The Tennis Party (2 page)

‘After your bath. You need clean nails. Yours are all horsy.’ But Georgina had lost interest and was doing a handspring on the lawn. Caroline, who had once trained as a gymnast herself, looked up. They didn’t teach them to finish off properly any more, she thought; to land neatly and present to the judges with a pretty smile. At Georgina’s boarding-school, no-one took gymnastics seriously. They did it to strengthen the girls for more important pursuits – netball, lacrosse, and always the horses. None of them seemed interested in competitions, show routines, shiny leotards and ribbons – the stuff of which Caroline’s childhood had been made.

*

Patrick Chance, walking up to the house from the tennis court, saw his beautiful, agile daughter turning cartwheels against the setting sun, and stopped for a moment, taking in her effortless grace, her vitality and energy. Was every father as sentimental as he? He found it difficult, talking to other parents, to emulate their easy nonchalance. Whereas they shrugged off their children’s achievements, he could not resist cataloguing Georgina’s; could never resist breaking off in conversation to point out that his daughter had just gone into the ring, yes, competing in the under fourteens, even though she was only just eleven. When the other parents nodded, smiling, and turned back to their chatter, his heart would beat with suppressed rage and incomprehension. But look at her! he always wanted to cry. Just look at her! She plays the piano, too, he would say, desperate to win back their attention. Coming on very well, her teacher says. We thought we might try her on the flute.

Caroline, he noticed, had turned her attention back to her nail polish. It still pained him that she didn’t share his fervent appreciation of Georgina – and refused to join in when he began to eulogize about her, even when they were together on their own. Particularly because, to be fair, there was a lot more in Georgina that Caroline could claim as her
own than he could. Mother and daughter shared their blond hair, their athletic frames, their tendency to burst into raucous laughter. But perhaps that was why Caroline was so blasé about Georgina. She was used to beauty, physical accomplishment and popularity. Whereas Patrick, short, stumpy and short-sighted, was not.

He continued walking towards the house and Georgina started walking towards him in a crab.

‘Hello, Daddy,’ she panted, and collapsed on the ground.

‘Hello, kitten,’ he said. ‘Good riding lesson?’

‘Brilliant.’ He looked up at Caroline.

‘Everything under control for tomorrow?’

‘The food’s on the plates, if that’s what you mean,’ said Caroline. ‘And Mrs Finch went over the bedrooms this morning.’

‘Who’s next door to me?’ demanded Georgina.

‘The little Mobyn twins and that nanny girl. What’s her name?’

‘Martina I think,’ said Patrick. ‘She’s German. Or Austrian, or something.’ Georgina wrinkled her nose.

‘Why couldn’t it be Nicola and Toby?’

‘Ask Daddy,’ said Caroline acerbically. ‘He insisted that Charles and Cressida go in the big spare room, so the twins have to go in the one next to you. Cressida’,
she enunciated the word with deliberate care, ‘likes having them near by.’

‘Why couldn’t they all go down the passage?’ suggested Georgina. ‘And Annie and Stephen go in the big spare room and Nicola and Toby next to me?’

‘Daddy wants Charles and Cressida to have the big room,’ said Caroline, ‘because they’re very rich, and he doesn’t want them to sneer at us.’ Patrick flushed.

‘Now that’s not true at all. I just thought it would be nice for them to have that room. Since they haven’t been here before.’

‘They probably never will be here, either,’ said Caroline briskly. ‘What’s the betting they phone and cancel tomorrow morning?’

‘They can’t do that,’ said Patrick, too quickly, he realized.

Caroline raised suspicious eyes. ‘Why the hell not? That’s what they usually do. How long have we been here? Nearly three years. And they’ve always been too busy to make it to anything.’

‘Cressida is a shithead,’ said Georgina. Caroline gave a cackle of laughter. Patrick stared at Georgina.

‘Where on earth did you learn language like that?’

‘Don’t be so boring,’ said Caroline. ‘Why do you think Cressida’s a shithead, sweetie? You hardly know her.’

‘I liked Ella,’ said Georgina mulishly.

‘You can’t possibly remember Ella,’ said Caroline.

‘I do,’ said Georgina. ‘She was really nice, she used to sing me songs. And Charles used to play the guitar.’ Patrick looked admiringly at her.

