Mischief (25 page)

The taxi let me out by the great front door: it was half past five on Christmas Eve, heavy crimson damask curtains had been closed, but there was an urgent sense of movement and life behind them. I rang three times and no-one answered. I pushed the door open, and went inside. What noise, what brightness, what Babel! I would have turned and left at once and taken my chances on a train back to the city but the taxi had already gone.

In the great hall someone played a grand piano, honky-tonk style, and a group of adults gathered round to sing Christmas carols out of tune: rivalled only by a cluster of teenage children singing the pop world’s seasonal offering,
Have Yourself a Hip-Hop Xmas and Other Tunes
, and jigging about in Ecstasy frenzy. Decorations were plentiful but without discrimination, organisation or style.

Dull paper streamers, of the kind made by earnest children, hung droopily over great distances from wall to wall. Vulgar tinsel draped old family portraits, and cheap Woolworth’s magic lanterns in gold, silver, scarlet and green hung from chandeliers and doorways wherever the eye fell, without order, without symmetry. Little children ran around to no apparent purpose, the girls dragging Barbie dolls around by their hair, accessories scattering far and wide on the oak floors and never picked up: little boys panicked and shrieked, pursued by clanking and fashionably cursing computer toys they seemed unable or unwilling to control. Fires had been lit in all the rooms and as I had predicted, smoked. I was obliged to pull my scarf up to cover my nose and mouth and breathe through that to save myself from the worst of the fumes.

As I stood dazed and horrified I was approached by Lady Hester. I recognised her from the pages of
Tatler
and
Hello!
(Yes, she stooped to
Hello!
I assumed that there were financial problems.) Lady Hester was a woman well into her eighties, still tall and gaunt, bright-eyed and vigorous for her age. She wore black leggings and a waisted silver jacket, which would have looked better on a cheerleader. Old legs are old legs and look skinny, not slender, and that’s that.

‘You must be Marigold’s friend Ishtar,’ she said. (My parents had been deeply into Indian mysticism around the time of my birth.) ‘Welcome! I’m sorry about so much smoke. Very cunning of you to think of the scarf. As soon as the fireplaces warm up, it gets better. It’s a problem we have every year. Part of the ritual!’ And just as Marigold came running up, I was saying, ‘Personally, I’d abandon the ritual and put in central heating,’ which Lady Hester obviously did not react well to, if only because it was sensible advice. But Marigold hugged me and said, ‘Ishtar, please don’t tell the truth, remember it’s Christmas. Let us have our illusions, if only for the weekend.’

* * *

I had never seen Marigold like this, as if she were six again, tippy-toed. Her usually pale horse-face was flushed and she looked almost pretty, tinsel in her hair, wearing a low-cut black top which left a bra strap showing, knocking back the punch as if it were Diet Coke, hotly pursued by the Seb she sometimes talked about, a young man with tendrilly-golden curls clinging to a finely sculpted head.

‘This is Ishtar,’ she was saying to Seb. ‘I share an office with her. She had nowhere to go for Christmas, so we’ve all agreed she can be this year’s Outsider.’

Well, thank you very much, Marigold. Who wants to be labelled as an Outsider, an object of pity, the one invited to the Christmas festivities because otherwise they’d be on their own? It seemed to me a gross abuse of the laws of hospitality and if thereafter I did not behave like a perfect guest who can be surprised? Nor had I liked the way Seb’s eye had drifted over me and away, even before he heard me described as the Outsider. Prada, to the uninformed eye, can sometimes look too plain, too dowdy.

But what did I do, you ask me, to justify some twenty people and a host of sticky little children bearing false witness against me? Firstly, remember that the Walpoles as a family are notoriously mentally unstable: they have become so through generations of mismarriage, drug-taking, miscegenation and eccentric social mobility. Rest assured that a girl who goes to the best school in the country is more likely to end up with a Rastafarian or a truck driver than a stockbroker or a prince. Secondly, although Marigold maintained that what kept the family together was their adoration of Lady Hester and their reverence for the Christmas ritual, it seemed just as likely to me that all were simply hoping to be first in line for a legacy. Or is this too cynical of me? I hate to be thought cynical, when all I am is realistic.

