Mrs Fox complained that Joshua, like the friends who had come to her party, had no sense of occasion. She spent Christmas Day with us, her festive spirit battling with his unseasonal one. We ate fried joints of supermarket turkey so that there would be no cold carcass to finish up. We ate frozen peas and baked potatoes and tinned Christmas pudding with brandy butter made by Mrs Fox. In comparison with everything else that, at least, was a triumph.
A pink nylon tree stood on the table, glowing with silver balls spaced mathematically by the manufacturer. Joshua had bought it because, he said, it was the most anti-Christmas symbol he could find. He hated Christmas, but liked not to ignore it. He was good at his discontent, funny. To make up for his apathy he bought us extravagant presents. Mrs Fox had a fur muff and velvet cushions for her bed. For me, Indian jewellery and a set of Victorian prints in beautiful frames.
After lunch we ate the box of crystallised gooseberries Mrs Fox had brought.
‘Henry’s favourites,’ she explained. ‘The only ones that didn’t get in his teeth.’ She was wearing, over her customary black dress, a cardigan made entirely of sequins. They winked and fluttered in the dull electric light. A bunch of goose feathers, dipped in silver paint and dried into hard spikes, was stuck in the band of her hat.
‘What are we going to do now?’ she asked. ‘Christmas afternoon is always such a problem. I remember, it always was. Edith always came to us for the day, of course, because she never had many social invitations, all her life. Edith never came immediately to people’s minds when they planned a party, if you know what I mean. So Henry and I always had her over. We’d have a nice lunch, then Henry’d always be off, in his black coat and carrying his bag, just as if it were a normal day. He wouldn’t wait for a call – just go off to a few of his patients who lived on their own, and take them a small present. Some of these, usually, for those who could digest them.’ She held up another gooseberry. ‘They loved him, Henry’s patients, and no wonder.’ She looked at us, sitting near her together on the floor, and sighed, smiling.
‘So Edith and I were faced with this long afternoon. Well, she wasn’t much of a walker, so we couldn’t go out. She didn’t play cards, or chess, or backgammon or any game. She didn’t do tapestry, or sew, or knit. So occupation-wise, if you see what I mean, we had a small problem. Then one year – what, thirty years ago, I suppose? – I hit on this idea. You see Edith always gave me the same present every year – a black fountain pen with a gold nib and a gold rim round the middle. She was funny like that: she always gave people presents that she would have liked to have herself. One of her peculiarities, you could call it. Anyway, she always gave me this beautiful pen – it was much too good ever to wear out in a year, of course, but I couldn’t tell her that could I? – and I knew what handling a new pen would mean to Edith. So one year I thought to myself, I thought: I’ll give Edith writing-paper, and she can spend the afternoon writing her thank-you letters with my pen. I found a beautiful box – I’ll never forget it, the box I found that first year. It was covered with violets, raised up sort of violets, on the lid, and inside the paper was the palest violet colour you could ever imagine. It even smelt of violets. I don’t mean those rubbishy synthetic smells they douse paper with these days. I mean just a trace of woodland violets. Each sheet of paper was stamped with a flower in the corner, and the envelopes were lined with purple tissue paper. Edith was quite taken aback. “Oh my,” she said. And I said to her, “Why don’t you use it now, Edith? We’ve got a long afternoon. I could help you with your thank-you letters.” “But I don’t have my pen with me, Eth,” she said. “Ha ha,” I said, “perhaps we can find a solution to that.” ’
Mrs Fox paused in her story and with one hand rubbed over the lumps of ruby and star-sapphire rings on her fingers of the other, as if to warm them.
‘So I went over to the big roll-top desk by the fire and cleared a space among the cards on the blotter. Edith laid out the first page and smoothed it very slowly with her hand. She sat down, and I knew she was ready. I picked up my pen and handed it to her. Well, you should have seen her face. “But Eth, it’s the pen I’ve just given you,” she said. “Are you sure?” “Of course I am, silly,” I said. “I’ve even got you ink to match.” And I took out a bottle of lovely deep purple ink that I’d hidden in a drawer. Edith dipped the clean nib right into the ink, and filled it, and I remember she was trembling. And then the funny thing was, she held it over the paper, and she turned to me and said: “What can I write, Eth?” Well, of course, that was the start of it all. From then on, every year, I dictated her letters on Christmas afternoon while Henry was out. Not that she had many to write. But Miss Turner from the post office always sent her handkerchiefs, and her butcher once sent her a nice crown of lamb, and the woman next door always made her a woolly robin – rubbish, really – in a kind of arrangement which had to be thrown out when the holly died.’
