Later, during the washing-up, Nell said: ‘Joking apart, Mum, why do you think we’ve been invited to the Manor? You must know how snobbish they are round here. The Rawdons — that nice couple in Buttercup Close, Bernie and I had supper with them the other night — said that unless you’ve lived here at least three hundred years, or you’re a millionaire, people like the Westovers won’t have anything to do with you socially; it isn’t that they’re nasty, it’s just they simply don’t notice you, which in a way is even worse.’
‘Dear Nelly, you’re such an innocent!’ Diz dropped a handful of forks into the silver drawer with a crash that made his mother wince. ‘Don’t you realise that people from the Rectory rate higher in your actual social hierarchy than the simple denizens of a housing estate? The rector, now, would certainly come before, say, your local doctor, even possibly your local lawyer, and — ’
‘Two points, you berk, before I throw up,’ interrupted his brother-in-law. ‘One, none of us happens to be the rector; and two, the Westovers are nothing anyway, just a load of chinless idiots who happen to have inherited a house paid for by the proceeds of some sort of quack horse medicine ... ’
Quite suddenly, Bet started to giggle, and once started, couldn’t stop. Shoulders shaking, eyes streaming, she hung over the sink, scrubbing ineffectively at the mashed potato saucepan in an agony of suppressed laughter. ‘Now look what you’ve done, you idiots.’ Nell put a comforting hand on her mother’s heaving shoulder. ‘You’ve gone and upset Mum! She doesn’t have much of a life down here, and all you two can do when she is asked out, is try and spoil it for her.’
‘She’s not crying, she’s laughing.’ Diz knew his mother better than the others. Nell went pink. ‘Quite honestly, Mum, I can’t see it’s that funny.’
‘Oh darling, it isn’t, not really, — you’re quite right. It’s just ... well, it was the cousin, you see. I happened to meet him in the wood — I must have forgotten to tell you. He ... he was quite friendly, actually, in spite of the dogs, and I think it may be because of him we’ve been asked.’
Suddenly everyone shut up. What was so funny about meeting the cousin? Which cousin, anyway? Diz glanced sharply at his mother, remembering Mr Bone. He hoped she wasn’t getting peculiar.
*
It was more or less dark by the time they set out for Hopton Manor the following Saturday. Bet was right, everyone had agreed to go in the end. Admittedly, she’d had a bit of a struggle with Diz over his party outfit, in the course of which he’d threatened once again not to attend. He’d appeared downstairs in jeans and an army surplus shirt, and it was only after repeated threats from her and much cajolery from his sister that he was finally won over and agreed to change into his only suit; last worn, he reminded them bitterly, at his father’s funeral.
Nell had been reduced to tears over her outfit. At considerable expense and after much soul-searching, she’d gone mad and purchased herself a jade-green two piece of a somewhat way-out design, only to be told at the last minute by Bernie that it made her look like someone in a pantomime. Tearfully refusing ever to be seen in the outfit again, she ended up wearing a rather sexy cocktail frock borrowed from Pol. Pol herself naturally looked exactly right in a soft tweed dress which must have cost the earth, and a pearl choker.
As a result of all this Bet was left with little time to spend on her own appearance. Too late, she noticed a soup mark on her red dress, and her mascara brush had somehow gone all gooey, causing her eyelashes to stick together. But it couldn’t be helped, and after one last, despairing look in her rather murky bedroom mirror — the others having commandeered the one in the bathroom — she hurried downstairs to join the Redfords.
‘Bet, did you know you’ve smudged your mascara? You should have done your face in my bathroom, that bedroom of yours is a positive black hole. I can’t imagine why —’
‘Oh shut up, Pol. Who’s going to look at me anyway?’
As the crow flies, Hopton Manor, set in a shallow valley on the far side of the wood, was only a mile from the Rectory; however, by road it was nearly three. The drive gates were imposing enough, their effect slightly marred by the fact that they were propped open with an aluminium dustbin. The drive itself was full of potholes and seemed to go on for miles. The house, when they reached it at last, a crouching mass in the gathering dark, looked vaguely Queen Anne. However, as no welcoming light shone from its elegantly proportioned windows — not even a cheery gleam from a lantern in the porch — it was hard to make out what it was like. In point of fact the whole place looked utterly dead. Had they come on the wrong night? Somewhere quite near an owl hooted, and from the woods behind the house came the harsh, mournful bark of a mating fox.
