Harriet Evans - Going Home

At that moment he came in, carrying a pan of scrambled eggs and wearing a paper hat. He was still in his tatty old dressing-gown, which looked much the worse for his exertions of the previous night. He was singing ‘La Donna E Mobile’ in a fruity operatic tone. It struck me that he looked more at home here this Christmas than I’d ever seen him. Although if Mike’s in a good mood and you’re one of twenty people in the same room, within ten minutes you’ll be doing the conga down the street, strangers from around the corner will be begging to join in, shops will hang out bunting and sell fireworks, and the council will declare a public holiday. I perked up at the sight of him.

‘Elizabetta! Mi amore. Have some eggs. Give me your plate.’

Mike had inherited from our grandfather a gift for making perfect scrambled eggs. ‘Hold on a second,’ I said.

‘Come on, stop dousing that nice bit of toast in sheepdip and hand it over. How disgusting you are! Rosalie, my peach, my nectar called Renée, have you ever had Marmite?’

‘Yes, and it was totally gross,’ said Rosalie. ‘My first husband had a kinda fetish for it. He had it flown over from Fortnum and Mason. God, some of the memories I have stored up here. Yeuch.’

There was a pause. Jess and Tom made choking sounds. Mike said, in outraged tones, ‘Woman! Please! Remember you’re talking to your second husband now, and his beloved nieces and nephew! They do not know whence your previous spouse and his extraordinary nocturnal proclivities hailed, nor do I wish them to. I do apologize, children. Don’t tell your parents about her.’

Rosalie giggled.

‘Aaargh,’ Mike shrieked. ‘You’ve distracted me with your bizarre Marmite routine and the eggs are overcooked now.’

‘Oh, God, please don’t worry,’ I begged. ‘Honestly! I’m starving – just dish it up.’

Mike slid the eggs on to my plate.

‘What about me?’ Jess demanded.

He held out the empty pan. Jess looked as if she might cry, but that was nothing new. ‘Have some of mine,’ I offered. ‘I’ve got loads.’

‘No, I’ll make some more,’ said Mike. ‘It’ll take two secs. Hold tight, Jessica. Don’t cry.’

‘I’m not going to cry! Jeez!’

Tom helped himself to another piece of toast.

‘You OK there, Sparky?’ said Rosalie, smiling at him.

‘Sure am,’ said Tom.

The phone rang. Tom, Jess and I glanced at each other guiltily, knowing that none of us had any intention of getting up to answer it.

Mike shouted, ‘Someone get that, will you? I’m breaking eggs in here.’

I relented, and ran through into the hall, hugging myself in the sudden cold as I picked up the handset.

‘Hello?’ I said.

‘Lizzy? It’s me.’

‘Georgy!’ I yelled. ‘I’ll take this into my room, hold on.’

‘Good – but hurry up. I can’t talk for long. Uncle Clive’s just arrived and we’re all going to do handbell ringing in a few minutes. Oh, God, get me out of here.’

The purpose of any best friend worth their salt is to listen with apparent fascination while you rant about on a number of subjects, in this case 1. our families and how mad they were (Georgy’s Uncle Clive and Aunt Matilda – who makes corn dollies – were contenders, but I won, hands down); 2. men, and the hieroglypthic language they speak (won that one, too, with my tales of David’s reappearance by the grave); 3. random Christmas presents (Georgy is a glamorous girl who runs a top hotel in central London: her aunt gave her a single hyacinth bulb in a plastic bag – nice); and 4. what we were wearing to our friend Swedish Victoria’s Pikey New Year’s Eve Party.

But since Georgy isn’t really a part of this story, and since our conversation would have been of no interest to anyone but ourselves, I felt a bit strange when I put down the phone twenty minutes later. For the first time since I’d come back to Keeper House, I felt myself peeling away from home life, and wanting to be in my flat, chatting and watching TV with Georgy over a glass of wine. It’s good to feel like that, though – I always arrive at Keeper House dreading having to leave, and the desire to embrace my normal life can come as something of a relief, an affirmation that I am a rational twenty-eight-year-old, not a crazed dumped person, marooned at her parents’ home, still in her pyjamas at eleven a.m. on Boxing Day.

I went back downstairs, where Mike was lighting a fire with the ecstasy of a ten-year-old. Tom and Jess were eating their eggs in companionable silence, while Rosalie gazed into the garden, hands folded in her lap, perhaps imagining herself as Queen Elizabeth I or the gracious hostess of some elegant soirée, gliding through the halls in a silk dress, Mike adoringly at her side.

The fire crackled and Mike rocked back on his heels to take a gulp of coffee. I ran my hands through my hair and bit one of my nails. I glanced at Tom, who looked relaxed and happy, and felt content again.

Rosalie turned to him. ‘You must come and stay with us in New York. Mike’s moving into my apartment, and it’s pretty big. You’re so welcome. I want to see you all over there before the year’s out – hey, we’re family now, aren’t we?’

It’s funny when I look back at that scene now. In a few days everything would change, and at that moment I had no clue of it, no clue at all.

By the end of Boxing Day, I wished Tom had taken up Rosalie’s offer immediately. His new-found desire to help others and reveal the truth had accomplished the following:

1 Chin had threatened to kill him.

2 His mother had offered bodily violence against him.

3 He had made my mother cry.

4 And – this was a stroke of genius – he had probably managed to split up Chin and Gibbo.

I’m not sure where it all went wrong. I can see that after unburdening yourself as Tom had done, you might want to help others help themselves, and I can also see that he had imagined touching tableaux of grateful relatives kissing his hands and thanking the Lord he was gay for it had shown them the path to their own happiness. What I’d forgotten was that Tom is, and always has been, disastrously tactless. He has all the strategic acumen of – well, I’m not too hot on military history and it’s been a while since I last read Asterix the Legionary – let’s say, a really bad general. He means well, but he can’t bring all the cohorts and squadrons together in a satisfactory way.

Tom’s first course of action was to try to embrace Rosalie – both literally and figuratively – into our family. Because she’d been the first to speak up after his ‘shock’ announcement, he clearly now looked upon her as a worthy recipient of the most intimate family confidences. By the time the walkers came back we’d rustled up some lunch and, as we tucked into our turkey leftovers, Rosalie asked Chin why she’d cheated on her fiancé Bill with his best friend, then asked Kate whether she’d had any side effects from her hysterectomy.

Chin gaped, and Kate said, no – but the up-side was that she’d never have any more children like Tom.

After lunch Tom sloped off with his NBF Rosalie to watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

‘God,’ breathed Chin, as she prowled around the sitting room, pursued by an emollient Gibbo, ‘doesn’t she have any tact?’

Kate stopped pacing in front of the fireplace. ‘I blame Tom,’ she said. ‘Well, I blame her too, but I especially blame Tom.’

‘Poor Tom,’ said my mother, absently, on the verge of going to sleep.

‘It’s just so… rude ,’ said Chin.

‘Well, yes,’ said Mike, helplessly. ‘Rosalie seems to absorb information like a sponge…’