Relative Love (6 page)

‘Thank you, Helen.’ Pamela took the dishes from her hands and set them down on the table. ‘There’s more of both in the kitchen if we need it. Are you all right, dear?’

‘Oh, yes, quite all right,’ Helen replied, her voice dry, touched yet unnerved that her mother-in-law should have spotted her distraction. ‘I’m a little tired but, then, we all are, aren’t we?’ she continued brightly, smoothing her skirt under her thighs as she slipped into a seat between Charlie and Colin, fielding enquiries about whether their children had enjoyed their stockings and how long they were planning to stay.

After lunch there was a frenzy of present-opening followed by a rather less enthusiastic assault on the washing-up, which eventually resulted in the women shooing the men and children from the kitchen and getting on with it themselves. Happy to be evicted, the group drifted back into the drawing room, the younger members returning to closer examinations of their gifts while the men cradled glasses of port and lolled in armchairs, easing their belt buckles. John turned on the television for the Queen’s Speech, but only Aunt Alicia showed any sign of listening to it. Colin, Peter and Charlie, meanwhile, fell into a discussion about terrorism, triggered by the news of another suicide bomber in Palestine and recent claims by the American president that the war on extremist factions was being won.

‘I’m only saying they’re kidding themselves if they think they can wipe it out. It doesn’t matter how many tanks or SAS teams go into these areas there’ll always be budding new Osama Bin Ladens to take up the cause. It’s like some monstrous hydra – cut off one bit and another grows just as quickly …’

‘And so many of the hot-spots – Iraq, Afghanistan and so on – are a topographical nightmare too…’ Charlie endeavoured, without complete success, to suppress a burp. ‘I certainly wouldn’t fancy trying to find my way around all those caves and mountains on my belly in the dark with a compass and thirty tons of gear in a backpack.’

‘The ethics are interesting, though, don’t you think?’ ventured Colin. ‘It’s essentially about a clash of cultures, isn’t it? The Taleban are just one of several extremist religious groups who see western civilisation as the enemy. Who’s to say we’re right and they’re wrong?’ The question, which had triggered some lively debates in the classroom during the course of the year, proved less effective with his brothers-in-law.

‘Of course we’re bloody well right,’ snorted Peter. ‘Two years ago they
murdered
several thousand people in one of the most heinous attacks the world has ever seen.’

‘I’m only saying —’

‘I knew five people in those towers,’ growled John, an observation they had all heard many times before but which prompted a moment of silent respect none the less. ‘An insurance syndicate. Good men, all of them. Wives and families. Half the bloody company wiped out. Horrific.’

‘Truly horrific,’ echoed Colin, fearful of having cast himself accidentally in the role of terrorist sympathiser and wanting to atone for it.

‘Well, I thought she was very good this year.’

‘Pardon. Sorry, Alicia?’ Peter set down his empty port glass and reached between their armchairs to pat his aunt’s arm. ‘Who was good?’

‘The Queen. I thought she was very good this year.’

‘Very good indeed,’ he agreed heartily, catching the eye of Charlie, who was chuckling.

‘Just the right tone. And all that trouble she’s had, too. She’s a marvel.’

‘What trouble is that, Alicia?’ said Charlie, raising his voice for the benefit of his aunt, who was very deaf.

‘With her family, the poor creature – all their comings and goings – no sense of duty, these days. She’s the only one with honour and decency, apart from her dear mother, of course. Now, there was a special lady. I remember her during the war, you know.’ Alicia pulled a small folded handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it to the tiny folds of flesh at the corners of her lips, where a few stray crumbs of Christmas pudding were still lodged. ‘Visiting London in the Blitz … She was like an angel, bringing hope to the people.’

‘And how old would you have been then?’ enquired Colin genially, wanting to show that, unlike the poor old lady’s nephews who were exchanging schoolboy looks of sufferance, he was truly interested.

‘That’s not for you to know, young man,’ replied Alicia tartly, thereby dashing Colin’s hopes of impressing anybody and causing Charlie almost to fall off the sofa he was laughing so much. Alicia, oblivious to this back-row amusement, tucked her handkerchief back under the cuff of her cardigan and reached for her stick. ‘What I need is another cup of tea, though I shouldn’t. It goes straight through me, you know.’