What did I do to annoy so much? Very little, by my standards, but what I did I made sure was noticeable. Shown to an attic room with three makeshift truckle beds in it, with twigs and soot tumbling down into the empty fireplace every time the door slammed – the chimneys were not even netted against the rooks – I explained that I would have insomnia if I did not have a bedroom to myself, and that I needed sheets and blankets, not a duvet, and after much apology and discussion ended up sleeping in Marigold’s room, and her on the sofa under the Christmas tree, so that Seb was unable to join her that night – I am sure that had been their plan – and the children did not get their normal sneak 2.00 a.m. preview of the presents. People should not invite guests if they cannot house them adequately.

Earlier I’d found a gold dress in Marigold’s wardrobe and put it on. Well, she offered.

‘Isn’t that one too tight?’ she asked. ‘The navy would be more you.’

‘Oh no,’ I said. It was tight, of course, and incredibly vulgar too, but what does an Outsider know or care? I draped myself round Seb once or twice and pole-danced round a pillar for his entertainment. Then I let him kiss me long and hard under the mistletoe, while everyone watched. Marigold fled from the room weeping and flinging her engagement ring on the floor. People who put up pagan mistletoe at a Christian ceremony must expect orgiastic behaviour.

Before going to bed I used the machines in the utility room to launder the damp towels I had found on the floor of Marigold’s bathroom. I had searched the linen cupboard for fresh ones but found none; what else could I do? The washing machine was faulty – there was no warning note to say so: is one meant to read the mind of machines? – and overflowed and caused some kind of electrical havoc to the kitchen electrics, so the deep freeze and the fridges cut out. This was not discovered until well into the next day. People who stuff turkeys with packets of frozen pork and herbs deserve what they get, and must risk E-coli if the power goes off.

* * *

On Christmas morning, leaving Seb in the bed, I rose early when only small hysterical children were about, and restrained the ones who assaulted me too violently, or made me sticky, and escorted them by ear to where their parents slept in their drunken stupors, and asked them to take charge of their offspring. People should not have children if they do not have the moral wherewithal to control them.

I spent the morning assuring enquirers that Seb was nothing worth Marigold having, and in all probability, was not her cousin but her half-brother, and preserving the Christmas presents from the ravages of the children, standing up to their wails and howls. Then came the adult giving ceremony. The custom was for every adult Walpole to bring what they called a tree present, a gift acceptable to all ages and genders, to the value of £15, to place it under the Christmas tree, and when the time came to take another out for themselves. Thus everyone came with a gift and left with a gift. It was a system fraught with dangers: simply by taking one out and not putting one in, I caused mayhem. The nun Cecilia, being slowest on her feet, was left without a gift and made a terrible fuss.

Lunch did not happen until three. Some thirty people sat in a triangle formed by three trestle tables. The table setting, I must admit, was pretty enough, and decorated with Christmas crackers and the heavy family silver had been taken out of storage. But thirty! How this family bred and bred! I had been seated at the jutting end of one of the tables, as befitted the Outsider. This did not improve my mood. I declared myself to be a vegetarian just as the three turkeys – one at each side of the triangle – were being carved. People who have thirty to a meal must surely expect a certain proportion of them to be vegetarians. I mentioned the deep freeze débâcle and a number of the guests converted to vegetarianism there and then – all of these, I noticed, had married into the Walpole Delingros; those born as family were hardier.

* * *

Next to me was Cecilia, rendered incontinent by the morning’s upsets. When all were finally served I enquired of everyone what the strange smell could be. A faulty drain, perhaps? Or one of them? A few rose to their feet and the children, seeing the adults rise, found the excuse to leave their chairs and run hither and thither, sniffing around under the table, overexciting the dogs, and pulling crackers out of turn. People should look after the elderly properly and make sure they do not drink too much or lose control of their bladders.

It was at this point that Lady Hester Delingro rose to her feet and, pointing across the festive triangle at me, arm fully extended, asked me to leave her table since it was clearly so unsatisfactory to me. I too rose to my feet.

‘Thank you for making me your Outsider,’ I said, ‘at the annual feast of the Walpole Delingros. I would hate to be an Insider.’ Which was no more than the truth. Lady Hester’s noble horseface contorted, reddened and went into spasms. She grabbed her heart; her hand fell away, she fell dead into her plate. It was over in five seconds. She can hardly have suffered. Rage and pain get confused. Nevertheless, it was a shock. Silence fell. Even the little children returned to their seats and sat silently.