‘What a memory! You must have been only about six then.’

‘I liked Seymour Road,’ said Georgina simply. ‘I wish we still lived there.’ Caroline gave another cackle of laughter.

‘There you are, Patrick, so much for the country life!’ Her blue eyes held his mockingly for a moment, and he stared back with an impotent rage. Her eyes seemed to reflect his own failures and worries back at him, reminding him in a tacit instant of the disappointments and disillusionments of the last thirteen years.

‘I must go and draw up the chart for tomorrow,’ he said abruptly. For Georgina’s sake more than his own he walked onto the terrace and kissed his wife on the mouth. She tasted, as she had done when he first kissed her behind one of the stands at the
Daily Telegraph
personal finance exhibition, of lipstick, cigarettes and alcohol.

‘I’ll be eighth seed if you like,’ she said, when his head came up again. ‘I don’t rate myself very highly at tennis.’

‘It’s doubles,’ he said, irritation rising.

‘Mixed doubles,’ said Georgina, who was once again in a crab position. ‘I could play with Toby, and Nicola could play with one of the twins. And the other twin could play with the nanny. How about that, Daddy?’

But he had gone.

As Patrick entered his study, he felt rather deflated. Caroline’s last dig about the country life had touched an unexpected sore spot. Life at Bindon had not turned out quite as he had wanted, and he, too, often felt a secret nostalgia for the days at Seymour Road. He had decided that they should move into the country really for Georgina’s sake. All the smart little girls that he met at her school seemed to live in villages, in old rectories and farmhouses, with dogs and horses and sheep. None of them lived in red-brick villas in the suburbs of Silchester.

So they had sold twenty-four Seymour Road, moved to Bindon and bought Georgina a pony. Here, Patrick had felt, they would move into a new level of existence. His mind had been filled, in the few weeks before the move, with images of large houses with sweeping drives, aristocratic girls leading horses out of loose boxes, croquet on the lawn, young boys called Henry and Hugo for Georgina to grow up with.

But Bindon wasn’t like that. Hardly any of the
families living in the village were what Patrick thought of as ‘county’. Many had moved to Bindon out of Silchester, or even London, attracted by the quick rail link to Waterloo. They made Patrick shudder, with their whining London voices, so different from Georgina’s clipped schoolgirl tones. Besides, they tended to keep to themselves, relying for their social life on parties of friends down from London – and, when those dried up, often moving back to London themselves. The previous owners of The White House had sold to move back to Battersea, bored with a village life that they hadn’t even tried.

For there was a village community of sorts in Bindon. Patrick and Caroline attended church every other Sunday, patronized the village fête, and were on amiable terms with the farmer whose land bordered their own. They knew the old lady whose family had once owned the manor house – and who now lived in a nearby cottage. They knew the fluttery pair of sisters whose brother had been the vicar of Bindon before he died. They knew the rather eccentric Taylors, who had lived in Bindon for generations – and probably married each other for generations, Caroline liked to add. But nowhere had Patrick found the smart, sociable, double-barrelled,
Country Life
families for which he was looking.

The trouble with Silchester, he had heard another
parent at Georgina’s school saying, was that it had turned into another London suburb – full of bloody commuters. Patrick, who himself commuted to London, was not offended by this remark. He knew he wasn’t the proper thing – neither was Caroline. But Georgina could and would be, if only she could mix with the right people. He was now looking seriously at moving further into the country – Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, perhaps. He had visions of a big Georgian house; perhaps ten or twenty acres. If this year went well, perhaps they could start looking.

If this year went well.

Patrick’s eye fell on his desk; on the paperwork he’d prepared for tomorrow. He would ask Charles casually into the study after lunch. No hassle, just an agreeable piece of business between friends. Besides, hassling wasn’t Patrick’s style. Never had been. Even when he’d been a cold-call salesman, he’d always retreated gracefully at the first sign of annoyance, playing it cool and courteous. Always courteous. Sometimes they were intrigued; sometimes he even found the punters phoning
him
back. When he sensed he’d got their interest, he would sometimes switch on the intimate, enthusiastic, I’m-doing-this-for-you-as-a-friend routine. But not if they were sophisticated investors – or, most tricky of all, thought they were sophisticated. Then it would be the smooth,
I’m-not-going-to-insult-your-intelligence approach. Selling’s all about judging the client, he thought. There’s a way into anyone’s pocket.

