Simply Heaven (31 page)

‘Probably killing the fatted calf as we speak,’ I joke, embarrassed. ‘They always keep one to hand for unexpected visitors.’

Dad has gone back to looking at the front wheel. ‘Well, it looks like we’re totally cactus here,’ he says.

‘We’ll bring the tractor up in the morning and pull it out.’ Rufus takes the lead at last. ‘If that’s OK,’ he adds to the chauffeur.

The chauffeur turns out to speak fluent cockernee. He opens his mouth and it’s like finding yourself flipped into the middle of an Ealing comedy. ‘Naah skin off my nose, myte,’ he says. ‘Dey got me for a wee’. Makes no odds ter me where vey want ter dump da’motah.’

Apples and Pears. Cup of Rosie Lee. Charlie Chester. Gareth Hunt. It’s a relief to hear someone speak like this at last. I’d been beginning to think Guy Ritchie was making it all up.

‘I’ll go down and get the Land Rover,’ says Rufus. ‘Then we can get your bags down to the house without too much grief.’

‘Yaya’s not so good on her legs,’ says Dad.

‘I’m not bloody dead yet, sonny,’ says Yaya. ‘Show some respect.’

‘Well, perhaps you wouldn’t mind coming with me and bringing up one of the other cars,’ Rufus says to the driver.

‘Whoo,
one of the other cars
,’ says Mum. Don’t start, Ma. Not yet. You’ve got plenty of time to put the buggers in their place.

‘No’ me, myte,’ says the driver. ‘Ahnly errlaird ’er drive ver wum car. More’m my job’s wurf.’ We really are in an Ealing comedy.

‘I’ll go,’ offers Dad.

‘Oh, don’t worry about me,’ says Yaya. ‘I’ll just walk. Someone fetch my cane for me, wouldya? If it’s not too much trouble.’

‘I told you I was going, Ma,’ says Dad. ‘Keep your hair on.’

‘Making an old lady walk miles in the pouring rain,’ says Yaya. ‘No wonder I never go nowhere.’

She climbs back into the limo, behind the chauffeur, who has settled down in the driver’s seat, arms folded, with his cap pulled firmly down over his eyes. Mum and I watch Rufus and Dad descend the hill. They look relaxed together, Dad walking with his hands in his pockets, Rufus’s swinging loosely by his sides.

The moment they’re out of earshot, Mum sticks an arm through mine and says: ‘So how you doing, lovey? Really? It’s not like you to burst into tears.’

‘I’m fine, Ma. I’m fine. It was just the shock of seeing you, is all.’

‘It was a relief to see you,’ she says. ‘We weren’t so sure if we’d come to the right place at first. Tell you what. From a distance it looks like it’s practically derelict.’

‘Don’t let them hear you say that. Round here, that place down there is what they call heaven.’

‘But there’s a bloody great hole in the roof!’ she begins. ‘That and the bloody great hole in the
road
. If you left a house in that state back home …’

‘Different culture, Ma. You’ve got to give it five minutes. How was the trip?’

‘Qantas,’ says Yaya, as though this is an explanation in itself. ‘Tell you what, I’m bloody glad we can fly Business. I went out the back to stretch my legs and they had them packed in there like sheep in a slaughterhouse.’

‘Never again,’ says Mum. ‘Tell you what, I won’t even fly Economy internally these days. They don’t even give you enough legroom to read a magazine. Let your table down and you cut off the circulation to the bottom half of your body.’

Yaya’s voice drifts through the door. ‘These people. Do they know we here? Why they not come to meet us?’

I guess I know the answer, but something makes me protect them anyway. They’re my husband’s family, after all. It would slay me if my folks judged Rufus on the strength of his family’s manners.

‘I’m not sure,’ I reply. ‘It’s a big house. Maybe they don’t know you’re here yet …’

‘I seen t’ree people at that window there.’ A gnarly hand emerges from the limo and points at the first-floor drawing room. Her eyesight hasn’t deteriorated since I left home. ‘They were watching us.’

‘God, then they’re probably running around getting tidied up. I don’t know. They weren’t exactly expecting visitors.’

‘No need to go to trouble on our account.’ Mum pats the back of her barnet and shakes her Rolex. ‘I’m just wearing what I threw on out of a suitcase.’

Glancing in through the open limo door, I see that she’s brought her entire range of Vuittons: the portmanteau, the suit carrier, the midsize suitcase, the wheel-on cabin baggage, the shoe store, the vanity case; even the hat box.

She’s travelling light, then.

By the time we reach the front door, they’ve pulled themselves together enough to form a welcoming party. To my surprise, it includes Hilary. I shouldn’t be surprised, really. We were supposed to be travelling down on the train together today so he could stay for Christmas, and he must have arrived while I was closeted with Beatrice. Doesn’t have a family of his own, of course. Or not one with a bloody great mansion on offer, anyway. Mary has managed, while we have been manhandling Yaya down the hill, to change into a dark green woollen dress topped off with a string of pearls and a pair of matching stud earrings. She has treated her hair to a comb and half a bottle of lacquer and slicked on another layer of her shell-pink lipstick and an application of powder. And sports a pair of high black court shoes which she must have carried down and put on just inside the front door, as she would have broken an ankle trying to walk in them on the uneven surfaces inside the house. She looks, as always, elegant.

Beside her, my mum looks dumpy in her Nikes and leisure wear. It doesn’t help that she has slung a bum bag around her hips that makes her look like she’s just stepped off a Disney cruise liner. Edmund hasn’t changed: is still in his customary uniform of twill trousies and a checked lawn shirt, but has definitely tidied his hair up, and Hilary looks, as usual, like a comedy cad.

They’ve turned the lights on in the hall. I glimpse Beatrice looking down from her bedroom window, Nessa silhouetted behind her.

The three of them stand in the doorway, Mary a step forward, one hand on the lintel, while her menfolk take up position, hands behind their backs, to her rear. I’m relieved to see that she is smiling.

‘Welcome!’ she cries, once we’re out of the Land Rover. ‘What a surprise! And what a treat!’ She totters gingerly out on to the flags in front of the door, extends a hand to my mother.

Edmund steps out after her, does the same to my dad. ‘Edmund Wattestone,’ he says. ‘How do you do?’

‘Mary,’ says Mary.

‘Great to meetcha, Mary,’ says my mum. ‘Colleen. I guess we’re related now, eh?’

Mary doesn’t turn a hair. ‘Lovely girl,’ she says. ‘And what a treat to be able to put faces to names at last.’

Mary has asked me precisely zero questions about my family in the past seven weeks.

‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ she says.

‘Likewise,’ lies my Mum right back at her. ‘So this is the old homestead, eh?’

‘For its sins,’ says Mary. ‘Come in. Please.’

There’s a pointed cough from behind us.

Oh God, sorry.

‘This is my grandmother,’ I say, ‘Penelope. Yaya, this is Mary, my mother-in-law, and Edmund, my father-in-law. And this is Hilary. An old family friend.’

‘That’s a chick’s name, isn’t it?’ asks Dad.

Edmund steps forward gallantly, takes my Yaya’s hand and bows over it.
he tells her.

‘What’d he say?’ asks Mum.

says Yaya.

says Edmund.