge.
A Proper Family Christmas Page 5
