As It Is On Telly

by Marshall, Jill

  Dan coughed. ‘Glad you like it. And, of course, your drains are cleared now.’

  ‘Oh-oo! Daniel.’ Mary swatted at him and giggled like … well, Charlotte, actually. Bunty whipped her head between the two of them. Was that a bit of a flirt? A slightly dirty flirt, for that matter?

  ‘Mary!’

  ‘Oh, now, Bunty. Don’t look like that. Even us older women enjoy a bit of … you know, dirty drains talk.’

  ‘Colin handy with the old plunger, was he, Mary?’ said Dan with a cheeky nudge of the elbow. Mary cackled madly.

  ‘Dan! Mary!’ Bunty shook her head at the pair of them. ‘I’ll have to cover Flinders’ ears.’

  ‘Tosh,’ said Mary, stuffing her handkerchief up her sleeve. Bunty half-expected to see leather bracelets hidden up there too. ‘Flinders could have told you a thing or two, that’s for sure.’

  This was unbelievable. ‘Am I the only one without a sex life?’ Bunty blurted. ‘Oh God, did I say that out loud?’

  Mary and Dan shrugged at each other, sniggering. Clearly she was the only one without a sex life. Or a recent one, at any rate. Still, clearly she need have no qualms about setting Mallory on Mary and adding her to her cast list. Damn. Dinner list. ‘Mary, when you’ve quite calmed down,’ she said with a grin, ‘we’re having a dinner party on Saturday, and I wondered if you’d like to come. There’s a … friend I’d like to introduce you to.’

  Mary’s papery face lit up like a harvest moon. ‘Dinner? Friends? How lovely! Oh, thank you, Bunty. Can I make something?’

  ‘Oh my word, yes.’ Two birds, one stone, thought Bunty. Keep Mary feeling useful, and avoid the need to make all three courses herself. ‘Could you bring dessert?’

  ‘I’ll make an apple betty.’ Mary looked over at the apple tree, ready to start picking there and then, and at the same moment Dan and Bunty remembered what had been festering around the roots. Dead cat and human crap betty didn’t have quite the same allure.

  ‘Tell you what I like,’ said Dan quickly. ‘A nice peach cobbler.’

  Mary’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh yes. So do I. I’ll make one just for you, Daniel.’

  Oh. So Dan was coming too. ‘You are free on Saturday night, Dan,’ said Bunty hastily, trying to make it sound like she’d been intending to invite him all along.

  ‘Depends. Have you got a friend for me too?’ Dan looked rather pointedly down Bunty’s top, and she realised instantly just which friend he meant.

  ‘I’ll see if Kat’s free,’ she said with a sigh. Holy shit! Forget Ray Cooney and polite, air-clappy, titter-titter theatre. This was going to be like an episode of Survivor. She’d have to kill them all off one by one just to make sure she was the one who made it to the end. Maybe apply betty wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

  *

  Charlotte was stoical, in her teenage fashion, about the prospect of an evening with six – no, eight – ‘olds’ around the place. ‘Well, du-uh. I know when I’m not wanted. And I don’t want to come to your stupid dinner party. Like, how boring would that be? I’ll just stay in my bedroom. Okayyyy?’

  She bared the whites of her eyes at Bunty, for some inexplicable reason, before traipsing disconsolately from the room. Bunty thought about it for a moment, hand on hip, caught in the middle of a movement. Caught in the middle, again. All she’d said was, ‘Dad and I have got some work people round to dinner on Saturday. You could go to the movies with a friend – my treat.’ Somehow between her lips and Charlotte’s ears that had apparently turned into ‘Get out of our way, we don’t want you around while we’re doing grown up things’ and that had put Charlotte on the defensive. Of course, that was more or less what she’d meant, but somehow everything Bunty said to Charlotte these days was seen as something combative. Sometimes she even thought twice about opening her mouth at all, knowing that whatever she said would come out the wrong way, or be taken the wrong way, or most certainly would be answered the wrong way. Kids. Who’d have ’em. Bunty thought fleetingly of Ben, of the touching little vista she’d drawn in her mind’s eye of Ben’s little darlings fitting somehow into their new conjoined life. She batted the thought away defiantly. ‘Don’t need it. Okayyyyy,’ she said, mimicking Charlotte’s rolling eyeballs.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ During her reverie, Graham had entered the lounge dressed fetchingly in his socks and boxers, shirt and tie.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said quickly. ‘Argument with Charlotte.’

