by Jilly Cooper
‘I’ve brought you some bottles of fine wine,’ went on Charlie.
Dora, snapping away on her telephone camera, was livid when Hengist gave her twenty pounds and told her to buzz off.
‘How are you going to manage? Coxie can’t wait on her own, she was hoping to put her feet up with a plate of goose and The Wizard of Oz.’
‘Go on, hop it.’
Dora rushed off across the snow to the Old Coach House.
‘Guess what, Oriana’s a lesbian; she’s turned up with a tall woman called Charlie. They’re sharing a bed, imagine them licking each other, it’s so pants.’
Ian and Patience, who’d had several drinks after a gruelling day with Paris, had great difficulty not laughing.
‘Shall I go and cheer him up?’ asked Dora wistfully. ‘Oh well, I’d better toboggan home.’
Charlie proceeded to dominate the conversation. She had spent six years teaching English at Smith before going into television on the news side. She had been everywhere and knew everyone. She was also a know-all, decided Janna, although it might have been to impress the Brett-Taylors.
She immediately recognized L’Enfance du Christ on the record player but, on picking up the CD cover, said she preferred Sir Colin Davis’s version with Janet Baker singing Mary.
The mistletoe hanging in the hall on the way into dinner was an excuse for a little lecture on druids gathering it by moonlight.
‘Mistletoe was alleged to cure infertility,’ continued Charlie, ‘ill humour and offer protection from lightning.’ Then, tucking her arm through Oriana’s: ‘There should have been some hanging in the Palestine Hotel the night we met.
‘Omigod.’ She clapped her hands as she entered the dining room. ‘How glorious.’ Yet the scarlet napkins, crimson roses and army of white candles lighting the room and casting a sheen on the frozen snow outside seemed less suited to the mood of the evening than the dark jungle wallpaper.
Glancing at the place cards, Sally wondered if Charlie ought now to be on Hengist’s right rather than hers, particularly as Emlyn was on her left, glowering like some huge cliff face across at Charlie, who was unfolding her red napkin like a matador and banging on about the New York apartment.
‘Oriana and I have kept things neutral. Then we can vary the look by adding cushions and throws.’
‘We’ve done the same at my school,’ piped up Janna. ‘Alas the boys do most of the throwing.’
But Charlie had been sidetracked by a lovely Nevinson of Battersea Power Station, opal smoke drifting in the morning sun, which had been recently hung on the wall opposite.
‘Although I prefer the gritty realism of Nevinson’s war oeuvre. Oriana, like him, is a war artist. The tautness and poetry of your daughter’s reportage, Hengist and Sally, will become TV classics.’
‘Oh Charlie.’ Oriana blew her a kiss.
They’re bitches. Poor Emlyn, thought Janna furiously. How could they chatter away as though everything was normal?
Hengist, who never squandered an opportunity to work a room, was quizzing Charlie about the American political scene, which he and Jupiter were busy cracking. Who were the movers and shakers? Charlie dismissed most of the ones he knew as right-wing bigots.
The first course of smoked salmon mousse and poached scallops was delicious but the latter were definitely undercooked, like eating chunks of female flesh.
Emlyn gagged and put his knife and fork together, suddenly overwhelmed with longing for his wise kindly father, who’d so disapproved of any link with the Brett-Taylors. What was he to do? He could hardly challenge Charlie to a duel. And how did you compete for a woman with another woman, who was so self-assured, so smart and who looked so much better in a dinner suit and her own skin than you did yourself? Emlyn drained his glass of Pouilly-Fumé and poured another one.
Charlie was a slow eater, because she talked so much, which was a good thing, because Coxie was so incensed to be abandoned that she refused to do much waiting.
Oriana and Sally helped her in with the goose, parsnip purée, roast potatoes, sprouts and bread sauce. As Hengist began carving, Elaine sidled round the table, dark eyes bright and loving in anticipation of goodies. On learning her name, Charlie launched into Tennyson:
‘“Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable, Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat.”’
‘Oh, fuck off,’ muttered Emlyn.
‘Pardon me?’ asked Charlie, then demanded what aspect of American history Emlyn was teaching. Learning it was the Wild West, she hoped Emlyn was stressing the victimization of the Native Americans.
‘No one more than Emlyn,’ snapped Janna.