She stopped again, briefly, for breath. Then went on: ‘The funny thing about those afternoons was that as soon as we had fallen into this letter-writing habit they never seemed long again. In a jiffy, it felt, Henry would be back out of the snow, laughing at us and asking for tea. I would always put on the kettle, because Edith would be busy sealing up the envelopes. But somehow, after Henry died, we didn’t get so many letters written. For one thing, Miss Turner died too, and I couldn’t find the quality of writing-paper to give Edith any more.’
She had kept still for the whole story. Now she swivelled round in her chair to look out of the window. Her sequin cardigan flashed and flared again, kingfisher colours. She tapped at the waxy cardboard of the empty gooseberry box with her quick fingers.
‘So what are we going to do?’ she asked. ‘We should go out.’
‘We’re going,’ said Joshua. ‘To the country.’
‘What do you mean? Where?’ He hadn’t told me of any plans.
‘Annabel Hammond’s coming round. She’s invited us all to tea with her mother.’ He got up, his back to me. ‘Near Windsor.’
‘Very nice too,’ said Mrs Fox. ‘Anything but Kent.’ Joshua turned to face me and grinned. He picked up one of Mrs Fox’s new velvet cushions and flung it at my head.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘she’s coming with her friend Bruce. So don’t look like that.’ He turned to Mrs Fox. ‘The trouble with Clare is that she’s wracked with jealousy. If I tell her I spent a nice day on Brighton Pier with my mother when I was a child, a green flush spreads from her ankles upwards.’
‘Stupid,’ I said, half smiling.
‘If you’ve never had reason to be jealous, you’ve never had reason to love,’ said Mrs Fox.
‘Well, anyway, it’ll all be all right this afternoon.’ Joshua was pacing the room now, tweaking at things, the balls on the Christmas tree, the dying poinsettias, as he passed them. ‘We’ll all be together, and Annabel loves Bruce. – At least, he loves her. And we’ll have a terrific tea with Mrs Hammond. She’s the best cook I know. She’ll make Bruce a lovely mother-in-law.’
‘As I said,’ repeated Mrs Fox, ‘Christmas afternoon can be such a problem.’
Annabel and Bruce arrived punctually at three o’clock. Annabel was tall and thin with smooth blonde hair strained back into a bow. She wore a leather coat with silver studs, pale knubbly stockings and fragile walking shoes made of suède. Perfect for Windsor tea.
‘I’ve heard so much about you – hello.’ She held out her hand. I took it. It was bony and compact, taut as a frightened bird’s wing. ‘This is Bruce Winham. Brucey, where are you?’ Without releasing me from her look, she folded her arm behind her back and tugged at a huge cable-knit sweater. A small man with hungry sunken eyes twitched eagerly forward. He had a neat black beard that was forced by the height of his polo-neck collar to stick out at right angles, and he wore gym shoes. He grinned at me, his mouth wide with merrily distorted teeth. A friendly, hopeful face. Joshua introduced Mrs Fox. She stood up smartly. Only Bruce shook her hand.
‘Why don’t we go straight away?’ asked Annabel. ‘We can take my car. It would be better than yours, if I remember it rightly, wouldn’t it, Josh?’ She gave him a narrow, knowing smile.
‘It’s changed since your day,’ he said, ‘but it’s just as uncomfortable. We’ll go in yours.’
Annabel swung her efficient look towards Mrs Fox.
‘Can we drop your – aunt anywhere on the way?’ she asked me. ‘Or does she want to come too?’ Her tone was uninviting.
‘Mrs Fox is a friend,’ I said.
‘Of course she’s coming too,’ said Joshua.
‘Very well, let’s go then.’ Annabel clacked her long silver nails against the silver studs of her belt.
Her car was a white Fiat coupé 124. Joshua, Mrs Fox and I sat in the back, Bruce hunched beside Annabel in front. He began rhythmically to tickle the nape of her neck with a prematurely old finger.
‘Stop that, Brucey,’ she snapped, ‘how can I concentrate on driving?’ Obediently he stopped. Joshua held my hand.
We sped to Windsor in almost complete silence. There was ragged snow in the fields and barely a car on the road. It was curiously peaceful. Joshua had been truthful about Annabel. For the moment she was no threat.
