Comfort and Joy (16 page)

‘Yes, do,’ says Robert, smiling wolfishly. ‘Clara’s dying to hear.’ He actually starts laughing to himself before Hope’s even
opened her mouth.

‘Well,’ Hope says. ‘And don’t take this the wrong way.’

‘You know,’ says Flo, ‘in my experience, anything you feel the need to prefix with “don’t take this the wrong way” is better
left unsaid.’

‘Totes,’ says Evie. ‘Can I see your blog, Hope? Will you show it to me? Like, right now? I die to read
More Than a Woman
.’

‘In a minute,’ says Hope.

‘You were saying?’ I say.

‘Well,’ says Hope. ‘I don’t really understand how you – you, Clara – can meet someone and I can’t.’

‘You’re always meeting people, Hope,’ I say. ‘You do nothing but.’

‘Yeah, but that’s not what I mean. I mean … well, look at you.’

‘Me?’ I say, startled. ‘What about me?’

‘Oh God, I didn’t mean it like that. Nothing’s
wrong
with
you. You’re quite attractive. It’s just … I do Pilates three times a week. And I see Guy, obviously.’ Guy is Hope’s personal
trainer; he arrives every morning at 6 a.m.

‘Right.’

‘Feel these,’ she says, proffering her upper arms. ‘Just feel.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Impressive.’

‘Thanks. And you’ve seen my abs. And I never have my roots showing, unlike you.’

‘Okay.’

‘And I don’t have marionette lines.’

‘What are marionette lines?’

‘Those,’ she says, pointing at the tiny lines between my mouth and nose. ‘You should really get them filled in. I do. And
maybe a tiny bit of Botox.’

‘Mm.’

‘And I weigh eight and a half stone.’

‘I know. You’ve told me before.’

‘Also, I’ve seen you in the changing room. Three kids: I’d have had a tummy tuck.’

‘Hypothetically.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Hypothetically.
If
you’d ever had children, you
might
have had a tummy tuck. I guess we’ll never know.’ This isn’t a kind thing to say, but I’m not really digging the demolition
of my appearance.

‘Clara!’ says Hope. ‘Why are you being mean to me? It’s not my fault I haven’t had children yet.’

‘Modern women are so bizarre,’ says Kate. ‘In my day, if you wanted a child, you just got up the duff. Worked if you wanted
a husband, too, come to think of it. Why don’t you just get up the duff, Hope? Just get pregnant. I realize it’s not ideal,
but frankly at this latest of late stages … It’s not like you couldn’t afford to raise a child on your own.’

‘I want to get married,’ says Hope.

‘Don’t look at me,’ says Robert. ‘Christ.’

‘Why am I not married, Robert?’ Hope asks plaintively, laying a hand on his arm. ‘Seriously. What do you think, as a man?’

‘You try too hard,’ says Robert. ‘It’s ball-witheringly off-putting. Simple as. Is there any cheese, Clara? I fancy cheese.
Stilton. It’s Christmas. You must have some Stilton somewhere.’

Hope looks absolutely crestfallen, so I pat her, even though I need a tummy tuck and filler for my lines.

‘Fridge, I think,’ I tell Robert. I turn to Hope: ‘Everything that Robert says is purest nonsense,’ I tell her. ‘Don’t listen
to him.’

‘Not nonsense,’ says Robert from inside the fridge. ‘Unvarnished truth. Horse’s mouth. Ah good, here it is.’

‘It
is
nonsense,’ I tell Hope. ‘He divorced me because I didn’t try hard enough …’

‘Yes, that’s partly true,’ says Robert. ‘Where are the crackers?’

‘… and now he’s telling you that you try too hard. You can’t win.’

‘All I want,’ says Hope, ‘is for a nice man to love me. I don’t even care what he looks like that much any more. I used to
have this great long list – he had to be tall, he had to be clever, he had to own property and have a decent income and be
successful and maybe a bit glamorous – and I’ve scrubbed every single requirement out. All I want is for him to be nice and
love me and want to have children.’

‘Oh God, Hope,’ says Evie. ‘It’s so tragic.’

‘I know,’ says Hope. ‘It’s a wonder I haven’t thrown myself under a train. Anyway: where is he? I go to the shops and I see
dozens, hundreds,
thousands
of couples. Ugly people, fat people, stupid people. Women with moustaches and men with
breasts. They’ve all got partners. And I’m good-looking – I’m a goddess by comparison, to be honest – and I spend hundreds
a month on maintenance. Plus I have amazing tits. And hair extensions you can’t even detect. And my own business. And a palatial
house. Do
I
have a boyfriend?’