‘Here, let me get it,’ exclaimed Charlie, who was actually very good with his aunt and rather fond of her brusqueness. He leapt to his feet and seized her cup and saucer with a gallant flourish. ‘Unless you’d like a drop of port instead.’

‘Heavens, no.’ Clearly delighted, Alicia fluttered her fingers at him. ‘Charles, you bad boy – the very idea, after all that wine. I should be high as a kite.’

‘High means you’re on drugs,’ put in Ed, who happened to be passing the armchair on his skateboard. Clutched to his chest was an advanced form of weaponry called a BB gun, which he had been given for Christmas. Having studied the instructions, he was
en route
out of the mayhem of torn wrapping-paper still littering the drawing room in search of a suitable spot for some target practice.

‘Lovely, dear,’ said Alicia, glad to have been addressed by one of the children, even though she hadn’t the faintest idea what the boy had said. She got confused with their names and ages, too, and whether they played trumpets or violins and where they went to school. In her monthly bridge group she was always talking about her brother and his family, feeling genuine delight in the knowledge of their existence (not to mention a faintly competitive urge to stir envy in the hearts of her companions). Yet the reality of them – the reality of anything, in fact – remained
somewhat harder to enjoy.
En masse
, such a large group of people was noisy and demanding, full of fast talk that she couldn’t follow and references to things she didn’t understand. Charlie was sweet and Pamela was kind (sometimes suffocatingly so), but she often wondered whether the monumental effort of the journey from her cottage in Wiltshire (a taxi and two trains) was really worthwhile. The uncomfortable truth, barely acknowledged by her and certainly not admitted to the bridge group, was that, widowed and with her only son Paul living in Australia, she didn’t really have any options. ‘Isn’t he too young to have a gun?’ she added, responding to a need to assert herself and addressing the comment to Colin because he was the only one still looking in her direction.

‘He certainly is.’ Colin spoke tightly, unsettled by both his thwarted attempts at a decent conversation with any member of his wife’s family and a mess-up over Roland’s present, a metal-detector, which Elizabeth had wrapped without including the necessary batteries. That she could have forgotten something so elementary was maddening. ‘But it’s not a real gun. It fires plastic pellets. We gave Roland a metal-detector,’ he began, seeking some congratulation for the idea of the gift in spite of their failure to get the thing functioning.

But he was interrupted by Charlie returning with a fresh cup of tea, which he carefully set down on the table next to Alicia’s chair, announcing as he did so that she was the prettiest aunt he had and if she got whisked off down the aisle again he wanted to be the first to know. Alicia tutted delightedly, then fell asleep, her tea undrunk, her veiny feet, propped on a box of three-dimensional chess which somebody had given somebody else, swelling out of her smart shoes. In an armchair across the room John, too, was asleep, his mouth slack, the biography of Colonel H. Jones that Peter had given him open on his chest.

‘I’m going to walk the ancient hound,’ declared Peter, getting up from his chair and stretching as he glanced round the room for support. ‘Any takers?’

Pamela appeared in the doorway behind him, carrying a tea-towel. ‘Don’t be too long, dear. Sid’s dropping by and I want him to take a photograph of all of us.’

On hearing this news, Ed slipped out of the door leading on to the cloisters, followed by Roland, who knew he wasn’t particularly wanted but who was so desperate to be given a turn with the gun that he didn’t care. Disappointment still burned in his nine-year-old heart, not just because of the batteries but because he had been defeated by daunting books of instructions to two construction kits and had eaten so much chocolate he felt sick.

‘A photo?’ Peter clicked his fingers at Boots, who twitched, then heaved himself out from under John’s feet, his tail thumping in expectation.

‘Yes. A photo. It will be lovely. All three generations of the family together. I’ll make him take several to be sure at least one comes out well.’ Pamela’s voice was no-nonsense, communicating to all those present that it was a matter on which she would not be thwarted. A far grander plan, to have just such a photograph used as the basis for a family portrait, she had decided, for the time being, to keep to herself. It was to be a present for John’s eightieth birthday in the autumn and she wanted it to be a complete surprise.

Clem, scowling at the idea of a photograph, crept out of the drawing room and raced upstairs to her bedroom to write with trembling reverence on the first page of the brand new leather-bound five-year diary she had been given by her sister.