Mrs Hammond lived up a long laurel hedged drive. Icy puddles spat under the wheels of the car as Annabel screeched round the gentle corners. For a moment Mrs Fox clutched at Joshua’s knee. He covered her hand with his, and we jerked to a halt in front of the Tudor house.
It looked warm and comfortable. A garland of holly and scarlet ribbon on the front door. Mullioned windows back-lit by fires and shaded lights indoors. Inside, it was full of labradors, real ones and china ones.
‘Typical sort of place,’ Mrs Fox whispered to me. ‘Henry had patients from these sort of houses. Smart lot.’
Mrs Hammond stood in front of a large open fire waiting to greet us. She was a smaller version of Annabel, equally thin and neat. Her hair, jersey, skirt and shoes were all of a matching blue-grey.
‘Darlings!’ She welcomed Joshua by curving clinically against his body, and reaching up with her skinny hand to touch, briefly, his face and hair with her diamond-ring fingers. ‘You haven’t been to see me for so long, my love? Why haven’t you been?’ Her voice was a whine.
She all but ignored me, but was warm to Mrs Fox. Instantly benevolent, confident in her skill at dealing with other people’s odd relations, as she apparently supposed. At the other end of the room Bruce gave a little skip, light on his feet in his gym shoes.
‘Lovely thick carpets,’ he remarked happily.
‘What was that, darling?’ Mrs Hammond’s whine rose.
‘I said: lovely thick carpets.’ He skipped over to her. She disapproved of him, but could hardly resist him.
‘They are rather nice, aren’t they, on a parquet floor?’
Annabel switched in with her organising voice again.
‘Why don’t we all go out before it’s dark? I feel like some exercise. Anyone else? Brucey? Josh?’
‘We’ll all come,’ said Joshua.
Except Mrs Hammond, we all went. Annabel, in spotless gum-boots now, led the way through the misty garden. We followed her through a small gate into a ploughed field. Here, the hard black earth split through the old snow, leaving it to lie in frozen white snakes between the ridges. We began to walk single file round the edges of the field. The hedges, wet with cobwebs, scratched at our sides.
Suddenly Joshua, who was in front of me, stopped. He bent down and scooped up a handful of the icy snow. Then he jumped at me and rubbed it quickly over my cheeks. It stung.
‘You dare!’
‘Catch me, then.’ I flung out my arms, but he had gone. Leaping over the plough.
‘I will.’ I sprang after him. I was aware of the other three, behind me, stopping and turning to watch. I chased him to the middle of the field, half-running, half-jumping from furrow to furrow. It was heavy going. The solid wet earth clung to my feet.
‘You’ll never get me!’ He stopped for a moment, panting, his face alight and excited.
‘I will.’ With mock ferocity I now made a snowball, picking up lumps of earth with the snow, in my haste, and threw it hard at him. He ducked, and it missed. He laughed.
‘Bad luck, Funny Face. It’s the aim that counts, you see. Look, like this.’ Quickly he made another snowball and leapt up, stretching his whole body, to fling it at me with all his apparent force. This time I turned my head to duck and dodge it, imitating his speed. I took a step backwards at the same time, tripped over a hard ridge of earth, and fell. I fell in the middle of a furrow, knees apart, hands askew beneath me. Icy bits of snow stung through my tights, and I felt the black earth push up behind my nails. Joshua was still laughing.
‘Are you all right?’ He came over to me, unconcerned.
‘I think so.’ He helped me up and brushed snow and earth from my coat.
‘You’re not much good, are you? Here, you’ve got mud on your face, too. How did that happen?’ He scraped it away with hard cold fingers. ‘Now you look marvellous.’
‘Don’t be funny,’ I said.
‘No, really, I mean it. Your cheeks are bright pink, for once, and your eyes are shining quite ridiculously.’
‘And I suppose you’d rather have me with mud on my coat and an undignified mess than the immaculate Annabel?’ I asked, tightly.
‘Yes,’ he said. He held my hand. It was cold, but warmer than mine.
We began to walk heavily back over the plough to the hedge. The others, equally spaced, stood where we had left them, watching our progress in silence. Mrs Fox stood to attention, her new fur muff hanging from a black satin ribbon round her neck, her hands clenched at her sides. Beneath the black sleeves of her coat hung small sparkling rims of cardigan, flashing silver and white now as the sequins reflected the scattered snow. She looked very serious.
Annabel spoke first, as soon as we were in earshot.
‘That was very amusing,’ she said. ‘You always were so energetic, Josh.’
‘I think we better go back to the house,’ said Joshua, coldly. ‘Clare should get cleaned up.’
