The Uninvited Guests (20 page)

K-K-K-Katy, beautiful Katy…

‘It’s refreshing to have a little of the unexpected.’

‘Oh yes, the salmonella bacteria can kill a person stone dead, though it might surprise you to hear it.’

But I gets much pleasure when I’m playing with me uke –

Keep your ukelele in your ’and…

‘I don’t think I’ve ever had such delicious icing in my life. It doesn’t taste green at all.’ (This was Patience.)

Traversham-Beechers reached for the wine and, torn between the red and the white, he chose both, and with unprecedented vulgarity, sloshed them into the glass two handed.

‘What does “green” taste like?’ he said violently, and before she could answer, drinking, he got to his feet.

He stared for a moment at the tapestry opposite him and then said suddenly, ‘I say, what about a game of Hinds and Hounds?’

They all ceased chattering and looked at him.

‘Hinds and Hounds?’ asked Clovis.

The voices floated to them from the study, softly:

I’m walking down the prom last night as peaceful as can be…

‘It’s a game of my own invention,’ he said.

‘Tell us.’ Clovis was eager, leaning forward on his elbows.

‘Well, we need a hind and we need hounds – two sorts. Who’ll be the hind?’

They looked from one to the other. Charlie’s eye was lingering on the women, but rested at last upon Ernest.

‘You!’

There was laughter – Ernest was the least deer-like person among them, at least as tall and broad as John.

‘Ernest?’ asked Patience. ‘Why Ernest?’

‘Are we required to run about the house?’ asked Charlotte doubtfully.

‘Oh yes, like animals in thicket and briar,’ said Charlie, and Clovis banged the table and laughed.

The lamps were still low. Charlie leaned over the table, with both palms flat upon it. The candles lit his face bizarrely, causing his features to change shape, eerily. His nose leapt sideways, his eyebrows jumped.

‘You are separated from the herd,’ he began, his teeth glowing yellow in the candlelight. ‘You are lost and alone, pursued mercilessly. You will be sought by the hounds … hunted … and shot.’

‘But why
Ernest?
’ repeated Patience, and was ignored.

‘How does it go?’ asked Emerald, intrigued at the prospect despite her suspicion of the man.

‘Here’s the thing: first, a glass –’

He darted to the sideboard, took a clean glass. Then, choosing with care, he opened a new decanter, one of port, and poured the dark liquid until it quivered, swollen, at the top of the glass. The party were mesmerised. The sounds of singing seeped under the door, curling like smoke about them as they watched.

He picked up the glass and carried it, glancing light from the candles as it moved, but never a drop spilt, and placed it in front of Clovis.

‘Master of the house first,’ he said. ‘The hind must be separated from the herd by the tufters. Each of the tufters – that’s us,’ he winked at the others, adorably, ‘must find a way to separate him, before the rest of the pack – us again, we’re short on numbers – give chase. Find it, and pass the glass.’

Clovis frowned in confusion. ‘Well, how? I’m not sure I follow—’

‘Come on!’ barked Traversham-Beechers. ‘I can’t baby you through it! It is an adult game – not child’s play – if you can’t think of how, then I shall
pass the glass.
’

The others dreaded him doing that, they had no idea how to play, or what they would say themselves, but the idea of his
passing the glass
seemed a terrible humiliation.

Ernest alone seemed unperturbed. He glanced around them all, mildly, as if indulging their folly whilst thinking of other things. (Much as he had, in fact, in the school playground whenever the chants of ‘
carrots
’ had begun.)

In the silence among the birthday party, the songs from the travellers came again:

But every time that I go out the people stare at me…

Traversham-Beechers stared at Clovis. The port sat before him untouched, glassy and dark. ‘
Clovis
, separate the hind.’

Clovis looked at Ernest, and sought to separate him. ‘He wears spectacles,’ he said at last.

Relief. It was true. He did. This undeniably distinguished him from the group.

‘I’d rather not—’ began Patience, but Ernest interrupted her.

‘Guilty,’ he said, holding up a hand with a small smile, as he thought to himself,
Ah, this is where I am again.

‘Capital. Drink. Pass it on.’

Clovis had to lean down to the table to sip from the glass, and when he had done, he passed it to his left, to Florence.

