The Uninvited Guests (5 page)

It held a delicate cameo, elegantly wrought and hanging on the most fragile of gold chains.

‘It’s most delightful,’ she said quietly.

‘Perhaps your brother could fasten it?’ said John. ‘I wouldn’t want to
misrepresent
myself. Good old Em!’ And he laughed again, smacked his broad thigh, and rose to his feet.

Clovis stood, too, and plunged his hands in his pockets, rocking, while Emerald found herself blurting loudly, ‘Would you come to supper tonight? I’m having a small party. A terribly small party. My good friend Patience Sutton and her mother—’

‘There’s no need to tempt me with the list!’ said John, and grasped her hand warmly between both of his. ‘If there were any fences down between us this invitation would most certainly mend them. I accept. Jolly good and I’ll look forward to it. And be off. And thanks.’

He smiled confidently at Clovis, tipped his imaginary hat, and was gone.

‘
Clovis, see him out!
’ hissed Emerald viciously, and Clovis shot from the room.

‘Hold up, old man! I’ll see you to your car,’ she heard him call and she sank once more down onto the chaise.

‘I’m the very last word in dunces,’ she said, and flopped back against its unforgiving gilded arm, dashing herself on the forehead with the heel of her hand. The other, tremblingly, sought John Buchanan’s piece of jewellery and toyed with it, thoughtfully.

She heard the gutted roar of the Rolls-Royce’s engine as it sparked, and moments later, Clovis returned.

‘I still don’t like him,’ he said. Then, ‘
Good old Em.
’ And he laughed, madly.

The sodden sky of earlier had been blasted apart by high and squally gusts and now, duck-egg blue, it smiled sunnily upon the grumpy Torringtons sitting at their lunch.

Smudge’s place stood empty. She often took her meals when she pleased, but as Florence Trieves put the pie dish on the table Emerald said, ‘Ought we to see if Smudge is feeling better?’ and resolved to do just that immediately lunch was finished.

The leftover pie was rabbit, with ham, and would have looked better in a new dish instead of the encrusted messy one of the night before, but Florence hadn’t seen fit and nobody felt they should remark on it. There was, more pleasingly, a vast saucepan of white, boiled new potatoes, smothered with parsley, so they wouldn’t go hungry – although, ‘A serving dish might have been have nicer for those, Mrs Trieves,’ as Charlotte observed vaguely.

‘It might,’ said Florence, and went for the mustard. She would eat her own pie standing in the kitchen. In her widow-hood, she distrusted pleasures of the senses, and didn’t like to stop for them, perhaps fearing envelopment.

Emerald, following her ride, and having been too miserable at breakfast to have an appetite, was ravenous, and ate hungrily until her mother, sighing, said, ‘And what of John Buchanan?’

‘What-what of him?’ answered Emerald evasively.

‘Don’t be evasive,’ said Charlotte, spotting it.

‘I’d rather not go into it, Mother.’

‘
Into it?
Into what? You young people have a remarkable way of putting things. Did your meeting with John Buchanan produce something
into which we might go?
’

‘Oh, Mother!’ Emerald stopped eating. ‘What is it you would like to know?’

‘In a nutshell?’

‘A succinct one.’

‘Whether or not he proposed to you.’

‘Proposed!’ This was Clovis, choking.

‘Clovis dear, there’s no need for vulgar manners.’

‘Ishabod!’

‘Nor language. Emerald?’

‘You’re being ridiculous. He has no interest in me beyond the neighbourly.’

‘I see the way he looks at you,’ said Charlotte, with an expert’s acuity. ‘And petrol is expensive. I beg to differ.’

‘I begged to differ too,’ put in Clovis gleefully, ‘until Emerald was smacked sharply on the metaphorical nose by said fellow for daring to infer he was giving her a
love token.
’

‘Oh,
Clovis
…’ groaned Emerald.

‘Explain, please,’ instructed their mother.

Emerald sighed. ‘John gave me a present. I told him I wasn’t – well, that he mustn’t think – well,
you know –
and then it was just
miserable
, because he stated in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t interested in a
romance
anyway. I felt a fool, he looked the jolly nice fellow he no doubt is, and now I’d rather just forget all about it, if it’s all the same to you.’

‘Well put,’ said Clovis. ‘
Good old Em.
’

Emerald kicked him hard but without effect, owing to her being unshod. He tossed a crust to Lucy and Nell who were lying on his feet and licked his fingers, and then there was a long silence during which they all ate, and kept to themselves.

