Sisteria (16 page)

‘Of course,' he said sarcastically. He took hold of her wrist and removed her hand, which by now was a considerable way down his trousers. Naomi's face fell. She got up from his lap.

‘I'm going shopping,' he said, glancing down at his watch. ‘Fortnum's closes in half an hour.'

Naomi couldn't believe she'd been so stupid. Not only had she let Tom catch her shouting at Plum - again - but she'd completely underestimated how upset he'd be about her not going to Beverley's for Christmas lunch. She knew all she needed to do to make amends was to get on the phone to Fallopia and put her off, but she simply couldn't bring herself to do it. Something was stopping her and it had nothing to do with the film crew being booked and paid for.

Chapter 15

It was the smell of the turkey roasting which had caused Beverley to charge upstairs for the third time that morning, stick her head down the loo and chuck up what little was left of her stomach contents.

The Littlestones didn't exactly celebrate Christmas. They certainly didn't exchange presents or have a tree, but like most non-orthodox Jews, they could see no reason why, when the rest of the world spent a week stuffing its face, they shouldn't join in. What was more, since Beverley was now pregnant and she and Melvin had received and banked Naomi's first cheque for a hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds, she felt sufficiently confident to push the boat out, food wise. To wit the fridge, now groaning with posh cheese, a large piece of six-pounds-fifty-a-pound ball rib, and half of Mitchell Softness's deli.

As Beverley came back downstairs to give Queenie a hand with lunch, her face was still white and clammy from vomiting. What turned it even whiter wasn't the sight or smell of the half-cooked turkey sitting in its roasting tin on the worktop. It was the sight of her mother standing over it holding a thick nine-inch-long glass tube with a large rubber ball at one end. Beverley stared in disbelief and horror as Queenie squeezed the ball, dipped the tube into the meat juices and released the ball again. In an instant the tube had filled. Then before Beverley could stop her, she had squeezed the ball a second time. A moment later the turkey's still pallid breasts were dripping in hot, fatty gravy.

‘Mum,' Beverley shouted at Queenie from across the kitchen, ‘please put that down.' She charged over to the cutlery drawer and took out a large long-handled spoon. She handed this to her mother and at the same time snatched the turkey baster from her.

‘But I don't understand,' Queenie said, looking at her daughter in utter bewilderment. ‘They've been selling these on the shopping channel all week. They look so clever. Then I found this one in the cupboard under the basin in the bathroom. God knows what it was doing there. I presumed you'd sent off for it and then mislaid it.'

‘Yes, yes... I did. Couldn't work out for the life of me where it had got to,' Beverley lied nervously. ‘But, you can't possibly use it because... because it's broken. Look, it's got a chipped end. Bound to be full of germs.'

She held the turkey baster up for less than half a second before pushing it against the flap of the swing bin and letting it drop inside.

‘Can't be helped,' she said. ‘Spoon'll do just as well.'

It would have to. Beverley wasn't about to let her mother baste their lunch with the same nine-ninety-nine top-of-the-range - ‘luxury', it had said on the pack - turkey baster she'd bought from a posh kitchenware shop in Muswell Hill, and which, only minutes after the seeding ceremony, she'd taken up to Rochelle's bathroom, used to suck Tom Jago's semen from the sundried tomato jar and shoved up inside her. The same turkey baster which afterwards had lain beside her on the floor while she kept her feet raised on a pile of towels, and into whose rubber ball she had gazed adoringly and asked, ‘So, tell me. How was it for you?'

Queenie shrugged, and continued to baste the turkey with the spoon. She knew when to back off. If Beverley's hormones hadn't been all over the place before she got pregnant, they most certainly were now.

‘You look lovely, by the way,' she said, partly to calm her daughter down.

Beverly beamed.

‘You don't think the trousers are too tight?' she asked, running her hand over the seat of the stretch black bootlegs Natalie had made her buy from Whistles in Hampstead. Morning sickness was causing the weight to fall off her. She'd taken the scales out of the deep freeze the night before, after everybody had gone to bed, and discovered to her delight that she was down to nine stone three. Queenie shook her head.

‘No, darling, they're perfect. Absolutely perfect.' With that her mother gave her a kiss on the forehead.

Beverley couldn't believe how well the two of them were getting on these days. Ever since she'd discovered she was pregnant, Queenie couldn't do enough for her. Nor could the children, come to that. She wasn't sure how long it would last, but for now they were taking it in turns to bring her tea in the morning, and Natalie was even picking her dirty underwear up off her bedroom floor and putting it in the linen basket.

