Breaking the Chain (11 page)

‘Terrific,’ Phoebe said.

‘I’m bored!’Jack said crossly.

‘How about playing with some of the toys you got in your stocking?’ Fay suggested, looking down and ruffling his hair affectionately, ‘upstairs in your bedroom.’

‘You come too!’ Jack ordered, pulling at her hand.

‘Just a minute and I will. I must just talk to your Auntie Phoebe first.’ She looked up again. ‘Have you got the bird in yet?’

‘Already? It’s …’ Phoebe glanced at Fay’s watch, ‘… only seven o’clock. God, I feel as though I’ve been here for hours, but it’s only been one so far!’

‘I don’t know about you, but I always give a turkey a bit extra. It can sit in the oven and wait if it’s done too soon, but if it’s underdone, it’s a disaster. Stop it, Jack! Mummy’s coming now.’

‘Right,’ Phoebe said, turning the oven on. ‘You’re the expert. I’ll get the brute stuffed straightaway then, and shove it in.’

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Fay asked. ‘I feel so guilty, letting you do most of the work. Please, Jack, don’t keep on doing that! Sorry, Phoebe, I’d better go and amuse this tyrant.’

Phoebe smiled down at Jack. He gave her a cunning look and dragged his mother off in triumph. Mmmm, thought Phoebe, I shan’t let mine order me about like that! She wondered, as she chopped onions, how long it would take her to become pregnant. They had only made love once (not very satisfactorily) since her coil came out, but you didn’t have to have an orgasm to conceive, did you? Phoebe thought not. Her period was about due. Perhaps it wouldn’t come? Perhaps it had already happened? If she started a baby now, it would be born at the end of … September. She smiled to herself at the thought.

‘You look ch-cheerful,’ Duncan observed, putting his head round the door. ‘D-Domesticity o-obviously suits you.’

Phoebe smiled at him. If you only knew, she thought. But she said, ‘Where is everyone? What are you all doing?’

‘That’s w-what I c-came to tell you. Rick’s boys, C-Con and I are g-going over to our p-place for a walk and m-maybe to watch television for a while.’

‘Oh do take Jack with you, will you? He’s dying to see some telly, and it will gave Fay a rest.’

‘Okay.’

‘Where’s Hope? And is Peter home yet?’

‘F-Father’s expected any time. Mother is s-still upstairs. Rick’s p-probably still asleep.’

‘Any sign of Brendan?’

‘Not y-yet. S-See you.’

‘Don’t be late back, whatever happens,’ Phoebe warned. ‘Lunch at two o’clock sharp, or else!

*

Hope lurked behind her bedroom window at ten o’clock on Christmas morning playing, at the same time, her favourite piece of music. She was keeping a general lookout for a rogue heron which just recently had discovered the goldfish in their new garden pool, and had taken to picking them off, one by one. Hope was of the opinion that if she was able to frighten it off enough times, it would finally lose its nerve altogether. So far today there had been no sign of it, so in the meantime she played on. The melancholy sound of her viola escaped through the open window, but did nothing to intercept an unpleasant smell which had just started to waft inwards from the grey countryside outside. Hope wrinkled her nose in displeasure and put her bow down on the dressing table. She could hear the sound of farm machinery in the adjacent field and as she looked, a tractor towing a red tanker came into her view between the trees. It was spraying liquid slurry in a pale ginger fan from a jet at its back end.

‘Well!’ Hope exclaimed, shutting the window with a bang. ‘Whatever next? Today of all days. The man has not one iota of consideration; none!’ She picked up her bow and played something suitably strident to express her feelings.

There was still no sign of Peter. She was convinced that he did it on purpose to humiliate her in front of the family. She felt that she had always done her best and had remained at his side, preserving a united front and providing tactful disinformation on his behalf whenever necessary, for over fifty years! And this was the way he repaid her loyalty, by casual absences punctuated by offhand attendances. What sort of an example was that for the next generation? Had he no sense of duty? She frowned, concentrating on her music, and wringing out great splashes of emotion from an apparently arid source.

There was no need to go downstairs yet. She wouldn’t eat breakfast today. Phoebe had promised to arrive at 6 a.m., so she would have things well in hand by now. She, Hope, had made her contribution by getting Duncan to pop her television up into the attic for the duration of the festive season. That would stop the wretched thing from dominating their lives! Hope
disapproved strongly of the modern habit of staying glued to the set throughout Christmas. In her day, people made their own amusement. They used their brains and their skills to entertain others. Today’s children seemed to have no powers of concentration, no tenacity, no imagination.

