One Day in May

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘Oh, believe me, it’s a fraction of the price I’ve been told someone called Ralph de Granville charges, who will otherwise be unleashed in my house. D’you know him?’

  ‘Only… by repute,’ I’d said, holding on to the console table now. I mouthed at Maggie – who was transfixed by this conversation, standing stock-still in the middle of the shop, a pair of gilt rococo cherubs in her hands – first the amount of money, then the name of the competing decorator. The first she gaped at; at the second, looked horrified. She shook her head and made an eloquent throat-slitting gesture. I turned back to Hugh, vertebrae stiffening.

  ‘We accept, Hugh. We’ll come this weekend and price the job up for you. Expect us on Friday.’

  ‘Perfect,’ he’d purred in relief.

  ‘Are you mad?’ Maggie squealed as I snapped my phone shut. Ralph de Granville? If we go head to head with that man we’ll be the laughing stock of London! If that’s who Laura wants there’s no way she’ll have us. We’re chalk and cheese! Fromage et froufrou, in fact. Remember Albion Close? That woman proudly showing us her “de Granville” bathroom with the tart’s knickers hanging from the window? That blind had more colour and pattern in it than one would care to see in an entire house! Hugh clearly has no idea how different we are. He just thinks one decorator is much the same as another.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ I said slowly. ‘Hugh knows what we do, and he likes it. And at the end of the day, Maggie,’ I flicked her a look, ‘it’s his house, not Laura’s.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘Right. Blimey. Not much has changed then, has it? I mean, since the days of Mr Darcy and Miss Bennet.’

  ‘Not a lot,’ I said shortly. ‘As Carla discovered to her cost.’ I climbed back onto the table and resumed my inspection of the chandelier. Carla was Hugh’s first wife: a fiery Italian who’d left him after a few years of unsatisfactory marriage for a Formula One racing driver. She’d received a handsome settlement but if she’d expected half the Abbey, she’d been disappointed.

  ‘Tricky for you, though,’ Maggie mused behind me, still weighing up her cherubs and the implications. ‘I mean, Hugh wants you, but Laura clearly doesn’t.’ Her voice couldn’t resist a triumphant little rise at the end. I ignored her and carried on fiddling with the crystal droplets. Rather like Christmas tree lights, a dud one could jeopardize the entire show. ‘And if we did get the job,’ she persisted, ‘we’d be there a lot, don’t you think? I mean, weekends too, possibly?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Seffy would like that, wouldn’t he? Now he’s a weekly boarder.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  There was a pause. I could tell she was building up to something. ‘And Ivan?’ Her voice betrayed a frisson of excitement.

  Ah, Ivan. My other weekly boarder. The one that tended to stay during the week, and scarper at weekends, who knows where. I carefully screwed in the last glass drop, then reached out and flicked a switch. The chandelier sprang into fabulous light, dazzling our tiny shop. We gasped as it glittered.

  ‘You see?’ I said triumphantly. ‘Just needed a bit of TLC. That’ll transform someone’s hall, turn it into Blenheim Palace. We’ll sell it for a fortune!’

  That had been the Monday, and the sudden illumination had silenced my friend spectacularly. On the Friday, however, as we rattled off the M40 and onto the main road into Thame, she returned doggedly to her theme.

  ‘Will he come and stay, d’you think? Ivan?’ Her face was pure innocence, but her mouth twitched provocatively. She made a show of studying the road.

  I pretended to give this due consideration, determined not to rise. ‘Why not?’ I said airily. ‘He might.’

  She sniggered into the dashboard. ‘God, I can just see Laura’s face. And your mother’s.’

  Even my sang-froid wobbled a bit at this, but I held my nerve.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said lightly. ‘They want me hitched. They’ll be delighted I’ve got a boyfriend at all. Probably be all over me.’

  ‘Until they meet him,’ she grinned, shooting me a look. Her eyes widened at my stony face. ‘Don’t give me that look, Hattie. You know very well I’m deeply jealous and would give my eyeteeth to have an Ivan, but I can’t help feeling a little bit of schadenfreude at your family’s reaction. Oh my God – your brother!’ She turned a hundred and eighty degrees and took a hand off the wheel. Clutched her mouth. ‘Isn’t he a vicar?’

