Puck and Isolde, of course, still performed with her as the Swingers, but those gigs seemed less frequent as the years since Lucas’s death grew. They just didn’t have the same swing without him, she supposed. But Amanda had continued to put out an album every two to three years and then tour it, still swinging for all of them. Sometimes it was an album of standards, sometimes it was themed – Florence shuddered as she remembered last year’s hideous A Very Saint Claire Holiday with an even more hideous remix of Jazz Cat which Amanda had actually rapped. Florence laughed, remembering her mother rhyming ‘purr’ with ‘myrrh’.
‘This is ridiculous,’ Amanda had shouted down the phone to Richard. ‘It’s not even singing, it’s just very fast talking.’ But Richard, sniffing out a dollar like a bloodhound with its nose to the ground, had pointed out it was also very fast money.
Richard. Florence realised she didn’t have to call the theatre, she could just call Richard. She hadn’t spoken to him in weeks. Florence’s forehead crinkled. Actually, she hadn’t spoken to Richard for months. The last time she’d seen him was at Amanda’s fiftieth birthday party, at which her mother had not allowed anyone to mention the number fifty, had insisted on no candles on the cake and had quite rightfully refused to wear a badge that said, It’s all downhill from here. Richard had fussed around Kinsey doing the flowers and rearranging chairs and getting in the way of everyone even more than Isolde, who had arrived late and either pretended (who knew with Isolde, there was every chance she did these things for effect) or truly had not realised Amanda’s party was on. All Florence could remember was her sister walking through the doors of Kinsey just before the first guests were due to arrive and saying: ‘Oh, is Mum’s thingy tonight?’ and everyone, mostly Richard, being furious with her.
Florence realised Richard was another person she had let fall from her gaze, another person she had stopped noticing; it wasn’t just Issy who was guilty of not paying attention.
Richard had been a huge part of her childhood. He was in so many family photos that people who didn’t know the Saint Claires might have assumed he was Lucas. She could see Richard now, pressing their costumes in the hallway of Kinsey where they inexplicably kept their ironing board, people forever tripping over the cord, Isolde once burning her arm on the iron’s tip as she paced around it.
Occasionally Richard would pick them all up from school, Florence insisting he park his van far from its back gates, where the students who gathered there couldn’t hear ‘You Can’t Get a Man With a Gun’ playing from its speakers.
Richard would dutifully park a couple of streets away, staring straight ahead while waiting for Florence to dash to the van, and not speaking until they had rounded the corner.
‘How was your day, sweetheart?’
‘Good.’
‘Anything wonderful happen?’
‘No,’ Florence would scowl at him and think if he knew anything he would know that nothing wonderful happened at her school ever, and that life was nothing like bloody My Fair Lady.
He and Amanda were always breaking into song around Kinsey – Richard tying a tea towel around his head like a scarf, knotting it around his chin and singing ‘I Feel Pretty’, making Amanda giggle and Florence stick her finger in her mouth and pretend to gag.
And when Lucas died, the one person who never seemed to leave the house, who remained there days after everyone else had gone, taking their washed casserole dishes with them, hugging Amanda tightly at the door and murmuring ‘anything I can do’ was Richard. She had hated him being there. In the kitchen baking. In the library rearranging books. In the hallway tripping everyone up with the iron’s cord. In their lives, not being their father, stepping into his frame. She had burned with resentment at him every time he had passed her in the hallway, or had sighed long and loud every time he spoke. She had been hell on rollerblade wheels.
Florence picked up the phone. ‘Hi Richard, it’s Florence,’ she said, or at least she tried to, because Richard interrupted, ‘Florence, how lovely to hear your voice, how are you, my darling? Well this is just wunderbar! I was just saying to your mother the other day, “How is our little flower?” and here you are. Now don’t tell me you’re calling to say you’ve finally seen sense and are ready to get the band back together . . .’ and on and on, and Florence remembered something else about Richard Miller.
The man never shut up, but this time she found she didn’t mind, she just listened and enjoyed the ride until he took a breath and she jumped in.