‘Now then,' Queenie continued, ‘you check the table while I get the turkey back in the oven.'

Beverley headed towards the kitchen door.

‘Oh, Mum,' she said, the tension rising in her voice again, ‘for God's sake make sure this bloody bird is properly done. The one you cooked last year was so rare I'm amazed we didn't all go down with salmonella. A bit of heart massage and the thing could have climbed off the table.'

Queenie gave an indignant sniff and smiled to show she wasn't really offended. Then, with a small sigh, she lifted up the heavy roasting tin with her oven-gloved hands and turned towards the cooker.

Beverley walked round the long dining room table making imperceptible adjustments to the position of the knives and forks.

As it did every year, the table looked as if it had been set for Friday-night dinner rather than Christmas lunch. Instead of a candle-filled centrepiece overflowing with seasonal greenery, taking pride of place in the middle of Beverley's ancient off-white lace tablecloth was a long, shallow dish of Mrs Elswood vertically sliced sweet and sour cucumbers. Next to this was a cholla (yesterday's, refreshed in the oven - not even Jewish bakers baked on Christmas Day). On each of the eight hors d'oeuvres plates - three or four of which matched - was a mashed-potato-sized scoop of her mother's chopped liver. In a spirit of religious tolerance and comic irony, Queenie had crowned each ball with a tiny sprig of plastic ivy. (Not her first choice of artificial greenery, but Smith's in Brent Cross had run out of everything else.)

‘Oh my God,' Beverley said out loud as her eyes went from the bread to the hors d'oeuvres plates and back again, ‘it's the bloody cholla and the ivy.'

‘Do you like it?' Queenie said, coming into the room with the salt and pepper pots and putting them on the table. ‘I thought something a bit festive would make Naomi's chap feel more at home.'

Beverley shot her a shocked look.

‘What?' she said, panic rising in her voice as she began counting place settings and discovered there were two extra. How she could have failed to notice this a few minutes ago she couldn't imagine. ‘What do you mean, Naomi's chap? Christ, you've invited Naomi and Tom for lunch, haven't you?'

‘You know I did,' Queenie said, doing her best to make her voice sound casual and failing miserably. ‘I told you ages ago.'

‘Mum,' Beverley said, gripping the back of one of the dining chairs so that her knuckles started to go white, ‘you most definitely did not tell me anything of the sort. If you had, I would quite simply have got back on the phone to Naomi and put her off.'

‘Why would you want to do that?' Queenie said. ‘I don't understand. You know how desperate I am to see her and that new man of hers. I was also planning - you know - to have that talk with Naomi... to say sorry about everything that happened when you were children.'

‘I know, Mum, I know,' Beverley said, gently now. ‘But please, just think for five minutes. I am carrying Tom's baby. Did it not occur to you that Melvin might not be particularly thrilled by me having another man's child inside me, and might be even less thrilled about sharing Christmas lunch with that man?' She lowered her voice. ‘For God's sake, Mum, why else do you think he's sleeping on the sofa? Did you really believe that nonsense I told you about him having trouble sleeping and not wanting to disturb me?'

‘Goodness, Bev, I didn't think.'

Beverley knew exactly what had happened. Her mother wasn't daft. At some stage it must have dawned on her how difficult it would be for Melvin if Naomi and Tom were to come for Christmas. But her emotions had blinded her common sense. She'd decided to keep quiet about having invited them until it was too late for Beverley to do anything about it.

She looked at her mother and shook her head.

‘It's OK. Don't worry, Mum, I'll sort it with Melvin,' she said with a sigh. ‘God alone knows how, though.'

***

It took her ages to convince Melvin the invitation had been Queenie's doing and not hers. Even then he said there was no way he could sit at the same table as Tom Jago.

‘Please, please, Mel,' she said, panicking, as it was well after twelve and Naomi and Tom were due in an hour. ‘I know this is a bloody mess, but don't go creating atmospheres this late in the day. If you bugger off now, Mum will start feeling guilty, and the kids'll demand to know what's going on and get upset. Naomi and Tom will be embarrassed - after all it's not their fault - and I'll be left trying to dish up and calm everybody down.'

She had to burst into tears before he took pity on her.

‘OK,' he said, ‘I'll come and I'll be civil, but don't expect me to greet him like a long-lost bloody brother, that's all.'

