Little of What You Fancy, page 17
Her third reason was contained in the hope that Pop would at last be well enough to come downstairs, and perhaps even into the garden, if the weather held, for lunch. She had great hopes of this. Both Dr O’Connor and Sister Trevelyan had promised as much, if he behaved himself, a matter to which Pop was giving serious attention. He was now able to walk about, go to the bathroom himself, bath himself and dress himself. It might well be that, in a day or two, he would walk up and downstairs. Whether the tigers of wrath had done the trick or not Ma didn’t know; but steadily and surely Pop was becoming himself again. There was hope, Ma thought, one way or another, of Nature returning to its course.
After much trial Ma finally decided on a dress of oyster satin for the occasion, together with a three-quarter-length coat of the same material: the whole very subdued for her and looking rather more appropriate to a Royal garden party than Sunday lunch under the Larkin walnut tree. She also had high-heeled shoes to match and a big gold-silver handbag that sparkled so much it looked as if it had accidentally fallen into a sack of sugar.
After a late period of indecision she at last rejected the baron of beef for the good reasons that, at anything up to a hundred weight it would have been too large for the oven and that no butcher could supply one anyway. Instead she chose two twenty-pound turkeys and a whole baked ham. As this would be preceded by a whole smoked salmon she told herself that she didn’t think anybody would starve.
The twins being at holiday camp in Devon and Victoria being gone off to Spain in an old London taxi, with three young men, an excursion that Ma thought would learn her, if nothing else did, to look after herself, this left seven of the Larkins and Mr Charlton for lunch, together with the Brigadier, Miss Pilchester, Sister Trevelyan, the Reverend Candy, Angela Snow and her father and finally the two Miss Barnwells. Pop had rightly insisted that the two Miss Barnwells should come since it was, after all, their Cause.
While Ma gave much serious thought to food and clothes Pop, who had been sitting out for increasingly long periods in the garden for the last three days, had given equally serious study to the drinks. As it was a question of entertaining a Queen’s Counsel he thought they ought to be plain but posh: no mucking about. Mr Charlton, called in for consultation on the matter, cordially agreed: no fancy stuff. He suggested a vintage champagne with the smoked salmon, Chambolle Musigny for the turkey and a Chateau Yquem with Ma’s many afters, one of which was going to be a Christmas pudding. No Red Bulls, no Rolls-Royces, no Blonde Bombshells or indeed any liquid fireworks of that nature. The whole affair had got to be kept, Mr Charlton said, on a certain plane.
The first person to arrive, to the dismay of Ma, who was hastily knocking up a large steak-and-kidney pie, just in case, was somebody who apparently hadn’t been invited. Looking out from the kitchen window Ma observed on the lawn a dandy little gentleman in a smart Oxford blue mohair suit, a claret silk bow tie with white spots and a jaunty little russet-red trilby hat cocked saucily to one side.
For almost a minute she was convinced that this was the Queen’s Counsel himself. She was about to rush upstairs and change quickly into her oyster satin when she astonishingly realized that the dandy little gentleman was none other than the Brigadier who, seeing her gazing from the kitchen window, jauntily doffed his hat to her in the best manner of some Edwardian gallant-about-town.
‘Hallo, General,’ Ma said, ‘didn’t recognize you.’
‘Bon jour, madame,’ the Brigadier said, coming to the open kitchen window and, as if the excursion into French wasn’t enough, actually kissed her hand.
The next to arrive was Mr Candy, apologetic, hot, thirsty and fearing he was late. He had had to conduct a church service at which the choir had outnumbered the congregation by fifteen to six, one of whom was a baby who had to be baptized, a circumstance that never failed to unnerve Mr Candy in view of the agonizing memory of all that had befallen him in christening Primrose. What with this and that Mr Candy had, as Pop put it, a lot on his plate nowadays.
‘A Guinness, please, if you don’t mind,’ he said in answer to Pop’s hearty invitation to a snifter. He needed it. It might, he thought, put his strength back; and Heaven knew when he mightn’t need that, too.
The weather, as the Brigadier put it, almost as if he had unaccountably denied all his principles and gone over to the Common Market, was Comme ci, comme ça: neither too hot, nor too breezy: a dreamy mixture of rippling sun, white cloud and gentle shade.
