Prudence (21 page)

‘But they’re old,’ I said, removing Antonia Fraser who was thoughtfully licking crab paste off the bridge rolls, ‘and they all loved Elizabeth.’

Crash came the pestle down on the poor lentils.

‘That marriage’d have come unstuck anyway.’

‘Rubbish,’ I said furiously. ‘He adored her. Everyone says so.’

‘He’d never have achieved his full potential married to her. He’d have got bored.’

‘Because she wasn’t a woman of substance,’ I said sourly. ‘I suppose you would have found her a little
ordinaire
.’

Berenice’s face suddenly took on the unarresting personality of a stopped clock. ‘God rest you merry gentlemen,’ sang the wireless.

I escaped from the kitchen before I wrung her deeply tanned neck.

Lucasta met me in the hall. ‘Very bad news,’ she said. ‘Coleridge has been sick three times on the stairs, and there’s bits of leather in it.’

‘Oh God!’

From a cursory examination of the stairs it was quite obvious that Coleridge had regurgitated a good deal of chewed-up Hermes belt.

‘Shall I tell Berenice?’ asked Lucasta happily.

‘God no,’ I said. ‘Do you want Coleridge put in an Old Setters’ Home?’

‘Don’t look so sad,’ said Lucasta to me as I mopped away with a Jay cloth and disinfectant. She put her arm round my shoulders.

‘You may not be very clever,’ she said, ‘but you’re very good at wiping up sick.’

At that moment Rose came down the stairs, carrying a suitcase. She looked very crestfallen. In fact her crest was positively round her ankles.

‘Beastly, beastly weather,’ she said.

‘You’re not going away, Granny?’ said Lucasta.

‘No darling, I’m going to have lunch and a nice hot bath at Professor Copeland’s and change into something pretty for your party. Where is she?’ she whispered, looking round nervously.

‘Making health food canapés in the kitchen.’

Rose shuddered. ‘She keeps trying to interest me in yoga.’

‘She thinks her navel is the centre of the universe.’

‘I used to think naval officers were the centre of mine,’ said Rose sadly.

There still seemed to be an awful lot to do. Hiding the going-away presents in a special drawer, putting cream in the meringues, hanging doughnuts on pieces of string, on a clothes line across the drawing-room. The child that finished its doughnut first, eating with its hands behind its back, would be awarded a prize. It was an excellent ice-breaker, said Berenice. I drew a donkey for people to pin a tail on. Berenice did an incredibly neat parcel for Pass-the-Parcel, using string instead of Sellotape. The snow was getting thicker, blanketing everything. I hoped Ace was getting on all right. Finally the man came to mend the central heating.

Maggie came down an hour before the party was due to start, poured herself a large drink, and balefully surveyed the platefuls of food in the kitchen.

‘It looks like the planet of the Canapés,’ she said.

Berenice’s lips tightened at such ‘unsupportive’ behaviour, but she merely extracted the Vim from the cupboard under the sink and went towards the door.

‘Where are you going?’ said Lucasta.

‘To have a bath,’ said Berenice grimly.

‘Gosh, you
must
be dirty!’

‘This is to clean the bath before I get into it.’

I had hoped to have a bath too and change, but Berenice pinched all the hot water, and at the end there was a terrible rush, what with trying to find some candle holders for Lucasta’s cake and getting her dressed and doing her hair. Sting was pounding away in an empty drawing-room. I had only one eye made up when the doorbell rang. It was a mother, twenty minutes early.

‘Awfully sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know how much time to leave because of the snow.’

And in no time the hall seemed to be full of Sophies, Pollys, Emilies and Katies, milling round in their long party dresses like coloured butterflies, watching Lucasta — the most ravishing of all in her black velvet catsuit — tearing open her presents. I was charging round like a scalded cat telling mothers where to put their coats, trying to open bottles of Entre Deux Mers, answering the door and keeping the dogs off the food. Where the hell was everyone?

Then there was that terrible lull when half the children had arrived and you didn’t know whether to start a game or not. None of the children were Lucasta’s special friends, because the party wasn’t being given at her own home, but just offspring of various local friends of the Mulhollands, so they were all very shy to begin with and stood around gazing at each other.

Very done up mothers and nannies wandered round looking disappointed and saying, ‘We expected Ace, or at least Jack to be here.’

