Wicked! (97 page)

‘Poor Sally,’ snapped Hengist.

They were then joined by Charlie and Oriana, with all her lipstick kissed off.

‘Mrs Brett-Taylor, you are so kind,’ cried Charlie. ‘I’ve just opened my gifts. These cufflinks are so neat, look’ – she shot out her silken ivory cuffs – ‘and I’m wearing the perfume, it’s delightful.’ She held out a wrist for Sally to smell. ‘And this is so appropriate.’ She waved the pink elephant tie. ‘From what Oriana tells me about Brett-Taylor hospitality, I’ll be seeing pink elephants of my own in a day or two, and finally Catullus is one of my favourite poets, and translated by Lord Hawkley. He came and lectured us at Smith.’

‘“Let’s live and love, my Lesbia,”’ muttered Janna, who was starting to get drunk and lippy. ‘“Heed not the disapproval of censorious old men,”’ and received a filthy look from Oriana.

‘I’ve brought you some bottles of fine wine,’ went on Charlie.

Dora, snapping away on her telephone camera, was livid when Hengist gave her twenty pounds and told her to buzz off.

‘How are you going to manage? Coxie can’t wait on her own, she was hoping to put her feet up with a plate of goose and
The Wizard of Oz
.’

‘Go on, hop it.’

Dora rushed off across the snow to the Old Coach House.

‘Guess what, Oriana’s a lesbian; she’s turned up with a tall woman called Charlie. They’re sharing a bed, imagine them licking each other, it’s so pants.’

Ian and Patience, who’d had several drinks after a gruelling day with Paris, had great difficulty not laughing.

‘Shall I go and cheer him up?’ asked Dora wistfully. ‘Oh well, I’d better toboggan home.’

Charlie proceeded to dominate the conversation. She had spent six years teaching English at Smith before going into television on the news side. She had been everywhere and knew everyone. She was also a know-all, decided Janna, although it might have been to impress the Brett-Taylors.

She immediately recognized
L’Enfance du Christ
on the record player but, on picking up the CD cover, said she preferred Sir Colin Davis’s version with Janet Baker singing Mary.

The mistletoe hanging in the hall on the way into dinner was an excuse for a little lecture on druids gathering it by moonlight.

‘Mistletoe was alleged to cure infertility,’ continued Charlie, ‘ill humour and offer protection from lightning.’ Then, tucking her arm through Oriana’s: ‘There should have been some hanging in the Palestine Hotel the night we met.

‘Omigod.’ She clapped her hands as she entered the dining room. ‘How glorious.’ Yet the scarlet napkins, crimson roses and army of white candles lighting the room and casting a sheen on the frozen snow outside seemed less suited to the mood of the evening than the dark jungle wallpaper.

Glancing at the place cards, Sally wondered if Charlie ought now to be on Hengist’s right rather than hers, particularly as Emlyn was on her left, glowering like some huge cliff face across at Charlie, who was unfolding her red napkin like a matador and banging on about the New York apartment.

‘Oriana and I have kept things neutral. Then we can vary the look by adding cushions and throws.’

‘We’ve done the same at my school,’ piped up Janna. ‘Alas the boys do most of the throwing.’

But Charlie had been sidetracked by a lovely Nevinson of Battersea Power Station, opal smoke drifting in the morning sun, which had been recently hung on the wall opposite.

‘Although I prefer the gritty realism of Nevinson’s war oeuvre. Oriana, like him, is a war artist. The tautness and poetry of your daughter’s reportage, Hengist and Sally, will become TV classics.’

‘Oh Charlie.’ Oriana blew her a kiss.

They’re bitches. Poor Emlyn, thought Janna furiously. How could they chatter away as though everything was normal?

Hengist, who never squandered an opportunity to work a room, was quizzing Charlie about the American political scene, which he and Jupiter were busy cracking. Who were the movers and shakers? Charlie dismissed most of the ones he knew as right-wing bigots.

The first course of smoked salmon mousse and poached scallops was delicious but the latter were definitely undercooked, like eating chunks of female flesh.

