by Judy Astley
‘Manda, more potatoes?’ Lottie, feeling as if she was playing the role of Granny Perfect, offered the extra ones to her putative daughter-in-law before she asked anyone else. If Manda thought this counted as a comment that she needed fattening up, well, it wasn’t a million miles from the truth. Manda’s body hovered between pin-thin and skeletal. Also it seemed logical to start the offers of seconds with the one who looked the hungriest as opposed to what her own mother had done, which was to begin with the biggest and greediest male – her own husband. The Revd John Cherry had never said no either, especially not on a Sunday when the preparation of this ritual lunch was a frantic business crammed in by Mary Cherry between Family Communion and Evensong. Why no one had ever considered moving the full-scale roast beef extravaganza to Monday or Saturday and serving up a simple soup and salad on Sunday was beyond Lottie. She’d suggested it once, on a day when her mother had yet again raced out of church, pushing past the vicar’s usual gaggle of fond old ladies lined up to congratulate him on his sermon, to baste the joint and shove the Yorkshire puddings into the temperamental Aga.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! It’s Sunday lunch.’ Mary had looked at Lottie in amazement as if her daughter had questioned why Christmas had to be in December. ‘Sunday lunch – that’s the point!’
‘No more for me, thanks. I’ve had loads!’ Manda held up a long skinny hand and fended off the dish of potatoes as if terrified by such proximity to carbohydrates.
‘No you haven’t.’ Sorrel pointed her knife at Manda’s plate. ‘You’ve had two tiny ones. And you can’t be on a diet, so maybe you’re—’
‘Sorrel! Pass the potatoes down to Sophia, will you?’ Lottie interrupted hurriedly.
‘I was only going to say …’
‘Yes, well, please don’t.’
‘Candida.’ Sorrel grinned at her mother and at Manda. ‘I was only going to say you might be avoiding potatoes because you’d got a yeast infection. It’s called Candida albicans. I looked it up.’
There was a short silence while everyone worked out how much of an embarrassment factor this carried. About 98 per cent, was Lottie’s guess, recalling gynaecological plain speaking from some Guardian article or other. Still, at least Sorrel hadn’t said ‘pregnant’. Manda would be aware enough of her biological clock without people like Sorrel carelessly setting it chiming. At past thirty Manda must have lots of friends who were producing babies. The poor girl was probably thoroughly sick of being invited along to baby showers, turning up each time clutching a beautifully wrapped gift and having everyone say, ‘Hey, maybe your turn next, Mands!’
‘You thought I was going to say “pregnant”, didn’t you, Mum?’ Sorrel declared triumphantly. Lottie groaned.
‘Potatoes are nothing to do with yeast infections,’ Manda said calmly. ‘I’d actually be completely fine with potatoes if I had candida. But I haven’t. Thank you for your concern though, Sorrel.’
‘Isn’t candida something to do with thrush?’ Clover asked Manda, who looked so startled Lottie wondered if eyeballs really could drop right out.
‘Yes, but you can get it right through your digestive system as well as up your fanny,’ Sorrel explained breezily. ‘It’s not just sexually transmitted, you know.’
‘I definitely haven’t got anything like that,’ Manda blurted. ‘I’m very well. Peak condition, in fact.’
She smiled nervously around the table, at all the faces that now gazed at her, as if waiting to hear her deny each of a long list of unpleasant and deeply personal symptoms and possibly proffer a signed-off appointment card from her local genito-urinary clinic.
‘Thrush! Perlease, I’m still eating!’ Sean shuddered, his loaded fork poised halfway to his mouth.
‘She still didn’t answer the pregnant bit,’ Sophia hissed loudly across the table to Sorrel. ‘Not actually. Are you having a baby, Manda?’ The child stared, bright-eyed and waiting. As, by now, were they all. Poor Manda was brick-scarlet. Lottie looked at Ilex – the one person who possibly should have been expected to come to her rescue. He was beyond helping, deep in murmured conversation with Gaz. She caught the words ‘offside’ and ‘penalty’.