They were interrupted by Charlotte abruptly pushing back her chair and saying harshly, ‘Then I’m to relinquish all thoughts of a match between you and John Buchanan, am I?’

Emerald and Clovis gawped.

‘I should say so, Ma,’ said Clovis, and Emerald added, ‘I didn’t know you were entertaining such thoughts!’

‘Well, I was. But I shall stop now.’ And she left the room – and her cutlery awry.

Emerald, ever loving, ever dutiful, went after her. Clovis, also loving, less dutiful, finished his rabbit pie.

Charlotte reached the bottom of the main staircase, stopped, and drooped, bodily. Emerald, at her side now, was at a loss.

‘Oh God,’ said Charlotte.

‘Mother, please…’

Charlotte looked about her, haunted, at the edifying squareness of Sterne’s hall.

‘It’s a great mistake ever to imagine one is home,’ she said brokenly and sank onto the bottom stair.

Emerald was bleak. ‘Perhaps your husband will return with good news.’

‘You may as well know: it’s almost hopeless.’

‘Really?’ Emerald was aghast. However often she had cried over it, she couldn’t quite believe in her childish heart that she might have to live anywhere but Sterne. She had even imagined her husband there – whoever he may be going to be – and never considered he might have other plans. She sat down near her mother on the flagstones, looking up at her.

‘We hope against hope,’ Charlotte went on, ‘but who can borrow against farmland now? And it’s too remote to build on.’

‘I know,’ said Emerald. ‘Sterne is too far from anything and no good to anybody.’

‘Everybody’s leaving the land. The cottages stand empty. Edward is even now trying to beg money from a man, an industrialist, who treats his workers vilely. It’s ghastly.’ Charlotte began to cry in earnest, with juddering, high-pitched sobs, not the usual, more picturesque expressions of sorrow she showed to her husband. ‘
My fault. My fault
,’ she said into her wet hands. ‘I’ve brought you up to these notions of permanence, I ought to have been satisfied with wandering, and never having anything of my own, and no love, and no home.’ She was becoming hysterical.

‘Oh, Mother, Mother …’ said Emerald and patted her, casting about for a distraction or glimmer to set her parent in a more hopeful direction.

‘And then,
then
,’ cried Charlotte, ‘I had, nestled in my heart,
stupidly
, that you and John Buchanan would love one another. He is so rich,’ the word was rough with need as it burst from her, ‘so
rich
,’ she was lusty with hopeless desire, ‘and then generations and generations of us would be set fair.
Set fair
,’ she said again, liking the phrase and pounding her fist, which held her tightly balled handkerchief, into the palm of her other hand, ‘for a good, safe, future. Just
marriage
—’

But here, Emerald cut her off.

‘“Just marriage?”’ she said, incredulously. ‘It’s all very well for you to say, Mother, having married
twice
for love! And John Buchanan may go some way to earning his keep, simply by looking the straight-up, all-white, upright sort of fellow that,
yes
, he no doubt is. And shaking hands with everybody. But very soon thereafter he shows himself to be an utter dolt. How would that sustain fifty years of marriage? And babies. And life.’

Charlotte had some steel left in her for: ‘“Utter dolt” is surely a little strong, even for you, Emerald, with your exacting standards. The man has, after all, managed to buy a good portion of Manchester since taking up business. And he’s not yet thirty.’

‘Well, Mother, it’s a moot point anyway, as he has no interest in me whatsoever! He made it abundantly clear at our meeting today.’

‘It would have been so
nice.
’

Emerald looked upon her with scorn, but softened; her mother’s expression was that of a person watching the very last train home tootle round a distant bend with her luggage on it: wistful, increasingly hopeless, lost.

‘I’m sorry, Mother,’ she said, and meant it. ‘Really and truly, I am. You’re quite right: I ought not be so harsh. Perhaps if John Buchanan
were
interested in me I might have
learned
to appreciate his good qualities. I’ve invited him for supper…’

‘Really?’ Charlotte gave a tiny shiver and appeared to bristle, minutely, all over. She was scenting hope.

She paused, before saying with studied and theatrical carelessness, ‘It was an act of real generosity to purchase the farm for his father.’

‘Yes, it was.’

