The Last Baronet

by Caroline Akrill

  ‘Yes,’ said Mary.

  ‘Is there anything to drink?’

  ‘Try the refrigerator.’

  ‘Runner beans again,’ commented Tom. ‘I hope they’re not stringy.’

  ‘They are not stringy,’ said his mother.

  ‘The last lot were.’

  ‘That was because Emily inadvertently picked the ones I was leaving on the plant to make seed.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ protested Emily. ‘How was I to know that? I’m not psychic. Is this vegetarian cheese?’

  ‘You were not to know because I omitted to tell you. Yes it is.’

  ‘I bet it isn’t.’

  ‘All right, it isn’t.’

  ‘I can’t eat it then. Ordinary cheese is made with calves’ intestine.’

  ‘Anybody seen the bottle opener?’ Tony enquired.

  ‘I have seen it somewhere, now you come to mention it,’ Mary said. ‘It was in a very unusual place. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I do distinctly remember wondering how it came to be there.’

  ‘Well, that’s a fat lot of help, isn’t it? That’s a fat lot of good!’ Tony returned to the kitchen. A great deal of scrabbling and crashing and slamming of drawers ensued.

  ‘I really can’t eat this,’ Emily said. ‘The very thought of it makes me want to puke.’

  ‘They are stringy.’ Tom removed a chewed remnant of runner bean from his mouth and laid it on the side of his plate in reproach. ‘I knew they would be.’

  ‘Has anybody any idea where the bloody corkscrew is?’ shouted Tony. ‘Somebody must know. Who had it last?’

  ‘You, for a guess,’ shouted Tom. ‘There’s only one alcoholic in this house!’

  ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ Tony’s face appeared round the kitchen door. ‘Exactly what is that supposed to mean!’

  ‘All it means,’ said Tom placidly, ‘is that, all things considered, you were possibly the last person to use the corkscrew yourself. Probably,’ he added, scraping a heap of beans to the side of his plate. ‘More than likely.’

  Emily, having already scraped to the side of her plate any of the potato which might possibly have been in contact with the fish sauce, now began to pick away at the cheese topping. She said in an aggrieved tone, ‘This cheese has gone right through the potato. By the time I’ve got rid of it, there will be nothing left to eat.’

  ‘Well, don’t count on the beans being edible,’ said Tom, ‘unless you happen to like chewing razor blades.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Mary exploded. ‘Stop it! All of you!’ Everyone fell silent. Tom put down his fork. Emily stopped scraping away the cheese. Tony stood in the doorway, a bottle of Sancerre and the corkscrew in one hand, a clutch of stemmed wineglasses in the other.

  Tom was the first to speak. ‘Hey, Ma,’ he said. ‘No need to lose your cool. It’s no big deal.’ His tone was casual but his eyes, when they met Emily’s across the table, held a warning.

  ‘We weren’t doing anything,’ Emily said defensively. ‘We were just eating.’

  ‘Mealtimes in this house are like a battlefield,’ said Mary. ‘Sometimes I wonder why I bother. Sometimes I wonder why I don’t leave you to fend for yourselves; why I don’t just open the kitchen cupboards and let you eat what you like, when you like; why I don’t leave you to graze like cattle. Sometimes I wonder why I struggle to get you to the table when you would obviously prefer to be somewhere else; why I bother to prepare food you would generally prefer not to eat.’

  Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Mary Pomeroy, ‘I would like to walk out of this house and take myself off to live in an hotel. I would occupy a single room and sleep in a single bed made up with fresh white linen every day. My wardrobe would be full of clothes which, if not actually new and unworn, would be cleaned and pressed for me by someone else. My meals would be prepared especially for me and my table for one would have a crisply laundered cloth and a white napkin, stiffly starched and folded into a Bishop’s mitre. That is what I would like my life to be. Just me. Nobody else. Everything pristine.’

  The silence deepened. Everyone waited.

  Mary Pomeroy looked up into the roof of the conservatory, to where the thick stems and strong, dark leaves of a Hoya had formed a lattice, starred here and there with bright crowns of wax-like pink flowers. (Not that she saw it; not that she thought it beautiful. Not, for that matter, that any of them had really looked at it and thought it beautiful). Mary Pomeroy took a deep breath. ‘Well now,’ she said with a determined brightness. ‘Lemon anyone? Parsley sauce?’

