Page 97 of Lessons in Life

She actually rather liked the dress Mrs Livesey, her mother’s tailor, had made for her. While it wasn’t as short as she’d have liked (and certainly not the black wide-legged trousers and floppy hat she’d squirrelled away upstairs in her wardrobe after a shopping trip in Leeds the previous Saturday with Junayd, who certainly had an eye for women’s fashion) she went along with the cream layered creation Mrs Livesey had come up with. While it did make her look like a royal-iced wedding cake, once on, and her blonde hair in the up style suggested by Angie the hairdresser, Eloise accepted the look, knowing the whole shebang would be over and done within a few hours.

* * *

‘Eloise, do come and stand at the door to welcome everyone,’ Muriel instructed, a rictus of a smile on her over-made-up face. ‘And, Michael, don’t you dare help yourself to any more of those vol-au-vents.’ She pronounced the final word to rhyme withrents. ‘Now, d’you think there’s enough food…? Eloise, are these Huntington-Green people coming? I didn’t have an RSVP – poor form… Michael, no, you’re not allowed champagne, there are bottles of Orangillo for the non-drinkers… Eloise, will you please pay special attention to Christopher Howard when the Howards arrive…?’

‘Who?’ Eloise, wanting only to pay special attention to her dreams of Junayd, shook her head irritably.

‘The Howards, Eloise. You know – Christopher is Brian’s chum – the pair were at prep school together: caused mayhem when Mrs Dixon had to have a term off for her down-below bits and that dreadful young woman straight from college took the class with her newfangled ideas on education. She had the boys sitting together round tables rather than in rows… Anyway, the Howards are all en route… Ah, Lady Saville, delighted… And Bunty and Bobo as well! How lovely…’

Eloise was seriously beginning to think Muriel was on something. She’d not stopped talking in this ongoing stream of consciousness for the past thirty minutes.

‘Good God, whatisyour mother wearing now, Ralph?’ Muriel shot a look of distaste towards Maude in a purple crushed-velvet trouser suit.

‘Hello, Granny, you look lovely.’ Eloise hurried over to the entrance to the white house, taking Maude Hudson’s arm and handing her a glass of bubbly before leading her to a table of septuagenarians, all Maude’s mates from when she ruled the roost up here before being tipped out into the dower cottage down by the village duck pond.

‘Christopher, do you remember Eloise?’ Muriel was at her side once more. ‘I’m sure you do! I seem to think I have a snap of the pair of you playing in the paddling pool totally in the ruddie nuddie when you were tiny.Too sweet.’ Eloise thought Muriel justtoo sillyfor words, but Christopher, in a sober dark suit and tie, didn’t appear to have noticed. He was already on his second glass of fizz and was looking past Eloise, eyeing up the talent who all seemed to belong to her brother Brian. ‘I’ll leave you with the party girl, Chris,’ Muriel said, patting his arm matily, ‘and attend to my other guests.’ She exited with a warning nod and wink in Eloise’s direction.

‘Hello, Eloise, you look different with your clothes on.’ Christopher Howard, having spent a year in the States desperately trying to drum up business for his family’s failing engineering company, finally deigned to look her way. He spoke a strange mixture of educated public school peppered with native Yorkshire, and an undertone of pseudo-American twang every time he remembered he’d been living Stateside. ‘Hey, you have grown up since I last saw you. Quite the beanpole, aren’t you?’

‘Seeing that must have been sixteen years ago, that’s no surprise, I suppose.’ Eloise took in the round pink face, the fine blond curls hiding an already receding hairline and a gut straining at his trouser belt and shuddered. Give him a trumpet and take his clothes off – Eloise breathed a silent yuck – and he’d be a dead ringer for one of the cherubs in Raphael’sSistine Madonna.

In reply, Christopher reached for another glass of champagne from the waitress, gave the girl a friendly squeeze on her backside and knocked back the drink in one.

Eloise suffered almost an hour of Christopher Howard talking about himself, his racing cars, his tennis, his golf, his family’s engineering business before returning to yet more birdies and holes-in-one. She was just about to excuse herself and join Granny Maude and her mates, who all seemed to be getting well stuck into the champagne, chortling merrily and thoroughly enjoying themselves, when a man, dressed in full black morning suit and obviously in charge of proceedings, produced a huge gong and announced food was served.

Supper, to Eloise, seemed interminable as the sixty or so guests piled their plates with the delicious delicacies, either standing to eat or making their way back to tables. A tiny woman on a harp, brought in at great expense toaid the guests’ digestion, seated herself and began the commencement of many pieces neither Eloise, nor, she suspected, anyone else, had ever heard before. She was just about to set off to find Michael, who Muriel said had been looking somewhat green around the gills five minutes earlier, when her mother headed over.

‘Eloise, Eloise,Eloise, the photographer is here…’

Still in Manic Muriel Mode, Eloise noted.

‘I was hoping for at leastYorkshire Lifeor evenThe Yorkshire Post, but we end up with theMidhope Examiner… And…’ she lowered her voice ‘…acoloured man, for heaven’s sake. Don’t tell me there wasn’t an Englishman available… what will our guests think…? I shall have words. Now, do go and freshen up, Eloise, brush your hair, pull your dress down, don’t want the whole of Yorkshire to think you’re a tart… don’t want the photographer to see your knickers…’

‘I beg your pardon…?’ Eloise didn’t hear her mother’s response, wasn’t sure if there had actually been one, because all she could hear was a buzzing in her ears and she felt the blood drain from her face before returning in a whoosh of burning red. Slightly hysterical, she only just managed to stop herself from saying: ‘Too late, Mummy, he already has!’

‘You all right, Lou?’ Michael, as pale as she was scarlet, was standing at her side. ‘I’ve just been sick in the rosebushes,’ he added cheerfully. ‘You don’t look too good either.’ He laughed. ‘Ma’s gone off on one too. She can’t understand why theExaminer’s sent a coloured bloke to take the photos of you.’

31

ROBYN

I longed for January to be over, longed for birdsong and lighter evenings, for summer dresses and sitting in the garden with a glass of Pimm’s. And for Fabian and me to be back as we were before Alex Brookfield had reared her ugly head in our lives. Ugly! Ha! Alexandra Brookfield was absolutely ravishing: one of those stunning women who had obviously been blessed by every good fairy invited along to her christening. The little people had probably been bickering to be first in the queue, determined to bestow nothing but fabulousness on the baby Alexandra: perfect in-proportion figure, perfect shiny swishy hair, perfect white teeth; brains, health, wealth and happiness. As well as the knight in shining armour – or was it the handsome prince in the castle? – in the form of Fabian Mansfield Carrington.

And if, by trampling on the fairies’ plans for the oh, so beautiful Alexandra, I was about to be carted off to a Fabian-free world as punishment by the little tinselled feckers, then I wasn’t sure what I could do about that. I was a big believer in fate, and if my path towards happy-ever-after in a cottage in West Yorkshire was suddenly yawning with a bloody great pothole, then who was I to argue otherwise?

‘Oh, don’t be so bloody wet,’ Petra Waters admonished me when finding me skulking and sulking in the drama department’s wardrobe, and I’d finally opened up about Fabian and Alexandra. ‘I mean, has he left you? Gone back to her?’

‘Well, no…’

‘Was he happier with her than he is with you?’

‘I don’t know…’

‘Have you discussed her with him?’

‘I refuse to talk about her.’

‘Is he seeing her now?’

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