She waited again, then, rising to her feet, remarked, ‘I hear he’s in great demand in town, but not much interested in
fripperies
and the
trappings
of his success – soirées and dances, boxes at the theatre, and so on.’

Emerald was known to have eschewed said hypothetical delights in pursuit of more serious – and attainable – occupations: reading, gardening and something else she could not now recall, which all seemed very tawdry in the light of
things John could afford to do if he liked.

‘Really?’ she answered softly.

Charlotte was an old hand at manipulation and knew when to stop. ‘Well!’ she said briskly, and brushed off her skirts, sniffing. ‘I had best to my room, and attempt to regain some dignity.’

‘You’re always dignified to me, Mother,’ said Emerald automatically.

Never having known why dignity should matter so much to her mother, she nevertheless knew that it did, and bestowed on her as often as possible the compliment:
very dignified, Mother.

‘You’re a darling,’ said Charlotte, patting her head and stepping lightly away from her up the stairs.

‘I shall see about Smudge,’ called Emerald after her and, ‘Yes, why don’t you?’ was her mother’s faint reply.

‘Smudge?’ There was no answer from behind Smudge’s bedroom door.

‘Smudge?’ cooed Emerald again, before turning the knob. The doorknobs at Sterne were all different, and nobody knew why. This particular one was china and undecorated; others were painted, some coloured glass, or brass, still others were of carved or plain wood. The Torringtons blamed the Victorians.

Smudge was asleep. Emerald sat on her bed and held the hand that lay outside the covers. When she opened her eyes she said, ‘Hello, small Smudge, would you like me to bring you something?’

Smudge was blurry. ‘Oh, no, or yes.’

‘Are you pretending this illness or is it authentic?’

‘Authentic, I think.’

‘Shall I fetch Dr Death?’

This was not his real name, of course. He wasn’t even a Dr D’Eath or Dethe – his name was actually Harris. His nickname had become increasingly morbid and hideous during the course of their father’s illness, but was too entrenched to discard. It had, in the last desperate days of his life, become funny once more. They had all, including the weakened Horace, shrieked with laughter at the uttering of the name Dr Death on more than one occasion. Laughed until they cried.

‘I don’t know. Would he come?’

‘Of course. What are your symptoms?’

‘My symptoms?’ The child’s white forehead creased.

‘Have you a headache? Are you in pain? Do you have any appetite at all?’

‘I’m not hungry very much, but I know the reason for that. I ate a tin of sugar biscuits that I had under my bed.’

Emerald bent down to look. Sure enough, there was an open tin there, revealing a golden interior lightly scattered with crumbs.

‘You’re not to bring biscuits up here, we’ll get mice.’

‘We’ve mice already; we may as well make them welcome.’

‘It’s no use arguing with invalids.’

Smudge giggled.

‘Mother wants you down for supper,’ said Emerald, although their mother had made no such statement. At this, the child rallied marvellously.

‘Then I will be. With the guests? Topping!’

‘Where on earth did “topping” come from?’

‘Clovis.’

‘Don’t say it.’

‘Only when I need to.’

Emerald took the biscuit tin and stood up. ‘Have you had any other visitors?’ she asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Clovis, or Mother, or Mrs Trieves…’

‘Only animals, but I don’t think they like ill people.’ All at once, Smudge began to cry. ‘They went away again,’ she said.

Emerald bent and kissed her.

‘You silly,’ she said, ‘I’ll fetch you soup and bread. You’re light-headed. The dogs adore you and so does Lloyd. Look! Here he is!’

The brindled cat had crept heavily into the room, with the air cats have of saying,
I understand you’re talking about me, but I shan’t look at you.

He affected surprise as Emerald heaved him up and deposited him on Smudge’s bed, where he suffered himself to be pinned down and began to purr.

With Lloyd to keep her company, Smudge’s tears were very soon over. Emerald left her, and went away to find soup. The kitchen was in uproar. It was a miracle that evidence of it hadn’t seeped into the main house. Florence Trieves and Myrtle were hard at it, barely visible among the clouds of flour and puffs of steam, as they flew between the counter and the table – pausing, in heated, fervent disarray to look up and ask: ‘What is it?’

An earthenware bowl held a dozen eggs, bright yolks mesmerised by glassy whites. Two anaemic chickens, spatchcocked, lay broken on a board. The rhubarb had been cleaned, chopped and heaped into three bright pink mountains.