The long lunch table having been laid out under the walnut tree, with a second table packed with a vast army of bottles beside it, Mr Charlton presently appeared from the house in a light smart cream suit, carrying corkscrews, bottle openers and ice-buckets as if prepared to deal with the drink situation in the manner of a butler.
Ma had at one time, in fact, seriously thought of having a butler. You could hire them. She expected any Queen’s Counsel was bound to have one at home and the very thing she didn’t want to do was to let the side down. But Mr Charlton’s own counsel had prevailed in this particular matter, and very firmly.
No, no, he said, he thought no butler. It rather smacked of folie de grandeur, a remark that had Ma back on her heels, with nothing more to say.
At one o’clock, by which time Mariette and Primrose had taken over in the kitchen – no bikinis and bare midriffs today, Ma had warned them – leaving Ma to nip upstairs and bottle herself up in the oyster satin, there came the second surprising entry of the day.
Ma, looking down from her bedroom window, was suddenly surprised to see in the garden another figure she didn’t recognize. At first she guessed it to be one of those Sunday moochers who occasionally turned up at the junk-yard looking for bargains in old chaff-cutters, old cider jars, old brass bedsteads and the sort of mullock people collected nowadays, all part of the status quo symbol, but then she wasn’t sure.
The man talking with Pop and Angela Snow was dressed in one of those shirts that seemed to have been cut out of old boarding-house wallpaper, an affair of violet, green and pink, a pair of crumpled orange slacks and a pair of open sandals in black and silver. Straight out of Carnaby Street, Ma thought, and could only assume that this was some new boy friend of Angela and that by some unhappy mischance the Queen’s Counsel hadn’t been able to make it.
Just our luck, she thought, as she went back downstairs, rather crushed at the thought of the oyster satin perhaps having been bought to no purpose and then immediately afterwards telling herself not to worry: the Queen’s Counsel would surely be coming along separate, in his own Daimler or Rolls or something, with his own chauffeur.
When she reached the garden and went across the lawn Angela came to meet her with a blissful ‘Darling’ and a kiss on both cheeks. Sweet to see Ma. How ravishing she looked. Angela adored the outfit. Perfick.
‘And this,’ she said, turning to the handsome figure in orange slacks and the old boarding-house wallpaper, ‘is my father. Sir John Furlington-Snow.’
Ma, speechless, could have dropped. As if Queen’s Counsel wasn’t enough it had to be ‘sir’ too.
‘I never use the Furlington bit myself,’ Angela said. ‘Too fatuous and fussy for words. But it’s important for Papa professionally.’
‘Mrs Larkin. How delightful to meet you at long last. I’ve heard so much about you.’
Ma could have passed out. You could have knocked her down, as Pop had it, with a stone block of wood. She had never heard such a beautiful voice in all her life. Languid, golden, smoothly aristocratic, it was exactly like Angela’s except that it was richly, deeply masculine. Ma could only suppose it developed that way from talking to the Queen so much. And that longish, thick gold-grey hair, curling about the ears, and the sort of lamb-chop whiskers: they had the real aristocratic, almost royal, touch about them too.
‘Oh! good morning, sir. Very nice to meet you, sir. So glad you could come, sir. Aren’t we lucky with the weather, sir?’
‘Oh! please don’t call him “sir”, Ma,’ Angela said, ‘he hates it.’
‘Oh! no, please, Mrs Larkin. Call me Furly. Everybody does.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Ma said and immediately begged to be excused and fled to the kitchen, red and trembling.
‘Well, glass o’ champers?’ Pop said to Angela’s father. ‘Plain, pink or cocktail?’
Sir John Furlington-Snow said well, if nobody minded, he’d have a beer.
‘Beer it is,’ Pop said, hardly concealing his surprise. He himself was on ginger ale. This is my son-in-law, Mr Charlton. This is me old friend, the General. And this is the Reverend Candy –here, where’s Mr Candy got to? He was here a minute ago.’
Mr Candy, having fortified himself with Guinness, had vanished into the house to find Primrose. With some of his much-needed strength back, he had an urgent question to ask her.
The urgency of the question faded utterly, however, when he found her waiting in the sitting-room, all alone; and, in defiance of Ma’s orders, clad in a ravishingly tight micro-skirt of a kind of shot mauve-apricot shade, altogether more disturbing than any bare midriff had ever been.
