The Uninvited Guests (18 page)

Plate after plate was carried through, and handfuls of cutlery, and hunks of bread. The hungry visitors, seated on three-legged stools, benches and bentwood chairs, huddled over the desk in the study and the hastily cleared small tables, and gobbled the food before them.

‘There are too many of them,’ panted Patience; ‘they need more.’

So, with the entrée exhausted, they made inroads into the next course. Florence’s keen blade found the slippery joints in the Poulet à la Marengo, the tender baby flesh of the veal roll. Still they were unsatisfied. The kitchen resembled a deserted field-hospital at the Crimea after the battle has moved on: bones with shreds of flesh clinging, wet cloths, stained, scraped boards and instruments flung down, as the hoards moved on to demolish the next thing – dessert.

‘Wait! God, wait,’ said Florence, turning her back on the scene of destruction and closing her eyes.

‘Here.’ Ernest took the knife from her, as around them the others worked.

Emerald watched his strong hands tuck the tip of the blade between the tender soft rhubarb slices that lay upon the custard of the tart, never tearing them; her own fingers trembled slightly as she held out two fragile plates for the crescents of jelly that came next from his spoon. Patience’s slender arm came between them for a moment, reaching for a jug of cream, before darting with it from the room.

‘Do you mind if I mention something?’ he asked.

‘I won’t know until you have,’ she answered, mentally gazing at an array of desirable and less desirable possibilities.

‘Have you really given up your science?’

‘My? Oh – the microscope. I suppose I have.’

He slipped a tiny globe of blancmange onto the plate, nestled against the jelly.

‘I’m amazed by it – from what I knew of you.’

‘Amazed by it? Are you?’ she asked. She was nonplussed.

‘Yes. Two more.’

She held up two more plates.

‘Hell!’ cried Clovis behind them, as some lard-loosened disaster hit the flags.

‘I think it’s a great shame,’ said Ernest. Another sliver of rhubarb tart found a home. Another crescent of acid jelly slipped from the rapidly warming spoon. ‘Because you are so clever.’

Emerald did not look up. She felt pride creeping into her, unusual and welcome.

‘I put it away during my father’s illness,’ she almost whispered, as unaccustomed warmth touched the hard frost of her restraint.

‘Ah,’ he answered, equally softly. His fish-slice eased beneath the crumbling pastry, butter wetting the metal.

‘Great heavens,’ broke in Florence, hot-footing it in from the study and seeing the myriad of desserts. ‘Are they each to have quite such a selection?’ But she snatched away the plates all the same. Ernest cast Emerald a slow, shy smile; I look a fright, she thought.

She had not thought to change her dress. It was limp, splattered with fat, and altogether ruined. The hem was filthy from treading into the dirt. Strands of hair had escaped from Myrtle’s miraculous pinning. Patience, in contrast, had retained, marvellously, the general appearance of freshness; even though on close inspection this illusion did not hold up (there was gravy on her lace cuffs). She and Clovis had assumed something of the pace and pattern of a relay, he down the corridor to the baize door, she on into the rooms, but the business of fetching plates from the kitchen was quicker than that of distribution, what with different passengers’ demands and requirements (some wanted fish, others meat, or only fowl, still more simply demanded all three, not to mention the varieties of taste when it came to fruit, jellies and sugars), and Clovis often had to fly after her to help with the passing round and questions. She was, he couldn’t help but notice, unwaveringly charming as she enquired after the well-being of the passengers. She even appeared to enjoy pleasing them, and Clovis found the sight of her – as she darted from one drab person to the next, bright as a gold coin in the shadowy study – was heartening; she seemed to restore him. Once, perhaps fatigued with unaccustomed servitude, she slipped on a well-sucked bone that had found its way onto the floor, the passengers being obliged to balance their food as well as their children and luggage on their laps. Patience’s slippered foot shot from beneath her and Clovis – quick as a whippet – was across the room to provide her with a steadying arm.

‘Do be careful, Patience.’ he said, as not only her face, but all the pinched, white faces in the room paused and looked up for an instant.
What about us?
they seemed to say.
What about asking us how we are faring, we who have had such a dreadful accident, we who are in this state of shock and delay?