‘You do not,’ says Flo. ‘It
is
really sad.’

‘I know. And now your sister has a man, and to be honest it just pisses me off.’

‘I don’t “have a man”.’

‘Well, something’s up. I’m saying this in a nice way, Clara, but if there were any justice in the world I would have a man
and you wouldn’t. You’ve had some already
and
you’ve got kids.’

‘What, I’d just sit here every night, doing the crossword and sewing my vagina up with artisanal yarn?’

‘Clara!’ says Kate. ‘That is the most horrendous visual.’

‘Well, honestly,’ I say. ‘I’m tired of it. Of women buying into all this, this
crap
in the completely
mad
belief that it’ll get them
a man
. It isn’t true. None of it is true. You’ve been sold a pup, Hope …’

‘You’ve been sold a pup, Hup,’ says Flo, who loves rhymes.

‘You’ve been sold a pip, Hip,’ says Evie.

‘The difference between you and me is – and I’d worked this one out by the time I was twenty-one – you don’t have to do anything.
Well, you have to do
some
stuff, otherwise …’

‘The full bush,’ says Flo. ‘You can’t have the full bush.’

‘Some people like a full bush,’ says Evie. ‘Just saying.’

‘And the ’tache. Gotta bleach the ’tache,’ says Flo.

‘Yes, okay, you may have to deal with the full bush. And probably only Diego Rivera liked the ’tache–monobrow combo.’

‘I think South Americans in general are partial to facial hair,’ says Kate. ‘Or at least indifferent to it.’

‘And you have to wash, and brush your teeth and have baths
and go and get waxed every now and then. And not be morbidly obese or have stains down your clothes, and maybe not burp your
appreciation repeatedly when someone buys you dinner. And that’s kind of it. The other stuff is so many cherries on the already
quite appetizing lady-cake. You know, Hope? We’re nice. There’s nothing wrong with us. We don’t have to go on as though we
need to starve ourselves or have extensive plastic surgery and a personality transplant …’

‘Wouldn’t hurt,’ says Robert.

‘… and an interior-decorated mansion just to “get a man”. It’s just such balls.’

‘Word,’ says Flo. ‘Also you forgot our teeth.’

‘What? Oh. Yes, quite. It’s bad enough that none of us can drink red wine because we all bleach our teeth.’

‘I don’t,’ says Kate.

‘I just wash mine in Steradent,’ says Pat. ‘Is there any cake?’

‘Over there,’ I say, pointing to the dresser. ‘I made it with Maisy.’

‘It’s all very easy for you to say,’ says Hope.

‘There is no man on earth who’s going to love you more because your highlights cost £300,’ I say. But this entire conversation
is pointless: I know Hope simply doesn’t believe me.

‘Is she still going on about wanting babies?’ asks Jake, coming back into the room. ‘Sam sent me down to get the whisky.’

‘Are the children okay, Jake?’ asks Flo.

‘What? Oh yes, perfectly happy. Yours are watching a thing about some pigs that live in a human house.’

‘Peppa,’ says Flo. ‘I fancy Daddy Pig.’

‘Everyone fancies Daddy Pig,’ says Evie. ‘Obviously. Where’s Ed?’

‘Upstairs with us,’ says Jake. ‘You okay, Tamsin?’

‘Enjoying you being the babysitters,’ says Tamsin, smiling at him.

‘The whisky’s on the side, there,’ I tell Jake. ‘The Scotch. If you want the Irish, it’s in the cupboard.’

‘Thanks, Clara. I’d better go back up. Sperm donors,’ he says to Hope as he’s halfway out of the room. ‘You can have some
of mine, if you want. The Jakester’s seed is mighty.’ He does a rather upsetting little thrust to illustrate. ‘You coming
up, Robert?’

‘Yeah, I think so,’ says Robert. ‘I’m scared of Hope.’

‘I think your fiancé just offered me his semen,’ says Hope, giving Tamsin a wild-eyed look.

‘Your poor life,’ says Evie sympathetically. ‘It just gets worse.’

As everyone sits in the kitchen with wine and coffee – the general consensus is that we’re still too stuffed for pudding –
I take Kate aside and lead her upstairs to my bedroom, which is a blessed oasis of calm compared to the bazaar-like chaos
of the rest of the house. The boys have retreated to their top-floor lair, and the smaller children are still being watched
over by the men, an anthropologically unusual occurrence that I feel ought to be taken advantage of.

