Choral Society

by Prue Leith

  Chapter Twenty

  The ‘Rebecca suit’ and purple and silver pendant were getting another outing. Rebecca had invited her to dinner.

  It was the first time since David’s death that Lucy was going out, alone, to a formal social event. Of course she often went to restaurants on her own, or to meet people she was writing about, and occasionally to friends for supper, but setting out, without a mate, to go to a dinner party where she would meet strangers, was new. She hoped she’d got it right and was not going to find everyone in jeans and T-shirts.

  It was ridiculous at her age to feel apprehensive. She found herself wishing Joanna was going to be there, but Joanna was in Wakefield. I’d better get used to it, she thought, walking alone into a roomful of strangers is the single woman’s price for any social life at all. I should be grateful. Not many people invite lone women – it upsets their table plan.

  On the way back from the hairdresser Lucy had stopped at Baker and Spice and bought a box of tiny ginger biscuits covered in chocolate. They smelt delicious and she was glad the salesgirl had sealed them in a fancy little carrier bag. If she’d been able to get at them she’d have eaten at least a couple in the taxi. But she arrived at Rebecca’s flat with her present intact.

  ‘Oh, yum,’ said Rebecca, tipping them out into a dish. ‘We’ll have them with coffee.’

  Rebecca’s daughter Angelica was there, and Lucy was struck by her physical resemblance to her mother. She was dressed in black trousers with a black cowl-neck top and flat patent shoes like ballet pumps. Her blonde hair was tied at the back of her neck in a demure velvet scrunchie, but she wore no jewellery, not even a watch. She was pretty and feminine, with creamy skin, and Lucy wondered for a moment whether Rebecca was proud of her daughter’s appearance or irked by such a constant reminder of how she herself had once looked. Probably both.

  While her mother darted about, looking distracted, Angelica sat quietly on the sofa, talking to, or rather listening to, two men.

  They must be the father and son pair, thought Lucy. Rebecca had told her and Joanna that she had designs on the son, who was something big in computer software, for Angelica. And this little dinner party was to set them up. Lucy, watching Rebecca abandon her attempt at arranging flowers – presumably a gift from one of the guests – in favour of sitting herself on the arm of the older man’s chair to join the conversation, wondered if perhaps Rebecca had designs on the father for herself. She had not invited Nelson, Lucy noticed.

  Lucy accepted a glass of champagne from the remaining male guest, who introduced himself as Bill, Rebecca’s ex-husband. He had a friendly, open face, a little fleshy, and Lucy liked him at once.

  After a few minutes of pleasantries, he said, ‘Maybe I’d better fix those roses. Rebecca has obviously forgotten them. Will you excuse me?’ He picked up the flowers and their wrappings, scissors and vase and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Lucy, thinking she might help, followed him, and looked round in horror. The kitchen was a complete tip, the sink full of dirty pots and pans and every surface covered with food in various stages of preparation.

  ‘Ah!’ joked Bill. ‘This brings back rather forcibly what marriage to Rebecca was like!’

  Lucy laughed and quickly cleared a space, and between them they cut short the rose stems and put them into a different, squat vase. Bill carried them through to the drawing room, while Lucy calculated how she could best get some order into this chaos. She had just found an apron (under a carrier bag of groceries) and put it on when Rebecca came in.

  ‘Lucy Barnes, will you get out of here!’

  ‘But Becca, you could do with a hand, couldn’t you? It will only take a minute for me to clear—’

  ‘Lucy, you are so bossy! Go away! I know what I’m doing, really. So go and be a guest please. I’m fine.’

  ‘OK, OK, I’m going. But yell if you want help.’

  The guests had all arrived by eight-fifteen, but by nine-thirty there was still no sign of any dinner. Rebecca had made several forays into the kitchen, though Lucy had not dared follow her. She noticed that Rebecca was becoming increasingly flushed, whether from the strains of hostessing or from the champagne, she did not know.

  Angelica was quietly serving more drinks, and Lucy went up to her.

  ‘Angelica, do you think I should help your mum? I did offer, but …’

  Angelica looked worried. ‘Poor Mum, she’s hopeless at this sort of-thing, but she’s just bitten my head off for interfering, so I’m waiting for her to demand help, which she will any minute.’

  ‘Will she? It’s nine-thirty!’

