The Continuity Girl

by Leah McLaren

  “Oh, will you shut the fuck up?” said Mish.

  Meredith winced and continued to soothe her friend by stroking her back. She gave Barnaby a look as if to say, Don’t take it personally, but he didn’t see it. His head was thrown back, eyes searching the sky. Without looking down, he pulled from his pouch a fan of black feathers attached to a string, and whistled twice. Tossing the fan in the air, he swung it around, where it caught the breeze and sailed for a few moments like a small kite. Seeing the wings, Mish dove facedown into a patch of longer grass, covered her head with her hands and began screaming all over again.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Meredith demanded. “Can’t you see she’s terrified?”

  “Oh God, of course. Terribly sorry.” Barnaby reeled in the feathers. “Magpie wings—to lure her back.” He slipped them back into his bag, looking like a chastised dog.

  Meredith looked down at Mish, who was now flat on the ground, her face pressed into a patch of wet heather.

  “Perhaps it’s best if you two go back and have a drink at the cottage,” Barnaby said after a silence. “I’ll call Harriet in and meet you there before we carry on to the main house for dinner. Again, I’m awfully sorry. This sort of thing never happens.”

  And with that he set off across the moors, leaving Mish and Meredith to return to the cottage on their own.

  Two hours later Barnaby stood with his guests on the front step of Hawkpen Manor. At the third rap the door swung in with an anguished creak. Meredith shivered. Was it possible the door had opened itself? Before she could process the thought, a thin, formally dressed man with a receding widow’s peak slipped out from behind the door and welcomed them in with a sweep of his hand.

  “Master Barnaby,” he said, taking in their damp clothes with an expression of unconcealed disdain.

  “Didier,” Barnaby said, pulling one can of Double Diamond off a plastic web and handing the man the remaining three.

  Meredith raised her hand to be introduced and the Frenchman stepped back as though she had pulled a pistol on him. Then he sniffed the air and walked away without a word.

  “Didier’s our butler,” said Barnaby. “He’s French.”

  They were standing in an enormous foyer with wood-paneled walls and gleaming floors that reminded Meredith of a particularly grand government office. She fought the urge to take a number and wait for someone to stamp her form.

  “When was it built?”

  Barnaby shrugged, cracked open the can of beer and drank deeply. “I’ll let my brother explain it all to you, if you don’t mind. He loves to bore new people with the history of the house, and I can never remember any of the relevant dates and architectural terms anyway.”

  Soon a pair of black high heels descended the staircase. Attached to them was an extremely pregnant woman wearing a smile so large and forced that Meredith was afraid her face might unhinge at the jaw.

  “Darling!” She kissed Barnaby on each cheek but avoided touching his jacket, which was flecked with mud. The hostess then turned to Mish and Meredith. “How lovely you could come. I’m Chubby, Barnaby’s sister-in-law. We so rarely have guests, this is such a treat. Now come into the drawing room and have a drink, and then Nigel can take you on his tour. He absolutely lives to show off the house. It’s appalling, really. You must stop him the minute you get bored. I’m afraid all we have is cream sherry for you ladies tonight—we’re not really trendy vodka people—but the sherry is rather good.”

  Meredith was offered a seat beside Barnaby on a stiff-backed antique sofa covered in slippery upholstery. It was about the size and dimensions of the piece North Americans would call a love seat, but there was nothing loving about the design. With backrests at opposite ends of the narrow seat, it ensured the bodies of its sitters were as far apart from each other as possible.

  This was just as well, as Barnaby had fallen into a sulk upon entering the house. Meredith watched him suckle his beer can, while Chubby interrogated Mish with the enthusiasm of a young police constable. Judging by her hostess’s interest level, Meredith could tell she assumed Mish was the one in whom Barnaby was interested, not herself. Maybe it was the minidress, she thought. Or the blond highlights (“buttery chunks,” Mish called them). Either way, Meredith didn’t mind. She was used to Mish getting more attention than she did. Not just from men, but from the world in general.

  “So now, Trish,” Chubby was saying while pouring sherry from a cut-crystal decanter. It was the kind with a huge glass stopper, which Meredith had thought existed only in television adaptations of old murder mystery novels.