‘Fine, Mel, fine,' she said with a sniff. ‘Civility is all I ask.'

Five minutes later the phone went. It was Naomi, sounding dreadful, saying she'd got flu and wouldn't be coming.

‘I've lost my voice,' she rasped. ‘Plus I've got a temperature of over a hundred. Tom's given me Lemsip and now I'm in bed with Vick on my chest.'

‘So it's not all bad news then,' Beverley joked lamely, but it was lost on Naomi.

‘Tom's still coming, though. I insisted. I know Mum's desperate to meet him.'

As she told her sister how much they would miss her, Beverley couldn't help wishing for Melvin's sake that it was Tom who had flu and not Naomi.

‘I'll make it up to you, Bev,' Naomi said finally, her voice barely audible down the phone. ‘We'll have lunch again as soon as I'm better. And tell Mum I'll be in touch soon. Promise.'

Had Naomi not cautiously dialled 141 before making the call, Beverley would have been able to discover that it came not from her flat in Holland Park, but from Cornwall.

***

Tom arrived bearing Belgian chocolates for Queenie, a bottle of Van Cleef and Arpels for Beverley and a couple of bottles of vintage champagne which he handed to Melvin. To Beverley's surprise, Melvin accepted the gift with extremely good grace and shook Tom's hand. The handshake was lukewarm on Melvin's part, but Beverley was the only one to notice.

‘I got HMV vouchers for the kids,' Tom said after Melvin had disappeared to put the champagne in the fridge. ‘Hope that's OK.'

‘Oh, you are kind,' she gushed. ‘But you didn't need to bring anything, really. I'm sure the kids'll be delighted.' She took the rest of his parcels and led him into the living room. She couldn't help taking in his blue denim shirt and beige Dockers and thinking how sexy he looked.

‘So how was Naomi when you left?'

‘Naomi?' he said, taken aback. ‘Fine as far as I know. Why?'

‘Fine? But I thought she had flu. A few minutes ago she rang to say she was in bed with Vick on her chest.'

‘Oh, oh, right,' he said, suddenly realizing that Naomi had chosen to lie rather than explain her preference for work over Christmas lunch with her family. He was surprised that she hadn't bothered to warn him about the excuse she had decided to give. ‘Sorry, I was confused for a minute. Yes, she's pretty rough really. Bloody awful, in fact.'

‘Poor soul,' Beverley said. Tom grunted.

‘If you say so,' he mumbled under his breath.

‘You OK?' Beverley said, vaguely aware of the mumble. ‘You seem a bit distracted.'

‘No, I'm fine,' he said. ‘Really.'

***

So it was that apart from the four Littlestones and Queenie, there sat around Beverley's cholla-and-ivy bedecked dining table on Christmas Day Rochelle and Mitchell Softness (who had been invited back in November and who were minus Allegra on account of her having gone to stay with cousins in Miami), and Tom Jago.

To Beverley's amazement and continued delight, Melvin rose to the occasion and continued to make polite if stilted conversation with Tom about such emotionally neutral topics as computers and GM foods. Rochelle sat the other side of Tom, barely able to contain her excitement. This was due in part to her having downed two glasses of buck's fizz before lunch.

‘He's gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous,' she'd mouth to Beverley when she thought Tom wasn't looking.

When she wasn't drooling over Tom, she was bickering with Mitchell.

‘Rochelle, I've lost my reading glasses,' he said, just as Rochelle was telling Tom how she'd always wanted to be an actress but her mother had put a stop to her ambition by forcing her to do a Pitman's shorthand-typing course.

‘I can't find them anywhere,' he went on. ‘Maybe you put them in your bag.'

‘They're your glasses, Mitchell,' she said, clearly irritated that her husband had interrupted her in mid flirt. ‘Why should they be in my bag? Anyway, what's the problem? Surely you don't need glasses to find your way from your soup bowl to your mouth... Don't let Mitchell have too much chicken soup, Bev - it gives him heartburn.'

‘Rochelle, please... give me a break. It's Christmas. Just for once in my life let me eat something I enjoy.'

‘OK, go ahead. See if I care. But you know as well as I do that if you eat too much neither of us will get a wink of sleep tonight. You'll be pacing round the bedroom for hours on end, clutching your chest, convinced you're having a heart attack. I don't know why we don't just offer the emergency doctor the spare room.'

‘Great idea. Then you could redecorate. Any excuse to spend money.'

‘What's that supposed to mean? I can manage on a budget.'