“Please don’t clear up,” he said. He still found all offers of help in the kitchen to be an embarrassment and a sign of pity.
“Oh, I love doing dishes,” said Sandy. “I know you probably consider me a dreadful Yank but I’m so in love with the fact that people here are able to live in tiny houses and do chores without complicated appliances.”
“I should point out that Rose Lodge is considered rather spacious,” said the Major. “And I’ll have you know I own a rather top-of-the-line steam iron.”
“You don’t send out your ironing?”
“I used to have a woman come in,” said the Major, “when my wife was ill. But she ironed my trouser seams until they were shiny. I looked like a damn band captain.” Sandy laughed and the Major did not wince quite so much. Either he was getting used to her, or the claret had not yet worn off.
“Maybe I won’t bother getting a dishwasher for the cottage,” said Sandy. “Maybe we’ll keep things authentic.”
“The way my son uses saucepans, I think you need one,” said the Major chipping at the burnt frying pan with a fork and speaking loudly so that Roger, coming in from the garden, would register the remark.
“I went down to the club last week,” said Roger taking the dry tea towel the Major offered him but then sitting down at the table instead of helping.
“I heard,” said the Major. “Why on earth didn’t you call me so I could take you down and introduce you properly?”
“Sorry. I was just passing, really, and I thought since I’d spent all those years as a junior member that I might as well just pop in and check out what’s what,” said Roger.
“And what exactly was what?” asked the Major.
“That old secretary is a damn idiot,” said Roger, “But I ran into Gertrude Dagenham-Smythe and she fixed everything. I told Sandy it was quite funny to see the club secretary fawning all over her. He couldn’t have whipped me out a membership application any faster.”
“I’ll need to fill out a sponsorship document, of course,” said the Major. “You shouldn’t have upset the secretary.”
“Actually, Gertrude said she’d have her uncle sponsor me,” said Roger indulging in a wide yawn.
“Lord Dagenham?”
“When she offered, I thought I might as well get sponsored by someone as high up the food chain as possible.”
“But you don’t even know her,” said the Major, who still thought of Gertrude as the lady in the bucket hat.
“We’ve met Gertrude a few times in town,” said Sandy. “She remembered Roger right away—joked about how she had a crush on him one summer when she visited.”
The Major had a sudden vision of a tall, thin girl with a blunt chin and green glasses who had haunted the lane one summer. He remembered Nancy inviting her in a couple of times.
“I remember Roger being very rude to her,” said the Major. “Anyway, it’s out of the question. It simply wouldn’t do not to be sponsored by your own family.”
“If you insist,” said Roger, and the Major could only fume as he realized he had been put in the position of begging not to be cut out of Roger’s social progress. “Do you remember how she was always popping out of the hedge and presenting me with gifts?” continued Roger. “She was as plain as the back of a bus and I had to drive her off with a pea-shooter.”
“Roger!” said the Major. The young lady’s status as Lord Dagenham’s niece was enough to grant her a certain distinction if not beauty.
“Oh, he’s very attentive to her now,” said Sandy. “She asked his help with this golf club dance and he agreed right away. Good thing I’m not the jealous type.”
“I’m not at all happy with the dance,” said the Major. “There are some ridiculous ideas floating about that you must help me quash.”
“I’m your man,” said Roger. “I don’t want anything silly detracting from the central theme—the glory of the Pettigrew name.”
“But that’s precisely the piece we need to quash,” said the Major. “I don’t like our name being bandied about as cheap entertainment.”
“But how else would we get our name bandied about so fast?” asked Roger. “They’ve asked me to play Grandfather Pettigrew. It’s unbelievably good luck.” He yawned again.
“It’s an outrage,” said the Major.
“It’s a boost to my social career and it won’t cost you a penny,” said Roger. “Would you deny me that chance?”
“We’ll look ridiculous,” said the Major.
“Everyone looks ridiculous in the country,” said Roger. “The point is to join in so they don’t suspect you.” The Major was tempted to reward his son’s self-absorption with a box on the ear with the freshly scrubbed frying pan.
“Your father is just wonderful,” said Sandy as they sat over tea in the living room. “It’s so nice to meet someone real for a change.”
“We met one of the biggest art collectors in Europe this week,” said Roger. “Russian guy—he has an entire house on the edge of Regents Park.”
“I don’t think your father would have liked it much,” said Sandy.
“He has six Picassos and amethyst handles on all the taps in the toilets,” said Roger. “Ten minutes of chatting with him, and Sandy had an order for an entire new wardrobe of clothes for his girlfriend.”
“I do admire a man who doesn’t do things by halves,” said Sandy.
“You should call her, darling, and see if we can wangle a lunch invitation,” said Roger.
“Oh, God, Roger, not lunch,” said Sandy. “Lunch requires conversation. I don’t think I can sustain a whole hour of listening to her catalog her handbags.”
“It’d be worth it if we get on the list of people invited to their private tent at the art fair,” said Roger. “If we work ’em right, we could be yachting in the Black Sea next summer, or at least invited down to Poole for the weekend.”
“In my day I don’t think we ever felt the need to ‘work’ our social contacts in such a manner,” said the Major. “It seems a bit gauche.”
“Oh come on, it’s always been the way of the world,” said Roger. “You’re either in the game, making the connections, or you’re left in the social backwoods, reduced to making friends with—well, with shopkeepers.”
“You’re very rude,” said the Major. He felt his face flushing.
“I think your father has the right idea,” said Sandy. “To be interesting, you have to make contacts in all sorts of worlds. That way you keep people off guard.”
“Sandy is a real master at making friends with people,” said Roger. “She has everyone convinced she really likes them.”
“I do like them all,” said Sandy, blushing. “Okay, maybe I don’t like the Russian. We may have to rent a canoe if you want a boating holiday.”
“She has my boss’s wife eating out of her hand. One minute I can’t get a cup of coffee with my boss, and the next, he’s asking me to go shooting with him and a client,” said Roger. “Never underestimate the power of the female Mafia,”
“I seem to remember a small boy blubbering over a dead woodpecker and vowing never to pick up a gun again,” said the Major. “Are you really going shooting?” He leaned toward Sandy and poured her more tea. “Could never get him to come out with me after that,” he added.
“Yeah—like ‘bring Woody’ is a great invitation,” said Roger. “It was my first shoot and I potted an endangered bird. They never let me forget it.”
“Oh, you have to learn to shrug these things off, my boy,” said the Major. “Nicknames only stick to people who let them.”
“My father.” Roger rolled his eyes. “A great believer in the cold-baths-and-blistering-rebuke school of compassion.”