Trespassers, they tiptoed across the gravel to the front door, the sound of their feet on the stones painfully loud in the all-enveloping silence, and huddled in the porch while Diz boldly grasped the ancient doorknocker — there didn’t seem to be a bell — and gave several loud raps on the front door.
Nothing happened.
‘Bet, are you sure you’ve got the date right?’ Pol hugged her fur coat. ‘Of course I’ve got the date right. Miss Westover definitely said Saturday.’
Actually, Bet was beginning to have doubts about this. ‘Give the knocker another go, Diz,’ she hissed, ‘someone must be there.’ Diz obediently did as he was told. ‘Is anybody there?’ he shouted into the unresponsive darkness. At that moment the door opened and he was propelled abruptly into a vast, cluttered hall, lit, it appeared, by a single forty-watt bulb.
‘Good evenings?’ A tall, extremely handsome manservant encased in tight, perfectly cut black trousers and a dazzling white jacket stood before them, the expression on his face one of chilling disapproval. ‘Mrs Brandon and party from the Rectory — WE HAVE BEEN INVITED,’ Pete shouted in his best talking-to-foreigners voice. ‘Si si.’ The manservant nodded impatiently and waved them in the direction of a door to the right of the staircase, then promptly disappeared into the surrounding gloom. Nell nudged her mother. ‘Let’s hope there are more like him around, eh, Mum!’ Bernie’s face, already grim, took on an even grimmer aspect. Far away, at the end of a long passage, in another world of warmth and light and laughter, Bet thought she heard the sounds of a party.
The room into which they’d been ushered so unceremoniously turned out to be a cloakroom cluttered with damp mackintoshes, wellies, old walking sticks and fishing gear; it was freezing cold, and smelt strongly of cat. Too cold to take their coats off, they stood around glumly waiting for something to happen.
At last — just as Diz, bored with hanging about, had taken down a fishing rod, placed an aged deerstalker on his head and, despite protests from Bet, was about to launch into one of his impersonations — there came a shriek from the doorway. ‘My poor dears! That adorable Alfonso has shown you into the gents! I really am most frightfully sorry. My name’s Sonia Byngham-Smythe, by the way, and you simply must be the party from the Rectory.’
They nodded, even Pol bereft of words. Mrs. Byngham-Smythe was indeed an apparition. Clad in green lurex tights topped by a tunic of purple silk, her age impossible to determine, she looked Bet up and down, her enormous, mascara-caked eyes taking in every detail of her appearance. ‘And you must be Mrs. Brandon.’ Bet placed her hand defensively over the soup stain. ‘Is that enchanting boy your son? How lucky you are — I’ve only a dismal daughter.’
‘Introductions are in order, I think.’ Pol moved gracefully forward, it was time to take over. ‘I’m Polly Redford, this is my husband, Peter, my niece Nell Sparsworth and her husband, Bernard. The boy in the hat is my nephew, Desmond. It’s too awful that there are so many of us, but I gather from my sister that Miss Westover did very kindly issue a blanket invitation. The traumas one has to endure with one’s Spanish staff! So decorative, but their English does sometimes leave something to be desired.’
Mrs. Byngham-Smythe looked at Pol thoughtfully, acknowledging a worthy opponent, and Bet swelled with pride for he
r sister. They were ushered upstairs without further ado, leaving Pete, Bernie and Diz to wait for them in the hall.
The ladies’ cloaks turned out to be a large, gloomy bedroom hung about with depressing prints of a quasi-religious nature and lit again, it seemed, by a forty-watt bulb. ‘Come down, darlings, when you’re ready, Alfonso will show you the way,’ shrieked Mrs Byngham-Smythe with a frightening smile. Her perfume remained behind her, the fumes so powerful they made Bet’s eyes water. She turned to her sister — always give praise where praise is due — ‘Pol you were marvellous, you really were.’ Pol smiled happily; Bet so seldom approved of anything one did. ‘I do occasionally have my uses ... ’
‘Whoever can that woman be, Aunt Pol. Is she some sort of relative?’ Pol smoothed her beautifully cut dress over her hips; she didn’t have to look in the mirror, she knew her make-up was perfect. ‘She’s another cousin, the Hon. Mrs Byngham-Smythe, one reads of her occasionally in the gossip columns. She’s been married umpteen times, drinks like a fish and will sleep with virtually anything, including the dog if pushed, or so I’ve heard.’ Bet and her daughter looked at one another in awe; they did not know these things.