My bedroom is large enough to have a sofa in it. Kate perches on its worn velvet arm while I sit on the bed, the soft embrace
of which immediately makes me feel exhausted. It fleetingly occurs to me that I could not have this conversation and instead
go for a quick, refreshing catnap – I am suddenly unbelievably tired – and so I inch forward a bit, in order to be not so
comfortable and more likely to stay awake.

‘I wanted to ask you something, Kate. It’s a weird kind of question.’

‘Shoot,’ says Kate. ‘Though you do look awfully tired, Clara. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be lying down?’

‘I
am
weirdly tired, actually. I was just thinking that.’

‘Well, you’ve barely stopped. I know you think I don’t notice
anything, but actually I am unusually observant. I’d have made an excellent sniper, I always think. You must be exhausted.
You really are a goose for not taking advantage of Conception and Pilar, you know. I say it every year.’

This is a reference to Kate’s housekeepers, who – although their names suggest an almost permanent state of genuflection –
don’t apparently ‘do’ Christmas. She’s always offering to lend them to me at this time of year, to help with clearing up and
so on, but as we have established, when it comes to 25 December I have my own strange compulsion to do everything myself.

‘I just don’t want, you know,
staff
milling about. It’s not … it’s just not very me.’

‘Think of them less as staff and more as your very own Christmas elves,’ says Kate. ‘Sent by the mothership in your hour of
need.’

‘Mm. But then what? You know – we’d get them presents and they’d feel obliged to get us all presents, which would bankrupt
them, and then we’d sit them down to lunch and there’s no room and the whole thing would feel a bit uncomfortable.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, remember when you asked them to Sam’s and my wedding? It was nice of you, but I had a bit of a problem working out
the placements.’

‘They were next to that grand friend of yours from school, if I remember. The heiress.’ Kate starts to laugh, catches my eye
and then laughs more loudly.

‘She’s a very committed feminist socialist. I just wanted to see what would happen when she met people who were actual Filipina
maids. I mean, it’s beyond parody.’

‘What did happen?’

‘Well, disappointingly she was slightly insulted to be seated
next to them, I could tell by her face. I think she’d have preferred a hot man.’

‘Not very democratic of her,’ says Kate. ‘And rather sexist.’

‘Yes. She asked them whether they were paid the minimum wage –’

‘The nerve!’ says Kate. ‘I never liked her, even when you were at school.
Mimsy
sort of girl. They’re paid it many times over, because I am not a monster.’

‘And then – well, she just sort of ignored them.’

‘Rather a waste of them. They’re very jolly. Of course they’re also extraordinarily right-wing, it always takes people aback.’

We are both laughing now.

‘Oh, this is silly, sitting like this,’ Kate says. ‘Let’s get into bed for a little while. It looks so cosy. Come on, shove
up. I feel rather tired too. My ancient bones are weary.’

‘You’re fifty-nine, Kate.’

‘I know. It’s unspeakable. And don’t tell anyone. I’ve started saying I’m sixty-five, though actually I’m thinking I might
bump it up to seventy.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they literally gasp in disbelief at my extraordinary state of well-preservedness. People really are stupid to lie
in the other direction. When I meet a woman who lies about being younger than she is, I think, “Poor thing, forty-five and
so unutterably ropey.” ’

She’s already kicking off her shoes and easing herself out of her wrap. Twenty seconds later we are in my bed, propped up
on a slew of fat, squishy pillows.

‘You gave me these a couple of Christmases ago, remember?’

‘Siberian goose down,’ Kate nods. ‘Nothing to beat it. I know you thought it was a dull present, but – life-changing, don’t
you think?’

‘Oh, God yes. The only trouble is, it makes all other pillows give you neck-ache.’

‘The princess and the pea. How spoilt we all are,’ says Kate. ‘When I think of how you and I used to live.’

‘Hardly in a shoe gnawing on bin findings, Kate.’

‘No, but in a studio flat with very few mod cons.’ She sighs. ‘We used to share a bed you know, rather like this but with
desperately inferior pillows. And sheets and blankets rather than a duvet. I rather miss sheets and blankets. We were blissfully
happy.’

‘That’s kind of what I wanted to ask you about, actually.’

‘Bedding?’

‘No, my father.’

‘Julian? Good Lord. Well, I assume he’s fine, darling. As you know, we aren’t on what you’d call best-friend speakers. Ask
the girls, they’re going to see him tomorrow.’

‘No, I mean my father-father. I mean Felix.’

‘Felix?’ Kate almost splutters. ‘Good grief. What brought that on?’

‘I don’t know, really.’ I note I’m twirling my hair, like I used to do as a child. ‘I was thinking how Maisy doesn’t have
any grandpas, and you’ve noticed how obsessed she is with who goes where?’