Emlyn gagged and put his knife and fork together, suddenly overwhelmed with longing for his wise kindly father, who’d so disapproved of any link with the Brett-Taylors. What was he to do? He could hardly challenge Charlie to a duel. And how did you compete for a woman with another woman, who was so self-assured, so smart and who looked so much better in a dinner suit and her own skin than you did yourself? Emlyn drained his glass of Pouilly-Fumé and poured another one.

Charlie was a slow eater, because she talked so much, which was a good thing, because Coxie was so incensed to be abandoned that she refused to do much waiting.

Oriana and Sally helped her in with the goose, parsnip purée, roast potatoes, sprouts and bread sauce. As Hengist began carving, Elaine sidled round the table, dark eyes bright and loving in anticipation of goodies. On learning her name, Charlie launched into Tennyson:

‘“Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable, Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat.”’

‘Oh, fuck off,’ muttered Emlyn.

‘Pardon me?’ asked Charlie, then demanded what aspect of American history Emlyn was teaching. Learning it was the Wild West, she hoped Emlyn was stressing the victimization of the Native Americans.

‘No one more than Emlyn,’ snapped Janna.

‘Here you are, Emlyn.’ A sympathetic Coxie shoved a huge plate of goose in front of him. ‘I’ve given you the breast.’

And so it went on. Glasses were filled several times as candlelight etched the deepening crisis on each face. On the surface, people contradicted each other, some with passion, some with dogged authority, while everyone watched. Was Charlie revving up to ask Hengist for Oriana’s nailbitten hand? wondered Janna. She had been worried about which fork to use. This lot would hardly have noticed if she’d rammed one into Charlie’s arm.

The crimson roses were shedding petals on the polished table like drops of blood. Janna shivered, remembering Cara Sharpe and the scarlet anemones.

Oriana, in truth, was irritated Emlyn was behaving so angrily and gauchely. She could see Charlie was wondering how Oriana could have attached herself for so long to such a boor. Emlyn could be so funny and sharp, but every time Charlie threw him a question, he ignored it like a great vegan sea lion rejecting fish. She also wished her father were less right wing, and her mother less like a crystal lustre, tinkle, tinkle, filling in silences with inane chat.

Janna she couldn’t read. She’d been convinced she was her father’s latest, but from the way Janna was sticking up for Emlyn, Oriana wasn’t sure.

The food was sublime. Never were sprouts more crunchy, potatoes more golden crisp and creamily soft inside, or goose more tender without being fatty. Charlie, who hadn’t had any lunch, was particularly taken with the parsnip purée and had a second helping.

‘It’s Taggie Campbell-Black’s recipe,’ said Sally, who was now gazing into space.

As Charlie proceeded to annihilate the Bush administration, and make disapproving comments on ‘not forgetting the starving worldwide’ as more food seemed to go back on everyone else’s plates than was put on them in the first place, Elaine was having a field day.

Sally, who’d been fingering the cut-glass ridges of her water glass, suddenly filled it up from the gravy boat without realizing it.

‘It’s my turn to clear away.’ Janna leapt to her feet, stacking up the plates and grabbing Sally’s glass.

In the kitchen, she found Coxie in tears and attacking the brandy.

‘My dinner’s ruined and poor Mr Davies.’

‘It was a wonderful dinner. Everyone’s upset, that’s all.’ Janna put an arm round Coxie’s heaving shoulders as Emlyn walked in with the goose.

When she and Emlyn came back to the kitchen with vegetables and sauce boats, Janna murmured that Charlie and Oriana were fearfully anti-Bush.

‘Except each other’s,’ snarled Emlyn.

Janna screamed with laughter, then stifled it, stammering how desperately sorry she was about everything.

Returning to the dining room with hot plates, Christmas pudding and brandy butter, they caught Oriana and Charlie in a clinch in the hall.

‘Christ!’ exploded Emlyn. ‘Shall we unjoin the ladies?’

Ignoring him, as a further act of solidarity, Charlie and Oriana moved their chairs together, pulling crackers, putting on paper hats and giggling over riddles. Inside Charlie’s cracker was a yellow whistle which she kept blowing.

Janna put the Christmas pudding on the sideboard; Hengist defiantly emptied half a bottle of brandy over it. As he set fire to it, blue flame nearly scorched the ceiling. Emlyn felt similar anger flaring up inside him: Oriana should have levelled with him. Even if there was a certain relief that it wasn’t him specifically she didn’t fancy, just blokes in general, her lack of response had constantly humiliated him, eroding his masculinity. He’d felt so heavy and ham-fisted, like a rhino trying to shag a gazelle.

