Evie stopped looking pleased. “But they’re coming tomorrow.”
“I’ve made some ghastly mistake. They’ve come tonight. And there’s nothing to eat, Evie.” Her voice broke. “Nothing.”
Evie considered. She recognised a crisis when she saw one. Crises were the stuff of life to Evie. Motherless lambs, egg-bound hens, smoking chimneys, moth in the church kneelers—in her time, she had dealt with them all. Nothing gave Evie more satisfaction than rising to the occasion. Now, she glanced at the clock, and then took off her hat. “I’ll stay,” she announced, “and give you a hand.”
“Oh, Evie—will you really?”
“The children are asleep. That’s one problem out of the way.” She unbuttoned her coat. “Does Henry know?”
“Yes, he’s nearly dressed.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, give them a drink.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” asked Evie.
They found a tray, some glasses, the bottle of Tio Pepe. Evie manhandled ice out of the icetray. Alison found nuts.
“The dining room,” said Alison. “I’d meant to light the fire. It’s icy.”
“I’ll get the little paraffin stove going. It smells a bit but it’ll warm the room quicker than anything else. And I’ll draw the curtains and switch on the hot plate.” She opened the kitchen door. “Quick, now, in you go.”
Alison carried the tray across the hall, fixed a smile on her face, opened the door and made her entrance. The Fairhursts were sitting by the fire, looking relaxed and cheerful, but Mr. Fairhurst got to his feet and came to help Alison, pulling forward a low table and taking the tray from her hands.
“We were just wishing,” said Mrs. Fairhurst, “that our daughter would follow your example and move out into the country. They’ve a dear little flat in the Fulham Road, but she’s having her second baby in the summer, and I’m afraid it’s going to be very cramped.”
“It’s quite a step to take…” Alison picked up the sherry bottle, but Mr. Fairhurst said, “Allow me,” and took it from her and poured the drinks himself, handing a glass to his wife. “… But Henry…”
As she said his name, she heard his footsteps on the stair, the door opened, and there he was. She had expected him to burst into the room, out of breath, thoroughly fussed, and with some button or cuff-link missing. But his appearance was neat and immaculate—as though he had spent at least half an hour in getting changed instead of the inside of two minutes. Despite the nightmare of what was happening, Alison found time to be filled with admiration for her husband. He never ceased to surprise her, and his composure was astonishing. She began to feel, herself, a little calmer. It was, after all, Henry’s future, his career, that was at stake. If he could take this evening in his stride, then surely Alison could do the same. Perhaps, together, they could carry it off.
Henry was charming. He apologised for his late appearance, made sure that his guests were comfortable, poured his own glass of sherry, and settled himself, quite at ease, in the middle of the sofa. He and the Fairhursts began to talk about Birmingham. Alison laid down her glass, murmured something about seeing to dinner, and slipped out of the room.
Across the hall, she could hear Evie struggling with the old paraffin heater. She went into the kitchen and tied on an apron. There was the salad. And what else? No time to unfreeze the prawns, deal with the filet of beef, or make Mother’s lemon soufflé. But there was the deep freeze, filled as usual with the sort of food her children would eat, and not much else. Fish fingers, frozen chips, ice cream. She opened its lid and peered inside. Saw a couple of rock-hard chickens, three loaves of sliced bread, two iced lollies on sticks.
Oh, God, please let me find something. Please let there be something I can give the Fairhursts to eat.
She thought of all the panic-stricken prayers which in the course of her life she had sent winging upwards. Long ago, she had decided that somewhere, up in the wild blue yonder, there simply had to be a computer, otherwise how could God keep track of the millions of billions of requests for aid and assistance that had been coming at Him through all eternity?
Please let there be something for dinner.
Tring, tring, went the computer, and there was the answer. A plastic carton of Chile con Carne, which Alison had made and stored a couple of months ago. That wouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes to unfreeze, stirred in a pot over the hot plate, and with it they could have boiled rice and the salad.