  ‘MAGGIE!’ I screamed, grabbing the dashboard as, in a blare of horns, the whole cab was illuminated by flashing lights behind.

  ‘Bastard,’ she muttered, as yet another outraged lorry driver hurtled past, fist shaking, mouth a dark hole. I could tell she was shaken, though.

  ‘Surely we’re nearly there?’ she snapped, distracted from her train of thought, gripping the shuddering wheel. ‘I thought you said they were just off this main road, but no one ever mentioned it?’ She scanned the surrounding scenery. ‘Said everyone sat sipping Pimm’s on the lawn, seemingly oblivious to the thunderous roar of traffic?’

  ‘They do. In fact Hugh’s planning a waterfall in the river to drown it out. Oh – here, quick, hang a left.’

  ‘A water feature!’ said Maggie gleefully, hitting the brakes and spinning the wheel at the last minute. ‘They’ll be putting decking on the terrace next. Down here? My, but this is grand. Is this really their drive?’

  It was. We’d shot through a pair of white gateposts flashing in the hedgerow and down a slip of tarmac, which plunged like an arrow, straight through an avenue of pollarded limes. The trees appeared to be holding hands facing us, their topiary branches pruned to cling. Wide grassy verges were mown neatly at their feet. Beyond, behind the post-and-rail fence, green fields spread flatly into the distance, and creamy cattle grazed.

  ‘Almost French,’ said Maggie, surprised. ‘I mean the avenue. The whole setting, in fact. They’ve even got the Charolais cows.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said, pleased she’d noticed. I kept quiet, letting her take it all in.

  ‘Keep going?’ She’d slowed down for a little humpback bridge at the bottom.

  ‘Yes, over the river. You see it runs in front of the house, which is unusual, isn’t it? Normally in England the lawn runs down to the river at the back.’

  ‘Does it now. Funnily enough I’m not terribly au fait with the layout of the grand country houses of England. Most of my friends live in Croydon. Where’s the house then?’

  ‘You don’t see it until – oh, take the left fork.’ She obediently swung the wheel as I pointed. As the drive divided sharply, the house loomed up before us.

  ‘Oh!’ She stared.

  ‘What?’ I demanded, keen to know, but not to prompt.

  ‘It could be a château.’

  Out of a clearing in a bank of trees along the flat valley floor, the Abbey rose up, its stone façade the colour of Dijon mustard. It was long and flat centrally, but had towers at either end, their conical slate roofs tapering sharply. Laura, when she’d first seen it, had wondered if, like Rapunzel, she’d be expected to let loose her blonde hair from one of those high windows as she sat spinning in an attic room. Dozens of windows flashed at us now in the evening sunlight, perhaps in welcome, perhaps not.

  ‘Exactly. Albeit a rather titchy château. But look at the pointy steeple roofs, just like that place in Chevenon. And the shutters, and the double front door.’

  ‘Tall windows too. Quite a lot of symmetry going on…’

  ‘It’s by a Scottish architect,’ I rushed on. ‘And if you think about it, some of those Highland piles are very French. Look at that wide bank of steps at the side, tumbling down to the gravel terrace. Just cries out for one of our distressed café tables, don’t you think? A few wrought-iron chairs, a well-placed urn…’

  ‘And look at your sister’s face,’ breathed Maggie, as we came to a halt in the gravel sweep at the front.

  The very French double front doors had swung back and Laura appeared at the top of the steps, dressed in a gu
n-metal grey silk shirt and jeans. Her blonde hair was shining, and her face plastered with an anxious, reproduction smile. She was flanked by another blonde, my mother, whose smile was more practised, less nervous. Behind them a pair of baying lurchers bounded out, nearly toppling my mother, and then Kit, my brother, appeared, a dog collar under his jumper. He beamed broadly from on high, a wine glass clasped to his chest. No sign of Dad, sadly.

  ‘Right,’ I muttered, all courage deserting me. ‘I think we just pretend we’re delivering a house-warming present – that mirror in the back will do. We’ll stay for drinks, then turn round and go home, don’t you think?’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Maggie, whose professional eyes were glittering as only a true Francophile’s could. ‘This place has got the French Partnership written all over it. I thought we were coming to some mouldy English pile, not a veritable Loire Valley pastiche. If you think I’m passing up a trillion-pound contract and the chance of having my name go down in the annals of interior design history with the likes of Mr John Fowler and Mrs Nina Campbell you’re mistaken. We’re here for the duration. This is working for me, Hattie. I’ve already picked my bedroom.’