  Relief was tangible. Everyone relaxed. Tom picked up his fork. Emily pushed the offending cheese to the edge of her plate. Tony made his way to the table and sat beside Tom. ‘Get your bloody hair cut,’ he said by way of a greeting. ‘You look like a girl.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ returned Tom affably.

  Mary Pomeroy winced. ‘Language, Tom, please.’

  ‘What’s wrong with looking like a girl?’ Emily wanted to know. Not that she wanted to look like one. Not now. Not yet.

  Tony poured himself a glass of wine and drained it in one draught. He offered the bottle around the table without response and poured himself a second glass. ‘Whoever would have thought,’ he said, ‘that a man could find himself sitting down to lunch with a son who wears his hair in a ponytail, and a daughter sporting a short back and sides and Doc Martins. I haven’t a clue what is happening in the world, but I have a gut feeling that something has gone terribly wrong somewhere.’

  ‘It’s probably something to do with steroid hormone implants in beef cattle and sheep,’ Emily said gloomily. ‘Either that, or fertilizer run-off from crops contaminating the water supply.’

  Her father peered at her over the top of his wine glass. ‘What the devil have you done to your eyebrows?’

  Emily raised a hand and felt the vacant area where her eyebrows had once been as if to ascertain that they had not crept back into place whilst her attention had been elsewhere. ‘Oh, those,’ she said airily. ‘I’ve shaved them off. I didn’t really need them. Eyebrows are relatively superfluous in the human species these days. I decided I could get along just as well without them.’

  ‘Good God!’ Tony drained his second glass of wine.

  ‘I thought something was different.’ Tom stared at his sister. ‘I was trying to work out what it was. You realise you’ll have to shave forever now, Em? Every day? Because they’ll keep growing back. Every morning you’ll look in the mirror and see two lines of stubble.’

  Mary Pomeroy closed her eyes. Just lately, when she was with her family, she experienced the discomforting sensation of having somehow strayed into an alien landscape, into a world where everything was surreal; where only the irrational could be considered the norm. She felt she was losing control. She lacked co-ordination. She felt that if she tried to walk, her feet might not touch the ground; that she would float. She felt lost and disoriented. She felt confused. She could not properly comprehend how she had acquired this family, how it had come about. These people, this husband, these children, were neither what she had desired, nor what she had expected. They were as unfamiliar to her as they were unfathomable. They were strangers.

  Normally, Mary would have discussed the meaning of these sensations with her mother, but this was no longer possible. Mary Pomeroy’s mother was not entirely absent (were not her ashes reposing still upon the rosewood bureau in the study, as yet unrelinquished, as yet unscattered?) but their customary thrice-weekly conversations were, understandably, not as comforting to Mary as once they had been. And Mary was currently most sorely in need of her mother’s advice, of her sound, lets-have-no-nonsense-my-girl; there’s-plenty-who’d-be-glad-to-change-places-with-you, sort of common sense.

  When Mary looked at Tony she saw a man who, thrust too early into his father’s shoes, had found himself not only ill-prepared and inexperienced, but also not nearly as able or astute as he had imagined himself to be. Since then,
knowingly or unknowingly, he had applied himself to the task of proving his worth at something, at anything, not only in the workplace, but also as a husband and father, as well as in an endless succession of hobbies and sporting pastimes, every one of them entered into with the most enormous enthusiasm (not to mention expense) only to be abandoned the very moment it became clear that he was not destined to achieve the excellence he so desperately desired. For Tony Pomeroy was a driven man. Relentless in pursuit of some elusive inner satisfaction, never content and rarely relaxed, he was forever striving to demonstrate his ability, seeking not only to justify his position in life (for his father had left him a substantial fortune as well as a business with such well-schooled and practiced management that Tony had felt superfluous from the first day of his directorship) but also to vindicate himself for having fallen short of parental satisfaction. Mary had found this endearing at first but now she was, quite simply, exhausted. Mary’s mother had taken the stout-hearted view that Mary could have done very much worse. ‘He provides for you,’ she had pointed out. ‘You have a lovely home, a car, designer clothes, expensive holidays, private schooling for the children. You lack for nothing.’ (There had been so many things lacking in her own married life that she was able to speak from a position of authority on this point). ‘And Tony obviously adores you. Be grateful for that.’