Investigation proved that there was no rice, only a half-empty packet of Tagliatelli. Chili con Carne and Tagliatelli with a crisp green salad. Said quickly, it didn’t sound so bad.
And for starters…? Soup. There was a single can of consommé, not enough for four people. She searched her shelves for something to go with it, and came up with a jar of kangaroo tail soup that had been given to them as a joke two Christmases ago. She filled her arms with the carton, the packet, the tin, and the jar, closed the lid of the deep freeze, and put everything onto the kitchen table. Evie appeared, carrying the paraffin can, and with a sooty smudge on her nose.
“That’s going fine,” she announced. “Warmer already, that room is. You hadn’t done any flowers, and the table looked a bit bare, so I put the fruit bowl with the oranges in the middle of the table. Doesn’t look like much, but it’s better than nothing.” She set down the can and looked at the strange assortment of goods on the table.
“What’s all this, then?”
“Dinner,” said Alison from the saucepan cupboard where she was trying to find a pot large enough for the Chile con Carne. “Clear soup—half of it kangaroo tail, but nobody needs to know that. Chile con Carne and Tagliatelli. Won’t that be all right?”
Evie made a face. “Doesn’t sound much to me, but some people will eat anything.” She preferred plain food herself, none of this foreign nonsense. A nice bit of mutton with caper sauce, that’s what Evie would have chosen.
“And pudding? What can I do for pudding?”
“There’s ice cream in the freezer.”
“I can’t just give them ice cream.”
“Make a sauce then. Hot chocolate’s nice.”
Hot chocolate sauce. The best hot chocolate sauce was made by simply melting bars of chocolate, and Alison had bars of chocolate, because she’d bought two for the children and forgotten to give them to them. She found her handbag and the chocolate bars.
And then, coffee.
“I’ll make the coffee,” said Evie.
“I haven’t had time to wash the best cups and they’re in the sitting-room cupboard.”
“Never mind, we’ll give them tea cups. Most people like big cups anyway. I know I do. Can’t be bothered with those demmy tassies.” Already she had the Chili con Carne out of its carton and into the saucepan. She stirred it, peering at it suspiciously. “What are these little things, then?”
“Red kidney beans.”
“Smells funny.”
“That’s the chile. It’s Mexican food.”
“Only hope they like Mexican food.”
Alison hoped so too.
When she joined the others, Henry let a decent moment or two pass, and then got to his feet and excused himself, saying that he had to see to the wine.
“You really are wonderful, you young people,” said Mrs. Fairhurst when he had gone. “I used to dread having people for dinner when we were first married, and I had somebody to help me.”
“Evie’s helping me this evening.”
“And I was such a hopeless cook!”
“Oh, come, dear,” her husband comforted her. “That was a long time ago.”
It seemed a good time to say it. “I do hope you can eat Chile con Carne. It’s rather hot.”
“Is that what we’re having for dinner tonight? What a treat. I haven’t had it since Jock and I were in Texas. We went out there with a business convention.”
Mr. Fairhurst enlarged on this. “And when we went to India, she could eat a hotter curry tha
n anybody else. I was in tears, and there she was, looking as cool as a cucumber.”
Henry returned to them. Alison, feeling as though they were engaged in some ludicrous game, withdrew once more. In the kitchen, Evie had everything under control, down to the last heated plate.
“Better get them in,” said Evie, “and if the place reeks of paraffin, don’t say anything. It’s better to ignore these things.”
But Mrs. Fairhurst said that she loved the smell of paraffin. It reminded her of country cottages when she was a child. And indeed, the dreaded dining room did not look too bad. Evie had lit the candles and left on only the small wall lights over the Victorian sideboard. They all took their places. Mr. Fairhurst faced the Highland cow in the rain. “Where on earth,” he wanted to know, as they started in on the soup, “did you find that wonderful picture? People don’t have pictures like that in their dining rooms any longer.”
Henry told him about the brass fender and the auction sale. Alison tried to decide whether the kangaroo tail soup tasted like kangaroo tails, but it didn’t. It just tasted like soup.
