by Mavis Cheek
It is Isabel, on her way to the lavatory.
Celia is doubly amazed at her continuing proclivity for invention.
‘Practising for Parlour Games,’ she says, straight out.
‘I didn’t know you meant physical ones,’ Isabel retorts. ‘And anyway – in my day it used to be matchboxes for that particular one – not vegetables …’
Since Tom has all the bean in his mouth now, Celia’s is free. She pokes out her tongue at the disappearing back of her sister. She has longed to do that ever since she was born. It has taken her forty years to realise it.
Tom, galvanised at the sight of that seductively glistening article, attempts to treat it in similar manner to the Kenyan bean, but Celia will have none of it. She pushes him away and he returns to the dining room and the bottles. He is torn between respect and desire. It appears she is only bashful with him. Perhaps the gift in the washing machine was the right thing to do. Anyway, Celia will see the funny side – she has a good sense of humour after all. Not like Susannah. Give her one and she wouldn’t know what to do with it.
Well, on the whole, the main course passes off beautifully. John, as latecomer, brings a fresh breeze into the proceedings which eases any prevailing atmosphere, and there is plenty of chatter and plenty of laughter so that anyone listening outside the door would think that lot in there are enjoying themselves.
By the time the puddings are trundled in on the trolley the table has rearranged itself. Dave is now sitting next to Alex and they are united in their views on the iniquities of City sharks. Beer is no longer mentioned and Dave enjoyed his meat course since Celia was thoughtful enough to give him all the outside bits of the joint. Susie and Isabel are side by side and deeply involved in discussions about New York, Susie for it, Isabel against it (though she has, of course, never been – which does not stop her having strong and certain opinions about the place). Tom and John are leaning quite close together, on Celia’s left-hand side, and she can’t quite hear what they are talking about, though it looks interesting for John is gazing with rapt and slightly flushed expression at Tom who is looking very committed. Since Celia gave up the unequal struggle with Tom and the wine hours ago they now have a bottle each. And why not? This is a party, after all, she reminds herself.
She judges that it is not quite the right time to invade all this happy companionship with the puddings so she pushes the trolley to one side and sits down, wondering who to talk to. If she selects Alex and Dave she will have to shout across her sister and Susie, and if she chooses her sister and Susie she will have to talk about New York which, on the whole, does not interest her since really they just seem to be scoring points off each other the whole time. And so for a minute or two she just sits, resting on her laurels, quite happy not to be doing anything and yet knowing that she could, if she chose, break into any of these twosomes and be welcomed as a third. At least, she hopes this is the case. She fiddles idly with an earring, traces the damask pattern on the tablecloth, sniffs to get the scent of the honeysuckle, puts a splash more wine into her glass, sips it, decides she’d prefer water and goes to get a bottle, sits down again and nobody notices the hiss of the cap as she undoes it, pours it into a glass, sips again, slips off a shoe and rubs her ankle, looks around the table at all those familiar faces and, finally, lets her muscles relax, her eyelids droop a little, and puts her head on one hand, lolling slightly in Tom’s direction.
She has no thoughts of talking or listening for the moment – just to sit here for a five-minute reverie is lovely. She glances across at the puddings, those marvellous sweet creations of hers, crowning the repast. Celia, she says to herself, you’ve done really well tonight – she says this to herself because so far no one else has said it. But there is still time, she muses. She sits on in this calm, pleasant state for a while longer, rather wishing someone would break into it. It would be nice to be noticed again. But she disturbs no one. After the scratchiness earlier it is nice to see them happy and united. Even if the happy unity doesn’t – quite – seem to include her. She keeps her mouth curved in a smile. It wouldn’t do to look miserable on such an occasion. If only her daughter would sleep through a cuddle. She will have to go through this one day. It won’t be the same for Henry. Men do seem to age better. She looks down the table at Alex. He is positively glowing. The Brandreth case certainly suits him. She sighs contentedly. Not a bad life, she thinks, not a bad life at all ...