  Graham just nodded. There were plenty of those to go round. He didn’t need any details. ‘Should I wear a tie for dinner?’

  Just as she was about to launch into a ‘why would you and who cares anyway’ sort of speech, Bunty took a look at his shirt. It was new. White. Fitted. The tie was also new and a rather fetching purple shade. And back to that shirt. It was definitely fitted. ‘That’s new,’ she said accusingly. ‘It’s … nice,’ she added, even more accusingly.

  Was he actually blushing? Bunty watched, amazed, as Graham slid his hands down over the shirt. ‘I’ve lost a bit of weight,’ he said, almost apologetically. ‘My old work shirts were getting a bit big.’

  Yeah, and a bit old, and a bit crusty around the armpits, and a bit not-right-for-Kylie, she wanted to say. But she stopped herself. For tonight, at least, he seemed to be making an effort. There was no harm in her doing the same. ‘No tie,’ she said eventually. ‘And leave the shirt out, over your jeans.’

  It was how Ben had worn his shirt, and it had looked amazing. Even Graham managed to look reasonable dressed that way; slightly cute even, with his little Shrek ears, pink and smelling of Lifebuoy, bobbing above his open collar.

  In the end, Bunty settled for a similar look herself, with tight jeans, a fitted linen shirt that showed just a hint of lacy bra, and strappy shoes. She didn’t want to make too much effort, as there was actually nobody there she wanted to impress – and she’d definitely rather not inflame Ryan if at all possible, or Mallory for that matter – but she was still quite pleased with the result. At least she didn’t look like a woman about to be dumped by her present husband and already dumped by her future one. On impulse, she grabbed a tiny diamante hairpin from Charlotte’s room and shoved it among her short dark curls, where it glinted like a snowflake.

  ‘That’s mine,’ whined Charlotte, spotting it even from the bottom of the stairs. She had a nose for anything taken from her small stock of fripperies, which was strangely at odds with her willingness to filch anything from shoes to vintage winter coats from her mother’s wardrobe.

  ‘You look nice, Mum. Nice shoes, Mum,’ said Bunty plaintively as she came down towards her.

  ‘Yeah, well, you would look nice; that’s my hair clip.’

  Bunty gave up. ‘Have you had your tea?’

  ‘Some rubbish out of the freezer. Enjoy your lovely dinner,’ said Charlotte. ‘I’ll just be in my room. On my own. Starving.’

  ‘You’re welcome to have some, but it’s lamb,’ said Bunty. ‘I could bring it up on a plate.’

  Charlotte held up a hand at the top of the stairs. The teenage stop sign. Go no further. At least she didn’t tell Bunty to ‘talk to’ it. ‘I’m fine. You just enjoy yourself. And don’t drink too much. And if anyone’s smoking send them outside because I don’t want that poison in my lungs. Ever. Okay?’

  Once again the tables had turned. Bunty half-waited for Charlotte to tell her to be in at a reasonable hour, young lady. She was distracted by the doorbell.

  Mary and Dan were standing side by side on the doorstep bearing a pie dish and a bottle of wine respectively, for all the world as though they’d stepped out of a clock and were just about to set off in different directions along the front path. ‘Sorry if we’re a bit early,’ said Dan quietly. Bunty could see instantly that he’d had trouble with Mary.

  ‘It’s seven, isn’t it, Bunty? That’s what time you said.’

  Bunty checked her watch – 7.01. ‘It is indeed, Mary, come on in.’

  Mary stepped inside and held out her arms. ‘Cobbler.
I don’t know what the matter is with Dan. He wanted to be ‘fashionably late’ whatever that means. I told him, seven o’clock means seven o’clock. And I normally have my tea at five thirty so I’m more than ready by now. Everyone must be famished by seven.’

  ‘I quite agree, ma’am,’ said a mellifluous, Donald Sinden type voice from behind them. Mallory had made quite an effort with his appearance, and was looking quite the gentleman in a three-piece suit complete with fob watch, which he was studying on the door step. ‘Seven oh two. I do hope I’m not late, Bunty dearest.’

  Fortunately Graham had heard the commotion and stepped into corporate mode. ‘Mary, hello, come on in. I’ve got a nice sherry waiting for you. And this is … Mallory, hello. Sherry for you too? Straight through to the lounge. And you must be Dan.’ He clapped Dan’s hand heartily – Bunty almost expected a matey hug. But then they’d gone, discussing which beer they were going to have and how Chelsea was going to do in the league. It was a Graham she used to hate, taking charge, moving things along, being orderly and work-orientated. For now, however, it was a bit of a relief, and she left him in charge of cloakroom duties as Ryan, Petra and Kat arrived all at once, while she sought refuge in the kitchen.