Hope sighed. Rick’s boys were either sullen or garrulous, but it wasn’t their fault that they didn’t have a mother. Conrad’s boy was plain spoilt, which was Fay’s fault because she was a working mother and felt permanently guilty. Herry’s children were charming but totally out of control. They all needed some discipline. They were all much too self-centred!

Hope came to this conclusion with some satisfaction, drew a confident final chord and put her viola away in its case for the day. Tomorrow, she resolved, she would practise longer. Today she must do what was expected of her.

Fay heard Hope playing while she took Jack to the lavatory. It was a clear confident noise, which was at the same time wistful and powerfully emotive. She
must
have feelings, Fay thought, or she wouldn’t be able to play so beautifully. She wouldn’t be able to bring so much of herself to the music if there wasn’t a deep source of passion within her to draw upon. So why does she hide it from the people who should most matter to her; her family? Why has she starved her sons of the emotional nourishment and empathy that every human being needs? Why has she taught them, by her own example, that feelings should be suppressed; so much so that she’s rendered them incapable even of responding to emotion in others, let alone feeling it for themselves? The only thing she’s given them all, Fay thought sadly, is a solid carapace of arrogance with which to contain and conceal the poor vestigial remnants of their humanity, and it is so watertight that hardly any primal instincts or enthusiasms ever leak out. No flutter of the heart is ever experienced by any of them, and the very lack of it makes them feel safe. They take no risks. They can never be violated or betrayed … Fay thought, I don’t want Jack to grow up like that.

‘I want my potty,’ Jack said. His lower lip quivered.

‘No, darling,’ Fay said, coming back to reality suddenly. ‘You stopped using your silly old potty ages ago, didn’t you? Now you
sit on the loo like all the rest of us do, to do poos. Show Mummy how grown up you can be, eh?’ Jack burst into noisy tears. Oh God! Fay thought. Not this again! I hoped we’d got him over this one, at least. The bed-wetting was still a problem, yet everyone said he’d grow out of it eventually. But this business with the potty seemed never-ending and Conrad was so unsympathetic to him. It didn’t help Jack if his Daddy constantly told him not to be a wimp. It just made things worse!

‘Come on, Jacko,’ Fay said encouragingly. ‘There’s no need to get all upset, darling. It’s no big deal. I’ll hold you and then you can’t fall in. Okay?’ Eventually, after much reluctance, Jack allowed his mother to suspend him above the lavatory. ‘Put Dolly down a minute and hold onto the seat,’ she said. ‘It’s all right, I’ve got you. There! Now you can go.’ But he couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Fay eventually gave up. She resolved not to tell Conrad. He would only put more pressure on the boy. Lately, she had become concerned at his attitude which had been so different when their girls were at the same age. Why was he suddenly so disappointed in Jack? Why the hell did he have to let it
show
so much? Jack was crying again. The poor child seemed to be having a thoroughly unhappy Christmas. ‘Never mind,’ she consoled him. She helped him to pull his trousers up and then closed the lavatory seat and sat him on top of it. ‘You can do a poo later. Now let’s do your nose. Big blow? Good boy. Now let’s go and see how Auntie Phoebe is getting on, eh?’

Phoebe was checking that the pudding was not boiling dry, as they went into the kitchen. She looked surprised to see Jack.

‘Didn’t he want to go?’ she asked Fay.

‘Where?’

‘Over to ours to w-a-t-c-h the t-e-l-l-y?’ Phoebe spelt it out.

Fay looked blank. ‘I didn’t know …’ she began.

‘Bloody Duncan!’ exclaimed Phoebe. ‘I
told
him to take Jack. I thought it would give you a break.’

‘Is that where everyone is? I did wonder. That won’t please Hope, will it?’

Phoebe smiled grimly. ‘Serve her right,’ she said.

‘Are you doing okay?’ Fay asked.

‘So far. Why don’t you take Jack anyway, and get me a nice sprig of holly for the pud while you’re out?’

‘Why not?’ Fay said. ‘Come on, Jacky.’ She bent down to him. ‘Let’s go and find some prickly holly with lots of lovely red berries on it.’

‘Boring,’Jack said scornfully.

‘Are you all right?’ Phoebe asked Fay. ‘You look a bit frazzled.’

‘The joys of unaccustomed full-time motherhood,’ Fay said wryly, pulling Jack by the scruff of his neck towards the back door. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are!’