Manda hid her face inside the twin curtains of her flat brown hair and stared down at her empty plate, trusting the personal speculation would soon move on to someone else. She considered saying that yes, actually, she did think she might be pregnant. Maybe this way Ilex, if he actually could be arsed to listen, would be kick-started into commitment mode, but then that would very nearly be as bad as having to ask him to marry her. She didn’t want her magical special day to come about under any hint of pressure, though how much longer she could leave it before giving in and pushing him right into it she really didn’t know. As they’d arrived at the house she’d had a good sneaky look at the front porch, checking it for wedding photo potential. Close to perfect, was how it appeared to her, although it needed a lot of tidying up. It would take more than that idle part-timer Al to get the garden sorted. They should get Green Piece in and give it a total makeover. Weeds pushed through the gravel in clumps, roof tiles needed replacing and the rampant passion flower scrambling up the walls could use a serious trim. Some tubs and hanging baskets of trailing white fuchsias and surfinias would help to soften the look. If all else failed, she could get the nursery to send round fully grown white-flowered climbers in pots. And roses. Of course there must be roses, for a wedding.
‘No, of course I’m not pregnant, Sophia,’ Manda said, sounding close to defeat.
‘Is that because you and Ilex haven’t been doing mating?’ Sophia persisted, her voice so clear and loud that even Gaz and Ilex looked up.
‘What’s mating?’ Elsa chipped in.
‘Bloody good fun, that’s what it is.’ Sean chortled.
‘Sean! Pas devant les enfants.’ Clover leaned across the table and hit her husband’s arm sharply.
‘That means you can’t say things in front of the children. Jakey’s mum’s always saying it,’ Sophia explained to her little sister. Lottie marvelled at the child’s worldly wisdom.
‘Still doing the French classes, are you, Sophia?’ she asked.
‘Oui.’ Sophia nodded.
‘Je pearl fronzee,’ Elsa chipped in.
‘Fantastic,’ Lottie told her. ‘What brilliant girls you are.’
Poor kids, did Clover ever give them time to lie on the lawn and watch the clouds drifting over?
Sean interrupted. ‘Is no one having these potatoes? Cause if they’re going begging …’ He didn’t wait for an answer but leaned across towards Sophia and scooped up a crisp roast potato in his fingers.
‘Daddee! I was saving that one!’ Sophia leaped from her seat and ran out of the room, sobbing dramatically. Oh good, Lottie thought, feeling immensely cheered. The child shows signs of being pretty normal after all.
‘Sorry, princess!’ Sean called after his daughter. ‘Think of it as leaving you more room for pudding! So, Mac, how’s the mighty herb project coming along? Cornered the market in minority mints yet?’
Mac groaned. ‘Don’t bloody ask. You won’t believe how fast a polytunnel full of parsley can drop dead if you water it in a heatwave.’
‘So why did you?’
‘Good question,’ Lottie said. ‘The hose was on a timer and something must have tripped. Just about every leaf was sun-scorched and useless. Restaurants can’t use anything less than perfect so we were stuck with a glut, only good for compost.’
‘Tastes the same though.’ Mac shrugged. ‘I made the most amazing green mayonnaise with it.’
‘Brown, you mean,’ Ilex interrupted. ‘Wouldn’t it be, with scorched leaves?’ His parents’ in competence at matters of simple business practice never ceased to stagger him. How many failed ventures had they ploughed their enthusiasm and loads of cash into during his lifetime? He hardly dared add them up. There was probably a club for people like them – hundreds of ex-musicians with a string of doomed hobby-careers. They could all get together
and chat about their trout farms and nightclubs and pheasant shoots and where did it all go wrong? If Mac and Lottie had only re-trained as something sensible when the music faded away instead of relying on short-lived enthusiasms and the comfort of twice-yearly royalties, they could be winding themselves down towards a nice quiet retirement, all nest-eggs hatching nicely. Instead, it looked like all funds had flown the coop long ago. And was this really the first time he’d noticed how run-down the house was looking? Tired was the word that came to mind, bordering on the exhausted and clapped-out. The curtains in this rarely used room – once glorious rich gold devoré velvet – were saggy and dulled. The Moroccan kelims would have proved a sound investment if they’d been preserved safely hanging on the walls rather than on the floors where they’d become scuffed and threadbare from a lifetime’s worth of sharp-clawed (and often incontinent) cats and dogs. It needed a sharp injection of serious funds, and fast, before real rot set in and the whole thing fell down.
‘The green mayo was all right,’ Mac protested. ‘I chucked in a couple of drops of food colouring from a bottle at the back of the larder. Could have packaged the stuff up, given it a fancy label and flogged it, no trouble. In fact, it gave me an idea.’