  Angelica gave a rueful smile. ‘Well, she’d better, because we’re running out of champagne.’

  Lucy had noticed that an attempt to lay the table had foundered. This is crazy, she thought. We will all be dead drunk if Rebecca does not produce some food soon.

  She strode back to the kitchen and put her head round the door.

  ‘Becca, can I at least lay the table?’

  Rebecca turned from rootling in the fridge, and as she did, a large glass dish slipped from its perilous position on top of something else and crashed to the floor, splattering floor and fridge with what Lucy now recognised as trifle. The glass dish was in pieces.

  ‘Jesus, Lucy, if you would just not interfere …’

  Angelica had heard the crash, and came in. She looked from Lucy to Rebecca and then quietly fetched kitchen roll and dust pan.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Lucy taking the cleaning things from her. ‘You do the table.’

  ‘Thanks, Lucy.’ Angelica turned to her mother: ‘Don’t worry Mum, no one needs pudding.’

  Rebecca rounded on her daughter. ‘Angelica, you may think I am a waste of space but I am just about capable of clearing up this mess! You can’t ask a guest to—’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Lucy, ‘I offered.’

  Rebecca made a grab for the dust pan but Lucy held it aloft.

  ‘Mum,’ said Angelica, ‘everyone is starving. Let’s just get them fed, shall we?’

  ‘God Almighty!’ exploded Rebecca, ‘could you not use that nursemaid voice on me? The patient, long suffering voice of reason! It drives me mad.’

  Angelica, miraculously, did not fight back.

  ‘Fine, I’ll go and lay the table.’

  But Rebecca, who was, Lucy realised, quite drunk, was not going to leave it at that. She caught her daughter by her arm.

  ‘Just do as we agreed, Angelica, and pour the drinks.’

  ‘Mother,’ said Angelica, her voice finally betraying suppressed anger, ‘the champagne is finished. Everyone has had too many drinks, especially you.’

  ‘So now I’m a drunk like your father, am I?’

  ‘Dad has not touched a drop for years as you very well know. And no, Mother, you are not a drunk. But you’re a useless cook. Why don’t you do what you do best and go and chat up those men out there?’

  Oh God, thought Lucy, this is heading for a full scale family row. She left the dust pan and brush on the floor and steered Angelica towards the door. ‘Go and lay the table,’ she said.

  Angelica hesitated, her face pink and her bottom lip not quite steady, then she nodded and turned to leave the kitchen. At that moment Bill came in.

  ‘What’s going on girls? Any chance of dinner anytime soon?’

  ‘Oh, fuck off, Bill,’ snapped Rebecca.

  Bill blinked in surprise but did not react. He looked at his flushed ex-wife, his stony-faced daughter, Lucy bending to clear up the mess on the floor, and said to Rebecca,

  ‘How about I take everyone out to dinner?’

  Rebecca would not agree to this, but Bill did persuade her to rejoin the others with him, leaving Angelica to lay the table and Lucy to rescue the supper.

  Lucy really enjoyed it, in spite of the mess, lack of space and need for urgency. She was doing what she was good at and she spun round the kitchen like a dervish, stacking stuff to make room, and working deftly and skilfully to get
the show on the road.

  First, where was the main course? She eventually found the dish, stone raw, in the cold oven. Rebecca had prepared two fat salmon fillets on a bed of sliced onion and potato. The fillets were sandwiched together with some sort of stuffing, and covered in foil. Rebecca had put them in the oven but failed to turn it on.

  Angelica reappeared as Lucy was dismantling the fish.

  ‘Wow, Lucy, what are you doing?’

  ‘Well, I think speed is what we need, don’t you? So I’m heating the soup, and we can eat that while I grill the fish. Your mama had forgotten to turn on the oven.’

  ‘But what are you doing to it?’

  ‘I’m afraid I am ditching her original idea. To heat the oven and bake this recipe would take at least an hour and anyway it’s a bad idea. The salmon would be overcooked long before the potatoes were anything like ready.’

  ‘But we had sea bass on potatoes like that at Geales the other day, and it was delicious. That’s why Mum wanted to do it.’

  ‘But they would have pre-cooked the spuds in a bit of fish stock.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Lucy turned the grill to maximum, separated the fillets, rinsed off the stuffing, and cut them across into smallish portions. She turned the pieces in a mix of honey and soy sauce.

