Page 11 of The Christmas Invitation
Clara was sitting on one sofa before a large coffee table on which was a tray of tea things and a depleted plate ofsandwiches. A thin, desiccated-looking middle-aged woman, with fair curling hair, sat on an upright brocade chair nearby, teacup in hand, while opposite on a mustard velvet chesterfield sofa was the small boy I’d seen earlier, leaning affectionately against a silver-haired and handsome elderly man, whom I immediately recognized as the great poet himself Henry Doome.
Rollo would have been dead jealous.
‘There you are, Meg,’ Clara said, with the beaming force-field smile that I remembered only too well. ‘Great timing, because Tottie’s just gone to put the kettle on for fresh tea, and the cheese scones should be ready by now. I expect you’re starving?’
‘I … yes, Iamhungry,’ I discovered, surprised. You’d think the shock of seeing Lex Mariner again would have put me off food for life.
I was also freezing, so when she patted the sofa next to her I was happy to obey.
‘Come and sit here to thaw out and I’ll introduce you to everyone. And here’s Tottie now,’ she added as the door opened and a tall, weather-beaten woman of flatly angular physique, with cropped pepper-and-salt hair, and dressed in corduroy trousers and a checked shirt, pushed a tea trolley into the room with a rattle.
This sofa seemed to be an upmarket version of the one in my flat, for it enveloped me in such billowy softness that I wasn’t sure I’d ever escape its clutches.
‘Meg, this is Tottie Gillyflower, one of the household,’ Clara said as Tottie removed the dirty cups and empty teapot and replaced them with a fresh supply in an entirely different pattern of china, before adding more sandwiches and a large plate of scones. The smell made me salivate.
‘Ha!’ said Tottie, by way of greeting, then shoved the trolley away into the middle of the room and planted herself opposite on the other sofa, next to the small boy.
‘That’s Henry, my husband, of course,’ Clara continued.
‘How do you do, my dear?’ said Henry in a voice I recognized from broadcasts. We may have never had a TV at the Farm while I was growing up, but we had the radio. ‘I can’t get up because Lass is asleep.’
What I’d thought was a hairy black, grey and white rug spread across his knees was actually a spaniel. In fact, it now awoke with a snort and, opening its eyes, spotted me. A tail flapped a little, narrowly missing the scones.
‘Teddy’s in the middle,’ Clara said. ‘He’s my niece’s little boy, but he makes his home with us because Zelda is an actor and it’s so difficult otherwise when she’s on tour round the provinces, which she mostly seems to be.’
‘It’s a pity they didn’t keep her character on inCoronation Street. That was really handy, since they film it so close by,’ Tottie said.
‘It was just a bit part, unfortunately,’ Henry explained to me. ‘You can’t really make a big impression with only two lines to say.’
‘That depends on how good the actor is,’ Clara said.
‘Mummy and Daddy are strange,’ the little boy put in, fixing me with a pair of dark eyes.
‘Estranged,’ corrected Clara. ‘Though the ways of modern coupling and uncoupling certainlyarestrange. Sybil, we haven’t introduced you yet,’ she added to the desiccated woman sitting in the brocade chair.
‘Meg, this is Sybil Whitcliffe, Henry’s niece. Her son, Mark, has inherited the family pile, Underhill, and is ripping the place apart so he can turn it into some kind of bijou weddingreception venue and country house hotel, so she’s escaped over here to have her tea in peace.’
‘So pleased …’ murmured Sybil faintly. She reminded me of one of those plants that seem dead until you put them in water, when they spring back to verdant life. I thought she looked about fifty and would be pretty if you soaked her for long enough.
The door opened and Den, still wearing the brown linen overall, wandered in, took a cheese scone, which he ate in two large bites, then wandered out again.
Lass scrambled down and followed him through the door before it shut.
‘It’s her dinnertime, more or less,’ Henry explained.
‘We had fishfingers for lunch at school today,’ Teddy said, looking up from a book he’d opened on his lap. ‘But fish don’t have fingers, do they? I asked Miss Dawn and she said, “Let’s not get into one of your long discussions till after lunch, Teddy. Just eat it.”’
‘None that I’ve ever seen,’ I agreed, beginning to feel as if I’d strayed into some Mad Hatter’s tea party. ‘I think they just make them out of minced up bits of white fish and call them that.’
‘Good, because I don’t want to eat real fingers,’ said Teddy. He subjected me to a close scrutiny. ‘Are you going to paint Aunt Clara?’
‘She is, and Henry too, I hope, but Meg’s recovering from an illness, so she needs lots of rest, fresh air and good food,’ Clara told him.
‘Your hair is very green,’ Teddy observed, with one of those sudden changes of subject children are prone to. ‘I can paint, too, so I might paint you with green hair.’
‘That would be wonderful, Teddy. I’d love you to paint my portrait.’
‘It’s a very pretty shade of green,’ Henry said kindly.