And then something to me even more shocking occurred. A group of male Walpole Delingros carried off the body to the next room, without so much as checking for a pulse, and stretched it out on the sofa under the Christmas tree. They closed the door, returned to the table, and behaved as if the death had not occurred. Lady Hester’s plate was removed, her daughter, Lady Rowan, Marigold’s mother, filled her chair. Everyone moved up one, even Cecilia, leaving me isolated, but with one damp, smelly chair next to me.

‘Shouldn’t someone call a doctor, an ambulance?’ I asked. No-one replied. ‘You can’t just eat Christmas pudding as if nothing had happened.’

* * *

But they could: curtains were drawn, lights put out, heated brandy poured over hot Christmas puddings to be set ablaze and carried in with due ceremony. I was offered none. It was as if I had ceased to exist. Only after coffee had been made and served and crackers pulled – those the children had left – and the dreadful jokes been read out and scorned, and the ritual been declared complete, were the doctor, the ambulance and the police called.

And that, I swear, is what happened. Even if thirty, not twenty, Walpole Delingros allege that the death happened after dinner, and that I took Lady Hester’s head and deliberately banged it into the edge of the marble fireplace during the course of an argument about the cause of smoking fireplaces, so she fell dead, suffering a cardiac infarction on the way down, I cannot help it. This was not what happened. If there is, as you say, a nasty dent on the side of Lady Hester’s head why then one of the family did it while she lay dead on the sofa, with a blunt instrument, the better to incriminate me. The Walpole Delingros are famous for sticking together, and I would be the first to admit I got up one or two people’s noses, even to the extent of their feeling that prison hereafter would be the best place for me. And others might feel that by being so rude to Lady Hester I had caused her death, and natural justice should prevail. It is not the first time people have borne false witness against me. Or again, perhaps one of their number, finding the old lady was still just about alive, and simply wanting to inherit, finished her off and the others closed ranks and decided to get me, in passing? Or is that too cynical a view of human nature?

It won’t work, of course, one of the children must surely blab, or perhaps Marigold will remember she is my friend. I believe she is back with Seb. In the meantime, while I wait for my mother’s call, I am happy enough in this cell. But perhaps you could arrange to have
The Times
sent in, so I can do the crossword? And if you could ask the Governor, or whoever he is, to stop people playing their radios and TVs so loud? Or at any rate to tune them to the same station? I am feeling a little insecure. I am accustomed to having enemies – the honest and righteous always are – but it was my bad judgement to make so many, in one place, and in that particular season. It is never safe to disturb the ritual, however much fun it may be.

2001

And we’d been so clever. We would catch the 15.40 from Schipol on the 24th, and be back in Bristol by 17.55. We’d pick up a hire car and be down the M5 to Okehampton in good time for Christmas Eve dinner with goose, mashed potatoes, red cabbage and a fine Rhone wine. Christmas dinner the next day would be turkey, roast potatoes, sprouts, cranberry sauce and good claret. My daughter and her husband live in Devon and are traditionalists. Chris and I tend to go for salad and a slice of quiche, but that’s the way it goes, these days. You go forward into a quicker, lighter future, and the children hop off backwards into the past, staring at you and muttering
weird
. But we love to see our daughter, and we have a new grandchild, and our son and his new fiancée would be joining us.

We’d finished work in Amsterdam and had a host of presents already wrapped, which we’d pack into the suitcase. Yes, very clever. Well organised. My husband does all that. It’s his thing, dates and timetables and being at the right place at the right time, and I trot along behind. He does consultancy work for a Dutch property company: I’m a writer: I fit in.

Too clever by half, of course. We’d reckoned without Christmas, or at any rate Yuletide. We’d reckoned without the waywardness of humanity. We had not taken into account the seasonal urgency which sometimes catches us up like a tide, so we move as others do, in a group, and do what we must, not what reason says. Princess Diana’s funeral, trolley rage at the supermarket just before the bank holiday. Just the same when Thor cracked his thunder over Northern skies, and everyone jumped the same way at his command. Rituals must be observed. They have their own imperative.