Relative Love (31 page)

Pamela fed Chloë and Roland at six o’clock, it having been decided that the older children could stay up to eat with their parents. Chloë, sticking sausages into a frothy mountain of mashed potato, said it was unfair, but only as a token gesture. For one thing she was starving, and for another Roland was two years older than her, which made it seem more okay. They had also had a surprisingly interesting time with the redoubtable Jessica, first tunnelling through Sid’s fresh tower of grass cuttings by the vegetable garden, then spying on Theo showing Clem how to work his camera. He had a new big microphone, which Clem had to hold at different angles and which was pretty boring to watch until Jessica livened everything up by saying that maybe they were in love with each other. Roland said cousins weren’t allowed to love each other, but it still made Chloë feel quite grown-up to think about it. Spying a little later on the grown-ups arriving in cars from London, she cast a sidelong glance at Roland, wondering if she might ever be in danger of loving
him
. But he looked so ugly, with bits of sleep in his eyes and a big red patch above his lips where he kept licking the drip from his nose, that she felt quite safe. Charlie and Serena were the first to arrive. Crouching behind a big bush with yellow flowers on it, the three children watched the car roll slowly down the drive. Roland pretended to fire shots using a big branch as a gun, while Jessica threw little stones under the path of the wheels. Their aunt and uncle, gratifyingly oblivious to these assaults, stared straight ahead, then sat in the car for what seemed like ages before getting out. Then Roland’s dad arrived, bouncing in his big green car at a much faster speed and Roland put down his branch and said they really ought to go inside.

The goose was huge and perfect with dark crispy skin and textured succulent meat. Pamela placed the dish in front of John for carving, feeling the customary thrill of satisfaction at the sight of the family ranged round the handsome table, their faces and plates shining under the flickering light of the candelabra. They were more subdued than usual, of course. It was only natural. The last time they had all been assembled little Tina had still been with them. Such a shocking loss. Pamela felt her heart quicken. But they were recovering she reminded herself. All of them, in their different ways, were getting over it. Breathing more calmly, she settled into her seat and began to discuss the party with Peter, telling him about the quote from the marquee people and the list of B&Bs she had drawn up for guests wanting to stay the night. Helen joined in, talking about the invitations and saying Peter was thinking of making the dress code white tie and tails,
because it was such a milestone of a birthday. Charlie, catching this, laughed loudly, saying thank God he’d lost a bit of weight because his set of whites was thirty years old. ‘And probably demolished by moths – it’s an age since I’ve worn them. When was it, Serena?’

‘Summer ball. Hurlingham 1991 – with Jake and Patty Taylor,’ Serena replied, without so much as a blink of hesitation. She speared a broad bean and popped it into her mouth, glad to have been offered the chance to say something so easy, something that made it look as if she was firing on all cylinders, when in fact there was only a splutter inside. The events of the previous night, Charlie, her gentle, lovely Charlie, pushing into her, not making love, but fucking her, injecting her with his desperation, were still raw. She had woken early and left him in bed while she occupied herself with mindless chores. Then he had gone running, not for his usual twenty minutes but for two hours, returning grey-faced, his tracksuit drenched. They had made the journey to Ashley House in silence, too much to be said to utter a word.

‘Then you’ll have to hire an outfit like the rest of us,’ quipped Colin, smiling, but thinking how typical this conversation was of his wife’s family and how utterly pretentious Peter was to insist on something so sartorially extravagant.

‘Black tie would be easier,’ ventured Elizabeth, detecting the edge in her husband’s tone. Recently the kindness had been slipping again and she was desperate to get it back. ‘What about you, Helen, what are you going to wear?’ She looked a little wistfully at her sister-in-law, noting that there was something subtly different about her appearance: pretty pearl pendants dangled from her ear-lobes and her hair was falling into her eyes, without its usual angular lines.

‘I bought something yesterday, actually.’

‘Did you?’ Peter looked in some astonishment at his wife. His drink with Hannah had turned into a couple of bottles and he had a headache. ‘You never said.’

‘Could I interrupt these proceedings …’ John chinked his glass with a knife and stood up ‘… to say a few words?’

