Lovers and Newcomers (48 page)

I want Miranda’s vision for Mead, therefore, almost as much as she does.

Miranda was saying, ‘I’m so pleased and happy that we’re all here tonight. I want to make the first toast, too. I think we should drink to…’

She paused, theatrically.

‘…Jessie. Because if she hadn’t been brave enough to join us, I’ve just realized we would have been thirteen at table tonight.’

She smiled through the candlelight and raised her glass, and everyone else followed suit.

Jessie actually blushed.

‘Cheers,’ she mumbled.

It was a good dinner. Selwyn collected himself, summoning up a great burst of energy and manic humour. To all of them who had known him in the old days, not just Polly, the original Selwyn magically reappeared at the table. As he always had done, he dominated their circle and there were hoots of laughter as he retold and embroidered familiar stories.

He pointed another cracker like a magic wand, conjuring up their shared memories.

‘Remember, Col?’

Colin’s thin face was bright with amusement. ‘Remember what? If I could, I probably wasn’t there.’

‘The bridge?’

Long ago when they were students, Miranda and Polly, Selwyn and Colin and Amos had all got drunk and stoned. That wasn’t remarkable, but on this particular night they had jumped one by one off a high bridge into the river. In spite of his denial, even at this distance Colin could indeed remember the sensation of being in the air, not falling but flying. The shouts and splashes all around him belonged to another dimension, unrelated to his flawless trajectory. He had felt utterly calm and perfectly certain of himself, and it was so unlike his normal state of mind that he had never forgotten it. Then he had hit the water and, a millisecond later, the river bed.

‘Exactly how drunk were you, Dad?’ Ben wondered.

‘Epically,’ Selwyn said.

‘Really, Dad? You must have been, like, totally
wiiild
when you were young.’

Selwyn majestically turned to his son. ‘My dear boy, just be aware, everything you think you know best, we discovered in the first place.’

Alpha tilted her lovely face to her father, taking up the tease. ‘Go on, tell us again about Grosvenor Square.’

Sam was enjoying this too. He leaned forwards to Amos. ‘And Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, eh Dad?’ Sam and Toby were both known to be politically right wing in their views. Amos held up his hand.

‘You may mock. This is your allotted role. But Selwyn is right.’

Alph and Omie and Toby waggled V-signs in the air. ‘Peeeeace, man,’ they drawled. Jessie sniggered and Amos raised an eyebrow at her.

Selwyn rested his elbow on the table and massaged the purplered rocket scar at the side of his head.

In the last hour he had grown back into himself. Now he seemed larger and more animated than any of the rest of them, as if there were volumes more blood running in his veins, and richer air inflating his lungs. For forty years, through his own reversals, even through the quite long intervals when the couples had grown apart, each of them would have acknowledged that he had been and always would be the leader of their small group. Now he commanded the attention of his old friends, their children and the guests. Looking on, Polly felt her heart swell with love for him and pride at his importance to all of them.

Now he rose up and demanded, ‘Listen. What do you think you know, you kids? Sex? Began in 1963. Music? What do I need to tell you? You’re still listening to it. Recreational drugs? Our invention. Political activism? Our generation’s trademark. Social anarchy? Check. Art? Culture? Fashion? Look what we started. And
admire
.’

The room was ecstatically divided now. Polly applauded, pounding her hands together as Miranda and Katherine joined in.

‘Blame it on the Boomers,’ jeered the young ones.

Joyce cupped a hand behind her ear. ‘What? What are they all saying?’

Selwyn roared, ‘What have you given us, you X-ers? The bloody internet.
YouTube
.’

A tinny jangle of music sounded. It was surprisingly insistent and it went on and on. Selwyn looked around to see what was interrupting his moment.

Jessie jumped, almost knocking over her glass.

‘Sorry, God, sorry. My phone.’

Sam steadied the glass with one hand, with the other he reached for her bag and handed it over.

‘Nice ringtone,’ he grinned.

Jessie stabbed at the buttons. She turned aside in her chair and hissed into the phone, ‘What do you
want
?’

She listened and then replied, ‘Yeah, well, where do you think I am?’