‘Just one little quick one. I thought you were never coming,’ she said and then held up her lips and proceeded to give him a kiss of such prolonged and destructive artistry that Mr Candy felt himself fading gradually away into a state, as it were, of intoxicated benediction. He longed, even though against his will, to say Amen, but Primrose was having none of it and had just started a repeat performance when Ma’s voice abruptly brought it all to an end.
‘Dishing up!’
Mr Candy, feeling not a little dished up himself, wandered into the open air, breathless and thirsty all over again, to find almost everyone now assembled about the long table under the walnut tree. The two little Miss Barnwells were now among the guests and, like little Oscar and Phyllida, were already sitting at table, as always like two eager budgerigars, gazing hungrily on the plates of smoked salmon, waiting to be fed. The only person who hadn’t arrived was Miss Pilchester, who was always late, anyway, Ma reflected, and probably thought it was still Saturday or something.
‘Am I late? Am I late? It is the right day, isn’t it? I had one of my hens die in the night and it was absolutely ghastly. I just couldn’t leave – you know – until – well, what with the warm weather and I couldn’t eat it, could I? I very nearly thought of fetching you, Mr Candy, to conduct the – Oh! am I awfully, awfully late?’
Again Ma found herself without a word to say. The reason this time was that Edith too had gone out and bought herself a new dress in honour of the Queen’s Counsel. Ma gazed at it enraptured. It was appropriately of royal blue. The skirt was calflength, the neck high, the front covered, like a bandman’s tunic, with large gold frogs. All this did nothing for Miss Pilchester’s figure since there was in fact little or no figure to do anything for. Nor could Ma decide whether or not it was meant to be a housecoat, a bath-robe or something left over from Edith’s service in the Navy.
Soon, the smoked salmon having rapidly disappeared and a good deal of champagne with it, Mr Charlton and Montgomery having carved and dismembered the turkeys, and Pop having done the honours with the Chambolle, there was much champing at the table, no less from the little Miss Barnwells and the Brigadier than from Edith Pilchester who, hugely enjoying herself on being released at last from purdah, kept saying:
‘Delicious. Delicious. Now if I kept turkeys and one of them had died what would I have done? That would have been a dilemma. What would I have done?’
‘Sung the whole of the St Matthew Passion I shouldn’t wonder,’ the Brigadier said tersely and not unexpectedly downed a third glass of Chambolle Musigny ‘59. ‘Splendid stuff, the Chambolle. Quite delectable. Of the Divine Order itself.’
Ma had so arranged the table that Angela sat on one side of Pop and Edith on the other; herself on one side of Angela’s father and Sister Trevelyan on the other, leaving Primrose to the Brigadier and one each of the little budgerigars to Montgomery and Mr Candy. In this arrangement Primrose was kept as near to Mr Candy as possible and as far from Sister Trevelyan as could be without seeming outright rude. Ma thought there was a bit of jealousy there.
And well there might be, she thought. Sister Trevelyan looked stunningly attractive in a simple pure white dress that was deceptively angelic, with its silver waist chain and simple neckline. So much so that Ma wondered if she’d done the right thing in putting her next to Sir John, who she had now decided was not only uncommonly handsome but had quite a look in his eye. Took after Angela, she shouldn’t wonder, and was quick to note that quite half the time Sir John seemed to be eating with only one hand, so that Ma shrewdly wondered what he was doing with the other.
She needn’t have wondered at all.
‘If you do that again,’ Sister Trevelyan whispered, ‘I shall scream.’
‘Scream.’
Sister Trevelyan thought it prudent not to scream.
‘I thought,’ Sir John said, ‘you came from down under?’
‘Yes, but not down under there!’
Presently Ma, shrewdly grasping that much more than mere eating and drinking was going on, lifted her glass and said:
‘Well, cheers! everybody. Nice to have you all here. Lovely. Cheers.’
Among the returning chorus of cheers the voice of the Brigadier could be heard saying ‘Bingo!’ and a crescendo of twitterings came from the Miss Barnwells. The only absent voice was that of Pop, who sat staring at a half-empty glass of ginger ale, a fact that touched Ma so much that she said pointedly to Sister Trevelyan:
‘What about it, Sister? What about a drop of Chambolle for Pop? Just a glass? Just one?’