‘They’re coming later,’ I said.

I charged upstairs. I found Maggie on the telephone in Rose’s room. ‘All right my sweetheart,’ she was saying huskily, ‘I’ll call you later.’ She blushed absolutely scarlet when she saw me standing in the doorway, and slammed down the receiver.

‘Please come down and help,’ I wailed. ‘I can’t do everything.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ she said, following me downstairs.

‘Just shepherd them into the drawing-room, and start the children on the doughnut-eating race. The winner gets a wrapped-up prize. They’re in the drawer of the sideboard. Oh God, there’s the doorbell.’

It was a glamorous but rather grubby brunette in a sheepskin coat.

‘Hi. I’m Delphinium,’ she said vaguely. ‘I brought Damian and Midas,’ pointing to two very beautiful long-haired boys, one blond, one dark, who nearly knocked me sideways as they charged past me into the drawing-room.

‘I left Lucasta’s present behind,’ she said, drifting after them. ‘Can I help myself to a drink? I know where it’s kept.’

The Muppet Show record had succeeded Sting on the gramophone as Maggie came back into the hall.

‘Hi, Delphinium,’ she said, then turning to me, ‘I’m afraid Coleridge and Wordsworth have got into the drawing-room and eaten half the doughnuts. They’ve gone really wild today.’

It was all too much. I started to giggle helplessly.

‘It’s because they can’t verbalize their feelings,’ I said. ‘I guess they’re getting negative vibes from a certain person, and they’re just overreacting. Oh well, we’d better play Pass-the-Parcel.’

That wasn’t much of a success either, because Berenice had done up the knots so beautifully no one could undo them. So we played musical bumps. But so many children had perfected the lightning descent, they kept dead-heating, and the ones already out, who included Damian and Midas, got bored and started a punch-up.

A diversion was created by the doorbell, and the arrival of Jason, a sickly looking child in a green velvet suit, who turned out to be the sworn enemy of Damian and Midas.

‘Oh bugger,’ said Lucasta, tearing open Jason’s present, ‘another boring flower press.’

At that moment, Berenice chose to make her entrance, wearing a rust shirt, tan boots, and a black skirt with a slit up the front. Her newly washed hair gleamed — no wonder there wasn’t any hot water left for me. She looked a million dollars and extremely irritated.

‘You haven’t seen my Hermes belt have you, Prudence?’

‘Who wants to stick the tail on the donkey?’ I shouted.

The fun became more fast and furious. Rose arrived with Professor Copeland. Several fathers rolled up, and a man to deliver some garden furniture.

‘It’s my special offer,’ said Rose excitedly. ‘We must hide it in the cellar before Ace arrives.’ Berenice had decided to give up grumbling about her belt and had found a soulmate in Delphinium.

‘It’s hard to keep your mind alive when you spend your time with people three feet high,’ she was saying.

I looked at my watch. It was five o’clock and the conjuror was quarter of an hour late. I mopped my brow; we’d have to eat soon.

There was a howl as Damian, whose blindfold seemed to have slipped, plunged the donkey’s tail into Professor Copeland’s bottom. Midas was hitting Jason over the head with a tennis racket still in its press.

‘I shouldn’t engage in that form of activity if I were you, Midas,’ said Delphinium.

‘It’s amazing,’ said Berenice, ‘the way children work out their hostility if you don’t interfere with their natural instincts.’

Five-fifteen, still no conjuror. I shepherded all the children into the kitchen for tea.

‘What’s this crap?’ said Damian, picking up a piece of carrot cake and hurling it at Jason.

‘Crap,’ said Midas, picking up a soya bean canapé and hurling it at Antonia Fraser.

Two of the Pollys or Emilies or Sophies started to cry.

‘Aren’t they a nightmare?’ said Maggie, putting her head round the door.

‘Why doesn’t Delphinium do anything to control them?’ I said in desperation.

‘She lives in a commune on the other side of Windermere. I don’t think she’s very into discipline. Their father commutes to London in a Ferrari,’ said Maggie.

The conjuror, a pouf with brushed forward hair, finally arrived gibbering with guilt and ill temper at 5.30. Talk about the panic stations of the extremely cross. ‘The roads are simply atrocious. I’d like to get started straight away,’ he said.

And by some miracle, five minutes later he had all the children sitting spellbound at his feet in the study, and pigeons coming out of his sleeve.