  “Actually, it’s Mish,” she said, vanishing her sherry in one go.

  “Oh gosh, terribly sorry. Mish. That’s an interesting name, isn’t it?”

  “It’s short for Michelle.”

  “Is your family French Canadian, then?”

  “No. Just plain old Canadian Canadian. Jewish Canadian really.”

  “Really? I’d never have known you were Jewish.” Chubby had an unnerving way of looking to the left and slightly above the head of whomever she was addressing.

  “It’s probably the nose job,” said Mish. “I got it for my sixteenth birthday. Family tradition.”

  Barnaby doubled over and began to cough. Meredith pounded him on the back, even though she knew you weren’t really supposed to. Across the room Chubby located a pair of large wrought-iron tongs.

  “So tell me,” Chubby went on, “what does your father do in Canada?”

  “Mostly golf and fight with my mother. He’s retired.”

  “And what did he do before retiring?” Chubby seemed to remember to smile and then forgot again just as quickly. She traded the tongs for a poker and began stabbing at the coals of the fire.

  “He worked a lot. And golfed less. And fought with my mother.”

  Seeing she was getting nowhere, Chubby switched the line of questioning. “And so how do the two of you ladies know each other?”

  “From school. We were both in the knitting club.” Mish looked over and winked.

  Meredith tensed. She could see the devil coming out in her friend.

  “And what school was that?”

  “Oh, just a school in Toronto—you wouldn’t have heard of it.”

  “A public school?” Chubby gave up looking for whatever it was she wanted and began blowing into the fire to stoke the flames. It didn’t do much good because she couldn’t bend down properly.

  “God, no,” said Mish. “The public school system in Canada is terrible.”

  “Really?” Chubby righted herself and placed a hand at the small of her back.

  “Oh, yes, total crap. Burgeoning class sizes, no extracurricular activities, teachers who barely know how to read themselves. It’s like crowd control.”

  “That’s awful,” said Chubby. “The English public school system is one of the only good things left in this country. That and the fact we still have our own currency—but who knows how long that will last with this EU nonsense. At this rate we won’t have a monarchy in ten years. Organic lemons imported daily from Italy in every corner store? Not a problem. But the Queen? Ridiculous! It makes me miserable just to think of it. Now, Barnaby, would you please come over here and do something about the fire.” She gave the face-splitting smile again. “We have central heating in the back wing, where we spend most of our time, but I’m afraid my husband is dead set against it in the rest of the house. He’s ridiculously old-fashioned in some ways. Well, speak of the devil.”

  Nigel Shakespeare appeared in a flying leap that landed him in the center of the room on top of a large Oriental rug that slid for a couple of feet before coming to a rest. Three Yorkshire terriers yipped at his ankles and narrowly escaped being crushed beneath his dancing feet. “Hallo, foreign guests! Hallo, beautiful wife! Hallo, prodigal sib!” He went around the room shaking hands and telling everybody not to get up. The dogs, upon seeing Chubby, began yelping and squeaking and did a flea-circus performance of rolls and prances in exc
hange for handfuls of heart-shaped gingersnaps she pulled from a silver box on the mantel.

  “Ooh, c’est très bien, mes petits poo-poo bijoux! Vous êtes très, très chouettes, n’est-ce pas? Maman vous aime, oui? Oui, oui, oui?”

  When Nigel reached Barnaby, he paused and ruffled his brother’s hair. Barnaby neither flinched nor smiled; he stood stock-still like a wax figure of himself. “Marvellous to see you, old chap. Well then, how are the birds holding up?”

  “Fine. Well, actually today there were some problems—”

  But before Barnaby could finish, Nigel took Mish and Meredith each by the arm and proceeded to steer them toward the double doors. “I hope you don’t mind if I steal your womenfolk for a tour of the house,” he said. “It is so refreshing to have visitors. We so rarely do.” And then, turning to Mish, he winked. “We’ve been busy restoring the frescoes in the ballroom and I was hoping I might have a dance.”

  Seeing the movement toward the door, the Yorkies abandoned their floor show and ran over to follow.

