An Excellent Wife (10 page)

'You can talk to birds; you can't talk to fishes,' said Joe.

'I do,' said Toby.

'Do they talk back?' Joe teased him, amused to see him go red.

Toby glared. 'Of course not, but they always come up to the glass and stare at me.'

'I bet they do. Think you're crackers, I expect! I know I do; talking to fish!

You'll be talking to seven-foot-high invisible rabbits next.'

Toby looked blank, never having heard of the famous film
Harvey,
in which a man talks to an invisible white rabbit. 'What are you talking about?'

Joe shrugged. 'Oh, never mind.'

'You're sitting by me,' Emmy called, and James squeezed round the other side of the table to take the empty chair. It was only as he sat down that he realised his mother was sitting on the other side of him.

He flushed and she said, 'Thank you for coming, James. I was afraid you wouldn't and I'm so glad you did.'

He didn't know what to say, but luckily he remembered the packages he held and pushed the one topped with a green silk bow towards her. 'Happy Birthday.'

Everyone stopped talking to watch. Pink and surprised, Ruth Ormond fumbled with the parcel, and it was only at that second that James noticed that her knuckle? were gnarled and swollen with arthritis, as Patience had told him a moment ago. He hadn't looked at her hands closely enough to see that the last time he came; he had been too busy observing that she no longer wore rings, as she had done when he was a child.

'Let me do that,' he said, taking the parcel and deftly opening it for her before pushing it back to her.

She took out the bottle of perfume first, in the famous black and gold packaging. Her eyes lifted to her son's face, bright with unshed tears. 'You remembered my favourite perfume! I haven't worn this for years; I couldn't afford luxuries like this.'

He Was startled; surely he had smelt it in her room the other day when he came here? He couldn't have imagined it!

Realising that she was trying now to open the box, he leaned over and did that for her, freed with some difficulty the stopper, and watched her invert the bottle then use the stopper to dab some of the perfume behind her ears and at her wrists. The scent entered his nostrils and he gave a barely audible sigh. Yes, that was what he had smelt when he walked into his mother's room and saw her. How extraordinary the human mind was! His memory and- imagination had instantly combined to make him believe he could smell the perfume she had always worn in his childhood. A mental conjuring trick.

Inhaling the scent, his mother sighed. 'Oh, it's so wonderful to smell it again.'

She held out her wrist to him. 'Isn't it gorgeous? Remember it?'

He bent to inhale the scent, then straightened, nodding. 'Yes, I remember.'

That was the perfume he had always associated with her in his mind; that was why he had believed he smelt it when he'd walked into her room.

'There's something else in the parcel,' Emmy pointed out, bending to peer inside the wrapping.

James unwrapped the scarf; Emmy gave a little gasp of delight. 'Oh, that's lovely!'

Ruth Ormond's face lit up. She held the silky green scarf between her gnarled hands, lifted it to her cheek. 'Oh, how pretty. I love that colour. I'll wear it now.'

James stood up, taking the scarf from her, and flung it lightly around her shoulders. His mother stroked down the long folds against the pale pink dress she wore.

'Thank you, James, I love both my presents.'

'Oh, I forgot your card,' he said, handing that to her, and then sat down again while she opened it, studied the picture on the front and then looked at his scrawled name inside.

Emmy was staring at the other package on the table in front of him. 'Who is that for?'

Everyone else stared, too. His colour rising, James cleared his throat. 'Oh, yes, I forgot...' He looked across the table at Patience. 'Happy Birthday.' He pushed the package towards her.

She looked startled. 'Oh, You shouldn't...didn't have to... I mean, thank you, that's very kind.' For once, he was glad to see, he had taken her by surprise and made her lose her cool. Usually it was he who was at a disadvantage; he was pleased to turn the tables.

'Open it, Patience!' Emmy urged.

She carefully undid the parcel, took out the perfume and stared at it.

'Heavens.'

'It's the same as Ruth's!' Emmy was always ready to point out the obvious.

James was flushed. 'I'm afraid I don't have much imagination. If you don't like it I can always take it back and change it, if you'd rather have another perfume?'I didn't know what perfume you liked.'