  Kat shimmied in with a bottle and poured out a large glass for Bunty. ‘Graham neglecting the chef again? I must say, he’s almost looking a bit tasty tonight.’

  ‘Dan?’

  ‘No, Graham.’

  ‘What!’

  Kat shrugged. ‘Well, for Graham, I mean. Must suit him, having this affair.’

  ‘Talking of which,’ said Bunty, changing the subject as quickly as possible, ‘I think Dan has his eye on you. Bits of you at any rate.’

  ‘Oooh. Nice.’ Kat gave a little satisfied smile. ‘Could be a good night then.’

  Bunty slammed down the hot dish of coquilles saint-jacques. ‘Kat! God, what is wrong with everyone? It’s like everyone’s in season! Even bloody Mary.’

  ‘Oh, that sounds good,’ said Dan from the edge of the dining area.

  Bunty sighed. ‘What does?’

  ‘Bloody mary. Have you got some on the go?’

  ‘I’ll make some,’ said Kat eagerly, and she scurried behind Bunty for the jug. ‘I’m not going to do anything,’ she whispered to Bunty. ‘It’s just a bit of a flirt. Relax!’

  Bunty blinked rapidly, pretending to wipe the steam from her eyes. Relax. Yes. That was all she had to do. Pretend she hadn’t invented the dinner party from hell, and that her husband wasn’t dallying with a Day-glo accessoried bimbette with a bottom, and that she wasn’t the only one here without at least one love interest in the offing. Relax. Flirt. She used to be the expert at it. That was her sport. Forget archery or tennis – a night of naughty asides and fluttering of the eyelashes used to be how she got through the evening, reminded herself she was attractive, wanted – alive, somehow. And of course it was never meant to go anywhere, because there was always Graham; but now there wasn’t, not for long anyway, and flirting could actually lead to something. But with who? She knew who, of course. But he wasn’t there.

  So she tried to relax, and somehow, despite all her rather depressing thoughts and her constant fear that someone was going to drop a faux pas onto the table and let slip all about her Croesus activities, the evening was, well, fun, she supposed. Mallory was a marvellous raconteur and held them all, Mary especially, completely spellbound with his tales of the area during the Blitz, and Beatlemania, and the three-day week. Ryan and Petra were overwhelmingly grey; in fact, Ryan only flushed when Kat asked, half-innocently, ‘So, Ryan, are you Graham’s squash partner?’

  ‘Squash?’ Petra laughed. ‘Ryan has bad knees. You can’t play squash, can you, darling? He can’t play squash,’ she confirmed for the rest of them.

  ‘Oh.’ Kat feigned confusion, pouting so prettily that Dan leaned in and practically fell down her cleavage. ‘Oh, sorry, only, Graham, I thought that Bunty had said you’d taken up squash with Ryan. Or was it football with Ryan? You two will have to be careful, anyway. People will talk.’

  ‘What about?’ said Graham, a tad more sharply than was necessary. Or usual.

  ‘They’ll be saying, Is that Graham having an affair,’ and Kat peered provocatively around the table à la Miss Marple, ‘with Ryan?’

  Peels of raucous laughter echoed around the room, largely from Kat, laughing at her own joke, from Mallory, who clearly thought the idea of homosexuality was preposterous, and Ryan, whose laugh whistled through his adenoids like a zephyr up the Grand Canyon. He evidently had asthma, too, as well as terminal blandness, Bunty realised. He’d never played squash in his life. Yet he was somehow complicit with Graham. That much was clear from the exchange of glances and the look of relief that swept over Graham’s rosy face when Kat inadvertently removed the focus from what they were actually up to.

  ‘It’s only because they’re –’ said Petra suddenly, not seeing the funny side of it, but then there was a furtive shuffling under the table. She coloured and corrected herself. ‘Friends,’ she said firmly. ‘Only because they’re friends. They’re not gay. You’re not gay, are you, Ryan? He’s not gay,’ she finished for him before he had time to deny the charges.

  There was a long awkward pause, and then Dan said quietly, ‘Oh, that’s a shame. Cos I am.’ And he fluttered his ridiculously black eyelashes at Ryan and then Mallory.