‘D’you remember how you used to put silver 5ps in the Christmas pudding, Mum?’ asked Oriana.

‘It was bachelor’s buttons in my day,’ said Hengist, scooping Christmas pudding into silver bowls, which Janna handed round.

‘I wonder who’d qualify for that,’ said Sally in a high voice.

Seeing she was shivering, Janna took Emlyn’s seat next to her, praising the brandy butter, saying what joy her indoor bulbs had brought the children.

‘How nice.’ Sally attacked her Christmas pudding, then, putting her spoon down, said:

‘D’you remember the time you got Elaine a doggy bag from La Perdrix d’Or, pork chops wrapped in silver foil, and forgot and put it under the tree? By the time you opened it on Christmas night, it had gone orf and stank like hell.’ Sally started to laugh shrilly on and on. Janna put a hand on her arm.

‘It’s OK,’ she murmured, ‘you’re doing fine.’

‘I haven’t had much practice.’

Hengist, who’d been trying to get some sense out of Emlyn about rugger, glanced across at his wife with such concern.

She’s the one he loves, thought Janna. Me, Ruth Walton, even Oriana aren’t in the frame compared with her.

‘Don’t know why everyone goes on about Taggie’s cooking,’ said Hengist, ‘my wife’s is just as good. Let’s all drink to her.’

After they’d drained their glasses, Hengist filled them up again and proposed a toast to absent friends.

‘Mum,’ said Janna.

‘Mungo,’ said Oriana bitterly.

‘Dad,’ muttered Emlyn with a break in his voice.

He was looking so sad, Janna poked him in the ribs with a cracker. Inside was a key ring attached to a perky little black dog with pricked ears.

‘How darling,’ said Charlie covetously, ‘an Aberdeen terrier. My mother has one.’

‘We call them Scotties in England,’ said Janna tartly, ‘and Emlyn’s going to have it.’ She dropped it into his dinner jacket pocket.

‘Where are Artie and Theo?’ said Oriana fretfully.

‘Gone to Athens,’ said Hengist, ‘staying in the Grande Bretagne, lucky things. Artie’s hiring a car and they’re going on day trips to Corinth and Sparta.’

‘Such a shame, I so wanted Charlie to meet them.’

‘They’re both such dear persons,’ said Sally.

‘Why are male couples “dear persons” and not women?’ said Oriana, who was getting punchy. ‘Dad’s always slagging off Joan Johnson and Sabine Bottomley, but if they’re men, it’s fine.’

Hengist and Janna escaped with the pudding bowls.

‘Save it for the birds,’ he cried as Janna started to tip rejected pudding into the bin. ‘Christ, what a bloody awful evening. Is that appalling Charlie going to stay behind and drink port with me and Emlyn?’

But as they returned to the dining room, the grandfather clock struck ten-thirty and Charlie, looking at Oriana with sleepy suggestive eyes, announced she was exhausted.

‘Thank you so much, Sally and Hengist, for letting me invade your evening and for your wonderful gifts. If it’s OK, I’ll give you mine tomorrow after I’ve unpacked. A very merry Christmas.’

Then she kissed Sally, shook hands with Hengist and Janna and told Emlyn it was good to meet him, and turned towards the door.

‘I’m coming with you,’ Oriana leapt to her feet.

‘No, you’re not.’ Emlyn grabbed her arm. ‘We’ve got to talk.’

‘Tomorrow.’ Oriana winced at the exerted pressure, then, thinking her arm would snap like a wishbone: ‘Oh, OK then.’

They went back into the drawing room, where neither could be bothered to bank up the dying embers.

Out of nerves, Oriana put a Christmas compilation on the CD player, hastily turning down the sound when the first track was ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’.

Emlyn watched as she idly flipped through the white invitation cards on the chimney piece, then wandered to the window, gazing out at the snow, which, growing too heavy, was sliding off branches and had bowed down her mother’s beloved ceanothus to breaking point.

Snow might have fallen on the stretch of white neck between Oriana’s dark hair and her brown velvet neckline. This can’t be happening, thought Emlyn.