But Patience and Clovis had eyes only for one another as they stood, her arm still resting on his hand, caught in the warmth of mutual concern. ‘Thank you, Clovis; how clumsy of me.’

‘Not at all,’ said he, and he bent to retrieve the offending piece of rabbit. He straightened, grinning at her, helplessly.

There was no sound in the room except for the chewing and breathing of all twenty people.

‘I wonder if they’ve had enough?’ whispered Patience in Clovis’s ear but he was too delighted by the sensation to reply.

In the empty dining room, Tenterhooks had made a good meal of the remains of the fish. Whatever he had found, here and there, had been consumed with much licking and quivering, although he could barely swallow for purring. Shortly afterwards, the kitten’s stomach had revolted, violently, against the unprecedented influx and the table was not now anywhere near as attractive as before the party had been called away. It didn’t matter, however, as the dining room was – for the present – abandoned. Even Traversham-Beechers had disappeared. There was no trace of him at all in the room; no stray curl of smoke, no odour of hair oil, lingering. Was he among the passengers, eating his fill? Was he shrouded in a drab woollen shawl with a baby’s head in the corner of his arm? Or was he wandering the halls of the house, trailing his fingers over the soft panels? Perhaps he was just resting his flesh and bones until the next time they were needed.

Safely ensconced in her room with Lady, behind her stout, locked door, restored by smelts and grateful for the continued distraction of the demanding survivors, Smudge applied herself to the animal’s portrait with renewed vigour. A misguided notion of charcoaling the whole of Lady’s side and then pressing her against the wall for a print had been abandoned as too ambitious, and she was now busily occupied in placing her bedside lamp in such a way as to create an accurate shadow outline of the pony and tracing it. The minutes flew by unnoticed, the hours unmarked; she was absorbed in her artistry.

In the morning room, Emerald, Clovis, John, Ernest, Florence and Patience surveyed the travellers, who had at last finished eating and were glumly licking their fingers, holding the hands of their children, or gazing dully at the fire. Although they were, for the moment, satisfied, their mood had not greatly improved. If anything, there was an increased atmosphere of need; they seemed to suck the very air from the room with their opaque desires.

‘Perhaps we might slip away?’ murmured Emerald.

The party trooped to the desperately disarranged kitchen, and carried from it plates of whatever they could find back to the dining room, where they seated themselves with their mismatching meats and juices.

Emerald discovered a heap of what she realised was kitten vomit near her place and dropped a napkin over it.

Out of sight, out of mind
, she thought, picking up the glass nearest her (that had been John’s; the placement was all topsyturvy) and drinking all the sherry in it straight down. She felt immediately fortified.

‘Where’s that man?’ she demanded, looking around them for their gentleman visitor, but nobody knew.

With no trace of Traversham-Beechers and the dining-room door firmly closed, the little group revelled for a short, thrilling moment in triumph and relief, excited by their adventure in serving. Clovis and Emerald exchanged a friendly look. Had they not met the increasing hoards and fed them? Their mother was absent, in vain and indefensible hiding in her room, but they, the young, were still, on Emerald’s birthday, in the dining room.

‘It isn’t so late,’ said Emerald. ‘Perhaps we
will
still have time for games, as you said, Patience.’

There was laughter.

‘Tuck in!’ cried Clovis, attacking his own poor plate of scraps with relish.

Florence, caught between family and servant by the unusualness of the evening, was unsure what to do and now stood, dithering, near the sideboard, from where she might either sit or serve the drinks. Emerald was tussling with a tough pastry crust that normally would have been left stuck to the dish, but now was slathered with mustard and appreciated.

‘Florence, Mrs Trieves,’ she said, when she could, ‘do sit. I think the circumstances demand flexibility, don’t you?’

Florence, after a moment’s hesitation, slipped into the seat between John and Patience, but kept her hands in her lap. John, who had striven for his good position in the world, was embarrassed and disapproving, having to sit next to the housekeeper, and he began to blush. Covering his discomfort and preserving good manners, he took the plate that Emerald offered for Florence.

‘Mrs Trieves,’ he said, frowning, ‘some bread? There’s gravy. Here.’ And he fetched that, too.

She was more embarrassed than he, and stared at her plate. ‘Thank you, Mr Buchanan,’ she said, her sharp-boned face reddening.

