‘The menu has always been presented at five o’clock, Madam. As is customary.’ Another silence. ‘Unless, of course, Madam would prefer we break with the usual tradition and protocol.’
‘Tradition? This place is like falling into a Past Times catalogue.’
‘They went bust,’ Mirabelle said, distractedly.
Aunt Charlotte gasped audibly.
‘Well, I’m not sucked in by any of this,’ Mother continued, ‘I think we’ll stick with the protocol of the customer always knows best. I’ll need to see that menu before five o’clock. You’ll bear in mind that during our stay here I am the mistress of this house and as such I set the protocol. Is that understood, Mrs Angel?’
Mrs Angel took every word stoically, a soldier in the trenches. I couldn’t help feeling admiration for the staunch, old woman.
‘Very well, Madam.’ She left with some dignity, I thought. It would be hard to say she was chastened but there was a distinct smell of woman scorned in the air. Just which woman, it was hard to tell.
‘And the book, when will we—’
‘Not now, Bridget!’ Mother hissed.
Rule 6: Never invite spiritualists, fortune tellers or anyone communing with the other side into your home. They may see more than you imagined.
THE ARRIVAL OF THE FORTUNE TELLER
In my experience, it’s very important at family gatherings to lay on adequate entertainment, otherwise guests succumb to boredom, followed by excessive drunkenness, which inevitably leads to poor behaviour of varying degrees — from the basic insults level, to violence and possible fatalities.
I say this from bitter experience of our dreaded Christmas. It was stultifying enough when Mother’s lot came — Aunt Charlotte and Mirabelle. But when Mother had to entertain Dad’s relatives, it was an extinction-level event. Mother would wail for days about the huge workload and impossibility of accommodating ‘the entire tribe’, which was his mother and father. Dad had no other relatives he was aware of, although following his death, many raised their heads above the parapet to peek at the will.
Christmas was excruciating, the gift opening a bitter mess of disappointment. But nothing could rival the period of time after dinner, a real wasteland of recriminations and dark looks. Apart from the fact that they all hated one another, the trouble was, there was nothing to do.
Here at Ambergris Towers, the choice had been made for us — tarot reading and fortune telling. Although I can’t say this particular activity would have sat well with my dad’s parents. After his death, they were always airing their ‘superstitions’ to the point where, finally, Mother was forced to sever all contact. When they died together in a car crash only a year later, that too was surrounded by superstitions, but nothing came of any of it. It took me many years to realize they had been saying ‘suspicions’, which just goes to show that little girls shouldn’t listen at doors. Some habits are harder to break than others, though.
At Ambergris Towers, the entertainment was shrouded in actual superstition or ‘nonsense hocus pocus’ as Mother called it.
‘Well, I don’t see what’s wrong with properly discussing the book,’ Bridget moaned. ‘It’s what we—’
‘At least it’s saved us from that eye-watering boredom,’ I murmured.
‘You’re not a member of the club, so that’s none of your concern.’
‘Is the dog a member of the club?’ I asked, widening my eyes at her. ‘Did you pay extra for Mr Bojangles to discuss the relative merits of the book, as well as bed and breakfast?’
‘I just don’t understand what sort of woman comes to a house and does that sort of charlatan nonsense,’ Mother grumbled, as if some form of sinful entertainment had been proposed.
Soft flakes of snow hurried across the dark light of the gardens. The granite sky occasionally let a blade of moonlight through and we could see the trees and fine sculptures encrusted with ice, the naked stone figures clothed in rimy white folds. It was no more than a mere powdering by then. Everything was sifted with a fine mist of snow as if it had been conjured from a Victorian Christmas card scene. We’d abandoned Christmas cards in our house on what Mother called ‘environmental grounds’. We still displayed the ones we received, of course, as it wouldn’t be entering into the spirit of Christmas if we didn’t. I have yet to find the time to unpick this logic.
I never attempt to question my family’s take on Christmas. I’m just there, like the Ghost of Christmas, as Mirabelle says. She wishes it was Christmas past, but I’m still around.
The snow added a dark luminosity to the gardens. Up-lit trees cut new shapes of light from the hard gloom and as the velvet snow gathered, it made the air around it seem even more brittle, light shivering over it as if it was broken glass. A new malevolence sat here, a stillness to the whole scene as though we’d stepped onto a stage set and, out there in the dark, our audience was watching us. It was as if the snow might stop mid-air and everything would be frozen into that fragile second, all of us suspended in this snow globe — and with one push, it could so easily be shattered.
A single black rook sailed in through the mist, stark against the grimy sky. It settled on a wind-twisted branch and my mind turned to another garden. As Dad lay dying, I had looked to the sky for help and there it sat on the fringes of a tree, that bird, that solitary rook watching my pain unfold.
The doorbell sounded, old and muted by rust, pulling me back from solemn thoughts. I didn’t blink for fear my tears might dislodge and there’d be another frustrated cross-examination of my feelings. I watched the startled rook rear into flight, its black wings streaking the stone sky.
No one responded to the bell and it rattled again, like gaoler’s keys, and with a new insistence. Someone else was stepping into our new strange world. There’d been no sound of a car, no crunch of gravelly footsteps. When we peered into that silvered world, we couldn’t even see footsteps on the white drive. The silent snow had momentarily sedated us but now, an anxious flavour drifted in on the wind. The dark gardens glistened with shadows — it was clean, with a cruel-edged sharpness. A soundless, still world watched us through the windows, poised as if waiting to see the effect of this new visitor
Angel entered, thin and wraith-like against the bone white backdrop. He spoke carefully. ‘Would Madam require the presence of the spiritualist here in the sitting room or perhaps in the library? Most guests choose the library for the additional atmosphere.’ Other families just don’t seem to get asked these kind of questions on holiday. But then Mother never took us on holiday. We once went to Corfu with Dad — he booked it and ‘surprised’ Mother. I had been in absolute raptures diving under the waves with Dad by day and listening to him reciting Greek tales by night. He told the Sirens’ tale with such appalled relish that I remember thinking he genuinely seemed to fear being dragged onto the rocks by them. But Mother swore heavily for a week. Apparently, it was middle-class and crass. Dad resisted the temptation to suggest that might suit her. It was blazing hot and Mother never let us forget that her skin was under threat and her hair would never recover.
After that, Mother satisfied her urge to pack expensive things in an expensive case by holidaying with Mirabelle in places that would never accept a child and probably wouldn’t have accepted Dad either. This was my first holiday with Mother since the mythically awful trip to Greece.