Christmas at Claridge's

by Karen Swan

  ‘Not sure yet. Let’s see,’ Stella mumbled with pins clenched between her teeth, lifting up Clem’s arms.

  Clem looked out and into the flats opposite. Old Mrs Crouch, who’d lived in Portbello all her life, so for well over seventy years, was picking some basil from her window box. Clem gave her a wave. The old lady was used to seeing Clem half-dressed and didn’t bat an eyelid at the goings-on over the road.

  ‘Do you think we should have some resolutions this year?’ Clem asked as Stella pinned a dart and the fabric moulded beneath her bust.

  ‘What for? Our lives are perfect the way they are.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Stella rotated her ninety degrees so that she was looking at the wall and the series of framed black and white photos Clem had taken of her and Tom during the phase when she’d fancied being a photographer. She studied her brother’s floppy brown hair, which always fell over his left eye, and the slight gap between his teeth, which gave him the endearing, scampish look girls fells for time and again. Not that he ever noticed. He had been with Clover for five years now and was as loyal as a puppy. The only reason he hadn’t proposed to Clover yet, Clem knew, was because he worried about her and wanted to see her more settled first.

  ‘I’m just wondering whether I need to make some changes. Tom’s really pissed off this time. I messed up big style.’

  ‘He’ll have forgiven you already, you know he will. He hasn’t got a resentful bone in his body, that one.’

  ‘He says I have to grow up.’

  ‘But you are grown up,’ Stella pouted prettily, as though the slight was as directed at her as at Clem. ‘You live in this great flat—’

  ‘With him – which he bought off Mum and Dad. Paying him rent is like giving back my pocket money.’

  ‘You have a cracking job.’

  ‘At his company.’

  Stella pulled back from her position on the floor and looked up at her, as though she was trying to be difficult.

  ‘See what I mean? I can’t cook. You and Tom make everything or else I get a take-out.’

  ‘Or go without,’ Stella reproved, knowing that Clem’s lack of interest in food was one of the reasons for her spectacular figure.

  ‘And I can’t drive. I get buses and cabs everywhere.’

  ‘Yeah, but what d’you need to drive for in London? Parking’s a nightmare and we both know your car would be permanently clamped. Or you’d forget where you left it.’

  ‘But what if I want to go into the countryside?’

  Stella shot her such a pained look that for a moment Clem wondered whether she’d accidentally swallowed a pin.

  ‘Yeah OK, so not that. But you know, I might want to go to . . . Clapham, one day.’

  ‘You never go south of Hyde Park, east of Ladbroke Grove, west of Westbourne Grove or North of North Ken. This is your patch. Why go anywhere else?’

  Clem sighed. ‘I just think I should have some resolutions this year. For Tom’s sake. Be a better sister, flatmate, employee, person.’

  ‘Like what then?’

  ‘I dunno.’ Clem stared across into Mrs Crouch’s cluttered flat, where the lampshades were draped with fringed scarves and her china figurine collection adorned every surface. ‘I could promise to clean the flat once a week.’ Her eyes scanned the stacked up dirty dishes, the fashion and gossip magazines thrown like scatter cushions across the sofa, the leather jacket still weeping quietly in the middle of the floor, her clothes overflowing from her bedroom . . .

  ‘Well, get a cleaner at least,’ Stella grimaced. ‘No need to go overboard.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ Clem agreed gratefully. ‘I’ll hire a cleaner. And I’ll learn to cook.’

  Stella arched one finely plucked eyebrow.

  Clem held up her index finger. ‘One thing. I’ll learn to cook one thing really well.’ An idea came to her. ‘Like lasagne. That’s Tom’s favourite, and besides, I’m fed up of people talking about béchamel like it’s a private club.’

  ‘All right. I’ll join you in that if you can find a hot Italian to teach you. What else?’

  ‘And I’ll learn to drive. I should have done it years ago.’

  Stella pulled a face, as if she was sucking on a lemon. ‘Well, if it’ll make you happy.’

  ‘I just want to make it up to him, that’s all. I’m fed up with being everyone’s favourite disappointment.’