Upstairs Rebecca stirs, turns over, begins to twitch her toes in an effort to make the rest of her wake up since her inner clock tells her it is time to go downstairs and disturb the adults. In her sleep she conjures up the image of chocolate mousse, which she has seen awaiting the guests, but try as she will Hazel’s efforts have been too good – she cannot, still, rouse herself. Gradually the toes cease to twitch, she finds a cool spot on the pillow and sinks back into a deep sleep devoid of even the hint of chocolate. She will not wake now until morning. Celia’s reprieve has come at last. Just, it seems, when she does not particularly want it. Ah well. Ah well.
At the moment that Rebecca ceases to stir, Celia begins to galvanise herself and to think about serving out the final stage of the meal. What else is there to do? Her eyes alight on Tom for a moment. Never mind candlelight only being for women, she thinks, he looks pretty good in it too. In fact, Tom looks so handsome that Celia finds herself thinking that he is just as Elvis Presley should have looked if he’d cut out the drink and the drugs: the wine has given his eyes low lids which makes them catlike and dangerous and there is a definite little curl to his full lips that really should launch themselves into ‘One Night With You’. I wonder what it would be like? she thinks. And shakes herself free of a little creeping desire to find out. Well, well – she pulls the trolley and the pudding towards her – she will never know; never need to know she corrects herself. And she opens her mouth to say, ‘Pudding everybody,’ when there is a long, penetrating ring on the doorbell. Her heart leaps – shock followed by the nice thought that it must be Hazel, come at last. Until that moment she has not realised how much she is missing her friend. She rises – but not quickly enough. Susie, who is usually so poised, so laconic, rises even faster and puts up a beautiful restraining hand. ‘No,’ she says, ‘I’ll go.’
How very odd, Celia thinks. Even odder that nobody seems at all surprised by an interruption at such a late hour.
Now everything is suspended. She is being gazed at in silence by everyone at the table. She gazes back, facing them as if they were some kind of tribunal. She hears Susie’s voice – commanding, self-assured – at the front door, and a man’s voice, growly and alien: what he says is indistinguishable. The front door closes with a bang. Followed by a short pause. Celia looks questioningly around the table. Blank eyes look back at her. She finds this irritating.
‘What on earth is going on?’ she says, rising.
‘Sit down,’ says Alex.
She does.
He turns off the small wall light, which has been the only illumination except for the candles.
Still they wait.
And then a faint warbling comes from the hall – the hitherto unknown noise of Susie singing, which hitherto unknown noise is taken up in its strains by the rest of the table, except Celia. Gradually she realises they are singing ‘Happy Birthday To Yew ...’ John holds open the dining-room door and there is a sudden vision of beauty in light and shade, a Caravaggio madonna – Susie to be exact – holding an enormous cake, bedecked in scarlet and white with ribbons floating and candles blazing, scarlet, white, scarlet, white, all perfectly positioned – forty candles fluttering away as the breath of the singers catches on the air.
‘Move that thing out of the way,’ says Isabel to Celia, meaning the trolley. Celia pushes it and watches her beautiful puddings move off into the outer darkness. The delicate honeysuckle and jasmine is pushed away, the peachy pink of the napery is consumed in the scarlet and white brilliance of the cake. Susie puts it down dead centre of the table and commands Celia to
blow but Celia has no air left – she tries, and fails.
‘Come on,’ says Tom, close at hand, encouraging her with a squeeze of her upper arm. ‘Blow ...’
She calls up her fleeting control and fills her lungs. She is about to give an enormous puff, being an obedient sort of person, when Tom, who perhaps suddenly realises that his fingers are around her arm and very close to her bosom, straightens those fingers so that they press into the soft swell of it. How can Celia blow out her candles with a man-who-is-not-her-husband-and-who-looks-just-like-Elvis-should-have-looked feeling her up? She goes limp and makes a very weak exhalation which barely flutters the flames. Everybody groans derisively. You try, she wants to say, with a man at your boobs. But she doesn’t. She just smiles ruefully, apologetically, and starts again. Too late. At her side she hears the intake of breath, sees her sister take aim, and feels her fire. Out go the candles.