‘Oh heavens. Is it that serious? Surely no-one minds a bit of mud. I mean, we’ve only just started.’ Annabel stamped her foot. Her nostrils flared.
‘She’s pretty wet,’ said Joshua.
‘For myself,’ said Mrs Fox, ‘I’m going back to the garden. I want to take a look in the greenhouse we passed. If that’s all right with you, of course, Miss Hammond?’
‘Of course,’ said Annabel. Having made her successful interruption, Mrs Fox thrust both her hands disapprovingly into her muff, and turned to plod back down the field towards the garden gate. The rest of us watched her go without speaking. Eventually her small, upright figure disappeared through the gate.
‘I’ll go back to the house on my own,’ I said. ‘You all go on.’
‘That’s the solution,’ said Annabel, ‘if you don’t mind.’ Joshua looked from her to me.
‘Shall we do that?’ He seemed not to mind which way the problem was settled.
‘Sure.’ I turned to go. Annabel suddenly smiled, her lips two thin slithers of silvery grease.
‘We won’t be long, anyway,’ she said. ‘Mother will show you round in the house.’
Then, spontaneously, Bruce took my arm.
‘I tell you what, I’ll go with Clare. Come on, Clare. Don’t let’s dither any more. I’m getting cold.’ He was shivering. Joshua and Annabel turned the other way. We parted.
Almost at once Bruce was forced to walk behind me because of the narrowness of the path.
‘Bloody damp,’ he said, after a while. ‘I loathe the bloody country.’
The sky was full of deepening shades now, grey and pink, turtle-dove colours. Against it, winter trees stood with tousled heads of hair on skinny necks, and pigeons flew towards the same wood that Joshua and Annabel were heading for.
By the time we reached the garden gate the daylight had closed down almost to darkness. In the silence, cinder paths between navy-blue hedges scrunched under our muddy feet.
‘Let’s join Mrs Fox in the greenhouse,’ Bruce said, bouncing amiably to my side again. ‘I can’t face too long with Mrs Hammond without Annabel’s protection.’
We made our way to the greenhouse, but Mrs Fox had left. Bruce turned the rusty key and we went in. It was warm and damp and neat. Shelves of poinsettias, cyclamens and azaleas, searing red and mushy pink in the feeble electric light. Bruce ran his hand along a rusty pipe bound up with rusty rags.
‘She sells them, as you can imagine,’ he said, indicating the flowers. ‘She’s the sort of woman who would put six tame chickens into a battery unit if she thought she could make a profit out of them that way.’ I laughed, feeling warmer at last. He sat on the pipe, now, testing it carefully first, and looked up at me. ‘So now it’s you and Joshua?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Annabel told me he was nuts about someone.’
‘I don’t think he is.’
‘It still hurts her, you know. She pretends it doesn’t, but I know bloody well it does. She was crazy about him for three years. Nervous breakdowns, the lot.’
I turned from him to prod the warm, feathery earth in a small pot of cacti.
‘What are you?’ I asked.
‘Film industry. What else? Totally unsuccessful, of course, and with little potential. Just striving, hoping, as they say. But I’m quite a pleasant fellow to have around on any set, so I get the jobs, and who cares about the prestige?’
‘How long have you known Joshua?’
‘Oh, years. I can’t remember when I first met him. I’ve always admired him and, to be honest, I suppose I’ve tried to model myself on him. But I’ve always been the utility model. What I can never achieve is his – distance, shall I call it? There I am, grinning away, showing exactly what’s going on in my mind, while he switches into this beautiful – distance.’ He grinned. ‘You can never tell what Joshua’s thinking. That’s what I admire. The enigma. The apparent lack of concern – then all of a sudden he surprises you. Like, when I was in hospital once for a long time, he didn’t make any promises to come and see me, like everyone else. But unlike everyone else he just came, every day. Bloody miles out of London it was, too. And I don’t mean that much to him.
‘Funny thing is, I’ve done a lot of the same things as Joshua – only some years later. Including Annabel, of course.’ He laughed, amused at himself. ‘Naturally, I’m nothing like Joshua was to her. But at least I offer her security, which is more than he ever did. Her mother can hardly abide me, as you can imagine, what with my lack of what she calls “background”, and that. But still, probably she won’t marry me in the end, so Mrs Hammond will be no problem.’
I wondered how Joshua had treated Annabel.
