One Day in May

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘Bantams,’ she corrected as I relieved her of her bag, which weighed a ton. Why these girls brought their entire wardrobes home for one weekend was beyond me, whilst Seffy, of course, in true, teenage-boy style, appeared to have brought nothing. Not even a toothbrush or a pair of pants, I observed, as he ducked into the back of the car laughing, still under attack from Biba’s fists. She told him precisely what the girls at her school thought of the boys at his, which seemed to be arrogant gits without a brain cell between them, whilst Daisy chimed in to divulge that her friend’s dad was a TV producer and was thinking of doing a documentary on the boys at Lightbrook, where Seffy was, in Berkshire, calling it Chinless Charlies. Seffy bellowed with mock indignation.

  ‘What have you got in here?’ I hauled Biba’s case into the boot as she got in the back with Seffy. It was even heavier than her sister’s.

  ‘I wasn’t sure how smart tonight was ’cos Mum said there was a dinner, so I brought a few things.’

  ‘A dinner?’ Seffy and Daisy looked horrified.

  The whole point of an exeat weekend was to come home – which Seffy regarded as either our house in London or here with his cousins – adopt a horizontal position in front of the television for thirty-six hours, eat and drink solidly, preferably while still horizontal, argue about who took command of the remote control, but otherwise do nothing. The last thing anyone wanted was a smart dinner.

  ‘No, no,’ I reassured them hastily, ‘it’s only us, plus Kit and Granny and Grandpa. Oh, and Maggie.’

  ‘I like Maggie.’ Daisy brightened. ‘She’s the really cool one you work with, isn’t she?’

  ‘She is. She’s also Seffy’s godmother.’

  ‘Who’s going out with a married man,’ put in my son helpfully.

  ‘Really?’ Biba was all attention. ‘Does his wife know?’

  ‘Thank you, darling.’ I eyed Seffy sternly in the mirror as I turned the key in the ignition. ‘Yes, well, Maggie is minus the married man tonight. And then tomorrow a chap called Ralph de Granville’s coming. He’s an interior designer.’

  ‘Like you?’ asked Daisy, putting her belt on in the front seat beside me.

  ‘Yes, like me.’

  ‘But why? I mean, I thought you and Maggie were doing the decorating?’

  ‘Yes, but Mum’s got some fixation about this Ralph person,’ Biba informed her from the back. ‘He’s much more, like, fashionable? More flamboyant, apparently. No offence, Hattie.’

  I grinned at her in the mirror. ‘No offence taken.’

  ‘But won’t that be a bit awkward? I mean, if you’re, you know, all there together? As competitors?’ asked Daisy.

  I was inclined to agree, and had been horrified when Laura had rather nervously told me that Mr de Granville, although originally coming the following week, now found himself otherwise engaged in Italy looking at some marble, and the only day he’d be able to get to the Abbey, was this Sunday morning. Obviously he realized weekends were precious, so alternatively, he could possibly squeeze something into his diary three months hence, pending other commitments…

  ‘It’ll be all right, won’t it, Hattie?’ Laura had asked me anxiously, fingers twisting at her waist. ‘Having you all there this weekend? I mean, you’re all professionals – you’re not going to scratch each other’s eyes out, are you?’

  ‘Well, it’s a little unusual, Laura, to have competing decorators in the same house. But I suppose Maggie and I could go to the pub. Make ourselves scarce.’

  ‘I’ll cancel him,’ she said quickly.

  ‘No, don’t be silly, it’ll be fine. You’re right. We’re all grown-ups. And I’m your sister, for God’s sake. I might just be there for the weekend, not in any professional capacity.’

  ‘Exactly. With your friend—’

  ‘The interior designer?’ I’d finished drily.

  Maggie, though, was far from put out when I’d told her privately.

  ‘Oh, goody. I’ve always wanted to meet this jerk. Let’s see if he’s as risible as his publicity suggests.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘Of course not. Hope he stays for lunch. And while he’s getting stuck into the Bloody Marys I’ll snitch his bag and snap his pencils and hide his tape measure.’

  ‘No, no, we’re all mature adults,’ I told Daisy now as we sped off down the lanes. ‘There won’t be any silly jealousies.’

  ‘I prefer your sort of design anyway,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t like flamboyant and fashionable.’