‘There you are,’ says Isabel in triumph.
One little flame remains. Celia blows it out. In the handclapping and jollity that follows no one sees her rearrange her face into a smile. Susie holds up a large silver knife drifting with scarlet ribbon which Celia grabs and plunges into the blood and snow before her. Who is she slicing into? It feels as if it is herself.
Enough, she commands her inner self, enough of all this pathos.
Celia has been given a surprise on her birthday after all. Courtesy of Susie’s Harrods’ account.
‘I never knew they did that sort of thing,’ she says.
‘You don’t know everything,’ says her sister.
She forbears saying, ‘I never said that I did.’
She congratulates Susie – and everybody – on the cleverness of the secret. They eat the cake. The puddings sit mournfully, like wallflowers at a ball, and Celia consoles herself that they can, after all, be put into the freezer. Good job she made them all fresh today. More consolation in that she can give Mrs Green a piece of cake with her coffee when she comes on Monday. It might even sweeten her a little. There will certainly be plenty left over. Despite the children, despite a whole tea-party, there is enough cake to last for a week. Harrods is a generous emporium. Susie is a generous friend.
And Isabel is a generous sister.
‘Now – what were you saying about playing some games, Cee?’ she says. ‘When I caught you practising in the kitchen with Tom?’
Celia’s cake becomes like sawdust in her mouth, a piece of crunchy icing sugar hangs upon her tonsils. The deep breath that Isabel’s remark calls up requires something to drink to dislodge it, or Celia will choke. She reaches for a glass and takes a huge drink. At best it will be her Perrier, at worst it will be her wine. But, as seems to be the case now that she has attained this age of wisdom, Celia is wrong. She has picked up Tom’s brandy glass. Alex has said of the brandy and the port, as he said of the wine, that all should help themselves. Tom, still delighted with the erstwhile experience of Celia’s left-hand breast, and past caution, alcoholically speaking anyway, has been generous with himself. Which may account for Celia’s mistaking the brandy glass for one containing something other than the best Napoleon. Few people would pour such a big nip. Down it goes – healing in the first split second, firewater in the next and perpetually thereafter. Naturally Celia makes a great deal of noise and what Isabel calls fuss and is unable to say it was a mistake.
Susie says, ‘You’ll simply kill yourself if you drink like that, Celia. Remember your liver is only half the size of Tom’s.’
This is an unpleasant thought bringing as it does the image of their two bloody organs sharing a scale, and it sets Celia off again.
Dave, not entirely sober himself now, says, ‘Perils of the bored middle-class housewife. Drink. Ha Ha ...’ Possibly he is joking but he has longed to get in a side-swipe somewhere and Alex has been so unusually interesting in a sound socially conscious way that he must do it to one other than he.
John, relieved that in the nick of time he has avoided buying one of Tom’s cars (now that his is all crunched up Tom moved swiftly) says, ‘Let her choke,’ meaning they should ease off the criticism but, of course, it sounds as if he actually wants her to die.
Tom, torn between selling the car (which, since it is cheap in his range, has been hanging around for two years) and gallantry for Celia, makes do with looking daggers at John and rubbing Celia’s back, noting, finally, what he surmised from previous explorations, that she is bra-less. Susie wears brassières all the time though there is little need. Celia is certainly an exciting woman.
Alex, because he is going away tomorrow, pushes down the irritation he feels at seeing his wife being foolish and does, for once, the right thing. He pours out a glass of mineral water which is passed down the line to Celia so that calm is at last restored. He does not like the look in Celia’s eye as she returns to normalcy and so he also says, ‘Games darling? What games would you like to play. We are all here at your command ...’ He sniggers as he indicates the table of friends (he, it must be said, is not entirely sober either). ‘Aren’t we, folks?’
‘Folks?’ Celia splutters; since when has Alex ever used such a proletarian endearment?
‘Even I, dear Celia –’ Dave reaches out a burly hand and clasps hers – ‘am prepared to indulge in such bourgeois entertainment and have a go. What had you in mind?’
Isabel looks pleased with the way her husband has handled the tricky fusion of principles and conformity.
