Simply Heaven (13 page)

At the far end of the room, on wide steps that lead through a partially curtained arch into what looks like another sitting room beyond, I catch sight of Mary. Elegant as ever, in black-and-white houndstooth check, she twiddles her champagne flute by the stem and cranes to catch sight of Rufus. She’s talking with a thin man who’s a good head taller than she is, dimpling up at him like a fine-vintage Doris Day as he dips his head to share a pleasantry. There are no women around them, surprise surprise.

Our eyes lock, and the dimples drop, momentarily, from the sides of her mouth. Mary’s eyes turn dark, like a shark’s: they shine at me, beam something not altogether pleasant in my direction. Then she slaps the smile back on, touches his sleeve with a light and intimate hand and points me out. Raises her glass at me, says something that makes him laugh. He imitates her gesture.

With my spare hand, I raise an imaginary glass in return. They make no effort to come over. Just stand there, the two of them, and talk about me.

A thickset man in a kilt walks past, reaches out and takes half a dozen pineapple sticks from the tray, says something about being starving, moves on without once looking at my face. Hastily, I stoop and lay my tray down on the chair. I figure that being mistaken for staff isn’t the best way to enter the fold. Clever old Mary. She’s set it up so that the first impression everyone gets of me will be of a travel-raddled, grimy oik, a fish out of water. I’d expected a couple of days’ grace, a chance to settle in. I guess she knew that. I can feel stirrings of respect deep in my breast. Clever old Mary.

I could murder a drink. There’s no-one within hailing distance, though: just a hundred chinless, big-nosed, straight-haired, bellowing humanoids with vowels like drill-bits. No-one seems to have noticed me. They’re all too intent on congratulating my husband. I guess it wouldn’t be the thing to shove my way past them and grab a glass. Rufus’s new wife, the dipsomaniac.

He calls me. Well, I assume it’s me, though everyone here seems to be calling everyone else ‘darling’ without discrimination. I look over to check, and he’s got a grin on his face and holds out a hand. ‘Come on, darling,’ he calls. ‘Come and meet everyone! Don’t be shy!’

There was a turkey farm down the road from where we lived when we were kids – a farm that made a smashing once-a-year profit from all the lunatics who insist on turning out a full ‘traditional’ roast dinner complete with spuds and stuffing in fifty degrees of heat because that’s what their grandparents used to do. My friend Tina and I whiled away a lot of spring afternoons, before we discovered boys, by whistling at them. The thing is with turkeys, they tend to make no noise at all, or they all gobble at once. Not an individual thought between them. And the sound of someone whistling drives them into a frenzy of indignation. Tina and I used to sneak up on the barn and, when they caught sight of us, there’d be a moment’s deathly hush as four hundred pea-sized brains tried to work out what the hell we were doing there. And then one of us – usually me; I’ve got the most raucous wolf whistle in the southern hemisphere – would let fly with a builder’s special, and the whole lot would let fly with a shriek of
obbleobbleobbleobbleobble
, every one of them goggling at us in astonishment like we’d farted in church.

It’s a bit like that now, only I’m not laughing. When Rufus began calling me, the entire room fell, bit by bit, silent. As a body, they turned in the direction of his reaching hand, stared, lips slightly ajar, at me. And now, as I unpeel myself from the wall and step into the aisle that has opened up before me, the crowd bursts into comment.

‘
Obbleobbleobbleobbleobble
,’ they go. ‘
Obbleobbleobbleobbleobble
.’

And once again, the room goes quiet.

Feeling the blush rise in my cheeks, I cross the space to reach him, feel scrutiny of my gait, my crumpled travelling clothes, my shiny nose, my grubby trainers. And then I’m in the middle of it, hand pumped, clothes tweaked, air kisses flying about my ears. I don’t stand a chance. There are a hundred-odd strangers in the room, and I’m the only one they have to take in. This is Rupert, says Rufus, this is Miranda. I nod, smile, fail to memorise the faces, grin inanely as the names fly past: this is Charlie, this is Jimbo, this is Ginny. This is LuluNessaTrinnyCaro and EddyReggieBertieSam. Mel, meet EmmaTobyLaviniaAndrew PoppyJamieSophieHugo. PippaDaddySusieTom …

Backtrack. I swing round to see the daddy.

He’s fairly obvious: an older version of the son. A little shorter, and run to thinness in that way that some older men have, and the hair’s gone salt-and-pepper and is cut with the sort of forced side parting that always makes you wonder about wigs, but it’s all pretty good, considering.

He sticks a hand out. ‘Edmund Wattestone,’ he says. ‘Shocked father-in-law. How do you do?’