Ilex looked hard at his father, trying to work out whether he was joking or not. You could never tell with Mac. When he and Lottie had attempted to run a restaurant they’d had quite a lot of trouble understanding the concept of Health and Safety. Mac had had a huge row with the visiting inspectors over the wolfhound-of-the-time dozing in its basket in the corner of the restaurant kitchen, pointing out to the outraged clipboard-toting official that it was either that or being on the wrong side of yet another set of authorities for leaving the poor creature slowly stewing to a certain death outside in the hot car.
‘What kind of idea, Dad?’ There was a certain amount of dread in Clover’s voice. ‘Please don’t say it’s another restaurant?’
‘God no! I’d never do that again. You have to be nice to people all the time!’ He laughed. ‘Though I suppose I could sit back, keep out of the way and not try to be hands-on …’
‘What, and just, like, count the money? Sounds cool.’ Sorrel nodded.
‘Nah – there wouldn’t be any money. Never is, not in food. The more rules and regulations, the less cash. And chefs are such prima donnas. I’ve had enough of those to last two lifetimes.’ Mac reached across for the wine and poured some into Clover’s glass and then his own. ‘No, I just thought, what about doing a range of herbal sorbets? You could package them up all arty-tarty and flog them off in upmarket delis. Got to be a winner because they’d be frozen – they’d keep. That way I wouldn’t get stuck with a glut and be at the mercy of those bloody up-their-own-egos chefs.’
‘You know, Mac, that’s not such a bad one.’ Lottie also refilled her glass and offered the wine to Sean who, mindful he’d be driving his car-full of family, looked at it longingly before passing it on to Sorrel. ‘We could have a competition for the package design – get some of the students down at the art college to do it – much cheaper than hiring some rip-off company.’
‘Mum, slow down! That’s just so typical!’ Clover interrupted, laughing. ‘There you go, straight to the fun bit before you’ve even given a thought to marketing and demand and a business plan! Can’t you and Dad ever think things through first?’
Lottie looked with amazement at her agitated daughter. ‘Think what through? Hey, lighten up, will you, Clover! It’s just an idea. We’re only at the playing-with-it stage!’
‘Mum, you’re always at the “playing-with-it” stage,’ Ilex said, leaning across the table and tenderly patting his mother’s wrist. He had to back up his sister here. If someone didn’t slow them down to a sensible pace right now, Mac and Lottie would soon be in full possession of a run-down food-processing plant and a warehouse full of unsold tarragon ice-cream rapidly heading for its Destroy-By date.
‘Ooh, you know sometimes I can’t believe you and Clover are really our children!’ Lottie got up and started collecting plates. ‘You’re so … straight! Where’s your imagination? Your vision? Where’s your sense of rebellion and your natural-born anarchy?’
‘Anarchy doesn’t get the bills paid, Mum,’ Ilex pointed out primly.
‘Or the children into a good school,’ Clover joined in.
‘Which is your rebellion – pathetic as it is,’ Sorrel pointed out to her sister. ‘Mum and Dad are old hippies who somehow got away with never having proper jobs so obviously your idea of rebelling was to go the other way.’ She looked carefully at her older brother and sister and added, ‘Of course you can rebel too far. I mean, Ilex, for Chrissake, you’re an estate agent. Like, how deadly is that?’
‘I am not an estate agent! I’m a property management consultant!’
‘Same difference,’ Sorrel snorted, pushing her chair away. She collected up the remaining plates and followed Lottie to the kitchen, calling as she went, ‘Whatever name you give it, Ilex, you’re still a no-life nine-to-five office slave who’s scared to leave home without a tie!’
‘And I suppose you think a few months backpacking is going to make you an authority on the romance of a wanderer’s life?’
Sorrel came back into the room and treated her brother to a pitying smile. ‘Well, at least I’m going somewhere. You and Manda never do any travelling.’
‘We go away. We went to Italy last September, and then to Bruges to the Christmas market. Or doesn’t that count?’
‘Yes, but it’s not travelling. It’s just a holiday. You knew exactly where you’d be from day one to when you came home and where you’d stay and everything. Travelling is when you really get the feel for how people live in the places you go to, not just hanging out in some tourist complex. It’s an adventure, the possibilities of the unknown!’