‘Here you are, Emlyn.’ A sympathetic Coxie shoved a huge plate of goose in front of him. ‘I’ve given you the breast.’
And so it went on. Glasses were filled several times as candlelight etched the deepening crisis on each face. On the surface, people contradicted each other, some with passion, some with dogged authority, while everyone watched. Was Charlie revving up to ask Hengist for Oriana’s nailbitten hand? wondered Janna. She had been worried about which fork to use. This lot would hardly have noticed if she’d rammed one into Charlie’s arm.
The crimson roses were shedding petals on the polished table like drops of blood. Janna shivered, remembering Cara Sharpe and the scarlet anemones.
Oriana, in truth, was irritated Emlyn was behaving so angrily and gauchely. She could see Charlie was wondering how Oriana could have attached herself for so long to such a boor. Emlyn could be so funny and sharp, but every time Charlie threw him a question, he ignored it like a great vegan sea lion rejecting fish. She also wished her father were less right wing, and her mother less like a crystal lustre, tinkle, tinkle, filling in silences with inane chat.
Janna she couldn’t read. She’d been convinced she was her father’s latest, but from the way Janna was sticking up for Emlyn, Oriana wasn’t sure.
The food was sublime. Never were sprouts more crunchy, potatoes more golden crisp and creamily soft inside, or goose more tender without being fatty. Charlie, who hadn’t had any lunch, was particularly taken with the parsnip purée and had a second helping.
‘It’s Taggie Campbell-Black’s recipe,’ said Sally, who was now gazing into space.
As Charlie proceeded to annihilate the Bush administration, and make disapproving comments on ‘not forgetting the starving worldwide’ as more food seemed to go back on everyone else’s plates than was put on them in the first place, Elaine was having a field day.
Sally, who’d been fingering the cut-glass ridges of her water glass, suddenly filled it up from the gravy boat without realizing it.
‘It’s my turn to clear away.’ Janna leapt to her feet, stacking up the plates and grabbing Sally’s glass.
In the kitchen, she found Coxie in tears and attacking the brandy.
‘My dinner’s ruined and poor Mr Davies.’
‘It was a wonderful dinner. Everyone’s upset, that’s all.’ Janna put an arm round Coxie’s heaving shoulders as Emlyn walked in with the goose.
When she and Emlyn came back to the kitchen with vegetables and sauce boats, Janna murmured that Charlie and Oriana were fearfully anti-Bush.
‘Except each other’s,’ snarled Emlyn.
Janna screamed with laughter, then stifled it, stammering how desperately sorry she was about everything.
Returning to the dining room with hot plates, Christmas pudding and brandy butter, they caught Oriana and Charlie in a clinch in the hall.
‘Christ!’ exploded Emlyn. ‘Shall we unjoin the ladies?’
Ignoring him, as a further act of solidarity, Charlie and Oriana moved their chairs together, pulling crackers, putting on paper hats and giggling over riddles. Inside Charlie’s cracker was a yellow whistle which she kept blowing.
Janna put the Christmas pudding on the sideboard; Hengist defiantly emptied half a bottle of brandy over it. As he set fire to it, blue flame nearly scorched the ceiling. Emlyn felt similar anger flaring up inside him: Or
iana should have levelled with him. Even if there was a certain relief that it wasn’t him specifically she didn’t fancy, just blokes in general, her lack of response had constantly humiliated him, eroding his masculinity. He’d felt so heavy and ham-fisted, like a rhino trying to shag a gazelle.
‘D’you remember how you used to put silver 5ps in the Christmas pudding, Mum?’ asked Oriana.
‘It was bachelor’s buttons in my day,’ said Hengist, scooping Christmas pudding into silver bowls, which Janna handed round.
‘I wonder who’d qualify for that,’ said Sally in a high voice.
Seeing she was shivering, Janna took Emlyn’s seat next to her, praising the brandy butter, saying what joy her indoor bulbs had brought the children.
‘How nice.’ Sally attacked her Christmas pudding, then, putting her spoon down, said:
‘D’you remember the time you got Elaine a doggy bag from La Perdrix d’Or, pork chops wrapped in silver foil, and forgot and put it under the tree? By the time you opened it on Christmas night, it had gone orf and stank like hell.’ Sally started to laugh shrilly on and on. Janna put a hand on her arm.
