Miss Arland poured a cup of tea for his mother and told him to offer her something to eat. He chose a plate of sausage-rolls. She smiled at him. ‘Don’t go away again,’ she whispered.
But he had to go away again because he couldn’t stand there holding the sausage-rolls. He darted back to the table and left the plate there, taking one for himself. When he returned to his mother she’d been joined by the Reverend Green and the Bishop.
The Bishop shook Michael’s hand and said it had been a very great pleasure to confirm him.
‘My father was in the Church,’ Michael’s mother said, and Michael knew that she wasn’t going to stop now. He watched her struggling to hold the words back, crumbling the pastry of her sausage-roll beneath her fingers. The flush had come into her cheeks, there was a brightness in her eyes. The Bishop’s face was kind: she couldn’t help herself, when kindness like that was there.
‘We really must be moving,’ the Reverend Green said, but the Bishop only smiled, and on and on she went about her father and the call he’d received so late in life. ‘I’m sure you knew him, my lord,’ was one suggestion she made, and the Bishop kindly agreed that he probably had.
‘Mrs Grainer would like to meet the Bishop,’ Outsize Dorothy murmured to the Reverend Green. She looked at Michael’s mother and Michael could see her remembering her and not caring for her.
‘Well, if you’ll excuse us,’ the Reverend Green said, seizing the Bishop’s arm.
‘Oh Michael dear, isn’t that a coincidence!’
There was happiness all over her face, bursting from her eyes, in her smile and her flushed cheeks and her fluffy hair. She turned to Mr and Mrs Tichbourne, who were talking to Mrs Carson, and said the Bishop had known her father, apparently quite well. She hadn’t even been aware that it was to be this particular bishop today, it hadn’t even occurred to her while she’d been at the confirmation service that such a coincidence could be possible. Her father had passed away fifteen years ago, he’d have been a contemporary of the Bishop’s. ‘He was in the Customs and Excise,’ she said, ‘before he received the call.’
They didn’t turn away from her. They listened, putting in a word or two, about coincidences and the niceness of the Bishop. Tichbourne and Carson stood eating sandwiches, offering them to one another. Michael’s face felt like a bonfire.
‘We’ll probably see you later,’ Mr Tichbourne said, eventually edging his wife away. ‘We’re staying at the Grand.’
‘Oh no, I’m at Sans Souci. Couldn’t ever afford the Grand!’ She laughed.
‘Don’t think we know the Sans Souci,’ Mrs Tichbourne said.
‘Darling, I’d love another cup of tea,’ his mother said to Michael, and he went away to get her one, leaving her with Mrs Carson. When he returned she was referring to Peggy Urch.
It was then, while talking to Mrs Carson, that Michael’s mother fell. Afterwards she said that she’d felt something slimy under one of her heels and had moved to rid herself of it. The next thing she knew she was lying on her back on the floor, soaked in tea.
Mrs Carson helped her to her feet. A.J.L. hovered solicitously. Outsize Dorothy picked up the cup and saucer.
‘I’m quite all right,’ Michael’s mother kept repeating. ‘There was something slippy on the floor, I’m quite all right.’
She was led to a chair by A.J.L. ‘I think we’d best call on Sister,’ he said. ‘Just to be sure.’
But she insisted that she was all right, that there was no need to go bothering Sister. She was as white as a sheet.
Michael’s father and Gillian came up to her and said they were sorry. Michael could see Tichbourne and Carson nudging one another, giggling. For a moment he thought of running away, hiding in the attics or something. Half a buttered bun had got stuck to the sleeve of his mother’s maroon coat when she’d fallen. Her left leg was saturated with tea.
‘We’ll drive you into town,’ his father said. ‘Horrible thing to happen.’
‘It’s just my elbow,’ his mother whispered. ‘I came down on my elbow.’
Carson and Tichbourne would imitate it because Carson and Tichbourne imitated everything. They’d stand there, pretending to be holding a cup of tea, and suddenly they’d be lying flat on their backs. ‘I think we’d best call on Sister,’ Carson would say, imitating A.J.L.
His father and Gillian said goodbye to Outsize Dorothy and to A.J.L. His mother, reduced to humble silence again, seemed only to want to get away. In the car she didn’t say anything at all and when they reached Sans Souci she didn’t seem to expect Michael to go in with her. She left the car, whispering her thanks, a little colour gathering in her face again.
That evening Michael had dinner with Gillian and his father in the Grand. Tichbourne was there also, and Carson, and several other boys, all with their parents. ‘I can drive a few of them back,’ his father said, ‘save everyone getting a car out.’ He crossed the dining-room floor and spoke to Mr Tichbourne and Mr Carson and the father of a boy called Mallabedeely. Michael ate minestrone soup and chicken with peas and roast potatoes. Gillian told him what the twins had been up to and said his father was going to have a swimming-pool put in. His father returned to the table and announced that he’d arranged to drive everyone back at nine o’clock.
Eating his chicken, he imagined his mother in Sans Souci, sitting on the edge of the bed, probably having a cry. He imagined her bringing back to London the stuff she’d bought for a picnic in her room. She’d never refer to any of that, she’d never upbraid him for going to the Grand for dinner when she’d wanted him to be with her. She’d consider it just that she should be punished.
As they got into the car, his father said he’d drive round by Sans Souci so that Michael could run in for a minute. ‘We’re meant to be back by a quarter past,’ Michael said quickly. ‘I’ve said goodbye to her,’ he added, which wasn’t quite true.
It would perhaps have been different if Tichbourne and Carson hadn’t been in the car. He’d have gone in and paused with her for a minute because he felt pity for her. But the unattractive facade of Sans Souci, the broken gate of the small front garden and the fishermen gnomes would have caused further nudging and giggling in his father’s white Alfa-Romeo.
