Come and Tell Me Some Lies (12 page)

Newcomers were nervous and indulgent, poised to greet the children. The American ones brought presents, the German ones came on motorbikes. Va Va fiddled with her hair, legs twisted coyly, when Eleanor said, ‘And this is Gabriella, but we call her Va Va.' It was the handbags, not the guests, which were interesting. Va Va had two of her own, identical, shiny, one pink, one blue, given on the same birthday by Eleanor and Granny. She spied a bulging green one near a chair and sidled over. ‘Can I play with your handbag?' The woman laughed. ‘Of course, why not?' Va Va knelt
down and lost herself in the musty leather folds of someone else's life.

Eleanor did not have much make-up, and what she did have was hers and not for playing with, Va Va had been told a thousand times. But a stranger, wanting to make friends, was more forthcoming. Out came scent, exotic in a round bottle with a gold stopper, breathing a hint of the delectable promise inside. Out came lipstick, heavy in a bullet-shaped tube and tasting of violets and Vaseline. Out came a purse, jangling with coins. One would be given to Va Va. She paraded it in front of Brodie. ‘ 'S' not fair,' he whined to Patrick, who leaned forward to hear him, then reached into his pocket for a sixpence.

Children's supper was haphazard. People milled in the kitchen – ‘Eleanor, do let me help' – and then stood smoking, talking, talking, talking, while Eleanor spooned baked beans and yoghurt into anyone within reach. No toothbrushing or face-washing on Drinking Evenings. Straight upstairs. Brodie built a castle on his bed. Sheets thrust over the spikes where he had unscrewed his bed knobs made a canopy beneath which he sat cross-legged, smirking. Flook and Va Va copied him. Three castles, three pairs of ripped sheets, toys catapulting across the wasteland of the room and bombing against the castle walls.

Va Va went on a mission for provisions at half-time. The kitchen was empty, plates strewn across the table, festooned spaghetti, half-eaten, hanging from them. All the grown-ups were in the Drinking Room, forbidden territory on Saturday nights. Through a crack in the door Va Va could see a bright sliver of flame reflected in the glass of the french windows and Patrick leaning one arm upon the mantelpiece.

He didn't see her when she sidled in to whisper something to Eleanor. He stood close to a man, talking. Abruptly he moved back, smashing his glass into the fire. ‘I beseech you in the bowels of Christ to remove this interloper.' The man edged towards the door, someone else filled the space at Patrick's side. Patrick frowned. ‘Eleanor. Read me something beautiful,' he growled, and her low voice fell into the silent room:

‘The sigh that heaves the grasses

Whence thou wilt never rise

Is of the air that passes

And knows not if it sighs.

‘The diamond tears adorning

Thy low mound on the lea,

Those are the tears of morning,

That weeps, but not for thee.'

Va Va hung around at the top of the stairs, peering through the banisters. A fat man lurched into the hall. He opened the front door and peed noisily and long into the garden. Va Va clenched her fists around the banisters and scowled. ‘How dare he? We don't even know him.'

Liza's son Dominic, Va Va's half-brother, shuffled ponderous and sideways out of the Drinking Room; his face was puffy and sentimental with drink. ‘You should be in bed, Gabriella, this is grown-ups' time.' He raised his glass to his lips and crashed headlong to the floor. Va Va held her breath, waiting for someone to come. The Drinking Room was loud with laughter.
No one came. She tiptoed down the stairs. Dominic smelt stale and boozy, his nose was pleated red against the tiles. He was breathing. ‘Not dead,' she thought. ‘It serves him right.'

Now Patrick was singing, his empty glass a microphone held under his chin. Va Va's eyes pinched with tiredness; she longed for them all to go to bed, to go away and make the house safe again. She sat on the stairs and listened.

‘The train don't stay love

It goes straight through

And now it's gone love

And so are you

‘Build me a castle

Forty feet high

So I can see her

As she goes by

‘Bird in a cage love

Bird in a cage

Dying for freedom

Ever a slave.'

Annie unwound herself from the pick-up truck, shivering in her thin dress, and followed me into the house.

‘I say, it's Cinderella back from the ball.' Daddy's elbows were on either side of a plate of food. Twisted cigarette butts protruded from mashed potato like crippled seedlings. ‘How nice of you to come home.' He turned to the man sitting next to him. ‘My daughter moves in the most exalted circles these days,' he drawled. ‘She is becoming a member of the upper classes and wishes to forget her poverty-stricken family.'