  ‘Hey!’ Stella protested, flicking a length of material against her leg. ‘Enough of that. You are deeply lovable and we wouldn’t have you any other way. Tom most of all. He’s a total softie where you’re concerned.’

  ‘I know, but he shouldn’t have to be. I should be making him proud and helping him, not holding him back. I’m the pelican around his neck.’

  ‘Albatross,’ Stella murmured, going back to her pinning.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s what I said.’

  Chapter Three

  Clem stood on the doorstep and rang again. The bell sounded deep into the shadows of the tall magnolia house and presently she heard the sound of her father’s slippered footsteps on the other side of the imposing black door.

  She readied herself with a smile as she heard the sound of the deadbolts being pushed back, and knew that meant she was the first to arrive – for once. The break with tradition didn’t thrill her as perhaps it should have done. Tom hadn’t come home at all yesterday and her sense of dread for when she did next see him was growing deeper with every passing hour.

  ‘Bunny,’ her father smiled down at her, still determined to call her by her baby name, even though she had a maxed-out credit card and a freezer stocked with vodka. At sixty-six, he was still an imposingly tall man of 6 foot 3 inches. She had inherited his height, wry sense of humour and languid demeanour. Everything else was her mother’s fault.

  ‘Hi Daddyo.’ She reached forward to kiss him on the cheek, her fingertips burrowing softly into the holey, patched cranberry cashmere sweater that he had worn all her life and possibly a significant portion of his life before that, too. ‘Happy New Year and all that jazz.’

  ‘Indeed.’ He shut the door and looked down at her fondly for a moment, resting one hand on the top of her head, like he used to when she was little. He was one of the very few people she remained ‘little’ to. ‘And how is the year treating my girl so far?’

  Clem nodded brightly, wondering whether Tom had rung ahead and ratted on her. ‘Well, I’ve decided to break my resolution never to have any resolutions.’

  ‘Oh?’ A flash of hope raced across his gentle features, which Tom had inherited, his florid cheeks clashing with the smooth snowy-white hair that had once been raven black.

  ‘Don’t get your hopes up! It’s nothing earth-shattering. Just the normal self-improvement ones that most people make. Thought I’d give them a go.’

  ‘You’re not going on some ridiculous diet, I hope? That’s what most of you young’uns bang on about nowadays and you’re like a wire hanger as it is.’

  ‘Thanks! And no, that isn’t one of them. I’m going to learn to drive, cook . . . that kind of thing.’ The hope that had skittered over his face a moment before was chased now by what she thought was mild disappointment. ‘I figure I have to keep it realistic or I’ll never do it,’ she added quickly. ‘And I’m not getting any younger.’

  ‘Quite so,’ he nodded, staring at her with a wistful look. ‘Well, come through. Your mother’s in the conservatory, waiting to see you.’

  Clem knew it wasn’t her that her mother was waiting to see, but she followed after him anyway, automatically smoothing her hair – which she’d conditioned especially – and checking her appearance in the tall gilded mirror: pale grey jeans and heeled camel ankle boots, a dusty pink silk shirt Stella had made her and a thin leather strap she’d picked up in the workshop and wound around her neck several times like a lariat. The Akubra hat would have been the perfect finishing touch, but it hadn’t recovered from the other night and she’d hidden it at the bottom of her wa
rdrobe, hoping that what was out of Tom’s sight would be out of his mind, too.

  ‘Mother,’ she said, crossing the glass room to where her mother was sitting reading The Economist, her seated form as erect as a ballerina’s, half-moon spectacles perched on the end of her aquiline nose, and her grey bobbed hair already immaculately styled by her hairdresser, who gave her a blow-dry every morning on his way to the salon. ‘Happy New Year.’

  ‘And to you, Clementine.’ Her mother’s distinctive turquoise eyes – which had in part singled her out as one of the notable beauties of her generation and were extending the same compliment to Clem – skimmed over her smart appearance. ‘Are you going into the office today?’ The question was posted as though she couldn’t be quite sure. Outfit fail.

  ‘Yeah, worst luck.’

  But her mother wasn’t listening. She was looking beyond her to the hall. ‘Where’s Tom? Isn’t he with you?’

  ‘No. He stayed at Clover’s yesterday.’

  ‘All day?’

