‘But he adores them.’
‘They wear him down. And why does he have this morbid obsession with the past? It’s so hypocritical. Elizabeth’s parents have got to face up to the fact that he’s bound to make another commitment sooner or later.’
‘But they’re old,’ I said, removing Antonia Fraser who was thoughtfully licking crab paste off the bridge rolls, ‘and they all loved Elizabeth.’
Crash came the pestle down on the poor lentils.
‘That marriage’d have come unstuck anyway.’
‘Rubbish,’ I said furiously. ‘He adored her. Everyone says so.’
‘He’d never have achieved his full potential married to her. He’d have got bored.’
‘Because she wasn’t a woman of substance,’ I said sourly. ‘I suppose you would have found her a little
Berenice’s face suddenly took on the unarresting personality of a stopped clock. ‘God rest you merry gentlemen,’ sang the wireless.
I escaped from the kitchen before I wrung her deeply tanned neck.
Lucasta met me in the hall. ‘Very bad news,’ she said. ‘Coleridge has been sick three times on the stairs, and there’s bits of leather in it.’
‘Oh God!’
From a cursory examination of the stairs it was quite obvious that Coleridge had regurgitated a good deal of chewed-up Hermes belt.
‘Shall I tell Berenice?’ asked Lucasta happily.
‘God no,’ I said. ‘Do you want Coleridge put in an Old Setters’ Home?’
‘Don’t look so sad,’ said Lucasta to me as I mopped away with a Jay cloth and disinfectant. She put her arm round my shoulders.
‘You may not be very clever,’ she said, ‘but you’re very good at wiping up sick.’
At that moment Rose came down the stairs, carrying a suitcase. She looked very crestfallen. In fact her crest was positively round her ankles.
‘Beastly, beastly weather,’ she said.
‘You’re not going away, Granny?’ said Lucasta.
‘No darling, I’m going to have lunch and a nice hot bath at Professor Copeland’s and change into something pretty for your party. Where is she?’ she whispered, looking round nervously.
‘Making health food canapes in the kitchen.’
Rose shuddered. ‘She keeps trying to interest me in yoga.’
‘She thinks her navel is the centre of the universe.’
‘I used to think naval officers were the centre of mine,’ said Rose sadly.
There still seemed to be an awful lot to do. Hiding the going-away presents in a special drawer, putting cream in the meringues, hanging doughnuts on pieces of string, on a clothes line across the drawing-room. The child that finished its doughnut first, eating with its hands behind its back, would be awarded a prize. It was an excellent ice-breaker, said Berenice. I drew a donkey for people to pin a tail on. Berenice did an incredibly neat parcel for Pass-the-Parcel, using string instead of Sellotape. The snow was getting thicker, blanketing everything. I hoped Ace was getting on all right. Finally the man came to mend the central heating.
Maggie came down an hour before the party was due to start, poured herself a large drink, and balefully surveyed the platefuls of food in the kitchen.
‘It looks like the planet of the Canapes,’ she said.
Berenice’s lips tightened at such ‘unsupportive’ behaviour, but she merely extracted the Vim from the cupboard under the sink and went towards the door.
‘Where are you going?’ said Lucasta.
‘To have a bath,’ said Berenice grimly.
‘Gosh, you
‘This is to clean the bath before I get into it.’
Chapter Fifteen
I had hoped to have a bath too and change, but Berenice pinched all the hot water, and at the end there was a terrible rush, what with trying to find some candle holders for Lucasta’s cake and getting her dressed and doing her hair. Sting was pounding away in an empty drawing-room. I had only one eye made up when the doorbell rang. It was a mother, twenty minutes early.
‘Awfully sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know how much time to leave because of the snow.’
And in no time the hall seemed to be full of Sophies, Pollys, Emilies and Katies, milling round in their long party dresses like coloured butterflies, watching Lucasta — the most ravishing of all in her black velvet catsuit — tearing open her presents. I was charging round like a scalded cat telling mothers where to put their coats, trying to open bottles of Entre Deux Mers, answering the door and keeping the dogs off the food. Where the hell was everyone?
Then there was that terrible lull when half the children had arrived and you didn’t know whether to start a game or not. None of the children were Lucasta’s special friends, because the party wasn’t being given at her own home, but just offspring of various local friends of the Mulhollands, so they were all very shy to begin with and stood around gazing at each other.
Very done up mothers and nannies wandered round looking disappointed and saying, ‘We expected Ace, or at least Jack to be here.’
‘They’re coming later,’ I said.
I charged upstairs. I found Maggie on the telephone in Rose’s room. ‘All right my sweetheart,’ she was saying huskily, ‘I’ll call you later.’ She blushed absolutely scarlet when she saw me standing in the doorway, and slammed down the receiver.
‘Please come down and help,’ I wailed. ‘I can’t do everything.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ she said, following me downstairs.
‘Just shepherd them into the drawing-room, and start the children on the doughnut-eating race. The winner gets a wrapped-up prize. They’re in the drawer of the sideboard. Oh God, there’s the doorbell.’
It was a glamorous but rather grubby brunette in a sheepskin coat.
‘Hi. I’m Delphinium,’ she said vaguely. ‘I brought Damian and Midas,’ pointing to two very beautiful long- haired boys, one blond, one dark, who nearly knocked me sideways as they charged past me into the drawing- room.
‘I left Lucasta’s present behind,’ she said, drifting after them. ‘Can I help myself to a drink? I know where it’s kept.’
The Muppet Show record had succeeded Sting on the gramophone as Maggie came back into the hall.
‘Hi, Delphinium,’ she said, then turning to me, ‘I’m afraid Coleridge and Wordsworth have got into the drawing-room and eaten half the doughnuts. They’ve gone really wild today.’
It was all too much. I started to giggle helplessly.
‘It’s because they can’t verbalize their feelings,’ I said. ‘I guess they’re getting negative vibes from a certain person, and they’re just overreacting. Oh well, we’d better play Pass-the-Parcel.’
That wasn’t much of a success either, because Berenice had done up the knots so beautifully no one could undo them. So we played musical bumps. But so many children had perfected the lightning descent, they kept dead-heating, and the ones already out, who included Damian and Midas, got bored and started a punch-up.
A diversion was created by the doorbell, and the arrival of Jason, a sickly looking child in a green velvet suit, who turned out to be the sworn enemy of Damian and Midas.
‘Oh bugger,’ said Lucasta, tearing open Jason’s present, ‘another boring flower press.’