Oh! yes indeed, the Miss Barnwells prattled. After all it was the Cause. Mr Larkin had been so terribly, terribly generous, to which Edith Pilchester added:
‘Oh! yes, please. Just a teeny, teeny one. It seems so unfair.’
‘What about it, Sister?’ Ma said.
‘Well, since I am not really on duty today’ Sister Trevelyan said, having been pinched so often by Sir John that she was now beginning to feel almost neglected when it didn’t happen, ‘just one glass. Just one small glass. But not a word to Dr O’Connor, otherwise my head will be on the block.’
Laughing with delight, Ma filled a glass with Chambolle Musigny and passed it over to Pop. At long, long last his period of purdah too was over. He could drink at last. Life was about to be good again.
With the word ‘Cheers!’ falling from his lips almost as a prayer of thanks Pop raised the glass, sipped at it and put it down again, his face wry.
‘Something wrong?’ Ma said. ‘Not corked, is it?’
Pop hesitated, licked his lips and then tasted the wine again.
‘Perfick,’ he said. ‘Only I don’t like the taste, that’s all.’
Did he mind? Ma said. He didn’t what?
‘Don’t like it, that’s all, Ma. Don’t like the taste. Tastes funny’
Ma, struck speechless for the third time that morning, told herself she would go to the bone-house. She didn’t for the life of her know what things were coming to.
‘Suppose when you’ve been off a thing all that long you sort of lose the urge for it or summat,’ Pop said. ‘Suppose you can do without it.’
Oh! you did, did you? Ma thought, thinking of other things and hoping that what applied to wine wouldn’t apply to letting Nature take its course in other directions. Pop not liking the taste? It really had her be-jiggered.
‘Great pity not to savour this excellent vintage,’ Sir John said, at the same time savouring the vintage of Sister Trevelyan somewhere in the region of the left upper thigh. ‘Beautiful bouquet.’
Future looked black, Ma thought. She half-wished she hadn’t let her place next to Sir John be taken over by Phyllida, who in true feminine Larkin fashion had insisted on sitting next to him instead of Ma. After all there was no doubt he was a bit of a dog. She was very near tempted to start making up to him herself. The curled half-grey half-blond hair, thick and rather long about the ears, together with the lamb-chop whiskers, the beautiful cultured aristocratic voice and the grey-blue eyes that were never still: it wouldn’t take anybody long to get a bit worked up, Ma thought.
‘Interested in gardening, Sir John?’ Ma said, just to see what happened.
Well, yes, he was, Sir John said, intensely: it was one of his hobbies, he confessed, contriving at the same time to pursue another one of them with Sister Trevelyan.
‘Good. You must come and see mine after lunch.’
‘Splendid. Delighted.’
As the meal went on and on it struck the little Miss Barnwells and also Miss Pilchester and even Mr Candy and Ma, that it was very curious that no mention had been made of the Cause. This, after all, was largely what the lunch was about: to stave off the invading forces of treacherous bureaucracy and so on, to keep the village and Pop’s property inviolate and in all ways to defend the Realm and the Cause. Everybody, rather like Ma, had certain confused ideas as to what the functions of a Queen’s Counsel were and half wondered if they ought not to set up a committee there and then, appoint Sir John as chairman and then hear the case for the defence put in true expert legal fashion.
They were however so shy as to be utterly unable to put these thoughts into words and it was finally left to the Brigadier to broach the subject, which he did by holding up his sixth or seventh glass of Chambolle Musigny, looking through it with fruity ardour at Angela Snow and then saying:
‘I understand, sir, that you’ve been good enough to take up the brief on our behalf. Noble gesture.’
The Brigadier’s few cryptic words had the immediate effect of producing no reply whatever from Sir John. At the same time there was a positive torrent of explanation and comments from the little Miss Barnwells, Edith Pilchester and even Ma and Mr Candy. Road, tunnel, Common Market, Rome, Island, England’s Green and Pleasant Land: the chorus wasn’t merely one of explanation and comments but one of protest, indignation and, on Edith Pilchester’s part, of righteous fervour amounting almost to wrath.