I take the hand, return the greeting. ‘Melody Katsouris,’ I say. ‘Horrified daughter-in-law. Good to make your acquaintance.’

And then, thank God, we both burst out laughing. ‘How was your trip?’ he asks. ‘You haven’t got a drink.’

‘It was fine. Interesting to get a fix on your so-called public transport. I think Rufus is trying to keep me sober. Doesn’t want me hoisting up my skirts and dancing on the tables on my first day.’

‘Well,
he
may not,’ says Edmund, ‘but this is something I’ve
got
to see. Champagne do you?’

‘No way. Makes me chunder.’

‘Good girl,’ he says, pats me amicably on the shoulder. ‘Roly!’ he bellows across the room. ‘Stop filling your own boots and get the girl a glass of plonk.’

Roly, face buried in his third flute of the fizzy stuff, looks up, calls ‘Right-oh!’ and heads in the direction of a woman with a tray.

‘Sorry,’ says Edmund, ‘no-one came and picked you up. We weren’t sure what flight you were getting in on, and then Mary wanted to put on this ghastly shindig. I wanted to give you a chance to get settled before you had to face this lot, but once she gets the bit between her teeth …’

‘It’s OK,’ I lie, ‘might as well jump in at the deep end.’

‘Hmm,’ muses Edmund, ‘I’m not sure if
deep
is exactly the word you’re grasping for. Still. Nice to have an excuse to turn on the heating, I suppose. Have you met the neighbours?’

‘Sort of,’ I say. ‘Haven’t seen this many pearl necklaces since my last trip to Pat Pong.’ And then I think perhaps this isn’t the most appropriate first impression to make on your father-in-law.

He laughs nervously. Hell. My only hope was that it might have gone over his head. Now I’ll never know. ‘So,’ he says, the subject change as clunky as a learner driver’s first move up to third, ‘what do you think of Bourton Allhallows, then?’

It’s probably a bit early in the day to tell him the truth. ‘Amazing,’ I say. ‘I couldn’t have imagined it in a million years.’

It works. A huge simpleton’s grin covers his face. ‘Well, you’ll find there are one or two drawbacks,’ he says.

‘So have you lived here all your life?’ A stupid question, I know.

‘Well, yes,’ he replies. ‘Apart from school and Oxford, of course.’

What on earth have you done with yourself in all that time? is the next question that runs through my head. ‘Wow,’ I say. ‘I guess it’s pretty much a full-time job.’

‘Not so bad now Rufus is on board,’ he says complaisantly. ‘And anyway, one has one’s duty.’

We’re standing side-by-side now, facing the room like old buddies. I squint at him out of the corner of my eye. Edmund doesn’t look like a man who’s spent his life burdened by duty. The lines on his face look like they’ve been earned by exposure to the elements, rather than to care. Like his son, he has the look of a man whose price has been put above pearls all his life. He’s got the mild, open face of someone who has never, ever questioned his own position in the world, because he’s never, ever had it challenged. I see it, sometimes, in Rufus. It’s an attractive quality, especially to someone like me, eaten up as I am with social insecurity. Unquestioning confidence: it’s what we all long for, isn’t it?

Roly pants up, new glass of champagne in one hand, jaded-looking glass of red in the other. ‘How you getting on, Mrs W?’ he asks. ‘See you’ve met the pa-in-law, then.’

I accept the glass, take a slug to steady my nerves. Old socks, car parts, tinfoil. Someone to our left is eyeing someone on the other side of the room. ‘Fryful social climber,’ she says. ‘Family made its money in breweries.’

‘Great,’ I say. ‘Though I wish I’d had some chance to look halfway respectable.’

‘You look marvellous, m’dear,’ says Edmund, and I think he means it. ‘Such a relief to see something that’s not navy blue for a change.’

Looking around the room, I see that he’s right. Well over half the women here are wearing navy blue. Boxy jackets, businesslike skirts, Alice bands, silk blouses, all the same light-sucking shade.

‘You’ll find,’ confides Edmund, ‘that a large number of British women base their style on their school uniform.’

‘Seriously? Why would you do that?’ We didn’t have uniforms at Redcliffe State High, but the thought of trying to recreate the look in adult life makes my spine turn cold. I mean, there’s daggy, and there’s
really
daggy.

‘Saves them having to think about what they’re going to wear, I think. If everything goes together.’