“You’ve made the room like a Victorian set piece. So clever of you.”
“It wasn’t really clever,” said Henry. “It just happened.”
The decor of the dining room took them through the first course. Over the Chili con Carne, they talked about Texas, and America, and holidays, and children. “We always used to take the children to Cornwall,” said Mrs. Fairhurst, delicately winding her Tagliatelli onto her fork.
“I’d love to take ours to Brittany,” said Henry. “I went there once when I was fourteen, and it always seemed to me the perfect place for children.”
Mr. Fairhurst said that when he was a boy he’d been taken every summer to the Isle of Wight. He’d had his own little dinghy. Sailing then become the topic of conversation, and Alison became so interested in this that she forgot about clearing the empty plates until Henry, coming to refill her wineglass, gave her a gentle kick under the table.
She gathered up the dishes and took them out to Evie. Evie said, “How’s it going?”
“All right. I think.”
Evie surveyed the empty plates. “Well, they ate it, anyway. Come on now, get the rest in before the sauce goes solid, and I’ll get on with the coffee.”
Alison said, “I don’t know what I’d have done without you, Evie. I simply don’t know what I’d have done.”
“You take my advice,” said Evie, picking up the tray with the ice cream and the pudding bowls, and placing it heavily in Alison’s hands. “Buy yourself a little diary. Write everything down. Times like this are too important to leave to chance. That’s what you should do. Buy yourself a little diary.”
* * *
“What I don’t understand,” said Henry, “is why you never wrote the date down.”
It was now midnight. The Fairhursts had departed at half-past eleven, full of grateful thanks, and hopes that Alison and Henry would, very soon, come and have dinner with them. They were charmed by the house, they said again, and had so enjoyed the delicious meal. It had indeed, Mrs. Fairhurst reiterated, been a memorable evening.
They drove off, into the darkness. Henry closed the front door and Alison burst into tears.
It took quite a long time, and a glass of whisky, before she could be persuaded to stop. “I’m hopeless,” she told Henry. “I know I’m hopeless.”
“You did very well.”
“But it was such an extraordinary meal. Evie never thought they’d eat it! And the dining room wasn’t warm at all, it just smelt…”
“It didn’t smell bad.”
“And there weren’t any flowers, just oranges, and I know you like having time to open your wine, and I was wearing a dressing gown.”
“It looked lovely.”
She refused to be comforted. “But it was so important. It was so important for you. And I had it all planned. The filet of beef and everything, and the flowers I was going to do. And I had a shopping list, and I’d written everything down.”
It was then that he said, “What I don’t understand is why you never wrote the date down.”
She tried to remember. She had stopped crying by now, and they were sitting together on the sofa in front of the dying fire. “I don’t think there was anything to write it down on. I can never find a bit of paper at the right moment. And she said the seventh. I’m sure she said the seventh. But she couldn’t have,” she finished hopelessly.
“I gave you a diary for Christmas,” Henry reminded her.
“I know, but Larry borrowed it for drawing in and I haven’t seen it since. Oh, Henry, you won’t get that job, it’ll be all my fault. I know that.”
“If I don’t get the job, it’s because I wasn’t meant to. Now, don’t let’s talk about it any more. It’s over and finished with. Let’s go to bed.”
* * *
The next morning it rained. Henry went to work, and Larry was picked up by a neighbour and driven to nursery school. Janey was teething, unhappy and demanding endless attention. With the baby either in her arms or whining at her feet, Alison endeavoured to make beds, wash dishes, tidy the kitchen. Later, when she was feeling stronger, she would ring her mother and tell her that there was now no need for her to come and fetch the children and keep them for the night. If she did it now, she knew that she would dissolve into tears and weep down the telephone, and she didn’t want to upset her mother.
When she had finally got Janey settled down for her morning sleep, she went into the dining room. It was dark and smelt stalely of cigar smoke and the last fumes of the old paraffin heater. She drew back the velvet curtains and the grey morning light shone in on the wreckage of crumpled napkins, wine-stained glasses, brimming ashtrays. She found a tray and began to collect the glasses. The telephone rang.