She took the stopper out of the bottle and lifted it, breathed in the scent from it, her eyes half-closed. 'Mmm...marvellous.' She smiled across the table, her hazel eyes very bright. 'I've never had any French perfume before; it costs too much for me so I'm thrilled. It's wonderful—thank you. I love it.'

'There's a scarf for you, too,' he confessed. 'I chose pink for you. I told you I didn't have much imagination.' Then his eyes lifted to observe her vivid red hair— maybe he should have given his mother the pink and given Patience green?

She held the delicate silky folds in her hands, gazing at them. 'What a gorgeous colour. That was very clever of you, James—how did you know I loved pink but never dare risk wearing it? People with red hair aren't supposed to wear pink, so nobody's ever bought me pink before, and I don't often buy myself anything as pretty as this because it would soon be ruined if I wore it when I was working—which I nearly always am!' She looked down at her green and blue dress uncertainly. 'Do you think I could wear it with this dress?'

Beside him, Emmy gave a deep sigh of envy. 'Of course you can. It will look lovely—just like rose petals—I bet it feels nice when you wear it, too.'

Patience wound it around her throat twice, then let the rest of it float down behind her back. 'How does it look, Em?'

'Oh, lovely.'

'Honestly?'

'Promise—cross my heart, hope to die. I don't care what anyone says; I love pink with red hair.'

'So do I.'

They were looking at each other intently across the table, sisters in every sense of the word, the child and the young woman united in their serious contemplation of one of the more important matters in life.

Patience looked across the table at James. 'What do you think?'

'You look wonderful; it exactly matches your hp- stick,' he said, and halfway through the sentence was terrified that his voice betrayed how he felt whenever he looked at that wide, warm, invitingly pink mouth.

As he stared it curved into a smile which he watched like someone watching the sun come up, remembering the way her mouth had felt under his when he kissed her earlier.

'When are we going to start eating?' growled Tom.

'Yes, I'm starving,' Joe said crossly.

'You can say grace, Joe,' Patience told him, with one of her teasing little grins.

'Me? Do I have to? Should be you; it's your birthday. Or Ruth.' Joe had that mutinous look he had when he was about to dig his toes in.

Ruth Ormond said grace before Patience could start an argument with Joe, and everyone reached for one of the plates of tiny triangular sandwiches filled with cucumber, tomato or thin sliced cheese.

'What are these meant to be? One bite and they're gone,' grumbled Joe, eating three at once.

'They're meant to be elegant. Don't gobble, we haven't brought all the food in yet,' Lavinia scolded, hurrying out to the kitchen.

She brought in hot buttered crumpets and muffins; there were two for everyone, although Joe ate three, but as Emmy only ate one that didn't matter.

The food kept coming—sausage rolls, Scotch eggs, . which James loved because the mixture of hard-boiled eggs wrapped in sausage meat which was coated in bread crumbs and fried was something Enid did particularly well and often served with salad, and there were sweet things, too, of course: red and orange jelly, banana blancmange and strawberry trifle, chocolate finger biscuits and small cakes. The party ended when they lit the candles on the large birthday cake on top of which Lavinia had written 'HAPPY

BIRTHDAY' in pink icing. Patience and Ruth Ormond blew the candles out together, in one long blow, and everyone sang 'Happy Birthday' to them.

Emmy had contributed an oddly shaped blue marzipan rabbit and a yellow marzipan banana which she had arranged on top of the cake.

'Which one do I eat?' James's mother asked.

'The banana's nice,' Emmy ingenuously said.

'Oh, yes, I'd eat the banana,' James recommended, not confident that the blue marzipan of the rabbit would be very palatable, anyway. It looked eerie, like something from outer space.

Emmy beamed as Ruth took the banana. 'Mmm, delicious,' Ruth said, nibbling at it.

'I couldn't eat another thing,' Patience said. 'You have the rabbit, Emmy.'

Smiling even wider, Emmy ate the rabbit while her brothers regarded her with disgust.

'You know Patience hates marzipan!' Toby told her, but she ignored him, biting off the ears last with her eyes half shut.

'I love it,' Ruth Ormond said hurriedly, finishing her marzipan banana.