  Clem nodded casually, but she saw the understanding shift into her mother’s sharp eyes immediately. The siblings had always been close and Tom was a stickler for the family being together on high days and holidays, even if being with Clem on New Year’s Day usually involved holding her hair back.

  ‘I know, that’s what I thought. And then I thought maybe he’s proposed or something,’ Clem said quickly, trying to throw her off the scent. ‘I mean, it has been five years now, and I suppose New Year’s Eve is one of the traditional times to ask.’

  ‘Good God, I hope not,’ her mother grimaced, appalled. ‘What a horrid cliché. I would hope we brought you both up to have rather more imagination than that.’

  Clem smiled as her mother sidetracked into disappointment – mission accomplished – then sank into the orange velvet sofa that had faded along the back where the sun caught it in the late afternoon. A giant fern obscured her mother’s face from view, but she made no effort to move it, throwing her long legs over the tapestried scatter cushions and checking texts, just as Lulu, her parents’ caramel-coloured cockerpoo, bounded into the room like a hairbrush on springs and jumped onto her lap. She was crazily cute, even though she was so small, spoilt and fluffy she had no business calling herself a dog. There were cats on the street that could bark more convincingly.

  ‘Don’t put your feet on the sofa, Clementine,’ her mother admonished quietly as Clem tickled the dog’s tummy. ‘And put Lulu down. You’re encouraging her to jump up.’

  Reluctantly, Clem put the dog down on the floor and pocketed her phone. Where was Tom?

  ‘So, what did you and Daddy do for New Year?’ she asked, swinging her leg metronomically in the full know-ledge that it would drive her mother mad.

  There was only the slightest pause before her mother answered. ‘We did our usual safari supper – drinks and canapés at the Bennetts’, dinner at the Wilson-Hopes’, pudding and Bridge here.’ She dropped her voice fractionally. ‘As we have done for the past twenty-six years.’

  ‘Nice,’ Clem nodded automatically.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Stella threw a party.’

  ‘Of course she did.’

  Clem peered through the fern at her mother, who had a smile on her lips but none in her eyes, just as her father walked through, carrying steaming plates of grilled kippers, poached eggs in hollandaise sauce and ribbons of smoked salmon twisted into appealing heaps. Since retiring as CEO of music publishers Haycock & Gibson twenty years earlier, he had fallen into a passionate secondary love affair with food, and was so often to be found chatting to the deli owners and fruit and veg market stallholders about black garlic or how to cook with lavender salt, or the merits of pecorino over parmigiana, that for the first year of his retirement, Clem’s mother had been quite convinced that he had not just another woman, but an entire other family on the go.

  ‘Well, we can’t wait for your brother any longer I’m afraid,’ he said, putting the plates down on the oval table, which was painted in a grey limed wash and set with olive-embroidered linen napkins and bone-handled cutlery. ‘I’m running a tight ship here and I calculated my cooking times according to you both needing to be in the office by ten so . . .’

  Just then, the doorbell rang.

  ‘Ah, his ears must have been burning. Tuck in!’ Her father waved his arms around eagerly like a conductor. ‘Don’t let it get cold. Nothing worse than congealed hollandaise.’ He pulled a face to indicate there really was nothing worse and marched out into the hall.

  Clem let her mother sit down first and watched out of the corner of her eye as she made a fuss of opening out her napkin and draping it elaborately across her lap. Clem displayed no such delicacy and had forked a piece of muffin before she’d even sat down. She had just pierced the delicate skin of her poached egg and was watching the golden yolk ooze over the plate when Tom followed in after their father.

  Both women’s jaws dropped at the sight of him. His usually clean-shaven face was covered with a dense undergrowth of stubble that looked like it would bloom into a full forest within twenty-four hours, and deep purple moons lay cradled beneath his eyes – Clem had seen more pigment in one of Lulu’s marrow bones. He hadn’t slept since the party, that much was clear.

  ‘Tom!’ Mrs Alderton cried, jumping to her feet and forgetting all about the napkin she’d been so precious about moments before. She cupped his face in her hands. ‘Oh, darling, what has she done to you?’

  Puzzlement crowded his eyes before they slid over to Clem’s. She saw understanding gather and knew he could guess what she’d told their mother – and why. She saw the resignation dawn on her big brother’s features.

