Parlour Games

by Mavis Cheek

  ‘They’re just setting off,’ says Alex.

  ‘Oh good – that means they’ll be here any minute.’

  Tom goes off to the lavatory, Celia and Alex return to the conservatory – her with her arm around his waist, he with his arm around her shoulders.

  ‘You do look very beautiful tonight,’ he whispers.

  ‘Just a minute, you two,’ says Isabel and she takes from her handbag her camera. ‘Stay just as you are –’ So they do, and she snaps them. ‘One for the album,’ she says.

  Behind them comes Tom. ‘What was all this about games, then, Celia?’ he says, slipping his hand around her waist. Sandwiched and held between him and Alex she feels like a dancer from Zorba the Greek. ‘Tell us what you’ve got in mind. You know me – I love games ...’

  Both men disentangle themselves from her body at the same time, as if choreographed. She feels rather relieved.

  ‘I just thought it’d be fun. After all, we know each other so well we can be as silly as we like. It’s a long time since I’ve done anything really silly. I feel like making an idiot of myself – I think it is kind of propitious for tonight. It may be the last time – I may never get the chance again.’

  Isabel looks at Celia’s colourful hair. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’ She smiles quite nicely.

  Celia doesn’t.

  Susie says, ‘Games it is then.’

  Tom says, ‘I’m game,’ and nudges Celia.

  Alex looks heavenwards at the paucity of the wit. But he nods.

  Dave says, ‘That must be just about the height of bourgeoisiosty.’ They look at him in wonder. ‘If there is such a word.’ He laughs.

  ‘And John and Hazel will join in with anything,’ says Celia. ‘I’m sure they won’t mind.’

  Susie is dabbling her long pink nail in her champagne, no drop of which has passed her perfect pink lips. ‘It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters tonight except that you have a lovely time. Right everybody?’

  Everybody agrees.

  ‘They ought to be here by now,’ says Celia, looking at her watch. ‘After all, it’s only a few streets away – it takes hardly any time to walk.’

  ‘What a nice idea – to be able to walk to a night out instead of having to drive or get a train.’

  ‘We do it quite a lot in our community,’ says Alex.

  ‘Proper little village, eh?’ says Dave.

  ‘More so than Surbiton I think.’

  Dave and Isabel both open their mouths but Susie gets in first. ‘More so than Wootton Deverill anyway,’ she says tactfully.

  ‘Have you still got a village school?’ asks Isabel.

  ‘No,’ says Susie, ‘thank God. It’s bad enough having the youth club.’

  ‘We’re raising money for a computer at ours,’ says Isabel.

  ‘Oh, Tom’s bought one already for them. Now they need software for it. We’re always putting our hands in our pockets one way and another ... still – it’s good publicity I suppose.’

  ‘I keep telling Celia that. Computers are so important. We’ve bought the boys one since they showed such an interest in Dave’s.’

  ‘Have they taken it apart yet?’ asks Celia.

  Isabel gives her a look.

  The telephone rings.

  ‘I’ll go,’ says Alex. ‘Open another bottle, will you, Dave? Or maybe Tom should. He’s probably got more experience of popping corks than you.’ And with a look of pleasure at the sharpness of his wit, he goes off to answer the call.

  Dave takes the bottle from the cooler and opens it deftly. ‘Plumbers happen to be good with their hands,’ he says, and gives his wife a wink. ‘Don’t they Izzie?’

  Celia is made supremely jealous by the blush that suffuses her sister’s face. How she wishes she had been successful earlier in the bedroom. In a desire for some kind of appeasement she crosses the room to Tom and, not a little buoyed up by the washing-machine’s secret and the champagne she has drunk, she says, ‘And second-hand car salesmen?’

  ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘they’re very good with theirs, too ...’

  So that she has to sit down and cross her legs very hard and remind herself that it is Parlour Games and not Adult Games they will be playing later. Surely Hazel and John must get here soon? Their presence would bring some kind of order, she feels sure. She squirms and the rattan shrieks. Alex, just returning, looks delighted as he says, ‘Careful with that chair, Celia.’ His mimicry of her earlier criticism is wickedly good.

  Before she can reply he goes on, ‘Enter stage left, a messenger, bearing tidings.’ Like the good lawyer he is he waits for his timing to be right before continuing. ‘That was John.’

  ‘What!’ Celia sits bolt upright; shriek, shriek from the chair. ‘John! Phoning? Why?’

  Alex looks pleased to have captured everyone’s attention before dropping his expression to one of suitable commiseration.

  ‘They’ve had a bit of a crash on the way over.’ He holds up his hands at the oohs and the aahs. ‘Nothing serious, but Hazel’s got whiplash. She’s a bit shaken up so John’s taking her home. He may come on later. He said not to worry.’ Alex pauses again for more oohs and aahs. ‘He said it was the perfect example of the accolade “we nearly broke our necks to get there ...”’ Everybody laughs, except Celia.

  ‘Why on earth did they drive?’ she wails.

  ‘They were late because Caspar ...’

  ‘Oh, don’t bother,’ she says tetchily. ‘Why can’t that dirty little tyke stop his tricks—’

  ‘Now, now,’ says Tom. ‘That’s not like you.’