‘It’s OK,’ she murmured, ‘you’re doing fine.’
‘I haven’t had much practice.’
Hengist, who’d been trying to get some sense out of Emlyn about rugger, glanced across at his wife with such concern.
She’s the one he loves, thought Janna. Me, Ruth Walton, even Oriana aren’t in the frame compared with her.
‘Don’t know why everyone goes on about Taggie’s cooking,’ said Hengist, ‘my wife’s is just as good. Let’s all drink to her.’
After they’d drained their glasses, Hengist filled them up again and proposed a toast to absent friends.
‘Mum,’ said Janna.
‘Mungo,’ said Oriana bitterly.
‘Dad,’ muttered Emlyn with a break in his voice.
He was looking so sad, Janna poked him in the ribs with a cracker. Inside was a key ring attached to a perky little black dog with pricked ears.
‘How darling,’ said Charlie covetously, ‘an Aberdeen terrier. My mother has one.’
‘We call them Scotties in England,’ said Janna tartly, ‘and Emlyn’s going to have it.’ She dropped it into his dinner jacket pocket.
‘Where are Artie and Theo?’ said Oriana fretfully.
‘Gone to Athens,’ said Hengist, ‘staying in the Grande Bretagne, lucky things. Artie’s hiring a car and they’re going on day trips to Corinth and Sparta.’
‘Such a shame, I so wanted Charlie to meet them.’
‘They’re both such dear persons,’ said Sally.
‘Why are male couples “dear persons” and not women?’ said Oriana, who was getting punchy. ‘Dad’s always slagging off Joan Johnson and Sabine Bottomley, but if they’re men, it’s fine.’
Hengist and Janna escaped with the pudding bowls.
‘Save it for the birds,’ he cried as Janna started to tip rejected pudding into the bin. ‘Christ, what a bloody awful evening. Is that appalling Charlie going to stay behind and drink port with me and Emlyn?’
But as they returned to the dining room, the grandfather clock struck ten-thirty and Charlie, looking at Oriana with sleepy suggestive eyes, announced she was exhausted.
‘Thank you so much, Sally and Hengist, for letting me invade your evening and for your wonderful gifts. If it’s OK, I’ll give you mine tomorrow after I’ve unpacked. A very merry Christmas.’
Then she kissed Sally, shook hands with Hengist and Janna and told Emlyn it was good to meet him, and turned towards the door.
‘I’m coming with you,’ Oriana leapt to her feet.
‘No, you’re not.’ Emlyn grabbed her arm. ‘We’ve got to talk.’
‘Tomorrow.’ Oriana winced at the exerted pressure, then, thinking her arm would snap like a wishbone: ‘Oh, OK then.’
They went back into the drawing room, where neither could be bothered to bank up the dying embers.
Out of nerves, Oriana put a Christmas compilation on the CD player, hastily turning down the sound when the first track was ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’.
Emlyn watched as she idly flipped through the white invitation cards on the chimney piece, then wandered to the window, gazing out at the snow, which, growing too heavy, was sliding off branches and had bowed down her mother’s beloved ceanothus to breaking point.
Snow might have fallen on the stretch of white neck between Oriana’s dark hair and her brown velvet neckline. This can’t be happening, thought Emlyn.
‘I’m so desperately sorry.’ Her voice was so low he had to move closer. ‘I hadn’t the guts to tell you. I thought you might have guessed. I’ll always love you in my head, but not between my legs.’
‘Thanks.’ Emlyn helped himself to several fingers of Hengist’s whisky. ‘How long’s it been going on?’
‘About eight months. War forces people to take chances, but I just knew it was right.’
She ought to be more contrite, thought Emlyn. She has all the self-righteousness of the infatuated.
‘Couldn’t we be friends?’ she begged.
‘I doubt it, not when one’s shot down by friendly fire.’ As a log fell into the grate in a shower of sparks he went on, ‘Hengist won’t get his rugby Blue grandson now.’ Emlyn removed Hengist’s pale blue tasselled Cambridge cap from a bust of Brahms.
‘He could.’ Oriana swung round. ‘Can I ask you a favour? It’s a compliment really. Charlie and I want a baby.’
Emlyn caught his breath. Fuck, he’d pulled the tassel off the cap.
