Muriel's Reign (3 page)

Leaving Cleopatra asleep in Peter’s study and wishing that grandmotherly sentiments hadn’t eluded her, Muriel went to the front door to find Monopoly. She always experienced the same fear when she did this; the fear that Monopoly, on an unexplained whim, might have gone to the squash court in search of Hugh, his old master.

Monopoly, however, bounded towards her and she dismissed the perfect image in her mind of a smiling granddaughter in a party frock, placed before her by doting parents who raced to reclaim her.

As she let the dog in she spied a fellow on a motorbike whizzing down the drive and knew, too late, that he had pinched the money left out as Christmas box for the paper boy. She had drawn a bit of holly on the corner of the envelope.

There was much to think about. Phyllis took an age to return from delivering Hugh’s parcel of jam and honey even if, earlier, she had complained of being run off her feet.

Muriel wasn’t yet certain as to where Phyllis’s duties lay. She knew she opened and closed the shutters morning
and evening, waved her arms about and talked of preparing rooms – although there were other, younger, girls who did the donkey work.

She was disappointed that her good American friend, David, had been unable to come for Christmas too. She had invited him, knowing it to be a risk, since his conversation was often unedited and louche. Nonetheless he was lively, she was devoted to him and he had pronounced her new life – the house – her domestic arrangement with Peter and everything connected with it – to be sensational. At the start he had accepted to come but later telephoned to say he was unwell and that he was writing to explain himself.

Muriel had spotted an old navy blue pram in the tack room. It was set on high springs and was double-ended with a well in the middle. She prayed that there would never be need for more than one of the ends. The fabric in the hoods was tattered but it was something to pop Cleopatra into. Marco and Flavia hadn’t invested in anything useful and Muriel knew that, soon, she must find a solution but knew nothing of local shops for perambulators. She wanted Phyllis to sort it out. Immediately.

Phyllis did reappear as Joyce and Eric, both furious, lurched into the hall with a vast Christmas tree and wanted to know where it was to be placed.

Flushed and gesticulating, Phyllis said, ‘Stopped to
give Mr Cottle a bit of a tidy and he made me a cup of coffee. Nescafe, that is to say.’

‘I want that old pram in the tack room to be cleaned up and we must see to the rooms.’

As she spoke she hoped that Cleopatra was still unconscious in Peter’s study.

Phyllis ignored the request to restore the pram but brightened at the talk of rooms. Rooms for royalty. The Queen Mother, Princess Matilda, Cunty and Farty. Moggan in the attic up amongst antlers and Phyllis. There was no danger there concerning Phyllis for Moggan was ‘not the marrying kind’.

‘Will it be two chamber pots? I know the Princess has need of one but what about her mother?’

Muriel guessed that Queen Elizabeth wore padding but said, ‘No. One. One will be enough.’

It was exciting in the bedrooms. They started with that of Queen Elizabeth. A small fridge had been delivered, put in a corner of the room and stacked with liquid refreshment for both her and the Princess. Cunty’s room was next door and Muriel asked Phyllis to find a bucket with a lid on it; requested by Cunty for the padding. Muriel didn’t enlarge on its use. They made sure that the chamber pot, decorated in roses, was near the bed in Mambles’s room. That was one thing that Mambles flatly refused to do – to travel on foot during the night.

Their stay was not necessarily to be a long one although they never told in advance of the exact number of days they planned on. Cut winter flowers were unlikely to survive for more than a few hours with the heating turned up high so pot plants, furnished with weird water-dribbling contraptions recommended by Dulcie, flourished in both rooms. Dulcie had read of these odd objects in one of her weekly editions of
Fur and Feathers
although they were actually intended to water baby chicks.

When everything was regally prepared Muriel and Phyllis returned to the hall – Muriel pausing to listen at Peter’s study door where all was silent and remembering to mention to anyone concerned that Farty was unable to drink any milk other than goat’s.