  When Mary considered Tom, she saw a boy who had dropped out of university for no good reason that anyone had been able to establish, who had deliberately turned his back upon any kind of academic achievement or qualifications, who saw ambition as something to be pitied rather than admired, and who regarded conformity as a political plot perpetuated by the establishment in order to subjugate the individual. When Mary had despaired of Tom, her mother had told her not to worry. ‘Tom will be all right. Tom’s bright. He’s just reacting to his father, that’s all. He looks at Tony and he doesn’t like what he sees. Should we blame him for that? Give him some space. Give him time. Tom’s a sensible lad. He’ll sort himself out.’

  When Mary looked at Emily she shrank back in alarm. She could not understand how her pretty, golden-haired daughter had turned overnight (or so it seemed) into this antagonistic, shaven creature stomping about the house in her hideous farm-labourer boots and her misshapen garments with their trailing hems and puckered seams; garments that looked as if they had been run up by an arthritic seamstress on a defective machine out of a pair of old curtains and a bedspread. When Mary recoiled from Emily, her mother had defended her. ‘Don’t interfere,’ she had warned. ‘Whatever you do, don’t nag. Just accept her as she is. There’s nothing wrong with Emily. She’s just a normal teenager feeling her way in a dubious world. She’s having an identity crisis. Emily’s a clever girl. Look at her school reports. Look at her O-level results. She’ll find her way eventually. Be patient.’

  Now, Mary Pomeroy collected plates and conveyed them to the kitchen, returning with a bowl of fruit which she placed in the centre of the table. Her family looked at the fruit and then, as she resumed her position at the table, at Mary Pomeroy.

  Tony spoke first. ‘Is that it?’ he enquired in a disappointed tone. ‘We’re not having a proper pudding then?’

  ‘We are having fruit for pudding,’ said Mary in a tense voice. ‘If you care to cast your mind back to yesterday, when there was a proper pudding, you had to take off somewhere in a tearing hurry and were unable to partake of it. Tom was not hungry. Emily, for moralistic, ecological, or possibly even sociological reasons, declined. Today there is fruit.’

  ‘Fine.’ Tom selected a banana. ‘Fruit’s fine. What’s wrong with fruit?’

  Emily, with a show of reluctance helped herself to an apple.

  ‘Don’t ask me if they are organically grown,’ her mother warned. ‘Just don’t say it.’

  Emily, who had indeed been about to enquire into the provenance of her apple, contented herself by polishing it vigorously with her napkin to remove any surface contamination.

  Tony poured himself another glass of wine. The bottle was almost empty. ‘I’ll stick with the grape, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Why should I mind?’ said Mary. ‘Who cares whether I mind or not, anyway? What difference does it make?’

  ‘You used to disapprove of more than one glass at lunchtime,’ Tony reminded her. ‘Somehow it used to make subsequent glasses taste that much better. Unrestricted drinking isn’t half as much fun.’

  And even that is my fault, I suppose, thought Mary. Even the taste of the third glass of wine is lacking because of something I have said or not said. Nothing I do or say is right for this family. Every word, every action only serves to earn me more reproach. Mary would have preferred to have felt anger but a great wave of misery washed over her instead, flooding her eyes with tears. ‘I’ll make some coffee.’ She stumbled to her feet.

  In the designer kitchen that her mother had so admired and coveted, Mary Pomeroy stood at the Butler sink, her hands gripping the cold porcelain. She closed her eyes against the grief and the despair but the scalding tears forced their way through her eyelids and dropped into the basin.

  ‘Crikey, what are we supposed to have done now?’ In Mary’s absence Emily helped herself to the last inch and a half of wine. ‘What was that about?’

  Tony put a warning finger to his lips. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’ He looked with regret at the empty wine bottle. ‘Quite honestly, I haven’t a clue.’

  ‘The happy pills don’t seem to have done much good,’ Tom said in a low voice. ‘They were a dead loss. I think you should persuade Ma to go back to the quack.’