‘Like a bastard,’ replied Bruce crossly. ‘Really dreadful. Always letting her down, getting at her, threatening her. He had the upper hand completely. Of course,’ he sighed, ‘he was right. That’s what she responds to best, and that’s what I just can’t do. I can’t treat her like that, not loving her like this. In fact there’s only one way I know I really can please her, and that won’t last for ever, will it?’
He stood up. We were exactly the same height.
‘So now you’re going through it all? I wonder how you’re making out?’
‘Who can tell?’ I asked. ‘I can’t.’
‘Well, as long as Joshua can’t tell what effect he’s having on you, you’ll keep him. That’s where Annabel went wrong. He was bored stiff as soon as she began declaring her love. He’s a terrible child like that. Win the chase, and the game is over for him, no matter how good the prize.’
We left the greenhouse and he locked the door again.
‘If you ask me, you’re doing pretty well,’ he said. ‘You’ve got him in pretty good shape.’
‘I hope so,’ I said. It was quite dark in the garden now. The lights from the house flickered through a tangle of silhouette bushes. Bruce took my arm and led me to the path.
‘If ever I can help,’ he said.
*
Back in the drawing-room Mrs Hammond and Mrs Fox sat in opposite arm-chairs by the fire. Mrs Fox had a pile of magazines dumped on her knee. Mrs Hammond had probably put them there, saying ‘Something to read,’ like a doctor’s receptionist, not caring how unsuitable they were as long as they kept Mrs Fox quiet. Mrs Hammond herself dabbed expertly at a piece of petit point. Her spiky diamond fingers made small rhythmic jumping movements that flashed with flames from the fire. A table with a white cloth and fragile plates covered with silver lids was laid by the sofa.
‘Oh, there you are,’ said Mrs Hammond, raising her blue eyes to us above her pale blue sewing glasses. ‘I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you.’
‘Clare fell over and we had to get her clean,’ said Bruce. ‘The trouble is, there are so many bathrooms in this house it took quite a time deciding which one to use.’
‘Bruce, your bitter little jokes,’ said Mrs Hammond. ‘It’s Christmas Day, don’t forget. Well, shall we start without them?’
Mrs Fox thankfully removed the pile of magazines from her lap to the floor.
‘I could do with a nice piece of Christmas cake,’ she said. ‘That’s one thing we always did away with, Christmas cake. Edith couldn’t manage the icing, what with her teeth, and Henry was allergic to marzipan.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Mrs Hammond.
At that moment Joshua and Annabel came through the door. Joshua rubbing his hands, Annabel with noticeably shining hair that looked as if it had been brushed extra hard to disguise previous dishevelment.
‘Sorry we’re late,’ she said, ‘you should have started. God, what you missed, though. It was so beautiful in the woods, you can’t imagine.’ She looked at me, elated. I felt my face red from the fire. ‘You should have come, in spite of the mud.’
‘What was so beautiful?’ asked Mrs Fox.
‘What?’ Annabel ran her hand impatiently through her hair.
‘I said: what was so beautiful in the woods?’ repeated Mrs Fox.
‘How do you mean?’ said Annabel.
‘I mean exactly what I say,’ said Mrs Fox.
For a moment there was puzzled silence in the room. No-one cared to help. I glanced at the loud ticking clock. Ten past five. We could leave at six. Annabel drew a chair up to the table and sat down. She motioned to Joshua to sit beside her.
‘For heaven’s sake! Am I being that inarticulate? Perhaps you’re not a country lover. Perhaps you only like towns in winter …’ Her voice was feeble. She was put out.
‘Not at all,’ said Mrs Fox, and gave me a small, private smile.
The rest of us joined Annabel at the table. Mrs Hammond, with a flicker of new respect, poured Mrs Fox the first cup of tea. We ate crumpets and banana sandwiches. The huge Christmas cake was decorated with icing-sugar hills. Small plaster figures ski-ed down the slopes and nylon fir trees were dotted in the valleys. Mrs Fox laughed with delight.
‘Have you ever seen anything like it?’ she asked Bruce.
‘Never,’ he said, ‘dreadfully vulgar, isn’t it?’ Annabel and Joshua both laughed at the same time. ‘When I was a child my mother would buy a slab of Dundee cake at Christmas time and spread on a thin bit of icing herself. We thought that was lovely.’
‘Really, Bruce, you’re always trying to shock me,’ said Mrs Hammond.
‘We must all play something after tea,’ said Annabel. ‘Wouldn’t that be a good idea?’
‘I think we really ought to be getting back,’ I said.