  ‘Could you find a bit of oil or butter or something and grease a sheet of foil to go on the grill tray?’ she said.

  ‘Why can’t the fish go straight on the grill?’

  ‘Because grills are hell to wash up, and the fish will stick to it.’

  She smiled at Angelica. What an amazing girl, she thought. Any other daughter would have slammed out of the house after an exchange like that with her mother.

  Lucy discovered the soup on the cooker and looked round for a spoon to taste it with. She couldn’t see a clean one so dipped her finger into it and sucked it. You’re not on telly now, she thought, there will be no calls from viewers on the need for hygiene. And anyway, heating the soup will kill the bugs.

  The soup was OK. Spinach and pea, she guessed. But it lacked flavour. She looked around for something to gee it up with. She found some Marigold vegetable bouillon, a lemon, and best of all, a box of coconut cream.

  ‘Why would a non-cook like your mother have coconut cream?’ asked Lucy, ‘or is it yours?’

  ‘No, it’s Mum’s, but it’s for making piña coladas.’

  Angelica watched her doctoring the soup. ‘I wish I could cook,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll teach you if you like.’

  ‘Would you? Really? I’d love that.’

  ‘Well, I will. Why not?’

  Lucy liked Angelica and felt for her. It could not be easy with a mother like Rebecca.

  ‘What are we going to do to replace the potatoes?’ asked Lucy. ‘We need something that cooks fast. Pasta, or rice maybe?’

  Angelica stared into a cupboard. ‘How about couscous?’

  ‘Even better, takes no time at all.’ They couldn’t find a steamer so Lucy poured half a packet of couscous into a serving dish and guessed how much boiling water to add. Then they chopped some of the spring onions and rocket intended by Rebecca for the salad. ‘We’ll reheat the couscous in the microwave and add this lot, and a handful of these peanuts, at the last minute. How about you finish making the salad and I’ll have a go at the pud?’

  ‘But that’s a goner if you remember! It’s in the bin.’

  ‘There might be something we can do,’ said Lucy, opening the fridge – cautiously to avoid a further cascade on to the floor. There was half a pint of thick cream in it and Lucy found a large pot of plain yogurt. She mixed them together, spooned them into coffee cups and topped them with maple syrup.

  ‘I’d have preferred muscovado sugar. It liquefies into a wonderfully treacly syrup, but never mind, maple syrup is good. We could have used honey, like the Greeks do, but we’ve got honey on the salmon.’ She put one of her Baker and Spice biscuits into each saucer.

  ‘The soup’s hot, my little commis chef,’ said Lucy, giving Angelica a pat on the back. ‘I’ll stick the fish under the grill while you go ring the dinner gong.’

  ‘That’s amazing, Lucy,’ said Angelica. ‘That whole Ready-Steady-Cook performance took ten minutes. You’re a genius.’

  Lucy laughed. ‘And the washing up will take for ever.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Both Lucy and Joanna had been dead reluctant about coming salsa dancing, Joanna with some nonsense about wanting to go back to Wakefield, and Lucy – more honest – just saying she wouldn’t enjoy it. But the whole point was that the three of them should have a night out together, and they would enjoy it.

  For a moment Rebecca feared the brute of a bouncer would not let them in, and of course neither Joanna nor Lucy was any help, telling her to forget it and that maybe salsa dancing wasn’t such a bright idea after all. But Rebecca indignantly claimed they were guests of the owner, Clemente, and surely the man could recognise Clemente’s mother when he saw her? Just as well he couldn’t.

  And were Lucy and Joanna grateful? Or impressed that she’d blagged their way in? Were they, hell. They were full of moral tut-tutting and anxiety about being too old for this sort of thing.

  Anyway, here they were in the New Salsa Dive, which Rebecca thought was great. Expensive, but worth it. Most salsa clubs were small, hot and seedy, but this one was amazing. It used to be the basement of a vast postal sorting office.

  A deafening blast of amplified music hit them as they entered, and Lucy looked at Rebecca with panic in her eyes. Joanna was as cool as ever, though Rebecca suspected she didn’t want to be there either. Her smart red skirt, pencil-thin to her calves and her teetering heels would be impossible to dance in anyway.