‘Richard, could I have tickets for Mum’s show? Three would be great. Isolde and Puck are keen to come along too. I’d like it to be a surprise.’
There was a pause, one that went on for so long Florence wasn’t sure if Richard was still on the line, but then his voice, a little muffled, a little quieter – was he crying? – said, ‘She would absolutely love that, Florence,’ then businesslike again, ‘Would you like to go tonight?’
‘Really? It’s not too short notice?’
‘There’ll be three tickets at the box office under my name. You’ll have to collect them by seven at the latest, curtain is at eight. But I must away, I’ve got some critics to boot out of your seats.’
*
The crowd in the Prince Street foyer before Amanda’s show were exactly how Florence remembered them from her childhood – only older.
The women were in gowns, not dresses, not skirts and tops or jeans and T-shirts, but gowns that fell from their hips and skimmed their ankles. They wore brooches in their hair, gathered in strands behind their ears, and necklaces with red stones that caught the light and made them beautiful. The men wore suits, with pressed shirts and caramel shoes, and they loosened their ties at the bar, and the air smelt exactly like the sort of perfume her mother wore.
Florence thought that the whole crowd looked like it had been caught beneath a Rodgers and Hammerstein snow dome. Florence knew these people, she half expected one of them to wander over and tuck her under the chin and say, ‘My, haven’t you grown!’ but they just kept talking and laughing. Florence felt giddy from watching them. This was her mother and father’s crowd; she knew them so well, and listening to their chatter in the foyer was like hearing a score of music she had practised over and over as a child.
At the top of the foyer’s stairs the three Saint Claire children stood momentarily still – even Isolde, who eventually whispered, ‘It’s like Jurassic Park in here. Does anyone else find all these old people a little bit creepy?’ But Florence shook her head. She didn’t find it creepy, she found it wonderful. She wished she could find Richard and tell him. Never mind. He had just found them.
‘Hello! Hello, what a treat to see you all! Puck, I love that jacket you’re wearing. Isolde, lovely as always, and Florence, my little flower, in full bloom!’ Richard was striding across the room with a suit that appeared to have sequins sewn into the lapels, and somehow pulling it off.
Florence smiled and forgot to be annoyed that he was making such a fuss.
‘Hello Richard,’ she said, kissing his cheek, while Isolde leant forward and kissed his other one, and Puck shook his hand.
‘Oh my!’ Richard said. ‘It’s like being in the middle of a Saint Claire sandwich – how wonderful to see you all in the same room again! I can’t even remember the last time!’
‘I can,’ Isolde said brightly. ‘It was at Dad’s funeral.’
Florence twisted the side of her mouth. ‘No, it wasn’t, Isolde. It was at Mum’s fiftieth.’
‘Oh,’ Issy answered, ‘I don’t remember being at that.’
Richard led them through the foyer crowd, parting the theatre-goers in his wake by holding his arms out on either side, both hands extended in a stop sign.
‘I don’t think that’s necessary, Richard,’ Florence laughed as he led them to their – very good, Florence noted – seats. ‘I don’t think we’re in any danger of getting mobbed here.’
Richard smiled as he sat down next to her. ‘Got to look after my chickens
,’ he said, and Florence was taken back to her childhood, Richard clucking and fussing all over them. ‘Come on, chickens, into the car!’; ‘I think it’s time I got you chickens home to bed’; ‘Bravo, chickens, bravo, a virtuoso performance.’
Then the lights dipped and Florence felt the crowd settle into their seats, all brushed with the same sleight of hand taking them from where they were a minute ago – bad traffic, unruly children, poor dinners – to here, where all those things faded with the house lights.
Then the lights darkened altogether and Amanda Saint Claire’s profile appeared in silhouette against a cream scrim, her head tilted slightly forward, her hair pulled back in a low bun at the back of her neck. It was so unmistakably her mother – the long, flat forehead, the retroussé nose, the perfect triangle of her slightly open lips, the neat, lifted chin – Florence felt strangely like putting her index finger in the air to trace along the shadow’s lines, to travel on her mother’s skin.