  I shot her a grateful look, beside me in jeans and a sweatshirt, unlike her sister in the back, swathed in Camden Market’s finest: three or four layered tops, a tiny skirt over leggings, masses of messy blonde hair and bling. There were only eighteen months between them, but Biba had embraced her teens with gusto – boys, parties, action, bring it on – whereas Daisy seemed to be resolutely clinging to childhood and her pets. She had a flock of bantams – ‘the girls’ – which were her pride and joy.

  And Seffy… well, Seffy had always been more like Daisy: in less of a hurry. Quite studious and musical – he played the cello beautifully – he was a prolific reader, but then a year ago… well, they were bound to grow up, weren’t they? I swallowed. Narrowed my eyes to the road. Bound to want to push the boundaries. And the rules at his old London day school had been so petty and ridiculous, just asking to be broken. So he’d got into a bit of trouble, which was unlike him. As the headmaster had said at the time, totally out of character; but then he’d been led astray. Nothing terrible, a few smokes in the park, a bottle of wine… but he’d seemed to be kicking against something. So I’d moved him to Lightbrook, a boarding school in the country – a huge financial stretch – but what Seffy had wanted. Had indeed asked to go to. Insisted. Well, I imagine it was rather quiet for him at home, with just me, no brothers and sisters, and certainly he seemed to be thriving there. He’d settled down a bit, was starting to work again, which he hadn’t been doing at Westminster, where he’d totally lost interest. And he was a bright boy, he’d catch up. For a while he hadn’t come home much either, even though he could at weekends, which had hurt a bit, and then when he did, he was much less affectionate. They all were, Laura assured me. Biba was just the same; they move on, which is away from us. But Seffy and I… well, being just the two of us, were so close.

  I gave myself a little inward shake. But that was last year. This year, these past few months, had been better. He’d rung me more, been more communicative, and his grades were steadily going up, hopefully in time for GCSEs.

  ‘How’s the play going?’ I asked him in the rear-view mirror. Was it my imagination or was there always a slightly guarded look now, just fleeting, before he answered me?

  ‘It’s good, going well. We’ve still got a way to go, but rehearsals are OK.’

  ‘What’s the play?’ Biba demanded.

  ‘King Lear.’

  ‘Oooh,’ she said mockingly. ‘Ambitious, Seffy-boy. And who are you, the crazy king?’

  ‘No, I’m Edmund, a rather dashing young earl who I’m playing with one hell of a swagger, I can tell you.’ He flicked up his coat collar and smouldered at her, waggling his eyebrows.

  ‘Oh God,’ she spluttered, ‘please don’t tell me you’re the love interest.’

  ‘Honey, I’m the sex interest.’

  Both girls roared and I smiled at them all in the mirror. He liked playing to the gallery, making the girls laugh, they loved having him around and I knew they were proud to call him their cousin. Tall, good-looking, floppy-haired, he was considered cool, even though he didn’t try, and his rather exotic background didn’t detract either: son of Croatian revolutionaries whose father had fought and died for his country, and whose family we’d tried but failed to trace any further back than the priest grandfather.

  When Seffy had been about ten he’d become very absorbed with his background and asked to go back to Croatia. We’d taken a package tour one week in the summer, and found a very different plac
e from the one I’d left. The Dalmatian coast, quite rightly, had become a tourist resort. Full of holiday-makers, the picturesque little quayside villages were crammed with tavernas spilling onto pavements and heaving with families, in flip-flops and shorts, buying postcards. A very different atmosphere prevailed from the one I’d left. I’d shown him the house where his parents had lived and where I’d stayed, freshly painted now, bright blue, with bougainvillaea trailing from pots in the yard. But a suspicious dark-eyed family lived within, who, I think, fearing we were laying some sort of claim to the place, were reluctant to let us in. Neither could we find anyone who remembered Seffy’s family, the Mastlovas being refugees anyway, and before it got too depressing, we moved on, to a resort down the coast for some sailing and snorkelling. Seffy, I think though, had been pleased to see it. On the beach, I’d often see him swim out, then turn round and tread water, narrowing his eyes to the hills behind, which I knew he was thinking his father had fought so bravely for.