Out on the landing, they peered into the gloom of the hall below; inevitably, there was no sign of Alfonso. Instead they were met with the sight of Diz lying on his stomach, apparently trying to retrieve something from under a rather dusty, rather beautiful, carved oak chest. Crouched beside him, Bernie looked resigned and Pete harassed. ‘He’s only broken a knob off this chest!’ said Bernie in his I-told-you-something-like-this-would-happen voice. ‘He said it was fake and gave it a tug and it flew off and rolled under there.’
For heaven’s sake, Pete, are you incapable of keeping a seventeen-year-old boy under control for two minutes?’ Pol’s question was purely rhetorical and Pete decided to ignore it. ‘Ah, there you are at last. Come on, Diz, forget about that damned knob and let’s find the party, it looks as if Alfonso’s disappeared for good.’
‘Probably eloped with our Sonia.’ Diz emerged, covered in dust. Bet made a few ineffectual attempts to tidy him up, but he brushed her hand away, and the party set off in Indian file down the long passage leading out of the hall, at the end of which was to be heard a noise like the distant baying of hounds. ‘The drinking call of the upper classes at the water-hole,’ Bernie hissed at Nell as they hurried down the passage, stumbling now and again in the inky darkness.
Emerging at last into the light, they found themselves in a huge, brilliantly lit room, stiflingly hot and already packed with people. Cynthia Westover was standing just inside the door, looking more than ever like the school hockey captain in mufti. Her blonde-streaked hair was permed tightly in the style of the nineteen forties, and she wore a plain shirt-waister of a rather unpleasant shade of puce. ‘Ah, Mrs Brandon. You’ve found your way at last! I’m sure there are plenty of people you know. Do grab yourselves a drink — the bar’s over there.’ She pointed vaguely towards the far end of the room. Not a sign of Simon Morris anywhere.
The bar, when they finally reached it, turned out to be a long. table loaded with food and drink of every description. Whatever Ms Westover saved on electricity, she undoubtedly spent on alcohol. It was presided over by Alfonso and a spotty girl from the village who Bet was pretty sure was yet another member of the ubiquitous Kettle clan.
‘This is more like it!’ Diz gulped down a champagne cocktail before Bet could stop him. ‘It’s only for the cherry, Mum, don’t panic.’ Bet shrugged and looked about her; she hadn’t come here to play the heavy parent, she’d come to ... Oh, hell, she surely wasn’t going to be so childish as to feel disappointed. But if Simon wasn’t going to be there, why had he asked her? But perhaps he wasn’t the one who had asked her; of course, that was an idea she’d dreamed up out of her imagination. And what did it matter anyway. Feeling like an Eskimo suddenly dumped down in the middle of an Arab market, she peered dismally up at the rather bad portrait of Saltpeter Westover above the mantlepiece and waited for something to happen.
‘Peter, my dear chap, how are you? We hoped we might bump into you here.’
‘Monty! Just the man I want to see.’
A tall man with a receding chin, who looked like a nineteenth-century cavalry officer in a Victorian print, had suddenly emerged from the crowd. Old Monty Cornwall at last! Behind him was his wife, Kitty, a replica of him except that she wore glasses. Pol kissed her fondly. ‘My dear, I feel absolutely awful I haven’t rung, but we’ve been inundated with builders and —’
‘My dear, so have we. I do so sympathise. Now do introduce us, we’ve been dying to meet your sister.’ There were shouted introductions all round, and the Rectory party gave a brief account of the rigors of their arrival. ‘Oh you poor dears! Cyn Westover has a heart of gold, but no manners whatever, none of the family has. Desmond, you simply must meet my daughter, she’s going up to Oxford in October so you’re sure to have something in common.’ Diz looked doubtful, but allowed himself to be led away in the direction of a group of noisy teenagers in the far corner of the room. They were all, Bet noticed, wearing jeans; there would, she supposed gloomily, be recriminations later on.