The noisy talk at the table rippled on. Jessie listened more intently, pressing her finger to one ear. After a few more muttered remarks she snapped the phone shut and tossed it into her bag. She sat upright, squaring her shoulders against the high carved back of her chair.

‘This is interesting,’ she announced. ‘Guess what?’

She was brimming with news, happily half-drunk, delighted to be the one who could pass on a juicy piece of information.

‘What?’ Selwyn rejoined.

‘They’ve got the treasure back.’

Miranda gasped. She clapped her hands agian, this time in sheer delight.

‘Our treasure? The
Mead
treasure?’

Amos looked first at Katherine, to see her reaction. It was several seconds before he turned to Jessie.

‘Them?’ he queried softly.

‘Yeah. The police. The fabulous stolen treasure of Mead was found this morning by three of those model plane guys, hidden in a ruined pillbox in Lockington woods. I know the place, we used to have a den in there when we were little, but no one ever goes near it now. Kids nowadays have got better stuff to do than make dens, I reckon.’

‘And that was the police on the phone, was it, to notify you personally?’

Jessie cocked her head at him.

‘Nope. It was Damon. He’d, um, already heard on the grapevine that the cops were on the track of it. Blokes who nicked the stuff must have got nervous and stashed it up there for a bit.’

‘Your ex-boyfriend is remarkably well-informed,’ Amos remarked.

Miranda called out, ‘Is he sure? Are they sure? It’s wonderful, if they’re right.’

Jessie’s delight was fading. It occurred to her that perhaps she shouldn’t give too much away.

‘Damon heard the gossip. You know what Meddlett’s like. The news is all over the Griffin tonight, you can imagine how they’re all gabbing away. Glad it’s my night off. Apparently they’ve got the archaeologists in now, checking the authenticity. Probably the police’ll tell you in the morning.’

Amos was expressionless. ‘I’ll hope for that,’ he said.

Jessie was aware that her story had somehow misfired. Whatever Kieran might choose to believe, the actual truth was that she didn’t know whether Damon had found out any more than she had originally mentioned to him, back when she was quite missing him after they had split, or whether he had then been involved with the theft.

She had her suspicions, though.

Red in the face, she blurted out, ‘Uh, maybe Damon has got it all wrong anyway. He’s had a few drinks, by the sound of it.’

‘I hope it is true,’ Omie sighed. ‘I love to think of all the treasure being safe in one place again, not taken off and sold all over the world to rich people.’

A general move away from the table began as people carried plates through to the kitchen. Selwyn was put out that the centre of attention had shifted elsewhere, Polly went to him and laid her cheek against his head, where the red scar puckered his skin.

‘I love you,’ she murmured.

Selwyn didn’t answer, but she thought he nodded.

Katherine took a tray of glasses and tried to duck away, but Amos caught up with her. He took the tray and roughly deposited it on the oak sideboard in the hall. The lights of the Christmas tree twinkled behind them.

‘You knew, didn’t you?’

Katherine stared at the stone floor, the curled edges of a rug, the scatter of fallen tree needles at her feet.

She had forgotten to look surprised at Jessie’s news, and Amos was far too sharp, too forensic, not to have noticed. However much whisky he put away he saw what he chose to notice, and his choice – after so long, ironically since she didn’t welcome it – now fell on her. She could almost hear the ticking of his formidable mind as he scrutinized her.

‘
How
did you know?’ he persisted.

When she didn’t answer, he nodded slowly.

‘Ah, I see. Of course. Well, I suppose I’m hardly in a position to complain. Your choice of a lover is unusual, if it is who I think it is, but that’s your business. The difference between us is that I never went as far as to deny our marriage, or to back out of it because of any of my liaisons. I always honoured you as my wife.’

Katherine raised her eyes. ‘Do you call that
honour
?’

He took in a breath.

Mutual pain now separated them as precisely as any of their differences.

This hurts so much, Katherine thought. She felt blinded, hobbled by it.

‘Mum?’ Toby called.

Her son – no, both her sons – were hovering at the foot of the stairs. They stared at their parents and the shining tree, a distortion of the happy family Christmas tableau.

She sidestepped her husband and crossed to the boys. She put an arm around each waist.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. Then she went quickly on into the kitchen.