  “Your dogs are so cute!” Mish loosened her arm from Nigel’s grip, squatted down in her mini and scooped up two of the terriers—one in each hand. The remaining creature began to whine pathetically.

  Meredith, who wasn’t keen on small dogs, bent down and picked it up. “What are their names?” she asked.

  “John, Paul and George,” Nigel said.

  “What!” Mish laughed. “Why no Ringo?”

  “I’m afraid only my wife can answer that particular question.”

  “Oh God,” said Barnaby, who had clearly heard this particular tale before.

  Chubby sighed as if under duress, then launched into the story. “When I was a small girl of six or seven, my oldest sister took me to London to meet the Beatles. It was my first trip to the city. She knew them through a cousin of ours who ran a famous gallery in Chelsea at the time. Anyway, we ended up back at the Savoy—where they were staying, of course—and...oh God, I remember it like it was yesterday.” Chubby pressed a hand to her throat as her eyes fluttered to the ceiling.

  “Go on,” Mish prompted.

  “You must understand I was a sheltered thing. Not at all like six-year-olds today.”

  “Her parents kept her locked up in the nursery with a German nanny,” said Nigel, squeezing Meredith around the waist and pinching a bit of back fat between his thumb and fingers.

  “Yes, they essentially did.” Chubby took a slow sip of sherry.

  Mish stamped her foot. “And then what?”

  “I was eventually sent to boarding school. Then to Cambridge for art history.”

  “No, I mean with the Beatles.”

  “Oh right, the Beatles. Well, there we were at the Savoy, just the band and my sister and I, when Nancy—my sister—announces to the entire room that she’s a virgin.”

  “How old was she?” asked Mish.

  Meredith kicked her sideways.

  “Let’s see.” Chubby counted on her fingers. “If I was six, she would have been, oh, eighteen. She seemed a lifetime older than me at the time. I’m not sure what she was thinking, bringing me along. But anyway, after a few more drinks and whatnot, they all decided to draw straws. To decide—you know.” Chubby opened her eyes very wide.

  Nigel took over. “And guess who Nancy got?”

  “Who?” Mish’s whole head quivered.

  “Ringo.”

  “No!”

  Chubby lowered her head and shook it miserably. “The truth is...I don’t really want to discuss it any further. It’s too difficult.”

  Mish nodded.

  “Well, that’s enough of that,” Nigel sang, clapping Mish and Mere-dith around the hips. “Come along, girls. Bring the dogs if you like. I want you to see what we’ve been doing to the maids’ old quarters.”

  By the time they returned to the sitting room, the fire had gone out and Barnaby was sitting alone on the love seat, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, chin on his chest, gently snoring. Meredith thought he looked like someone trying to sleep on an airplane. Chubby was nowhere to be seen.

  Meredith sat down beside Barnaby and squeezed his arm.

  Barnaby started. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  The look on his face was so confused, Meredith felt the urge to pull him onto her lap and rock him back to sleep.

  “No, no, it’s fine. Nigel just took us on a tour of the house. You were only asleep for a little while. Not even an hour.”

  “Oh.” Barnaby slumped, then pulled himself up and made a serious face. “I couldn’t find Harriet. I called and called but she wouldn’t come.”

  “She’ll turn up.”

  “I hope so. It’s highly unusual behaviour. I so rarely have guests. Certainly not women. I think she may have been jealous.”

  Meredith looked across the room to where Nigel was pouring Mish more sherry from the crystal decanter. “Surely birds don’t get jealous,” she said.

  “I don’t know.” Barnaby motioned to Didier for another Double Diamond. “They might.”

  There was a commotion in the corridor, the double doors swung open and two little girls in white cotton nightgowns trotted into the room. The smaller child ran up and wrapped her arms around Barnaby’s knees. A plastic comb was snared in her hair.

  “Little Miss Titty,” he said.

  “Uncle Barnaby, I’m so glad you’ve come. Tatia pulls my hair so hard after my bath it makes me cry, even when I’m not at all sad.” She lowered her voice and looked back at her older sister, who hung by the door looking bored. “And Petsy’s been beastly all evening.”