Phew: Blissful relief! The grown-ups were having a rip-roaring party in the drawing-room; everyone was well away. I was just pouring myself and Mrs Braddock a drink when the doorbell rang yet again.

‘I always read Rod McKuen to my potted plants,’ Berenice was saying.

As no one was obviously going to move, I went to answer the door.

It was another mother. She had bruised eyes, ash blonde hair and the startled look of a race horse. She was also vaguely familiar.

‘Hullo,’ she said nervously. ‘Is it all right if I come in?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘If you’ve come to collect, I’m afraid we’re running behind schedule. The conjuror arrived late, but the grown-ups are having a terrific party in the drawing-room. You know what the Mulhollands are like!’

She smiled. ‘Only too well! I’m Fay.’

I swallowed. ‘Oh, my goodness. I’m Pru.’ What on earth was Maggie going to say?

‘Lucasta’s talked about you on the telephone,’ she said. ‘You’ve been so kind to her. Are you sure it’s all right my coming?’

She was so friendly, you couldn’t not like her.

‘Of course it is. How was the play?’

‘It was good,’ she said, taking off a rather worn fur coat. ‘I had a nice director, I think he’ll give me more work. Has Lucasta had a nice birthday?’

‘Sensational,’ I shouted over the party roar as we passed at the drawing-room door.

‘Gosh, I’m nervous of going in there,’ said Fay.

She needn’t have been. Rose gave a shriek of excitement and fell on her neck.

‘Darling, darling Fay,’ she cried. ‘How lovely to see you! You shouldn’t have stayed away so long, and how ravishing you look. You’ve lost so much weight. How lovely. James! Berenice! Delphinium! This is Fay, Jack’s first wife, and Lucasta’s mother.’

Everyone crowded round Fay, saying how nice it was to see her again.

‘I’m Ivan’s permanent commitment,’ I heard Berenice saying.

Suddenly I caught a glimpse of Maggie’s face through the throng. I felt sick; she looked absolutely crucified. I was about to fight my way through to her when I heard a scream. In the hall I found the conjuror in floods of tears.

‘They’re the worst lot of kids I’ve ever had to deal with. They’re little monsters. That Damian tried to send one of my pigeons up the chimney with a message for Santa Claus and singed all its feathers.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘I can’t go on.’

‘Oh please,’ I said. ‘You were booked for an hour. Have a strong drink and another go.’

‘I don’t drink,’ sobbed the conjuror, ‘and you need a bodyguard for that lot. Leave that rabbit alone, you little sod,’ he screamed, rushing back into the study.

Jack was next to arrive. He was in a good temper. He’d pulled off a terrific deal with the Americans.

‘Maggie and I can spend Christmas in Bermuda if we want to.’

‘I’m not sure
she’ll
want to,’ I said, ‘Fay’s in the drawing-room, being fêted by everyone.’

Jack’s face lit up: ‘Fay is? Isn’t she great? I must go and say hullo.’

Damian burst out of the study and ran yelling down the passage towards the kitchen.

‘Beautiful child, isn’t he?’ I said sourly.

‘Probably mine,’ said Jack.

‘He’s a monster,’ I protested. ‘He belongs to someone called Delphinium.’

Jack laughed. ‘Then he’s definitely mine.’

He smoothed his hair in the hall mirror, straightened his tie, and fought his way into the drawing-room.

‘Look who’s here, Jack darling,’ I heard Rose shriek. ‘It’s darling Fay. Doesn’t she look beautiful?’

The next moment Maggie came out of the room. I caught a glimpse of her white stricken face as she fled upstairs.

After that the party got completely out of hand. The children came screaming out of the study, followed by the conjuror still in tears.

‘I want my money,’ he said, ‘and I’m going.’

No one of course had any cash. Jack had an Irish 50p, and Berenice had travellers’ cheques, and the conjuror wouldn’t take an ordinary cheque.

‘I want cash on delivery,’ he said, firmly sitting down on his trunk of magic. ‘I don’t trust that lot in there not to bounce cheques, and I’m going to wait until I get it.’

I could just have paid him myself but I wanted to keep enough cash for my fare back to London — just in case.

In the drawing-room Jack was chatting to Fay, one hand holding a drink, the other lying along the sofa behind her head. He looked the picture of handsome relaxed contentment.