I don’t know how I could have been sad before because right now I feel so glad. I have had the best year ever for presents. Maisie gave me this diary, which I am going to write in every day for the next five years of my life. It has a key, so I can write ANYTHING. Everyone has been really
nice, especially Aunt Cassie, who said she thought my hair looked really pretty, though I can’t think why because I’d only washed it, and Theo, who was being sort of all stuck-up at first but is now his normal self again. He got this amazing video camera from Uncle Peter and Aunt Helen. (Mum says they are spoilt and I suppose they are, except that spoilt should mean behaving horribly and Theo and Chloë don’t really do that. At least, Chloë does sometimes but that’s mostly because she’s only seven.) Anyway, what I was going to say was Theo got this idea that he was going to do interviews with everyone on his camera – sort of like a documentary, he said – and he chose to do me first. It was a real laugh, though I thought I looked pretty dumb when he played it back to me afterwards. Must stop now as I can hear someone coming. PS Have eaten so much – feel so FAT I never want to eat another thing.

‘You’re looking so well, Cassie,’ remarked Serena, draping her damp tea-towel over the Aga rail and sinking down into the kitchen sofa next to her sister-in-law.

‘Yes, isn’t she?’ agreed Helen, joining them with her cup of tea. Now that the drama of lunch and presents was over she could feel herself beginning at last to relax. Theo had given her a dear little box he had made in carpentry, and Chloë a crayoned self-portrait with the words ‘I love Mummy’ scrawled underneath. Peter, too, had been very sweet, refusing to admit that the suede jacket she had given him was a little too large and kissing her with a tenderness she knew was designed to communicate that the disagreement of the night before was behind them. Christmas was nothing but a bloody strain, she decided, taking the remaining space on the sofa and blowing across the steam of her tea. ‘So work’s going well, then, Cassie?’

‘Oh, yes, very well indeed,’ Cassie gushed, flushing at the compliments of her sisters-in-law, wishing she could tell them that the radiance beaming out of her had nothing to do with the number of commissions she had to decorate people’s houses and everything to do with being in love. Really in love. For the first time in her life. Nothing she had ever felt for another human being came close. It was ten months now since she had met Dan (at his surgery, although he wasn’t the doctor she had been seeing so it wasn’t unethical) and her heart still galloped at the mere thought of him. It galloped even more when she saw him. And when he touched her, with his cool, expert slim fingers, she was at times so close to ecstasy that she wanted to weep with the joy of it. She kept waiting for the bubble to burst, for him to say or do something that would jolt her back to the sanity of realising she was better off alone (a regular occurrence that had triggered the death-throes of every other relationship she had ever had), but it didn’t happen. No wonder people noticed. It was as if ten thousand lightbulbs had been switched on inside her. She felt energised, beautiful, empowered. Given half a chance, she would have gladly shinned up St Margaret’s spire with a loudspeaker to proclaim her happiness to the whole world. The moment they were properly – openly – together she might do just that, Cassie decided, pressing the rim of her mug to her lips to hide her smile. In the meantime she had to be the soul of discretion, for Dan’s sake. He had wanted to get Christmas out of the way before he told his wife and she respected him for that. There were his children to consider, after all (two girls and a boy, all under ten), and the question of money, about which he was consulting a lawyer friend. ‘In fact I’m not very busy,’ she confessed, ‘but the jobs I’m doing I’m enjoying enormously.’ (In truth her meetings with Dan, grabbed at odd hours and often at very short notice, meant the number of clients on her books had fallen considerably.) ‘There’s one in Battersea that’s particularly challenging – a flat at the top of a Victorian mansion block which was gutted by fire so I’ve been given
carte blanche
to start again.’

‘Who caught fire?’ asked Elizabeth, returning from a final fruitless quest for the right size batteries in various drawers and cupboards suggested by her mother. Not being able to try out the metal-detector had made Roland cry and she felt all the failure of it. She felt, too, the weight of her husband’s displeasure: dense and invisible, like the sort of heaviness in the air before a huge storm. She perched on the edge of the kitchen table, folding her arms and smiling at her little sister, looking so like an angel, with the lamp on the shelf behind the sofa shining through the blonde waves of her hair. How simple life is for her, she thought fondly, with only her own happiness to worry about. Boyfriends had come and gone over the years, but were rarely mentioned and even more rarely introduced. There was certainly something selfish about such an existence, but also something admirably brave. Elizabeth herself had never quite believed in her ability to face the world alone, longing, even as a teenager – even after the souring of her first marriage – for the safe haven of partnership.