  The Bosnian war was still topical and it gave him a bit of glamour, I think. He used to talk about it a lot, although these days, less so. In fact, not at all. And he was impatient when it was mentioned. My father, who’d often got maps out and spoken to him about it, thinking it was important, had been surprised at the brusque way Seffy no longer wanted to discuss it. But Mum said it was only natural: he was English, for heaven’s sake, at an English public school. All his friends were called Tom, Sam and Harry, he wanted to fit in, move on, not be different. He was growing up. He was. Up until he was about twelve, he’d still crawl into my bed for a cuddle. Not now, of course.

  When I next went to speak to him, I saw he was already watching me in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Hungry?’ I smiled.

  ‘Starving. Breakfast had finished by the time I got up, so I missed it.’

  ‘Oh, Seffy, don’t they make you get up in time? What’s that matron doing, filing her nails?’

  ‘We’re deemed Responsible Adults.’ He made ironic quotation marks in the air. ‘Old enough to get ourselves up.’

  ‘Yes, but still,’ I grumbled as we pulled into the front drive and crunched to a halt. ‘They should make some provision for adolescent torpor. Left to your own devices, I’m surprised you get up for lessons.’

  ‘I don’t always,’ he said softly as he climbed out of the car, then seeing my horrified face: ‘Joke, Mother. Chill. I’ve haven’t missed one at Lightbrook yet, OK?’

  Although I missed quite a few at Westminster, was implicit in that, I thought as he slouched up the drive, hands in his overcoat pockets, to the house. Biba and Daisy, behind him, were yelling that he could at least help with their bags, or didn’t they teach those sort of manners at top public schools any more? He turned and walked backwards towards the front door, cupping his ear, quizzically, aping deafness. What? Can’t hear. They appealed to their mother who’d just that minute pulled up beside us in her four-by-four, Charlie in the front seat, fresh from his prep school, looking impossibly gorgeous and freckly, his face lighting up when he saw Seffy, banging on the window to attract his attention. Laura, though, when she’d got out and hugged her daughters, refused to censure her nephew.

  ‘Well, if you girls worked harder on your charm, perhaps he might help. I always found the delicate-flower routine worked wonders.’

  Seffy stopped walking backwards and widened his eyes in mock delight. ‘Oh, I love delicate flowers,’ he assured his cousins. ‘Now if you were a bit more like your mother, a bit more…’ he wrinkled his brow, ‘gentle, feminine…’ He didn’t get any further, though, as, roaring like banshees, the girls chased him into the house, Biba taking off a shoe and hurling it at him, Charlie on their heels, shrieking with delight and shedding his blazer as he raced after them. Laura and I sighed and stooped to pick up the heavy bags, obviously.

  Supper that evening was a noisy affair. Mum and Dad, down from London, were there in their favourite role as grandparents, Kit was relaxed amongst his family, and Maggie made an easy guest. As a single girl she was accustomed to singing for her supper and could be very droll, but also thrived on drawing people out, something no one in my family needed, but were all delighted to do, given the opportunity. She was leaning her chin in her hand at the kitchen table now, making huge eyes at Kit.

  ‘It must be wonderful having a calling, a vocation,’ she was saying as Laura and I hustled vegetable dishes to the table, Laura telling her daughters they could at least lend a hand, instead of poring over her latest copy of Hello!. They shut it grudgingly, and slouched to the table.

  ‘Oh, I feel very blessed,’ Kit agreed.

  ‘And you really stepped up to the plate, didn’t you? Gave up so much. I mean, materially, if you were thinking of going into the City. I think it’s wonderful.’

  Kit’s chest was expanding and Laura and I exchanged smiles. Of course it was wonderful how Kit had answered the call, given up so much, and we were all very proud of him. Particularly what he’d done in Sarajevo. But it was interesting how, over the years, he’d somehow reverted to type, albeit within the Church. The gritty parish in Tower Hamlets that he’d talked of reforming at Bible college had, after three years of cycling around Oxford, become less of a burning issue, and even though he’d been offered just such a parish in Tottenham, when he’d also been offered a curacy on a vast country estate – a duke’s estate, a famous one belonging to a friend of Hugh’s – with its own idyllic church in perfect Jane Austen parkland, and where most of the parishioners were over sixty and feared God anyway, and where he was to be in possession of a dear little brick and flint vicarage, the sort people pay squillions for in Country Life, he’d found himself accepting. Far from being at the cutting edge of the ministry, Kit was firmly at the upholstered end.

  ‘Done much shooting lately?’ enquired Laura innocently, as she shepherded Charlie to the table by his shoulders, flicking me a look.