Silence fell at once. Serena dropped her gaze to her lap, her mouth dry. He would say something about Tina and she wasn’t sure she could bear it. Yet she wanted him to so badly. Part of her wanted all of them to talk about Tina all the time, both to acknowledge her own pain and because talking about stupid things like what to wear at parties felt like betrayal, as if they’d all forgotten already and didn’t care.

‘Can I film you, Granddad?’

‘Oh, honestly, Theo, not now.’ Peter glared at his son who blushed violently.

‘I think, maybe Daddy’s right, Theo darling,’ began Pamela, but John interrupted her, saying, why on earth not as it was an important family occasion but could he be quick about it. Theo caught Clem’s eye and the pair of them rushed to fetch the camera and microphone, both exuberant, Theo because it would be a brilliant addition to his family documentary and Clem because it allowed her to leave her half-touched plate of food. Not eating was so much easier at home. At Ashley House meals were so much more of an event, with huge dishes of home-grown delicacies from the kitchen garden and Pamela in particular observing and commenting on everybody’s capacity to do justice to them. After her grandfather had put three fat slabs of meat on her plate, Clem had watched with mounting horror as her father ladled three roast potatoes next to them, then held the plate out to her aunt Elizabeth (who always ate huge amounts), for mountainous helpings of carrots and broad beans. It had taken every ounce of willpower to eat one piece of meat, half a potato and three carrots. After that she focused on dissecting the beans, pressing the chewy outer skin with her fork till the little green hearts inside spurted free. These she had then herded one by one towards a growing pile of chopped meat and potato. Even so,
standing as Theo instructed, with the microphone level and to one side of her grandfather, she was aware of her stomach, ugly and bulging against the waistband of her trousers.

John cleared his throat, his face sombre, his heart proud. He glanced at Theo and winked. ‘Ready?’

His grandson nodded eagerly and pressed the button to record. He didn’t have that much film left. He would finish off tomorrow, then have a grand viewing for all the family on Sunday. It had been Clem’s idea and he had to confess it was rather a good one. They were going to set up rows of chairs in the TV room, like in a real cinema, and charge for entry.

‘It is, as ever, wonderful to have you all with us. I can’t tell you how much it means to Pamela and me, isn’t that right, darling?’

Pamela nodded, wondering what he was going to say next and hoping it wouldn’t be too sentimental because there was an air of uneasy expectancy round the table.

‘I wanted to propose a toast, first to the family and, second, to … to absent friends.’

For a long moment no one spoke. Eventually it was Peter who led the way, booming, ‘Absent friends,’ and chinking glasses with Elizabeth, which promptly caused the rest of the family to follow suit. John took a heavy swig of wine, then continued with the announcement that because life was short and unpredictable he had decided to advance to each of his four children the sum of twenty thousand pounds. ‘If I can work my way through a few complicated loop-holes, like not dying for a few more years, it will mean considerably less for the taxman when I’m gone.’ Gasps of appreciation rippled round the table. Cassie leapt from her seat to kiss her father, followed closely by Elizabeth, then Peter and Charlie, who offered him warm handshakes.

‘And now I believe we have a choice of lemon meringue pie or rhubarb crumble.’

There was a rush to clear the plates. Serena joined in, but mechanically, trying to feel glad about the money, but thinking only of the toast.
Absent friends
. Not even her name. He was like Charlie, they all were – so eager, so able, to be
normal
that she hated them.
Hated
them. In the flurry between courses Clem, meanwhile, managed to slip up to the bathroom on the top floor, where, with the aid of a toothbrush, she ejected the goose and vegetables into the lavatory. It felt horrible at the time, but fantastic afterwards.

After dinner the children were ushered up to bed, closely followed by Serena, Cassie and Helen, each for different reasons seeking the let-off of an early night. Elizabeth helped her mother wash the coffee-cups and saucers (the only survivors of a hand-painted set of crockery that had belonged to Edmund and Violet), while the men retreated with brandy to the drawing room.

‘Mum?’

‘Yes, Lizzy?’ Elizabeth was washing and Pamela was drying, arranging the glass-thin treasures on a tray for storage in a special cupboard in the pantry.

‘I hope you don’t mind but Serena told me about your … about …’

‘Miranda? Yes, I know. She warned me she had.’ Pamela picked at a speck on the edge of one of the saucers, then rubbed hard with the cloth. ‘I thought you might mention it.’

‘I just … I was a bit surprised that you had never told us,’ faltered Elizabeth, a little put out both at having her question anticipated and the breeziness of her mother’s tone.