She returned to the subject of the pram and Phyllis, with rotten grace, replied, ‘All right then. It’s in shreds. Seems a shame. You’d have thought …’

Lizzie’s room was ready too. Muriel strained to add touches equal to those of Mambles and her mother (barring chamber pot) for fear of Lizzie’s comparisons. She was certain to snoop upon arriving, as she was due to do, before the others. She had already telephoned three times that morning – twice about the time of her train arrival and once about clothes – ‘What sort of evening dresses should I bring to keep my end up with your smart friends?’

Muriel was planning her next move when Flavia crept up on her; startlingly dressed and carrying a tin of baby food and a bottle.

‘I’ve had a squizz in the study and Peter’s doing fine. Cleopatra’s still asleep. I knew she wouldn’t be any trouble. Be a chick and give her these when she wakes up. Me and Marco are off to join Tommy Tiddler at the pub. Good old Gran.’

Flavia, Muriel noticed, had started to take a morbid interest in clothes. Her outfits had become showier and more expensive-looking as though to prove that, in spite of living in a barn in her mother-in-law’s garden and of having produced a baby, she could still hold her own in a more sophisticated world; that she had in no way been diminished by country air. Clothes were transformed into armour.

Lizzie was likely to sense competition and to stiffen at being sartorially outdone – even by one many years her junior.

Muriel had no idea what to do. She was near to trembling and cross. She took the tin and the bottle and said, ‘Okay, Flav, but come straight back and take her for a walk. I’m having an old pram cleaned and I’ll get you a new one after Christmas.’

‘Straight back? We’ll probably have a bit of fodder while we’re there.’

She pirouetted elegantly and ran off saying, ‘Can’t wait. Marco’s hooting his horn.’

Muriel screamed, ‘I’ll push her round at three o’clock.’

‘Don’t worry. We’ll fetch her when we’re through.’

When Muriel went to Peter’s study Cleopatra was writhing; ready to wake and livid. She lifted the smelly child from the pen, glared at the tins of baby food left by Flavia and looked at her watch. It was only midday.

Kitty, the angelic cook, knocked on the door.

‘You can’t go feeding her that, Mrs Cottle. I’ll mash her up some chicken and potato – and greens when you and Mr Peter have your lunch. I’ve got Gemma and Lara with me this morning in the kitchen. We’ll take her over to the barn and get her cleaned up – and dressed. They always leave the door ajar.’

When Muriel had put another note into another envelope and drawn another bit of holly and placed it on the door handle, she realised that the paper boy had already called and left empty-handed.

She and Peter went to the small table in the
dining-room
window and found that Kitty had wedged an old wooden high chair between the places where they were to sit. Kitty reappeared followed by thrilled Gemma and Lara – hair in Kirby grips, carrying a glowing Cleopatra. It hit her. The sensation she had yearned for. A grandmotherly glow as Cleopatra gave her a heavenly
smile. Kitty said, ‘It took a while to get her scrubbed up. Gemma found the frock; still in its wrapping since you brought it back from London.’

Cleopatra ate some of the chicken and vegetables and threw some around the room; spattering silver and glass. Muriel’s grandmotherly glow lasted less than an hour after which she began to long for Marco and Flavia’s return and resolved to be firm.

Lizzie was due to arrive in the evening and doubtless expected her quarters to match the comforts of other visitors; barring chamber pots, lidded buckets and alcohol. She told Muriel, earlier by telephone, ‘Don’t worry a scrap about me in your grand house with your grand guests.’ Muriel loathed the word ‘grand’.

‘I’ll have a very heavy suitcase. Masses of clothes, of course. As you know the only thing I can’t stand is cold. I get physically ill when I’m cold. Actually sick.’

No sign of Marco or Flavia and Muriel became frantic. She swallowed her prejudices and decided to dump the baby on Hugh; playpen too.

Cleopatra, even when writhing and flailing, was transportable in Muriel’s arms – across the yard and down a path to the squash court although it was windy and wet. The playpen, she decided, must be delivered later and left forever in Hugh’s charge.

