One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [64]
‘Like… a couch?’ Mum asked tentatively.
‘No, no, dear lady, not at all!’ Ralph was horrified. ‘It’s a shell, you know. But gigantic.’ He demonstrated its vastness with huge sweeping arms.
‘Oh, a shell!’ said Mum, as if all was revealed and every home should have one. ‘I see.’ She nodded emphatically.
‘A tropical marine gastropod.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Mum shut her eyes, palms up, as if no further explanation were necessary.
‘I can get one sent straight from Peru, with a great gaping mouth, like this –’ Ralph opened his jaws wide; Mum stepped back in alarm – ‘suggestive of birth and renewal. A new family in situ, see? And we’ll put it at the far end of the hall, so that once we’ve passed the stairs,’ he tripped prettily past them, ‘we encounter, it here… voilà.’ He stopped and unfolded his palms towards Dad.
‘Oh!’ My mother clasped her hands. ‘Yes, I see. A sort of symbolism, Laura.’ She turned to her daughter.
‘But… won’t it be terribly uncomfortable?’ Laura looked confused. ‘I mean, is it to sit on? Or—’
‘No, no, it’s to walk around, to admire. To wonder at, to marvel. It’s living art.’
‘Expensive?’ put in Hugh, who just happened to be listening behind a door.
‘My dear Lord Pelham, it’s coming from darkest Peru, like Paddington. It’s rare, it’s ancient, it won’t be cheap. But you’ll have it for ever, and no one, absolutely no one, wherever you go, will have one. You will never see it again.’
‘With good reason,’ murmured Dad into his Tribune.
‘I see.’ Laura liked this. ‘And, around it…?’ She made a helpless gesture with her hands, walking to where Dad and the chairs were.
‘Rien,’ Ralphie said firmly, following her. ‘No clutter, no furniture, no pictures on the walls. Just one, very good, very important piece.’ He held on to the ‘c’ in piece for longer than was absolutely necessary.
‘Mollusc,’ put in Dad.
Ralph inclined his head enquiringly, eyelids flickering.
‘It’s a mollusc,’ Dad explained. ‘A shellfish.’
Ralph smiled thinly, in grudging assent.
‘Well, we’ll think about it,’ breathed Laura. ‘And the floor?’
‘Will have to go.’
‘Go?’ She looked down at the tiles.
Ralph shuddered. ‘Hideous. Turn of the century. No age. Arts and Crafts revival at its very worst. I’m thinking French limestone throughout.’
Hugh yelped and disappeared. Laura, aware that she was in the grip of a formidable talent, but that she’d soon be in the grip of a divorce if she didn’t watch out, looked flustered.
‘Oh, um, look,’ she faltered, scratching her leg. ‘The thing is, the floor might have to stay. Only, you know, it’s a family thing. Hugh’s parents would be dreadfully upset.’
Ralph looked as if he’d sucked a lemon.
‘But the um, shell – conch – I’m sure, is a very good idea,’ she enthused.
‘Along with the statue of Saint Somebody-or-other in the dining room, and the vessel in the drawing room,’ remarked my father.
‘Vessel?’ asked Maggie, who’d heroically held her tongue up until now.
‘Frightfully symbolic,’ Mum whispered to her. ‘And Mr de Granville firmly believes one should have one Good Piece,’ she too held on to the ‘c’, ‘in each room.’
‘Oh, me too,’ agreed Dad, folding up his paper. ‘Give me a Cézanne or a Gauguin and I’m a happy man.’
‘And it’s just so wonderful that he can simply look at a room and tell right away,’ Mum told Maggie, all sparkly eyed. ‘He walked straight into the morning room and said, baroque. Early seventeenth century. Harpsichord in the corner. And then in the dining room we’re going all North American Indian.’
My father made a choking sound.
‘Naïve, indigenous art,’ Ralph explained.
‘Take a look upstairs, laddie,’ said my father, ‘on Charlie’s bedroom walls. Plenty of naïve indigenous art up there. In point of fact, Laura’s kept all the kids’ paintings.’
‘It’s not quite as simple as that,’ Ralph smiled politely.
Dad blinked. ‘Is it not?’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Oh, OK.’
‘But I think that’s probably enough for one day,’ Ralph said, looking rather tired suddenly. He half closed weary lids: plucked a fawn, kidskin attaché bag from a table and tucked it neatly under his arm. Maggie