‘What on earth for? You can’t be that engaged on Christmas night. You’re either doing something positive, or you’re not.’ I looked at Joshua.
‘I’m in no particular hurry,’ he said. ‘What about you, Mrs Fox?’ Mrs Fox was trying to unstick a fir tree from her huge slice of cake.
‘Can I keep it?’ she asked, as it broke away, a heavy chunk of icing clinging to its roots.
‘Of course,’ said Mrs Hammond, ‘and if you all agree to stay to dinner we’ll have my special soufflé that comes in on fire.’ She smiled conspiratorially at her daughter.
‘In that case we should stay, shouldn’t we?’ Mrs Fox asked Joshua. ‘We couldn’t miss that. In my day,’ she explained to Mrs Hammond, ‘I was quite a gourmet. It was all because Henry’s patients would come to me to try out their little experiments.’ The fir tree and the thought of a fiery pudding had won over Mrs Fox. Her noble stand against the Hammonds was weakened, and she had them in her control now. Annabel, triumphant, encouraged her to tell stories. Mrs Fox took her cue, performed, and was well received.
‘Such a beautiful cardigan, that, Mrs Fox,’ said Annabel at one moment. In the firelight its icy coloured sequins sparkled with gold; fulgid, alive, reflecting dancing patterns on her face.
‘You exaggerate,’ said Mrs Fox, ‘it’s just an old thing I got at a jumble sale.’ Bruce turned wickedly to Annabel.
‘What do you mean by beautiful?’ he asked.
‘For heaven’s sake!’ She screeched with laughter.
‘You’ll learn to laugh with people one day, you patronising bitch,’ he said quietly, so that Mrs Fox shouldn’t hear.
After tea he and I played Scrabble while the other four played bridge.
‘I’m sorry you weren’t able to get away,’ he said. ‘Dinner will doubtless be the kind of merry occasion you wouldn’t have minded missing. Mrs Hammond likes her champagne.’
A white-coated Spanish butler appeared with the first bottle at six-thirty. Mrs Hammond broke up the game of bridge to take a glass with her to the kitchen. Annabel went up for a bath.
‘I can’t lend you anything for dinner, I suppose?’ she said, before she left. ‘We’re not exactly the same size, are we?’
‘She’s a great one for always making her point,’ said Bruce, when she had left.
‘She hasn’t changed,’ said Joshua. He came and sat down on the low fire stool. ‘You seem to be casting a certain gloom.’
‘I’m not feeling my gayest.’
‘There’s nothing to worry about, idiot.’ It was then, in the light of the fire, that I saw a miniscule speck of silver grease glinting on his chin. I took my handkerchief and wiped it off.
‘Silver shines,’ I said. I paused, fighting not to say it. I lost. ‘It must have been beautiful in the woods.’ For a moment Joshua stiffened, then he smiled. Bruce watched him carefully.
‘She pounced on me like a tiger,’ he said.
‘The bitch. Christ, the bitch.’ Bruce winced. ‘It was only after lunch, just before we came round to meet you.…’
‘I’m sorry Bruce. But anyway, she didn’t succeed.’ Joshua put his hand on my knee. Bruce untied the laces of one of his gym shoes then re-tied it, more tightly, with a fierce tug.
‘My trouble is, I love the girl,’ he said. ‘I love her with a ludicrous passion that doesn’t get either of us anywhere. I know my role. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to stop playing it.’
Annabel reappeared an hour later. She wore a magnificent gold trouser suit whose top was unzipped to just below her breasts. Plainly she wore no bra beneath.
‘Wow,’ said Bruce, sadly.
‘Fantastic,’ said Joshua. They both rose to fill her glass.
She laughed at their attention. ‘Isn’t this fun?’ she asked me.
‘Great fun,’ I said. My cardigan felt enormous and hot. My feet blazed in my thick boots. My head ached from the heat and champagne.
At eight o’clock a gong was rung. Dinner was served. We filed in like two badly matched teams; Mrs Hammond, Annabel and Mrs Fox dressed for the occasion; Bruce, Joshua and I decidedly out of place in the claustrophobic, red dining-room. The mahogany table was laid with a clutter of candles and crackers, dazzling silver and glass, and a dreadful winter-scene centrepiece with a mirror lake, cotton-wool snow and more nylon fir trees. Jonathan would have loved it.
Soup, first. Mulberry coloured stuff thick with croutons.
‘What an amusing little soup,’ said Bruce, to break the warm silence.