‘Careful,’ he said, the port sweet on his lips.

Florence had utterly forgotten her suspicion and dislike of Traversham-Beechers. It was a long time since she had sat at a table to eat at all, and longer since it had been in a dining room. She had forgotten, too, her stiff, black silk dress; she felt almost as if she were adorned like the other women, absorbed into the evening with them, and her gratitude was weak and grasping.

‘His ambition is medicine, which is a dull profession,’ she said quickly, hoping to be unnoticed, and she too leaned forwards to sip the port and then passed it on. It was sugary and lay thickly on her tongue, burning gently.

Ernest could not find it in himself to answer ‘guilty’ in regard to his cherished aspirations, so he simply nodded, and began to think of other things (the strength of spiders’ silk, penicillin …). Beside him, Patience fretted and strained in her anxiety. ‘Oh, no!’ she said, and, ‘But I don’t see why!’

Next was John. He had not wanted to be caught out, ridiculed as a parvenu, and had thought of something already. He took the drink, held it and said firmly, ‘Mr Sutton is not popular. He had no lady to bring into dinner.’

He admittedly took some pleasure in the statement; it was he whose arm Emerald had taken, and it proved Ernest a poor rival.

Small laughs and ‘ooh!’s greeted his remark. John was pleased he had made a splash, drank neatly, and handed the glass to Emerald.

‘Not a loving cup, but a dividing one,’ she said. She had not liked the game till then, although she was attracted to it. She was clinging to a moral part of herself that naggingly said she ought not take part in such a play. And yet, now, holding the glass and feeling the eyes of the others upon her, and the faint bawdy songs of their rough visitors carrying on the air, she thought:
Ernest doesn’t care, it’s just a game.

‘Get on with it, Em,’ Clovis said, so impatiently that she started.

But she couldn’t for the life of her think what to say. The fellow himself seemed interested in something on the wall behind her head.

She regarded him, racking her brains. Charlie Traversham-Beechers began to tap the table, to a rhythm –
tap tap tap-tap-tap, tap tap tap-tap-tap –
and soon Clovis followed suit, then John…

‘Come on,’ they whispered, ‘come on…’

Emerald did not want to look at Ernest for too long because it made her blush. As glancingly as she could, she registered his angular jaw, his strong brow. Speechless, she noted the honest stillness of him; his hands; the straightness of his shoulders. The child Ernest would have been easy enough to ridicule (not that she had wanted to) but now this adult was, in every physical way, unapproachable. Around her, the drumming increased.

‘Come on, come on,’ said Charlie, ‘or else pass the glass,
pass it, pass it…
’

Hotly, Emerald stared at Ernest; coolly, he ignored her. Her heart beat fast, throbbing inside her. The rawness of her attraction to him mingled with her fear of ridicule, and weakened her. Her blushes seemed to warm every part of her: surely her state was visible to everybody – she winced at the thought. Why wouldn’t he look at her? Sitting there so solemnly, in his restraint, his quietness; she longed to shake some reaction out of him; she thought of his ghoulish interest in disease and injury – what sort of a man would surround himself with bruised flesh and diseased organs?

‘He’s odd – he’s just odd!’ she burst out violently, her cheeks burning, and felt a stab of cruel delight.

‘Emerald!’ Patience said sharply, betrayed.

Ernest jolted, faced her suddenly; he was himself, the boy she had known, the man she now desired. She could see she had hurt him. She was flooded with shame.

Amongst the others there was a shout of laughter; this was the most successful barb yet. They all looked to Ernest to see his reaction.

‘What do you say to that, eh? What do you say to that?’ cried Charlie. ‘Odd!’

Ernest affected insouciance with every ounce of himself. Odd? Was that what she thought of him? He fought the urge to look down, drawing on childhood anguish for his armour; wasn’t he a man now?

As a girl she had accepted him, he thought. But perhaps even then she had thought him
odd;
considered him odd as they chased butterflies; considered him odd as they cut up little frogs. At last, as they moved on from him, he permitted himself to close his eyes briefly in defeat.
Odd.

‘Your turn, Patience,’ said Charlie. ‘Give her the glass.’