  She threw open the cab door and jumped out. ‘Laura – and Mrs Carrington – how lovely! Kit, what a surprise, loving the surplice, incidentally; you carry that off terribly well. How wonderful to see you all!’

  2

  Laura’s hug at least was genuine, and I realized the synthetic smile was masking apprehension, not antipathy. I was aware of my own face not knowing quite how to play this either.

  ‘I should have rung you,’ were my first instinctive words, muttered guiltily in her ear, because of course I should.

  ‘You texted me.’

  ‘l know, but that was cowardly. I should have rung and asked, not texted and told.’ I remembered her curt little text back: ‘Well, if Hugh has asked you 2 come of course I’d love you 2.’

  I should have punched out her number there and then, except I knew she’d be cool and polite down the line, but warmer in the flesh, as she was now. She looked gorgeous as ever but, close up, there were circles under her eyes.

  ‘Actually, I’m really glad you’re here,’ she murmured. ‘Mum’s driving me mad, and Kit could do with a little diluting.’

  ‘What’s he doing here?’ I glanced at my brother, beaming a canonized smile from the top step.

  ‘He’s on some Bible-thumping course in Oxford, so he’s staying.’

  ‘Ah, I wondered. He’s got that ecstatic look on his face he always gets when he’s topped up his fervour. What about Dad?’

  ‘Due tomorrow. There’s a strike in Geneva, would you believe, so he couldn’t get a flight.’

  My father had pretty much retired as a journalist now, but sometimes took freelance assignments. Currently he was doing a travel piece for the Independent.

  ‘Darling!’ My mother, realizing too much chat was occurring on the gravel without her, and that if she wanted to know what was going on she’d have to drop the Norman Hartnell ex-model pose – chin up, right foot slightly at an angle and to the fore – expertly descended the steps in heels. ‘How lovely, what a surprise!’

  It wasn’t, of course, but Mum was lining up with Laura, placing herself firmly in her camp. Not for the first time I felt a guilty twinge of relief that Laura now had a house big enough to accommodate my family and its foibles, all of whom I loved unreservedly, but didn’t want to be proximate to all the time. In my darker moments, in my tiny house, with Seffy away at school, I sometimes fantasized about being attached, settled, having a proper family, but I was never quite sure about everything else that went with it. Part of me relished being the daughter who bombed in and then slid back to London: the one they no doubt discussed when I’d gone, worried about. If Mum had her way I’d be married to a nice GP in the village and work part time in a little antique shop selling Edwardian knick-knacks. I shuddered at the thought.

  ‘Mum.’ I kissed her fragrant cheek, marvelling at how she seemed to get younger: her shoulder-length ash-blonde hair was streaked with silver now, but the bones were still good, blue eyes bright, and she was slim and straight-backed as ever. ‘You look terrific.’

  ‘Thank you, darling. I’ve got a new girl doing my facials in Motcomb Street. It’s all to do with the rotation of energy and fluids, apparently. You might try her; I’ll give you her number. You’re looking a little peaky, if I might say so.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I grinned. ‘Oh, Mum, you remember Maggie, don’t you?’

  Mum, who at five foot ten, never stooped to accommodate lesser beings, peered. Maggie flushed, and almost curtsied. There was certainly a bit of a bob going on there.

  ‘D’you know, I believe I do. Now, Maggie, you look awfully well. You clearly look after yourself, and you single girls should, you know.’ She cast me a reproving look as she air-kissed Maggie’s cheek. There, the first reference to my spinsterhood, and we’d been here, what, two minutes?

  ‘Did you go and see Mr Auchbach, darling?’ She was back to me, eyes penetrating.

  ‘Oh, no, I haven’t yet.’

  ‘I knew you hadn’t. I could tell by your worry lines. For pity’s sake, go.’

  This, a reference to her counsellor, a complete stranger, to whom she poured her heart out once a week. Lord knows what about; she couldn’t be more happily married or solvent. Me, the problem daughter, no doubt.

  ‘And Laura tells me you failed to catch the Garnier.’