‘Bruce, I never know whether to take you seriously or not,’ said Mrs Hammond. Her cheeks were flushed to the same colour as the soup. ‘The funny thing about me is, I never know whether someone is complimenting me or insulting me.’
‘That is a happy confusion in which you should always remain,’ replied Bruce.
‘What a lovely centrepiece!’ Mrs Fox left her soup to prod the cotton-wool snow with a finger. ‘Did you make it, Mrs Hammond?’
‘Of course. Everything in this house is home-made that can be home-made. I’ve always been very good with my hands.’
‘And does Annabel take after you?’ The old sharpness had returned to Mrs Fox’s voice. Bruce answered her.
‘She’s marvellous with her hands,’ he said. Joshua spluttered into his soup. Annabel glanced at him through half-shut fake lashes.
‘What do you say to that, Josh?’ Joshua looked from Bruce to her.
‘Oh, marvellous,’ he said lightly. ‘Anything you under take to do, you do well.’ Everyone but me laughed. Mrs Hammond joined in the spirit of the joke.
‘I don’t know what Joshua and Bruce can know about it,’ she said, ‘I swear they’ve never caught her knitting, or arranging flowers or anything. How can you judge?’
‘We can judge,’ said Joshua.
I pushed my soup away, sickened. Annabel noticed immediately.
‘Anything the matter, Clare?’ ‘No.’
‘You must be dreadfully hot in that cardigan.’
‘I am, rather.’
‘Poor you. We can’t open the window, either. There’s something wrong with the sash.’ I felt a hot icicle of sweat trickle down my spine. The candle flames wavered and fattened before my eyes. I removed my hand from where it had lain slumped on the table. Five misted-up fingermarks remained on the shining surface. ‘It’s ghastly, suffering from heat,’ Annabel went on. ‘I feel so sorry for people who do. I love it, myself. Crazy about the sun, aren’t I Josh? Do you remember? St Tropez? I’m quite happy just to lie. Just to lie in the sun for hours, doing nothing but getting brown. I suppose it’s awfully boring, really, for anyone who’s with me. Wasn’t it, Josh?’
‘Fairly,’ said Joshua. They smiled at each other, acknowledging the lie. Something grated behind my eyes. On Christmas night last year, Jonathan, in his shiny old dinner jacket, had said I was beautiful. His mother’s diningroom had been uncomfortably hot, too. But he had noticed my unease halfway through the smoked salmon. Without saying anything he had opened the door and make a chink in the heavy curtains. He had cared.
Joshua was warming to Annabel’s reminiscences. He sat with his fork suspended over his plate of left-over turkey disguised in a spicy sauce, his face hard-cut shadows and planes in the candlelight, his eyes restless behind the massive frames of his glasses, his mouth upturned on one side only as he smiled – beautiful.
Joshua – get up from the table now, come over to me, take my hand, and tell everybody we are leaving….
‘Annabel is such a sophisticated traveller,’ Joshua was saying. ‘Wherever you go she knows about the most interesting church, the best local wine, the cheapest good restaurant, don’t you? And then she’s always changing, aren’t you? Three or four times a day as far as I could make out. She manages to produce endless clothes and yet a very small amount of luggage. I could never understand it.’
‘Quite,’ snapped Bruce.
Let’s go right now, please Joshua. Out into the night, quickly to the airport. Let’s catch a plane to anywhere, anywhere as long as it’s away from these people. And let’s tell them why we’re leaving.
The promised soufflé came, swaying pale and high above its dish, blue brandy flames lapping up its sides. Mrs Fox clapped her hands.
You could buy two of those miniature bottles of brandy, and we could ask the air-hostess for a rug. …
I looked at Joshua, but his eyes flicked away, back to Annabel. She was flushed now, not an ugly red flush with hard edges, as I felt my own to be, but the natural colour of her cheeks was intensified just enough to make her hard eyes bluer. She was excited, beautiful, prepared to make her next move, any move, so long as Joshua kept reacting.
‘But my darling Josh,’ she said, you are such a child on holiday. Remember? Remember how you always used to be running away from me in foreign towns, playing childish games. I could never speak the language, that was my problem, so I could never ask if anyone’d seen you.’ Joshua paused in the middle of helping himself to the soufflé.
‘You exaggerate,’ he said, no longer smiling. On my own plate the flames fizzled out round a fiery mound of fluff. I held on to the solid mahogany underbelly of the table.
