Come and Tell Me Some Lies (10 page)

Trixie, generously extending her godmotherly role to the whole family, gave Patrick's party in London. She and her silent husband Russell lived in a house as white as icing, with great stone steps leading up to the front door. Eleanor and Patrick paused in the hall and a brace of ladies with white aprons took their coats and whisked Dan and Poppy upstairs.

In the blood-red dining-room more white-aproned women milled, arranging glasses and prinking canapés. Overawed, Va Va, Brodie and Flook followed their parents through the echoing house and upstairs to get ready.

Trixie summoned Eleanor to her room, Va Va followed. Clothes lolled everywhere, a pile of them wrapped in transparent polythene gleamed and rustled on the bed. ‘Eleanor, choose something, choose anything,' boomed Trixie, embracing her.

‘I've brought my blue velvet dress, I think I'll wear that,' said Eleanor, blinking at the array.

Trixie's eyes sagged at the corners. ‘Won't you just try this lilac one?' she urged, raising a froth of purple lace. Her shirt, straining across her jutting bosom, suddenly drooped as a button spun off and fell, lost in the thick pile of the carpet. Va Va giggled and was sent up yet more stairs to dress herself. Buoyed up with excitement, Brodie and Flook flung pillows across the bedroom. Va Va cajoled Brodie into trying on her lime-green nylon nightie, smuggled into her suitcase when Eleanor was not looking. Eleanor entered, a princess from Hans Christian Andersen in a sweeping gown of silk velvet the colour of her eyes. Purple earrings quivered behind strands of hair and she smelt of summer.

‘Brodie, take that thing off. Va Va, I told you not to bring it. Now will you hurry up and get dressed.' The children flung off their jeans and jerseys and, in seconds, Brodie and Flook were dressed in matching navy shirts and red trousers. Va Va slouched on the bed; she wanted to wear her lime-green nightie. Patrick had brought it back for her from America and it was her favourite dress. Eleanor loathed it, and paid Va Va not to wear it to children's parties at home. But today there was no alternative: Va Va had not brought another dress. Skipping with joy, she entered the drawing-room with Eleanor, nylon wafting softly as she moved.

‘Darlings, you look beautiful,' said Patrick, raising his glass in a toast to them.

People arrived and arrived, none seemed to leave and the house swelled and hummed with talk. Squeezing through to
find Patrick, Va Va scratched her ear on a button and submitted to spattering kisses. ‘My, haven't you grown? You must be ten now, Gabriella. How is your baby sister? You won't remember me, I came to Mildney last summer.' Women with painted faces purred at her and smiled. She couldn't find Patrick anywhere, or Brodie or Flook.

Eleanor came down the stairs. ‘I've been to see Dan and Poppy. They're both sound asleep and Mrs Damley is watching them.'

A man with red hair and a broad Scottish accent came up. ‘Eleanor, you look like a goddess.' He squinted down at Va Va. ‘Hello, young lady. I'm Angus Dean. Have you heard of me?' Va Va backed towards her mother and shook her head. ‘I'm a Catholic homosexual orphan from Glasgow. Your father is a very famous, very brilliant poet. I hope you're proud of him.'

Va Va glared at the man, suspicion freezing her scowl. ‘You're too old to be an orphan,' she said, but he wasn't listening.

‘I'll take you to Trixie's room and you can watch television,' said Eleanor and led her up the stairs.

‘What's a homosexual?' Va Va asked as they threaded past more people on the landing.

‘I'll tell you some other time,' replied Eleanor.

Brodie and Flook were cocooned in Trixie's mighty bed, sausage rolls strewn at their feet. Va Va climbed in between them and
Kojak
began.

October 1988

Trixie divorced Russell and came to stay at Mildney with her new boyfriend, David. We were all there for the weekend. On Saturday morning David put on a builder's helmet and a checked shirt and went out with his chainsaw to cut up fallen trees in the Wilderness. Trixie, her hair held back by a child's pink hairband adorned with two bobbing antennae, stamped round the house waking us all up. ‘Come on, you lot, I want to talk to you. Present yourselves in the playroom in ten minutes.'

Groaning, I turned over, burying my face in the pillow, but Trixie was not to be defeated. Into my room she thumped, the yellow fluff-balls on the ends of her antennae swivelling as they brushed the ceiling. ‘You can marshal your brothers, Va Va.' She sounded like a drill-sergeant chivvying soldiers on parade. I got up.

There was a tray of tea in the playroom. I poured five mugfuls and handed them to the others as they slouched in; hair tangled from sleep, jerseys inside out. Brodie had holes in the toes of his socks; rosy flesh peeped rudely from grey wool as he sat down.

