Philip Hensher - The Friendly Ones

Catherine felt that she was always resting in the interstices here at her sister-in-law’s house. In much the same way that, since her divorce and the so-surprising, pressing invitation – the first of five – from Blossom to come and stay, not any time but on a particular date, and to bring the little one too, there was always something intermediate and uncertain about the positions she found herself in. Was she a guest that Blossom and Stephen longed for, found excellent company, enjoyed being in the house? Or was there some underhand and contemptuous motive, unknown to and unspoken by even them? She had felt like discussing it with Leo on the phone or at those sad handovers, asking him what place he thought she occupied in Blossom’s life. She had a good idea, however: she knew that he would think she was invited for the sake of the retelling, so that Blossom could subsequently say to Leo, just in passing, ‘Oh, we had your ex-wife and little boy to stay last week. They are so charming, I must say.’ The pleasure of causing pain and rendering Leo’s life inadequate quite outweighed the difficulty and tedium of having Catherine and Josh as awkward presences in the house for four or five days. At some future but not at all remote point Catherine and Josh would surely be evicted from Elscombe House by her sometime sister-in-law’s husband and her sometime nephews and nieces, bearing shotguns and laughing as the sometime relations stumbled, suitcases in hand, down the gravel drive.

Breakfast finished, and the children were shooed off, going upstairs – Tresco said, over his shoulder, in a dismissive way – to dress for the woods; the Japanese nanny followed, carrying the now rather large Trevor (a girl) and puffing up the stairs towards the nursery. Catherine stood at the foot of the wooden stairs, resting her hand on the carved heraldic beasts forming the stop at the bottom of the banisters. She had been here too long: she wondered, as her mind formed the word, whether ‘banisters’ was not a word Blossom would consider common in some way. The bedroom was forbidden during the day, apart from moments when it was necessary to change clothes and quietly to drink a little vodka from the bottle she had brought; in any case, there was nowhere to sit, apart from a hard cane chair. She could read her book, but she had already finished it; there was nothing to read in the house, apart from the dutiful books the children ought to read and the forbidding leather-bound antiquities that had gone to make the library, bought with the house by Stephen. What did people like her read in a house like this? There was no place for a person like her in a house like this. She stood at the foot of the stairs, wondering whether she could justify going out for a walk to the village. The pub would not be open yet.

‘I’ve got some dull letters to write,’ Blossom said, having followed the girl clearing the breakfast table out into the hall, berating her all the while. ‘It’s no pleasure. Come and sit with me and we’ll chat. Stephen’s in his study all day, manipulating investments, I suppose.’

Without waiting for an answer, Blossom continued on her way, following the skivvy through the green baize door underneath the stairs that led to the old kitchen. There were meals to order, tasks to assign, purposes to fulfil. Catherine tried to remember which was the morning room – the little square yellow one, she thought, at the back of the house with the ugly china pug in it.

There was a rumpus from the first floor, and down the double staircase, proceeding underneath the Burne-Jones stained-glass window, the children thunderously came. The two middle ones, Tamara and Thomas, were first, and dressed unexpectedly, Tamara in a full-length white lace ball-gown, a First Communion frock in a Roman Catholic country. She had pink ribbons in her hair. Her brother Thomas was dressed for the same occasion, in blue velvet knickerbockers and a foaming white shirt to match his gleaming white stockings; he was wearing a pink bow-tie, not very expertly tied. But Tresco and Josh, behind, confident and shamefaced by turn, they were dressed just as they had been at the breakfast table.

‘Going somewhere?’ Catherine asked Tamara.

‘Don’t tell Mummy,’ Tamara said. ‘There’s a good Aunty Catherine.’

‘We’re just going to the Wreck,’ Tresco said. ‘Goading the proles.’

‘I see,’ Catherine said. ‘Well, don’t shoot any of them. You won’t be popular if you wade through the woods in that dress, Tamara.’

‘There’s something called a dry-cleaner’s,’ Tamara said. ‘Poor little Thomas. He hates his Faunties ‒ he simply loathes them.’

‘They made me,’ Thomas said, his face screwed up with rage as they processed past their aunt; their usual way into the grounds was through the drawing room and its French windows. Catherine caught her son’s head and rumpled it as it passed. He looked back: shame, fright, secrecy all melded in his look. They would find an excuse not to come next time they were asked.

‘It’s rather nice to see them all getting on, the cousins,’ Blossom said, emerging from the servants’ quarters. ‘There’s no accounting for children and whether they’ll get on with each other. I always tell my children it’s just not on to be fussy about food, to like this food or that food, and it’s not on to like some people and think you don’t like others.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Catherine said, following Blossom towards the morning room. ‘I think you’re allowed to like some people more than others.’

‘If you’re grown-up you are,’ Blossom said. ‘Good morning, Mrs Bates. Everything all right? Good, good. If you’re grown-up you’re perfectly permitted to have likes and dislikes about people or food or anything else. I’ll make a confession to you – I absolutely can’t bear desiccated coconut. I can’t bear it. But I’m sure that I wasn’t allowed to say that I wouldn’t have this or I wouldn’t have that when I was a child. And it was exactly the same with people. Get on with everyone and the world will be a much easier place. That’s my motto.’

‘Leo’s absolutely stiff with likes and dislikes, what he won’t eat, and who he gets on with at work and who he can’t abide.’

‘Well, there you are, then,’ Blossom said illogically. As so often, when she talked grandly but vaguely about her past, she seemed to have an invented, imaginary life in mind, one with ponies and acres and grandparents with Victorian principles. She had forgotten, perhaps, that Catherine had been married to her brother, and knew all about the reality of the doctor in the suburb of Sheffield and his self-pitying, indulgent wife with the hands fluttering as she spoke. ‘We’re all so fond of Josh – he’s such a nice little boy. And so fair-minded, as you say. How is he at school?’ She plumped herself down behind the writing table. On it were any number of curiosa: a set of miniature furled flags, a miniature reproduction Buddha in marble, some Japanese porcelain dishes ‒ corporate gifts that had ended up here. The better ones were in Stephen’s study. Catherine pulled the armchair out of the direct sunlight. It was still a little bit like a job interview, the way Blossom had situated herself.

‘He likes it,’ Catherine said. ‘He seems to be thriving there. It’s a lovely atmosphere – you can’t help feeling how friendly everyone is. There’s a proper feeling of helping out and thinking of everyone.’

‘Oh, Brighton,’ Blossom said. ‘I can well imagine. It sounds absolutely lovely. I know those schools, putting everyone’s welfare first, making sure no one’s left behind … I sometimes wonder, though.’

‘I know it’s not much like the sort of schools we went to,’ Catherine said.

‘Or Tresco’s school,’ Blossom said. ‘To be honest. It’s a terrific school, you know. They’re introducing Mandarin as an option. Have you ever thought about what Josh could be doing? My children can be little swine, I know, but they’re constantly vying to outdo each other, speak better Japanese than each other, run faster, survive a day in the woods without anything to eat or drink. Do they have sports day at Josh’s school?’