Patience, in all the violence of her outrage, could not control herself any longer. If she had felt her better self shrink in this ungenerous atmosphere, now it swelled again, demanded to be heard. She threw out her hand and knocked the glass flying across the table. The thick, ruby-red port sprayed and splashed, pooling on the cloth and sinking in. The glass smashed loudly against the heavy silver candelabra, and was met, at last, with silence.

‘
Whatever did you do that for?
’ said Traversham-Beechers.

He was genuinely shocked and very dismayed; he was altogether flabbergasted.

The others stared at her.

‘You’re all brutes,’ said Patience. ‘You’re hateful! My brother is a better man than any of you!’

‘Oh, bravo,’ said Clovis, with studied languor, for Charlie Traversham-Beechers’ benefit.

‘Certainly better than
you
!’ She pointed at him furiously. Clovis raised his eyebrows at her and smiled (although inwardly he shook).

There was another brief silence. Traversham-Beechers and Patience, magnetic poles, were fighting out the tide of the table between them. Like jetsam on the swell, the others might all be washed to shore, or swept away – the mood hung in the balance; the driftwood on the wave.

‘Does your sister fight all your battles?’ Traversham-Beechers said to Ernest, drawlingly.

‘Oh, he was ever a milksop,’ said Charlotte, siding with the strongest, as was her nature.

And with that the tide was turned. They might all be swept away now.

Emerald felt entirely confused. Weird delight, shame, shock – all fought within her. She mopped at the port stain with Florence, both dirtying all the remaining clean napkins and not improving it a jot. Ernest appeared the least perturbed of all and concerned mainly for his sister.

‘Patience?’ he asked quietly. ‘Patience,’ he said again, ‘it’s nothing. They were just being silly.’

Patience looked at him with wide eyes, shocked at herself and at all of them. She should have liked to make peace with Clovis, whom she didn’t really blame, but his expression was not pleasant. Ernest turned to the table.

‘If my hostess doesn’t mind, I’d like to take a look at the library – and rejoin you all in a little while. Excuse me, please.’

Charlotte gaped at him. He nodded stiffly, and left the table.

At that, Charlie Traversham-Beechers, who had been momentarily wrong-footed by Patience’s rebellion, rose quickly to his feet.

‘Really?’ he said, and his voice was oddly commanding. ‘Then you’ll miss the next hind.’

Ernest paused. The singing from the study, which had momentarily abated, floated strongly to them on the air:

With all my might, I nearly balanced over
,

But my old friend grasp’d my leg and pulled me back again…

‘You’ll continue playing, then?’ he said, and looked around at each of them.

Emerald was staring at her hands, Florence was busying herself with the sodden linen, Clovis was gazing up at Traversham-Beechers with something akin to adoration. It was Charlotte who met his eye boldly and said, ‘You are tiresome, Ernest, for such a young man. Come and join in the fun.’

Ernest was caught between good manners and a strong desire to distance himself from this corrupt revelry.

‘The next hind then,’ said Charlie, as if it was all decided. ‘And that will be Miss Sutton.’

‘No,’ said Ernest, squaring up to him, as commanding now as his adversary. ‘You’re a cad; she won’t have it.’

‘Won’t she? She most certainly will,’ said Charlie smoothly. ‘“The first tufter to falter is turned into a hind.” Everybody knows that! She passed the glass, do you see? She passed it! It’s the rules!’

Ernest appealed to the table. ‘Mrs Swift? Come – Clovis? Good God!’

No voice was raised to help him; nobody took his side. All mesmerised – Emerald bewitched.

‘It’s all right, Ernest,’ said Patience suddenly. ‘Let’s play. I don’t mind.’

‘You do. I will not.’

‘Sit down, Ernest. Really, it’s quite all right. You said it: they’re all just being silly.’

He could not refuse her and he could not desert her; he sat – and moved his chair closer so that she might take comfort in his presence.

‘It’s not personal,’ said the caddish gentleman. ‘It’s just a game. And it’s your sister’s turn. Let’s begin.’

He slipped another thick inch of port from the decanter into a new glass.

‘I’m first tufter,’ he said. They all waited.

He held up the glass still, and spoke in the hasty, cheery manner of one who is getting the ball rolling. ‘Miss Sutton has an inkling she’s not quite as clever as the other young ladies at Newnham College,’ he said. ‘Don’t you?’