‘Come and meet the Campbells.’ Monty Cornwall made an all-embracing gesture. ‘They must be about your nearest neighbours. Frightfully nice couple — retired now, of course. I believe he used to run the gasworks in Bogota. They’re over there under the window, talking to the woman with a feather in her hat.’ Pol, Pete and the Sparsworths set off obediently behind him as he hoved his way through the crowd, despite the fact that the Campbells and their connection with the gas works in Bogota did not, on the face of it, sound all that exciting. Anything, Nell whispered to Bernie, was better than standing at the bar like a bunch of wallflowers. Bet, feeling rebellious, remained where she was and ordered another champagne cocktail.
‘You live in the Old Rectory at Hopton, don’t you?’ A timid voice sounded in her ear, reminding her forcefully of the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. ‘Yes we do,’ she said, smiling brightly. A sad, lost little lady stood beside her, dressed in what looked like one of those mail-order dresses advertised in Sunday newspapers, whose style never seems to change. They talked in a desultory fashion. The lady turned out to be the local librarian; she was pretty sure, she confided to Bet, that she had been invited by mistake. She had a feeling, she said, that Miss Westover had somehow got her lists mixed up. Not that I mind, Mrs Brandon, don’t get me wrong,’ she gave a shrill laugh, the gin in her bitter lemon beginning to take effect, ‘if it gives me a chance to see inside this lovely old place.’ And so it went on. Bet was passed from group to group, each time reciting her credentials until she began to wish she’d had them typed out beforehand, a sort of social CV to be handed out to interested parties on request.
What seemed hours later, she found herself standing in a corner with another- tiny lady — only this one had her hair cut in an Eton crop — holding a rather one-sided conversation on the subject of the Saxon village at West Stowe. Bet knew little, actually nothing, about West Stowe, and simply stood there, sipping her drink and trying to look intelligent. She hadn’t seen the rest of her lot since they’d departed in search of the people from Bogota. ‘You see, Mrs Brandon, what I feel about all this so-called reconstruction is —’
‘Hullo, Titania, how goes it?’
Bet spun round, spilling most of her drink in the process. Simon Morris, looking not cross this time but tired, smiled at her. ‘Hullo there, Smoky,’ said the West Stowe lady unexpectedly, ‘so you know Mrs Brandon.’
‘We’ve met here and there. And how are you, Tabby? Still mating all those gorgeous red setters and enjoying every minute of it?’
‘You really are the wickedest man! Of course I don’t enjoy it!’ The West Stowe lady positively glowed, the ethics of pseudo-historical reconstruction forgotten. A horsey woman with an eye-glass loomed up. ‘Tabby, my dear, I want to pick your brains about Golden Joseph — what price Crufts now, eh?’
> ‘Why Titania?’
‘We met in a wood, didn’t we.’
‘But if I’m Titania, who ... ?’
‘Bottom probably. I sometimes think an ass’s head would suit me admirably.’
‘I can’t think where my family have got to.’ Bet, far out of her depths, felt herself being swept along by currents she never knew existed. ‘I don’t seem to have seen them for hours.’
‘Have dinner with me?’
‘I’d like to ... When you’re next down, perhaps, and you must come and —’
‘I meant now, actually. My car broke down on the A 12 on the way here, I had the father and mother of a row with my director this morning, and what with one thing and another I don’t think I can take much more of this mob, God knows where Cyn digs them up. Will you?’
Quite suddenly, absurdly, she felt relieved; he had, after all, come as quickly as he could. To hell with the family, why shouldn’t she have dinner with Simon? ‘I’d like to,’ she said, feeling both reckless and wicked (why did she feel wicked?), ‘but I must tell the others.’
‘We can tell Cyn on the way out, don’t worry. Surely they’re capable of looking after themselves?’
‘Ah, there you are at last, Bet. We were wondering where you’d got to. How’s the car, Morris, no problems, I hope?’ Pete was showing signs of wear — a statue of Bacchus a bit blurred round the edges from being left too long in the rain. ‘Pete, I’m so glad you’ve appeared, I was just going to look for you. Mr Morris has very kindly asked me to dinner, so I won’t be home until later on.’
‘Splendid, splendid!’ Actually Pete looked none too pleased, his pale blue, somewhat bloodshot eyes darting suspiciously from Simon to Bet and back again to Simon. He helped himself to a passing drink and tried again. ‘Look, I’ve just had an idea. We’re all going on somewhere with the Cornwalls; why not join forces?’
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