  ‘I didn’t propose to her, Mother,’ he said, gently taking his mother’s hands off his cheeks. ‘But as and when I do, it’ll be at a rather more inspired time and place than that.’

  ‘Oh darling,’ Portia Alderton beamed back at him happily. So long as the proposal wasn’t clichéd, she could clearly work with the rest. ‘Well, thank heavens for that.’ She laughed, fluttering a delicate hand above her heart.

  ‘The hollandaise is congealing,’ Edmund Alderton muttered sadly from his seat at the opposite end of the table.

  ‘Do come and sit, darling,’ Portia urged her son. ‘We were waiting for you. Ignore your sister, she couldn’t wait, naturellement.’

  Clem sighed and silently passed her brother the kippers instead.

  ‘So what are we supposed to make of your appearance this morning then, Tom?’ Edmund asked. ‘I assume you aren’t going into the office today after all.’

  ‘Actually, I’ve just come from there.’

  ‘What? At this time of the day?’ Portia asked, appalled, realizing he must have worked through the night. ‘Thomas, you need your sleep.’

  ‘Remember Berlin’s coming up, dear,’ Edmund said soothingly to his wife. ‘Things always get hectic in the run-up to that. It’s where they have to strut their stuff. Isn’t that right, Tom?’

  Tom took a deep breath. ‘Actually, we’re not going this year.’

  Clem’s fork dropped to the plate with a clatter.

  ‘We’re too busy with the Perignard launch. We go into production the week after next. It’s not the time to be away from the office,’ he said, keeping his eyes on his plate, spearing almost half a poached egg and ramming it into his mouth ravenously. He clearly hadn’t eaten since the party either. He looked so tired that Clem thought he might fall asleep in his plate.

  Clem knew he was using the Perignard account as a cover to divert his parents’ concern, but cancelling Berlin altogether was . . . catastrophic. She looked back down at her plate and twiddled a salmon ribbon with her fork, her appetite completely gone and alarm bells sounding in her head. She was beginning to realize that things were even worse than she’d feared.

  ‘Perignard, yes, I walked past the premises last week. It’s a good-sized space,’ Edmund said chattily, completely buying the alibi.

  ‘Mmm,’
Tom agreed.

  ‘I still can’t fathom how you’re going to line the walls with leather that’s been studded with diamonds.’

  Tom swallowed. ‘No one can, that’s what’s so special about it. We’ve spent the last year developing the technology, Dad.’

  ‘Well, I can’t wait to see it,’ Portia exclaimed, delight and pride in her eyes. ‘I hope we’ll be invited to the launch party?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And the coming year? How’s that looking for the leather trade overall?’ their father asked. ‘Tough times all round, I should say.’

  ‘Well, obviously the building trade’s been hit by the downturn – it’s always one of the first industries hit; new builds alone are down forty per cent from two years ago – but it has begun trickling through to us now. A lot of clients are stalling on projects they’d intended to green light this year, even just the refurbs.’

  ‘So what does that mean for Alderton Hide?’ Portia asked, her fork poised mid-air, keenly aware that her son was leading up to something.

  Tom took a deep breath. ‘I may need to make some redundancies at the factory in the mid-term. As for the immediate future, I’m going to have to pass on the new premises in Blenheim Crescent.’

  His mother looked aghast, pressing her hand onto his arm. ‘But you spent months looking for the right space. You’re absolutely boxed in where you are now. You can’t possibly be expected to run the headquarters of such a prestigious brand from those cramped offices.’ The way she talked about them, Alderton Hide sounded like the next Louis Vuitton.

  ‘I don’t have a choice, Mum. We’ll just have to put up with it for a bit longer.’

  ‘But Tom— ’

  ‘Look! The economy’s a mess, the banks aren’t lending and I can’t take the risk, OK?’ he said in a fierce tone that shut the conversation down.

  There was an awkward silence and Clem realized she had stopped eating, her eyes pinned to her brother, who resolutely refused to look at her.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ Mrs Alderton said, laying a hand over her son’s and squeezing it. ‘I know you always say there isn’t, but if there is ever anything we can do . . .’