  ‘If you cry on your birthday,’ says Isabel (as she used to say so regularly), ‘you’ll cry for the rest of the year.’

  Two tears – one of rage, one of frustration – escape from Celia’s eyes.

  ‘That’s done it,’ says Dave.

  Celia brushes them away and stands up.

  ‘They aren’t the first I’ve shed tonight,’ she says.

  Tom gives her a sad little look.

  She ignores it, for its tenderness is too desirable.

  ‘Let’s get in to the dining room for Christ’s sake,’ she says. ‘Or everything will be spoilt.’

  3

  The cool dimness of the dining room after the bright sunshine of the conservatory produces a calm and peaceful air among the guests. The sober glow of the furniture’s old wood (nothing wrong with Mrs Green’s ability to polish when the quality is worthy of it) and the simple precision of the table settings gives a quiet sense of harmony to the scene. Celia has chosen the soft whiteness of damask for the tablecloth and pale Italianate pink for the serviettes. The cutlery winks in the candlelight and a dainty arrangement of jasmine and honeysuckle from the garden sends out a delicate perfume. On the white plates the peachy-pink of the fish nestles against the sharp yellow of the lemon and the greeny-blackness of the watercress. She feels happy again: this is her domain; this is what she is good at. What has she been getting so het up about? She is a perfectly ordinary Bedford Park wife in her perfectly ordinary Bedford Park house within the bosom of her perfectly ordinary Bedford Park family – having a slightly special birthday. That is all, she tells herself, that is all.

  She surveys the table, the guests, the setting and the players. Here is perfection, she decides, here is perfection that is mine; I could not have done all this when I was twenty; this is an art that comes only with age; like the furniture she has become polished. No more rough edges, no more risks. Which is as it should be. She sends a deeply satisfied smile in her husband’s direction but finds that out of the corner of his eye he is scrutinising his reflection in the smoky gilded glass above the mantel. Odd, she thinks again, very odd. Perhaps her own middle ground does make him reappraise his. She looks at him with love. For all his shifts and foibles she loves him still. Passion recollected in tranquillity: a little sigh escapes her at this thought. It would have been so nice to recollect a more recent experience of passion than – when? – she thinks hard – when did they last
make love? It must be over a week – she puts her fingers to her mouth to concentrate – no, more than that, more like two weeks – ever since the final intensity of the Brandreth case deepened and Alex has been either away from home or much too tired – it could even be three weeks ... Guiltily and fleetingly she sneaks a quick look at Tom. Thank heavens he has no idea how often Celia is left alone for she is certain he would consolidate. (When thinking of Tom one does well to think in business terms since he is, by nature, a man of business.) Tom pursues Celia, so Celia thinks, as he would pursue a new market. She is not arrogant in feeling relieved that he is unaware of her spending nights on her own – she is right to do so – and as she does so another thought follows on which is, taking in the reckoning of her two, maybe three weeks’ sexual hiatus, that she could have accommodated Tom very nicely if she had chosen to. Which, of course, she did not. This only goes to show what a good contented wife she is and what a good marriage they have. Alex is not the only one allowed to feel smug, she thinks. After all, she, too, has worked hard enough for it.

  The correct approbation greets the scene. Little subdued noises from the throats of her guests that signal recognition of her prowess. Celia points them into their places. With the absence of Hazel and John there is more room for them to spread. She puts Tom to her left and Dave to her right. Then Alex at the head of the table, flanked by Isabel and Susie. In the glow of the candlelight everybody looks beautiful and the tensions at last seem to have evaporated. As they seat themselves they all look quite dignified and at ease. Even Susie, who is without the benefit of champagne, is relaxed enough to give the jasmine and honeysuckle only the most fleeting of arrangements with her lovely manicured hands. Celia notices that they do look better now. Damn. She shakes off the irritation. Ah well, she thinks, almost perfection. Susannah always did have the edge.

  Alex wrests his gaze away from the mirror and takes one of the two bottles of wine from their silver coolers.

  ‘First,’ he says, ‘a toast to my beautiful wife.’

  They raise their filled glasses and drink to her. Affection and goodwill reflect out of the five pairs of eyes as they speak. She feels like a bride again and decides that this was the right thing to do after all. Gone are the hints of the Marie Céleste. She raises her glass to answer them, and gives a long, slow smile around the table, which ends on Tom. She is just about to sip her wine, having said ‘To you all’ in a suitably dainty way, when she feels his hand, very hot on her knee. The suitable daintiness gives way to a little shriek and some of her wine splashes on to the tablecloth. Tom is the only one not looking at her. She gives her knee a jerk, which does not dislodge the hand, and carries on gamely.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says to the startled assembly, and borrows the first phrase that comes to mind which is unfortunately one of Mrs Green’s. ‘One of my twinges ...’ She shrugs. ‘Rheumatism.’ She embroiders the theme.

  ‘You should go to a homeopath,’ says Susie.

  ‘There was an excellent programme on the radio this morning about diet and health,’ says Isabel. ‘I taped it for the staff. You can’t begin too early getting the message across to children.’ She looks at Celia pointedly. ‘Did you hear it?’