Amanda Saint Claire’s profile was so still for so long, Florence knew the audience would start to wonder if it was real or some sort of cut-out. But they didn’t know her mother. Florence looked across at Isolde and grinned, and Isolde smiled back, then leant forward and whispered, ‘She’ll hang on all night if she has to.’
What Florence knew, and Isolde and Puck too, was that the thing that was keeping Amanda Saint Claire set in stone for so long was sheer will. She would hold that pose until the exact moment when the audience stopped being enthralled and started shifting in their seats.
Florence watched as Amanda raised her hand and began to click her fingers metronomically, and Florence felt the hairs on her arms stiffen as a double bass began to play behind the scrim.
It was sparse, and it was perfect, as the bass player plucked out the first few famous bars of a jazz standard (‘Always open with a crowd pleaser,’ she heard her father say. ‘Get them on your side and then you can do whatever the hell you like later.’) and the scrim dropped.
Amanda Saint Claire, in a black velvet strapless dress turned her head, looked the audience in the eyes and took them all on.
‘Take me in your arms . . .’ she began, and Florence felt tears immediately sting her eyes, although if someone had asked, she would not have been able to explain why. It was something to do with the way Amanda had slowed down the song until she was almost speaking it, the way she had taken all the heat out of it, replaced its febrile tones with something very close to aching, and the way she was on stage, alone with just the double bass player beside her.
No band. No Lucas. No Isolde or Puck and never Florence.
Just Amanda Saint Claire, letting the show go on.
When the song finished the applause spilled through the rows like a Mexican wave, and a couple of people stood up, cupping their mouths with their hands to holler.
Florence hated the hollerers – but not as much as the people she and Isolde called the ‘woo-ers’.
‘Woo!’ a man directly behind Florence called, and Florence didn’t have to look to know the Issy would have swivelled her head to scowl at him.
But Amanda loved them all, even the ones who called out, ‘Marry me Amanda!’ – especially the ones who called out, ‘Marry me Amanda!’ Florence thought.
She watched as her mother bowed just slightly from her waist and mouthed the words ‘Thank you’ as she stepped towards the microphone for her next song, and the rest of the band began filing onto the stage, smiling and nodding as if they had all just run into each other at the most wonderful party.
Florence thought back to all those years ago when she had begged her mother in her childhood room not to break into song and Amanda had answered: ‘I can’t help it.’ It was true then, and it was true now, Florence thought, watching her mother toss a smile out to the balcony, her eyes scanning along its rows, making sure it reached everyone.
‘Maximum wattage,’ Florence mouthed in the dark.
When Amanda had first turned towards the audience, Florence had seen her mother take them in, her three children sitting in the first row of the balcony, seats that Richard had managed to prise someone else’s bottoms off.
The thing that struck Florence most was that her mother had not missed a beat. Her eyes had widened a little as she saw Puck and Isolde and Florence, her eyebrows had lifted a little, but she had not faltered or lost her place. She had just kept singing, kept working the stage for the next two and a half hours, with an interval.
It was a marathon, and only at the end of Amanda Saint Claire’s seemingly endless stories she could tell you did she say, ‘Thank you, everybody. Tonight has been a special night for me as I’ve had my three children, Florence, Isolde and Puck in the audience.’
She gestured to where they sat, Puck with his head down, Isolde actually waving from her seat, and Florence locking eyes with her mother.
‘They are my most treasured stories of all, and the three greatest loves of my life,’ her mother added.
Three, Florence noted, not four.
Later that evening, when they sat in Amanda’s dressing room and Richard brought in a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket, Florence smiled at her mother.
‘You’re really good, Mum,’ she said. ‘You’re really, really good.’
Amanda smiled her cat smile at her daughter.
‘I know, darling,’ she purred.
*
The week after Amanda’s Stories I Could Tell You gig, Miss Suki and the Nightshades had an appointment to meet Natalie Bishop at Avalon.
The benefit was called Music Under the Milky Way and it was, Orla told them in Veronica’s car on the way there, a fundraiser for the art gallery, which had apparently run out of money for new acquisitions.