  ‘You might care to suggest it yourself sometime,’ said Tony wearily. ‘The last time I mentioned it the balloon really went up. Anyone would have thought I’d suggested men in white coats and a test drive in a straitjacket.’

  ‘Couldn’t the quack do a home visit?’ Emily wondered.

  ‘Not unless the patient is unable to attend the surgery, apparently. When I last had words with the doctor, he said it was quite common to suffer a mild form of clinical depression following the death of a close relative. He seemed think it was premature to think in terms of prescribing long-term anti-depressant drugs or psychotherapy. He advised that we should just continue to be patient and understanding and see what happens.’

  ‘What happens will be that we shall all end up needing psychotherapy,’ Emily said glumly. ‘That’s what will happen.’

  ‘Well, let’s not dismiss it out of hand,’ said Tom. ‘We could go as a group. We could enrol for collective therapy. It might be more enjoyable than we think. It might be just the activity to fill our long winter evenings.’

  ‘Don’t be flippant,’ warned Tony. ‘Not about this, anyway.’

  ‘I think it would help if we persuaded Ma to scatter Gran’s ashes,’ said Emily. ‘I think it’s really weird and unhealthy keeping them in the house. I think it’s morbid. I don’t think Gran would approve of it if she knew.’

  ‘Where did Gran want to be scattered anyway?’ Tom wanted to know. ‘Does anybody know? Did she leave any instructions?’

  Tony shrugged. ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘That’s not like Gran, is it? She was always such an organised sort of bod; I’d have thought she’d have everything covered right down to the last knockings.’

  ‘I think it would be a nice idea to scatter her over the vegetable patch,’ Emily said. ‘I think the ashes...’

  ‘If you are about to say that Gran is biodegradable,’ interposed Tony swiftly, ‘I seriously warn you against it.’

  ‘What I was about to say,’ said Emily with dignity, ‘is that the ashes would act as fertilizer and enrich the soil. Gran was particularly keen on recycling. She was always going on about waste, and I wasn’t being disrespectful in the least.’

  ‘Whilst that may very well be true,’ said Tony, ‘I doubt if your Mother would be very receptive to such a suggestion at the moment, and I hope that nobody would be tactless enough to mention the dispos
al of Gran’s ashes in the present circumstances.’

  ‘We won’t,’ agreed Tom. ‘No way. Positively not.’

  ‘It was only a suggestion,’ Emily said grumpily. ‘Do you think we’re going to get coffee, or not?’

  ‘Remember what the good doctor said,’ Tony reminded her. ‘Be patient.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he specified exactly how long we had to be patient for?’ Emily looked at her outsize black plastic Swatch. ‘I’ve got to be in Bromley by three.’

  Encouraging sounds came from the kitchen. China chinked. Coffee spoons rattled into saucers.

  ‘Hold on,’ said Tom. ‘It’s all about to happen.’

  ‘Should I offer to help?’ Emily looked questioningly at Tony.

  Tony shook his head. ‘Let’s keep things normal, shall we? Just be here when it arrives, that’s all.’

  ‘Christmas is going to be a real barrel of laughs this year,’ Tom commented morosely. ‘We managed to ignore it last year, with Gran dying on Christmas Eve, but this year it’s going to be pretty desperate. I don’t know how we’re going to get Ma through it.’

  Tony said ‘I’ve been thinking about that. I thought we might go away for Christmas this year, spend it somewhere different. It would mean we could avoid having to do all the usual things like putting up decorations and buying a tree; we could just pile into the car and take off. What do you think?’

  Emily stared. ‘Dad, I think you’ve just made a brilliant suggestion!’

  ‘Well, there’s no need to look so flabbergasted; I have been known to come up with a good idea now and again!’

  ‘But where would we go?’ Tom sounded doubtful. ‘I can’t imagine Ma enjoying a synthetic hotel Christmas with paper hats and party poppers. It could be pretty foul, you know. Maybe we should go abroad?’

  ‘I don’t think we should go abroad,’ said Emily. ‘Ma doesn’t like flying, for a start, and we’d need to fly to get anywhere half decent, anywhere hot.’

  Tom said ‘Who wants to be hot at Christmas? Hey, maybe we should go to Scotland; we could go skiing.’