Dreams of Another Day, page 27
The children went reluctantly and the adults settled down to a sumptuous dinner of unexpected dishes. The pièce de résistance was a whole carp, stuffed with chestnuts and raisins. It tasted rather odd, but it was stylish and entirely different from any of the traditional Christmas dishes that the others planned to cook.
Ming had been placed between Peter and Tibor and opposite Gerry, who had David on her right. They talked easily about all sorts of important subjects that did not matter personally to any one of them, ignoring the various emotional conduits that connected them and yet held them rigidly apart.
Once Flixe had served the pudding, an impressive confection of small spherical eclairs filled with orange cream and topped with caramel, she began to relax and the conversation, which had been fragmented, became general. By some unspoken agreement they dropped politics and the latest moves in the international situation, and instead talked about past Christmases. Between them they managed to remember plenty of old disasters that were funny in retrospect and slowly the formality around the table warmed into real laughter.
‘You are lucky,’ said Julia at one moment after Gerry and Flixe had been telling Ming of early Christmases in India before she could remember much. Flixe smiled at Julia, but Gerry looked interested and alert.
‘Lucky?’ she said.
‘Having each other, I mean. I never had any siblings and I envy you horribly,’ said Julia.
David looked across the table at his wife, surprised by the feeling in her voice. She sounded lonely. His eyebrows touched over his nose as he frowned. For months he had been so preoccupied with hiding his own depression and then with the exhilaration of its departure that it had not occurred to him that Julia might not be happy either. She always seemed so equable and content.
‘I suspect we all envy each other for things we can never have,’ said Gerry bitterly, breaking off David’s thoughts and making everyone look at her. ‘You at least need never know what it is to watch mothers and small children and to know you can never be one of them.’
No one said anything for a moment. Gerry pulled a small lace handkerchief from the sleeve of her cheerful red dress and blew her nose.
‘I’m so sorry, Julia, Flixe. I don’t know what came over me.’
Ming longed to help. She was sure that Gerry’s renewed sensitivity to the subject of babies was her fault and there was nothing she could do about it. She glanced quickly across at Mike and saw that he was looking helpless and miserable. Ming knew that she had to distract everyone’s attention and give Gerry time to recover.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Julia,’ Ming said with spurious cheerfulness. ‘It’s all very well to wish for siblings but you don’t know what you’d be letting yourself in for. They might be elder sisters after all.’
Tibor laughed at the theatrical stress Ming gave to her warning. Her eyes sparkled as she answered his smile.
‘When they’re not telling you what to do, they’re bullying you into running their errands and generally exploiting you. D’you know, Julia, Flixe even used to make me muck out her pony.’
‘Really? Flixe, you never told me that,’ said Peter, looking down the long table at his wife. He was amused to see a very slight blush on her cheekbones.
‘Once, Ming, you must admit it was only once,’ she said, looking guilty. Everyone’s attention was diverted from Gerry and Mike.
‘True,’ said Ming, ‘but you tricked me into it by promising to give me that ravishing pink party dress of yours.’
‘Do you know that’s been on my conscience almost ever since,’ said Flixe. She knew what Ming was trying to do and would have admitted to anything to help her do it. ‘I can’t remember what excuse I gave you for reneging on the deal.’
‘You didn’t, you simply took advantage of the power bestowed by your great age. You were a rotter sometimes.’
Everyone laughed, even Gerry.
‘Christmas is a terrible time for families,’ said David with a quiet smile in his eyes. He, too, had been watching Ming as she spoke and thinking how much he admired her care for other people and her intelligence. ‘We always used to quarrel – and get very emotional. My mother positively hates it.’
‘So do I, sometimes,’ said Gerry with a heavy sigh. She turned quickly towards Flixe. ‘Not this, this is lovely. How does your mother cope, David?’
‘She always stays firmly in Scotland, where they don’t make much fuss over it, and pretends that it isn’t really happening. Then when they go in for all that whisky and grim good cheer at Hogmanay, she comes south.’