‘You're drunk, Daddy. Don't be foul.' My voice wobbled. ‘What's wrong with my friends anyway? You sent me to that school, and that's where I met them.'

Mummy intervened. ‘Pay no attention. He's been perfectly ghastly all evening. He's bored and he's secretly dying to hear about your party.'

‘Darling heart, come and tell me some lies.' Daddy was smiling now, reaching his hand out to me.

‘Are you going to be nice?' I squeezed past a red-nosed woman on his right. The man opposite stood up, a pipe swinging on his lip, and shook hands with me. ‘Victor Schmidt,'
he said, and gestured to the red-nosed woman, ‘and this is my wife, Evelyn.' Evelyn sniffed.

Daddy sneered, narrowing his eyes, ‘Evelyn is a practising lesbian. Her conversation is superfluous until she admits this.'

Evelyn shrank away from him and burst into tears, dabbing at her nose with a frilly handkerchief.

‘Patrick, for heaven's sake leave her alone.'

Evelyn wailed and rushed from the room. Daddy slammed the table with his glass. ‘I will not tolerate hypocritical little bitches in my house,' he yelled. Victor took a swig from a bottle of red wine and looked up at the ceiling. Mummy disappeared to find Evelyn, and Annie, eyes starting from her head in glee, wriggled past Evelyn's upturned chair and sat down next to Daddy.

‘Who the hell are you?'

‘Daddy, this is Annie, Sasha's sister. She brought me home from the party.'

Daddy raised his glass to Chris. ‘You must be the pumpkin then, dear boy,' he said. Chris cowered by the Aga, a protective shield of cat curved in his arms. He blushed and nodded. Annie lit a cigarette and swivelled herself nearer to Daddy. He looked at her, a smile glimmering. ‘You look like a hooker,' he said. Annie simpered and said primly, ‘Thank you.'

Daddy laughed and passed her a yellow mug. ‘Here, have a drink.' He poured wine into the bottom of the mug, then topped it up with water. ‘This is how we get drunk in Italy, dear heart. Intoxication should be gradual.'

Weak with relief, I leaned next to Chris, keeping a good distance from the table. I found a box of chocolates melting in the top oven and in silence Chris and I consumed them.

Annie bombarded Daddy with questions. His mood had changed. ‘You are impertinent,' he said gently, when she asked, ‘How did you get to be a poet?' But he liked her, and even Victor unbent a little from his umbrage when Daddy took his glass like a microphone and sang ‘My Snowy-Breasted Pearl'. Evelyn did not return; Victor was so drunk that he failed to notice her absence when he went to bed. The phone rang very late. Daddy had gone to bed; Annie and Chris, she wreathed in smiles, he in yawns, had departed, promising to come back soon. It was Evelyn. In the village telephone-box.

‘I am taking a taxi to Norwich where I shall spend the night in a hotel. The taxi is collecting me from the churchyard. Please could you tell Victor to meet me at the Maid's Head tomorrow morning.'

Mummy pleaded with Evelyn to return but she would have none of it. ‘I shall never set foot in that house again, Eleanor.'

Mummy came back into the kitchen. ‘I'd better go and wake Victor,' she said, ‘Evelyn is in a terrible state.'

Victor refused to do anything, so Mummy gave up and kissed me goodnight. ‘Darling, I haven't heard a word about your party yet. You must tell me it all tomorrow.'

Christmas 1988

For the first time, we did not all come home for Christmas. Flook was away, hitch-hiking across America. He sent frequent postcards offering glimpses of his adventures.

‘
New York.
Robbed on the subway – lost everything except my money and my life.'

‘
Salt Lake City.
Met a pretty girl and followed her in through a big door. She slammed it, it was a Mormon Church – narrow escape.'

‘
Big Sur.
Stood on a cliff drinking orange juice at dawn and saw a school of whales heading south. May follow them.'

Mum was neurotic for three days after each of these postcards arrived. She imagined her baby son being sold by white slavers, run over by lorries and seduced by mad women. Dad laughed. ‘Eleanor, for Christ's sake. He's having a wonderful time. He is twenty-one, precisely the right age to go to America, and at least he's sending postcards.' He looked at Mum's wretched face and took her hand. ‘Come on. He's fine. You are too full of sensibility and somewhat lacking
in sense.' Mum laughed and agreed not to worry, but continued to ask casual questions about mortality in the San Andreas fault.