Trixie enjoyed being in command. Her visits to Mildney were infrequent, but whenever she came her mission was to change things. Mum was fond of her, but she never failed to upset someone with her two-pronged approach of generosity and bullying. She bought Mum a new washing machine and then policed it, banning any items of clothing belonging to the boys. ‘They can use a laundrette,' she insisted. ‘Their ghastly jeans will break it immediately, and as for their socks …' She paused, dragged on her cigarette and exhaled a frill of blue smoke from her nose. ‘My dear, they should be incinerated.'

In the playroom Trixie slumped her bulk on to the arm of a chair. She gazed round at all of us, eyes wide, face pulled into sensitive mode.

‘Now I want you all to listen to me. I have spoken to your mother, and although she never complains – dear Eleanor, she is a saint – I know she is desperately worried about money.'

Flook sighed and got up to refill his mug. He frowned into the fireplace. ‘Why isn't Mum involved in this conversation?' he asked.

Trixie blinked several times. ‘She's too embarrassed, actually.' She sighed. ‘She's hiding in the loo, if you must know.' Trixie laughed and looked round at us expectantly. None of us responded. She continued, ‘Anyway. It's time you all helped your parents a bit. They've helped you, and now you are grown-up and earning money you can afford to let go of the selfishness of youth.'

Dan and Poppy hissed venom towards her and she acknowledged them with a nod. ‘You two could give up your pocket-money and stop scrounging cigarettes, but I know you aren't
earning. And of course Dan's leg is a dreadful worry for her.'

‘It's not much fun for me either,' said Dan.

Trixie coughed. ‘Va Va, Brodie and Flook can each give ten pounds a week.'

There was a long silence. Brodie stared at Trixie, his gaze steady, forcing her to look back at him. She lowered her eyes. ‘I know you think I shouldn't interfere, but I don't care, it has to be said.'

I couldn't decide if I hated her more for her ham-fisted approach or for being right. Anyway, I hated her.

‘Thank you for your lecture.' Brodie walked towards the door. ‘I'm going to talk to Mum about it. We will do what she wants us to,
not
what you tell us to.' He paused before leaving the room. ‘And why are you wearing that ridiculous thing on your head?'

Trixie reached up and felt her drooping antennae. She gasped and laughed, eyes snapping shut, mouth gaping wide as hilarity bowled through her. Silent, treading softly, curving round her like cats shrinking from water, we all left the room.

Mum was crying in the kitchen. ‘I told her not to. I begged her not to,' she wept, ‘but Trixie insisted. I am sorry, all of you. Just ignore her.'

Hooting guffaws still issued from the playroom. Brodie shut the door. ‘Mum, you should have told us. We don't mind. It's just being told by her.'

Mum blew her nose. ‘Well, every little helps,' she managed to say.

Eleanor cured Patrick of drinking whisky. When she met him he would start and finish a bottle in an evening. By surreptitiously pouring half of each new bottle down the lavatory and topping it up with water, she weaned him from this dangerous nectar and steered him into a routine where he only drank on Saturdays.

Red Martini, spiced and sickly, was his next peccadillo. He would clasp the bottle by the neck and keep it close to him all evening, challenging anyone who tried to share it.

Patrick rarely invited the children into the Drinking Room. It was like a museum, deep shelves, deep dust, icons and a Chinese pipe. His special things. Patrick loved ritual, and he lit the fire in the Drinking Room at five o'clock on Saturday evenings. Then he went upstairs and had a bath, returning in clean clothes but the same scuffed cowboy boots, like a priest ready for Mass. He stood at the mantelpiece with his first glass of wine, head to one side listening to the opening melody of every Saturday night; the babbling summer notes of Theodorakis's ‘On the Beach' issued from the gramophone, heralding another Drinking Evening.

Va Va was eight when she was invited, one afternoon, to help
Patrick rearrange his Drinking Room things. Reaching back on a shelf for the broken wing of a plaster cherub, she found a tiny box of books. Eight bruised purple covers in miniature. ‘I shall give you these on your fifteenth birthday,' said Patrick. Va Va shivered in the shadow of future sophistication. Something in the Drinking Room was hers.

At school on Monday, all the sleek, shiny-haired girls with freshly ironed shirts and polished shoes discussed their neat, comfortable weekends, and I felt a thousand miles from home. It was nearly my birthday, and my friends wanted to know how it was to be celebrated.

‘Mummy and Daddy are taking me to the theatre and out to supper,' I lied breezily. ‘And for my present I'm going to have my ears pierced.'

‘Dilly had her ears pieced and a party dress,' said someone, and I found myself responding, ‘Oh yes. Mummy's having one made for me already.'