‘Mike, shall we go to Scotland next year?’ said Gerry. ‘It sounds an excellent solution.’
‘Good idea, darling,’ he called from the foot of the table. ‘Unless, of course, we were to get snowed in. That could be dull. May I open my packages, Flixe? They look so enticing.’
‘I’m glad you think so, Mike,’ she said, touching his hand. ‘They’re nothing special, but I always think that Christmas without presents would be like … oh, a salad without dressing.’
Mike laughed. ‘Or a kiss without a cuddle, eh Flixe?’
He picked up a silver package so that he could untie the red ribbons. The others did the same, discovering small but useful presents such as handkerchiefs, shaving soap, bath salts and pen-knives. While they were busy unwrapping, Peter got up from his chair and walked down the room to the other end of the long table. He put both hands on his wife’s firm shoulders and kissed her neck. As he straightened up, he put a hand into his waistcoat pocket and took out a ring.
‘I’ve got one for you,’ he said as he slid it onto her finger to join her engagement and wedding rings.
‘It’s lovely, Peter,’ she said, turning her hand this way and that so that the sapphires and diamonds caught the candle light. ‘Thank you. Yours is under the tree. Do you want it now?’
Peter shook his dark head. The candles threw shadows across his saturnine face, making him look even more intriguing than usual.
‘That’s not your Christmas present; it’s your combined pre-Christmas and baby present.’
Flixe kissed him.
‘Now be off with you, my love,’ he said, helping her up from her chair. ‘I can see that Mike wants his port.’
‘And a little peace from all these chattering women.’
They all laughed except for Tibor, whose full lips took on a sardonic twist. He enjoyed the company of women and had always disliked the enforced segregation of the sexes after dinner. At least in the Suvarovs’ house he had no need to fear either ponderous ill-informed political chit-chat or the laboured salacity he had come across at some London dinners.
Flixe led the women upstairs towards her bedroom. Ming was immediately behind her sisters when she heard Gerry whispering an apology to Flixe for making a scene at dinner. Flixe put an arm around Gerry’s shoulders and leant her blonde head towards her sister’s. Ming was visited by a sudden bitter pang of regret for her dead twin.
She turned her head so that she need not see so clear a demonstration of what Gerry had been trying to tell her that she lacked and saw Julia directly behind her.
‘That’s what I miss. Aren’t they lucky?’ Julia said.
Ming nodded.
‘In that respect, yes: immensely lucky. How are your children? I liked them so much when I came to lunch last summer.’
Julia answered politely and they followed the other two into Flixe’s comfortable, flower-scented bedroom.
Christmas at the Alderbrook parents’ house seemed rather an anticlimax after Flixe’s luxurious party, but for most of the time it was a lot less emotional. Ming was relieved that her father greeted her just as he always had done and seemed to have overcome his fury about her Suez article. He said nothing at all about the Story of a Lost Love, and in gratitude, Ming slipped back into the role of dutiful daughter that she had played so well for so long.
The small party ate a great deal, drove to various neighbouring houses for drinks, went twice to church, walked off their meals in the fields and woods around the house, and played innumerable hands of bridge. Ming, who was not very good, and Mike, who was not very interested, took it in turns to make up the table.
On the afternoon of Boxing Day it was Mike’s turn to play, and so Ming took herself to the kitchen to tackle the mountain of washing-up that had been left after lunch. Gerry came to join her whenever she was dummy, and between them they washed and dried nearly everything but the saucepans, trying to keep each other amused enough not to exchange notes about how dreary Christmas was in a house without children. At one moment Gerry did say:
‘Doesn’t it make you feel second-best to Flixe?’
Ming longed to say something serious, something that might comfort Gerry, but she was afraid that there was nothing that would do that.
‘I’ve always felt a long way second-best to both of you,’ she said with a clear smile. ‘Being the youngest, I suppose that’s inevitable. You grow up knowing that your sisters will always be cleverer, more grownup, more sophisticated, more at ease with other people than you.’