Flook rang from San Francisco on Christmas Day. ‘It's sunny, and I'm on my own,' he said, ‘but it doesn't matter, because I can't imagine Christmas without being at home. This is just another day. I'll have Christmas next year.'

Brodie was hardly there either. Having worked for a year in the City he became dizzy with instant wealth, a commodity none of us was used to. After spending all the money on drink and drugs, he realized that banking was not for him. Uttering some crisply chosen phrases on the cynicism of exploitation, he traded his smart suits for a black-and-white guitar and a nose-ring. He formed a band by advertising for members in the
New Musical Express
and, soon after, they were sent to New York to record an album. Brodie came home on Christmas Eve, jet-lagged and unusually cheerful. His luggage was two bags of vanilla coffee and his guitar, his clothes were those he was wearing.

‘I forgot everything else. I suppose I'll have to go back and get my stuff.' Mum and Dad were surprised at his good humour. He even said he liked his Christmas presents.

‘Did you have a religious experience in New York?' Dad teased.

Brodie was so tired he missed the joke. ‘No, I didn't see any churches. Actually, I never got further uptown than Greenwich Village.'

I was disgusted. ‘You mean you didn't go to the Metropolitan Museum, or Tiffany's, or the Guggenheim?' I squawked.

Brodie sighed. ‘I was working, you know. We never got out of the studio before two in the morning.'

Dad interrupted as I began to make a retrospective sightseeing timetable for Brodie and the band. ‘Va Va, you don't understand,' said Dad. ‘Rock stars disappear in daylight. They require night and a little stimulation, isn't that so, Brodie?' Brodie grinned. He started discussing downtown bars with Dad who, despite not having visited New York for fifteen years, could remember almost all the ones Brodie mentioned. ‘Brodie's smiled three times in half an hour,' said Poppy as we criss-crossed sprouts at the kitchen table. ‘He must have had fun.'

Dan's girlfriend Tamsin came for Christmas lunch, bringing her own meat-free platter. Small, neat and blonde, she was a nurse he had met on his most recent stay in hospital. At ten o'clock in the evening, our lunch was ready. All day we had peered into the Aga, to be met with dough-coloured turkey. It sweated and hissed but would not cook. Finally Dan poured some paraffin into the Aga. It boomed from its heart and puffed into action, the hotplate turning angry red, then glittering pink with heat. Tamsin's nut roast cowered beside the vast turkey when Poppy and I heaved it out of the oven. It was wedged with forgotten logs we had put to dry in the Aga days before. The turkey had a strong woody taste which we all decided we might as well like. ‘If we don't we won't eat for days,' said Dan, his plate a small mountain leaping with an avalanche of peas.

On the day after Boxing Day, Brodie and I left for London. I went with him to the airport, and he flew back to America
for six more weeks. I returned to work, noisily tapping at my typewriter to draw attention to the fact that I was in the office between Christmas and New Year. No one was very interested.

Five orange kittens rolled across the kitchen floor. Patrick nudged one on to the toe of his boot. ‘Catch!' he called to Flook, day-dreaming by the Aga.

‘No, Daddy,' Va Va screamed, too late. The kitten was airborne, legs and tail spread wide like a star as it somersaulted towards Flook. Patrick laughed maniacally. Flook reached to catch it, but the kitten slipped through his fingers and landed on the Aga. It squealed, tinny and barbed with terror, then jumped down, scuttling sideways like a crab to hide under the dresser. The room smelt of singed fur, acrid and nauseating. Flook lay by the dresser, trawling his arms against the back wall, searching for the kitten. Va Va ran to Patrick, hitting him and screaming. Patrick was speechless. He tried to put his arms around her but she pushed him away. ‘It's all right. My love, I am sorry, believe me.' His voice was cowed and pleading.

Her nose ran. ‘I'll tell the RSPCA,' she screeched. Flook, cradling the now purring kitten, yelled too. Eleanor came in. Va Va opened her mouth to tell her what had happened but the words gagged. She could not say, ‘Daddy hurt the kitten.' Patrick explained, halting and ashamed, like a child. Eleanor
hugged Va Va and Flook. ‘Darlings, the kitten is fine. Why don't you get him some milk? Daddy was very wrong to kick him, but it was entirely, entirely an accident that he hurt the kitten. Will you give him a kiss and let him say sorry?'