He sat down, put the folder marked ‘Charles’ to one side, and began carefully drawing out the chart for the tournament. But a doubt kept swimming around in his mind. Charles and Cressida had always managed to cancel when they’d been invited to Bindon before – an ill child; a recalcitrant nanny; once, less believably, two cars that wouldn’t start. And although he’d got Charles’ absolute assurance that they would be attending the party tomorrow, the very thought that they might somehow pull out caused distress signals to go shooting down Patrick’s spine. If they didn’t meet tomorrow, there would probably be no chance of seeing Charles for several months.

He sat back in his chair, staring blindly at the bookcase. Was it worth phoning Charles and Cressida to check that they were coming? He rehearsed the call in his mind. A relaxed, unpressured tone of voice – ‘Charles, old boy, don’t tell us you’re going to blow us out again. Caroline will never forgive you.’ Or, if he got Cressida, some domestic query that would please her – ‘Just checking that the twins aren’t allergic to goose-down quilts.’ He reached for his Filofax and dialled the number, fingers trembling slightly.

‘Allo?’

Shit. The German nanny. But perhaps Charles was there.

‘Hello there, could I speak to Mr Mobyn?’

‘He isn’t here, I am sorry, is there a message please?’

Fuck.

‘It’s Patrick Chance here, just checking that you’re all coming to the tennis party tomorrow?’

‘Tennis party.’ The girl sounded doubtful. Patrick held his breath. ‘Yes, I think we leave here at ten o’clock.’

‘Good, good.’ Patrick tried not to sound too elated.

‘What is the message please?’

‘Oh, erm, no message,’ said Patrick. ‘Just checking you were all still coming.’

‘Shall I ask Mr Mobyn to call you back?’

‘Yes. Look, it really doesn’t matter,’ said Patrick. ‘I’ll see you all tomorrow, all right?’

‘Is that the message?’

‘Yes, all right.’ Patrick gave in.

He replaced the receiver and closed his eyes. By this time tomorrow it should all be in the bag; signed, sealed and stamped. He picked up the folder and flicked through it a couple of times. But he was already completely familiar with its contents. He put it into his top drawer, closed and locked it. Then he spread out the sheet for the tournament chart and began
to write the names of the four pairs across the top. Patrick and Caroline, he wrote. Stephen and Annie. Don and Valerie. Charles and Cressida.

Charles and Cressida Mobyn were attending a drinks party at the house of Sir Benjamin Sutcliffe, before a charity performance of the
Messiah
in Silchester Cathedral. They mingled, holding glasses of Kir Royale, with the most eminent residents of Silchester – many of whom lived, like they did, in the Cathedral Close – together with a sprinkling of celebrities from around the area and even a few from London. Sir Benjamin’s drawing-room was long and high ceilinged, with enormous unshuttered windows looking directly onto the floodlit cathedral, and most of the guests were turned unconsciously towards the view, looking up every so often as though to check it was still there.

Cressida was one of the few guests present with her back towards the cathedral. Tall, elegant and queenly, she seemed oblivious of its towering presence; even though she was universally acknowledged as one of the most tireless campaigners for the West Tower Fund. Indeed, her name was listed on the back of tonight’s concert programme as one of the hardworking committee members who had made it all possible.

She was talking now to the well-loved radio presenter who would be making a speech at the
beginning of the concert. The radio presenter was gesturing flamboyantly at the splendid sight of the cathedral, and Cressida, looking slightly taken aback, turned to look at it. Almost immediately, she turned back and smiled politely at the presenter. She had, after all, seen the cathedral nearly every day for the last four years. She did, after all, live opposite it.

Charles, watching her from the other side of the room, could follow her thoughts as easily as his own. After all this time, the combination of her blinkered mind, her rangy blonde beauty and her wealth still acted on him like an aphrodisiac. When Cressida, at the breakfast table, looked up from the newspaper and asked in all innocence what they meant by privatization – or what on earth was wrong with insider dealing – he invariably felt an immediate surge of sexual energy. When she opened letters from her portfolio managers, frowned in slight puzzlement, and threw them down beside her plate, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Contrary to popular belief, he hadn’t married Cressida for her money. He had married her for her complete indifference to it.