‘And the small retailers,’ adds Roly, ‘you know, in towns like Stow and Moreton. It’s a lot more convenient if they know what they need to stock, and as most of them belong to people’s ex-wives …’

‘… Empty nesters …’

‘… younger sons …’

‘So tell me, Melody,’ says Edmund, ‘Mary says you’re something medical.’

‘Not really. Strictly alternative.’

‘Ah. You’ll not find a lot of call for that sort of thing around here, I’m afraid. It’s mostly shotgun wounds and broken limbs in Heythrop country.’

‘Dog bites,’ Roly interjects.

‘The odd bull-goring.’

‘Not a lot of use for the laying-on of hands. Mostly stitches and tetanus boosters.’

‘Well, I can speed up the healing process, at least.’

A familiar voice speaks up at my elbow. ‘Healing process? Melody, I hadn’t taken you for a
psychobabbler
.’

Oh hell. Mother-in-law alert. I slap a smile on, turn to face her. ‘Mary. Not psychobabble. Physical healing.’

She’s wreathed in smiles herself. Gives me a perfumy, powdery kiss on the cheek and a squeeze on the upper arm. ‘Well, thank heaven for that! I had visions of myself stumbling over pro-lesbian meditation encounters every time I went into the drawing room.’

Rufus seems to be having a boxing match with a couple of blokes who look like they might originally have been constructed out of modelling putty for a kiddies’ show on TV. They are being cheered on by a young woman with front teeth you could cut logs with.

‘Don’t worry, Mary,’ I attempt a joke, ‘I’ll just start things off slowly with the Wednesday-night know-your-vagina group.’

I really don’t know my own mouth, sometimes. The smile congeals on Mary’s face, and Edmund titters.

‘Oops,’ I say. ‘Maybe I should have kept quiet about that until you’d got used to the naturism.’

Mary recovers, and gestures to the thin man, who’s accompanied her over from the steps. ‘Hilary Crawshaw,’ she says. ‘Melody Wattestone.’

‘Katsouris,’ I correct her. There’s a visible gulp. Hilary, who wears an elegant grey suit with a tiny peak of spotted handkerchief sticking out of the top pocket, brushes my fingers with his. ‘How do you do?’ he says. ‘And congratulations.’

This one’s going to have to go straight on to my avoid list.

‘I say,’ says Roly, ‘aren’t you supposed to wish the bride good luck? I thought it was the chap who got congratulated.’

Hilary ignores him. ‘Many, many congratulations,’ he repeats. I’ve heard about the bitchy queens that aristocratic ladies gather around them to take them to art galleries. I think I’ve just met my first one.

‘Hilary,’ I say. ‘Hey, isn’t that a sheila’s name?’

The fingers freeze against my palm. ‘In Awstralia, perhaps,’ he bats back.

‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ he says. ‘I always holiday in Florence, myself.’

‘Hilary is an authority on fine art, aren’t you, darling?’ says Mary. Like I wouldn’t have guessed. ‘He used to stay with Harold Acton all the time.’

Well, that went straight over my head.

‘Wonderful parties,’ says Hilary. ‘The thought of the Villa La Pietra overrun with American students …’

‘Never mind,’ says Mary.

‘Never mind,’ I say.

‘I heard he was a frightful old poof,’ says Edmund. ‘Always jumping on Wykehamists.’

‘Oh, but the
collections
,’ says Mary. Then: ‘How was your trip? I’m
so
sorry there was no-one there to meet you. If you’d
rung
, we’d have been
queuing
up to come and get you.’

‘That’s so sweet.’

‘
Non
-sense,’ she says. ‘I wouldn’t
dream
of leaving family hanging about at airports. Isn’t that so, Edmund, darling?’

‘Well, no, darling,’ says the husband, ‘except that you were knee-deep in sausage rolls all morning.’

‘It was fine. We bumped into Roly on the train, so there wasn’t a problem getting here.’

She slips an arm through mine. Pats me on the forearm. It must look great from the outside: it’s only me that can feel the stiffness in the gesture, the way she holds herself so that as little of her body is touching me as possible. ‘Well,
wel
come, my dear. It’s
so
good to have my boy home at last. Have you met the rest of the family, yet? Have you met our neighbour, Cressy Lambton?’

I find myself facing a tall woman with a weatherbeaten face. She wears her hair short and shapeless, fringe hanging in her eyes like a Shetland pony’s, and not a scrap of makeup. Her party clothes consist of green slacks with a puffed-sleeved white shirt over which she sports a padded jerkin of the sort people usually wear to shoot things in. I don’t mind telling you, Cressy’s as ugly as a hatful of arseholes.

‘How do you do?’ she says, and wrings my hand like it’s the neck of a wounded rabbit.