Eric and Joyce, her main and disliked outdoor helpers,
claimed to be occupied with wreaths and holly – worthy of a Queen or, at any rate, her mother. Later they must be urged to move the pen. She wrapped a woolly coat round Cleopatra. Kitty had fished it out from the muddle in the barn for Flavia had delivered her coatless.

Hugh was practising the flute when Muriel and Cleopatra charged in without knocking. Not far from where he stood in front of the music stand, a game of patience was laid out on a card table – sighing signal of solitude. Muriel was fairly certain that the game had not progressed since the last time she had popped in with a wastepaper basket.

‘Goodness me, Muriel.’ He cleared his throat and put the flute to one side. ‘What a pleasant event. A visit from you and our lovely granddaughter.’ He spoke in a voice of reverence and looked tenderly at them as he encouraged his eyes to brim. ‘Next time perhaps you could bring Monopoly.’

Muriel, desperate to leave them to it and to get on with preparations, said, ‘I can only stop for a moment Hugh but I hope you will be able to look after Cleopatra until Marco and Flavia get back from a jaunt to the pub.’

Hugh, thunderstruck, decided to take his chance, to stake his claim, to show grandparental responsibility and involvement.

‘Of course. Come little one. I’ll teach her to play the flute and, er, bond.’

Filled with doubts and some regrets, Muriel fled to the warmth of Peter’s study and related all to his amusement. She was relieved that they were close and together as they discussed the forlorn enterprise of entertaining – the dimness and uncertainty involved in aiming to be hospitable. She felt, she told Peter, that her past was never to be over and that their future together was shapeless. Peter was having none of it and explained, very patiently and to her satisfaction, that they were happy. She knelt beside him and he held his hand heavily on her head. She liked the weight of it.

An extra Christmas post had brought a letter from her friend David explaining in more detail his last-minute refusal to be with them all.

‘Darling Muriel. I had bought gifts for everyone, very special gifts, but, oh, I so regret I shan’t be able to give them round, all of you gathered about what I imagine, in the full fantastic flush of my imagination, a Christmas tree in the grand hall rising to the high Elizabethan beams, scintillating with gaudy ornaments and twinkling lights. And then Christmas luncheon in the dining room with its wainscoting so attractively warped with age, the great roasted turkey served on a massive serving dish (in America, platter, an old English word preserved in the still devoted ex-colony) surrounded by holly and mistletoe. HRH delighting in eating a whole leg? Up the ancient wooden stairs, the treads at picturesque angles and the newel posts worn from centuries of palsied hands clutching at them for support. I could go on and on, and do in fantasy, a fantasy I so wish I could realise in fact, but, my darling Muriel, I am not well, not at all well, with, I
think, the Spanish flu, perhaps the very, very last in the world to suffer from that epidemic, once thought eradicated, but caught by me in a rather louche way in a rather remote part of the world, where the Spanish flu is said to have come back among the young attractive natives.

You are wonderfully aware of how much your invitations mean to me, I, an American trying to learn the ways of the British, which passport I am so proud to say I have been honoured with – though I must say I am puzzled, for my passport identifies me as a British citizen, not a subject. Has the United Kingdom become a republic without the royals knowing?’

She was sorry about the Spanish flu and not to be seeing him. David did so appreciate the marvels of the house. Few of her visitors or dependants appeared to have noticed anything very special about it although Peter, with high enthusiasm, often made her describe every cranny to him in detail.

Flavia, followed by an unsteady Marco, floundered into the hall where the Christmas tree had been installed and where piles of cut holly lay on plastic sheeting ready to decorate pictures and clocks. It was clear to Muriel as she walked down the stairs, having again checked on Lizzie’s bedroom, that both Marco and Flavia were very drunk. She wondered which of the two had driven the car back from the pub.

‘Hi Ma,’ Marco, wearing a fixed grin, held tight to the stair rail as he waited for his mother to reach the bottom step. ‘Getting ready for royalty? Is your show on the road?’