‘I exaggerate? Absolute nonsense.’ So concerned was she with her own pace, that Annabel was unaware now that Joshua had fallen behind her. ‘Don’t say you’ve forgotten that time – where was it? God knows, England somewhere, I think – that time you ran off for hours leaving me on some God-forsaken beach. And when at last you came back you didn’t care a damn that I was perished. You were very pleased with yourself, in fact, because you’d managed to get us ice creams, two bloody choc bars if I remember – ’
‘Shut up, Annabel!’ My scream ripped into her. She stopped. In silence, everyone looked at me. I trembled, I burned. ‘You reminiscing bitch. What are you trying to do?’
‘What have I done?’ Her voice cool, concealing a smile. Her head tipped up towards me now, innocently. Then all the heads tipped up, so that shadowy cheeks suddenly flared with gold light from the candles, I was standing. I looked at Joshua and the others faded.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ Pause. No answer. He still held my eyes. ‘Quickly. Please. It’s time for us to go.’ He got up, came to my chair and pulled it away, freeing me from the trap between it and the table. Then he went to the door, opened it for me, and gestured to me to go through. He didn’t follow. I turned round to wait for him. He was shutting the door.
‘That was a pretty scene,’ he said, so quietly I could hardly hear, and the door closed.
I began to run through corridors – close-carpeted, hunting scenes on the walls, dimpled light from chandeliers. I chose a door with an ornate brass handle. An unused room, cold. Very high leather chairs. Grey walls, guns, a stuffed labrador in a glass cage, a steel-framed photograph of a man with Annabel’s eyes, one of them was widened behind a monocle. Leather arm-chair very cold behind my knees, very cold arms under my hands. Directly opposite my chair the labrador, its flinty pink tongue painless on icicle teeth, smiled its dead smile.
*
About half an hour later there was a tap on the door. I didn’t answer. Mrs Fox came in.
‘Heavens, child, you’ll catch your death in here,’ she said, going to the small electric fire that stood dwarfed at the foot of the huge fireplace. She switched on its two thin bars. ‘Typical meanness of these sort of people. Henry was always having to go to people who’d caught pneumonia by economising on the central heating when they needn’t have. They’d cut out a radiator here, a radiator there, just to prove to themselves they weren’t extravagant. But then the rich have some funny illusions about cutting down, don’t they?’ She went over to the dog and tapped at the glass case, her back to me. ‘What an awful creature! Joshua said I should tell you we will be leaving shortly. I wouldn’t have liked to have a dog like that alive, let alone dead.’
She turned to me. In this room her sequined cardigan glittered deep violet, navy, and dull silver, subdued. She still wore her black hat with its silver painted goose feathers and, as usual, one hand rubbed at the lumpy rings on the other.
‘They put on Stravinsky in the drawing-room when we went through,’ she said. ‘Well, I thought, if you start listening to that, you’ll never leave. So I thought I’d come and find you. Joshua saw me going and gave me the message.’
‘Mrs Fox,’ I said.
‘That’s all right,’ she said. She went now to the huge desk in the corner. It had a carved roll-top which she fingered gently. ‘Very like ours,’ she said, ‘very like ours. I mean, like the one I was telling you about where Edith used to write her Christmas letters. Do you think anyone would mind –?’ Gently she pushed up the lid. Underneath, polished brass handles shone on a pattern of small drawers. There were no papers, no pens, no ink. Mrs Fox was disappointed. ‘It’s all deserted,’ she said, pulling back the lid. ‘I’ve never liked an empty desk.’
Through the door came the distant sound of Joshua calling us. I didn’t move.
‘Come along now, up off that chair.’ Mrs Fox spoke with the same voice she had used to Edith on the park bench. ‘We must go, and about time too.’ Still I didn’t move. Mrs Fox moved slowly towards me. She seemed to sag a little. ‘Come along, please.’ She put out her hand, the one with the rings, so that they flashed like a morse code back at her sequined sleeve. ‘Take my arm, if you would. You’d never believe it, but I’m a little tired.’ It didn’t matter whether or not she spoke the truth. I got up, and took her arm. The sequins felt splintery under my hand. We walked past the smiling dog and out into the passage.
‘I didn’t turn the fire off on purpose, of course,’ said Mrs Fox, ‘it just might make that little difference to Mrs Hammond’s bill, mightn’t it?’
We turned the corner. At the far end of the passage, in the brightly lit hall, the Hammonds, Joshua and Bruce, unaware of us, were talking and laughing round the Christmas tree, pulling on coats, kissing Mrs Hammond, saying they’d love to come again; saying, yes, really, it had been a lovely time, a lovely Christmas Day.