  “Really?” said Barnaby, eyes widening. “Well, you know what you must do to older siblings who torment you?” And he bent down and began to whisper in the little girl’s ear, sending her into shrieks of laughter—which stopped when a red-haired woman walked into the room hoisting a fat infant on her hip.

  “Girls,” she said in a steely eastern European accent. “Say hello to the guests.”

  Petsy and Titty had begun a reluctant but well-mannered round of limp handshaking when Chubby returned, looking like a tired work pony—all swollen belly, knobby knees and coarse, dry mane. She clopped across the room and placed her girth squarely between her husband and Mish, who was receiving an involved lecture on the history of the sixteenth-century Florentine door frames. Nigel’s hand had been resting on Mish’s upper arm, just inches from the side of her left breast, when his wife appeared. He let it flutter gradually to his trouser pocket, skimming the edge of Mish’s buttock in the process.

  “Darling,” Chubby interrupted in a louder-than-necessary voice. “Dinner should be ready in a few minutes. Would you like to show the guests to the dining room?”

  Nigel smiled at his wife. “Of course, my love.”

  The Yorkies reappeared from under one of the sofas, where they had been devouring a forgotten piece of lint-covered liver pâté. They began to yap furiously and pull at the hems of the girls’ nightgowns. The children squealed in delight.

  “Girls!” Chubby shouted, “How many times must I tell you—use your French when speaking to the dogs!”

  Tatia held out the baby to be kissed while the other girls took turns saying good night to the adults. Petsy, the sullen older one (who looked about twenty-two but was actually eleven), seemed suddenly reluctant to go to bed. Having to make small talk with strangers was a bore, her expression said, but being sent to bed at nine-thirty on a Saturday night was downright humiliating.

  “Mummy, do you mind if I take the dogs out for a walk around the garden before I go to bed? I think they might need to pee.”

  Chubby looked suspicious for a moment, then sighed. The late stages of pregnancy seemed to have pushed her beyond argument. “Just make sure you put your boots on and mind you don’t get your nightgown wet.” Petsy glowered and sauntered out of the room with John, Paul and George in tow.

  Soon enough, dinner was served. The guests advanced to the dining room, a drafty, music-free chamber d
ominated by a blazing electric chandelier.

  A woman in a starched apron distributed wedges of mysterious-looking game pie.

  The table was a large walnut oval, polished to a reflective gloss. Meredith checked her lipstick while pretending to admire the china pattern. They were seated in an even spread around the table, so conversation had to be shouted, creating an echo off the ceiling. Apart from the blazing chandelier, the enormous walk-in fireplace, and the oil paintings of plump, unsmiling ancestors, Meredith was reminded of her loft back in Canada. Something about the cold rectangularity of the room. She reached for her napkin but found there wasn’t one.

  At the other end of the table, Chubby watched her husband talk to Mish. For a pregnant woman, Meredith noticed, she wasn’t eating much.

  “Your children are so polite,” said Meredith, hoping her words wouldn’t sound disingenuous (they weren’t).

  “Oh, thank you.” Chubby seemed to soften a bit, took a sip of her wine. “I’m sorry you didn’t really get to talk to them. Petsy’s going through a snarky adolescent phase and Titty’s so in love with Barnaby she can’t bear to talk to anyone else when he’s around.”

  “I thought they were sweet.” She smiled at Chubby’s tummy. “When are you due?”

  “Any second now. Actually, not for a month. But it feels like any second.”

  “You must be an expert at it by now.” Meredith shook her head, awed. “Four. I can’t imagine.”

  “But that’s just it. Neither can I.” Chubby fiddled with her earring and avoided looking down. “You think it’s something you’re going to do, and then in the end, it just sort of happens to you.”

  Meredith picked off a bit of gravy-soaked pastry with her fork and chewed it with her front teeth. It tasted like coat lining.

  “Do you have any siblings?” asked Chubby.

  “No, just me. My mother wasn’t into being a mother.”

  “Ah.” Chubby nodded deeply. “A careerist?”

  “In a way. She was a poet. Still is, I guess.”

  “Ooh, really! I adore poetry. What’s her name? Perhaps I know her.”