  Not a bus, but an exhibition, by a little-known Cuban painter, thus completing, in under three minutes, the Hattie-will-not-be-beautified-analysed-or-cultured trilogy. Not bad, I thought, in awe.

  ‘A record, surely?’ murmured Kit, who, in his languid manner, had finally managed to stroll down the steps to kiss me, hands in pockets.

  ‘Must be,’ I muttered back. ‘She’s only got to mention Seffy’s long hair and alcohol consumption and things will really get provocative.’

  ‘Oh, we’ve already done that. I thought I’d get it out of the way early. I told her a bottle of wine a day was quite normal for a fifteen-year-old, especially one who’s spent so much time in France.’

  I giggled. ‘Thanks.’

  He moved on to shake hands with Maggie; all six foot two and eyes of blue, with cheekbones and swept-back blond hair to boot; surely the most decorative and affable vicar the Church of England was ever likely to get. My family are red hot in the looks department, or at least most of them are. I’ll come to me and Dad later. I saw Maggie swoon visibly.

  Hugh was amongst us now, muttering, ‘… how marvellous, thanks for coming, splendid, splendid…’ as he kissed and shook hands, palpably relieved, I think, that we’d actually made it, and that his wife wasn’t sulking at being outmanoeuvred. However, as we all climbed the steps behind him – his hair had finally retreated, I noticed, apart from two plucky outposts above his ears – and he pointed out architectural features and turrets to Maggie, who was exclaiming politely, Mum helpfully sticking her tour-guide oar in when she felt her son-in-law wasn’t being effusive enough, Laura linked my arm – held it, rather – and we fell back. She discreetly got down to brass tacks.

  ‘Presumably you know I’ve got Ralph de Granville coming to look at the place?’ she said softly.

  ‘I do, and listen, Laura, he’s streets ahead of us in design terms. Whoppingly famous and totally different, too. You stick with him, if that’s what you want. Maggie and I can just give you a bit of advice on – I don’t know – the odd spare bedroom or something?’ I waved my arm vaguely, upstairs somewhere.

  ‘Or I thought the kitchen,’ she said eagerly, ‘because that’s the sort of thing you do so well, isn’t it?’

  Basic, functional, utilitarian rooms: yes, we did, I thought, heroically holding my tongue and trying not to think about the elegant drawing room we’d just done in Chester Square, or the morning room in Wiltshire, or indeed the entire house in Streatham.

  ‘In fact, tell you what. Why don’t we leave the o
thers to get a drink and I’ll show you what I mean?’

  I knew, though, because I knew her kitchen. It was the only room I rated. In the old days, when Cecily and Lionel were away, we’d creep around the house together, feeling slightly treacherous – reorganizing, giggling, making plans – and I’d praised the kitchen’s simplicity, its integrity, said I wouldn’t touch it. It was with a sinking heart, therefore, that I obediently followed her through the great domed hall, which managed to be both huge yet claustrophobic – busy Victorian floor tiles and oppressive oak panelling – mentally painting it a pale mouse colour and picking out the beading in something slightly stronger – down towards the back corridor.

  ‘Hughie, darling,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘will you get everyone a drink? I’m just going to show Hattie the kitchen.’

  The look of panic that crossed Hugh’s face, as he stopped en route to the drawing room with the rest of the crew, told me this was not going to plan.

  ‘Oh, I think Hattie would like a glass of wine too, after her long drive, wouldn’t you, Hatts? Why don’t we all have a drink, and then do the house together?’

  There was a silence. Laura swallowed. ‘All right, darling.’

  She about-turned and we all trooped into the shabby drawing room – one or two good pieces but far too much furniture, every available surface crammed with doodahs and whatnots. All eyes were firmly on the threadbare Persian carpet. Laura and Hugh went into a furious whispered huddle over by the fireplace, Kit suavely engaged Maggie in conversation and escorted her to the window to show her the view, whilst Mum held my arm.

  ‘Don’t get involved,’ she said in a low, portentous voice.

  ‘I’m not getting involved.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re here to quote.’

  ‘Because Hugh asked me!’

  Mum made her famous face: the one that suggested I’d overstepped the mark. I counted to ten.

  ‘This is something they have to sort out for themselves,’ she went on in the same, gravitas-laden manner. ‘And poor Laura is terribly upset and emotional at the moment.’