  The huge interior of the club was one giant fake: a film-set Havana plaza, complete with decayed baroque colonnades round the sides. One whole side housed the bar. The restaurant was visible above, with filigree iron balconies and tall French windows. A wide pavement surrounded the dance floor, with café tables and giant cane armchairs, and along one side three real nineteen-fifties American cars with leather upholstery were parked at the kerb. And what looked like the crumbling paving and irregular cobbles of a run-down Cuban square was all trompe l’oeil – it was a dead-flat dance-floor.

  The place was heaving. Professional dancers, really cute young guys, were there to partner unattached women, just as luscious young hostesses pulled in the single guys. Couples were shimmying around the floor, groin to groin.

  Lucy put her mouth to Rebecca’s ear and shouted, ‘I can’t do this, Becca,’ but Rebecca shouted back, ‘Don’t be a wuss! It will be great,’ and took her hand and dragged her along, Joanna following. They edged past the line of cars, two of which were occupied by couples groping each other in the back seat. As they drew level with the big Buick with no one in it, Rebecca opened the back door on impulse and climbed in. The others followed, and they all sat in the back seat, laughing.

  Rebecca leaned over the others and pulled the door shut. It clunked heavily, instantly halving the volume of sound. She said, ‘I guess these cars are so you can pretend you are in the back seat of mom’s Studebaker on Prom night. But they are good for talking too.’

  ‘God, how does anyone talk in that din?’ asked Joanna.

  ‘They don’t. No one talks to anyone,’ replied Rebecca. ‘They are all here for the dancing.’

  ‘But,’ said Lucy, ‘I’d want to know if I liked someone before I danced with him, wouldn’t you?’

  They really are out of the ark, these two, thought Rebecca. ‘Hell no,’ she said, ‘I want to know if he can dance. And that takes six seconds.’

  Joanna asked what happened if he couldn’t. ‘I dump him of course. Just walk away.’

  ‘I couldn’t do that,’ said Lucy, ‘it’s so rude.’

  Rebecca decided not to take offence at this, and they sat in their sound-proofed igloo looking out at the dancers. Joanna looked aloof, Lucy anxious.

&n
bsp; ‘They aren’t all young,’ Joanna remarked. ‘Some are in their forties I suppose, but none as old as us. Rebecca, are you sure about this? Who’s going to want to dance with us?’

  No one if you look so bloody miserable about it, Rebecca thought but did not say. Lucy answered Joanna’s question,

  ‘No one,’ she said, then shifted round to look directly at Rebecca. ‘I’m sorry to be so feeble, Becca, but I didn’t care for being a wallflower at sixteen and I don’t want to repeat the experience now.’ She looked at Joanna. ‘Jo, I’m for cutting our losses and leaving if you are.’

  Rebecca was getting seriously fed up with this. It was like wading uphill through treacle. You’d think she’d invited them to a sex orgy in a brothel, they were so determinedly negative. ‘God, you’re a pair of wet blankets,’ she said. ‘At least give it a go – how can you knock it if you haven’t tried it?’

  She saw Joanna and Lucy look at each other, undecided whether to walk out or to trust her. ‘C’mon,’ Rebecca insisted, ‘let’s get you some Dutch courage.’

  They climbed out of the car and Rebecca pushed through to the bar, Lucy and Joanna reluctantly in her wake. Rebecca ordered three mojitos.

  It’s a good thing the music makes talking impossible, thought Rebecca, because Lucy and Joanna were so tight-lipped they would not be talking anyway. Lucy looked cross and unhappy and Joanna’s expression had gone from cool to icy. Fuck the pair of them.

  Within minutes a middle-aged man with broad shoulders and tiny feet took the near-empty glass out of her hand, put it on the bar, and led her onto the dance floor.

  He was seriously good. God, what a relief, thought Rebecca, this is what I need.

  They stamped and twirled and moved together like cogs of the same machine. Rebecca could feel her short skirt lifting and falling as she jiggled her bum and flashed her feet. She knew her legs looked good in her dancing shoes (she always wore her chunky Jimmy Choo sandals to dance in: they were not too high, with wide strong straps, and they had style).

  Rebecca gave it her all. She was showing off, she knew, but why not? She liked being looked at. I’m sure that po-faced pair are full of disapproval, she thought, but what are we here for?