‘Haven’t we all?’ Veronica sighed from behind the wheel.
Orla said, ‘Speaking of which, I fink we need somefing classier for this gig, you know, somefing that makes us look like we belong there.’
Florence thought that somefing might be for Orla to stop saying ‘somefing’ and calling Avalon ‘the big ’ouse’ as if it was a correctional centre.
‘We do belong, Orla,’ she said, ‘because they’ve invited us there.’
‘To work,’ Orla reminded her. ‘They’ll probably make us use the maid’s entrance.’
In the back seat Florence was mentally going through the costumes they kept hung in suit bags at Veronica’s house. They always reminded her of old men in overcoats lined up at a bus stop.
‘What about the green satins?’ she asked. ‘They have a bit of a “to the manor born” look about them, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, if “The Manor” is the name of a brothel,’ Veronica answered.
‘The silver sequins?’ Florence tried.
‘No,’ Orla said. ‘’Alf the sequins are coming off. I always feel like I’m unravelling when I wear them.’
‘The black halter necks?’ Florence mused. ‘They hide a multitude of sins – mostly yours, Veronica.’
Veronica shook her head. ‘I don’t believe in sin, honey. Thought you might have picked that up by now.’
Florence was tired of the dresses as well, not so much their style but their impracticality. She was tired of pouring herself into sheaths she had to tug down at the hips and cup her breasts into, like she was wriggling into an hourglass.
‘What about we rent some tuxedos for the night?’ she said and Veronica clapped her hands.
‘I love it,’ she said. ‘Very Victor/Victoria.’
‘’Oo?’ asked Orla as Avalon’s gates slowly swung open, with no sign, Florence noted with relief, of the two hounds of the Baskervilles.
Veronica parked the car in a spot marked ‘Visitors’ and Florence wondered what it must be like to live in a house where the parking was designated.
‘Let me do the talking,’ Orla said, her vowels suddenly far more rounded, her voice taking on its Kensington clip.
‘Just be yourself, Orla,’ Florence said, ‘we’re not on stage now,’ but as the door open
ed and Natalie Bishop stood there smiling, Florence felt absurdly like she was; as if she had stepped into the first scene of a Wodehouse play and Bertie Wooster was about to come gambolling off the tennis courts.
Mrs ‘Call me Natalie’ Bishop led them to a room off Avalon’s wide central hallway that had low stuffed sofas, high arched windows, and in between tapestried footstools and occasional tables set with bowls of freshly cut peonies.
Florence’s eyes flicked to a tall, clear vase filled with three exquisite bird of paradise stems. Albert called them the punk rockers of the botanical world, all spiky attitude and bright orange mohawks.
‘I love your flowers,’ she told Natalie Bishop, ‘particularly the bird of paradise.’
‘Ah yes, the Strelitzia reginae. I love it too.’
Florence noted the Latin, and thought she had been right. Someone who knew their way around a garden lived at Avalon. She just hadn’t expected it to be the owner.
She nodded towards a neat pink cluster of flowers growing outside an arched window.
‘Daphne odora,’ Florence said. ‘They’re tricky to grow here.’
Call Me Natalie’s eyebrows lifted a little. ‘Yes, but I’ve found that the trick is to not overwater them. People think daphnes have to be kept moist all the time, but they don’t.’ She gestured towards the window again. ‘And what do you think of my Anemone hupehensis japonicas?’
‘Lovely,’ breathed Florence, as Orla whispered to Veronica, ‘What are they talking about? It’s all Greek to me.’
‘Latin,’ Veronica whispered back. ‘They’re speaking Latin – actually they’re showing off in Latin.’
After the meeting, which mostly involved Florence and Natalie Bishop wandering around Avalon’s grounds pointing at plants, with Orla and Veronica trailing behind them, Natalie walked them to their car.
‘My secretary Marianne will send all the details to you,’ she said, ‘but as I said, it’s quite simple, you do three songs in the marquee after the string quartet has led the guests in, and I’ll let you know which three from the list you so kindly gave me, Orla,’ she added.
The Best Kind of Beautiful Page 16