  ‘You’re gay?’ shrieked Kat.

  ‘No!’ Dan laughed uproariously, and everyone else joined in. Bunty smiled at him thankfully. For all his shovel-handed, manly, smelly-job front, ‘Dan, Dan the Drainage Man’ had a certain social charm that made all those around him feel, well, happy. She’d never met a man so comfortable in his own skin. Graham, meanwhile, was currently so uncomfortable in his that he was about to burst out of it like an overcooked sausage.

  ‘Relax,’ she said, filling his glass with a rather good Lafite he’d dragged out of the back of a cupboard. He’d been saving it for Kylie, no doubt.

  He gave her a long, searching look; a look that she couldn’t interpret properly, but which seemed to be checking out whether she’d worked out what was going on. She stared back at him levelly, inscrutable, and then finally he chinked his glass against hers and drained the contents into his mouth. That look she understood, after so many years of translating his every grunt. ‘We might be having a crisis,’ it said, ‘but we’ve just agreed we’re not going to have it tonight.’

  And they didn’t. Lamb, mangetout and new potatoes segued neatly into peach cobbler and crème fraîche, then port, more wine, chocolates provided by Kat, and then goodnights, and swapping of numbers, and a gentlemanly kiss of Mary’s hand from Mallory. It was all going so smoothly that Graham even dared to drop a vaguely proprietorial hand onto her shoulder as they waved Kat off in a cab, laughing as Dan made a very obvious grab for her breasts and then shouted, ‘Couldn’t resist, sorry. I’ve never seen boobs that were bigger than my hands before.’

  ‘They’re spoken for,’ squealed Kat, then she blew everyone a kiss and disappeared into the night.

  Graham shook his head as he closed the door. ‘She’s mad,’ he said, though without the usual slight chilly edge of disapproval that he normally reserved for Kat. ‘And that was fun.’

  ‘It was. It really was,’ said Bunty. She could hardly believe it herself. Other than the odd little social slip it had been really quite an evening, pleasant and flowing and more of a giggle than she’d had in ages, since she and Kat and Cally had last been out together. ‘Quite like the old days.’

  For a moment she and Graham looked at each other, both remembering their early dinner parties; not quite on a packing case because Graham had already collected some sensible furniture from his grandmother, but nonetheless on mismatched chairs and one ordinary fork in the fondue pot, and too much cheap wine and bad games of Pictionary … and as she smiled at the memory she came to with a start. Graham was running a finger along her lip.

  It was another thing she remembered very well
.

  ‘You look about twenty-two,’ said Graham, and he leaned in to kiss her.

  And even though she wasn’t completely against the idea; even though Graham looked younger himself than he had in … well, forever, and even though this same evening in the past would definitely have led to sex, possibly even with a degree of enthusiasm, the worm in her mind wouldn’t stop turning. ‘Is that how old you like them these days? Twenty-two?’

  Graham stopped a millimetre away from her mouth. ‘What are you on about?’ he said softly.

  ‘You know. Your squash partners. Twenty-two? Or, God, it’s not younger is it?’

  ‘What …’ Graham looked genuinely bewildered, then something occurred to him. ‘This isn’t about that computer stuff, is it? Because I’ve already told you that wasn’t me. Or … Jesus, you don’t think Ryan and I are really … you couldn’t think that!’

  Bunty shrugged, feeling unaccountably hurt all of a sudden. He couldn’t even do the decent thing and confess. ‘I don’t know what I think.’

  ‘Well, whatever it is,’ said Graham, breathing hard, no longer from passion, ‘it isn’t good, is it? We … we should talk.’

  The phone vibrated in her jeans pocket, but as she went to grab it, Graham got hold of her hand, stopping her. ‘Bun, not now, this is important.’

  There was a phone number. A number starting with 0064.

  New Zealand.

  Ben.

  ‘So’s this,’ said Bunty. She walked down the hall and pressed the button.

  When she turned round, Graham was already walking up the stairs to bed.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Pearl: Today we’re very pleased to have with us this year’s Super Mummy, Bunty McKenna. Bunty, welcome.

  Bunty (inclining head graciously): Pleasure, Pearl.

  Finn: Ooops! Pleasure Pearl. Sounds like something a bit naughty.

  Pearl (giggles): Finn. Now, we’re actually here to talk about something very serious, that might affect a lot of parents out there. Bunty, tell us more. What did you find in the bedroom that night?