‘That’s because there was nothing to tell. It was a miscarriage, that’s all. What would have been a little girl. Between you and Peter. Such a fuss is made about these things now, but really it’s
very
common and in those days one was encouraged – quite rightly, in my view – simply to forget about it and get on. There.’ She put the saucer down. ‘Is this the last?’

‘Six months.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The … Miranda – Serena said she was six months old.’

‘Twenty-eight weeks. There.’ Pamela stood back to admire the cups and saucers. ‘I am
so
fond of these.’

‘Golly. These days that would be a stillbirth not a miscarriage. There’d be a death certificate, a funeral and everything.’

‘Elizabeth.’ Pamela’s voice was sharp. ‘Really, darling, do you have to be so morbid? I only told Serena because I thought it might in some small way make her feel less alone in her ordeal. What happened to me was far less traumatic in every conceivable way. Now, would you carry this tray for me? I’m feeling rather tired.’

Whereupon Elizabeth, still somewhat preoccupied by their conversation, missed the infamous step down into the pantry and fell forwards, pitching the stack of cups and saucers ahead of her. They flew, little white birds with handle wings, in one beautiful instant of silent symmetry before crashing against the hard tiles of the wall and floor.

‘Oh, Elizabeth – so clumsy, oh, really.’ Pamela was in tears. The men came running, their eyes glazed with brandy, their voices ringing with concern. ‘Oh, really, of all things to break – Elizabeth, how could you?’

‘It was an accident,’ Elizabeth muttered, standing helplessly, close to tears too, while the men rushed round with brushes and dustpans. ‘I’m sorry, Mum, it was an accident.’

‘Of course it was,’ interjected John smoothly, putting his arm round Pamela and steering her towards the door. ‘Come on, now, bedtime. We’re all tired.’

Colin followed them, while Peter and Charlie returned to the remains of their brandy and a meandering conversation that covered their father’s unexpected gift, their sister’s predilection for clumsiness, Peter’s recent victory and the new challenges of Charlie’s job. Of more emotional matters – grief, marital stresses – they made no mention. Peter, who had let off a little of his own steam to his friend Hannah on such subjects, felt little inclination to either unburden himself to his brother or press him on anything he didn’t wish to discuss. Charlie, meanwhile, new to the agonies of shame and despair, preferred to keep their torturous intricacies to himself. The talk was consoling, though, for both of them. Stretched out in his father’s weathered leather armchair, the brandy having erased the last traces of his headache, Peter realised that a break at the family country retreat was just what he needed. While Charlie, watching his brother relax next to him, legs outstretched just as their father’s would have been, features so similar in profile (the Roman nose, the eyes deep set, the widening bald patch, crisp grey hair curling against the collar of his shirt), had a vivid, reassuring sense of conventional time – birth, life, death – not mattering at all; of human lives spinning like planets round a sun, repeating patterns. Nothing ever ends, he thought, swaying slightly as he got to his feet. ‘Night, then,’ he said, ‘Peter, son of John.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You’re so like him, it’s almost spooky.’

‘God help me.’ Peter chuckled, flinging a friendly punch as Charlie passed his chair.

‘No, you are,’ persisted Charlie gravely, catching his brother’s arm and holding it tight for a moment. ‘One day, before too long, you’ll be living here, you and Helen, and so it goes on … Life, it just goes on, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, it does.’ Peter sighed, a little wearily. ‘Yes, it does. Go to bed, mate, you look bushed. Get a good night’s sleep.’

‘I’ll do my best.’ Charlie smiled bleakly, suddenly dreading the version of Serena he would find upstairs: still and unresponsive, dead to love, happiness, trust and the million other good things they had once shared.

Dear Mr Smith
,

I am sorry it has taken so long for me to respond to your letter, but I have not been well. I broke my hip in a fall a couple of months ago and have only just found my feet again. I am delighted that you are including a chapter in your book about Eric, but I don’t really see how I could help. My memory is not what it was – full of small silly things that would almost certainly be of no use to you. One thing I will say is that Eric was always one to hide his light under a bushel, so that it is especially nice that someone is at last singing his praises for him. He did many brave things in the war but rarely talked about any of them. Even when he got invited for tea with the Queen he didn’t tell any of us until it was over
.