My fifteenth birthday dawned with decadence. Daddy was to drive us to school so that the family tradition of birthday presents at breakfast could be conducted at a reasonable hour rather than five in the morning. I had the ritualistic card-opening and was gratefully surprised to receive a cheque for five pounds from my grandparents. One envelope came covered in mud. It had no stamp, just my name scrawled badly across the top left-hand corner. Inside was a lilac-and-pink cut-out ballerina from Mr Cardew's, with loving scratches, paw marks
and wobbling crosses (the signatures of those unable to write) from all the animals. Shalimar, with typical ostentation, had used a lump of coal to sign his name, and it came off all over my hands and my pale school jersey.

I did not expect any presents because I was to have my ears pierced after school that afternoon, but in the tiled arches under the kitchen window a pile of lumpy, shiny parcels awaited me. Daddy sat with Poppy at the end of the table, posting jammy squares of toast into her round mouth. Mummy cleared a space among the bowls and plates, insisting on wiping the table before the presents were opened. ‘Come on, Ellie, let's see what Va Va's got.' Daddy was excited; he loved presents, and opened his own impatiently, all at once, losing small things beneath a foam of ripped wrapping. ‘All right. I'm just coming.' Mummy wiped her hands, lobster-red and veined from washing-up, down her skirt, and reached for the first parcel. ‘This is to Va Va with much love from Daddy,' she read, and the kitchen fell silent apart from the ticking of the clock. I opened a small, heavy parcel, tearing the silver foil which Daddy always used to wrap his presents. It was the set of books from the Drinking Room, the books he had promised me years ago, and which I had forgotten entirely. ‘My Own Library' read the faded gold script engraved across the green leather pediment framing the books. ‘Oh Daddy, thank you.' I squeezed past chairs to kiss him. ‘I can't believe you remembered about these books.' ‘Neither can I.' Mummy looked amazed. Daddy smiled slowly. ‘They mark a turning-point, my love. You are no longer a child.'

My next present was from Dan. It was a red rubber moustache. I put it on and Flook laughed so much that he forgot about his
porridge, and sank his chin into it. A purse, some bathsalts and some books from Brodie and Flook followed, and then a nearly clean handkerchief from Poppy. ‘I bought it from Mr Cardew with my pocket money for you, and I tried it out on the way home. It does work, I promise.'

‘To darling Va Va, with love from Mummy,' Mummy read out on the last parcel. ‘You can take it back if you don't like it. I asked the woman in the shop,' she said, before I had begun to open it. Pink teddy-bear paper fell away, revealing a smooth pillow of palest cream silk. I lifted a corner. Loosened from its tissue paper, a dress cascaded towards the floor, soft as a rose petal with lace foaming in hoops around the skirt. Mummy looked anxious as I held it up against myself, craning her neck to see my expression, hidden by hair. ‘It's old,' she said. ‘Twenties, I think, but I thought it would really suit you, darling.' Then, nervously, ‘Do you like it?' I looked up, radiant. ‘Wow,' was all I could say. There was a sudden rush as Flook realized it was nearly eight o'clock, and time to leave for school. I regained the faculty of speech enough to thank Mummy and Daddy, and drove to school numb with pleasure, anticipating the jealous disbelief of my school friends. We were even going to the theatre, although Daddy had refused to come, stating piously, ‘The bambini need looking after.' Brodie said he would come instead.

After school, I hurried the mile between school and Jones's, where I was to have my ears pierced. Square grey houses loomed from belts of spruce, televisions flickering in downstairs rooms. Street-lights flared in the creeping dusk as I walked and I was glad to reach the crowded High Street. In Jones's I pushed
my hood down and a cold prickle of sweat rushed over me as hot air steamed out of knee-high heaters. I dawdled on the ground floor, wondering which tights would look best with my new dress. I chose a sparkling pair, and earmarked them for when Daddy had cashed my cheque for me. In the lift I pressed the button for the third floor, and the beauty salon. The lift was small. Just as the doors were closing, a man dashed in and stood behind me. Floating up to the third floor, I was disturbed by wafts of alcohol. I got out and idled by some stationery. I wondered what kind of birthday cake Mummy had made, and if I would be allowed a glass of wine now I was fifteen. The man from the lift was beside me, his red-rimmed eyes watery, staring into mine. His grey coat was undone, hands clasped through his pockets in front of him. He panted heavily, alcohol bitter on his breath. Over the collar of his coat, wispy fair hair drooped from a loose pony-tail. Mesmerized, like a rabbit in headlights, I stared back, curdling with cold fear. He was not very old.