She thought it was probably Evie. “Hello?”
“Alison.” It was Mrs. Fairhurst. “My dear child. What can I say?”
Alison frowned. What, indeed, could Mrs. Fairhurst have to say? “I’m sorry”?
“It was all my fault. I’ve just looked at my diary to check a Save the Children Fund meeting I have to go to, and I realise that it was tonight you asked us for dinner. Friday. You weren’t expecting us last night, because we weren’t meant to be there.”
Alison took a deep breath and then let it all out again in a trembling sign of relief. She felt as though a great weight had been taken from her shoulders. It hadn’t been her mistake. It had been Mrs. Fairhurst’s.
“Well…” There was no point in telling a lie. She began to smile. “No.”
“And you never said a word. You just behaved as though we were expected, and gave us that delicious dinner. And everything looked so pretty, and both of you so relaxed. I can’t get over it. And I can’t imagine how I was so stupid except that I couldn’t find my glasses, and I obviously wrote it down on the wrong day. Will you ever forgive me?”
“But I was just as much to blame. I’m terribly vague on the telephone. In fact, I thought the mix-up was all my fault.”
“Well, you were so sweet. And Jock will be furious with me when I ring him up and tell him.”
“I’m sure he won’t be.”
“Well, there it is, and I’m truly sorry. It must have been a nightmare opening your door and finding us there, all dressed up like Christmas trees! But you both came up trumps. Congratulations. And thank you for being so understanding to a silly old woman.”
“I don’t think you’re silly at all,” said Alison to her husband’s chairman’s wife. “I think you’re smashing.”
* * *
When Henry came home that evening, Alison was cooking the filet of beef. It was too much for the two of them, but the children could eat the leftovers cold for lunch the next day. Henry was late. The children were in bed and asleep. The cat had been fed, the fire lighted. It was nearly a quarter past seven when she heard his car come up the lane and park in the garage. The engine was turned off, the garage door closed. Then
the back door opened and Henry appeared, looking much as usual, except, along with his briefcase and his newspaper, he carried the biggest bunch of red roses Alison had ever seen.
With his foot, he shut the door behind him.
“Well,” he said.
“Well,” said Alison.
“They came on the wrong night.”
“Yes, I know. Mrs. Fairhurst rang me. She’d written it down wrong in her diary.”
“They both think you’re wonderful.”
“It doesn’t matter what they think of me. It’s what they think of you that counts.”
Henry smiled. He came towards her, holding the roses in front of him like an offering.
“Do you know who these are for?”
Alison considered. “Evie, I should hope. If anyone deserves red roses, it’s Evie.”
“I have already arranged for roses to be delivered to Evie. Pink ones, with lots of asparagus fern and a suitable card. Try again.”
“They’re for Janey?”
“Wrong.”
“Larry? The cat?”
“Still wrong.”
“Give up.”
“They are,” said Henry, trying to sound portentous, but in point of fact looking bright-eyed as an expectant schoolboy, “for the wife of the newly appointed Export Director of Fairhurst & Hanbury.”
“You got the job!”
“In other words, my darling”—he leaned forward and kissed her open mouth—“you.”
He drew away from her and they looked at each other. Then Alison made a sound that was halfway between a sob and a shout of triumph and flung herself at him. He dropped briefcase, newspaper, and roses, and gathered her into his arms.
After a little, Catkin, disturbed by all this commotion, jumped down from his basket to inspect the roses, but when he realised that they were not edible, returned to his blanket and went back to sleep.
ST. MARTIN’S PAPERBACKS TITLES BY ROSAMUNDE PILCHER
WINTER SOLSTICE
SLEEPING TIGER
ANOTHER VIEW
SNOW IN APRIL
THE END OF SUMMER
THE EMPTY HOUSE
Blue Bedroom and Other Stories Page 23