From somewhere Miranda’s voice called, ‘Charades?’

Polly was scraping plates into the compost bin. Her face shone with sweat and when she glanced down she saw a dark grease stain on the sloping shelf of her blue silk bodice.

Seeing Katherine’s face she asked, ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m not sure.’

They regarded each other, battered but not extinguished. Ben was now calling for charades too, his voice echoing through the house.

‘What about you?’ Katherine asked. Joyce’s words were still in her head, so she could imagine how clearly they must sound for Polly.

Polly rotated the bangle on her wrist, forwards and backwards.

‘I’ll carry on,’ she said at last. Feet were running up and down the stairs, a pair of stilettos clicked in the hall and a door slammed. Music briefly blared. ‘Let’s go and play charades. It’s as good a metaphor as any, don’t you think?’

Briefly, they clasped hands.

Jessie hovered near the back of the drawing room. The big sofa with folding arms and fat tassels had been pushed back and a tatty old rug or two rolled away to leave a space of bare floorboards. She had never played charades in her life, and had only the most approximate idea of what the game involved. It was the kind of thing you puzzled over in old-fashioned novels, or maybe read in articles in dentists’ waiting-room magazines about the Royal Family at Sandringham. In fact apart from Pass the Parcel at one or two birthdays she had been to when she was seven, the only indoor game she could remember participating in was Spin the Bottle, and having to kiss Kenny Carson as a result of it. Yet all these people knew exactly what they were doing, as if they had spent half their lives playing party games. Jessie wondered if by noticing this divide she had stumbled on a really quick and effective way of determining whether or not you were posh.

Names were written on slips of paper and then pulled out of Ben’s woolly hat to make two teams. The one Jessie was on withdrew across the draughty hall to the dining room. There were puddles of wax on the table, nutshells and satsuma peel scattered everywhere. Sam Knight put a piece of paper and a pencil in her hand and told her to write down a film or a book or a song title, or a quotation if she felt like it.

Her mind went blank. She screwed up her concentration to the point of pain and wrote
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
. Apparently that was good enough, because a minute later they were back in front of the fire. Selwyn and Miranda and the rest of the other team were waiting, drawn up in front of the fender like a row of migrating birds.

The hat was held out once more. Selwyn rolled up his sleeve and rotated his wrist over the opening.

‘I’m going first,’ he announced. With a magician’s flourish he extracted a piece of paper and unfolded it. Toby clicked one of six buttons on his all-purpose heavy-duty mountaineer’s and deep-sea-diver’s watch.

‘Go!’

At once Selwyn’s arms and hands flew around. He held up fingers and mugged at his team. At once everyone started yelling.

‘Film. Six words. Second word. One syllable.’

Jessie stared. What on earth was all this?

Selwyn drew himself up. Balancing on the balls of his feet on the fender bar he filled his lungs with air. His chest visibly expanded. His face was flushed and his hair stood up in a stiff crest. Then he extended his arms, lifting and stretching them away from his shoulders. His fingers drooped like wing feathers as his elbows rose and fell in a slow arc. He closed his eyes, transformed from a starling into an elegant raptor.

‘Bird?’

‘Crow?’

Selwyn’s eyes snapped open. He glared as he launched himself off the fender, gliding and swooping. Miranda and Ben and the twins shouted bird names.

Amos barked, ‘Flight?’

Selwyn whirled around. He stabbed a finger at Amos and beckoned.

Miranda and Polly knelt side by side on the floor, shouting words. They were both absorbed in the game.

Selwyn jabbed his thumb over his shoulder, silently exhorting them. His eyes suddenly widened, staring at nothing, the whites showing.

‘Are you hitchhiking?’ Joyce shouted.

‘Mum, you’re on the other team,’ Miranda called.

Selwyn’s shoulders jerked.

He had been poised, like a puppet held by invisible strings. Now his head tipped back, his jaw hanging open. His knees buckled beneath him. They watched, their shouts and laughter frozen in their mouths. Selwyn dropped like a ruined tree. His head smashed against the corner of the fender.

Omega’s voice rose in a thin scream.

There was a rush of people, scrambling from their seats. Selwyn lay without moving, his face turning a dark, contused crimson.