One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [58]
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She straightened up, sucking hard to keep it going. ‘I’m sure Emma would have been puffing away in the shrubbery given half a chance. And anyway, I’ve been provoked,’ she remarked as she blew out a thin line of smoke. ‘Did he get his personality out of a dictionary, d’you think? Under P for parody?’
I smiled. ‘Ah, but you see, Mum and Laura would be upset if he wasn’t like that,’ I pointed out as we strolled between the formal beds, white roses nodding in the breeze. ‘It’s totally and utterly what they were expecting. All that flamboyant, artistic director stuff – right up their alley.’
‘Makes my skin creep,’ she shuddered. ‘He’ll be prancing around in there,’ she jabbed her cigarette back to the house, ‘waving his arms about and shooting his cuffs up, droning on about festoons and filigrees, and they won’t have a bloody clue what he’s talking about. I hate that kind of crap, blinding people with science. He’ll be getting them to have coronets above the windows for pelmets and… oh my God…’ She stopped. Stared back at the house. ‘What did I tell you?’
‘What?’
Ralph was at the dining room windows, chiselled profile to us, hands cupped in the air as if demonstrating a coronet shape. He saw us. Froze. Then glared and turned abruptly on his heel, sweeping on, whilst across the windows, like a couple of little mice, Mum and Laura scuttled after him.
‘Prat,’ Maggie spat with feeling.
‘Ignore him,’ I soothed. ‘He’ll be gone soon. Be prancing around Italy looking at marble.’
‘Oh, I shall,’ she seethed. ‘I shall snub him entirely. But before he goes I might just accidentally spill my drink on his calf-skin attaché case.’ The thought clearly cheered her and she smiled. Turning her back on the house, she gazed about her. ‘Meanwhile I shall enjoy this ridiculously grand country house while I can. Blimey, look at this garden.’ She blinked down at the statue at the end of the lime avenue. ‘Or is garden de trop? Unspeakably vulgar.’ Her lip curled. ‘Parkland, no doubt.’
I shrugged. ‘No idea. Dad calls it the backyard.’
She barked a laugh up to the sky. ‘Good for him!’ She looked admiringly at me. ‘I like your dad.’
‘Most people do.’
‘Your mum’s great too,’ she said politely.
I grinned. ‘She grows on you.’
‘But your dad… well, he’s comfortable in his own skin, isn’t he? Not impressed by any of this nonsense.’ She swept her arm around dismissively.
‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘But it doesn’t get his back up, either.’
She glanced back at me. Sniffed. ‘Hm. Lovely air, anyway,’ she said, changing the subject. She took a drag on her ciggie. ‘Definitely smells different from London, doesn’t it?’
‘Definitely,’ I agreed as she cupped a rose in her hand and lowered her face to smell it. A startled bumble bee shot out, just grazing her nose.
‘Shit!’ she squealed, dropping it hastily. Her gaze around the great outdoors was rather more nervous now. ‘Come on, Hattie, this place is beginning to scare me. I think I need an espresso, fast. Let’s walk to the village.’
‘What do people do all day?’ she marvelled as we strolled down the back drive towards the lane. The banks frothed with milky cow parsley and nodding ox-eye daisies, and beech trees cast an occasional pool of dappled shade. ‘What does Laura do?’
‘Oh, she says there’s masses.’ I said vaguely. ‘She has to organize all the people who work here, don’t forget, the housekeeper and the gardener, and then there’s people at the Home Farm too. Tenants, that kind of thing.’
‘How d’you mean, organize?’ she pounced, sensing tyranny.
‘Well, if their washing machine breaks down, or something, she’s got to fix it. Or at least get it fixed.’
‘Oh.’
‘And she sits on committees and things too.’
‘What, discussing the church roof?’ she sneered.
‘Amongst other things,’ I said loyally, determined not to let Maggie take aim at my sister whilst she was under her roof. Even though, I recalled guiltily, I could be persuaded to on occasion as we sat behind the counter at the shop in London, cradling mugs of coffee.
Maggie