Dying Flames (8 page)

Ordering broke the ice. Graham stuck with the sea trout and had the
stracciatella
for first course. He noticed that most of the guests were non-veal-eaters, either for conscientious reasons or because they had never tried it. Christa had spaghetti carbonara and chicken, her brother lasagne and steak pizzaiola. Adam looked as if he was fueling rage and had a glass of red wine in front of him—no pretense of lemonade for him. Ted Somers stuck to minestrone and pork chops, while Peggy chose greedily from the antipasto and ordered duckling for her main course. She was solicitous for the Halliburtons, who opted (except that there was no choice) for the vegetarian main course, preceded by minestrone.

“The vegetarian options really
are
good here,” announced Peggy. “Not something just thrown together for cranks.”

“We're on the march,” observed Vesta. “We're too many to be called cranks. Only a few antediluvian pub landlords regard us as cranks these days.”

“I have to keep Michael and Vesta happy,” said Peggy. “Not because they're my employers—very good ones they are too—but because Michael has just cast me as Martha in
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
—something I've yearned to do for years, but was too young. We start rehearsals in a few weeks' time.”

There was a little burst of applause in anticipation.

“Pity he doesn't send her to America,” whispered Christa to Graham. “Six months and she might get the accent right.”

The announcement had caused a little stir of comment and interest at the table, and the American tourists with the camera looked at Peggy curiously, as if they expected to see her name in lights over a West End theater next time they visited the country. The big table was settling down into little knots of conversation.

“You'll have to excuse me, Mr. Broadbent,” said Ted Somers. “I was a bit taken aback by your name. A lot of water's flowed under the bridge since then, some of it mucky. Maybe we couldn't have met as friends all those years ago, but we can now. Let bygones be bygones, eh?”

“By all means,” said Graham. “I hear you've done pretty well for yourself since moving to Romford.”

“Not bad. Better than trying to run a small garage in a small village.”

“That's what they say in Bidford.”

“Oh, you know the old place, do you? Do you still live in the area?”

“In Suffolk. Hepton Magna, so not all that far away. I was sorry to hear that your wife died recently.”

“Aye—it leaves a hole: a big black hole in my case. We'd had a lot of troubles and disappointments in recent years.” He threw a glance in the direction of his daughter, one clearly well short of full forgiveness. “Silly of me, but when Mary died, I blamed it on the troubles. But it's illnesses that kill you, not sadnesses. Are you married yourself?”

“Separated. I'm not the marrying type. I've learned my lesson.”

It was code—a rather dishonest code—for telling Ted he was no longer interested in his daughter.

Ted nodded. “I've got a son too,” he said, apropos of nothing. “Steady lad. We never made a lot of him, as we did…you know. But you begin to appreciate the steady type when you get older. He's had his troubles too—beyond what he deserved. But he's straight as a die, is Oliver. I'm grateful for him now.”

Talk of sons made Graham conscious that he ought to take some notice of Terry Telford, sitting almost opposite him. The mere thought roused in him feelings of rebellion: he was being manipulated by Peggy and had come to the “celebration” knowing he would be manipulated. This did not mean he had to offer total cooperation in the process.

He wondered how much Terry Telford knew about the situation. Not very much, he guessed. All would surely have been saved for a big revelation scene. Now Terry was sitting at Peggy's right hand, getting closer to her than necessary, and putting his hand near hers every time they shared a laugh about something, which was often. Looking at the young man, plump, apparently good-humored, Graham decided he had a pleasanter impression of the young man than Christa and Adam seemed to have got.

He noticed that Peggy was keeping her eyes, when possible, on the waiters. The first course had been cleared away, and when the main courses began to appear, Peggy fingered her glass nervously and kept looking around, up and down “her” table. She's staging act 1, scene 2, Graham thought.

When all the main courses had been delivered, Peggy smiled round at everyone and tapped her glass.

“Now don't stop eating. This is not a toast, yet. I just want to tell you a story, share a piece of news. I told you how Michael had just asked me to play Martha in
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
I don't know how I'm going to play someone who is so twisted by
not
having children. I've been so blessed in that way—by lovely Christabel and wonderful Adam! Such props and stays for me—and joys too!—they've been always.”

Christa smiled coolly, and Adam released not a muscle of his tense, angry face. Graham thought that if he were making the speech, he would have seen these as danger signs.

“But one or two of you know of an episode long ago. Something happened to me when I was very young—I strayed from the path, as Graham might put it in one of his lovely novels.”

“I'm not Barbara Cartland,” protested Graham.

“But you have a heart, Graham, however much you may try to put on this hard cynicism which is fashionable. Anyway, I knew so little then”—not so ingenue as you're painting yourself, thought Graham—“and that meant that we moved from our lovely little Essex village to Romford. Believe me, it was something that I've never regretted, thanks to all the lovely, lovely friends I've made here, particularly my
dramatic
friends as I may call them.” A special glance was shot at Michael and Vesta. “But the early heartbreak was that I had to give up the baby that I bore—such a love! So small and helpless! Things were different then, you know, and there were pressures…”

“There were no pressures from us,” muttered Ted Somers.

“I'm not accusing anyone, Dad…. So all my life I've carried around in me this heartbreak, this something that I've had and then lost and thought I could never find again. Perhaps this heartbreak has added something to my performances onstage—it's not for me to say…. Anyway, it just shows how one has to have faith. Because one day, three weeks ago—September the tenth it was, and I'll never forget the date—I had a phone call, and there was something in the voice, and I
knew
from the moment I heard it that this was one of the most important phone calls of my life. He asked me if I had been Peggy Somers, and”—she smiled roguishly—“to cut a long story not very short, he announced that he was the child I'd given up for adoption all those weary years ago, when I was eighteen. Christa and Adam have met him, we all love him already, and I wanted to introduce him to all my family and friends, so we can all be open about it, all welcome him.”