Glancing at her, next to him, on the same level, he relented; she was so flustered and upset. Despite himself, he noticed that with her head tilted down as it was, and her hair escaping from the rigid bun in which she kept it, her neck looked remarkably – what would be an apt description? –
womanly
, in the lamplight. Yes, remarkably womanly. Pretty. He instantly brought himself up, cleared his throat, and reached for a glass. Noticing the feminine attributes of a middle-aged housekeeper was the sort of thought he hadn’t entertained since discovering his physical maleness at thirteen and fourteen when, in the first flushing fever of connection, he had noted compulsively the fetching shapes of every female form he came across, from shop assistants to gaunt aunts to sculptures and even, disturbingly, non-human things: the waggling of ducks’ downy behinds, the bewitching curves of banisters. Mrs Trieves was not a banister, of course, but, he told himself sternly, she was not to be considered any more than one. And he turned both thoughts and body sharply away from her. It must have been the wine and the bizarre circumstances. Why, she was as old as Charlotte Torrington – but, oh dear, that was a very poor comparison, as that lady was an out-and-out beauty at any age. And with that, lost in confusion, John looked straight up and ahead, and tried hard not to think of women at all – an endeavour doomed, of course, to utter failure; within a minute he was wondering if Florence’s ankles were as pretty as her neck. He was saved by Emerald’s profile as she nibbled a sprout. Here was elegance, he thought. Here was beauty and suitability itself. He rested his gaze upon her, and wondered if his ignoring of her was having any effect on the indifference she bore him. Sensing his look, she glanced over at him saucily, and he had his answer, feeling confidence return.

‘Well, I must say, this has been a rum old evening,’ he said happily.

‘Extremely,’ agreed Patience.

‘But I hope you don’t mind my saying, Emerald, you’ve carried it off. Hasn’t she?’ He appealed to the table. ‘Hasn’t she been marvellous?’

‘Of course I haven’t, but—’ Emerald’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, Smudge! I must fetch her down.’

‘Perhaps she’ll be asleep?’ said Ernest, the Sutton household not having been accustomed to children roaming around in nightdresses at teatime and joining grown-up dinners.

‘Not she,’ rejoined Clovis; ‘not if there’s cake in the offing.’

‘I promised she could help with the candles.’

Emerald stood, but very soon sat down again, sharply, as the door flew open and Charlie Traversham-Beechers, lightly spinning the knob with dancing fingertips, announced himself nasally: ‘Who are the survivors now? Any left for us?’

4

A MOST UNPLEASANT GAME

Arrested in their jollity, faces falling, the group looked at Traversham-Beechers wanly for a moment, and then returned to their suppers.

He went immediately to the sideboard and took a deep ruby claret from amongst the decanters and fresh glasses from the sideboard. They tinkled together onto the muffling cloth as he poured, hurriedly, so that little spots and red splashes flew about their edges, and ran pinkly down to stain the damask.

‘Here, be merry and all that,’ he encouraged, handing around the drinks and keeping the decanter on the table. As he placed the glasses in front of each of them, their camaraderie dissolved into the air. What had been a friendly group became a tableful of single, separated souls. He sat next to Emerald and drank deeply.

‘Well, isn’t this cosy? Fancy getting blotto?’ he said.

A shocked silence met this suggestion.

‘I believe I can return a “nay” to that,’ said John, ‘but I wouldn’t mind a glass.’

‘A glass or two! That’s the spirit,’ said Traversham-Beechers, and topped up all the glasses to brimming. ‘A toast to your mother – the beautiful Miss – I do beg your pardon, Mrs Torring—I’m so sorry,
Mrs Swift:
Mrs Swift!’ and he raised his glass, drank, and then asked mildly, ‘Where is she?’

‘She’s – she went off some time ago,’ said Clovis, adding to Emerald, ‘Don’t you think we ought to offer our sainted parent the last of the scraps?’

‘Go and seek her out, would you, Clo?’ said Emerald, who did not much fancy an encounter with her mother just then.

Clovis left the disturbed and gaudy dining room, the guests, seated anyhow, in grubby clothes and scattered scraps about the table, and went into the chilly emptiness of the corridors and hall.

The cat Lloyd was perched sternly on the newel post and watched him as he passed.