Anne Korkeakivi - An Unexpected Guest

Her dinner staff lined up, Clare had tapped out an e-mail to the embassy, requesting that the official plate embossed with the queen’s emblem be sent over in the morning, not too late, and then another to Edward’s secretary, requesting the guest list, with annotations about recent personal events and food preferences. She’d extracted the notepad she always carried and begun a to-do list — butcher, wine, flowers, etc. — careful to think as well of anything the butler normally would handle. Last, she’d sent an e-mail to the publication office at the Rodin Museum to say she’d likely have to delay dropping off the translation she’d just completed. This was her other job, the one she got paid for — she translated art books and catalogs.

She’d done all this in slightly over ten minutes, then returned to the reception hall in time to switch off her phone and listen to Edward give the absent ambassador’s welcoming speech. She’d kissed more cheeks amongst the circulating hors d’oeuvres, greeted more acquaintances, asked about more children, wives, and husbands. She’d been the picture of calm and competence. As she’d lain in bed later that night, trying to process Edward’s news about the embassy in Dublin, she had carefully tugged on this earlier sanguinity, reeling it back in until her breathing slowed, her heart stilled. She’d willed sleep to come to her.

Clare folded her breakfast napkin. If she could keep her cool last night, she could keep it this morning. She could keep it through the day, and through the dinner. She could even keep it in Dublin. She had experience controlling fear.

She replaced the top of the sugar bowl. She twisted the lid back over Edward’s jar of marmalade and gathered the plates from their breakfast, placing them on a tray. Mathilde would be coming in soon to start cooking. Amélie was already primping the formal living room. She tipped the remains of Edward’s pot of tea into the sink, then that of her cup of coffee.

She would not think about St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin, where rain had once splattered the remains of her humanity. She wouldn’t think about Dublin at all. She would put her all into helping Edward. She’d spent more than twenty years piling grain upon grain of obfuscation, and she couldn’t go backwards. Either she organized tonight’s dinner with the skill Edward knew she possessed or she’d have to tell him the truth about herself. She didn’t plan to tell that to anyone.

Clare scanned the guest list for possible food allergies, religious restrictions, or special diets and, finding none, set it down on a counter. A gust of spring wind stirred the chartreuse buds on the linden tree outside the kitchen window, and unfastening the hinge, she opened the window so the scent of blossoms could enter. After weeks of gray and drizzle, the sun was shining on Paris. Morning light spilled over the cobbled courtyard below. Tiny sprigs of green peeked through the crags between the stones, blades of grass too young to be cut down by the concierge’s weaponry. Somehow, overnight, the wisteria had fanned out in a flash of purple against the side of the building, like the imprint of light seen after squeezing one’s eyelids shut.

“You’ll catch a chill like that.”

Clare drew her head back in. “Good morning, Mathilde.”

“Hmph.” Mathilde, who was half Swiss and half Scottish, and always prepared for a sudden snow- or rainstorm, pulled a heavy wool coat off and hung it in a closet by the service entrance. “You have the menu for me?”

“Yes.”

A menu had already been planned for the ambassador, but the Salon Bleu, where dinner was to have been held at the ambassador’s residence, was a pageant of sweeping ceiling, gilt wall ornaments, blue satin upholstery, and the tinkling of crystal, with a richly colored rug the size of a small sea. The dining room in the minister’s residence, while handsome with its mahogany furniture and dark-green painted walls, and large enough to seat twenty at dinner, felt intimate by comparison. In other words, what would have succeeded amidst the splendor of the Salon Bleu wouldn’t work for the minister’s more discreet residence. Moreover, Clare wanted a meal that would show off Mathilde’s particular culinary talents and make subtle reference to Ireland. If she was going to help Edward, she was going to do it right.

She refined her thoughts as she spoke. “New asparagus from Alsace, wrapped in jambon de bayonne, to start. Your lovely Chilean sea bass crusted with almond and bathed in leek and lemon cream as the main course. Salad, and I’ll get whatever we need for the cheese course when I go to buy the flowers. You decide the dessert. Whatever you think fit — your desserts are all brilliant. Just please make it seasonal.”

“You can’t do the Chilean sea bass. Too controversial.”

“Overfishing?”

“Overfishing.” Mathilde shrugged. “Vietnamese farmed basa. I can cook it up the same way as the Chilean, and it tastes almost the same. I’ll dress it with potatoes in fresh pesto.”

“Perfect.” Clare heard the ring of the phone in the study, the sound of the housekeeper’s slippers padding their way down the hall. She paused to listen for the name of the caller.

“ Oui, wait, please.” Amélie’s voice carried into the room. “I will go to the Madame, James.”

James? Had she heard Amélie correctly?

“ Donc, asparagus and ham, basa in leek and lemon cream. It’s no bad,” Mathilde said, offering a begrudging nod, “for a spring menu.” She crossed her arms over her ample chest. “All right, then, if you don’t have anything else, I’d best get started. Nae the way one is supposed to do these things. A V.I.P. dinner on one day’s notice.”

Jamie had barely ever rung in the morning since he’d begun at boarding school last autumn. Once, when he’d forgotten to finish an essay for history: “Come on, Mom,” he’d said, “just a short little e-mail, saying my computer exploded or something.” Another time, when he’d been called down to the headmaster for throwing a currant bun (that hit a teacher). He normally timed his daily call for early evening, when Clare was most likely to be in but Edward not yet. At fifteen, he didn’t want his father to know how unhappy he was away from home, nor how dependent he was on his mother to stick it out.

She checked her watch: 9:10 a.m.

Jamie couldn’t have gotten into some new trouble on this day of all days.

“I’m truly sorry,” she said to Mathilde, “especially after I’d given you the day off. Thank you again for coming in. You’re a treasure.”

Mathilde snorted and began tying on her apron.

“Madame, eet’s James,” Amélie said, extending the phone towards her.

“Oh!” She accepted the handset from the housekeeper with a careful smile on her face. “That’s nice. Thank you, Amélie. I think I’ll just take this back in the bedroom.”

She walked the long hall back to her bedroom, half shut the door, and sat down on the edge of the mattress. The plastic of the receiver felt cool against her cheek, unyielding. It was tricky with Jamie. He wanted her help, and she wished she could do more for him. Things certainly were not going well at his boarding school. But nothing annoyed him more than unsolicited interference from his parents. “Jamie?”

There was a pause. “James.”

“ James. Is everything all right?” To herself she thought, Please, at least don’t let any bones be broken. Or any school property.

“Yeah, sure, Mom. Two hundred thousand people died in Iraq this morning. But it only rained three inches in London this week.”