‘Unto us a boy is born,’ sang the CD player.
‘Not unto us, it ain’t,’ said Emlyn flatly.
‘It could be. I can’t think of anyone in the world I’d rather have as father of my child. You’re brave, loyal, funny and such a wonderful athlete.’
‘And thick,’ said Emlyn. ‘You’d provide the brains presumably.’
‘Oh, Emlyn.’ If he could joke, the worst was over.
She reached out and took his hand, irresistible in her hopeful beauty. ‘Daddy’d be so pleased too, he’s so fond of you. Will you sleep with me while I’m here, Charlie truly won’t mind, but if you can’t face that, at least be the donor?’ Then when he didn’t answer: ‘You could have access,’ she added.
‘You fucking bitch,’ said Emlyn softly. ‘I joined this school because of you, and sold my principles down the River Fleet. You ruthless bloody bitch. Using your rough trade to provide hybrid vigour. No fucking thank you.’
‘No need to be obnoxious,’ said Oriana huffily, as though he’d refused to give her a lift to the station. ‘I could easily have married you and had women on the side, taken the easy route. But Charlie and I thought about this long and hard.’
‘Hardly the operative adjectives.’ Emlyn’s voice grew in fury. ‘There is absolutely no way a child of mine is going to be brought up by a couple of lesbians.’
‘Pity,’ sighed Oriana, ‘our gay male friends have been very supportive and are very happy to oblige. They see the bigger picture.’
‘Or bugger picture – we are talking about a child.’
‘Charlie would actually prefer IVF to make sure of a girl, but she knows I so want to give Dad a grandson.’
‘You’ve had it all planned,’ said Emlyn softly. ‘I never, never want to see you again,’ and, fumbling with the French windows, tripping over the door ledge, he stumbled off into the blizzard.
Hearing doors slamming and shouting, Hengist, who’d just seen Janna, who should not have been driving, into her car, marched into the drawing room.
Towering over Oriana, terrible as an army with banners, he roared, ‘Your mother’s devastated. I can’t think of a crasser way of hurting her. I’m amazed you didn’t announce it on television. Heartbreaking News. And what the hell have you said to poor Emlyn?’
When Oriana told him, adding that she hoped it would be some compensation to Emlyn to feel he was involved, Hengist flipped.
&n
bsp; ‘How can you be so fucking insensitive?’
‘You wanted a son, a grandson; I’m doing my best.’
‘Not one brought up by two dykes.’
Oriana winced. ‘Why are you and Emlyn so homophobic?’
‘Children need a father.’
‘Charlie and I love each other,’ said Oriana. ‘You’ve always surrounded yourself with children who you love more than me. You loved Mungo more than me. I’m just trying to give you another Mungo,’ she sobbed.
‘Don’t drag Mungo into it. Get out, GET OUT, I never want to see you or Charlie again.’
Charging upstairs to her bedroom, Oriana discovered the long, lean, olive-skinned nakedness of Charlie, stretched out across the four-poster. Her high breasts and sleek flat belly would never have need of surgery. Arms on the pillow behind her head showed off armpit hair as glossy as her dark brown Brazilian. On the bedside table awaited oil for fingers that went everywhere, releasing Oriana utterly, driving her to heaven.
‘Come to bed, my darling,’ called out Charlie softly, then, seeing the anguish on Oriana’s face, asked anxiously, ‘Whatever’s the matter?’
‘It’s a good thing you haven’t unpacked yet,’ sobbed Oriana, ‘there’s no room at this inn.’
Out on the pitches, it was as light as day. In contrast to her master’s anguish, Elaine skipped and cavorted, white on white, snorting excitedly, tunnelling her nose along the snow. Hengist, who had no treads on his black evening shoes, fell over twice and heaved himself up. Reaching Badger’s Retreat, he found a tall big ash had been blown over in yesterday’s gale, knocking most of the branches off the east side of the Family Tree, smashing every sapling springing up around it.
Like Charlie, invading our Christmas, destroying us, he thought. A few remaining branches swung loose like broken limbs. Others were bandaged in snow. Hengist gave a howl and flung his arms round the trunk trying to hold the family together.
From now on, his sights would be set on Paris.
By the time he got home, Oriana and Charlie had departed and he was greeted by a tearful Sally, furious with him for chucking Oriana out.