She stood up, looked around at them all, and raised her glass.

“To Terry Telford, my son.”

Not just an echoing of the sentiments but applause seemed to be called for, and that presented problems. Who was to be applauded, and what for? Graham tried to solve the matter when he put down his glass, having sipped, and extended his hand over the table, saying, “Welcome.” Michael and Vesta followed his example, and so, after a moment's hesitation, did Ted Somers.

“I suppose I'm your grandfather,” he said. “Welcome.”

Graham was beginning to wonder, with dread, when all this loving was going to lead to the inevitable revelation. He looked at Peggy, but all she did was respond with an enigmatic smile. He felt he was only ministering to her self-absorption, and he looked away in disgust. As he did so, his eye rested on the other end of the table. Adam was sitting there, his face twisting with real fury—genuine feeling, as opposed to all the actressy falseness emanating from Peggy and from her newfound son, who was again caressing her hand on the table and looking into her eyes, while both were masticating their main courses. Graham felt the intensity of Adam's feelings was a relief, but he had to recognize that it was a threat as well. He had helped to initiate a train of events that could end in catastrophe for Peggy and her fragile family.

“So that,” came Peggy's voice, resuming the play, “is how I came to know my firstborn, the son I'd had and never had. And what it proves to me is that happy endings do happen. ‘Sometimes—there's God—so quickly!' as Blanche DuBois says.” If Graham had not noticed the rotten Southern accent, Christa's nudge would have told him. “And from now on, Terry and I are going to make up for all that wasted time. I'll never be alone again.”

“Alone?” Adam's voice came from the end of the table, breaking in anger or contempt. “You'll never be
alone
again? Haven't Christa and I been anyone? Have we just been inconvenient nothings who should never have intruded into your life?”

Peggy's hand went to her mouth. “Adam! Darling, you're misunderstanding. I never meant—”

“Oh, you meant what you said,
Mother
! All we've been to you is walking maintenance payments. I'm sick of you. I'm sick of living with you, having you near me. I'd rather sleep on the streets and beg. I'd rather sell myself. I'd rather be dead.”

He kicked back his chair and ran from the restaurant, withholding his tears till he was outside and the door well shut, but then breaking out as if his heart were broken. The restaurant had fallen silent in the last minute or two, and the tears penetrated inside.

“Oh, the silly boy,” said Peggy. “Don't let him spoil our evening. He's still only a child, and he's not used to the idea of his new, wonderful brother.”

“Someone should go to him,” Graham whispered to Ted and Christa.

“His sister would be best,” said Ted. “I'm afraid I've never really understood the boy.”

“I'll go,” said Christa, wiping her mouth. “I'll give him a minute or two and then I'll go.”

“Tell him living on the streets is out of the question,” said Graham. “He can bunk down at my house while he sorts himself out. Christa, you both can, at any time. You must remember that.”

Christa nodded and smiled absently, as if the offer had always been assumed by her. The waiters, possibly with earlier experience of Peggy's celebrations going awry, had hurried the sweets trolley away from a distant table and began a gabble through the alternatives to cover the awkwardness, which in any case was apparently not perceptible to Peggy, who was giggling with Terry in a way that could only be described as flirtatious.

“I'll have the strawberry shortcake, or the tiramisu—whatever,” said Christa, and slipped away from the table and out through the door to the street. This left Graham feeling still more marooned in company that was indifferent or positively hostile to him. And with a public revelation by Peggy, delivered in the most cringe-making style and English, still in prospect.

Peggy had chosen a concoction that was mostly artificial cream, and the plate looked as if all the ingredients had been delivered by cannon. Terry was looking at it and laughing, and Peggy, still in a giggly mood, was forcing a piled-up spoonful into his mouth. Graham was possessed of an almost irresistible urge to push back his chair and go out to join the hunt for Adam, who suddenly seemed to him the most appealing person at the table, because he was possessed of real emotion.

Peggy, however, self-regarding as she generally was, had a sympathetic understanding when confronted by an emotion that related to herself. She sensed what Graham, hardly seen for twenty-five years, felt about the scene that was being enacted. She tore herself from Terry's seduction of her and fixed Graham with a smile that was not in any way come-hither. Indeed, it was almost basilisk, paralyzing his will.

“There's one more thing,” she said.

The table went quiet. Had they all been expecting this? All eyes were on Peggy, but Graham somehow got the impression that the Halliburtons were desperately trying not to look at him. Egotism, he told himself.

“
Just
one more, then Peggy will shut up and let you all relax and enjoy yourselves. You know how honored we all feel that we have with us tonight Graham Broadbent, one of the most talented of that wonderful generation of English novelists that emerged in the eighties and nineties.” Of whom Peggy, Graham suspected, could have named no other. “Graham and I go way back, he to his last year in Grammar School, me to my last months living in those parts—living with my dear old dad here, and Mum, who's no longer with us. We met in a school play—my first starring role—but we
really
met a few weeks later, in a churchyard. Graham was wondering whether to go to London University, and I was expecting to do my last year at school, and perhaps be in another play with Colchester Grammar Boys. And we met. It wasn't love at first sight, or anything like that, but it was attraction, and I
know
I suspected then what a distinguished figure Graham was to become.”