At one o’clock everything started happening together. As Phoebe was peeling Brussels sprouts, Fay came back alone to help her with last-minute things, and their mother-in-law made her first appearance. Hope was wearing a long black velvet skirt, and a silk blouse with a cameo at her neck. She looked very grand.

‘Wouldn’t you have thought that he would have had more consideration?’ she demanded, as she swept into the kitchen and proceded to do a critical appraisal of Phoebe’s progress so far.

Good afternoon, Hope, and a Merry Christmas to you too! Phoebe thought. Trust her to begin her day with a complaint. ‘Who?’ she asked.

‘Why, Duckham, wretched man! Fancy spreading muck on Christmas Day. What have you used this for?’ She said this last with such horror that Phoebe was paralysed in mid sprout. ‘It smells of onions!’ Hope said accusingly, brandishing a small wooden board.

‘Yes,’ Phoebe said, looking round. ‘I chopped onions on it for the stuff –’

‘Never
cut up onions on
this
board!’ Hope said. ‘The smell persists for ever. Surely you should know better than that?’

A large black Bentley swished past the kitchen window at that moment, making for the front door. ‘Peter!’ Hope exclaimed. ‘About time too!’ She turned and walked swiftly out of the kitchen.

‘It was the only bloody chopping board I could sodding well find!’ Phoebe protested to Fay, after she had gone.

‘What does she know?’ Fay agreed. ‘She never lifts a finger in here. Decent of the old man to put in an appearance, wouldn’t
you say? Now perhaps she’ll be all graciousness and good cheer!’ She flashed Phoebe an ironic smile.

Phoebe felt a growing feeling of solidarity with her sister-in-law. Until now she had thought of her as super-efficient and rather aloof. She had felt rather in awe of her seniority and envious of her achievements and good looks. She realized that she hardly knew her at all. Perhaps they might even become friends.

So far, it had been an easy journey down to Somerset, Peter thought. The Bentley was running sweetly as always. The weather was neutral; pressure was high and it was dull with a faint drizzle. He glanced sideways at his companion, who was still chattering away in that fresh unselfconscious manner which had no pretensions to any logical succession of ideas and, to his certain knowledge, was peculiar to young, very pretty girls. She was definitely no intellectual giant, but one could not have everything, and she was bright enough to regard him with obvious admiration, which was as it should be. She would without doubt enliven Christmas.

‘I was expecting snow,’ she said, in her amusing colonial accent, ‘like on the Christmas cards, but it’s just cold and grey. I reckon it’s a swindle.’

‘Anticyclonic gloom,’ Peter said, agreeing. ‘I don’t suppose you get much of that in NZ?’

‘Search me!’ the girl said, giggling. ‘If I knew what it was, I could tell you. One thing’s for sure, I’m not in the least gloomy.’ She gave him a dazzling smile and then frowned suddenly, changing tack with all the skill of a butterfly on a slalom course. ‘You don’t get all ponced up in the evenings, do you?’ she asked, worried. ‘Only I haven’t got anything smart to wear. I never thought …’

‘No,’ Peter reassured her. ‘We just come as we are.’

‘We do that at home too,’ she said, giggling anew, ‘but my Dad has one unbreakable rule.’

‘Yes?’

‘Yeah. We can only come to the table in
dry
swimming cozzies.’

Peter had a wonderful vision of himself entering the crowded
dining room at the big house and presenting her on a platter, resplendent in nothing but a brief bikini with acres of warm, smooth, suntanned,
edible
skin … as an alternative to the traditional flaming pudding perhaps?

‘You’ve got a really wicked look on your face!’ she exclaimed.

He smiled broadly. ‘That’s because I was having a really wicked thought,’ he said, ‘which was entirely of your making. Here we are.’ He turned the car into his drive and they swept down the avenue between the limes. ‘We’ll go round to the front,’ Peter said, ‘then you’ll see the house from its best side.’

‘It’s bloody
huge!’
the girl said, in awe, as they got out of the car. ‘It’s a mega mansion.’

‘It’s comfortable enough,’ Peter agreed. ‘Ah, here’s my wife now. Hope, this is Thelma from New Zealand. The poor child had nowhere to go for Christmas, so I said I knew you’d be delighted to welcome her here.’

At five minutes to two, Phoebe was making the gravy. The turkey was sitting on its carving dish flanked by bacon and sausages in the warm oven. The roast potatoes and parsnips were keeping hot in a covered dish. The green vegetables were almost done. The bread sauce was ready. Any minute now, the exercise would be completed, and she could sit down and maybe even begin to enjoy the day. She glanced at Fay’s watch. Spot on! she thought. Thank God for that!