‘I know,’ she says, for Celia is still unable to articulate properly. (Let those who call good brandy smooth take note – it is an illusion.) ‘Cee used to love that game called, – oh, something-or-other – where you have to say things like, if you were a dog what sort of dog would you be ...’
‘I don’t like dogs,’ says John, who finds that jogging on Bedford Park pavements produces certain substances on his trainers that he would rather not think about.
‘All right,’ says Isabel. ‘It can be any category. Can’t it, Celia?’
Celia nods. She would have preferred Flannel Doughnut but there we are.
‘What then?’ asks her sister.
Celia takes a deep breath to speak.
Isabel says, ‘Make up your mind.’
Celia says, ‘You choose.’
Isabel smiles around the table.
Susie says sharply, ‘It’s your birthday, Celia. You decide.’
‘Flowers,’ says Isabel quickly. ‘OK, Cee?’
Celia is exhausted. She has also gone from being fairly sober (the food took care of the champagne imbibed earlier and, since she was so absorbed with Tom’s intake, she scarcely touched wine during the meal) to being much brandified.
‘I will accept any category you choose for me, dear sister of mine,’ she says. ‘And any game you see fit.’
Tom puts his hand back on her knee under the table and she scarcely reacts.
‘Let’s play that one, by all means.’
And Susie, always one, as we have seen, to put the one deserving of limelight into the limelight and also the only one there to recognise that Celia has, basically, had it, says, ‘Better by far – since we are here to celebrate Celia – that we should make a variant (being sober she can say such words) of the game. We’ll all go round the table saying what flower we think Celia represents to us – who know her so well. And Celia can just sit quietly and listen. She’s done enough for one night.’
Celia looks across at the darkness surrounding her trolley with its untouched delectables. Curiously she feels she could join them and nestle between the raspberries and the chocolate. ‘Does anyone want a bit of my puddings?’ she asks.
Everyone but Tom declines but then, she thinks, he would probably have accepted toads in aspic given the state he is in. He makes yummy noises over the dish she sets before him but she can tell he isn’t tasting it at all. He holds a cigar in one hand while he eats with the other – which at least means that she can have her knee and bosom back again.
In the years to come, if Celia thinks
about that night, a wry smile curls around her lip as she remembers the various floral tributes on offer. Dave’s sunflower would have been all right – would have been lovely really – if he had not added in high good humour and under his breath so that Celia alone could hear it, ‘Or perhaps a scarlet runner would be more appropriate.’
Celia awaited Isabel’s reason for choosing buddleia in trepidation, and she was not wrong to do so. ‘Because it grows so effortlessly anywhere ...’ her sister said, and then appended, as an afterthought, ‘... and it’s so pretty.’
Tom growled something about Alpines to which Celia, much strained by the whole thing, snapped back, ‘They keep a low profile and have to make do with pretty rocky ground.’ Tom looked rather hopeful after this and Alex looked annoyed.
John said apple blossom but when asked to explain the characteristic behind this choice it proved to be diplomatically pragmatic. He shrugged and said, ‘Because everything Celia produces is delicious, of course.’ It would have been nice to think of this as profound but she didn’t, it was merely meaningless twaddle. She almost said as much.
If she had hoped for the rose without a thorn from Alex, she was disappointed. He was having to think very hard and once or twice coughed and said that he didn’t know the names of many flowers. Then, quite suddenly, he said ‘Pansy’ which made Dave and John snigger across the table at each other. When asked why, Alex said, ‘Because they’ve got such funny, innocent little faces and they look so shy.’ Celia neither felt funny nor innocent. She was forty (or would be tomorrow), for God’s sake, and she would like her husband to put her more in the full-blown floribunda class. Something told Alex that he had not quite scored maximum points with this explanation, so he added, ‘And because I have always loved them.’ Everybody said ‘Aah’ and Celia would have liked to bask a bit but, truth was, Alex could have been in a courtroom as he said this for it was delivered like some devilish masterstroke.
But Celia just smiled at him with her mouth. She was absolutely and completely beyond doing anything else.