  ‘I had the radio on,’ says Celia – rather cleverly, she fancies.

  ‘Interesting, that bit about the RDA of Tricalcium Phosphate, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Very,’ says Celia. ‘Very, very interesting.’

  What is RDA? she wonders.

  What is Tricalcium Phosphate?

  ‘So will you be taking it?’

  ‘Will you?’ Celia hazards.

  ‘I already do,’ says Isabel.

  Tom’s hand is creeping upwards.

  ‘You look shocked,’ says her sister.

  ‘No, no,’ says Celia, trying to adopt a nun-like expression. ‘I’m quite unshockable nowadays.’ And beneath the table she brings her knee up very sharply so that Tom’s knuckles get a nasty squashing. He bites the bullet, in the shape of a great gulp of his drink, and says nothing. The hand remains just above the knee. As long as it stays approximately in that area Celia can deal with it.

  To her relief Isabel and Susannah have begun to discuss alternative medicine.

  ‘Let’s eat,’ says Celia. She gives her leg a hopeful shake. Tom removes the hand and gives a loud sighing exhalation.

  ‘No need to blow on it,’ says Dave. ‘I think it’s already gone cold.’ He indicates the prettily arranged plates.

  Tom looks meaningfully at Celia and says, with surprising vigour, ‘I know, old man – I know.’ He drains his glass.

  Alex says, ‘I’m not going to stand on ceremony tonight. You can all help yourselves.’ He points at the bottles and adds another to the pair.

  Tom reaches for it and refills his glass. Celia grabs a baguette, breaks a large chunk off and plonks it on to his plate. It destroys the harmony of the food but she thinks it might soak up the drink.

  ‘Thank you, Mummy,’ he says in a squeaky voice.

  Alex, not one to be overwhelmed by others’ conversations, steers a straight course between the virtues of evening primrose and charcoal tablets, and says to Dave, ‘You should approve of this new case of mine. Bringing the City to book ...’

  Dave is peering suspiciously at his plate and poking about at the little pink fillet, breaking it up into pieces in his quest for a bone or two. He prefers his fish from the supermarket freezer where its shape bears no relation to its origins and where a machine (clever this technology) has succeeded in removing every trace of its skeleton. Celia leans towards him and whispers very gently that he need not worry, she has removed all but the finest hair bones. He dips a chunk of it into the mayonnaise and thinks it is a bit bland compared with the stuff they have at home. It has a strange taste, too. He carries on guardedly and says to Alex, ‘Tell us about it,’ knowing that he will anyway. And so Alex begins.

  He begins with how many rival firms he has knocked out of the running and how all that their main rival has been left with is a piddling bit of consultancy – and this is to be done by a woman. He pays her the highest compliment that he can in the circumstances, which is that she has deserved her small success since throughout the preliminaries, and in all her dealings, she has behaved just like a man ... Celia would ordinarily have pointed out that this statement is in direct contrast to his earlier assertions about sexual equality but she does not. She is still walking on eggshells tonight and will go as lightly as she can. It is not worth risking the adult sanctuary later. So much for Lesley Gore, she thinks.

  ‘What an odd taste this mayonnaise has,’ says her sister, wrinkling her nose and sucking in her cheeks like an expert wine taster. ‘What is it?’

  Susie has dipped the very tip of a watercress frond into hers and tastes it. ‘Tarragon,’ she says.

  And so much for Celia’s little surprise.

  Dave looks even more suspicious.

  ‘Good for the digestion,’ says Susie knowingly.

  ‘Makes you burp a lot.’ Celia giggles at her brother-in-law. Dave giggles back. Isabel raises her eyebrows, opens her mouth to speak, but is forestalled by Alex’s determination to keep the subject of the Brandreth case and its social implications alive.

  ‘On the whole,’ he says, ‘doing something like this is much more useful than waving banners about.’

  He and Celia exchange looks. Hers defy his pointedness by assuming a greeny-blue innocence. Not an eggshell cracks. Celia’s eyes remain empty of remark. Alex, if he ever did so, might be excused for thinking that, on the whole, his wife is not au fait with his career.

  Very soon everyone, except Tom, is apparently listening hard. Tom is the only one to whom eating has not become secondary: this is because Celia, who is both trying to listen hard and also to deal with Tom at the same time (not too difficult for her since she quite often has this dual role to play when they eat with the children), keeps pushing bits of food around his plate to entice him. Susannah is eating the watercress and not
much else and thinking to herself that Celia is looking decidedly mumsy and that if she is not careful she will end up looking exactly like Isabel who is entirely mumsy – always was, always will be. But Susie always had hopes for Celia. That aquamarine skirt may match her eyes, but it also seems to Susannah that there is more than just the material bunched up around her hips – Celia has definitely spread in the last couple of years. Two or three pounds at least. She catches Celia’s eye and mouths the word ‘delicious’ as she crunches more of the dark green leaves. Celia guiltily removes her hands from the proximity of Tom’s plate in case Susie has noticed, which she hasn’t, and smiles back ‘thanks’. Susie thinks, on the whole, Celia is looking strained.