Gerry laughed and Ming thought that she had done something to help after all.
‘But you caught up long ago, Ming,’ she said, reaching for the water jug. Before she could dry it, she had to obey a call from the drawing room to take up her next hand, leaving Ming to run a new bowlful of hot water and begin to tackle the greasy pans.
She had dealt with the first when her mother appeared, looking as neat as she had when she had come down to breakfast that morning. Her tweed skirt and moss-green twin-set were as conventional as all her clothes and suited her better than usual. She wore the pearls her father had once given her and suitably discreet make-up. Her hair had become so thin that she had taken to having a light pink rinse put in to disguise the amount of scalp that showed through.
Asshe walked nearer the sink the light fell directly over her and Ming noticed the device for the first time and felt sorry for her mother. Mrs Alderbrook had always been impeccably dressed and had taken infinite pains to make certain that no one could ever laugh at her or criticise anything she wore. The indignity of losing her hair must have hurt.
‘I’m dummy this time, darling,’ she said. ‘Let me take a turn. You’ve done far more than your fair share.’
Ming smiled over her shoulder at her mother. It was pleasant to have her wholehearted approval for once.
‘I’m perfectly happy doing the washing-up,’ said Ming, ‘and you look jolly tired. How’s the ankle? It must have been an awful sprain to stop you coming to the christening.’
‘Fairly awful,’ said her mother, pulling the moss-green cardigan down over her hips. She went to feel the damp cloths Gerry had hung in front of the cream-coloured Aga and then reached into a cupboard to fetch a pile of dry ones. Shaking one of them out, she looked down at her slender ankles above the heavy brown country shoes.
‘I was rather afraid the swelling would be permanent, but I think it’s gone now.’ She picked the water jug off the splintered wooden draining board and started to dry it. ‘But it wasn’t really the ankle that stopped us.’
‘Oh,’ said Ming inadequately, dreading the signs of an impending reprimand.
Long experience had shown her that she could do nothing to stop it and she focused all her efforts on not minding whatever her mother might say. Ming had tried all her life to avoid offending or disappointing her, but she had never succeeded and had usually blamed herself for it. Since her conversation at Gerry’s flat she had begun to look at the past differently, but even Gerry’s insights did not stop her feeling cold and hollow as she waited.
‘No,’ said Fanny Alderbrook, looking at Ming over the top of the spectacles she had forgotten to remove, ‘your father was so upset by what you wrote that he really wasn’t up to seeing you just then.’
‘Well, he seems to have got over it all right now,’ said Ming, brightly.
She did not look at her mother, apparently concentrating on removing the stain from the bottom of a pale blue enamelled pan. She had heard a defensive note in her voice and hated it.
‘I can’t believe he should have minded that much. A lot of people have written far more controversially about Suez than I did.’
‘But none of them was his daughter.’
Mrs Alderbrook put a hand on Ming’s thin wrist, around which clung a high-water mark of half-dissolved fat. Ming turned to face her, teeth clenched behind her smiling lips.
‘Didn’t you think about what you were doing to him, Ming?’
‘Oh, Mother! Why must you make it so personal?’ Ming turned back to the washing-up. ‘I wasn’t doing anything to him – or to you. I was just doing my job.’
‘But you must have known how much we would feel it. After all, you went to the trouble of finding out what we thought about the whole business way back in the summer. It was pathetic, you know,’ she added, her voice softening slightly. ‘Your father sat in his chair in the morning room and kept saying: “Of all of them, why Ming?”’
Ming rinsed another pan under the hot tap, trying not to see how the fresh hot water splashing into the bowl drove ripples of fat globules across the grey water already there.
‘You see, darling, he’s always believed that you were going to make up for all the other disappointments: for Annie’s death, for all Flixe’s scandals and the insinuations about her husband, for Gerry’s childlessness …’
‘Mummy, don’t,’ said Ming like a six-year-old having a splinter extracted from under her fingernail. She had not called her mother that for years. Mrs Alderbrook paid no attention and dug a little further into Ming’s defences.