  ‘A bit last season,’ Kit conceded.

  ‘You shoot?’ Maggie blinked.

  ‘Kit has fishing and shooting rights on Richard’s estate,’ explained Hugh. ‘I gather you caught a whopper on Saturday. A twenty-pounder, no less.’

  ‘Yes, but that was a bit of a one-off,’ said Kit uncomfortably. ‘Normally at weekends I can’t get away from parish duties,’ he explained to Maggie. ‘Visiting and so on.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the needy of Henley-on-Thames,’ grinned Dad, sitting down and spreading his napkin on his lap. ‘Quite a challenge getting round all those manicured lawns, trudging up those crunchy drives. Keep it up, laddie.’ Kit grinned good-naturedly as we guffawed. ‘Actually, we mustn’t tease,’ Dad went on soberly. ‘Kit does sterling work kissing for Oxfordshire.’

  Kit took a mock bow to our cheers whilst Maggie looked bewildered. Years ago Kit had made the mistake of kissing an old lady on the cheek after the service at the church door – ‘purely because she proffered it and purely because it seemed rude not to!’ he’d declared hotly later. But the very next Sunday, every old dear in the parish had lined up, cheek at the ready for this attractive young vicar to peck, standing their ground resolutely if he even looked like hesitating. Kit claimed he now kissed so many powdery cheeks on a Sunday his lips were white by the end of it.

  ‘Manufacture a cold sore,’ Biba suggested. ‘Or a great big zit, just here.’ She curled her lip.

  ‘Like this.’ Charlie helpfully demonstrated with a blob of mashed potato on his sister.

  ‘You are so dumb.’ Biba flicked it off with her finger, whereupon the Labrador caught it like a fly.

  ‘I don’t like this word dumb,’ remarked my mother imperiously as she handed round the carrots. ‘It’s an Americanism.’

  ‘You’re married to an American,’ yelped my father.

  ‘Yes, but you wouldn’t say it, darling. You’re an educated American.’

  ‘Why, thank you, my flower.’ He inclined his head ironically. ‘Nice to know I’m winning the Darwinian struggle.’

  ‘It comes from watching too muc
h television,’ Mum observed. ‘Too much Friends. I mean, you wouldn’t say “sidewalk”, would you?’ she demanded of Biba. ‘And you wouldn’t take out the garbage?’

  ‘No,’ Biba agreed, ‘I’d take out the trash.’

  As the young dissolved, Laura retorted: ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

  ‘You’ve been rinsed, Granny,’ Seffy informed her.

  ‘I’m always rinsed, darling.’ She patted her hairdo. ‘I make my girl do it twice, to get out all the conditioner.’

  This struck them as unbearably funny, but Mum ploughed on undaunted, turning her gaze on someone else. ‘And speaking of taking out the rubbish, I gather you’ve got some young man to do just that, Hattie?’

  That stopped the laughter instantly: silence descended. I glanced, appalled, at Laura, who got up, pink-cheeked, on some spurious excuse to grab the tomato ketchup bottle. She hissed, ‘She-made-me!’ at Mum’s back.

  ‘Rather young, I believe. But at least Seffy likes him.’

  ‘Yeah, but I think he does more than take out Mum’s rubbish,’ drawled my son. I gaped, red-faced, as everyone roared. Seffy shrugged at me, grinning. ‘Sorry, Mum, but, like my aunt says, she made me. I was tortured. You try not answering Granny’s questions.’

  ‘You just tell her to mind her own business!’ I spluttered, but I was secretly pleased too. He liked Ivan. I thought he did, but I was pleased to hear it: publicly too.

  ‘How young?’ Biba was mouthing across the table to Seffy, clearly gripped, and clearly annoyed she hadn’t been in the loop about this. She boggled as Seffy mouthed something back.

  ‘Hattie. You’ve got a toy boy!’ she squealed.

  ‘I have not got a toy boy!’ I roared, the colour of the tomato ketchup bottle now.

  ‘Well, if he makes Hattie happy, I think that’s wonderful,’ said Laura, grovelling for all she was worth, having spilled the beans, and shooting her daughter a look.

  ‘I agree,’ said Dad staunchly. ‘It’s about time you had a boyfriend, darling. I couldn’t be more pleased.’ I sent him a grateful look. ‘And if he’s still in short pants with a catapult in his pocket, it’s all the same to me.’