‘Charlotte, darling, how are you? No one told me you’d arrived!’ Mother has always been a dreadful liar. She received the usual coral red lipstick print on her cheek, suffering the kiss with obvious distaste.
‘I’m surprised you didn’t hear her,’ Mirabelle said.
The more I see them together the more I’m convinced that relatives and friends were never meant to be in the same room. My only expectation when they are together, particularly now, is that there will be aggravation, irritation and even murderous thoughts.
I sometimes wonder if Mother forces everyone together in some sort of social experiment just to watch what happens and see how long they’ll last.
It had always been accepted that Mirabelle harboured a particular loathing for Aunt Charlotte — no doubt exacerbated by the ogre Aunt Charlotte being a genuine sister to her beloved Pandora, instead of a fabricated relative like herself.
But Aunt Charlotte was no fool and despised Mirabelle with elegant disdain, as if the Queen were meeting a traitor at her Garden Party. There was the initial exaggerated surprise that someone such as her, an infiltrator, should even be present, followed by the maintenance of decency, propriety and an obvious loathing. Aunt Charlotte always presented the image of healthy mistrust of the enemy in a sort of Churchillian way that infuriated Mirabelle.
‘Ursula, darling, look at you! You’ve grown!’
Aunt Charlotte’s memory seemed to revert to me being eleven years old with each new meeting.
A gong sounded as if some sort of ritual was about to commence.
‘Dinner is served!’ called a sonorous voice — a gentleman with, we were soon to discover, enough aloofness to set him apart as the butler.
‘Good Lord, Ursula. Whatever shall become of us?’ Aunt Charlotte roared and held me at arm’s length. ‘Are we to be murdered in our beds this very night? Look at this place, it’s like a tomb and now the dead are rising!’ Aunt Charlotte has always had a taste for the dramatic. Mother puts it down to her being dropped on her head as a baby. Mother did the dropping, of course.
Dinner was predictably tedious. Mother and Mirabelle made disparaging remarks about the food and Aunt Charlotte. Aunt Charlotte suffered from her ‘gastrics’. But then we all suffer from her gastrics. Every Christmas in living memory has smelled of her intestines. She calls it her ‘nasty cough’.
Yap.
‘She brought the bloody dog?’ Aunt Charlotte adopted the look she reserves for customer service representatives.
‘She has been accompanied by Mr Bojangles, if that’s what you’re driving at, Charlotte.’
‘If I was driving at anything, Bridget, it would be you and your yappy hound.’
‘Charlotte,’ Mother sighed wearily, ‘thinking and saying, two different things. Out loud. In loud. Remember?’
Aunt Charlotte cast a withering glance across the room.
‘Are you the only staff?’ Aunt Charlotte sniped as if she was more accustomed to a tide of employees rather than just Margery Braithwaite who does on a Monday and Thursday for her.
‘No, Madam,’ The Butler drawled, ‘there is a housekeeper, Mrs—’
‘The creepy old bat I was telling you about, Pandora darling,’ Mirabelle interjected.
‘Mrs Angel,’ he concluded, as he served the sole.
‘And you? We can’t go on calling you the butler, that would seem a little too impersonal even for this.’ Mirabelle grimaced at the old man. I fear it may have been an attempt at a smile.
‘Angel,’ he pronounced coldly.
Mirabelle’s smile melted. ‘As in . . .’
‘Yes, Madam. I am Angel. Mrs Angel is my wife.’
A dark cloud of silence rolled in.
‘Why it needs three of them for us, I don’t know,’ Mother murmured in her usual shrill murmur.
‘Two,’ droned Angel.
‘Two what?’
‘Two, Madam.’
‘No, no, no, man! Two of what?’ Mother sighed in frustration.
‘Two staff, Madam. Why it needs two of them, you do not know. Not three.’ Angel continued to slop pieces of dead fish onto each plate, so slippery they might still swim.
‘I paid for three.’
‘I am not aware of such matters, Madam, but I’m sure you will certainly be repaid in full. As you suggested, Madam, it should not need three of us to take care of your needs.’
Mother was dumbfounded, which actually looked quite hostile on her face.
‘Well, it’s certainly pricey, however many Angels there are,’ she muttered. Mother has always been fiscally aware. When Dad was alive, she would ritually berate him for the fact that his job did not always provide enough to satiate her needs. Teaching was a higher calling then and this grated with Mother. I’d be richer if you were dead, I vividly remember her joking. They were close and Mother’s dry comedy could easily have been misconstrued if the wrong person had been listening. Thankfully, it was just me with my ear to the other side of the door.
But on this occasion, she was perfectly correct. The insurance, the savings and investments Dad had shrewdly made over the years were far and away beyond her expectations, especially on his teacher’s salary. Finally, he had provided her with the income she knew he was always worth. She never doubted him. She could finally afford to realize her dream of sending me to St Cuthbert’s — which she’d always wanted for me. Mother put me first and foremost. It was a wrench to be sent away so swiftly after Dad’s death but Mother had to be strong for both of us. That’s what mothers sometimes have to do, and I admire her for that. At the time, obviously, I expressed my emotions in a rather different way, but my therapist explained that was counterproductive. I am learning new ways to Mother’s heart. It is a long and sometimes arduous conflict to maintain equanimity within a family and that is why I like to maintain constant vigilance. Otherwise, it can easily derail and the perfect calm washes away. Despite our differences, I don’t want to find myself truly at war with Mother.
Dinner was a solemn, awkward combination of warm wine and insults; the perfect atmosphere for book club. They’d decided to read Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith after Bridget had mistaken it for The Girl on the Train and ordered all the wrong copies. Nobody cared or noticed. But Bridget seemed genuinely sad when she explained her error.
She cleared her throat, which is never a good sign with Bridget as it means she’s readying herself to make one of her pronouncements. ‘So, shall we talk about the book? After all, it is why we’re here.’ She laughed peevishly.
‘Book?’
‘Charlotte, in loud remember,’ Mother reminded.
‘I was simply saying, Charlotte, that this is a book club weekend, so shouldn’t we really—’
‘Later, Bridget, thank you.’ Mirabelle, for all her many faults, was useful in silencing Bridget.
They never talked about the book much beyond the cover anyway. As with most book clubs, the first rule of book club was you do not talk about the book.
The taut silences at dinner, dismissive comments, and casual rudeness reminded me so much of home. Mother has no other way of dealing with family and friends. I consider myself fortunate to still be in Mother’s favour, given that I am related to her.