‘He was so proud of what you did in the war and of the way you managed to stay the same, despite what you went through then, and the decoration and everything. He’s had you on a pedestal ever since, and assumed that all the best young men would feel the same. And yet in spite of Anna’s money, you’re still unmarried.’
Mrs Alderbrook paused, as though waiting for Ming to confide in her. There was enough hardness behind the interest in her blue eyes to make Ming feel wary. Some of Gerry’s explanations of their mother’s tendency to verbal brutality began to seem less fantastic. When Ming said nothing, Mrs Alderbrook went on:
‘And since almost the beginning of this magazine business, he’s been afraid – we’ve both been afraid – that you’ll drive them off. You’re showing yourself to be so aggressive, darling, so unfeminine, that men will simply not understand what you’re really like.’
‘What am I like?’ asked Ming, cut to the quick. The misery of her last meeting with Mark was under-lined by a fear that she had driven him away by coarseness or brazenness.
‘Fanny!’ The general’s voice called from the drawing room. Ming’s mother put down her drying-up cloth.
‘He’s always loved you best, you see. And when he hears about scenes like the one at Flixe’s dinner party when you were so horrible to that young man from the Stock Exchange he can hardly bear it. Just as he can’t bear the thought that it’s you who’ve made him into a laughing stock.’
‘But I haven’t,’ said Ming, furious with Flixe for telling tales and with her mother for exaggerating so much.
‘What do you think the regiment must have thought when they saw his name on an article like that?’
‘No one in the regiment is going to read anything like The World Beyond,’ said Ming with more crispness than she had ever used when speaking to either of her parents.
It dawned on Ming that her mother was not only her husband’s mouthpiece but was speaking for herself as well. Anger and resentment that she was using Ming’s affection for him to make her own dissatisfaction hurt more, pushed Ming to add:
‘And if they did, all they would have seen is an attempt by someone who loathes the basis on which they run their lives to show up the foolishness of killing people to settle a political point and the deviousness of the means by which the war was started.’
‘And what do you think that all our old friends are saying now?’ Fanny paid as little attention to the content of Ming’s outburst as she had to childhood protests of unfairness. ‘Can’t you imagine them raking over the old scandals and saying, “Well, what can you expect of one of the Alderbrook girls?” Do you think it’s pleasant to know that we’re being pitied for the things you do?’
‘What can it possibly matter what other people think?’
‘Of course it matters. I’ve had a hard enough life without being pitied and despised because of what you do for a living. Why couldn’t any of you have behaved like other people’s daughters?’
Ming did not answer.
‘Fanny!’
‘Coming,’ she called. ‘Try to make it up with him before you go back to London,’ she added more kindly to her youngest daughter. Then, as though something long repressed were being forced out of her she added with less apparent sweetness:
‘You know, sometimes I wish you three would remember me when you take it into your heads to punish him for whatever it is you imagine he did to you or didn’t do.’
‘Fanny!’ The general’s voice sounded exasperated.
Without waiting for a reply, Fanny Alderbrook went to answer her husband’s call and Ming turned doggedly back to the saucepans and roasting tins. Her anger helped to control all the guilt that her mother had managed to stir up in her. She felt infinitely relieved that she had said nothing to her parents about her summons to the magistrates’court and that they had been too embarrassed to talk about the Story of a Lost Love.
Ming slept badly that night and was awake soon after seven, when she heard her father letting the dogs out into the garden. Knowing that she had very little time to find out what he really felt and repair the damage her mother had talked about, Ming dressed quickly in her warmest trousers and jersey. Downstairs she picked a coat at random from the rack by the back door, stuffed her feet into a pair of wellingtons and followed her father outside.
There had been a hard frost that night and the short grass felt crunchy under her boots as she walked across the small lawn to the ha-ha. The dogs were careering up the field beyond and her father was walking slowly after them, leaning on his stick. He looked much older than when she had been there in the summer and she felt the sharp tug of all the hooks that joined her to him.