After tea they had party games—Pin the Tail on the Donkey, Oranges and Lemons, which the old people played at a stately pace, laughing all the time, and Pass the Parcel, a game which Joe cheated at and managed to win. So he got the contents of the parcel—a box of chocolates—but Lavinia and the others were highly indignant.

Ruth Ormond went to bed a few minutes later. 'It's been a wonderful day; I think I just ran out of energy!' she said to her son.

James could see she was pale under her make-up and frowned, realising just how frail she was. 'Can you manage the stairs?'

She nodded, smiling, and bent, suddenly, to kiss his cheek. 'Goodnight.

Thank you for my presents, James.'

Patience went with her; James followed them into the hall and asked, 'May I ring for a taxi? I really should be going.'

'Help yourself.' Patience nodded.

He had finished his call when she came back a few minutes later.

'Is she okay?' James asked, and was surprised to realise he was anxious.

'Tired, but fine. She's had a lovely day, and the highlight was you turning up.

She was afraid you wouldn't.'

'I nearly didn't.' He turned dark red, all the old pain and rage welling up in him again. 'After all, why should I? What can she expect? She walked out on me when I was ten years old, just swanned off with some guy, leaving me behind with a father who was as cold as ice, knowing I was going to get a miserable childhood with him! How dare she just turn up again now, twenty-five years later, and ask me to forgive and forget?'

Impatiently, Patience said, 'But you aren't a little boy any more, you're a man, and it was all a long, long time- ago! You must have got over it by now, and poor Ruth is very lonely; she's old and sick and needs you.'

'She forfeited her right to be my mother all those years ago—her choice, not mine.'

'Give her a second chance, James!'

'Why should I?' James felt suffocated, his pain and anger was so intense.

Hoarsely, he muttered, 'What right has she to turn up in my life and make emotional demands after all this time?'

Patience was looking at him in a way he bitterly resented. He had no difficulty reading everything in that mobile face: contempt, condemnation, coldness.

'Stupid of her to think she could,' she said icily. 'You can't get blood out of a stone, and you can't get emotion from a man who lives in an emotional refrigerator! But then Ruth is very old and afraid of dying, and she's clinging to a dream. I'm sorry for her, and I don't want to hurt her, or I'd tell her to forget it because you're never going to be human enough to forgive her. I don't think there's anything human inside you.'

Rage clawed inside James like a wild cat imprisoned in his chest. He was breathing thickly, couldn't speak, his hands clenched into fists, his eyes smouldering as they stared down at her. She had no right to speak to him like that. Was that what she thought of him, then? That he wasn't human? That he lived in a refrigerator?

Honesty compelled him to admit that he had done for most of his life, yes.

His father had locked him up there years ago. But lately... He flinched away from admitting what had been happening to him lately. Since the day Patience had erupted into his office everything in his life had altered. But he had been a fool to get so involved with a girl who was far too young for him and, anyway, already had a boyfriend of her own age.

He would be stupid not to recognise that Patience had been using him, trying to manipulate him, taking advantage of the attraction she must have realised he felt. Oh, no doubt she told herself that she was justified, that it was all in a good cause—she wanted to help his mother and, being a woman, it came naturally to her to be devious and ruthless, to use his own weakness against him.

He looked into her hazel eyes bitterly, and found them staring back with just as much anger.

And she didn't even really like him! He had been trying to convince himself she did, but that was dislike in her face! She despised him.

The idea was painful. He had never cared whether or not people disliked him. That was something else he had begun to do—care about people. A few weeks ago he would have called himself strong-minded, tough, self-confident. Now he knew he had weaknesses which could destroy him if he didn't do something about them, fast.

'Perhaps you'll stop bothering me now, then!' he snapped at Patience, who glared back.

'Don't worry, I'll never bother you again!'

They were so furiously intent on each other that they both jumped when the taxi arrived outside and hooted sharply.

Patience took a long breath. 'Goodbye.' Her voice was tart, and as cold as the north wind.

James wrenched himself away, pulled open the front door and walked very fast down the drive to where the taxi was waiting. He gave the driver his address and leaned back without looking at the house again as he was driven off into the night and headed southwards into central London.