They both smoked cigarettes and seemed anxious to cover tracks; to divert attention from their absenteeism.

‘Great fodder at The Bell. That Tommy Tiddler is a scream. Had us all in fits. I had to warn him not to do his imitation of the Queen Mother on Boxing Day as she’ll be here in person. He thought I was kidding.’

He lurched and Flavia took over. ‘Where’s Cleopatra? Can you be a chick and continue the love-in with your granddaughter a bit longer? We need a nap. Touch of flu.’

They both teetered.

Muriel told them that they would find their small daughter learning to play the flute with her grandfather in the squash court and advised them to fetch her on their way home.

Marco smiled stupidly and said, ‘Steady on, Ma. We need a bit of shut-eye. Good on you, though, for sharing grandparental responsibility with Pa.’

Muriel objected to the word ‘responsibility’ and rage mounted as she begged her son, beloved but confusing, and his pretty, dressy, drunk and feckless wife to retrieve their child.

Phyllis, who loved tinsel, began to decorate the tree. Outside it was wet and windy and darkness settled early. Muriel fretted that the heating was not turned up to the right temperature and wished she understood the system – reluctant to ask advice from anyone about anything.

She turned to the handsome staircase. Worth checking just once more on Lizzie’s room. As she trod on the third step there was a soft click and the electricity went off. Only dim light, losing force by the second, came from various windows. The house had lately been rewired and she was indignant. Peter, who had heard her exclaim, called her.

‘Come in here, Muriel, before it gets dark. My study. There’s a good fire banked up. We can do a bit of chatting as we wait for developments. Lizzie will make a meal of it. I daresay the telephone’s off too by the way and radiators will soon start to cool.’

There had been a strong wind and Peter guessed that a fallen tree had dislocated not only the lights but also the telephone.

She joined him and wondered about the Aga and if it was fired electrically. Water too. Did Kitty, for instance, have any backup in the kitchen? She was not due to come in until later. What of the squash court? Hugh floundering with the flute and the baby. No way, presumably, of heating up his ‘dinner for one’.

Peter was musing. ‘Too late to put them off I fear. They’ll have to lump it. Might do them good – not that we want Mummy to croak from hypothermia and cause a scene.’

‘Peter. Please. And Lizzie. Christ!’

The house was getting colder and Lizzie’s train had already left a London station. No television either and Lizzie withered without a diet of ‘soaps’.

Muriel suddenly noticed that a foul and continuous wail came from somewhere near the front door. A shrill bleep. Peter said, ‘That’ll be the burglar alarm.’ One had recently been installed. ‘I think we’ll have to put up with that noise until the power comes back or, at any rate, until the battery gives out.’

A purse-lipped Phyllis came in carrying two candles and with a torch tucked under one arm. She was followed by Dulcie who was wrapped in vast outer garments, and in a towering rage. She charged into the study and shouted against the noise of the alarm. ‘Two trees down. Goodness only knows when they will be seen to. Lines will be jammed I daresay. Not that we can phone from here. And you’d better unplug that Braille machine of yours.’ She glared at Peter who saw nothing. ‘It’ll explode when the lights come on again – that is if they do this side of Christmas.’

Her bifocals glittered in the firelight as she prepared to
plunge further. ‘I’ve got gas in the van so the cats are all right. That is to say that Corin, my Burmese, is suffering from asthma. Other than that someone’s been bloody stupid. Fancy not getting that old generator repaired when they did all those fancy bits round here. I once worked in an architects’ (she pronounced the word as it was spelled) office and I know what bloody idiots they all are – including that damned imbecile you had to help, if that’s the word, with your alterations. I will not say “improvements”.’

Dulcie had worn herself out and sat glowering on an armchair as daylight faded.

Joyce had been detailed to fetch Lizzie from the station and Muriel began to get nervy, apprehensive and infuriated. The wail from the alarm continued as she floundered in a hinterland of unwanted consequences.