“Dad.” Saskia spoke very softly, but her voice was firm. “No gross birth stories today, please. It’s Christmas.”
“Christmas is all about birth stories,” said Nathan through a mouthful of lunch. “In a barn or whatever, with nothing but herbs as pain relief. What do frankincense and myrrh actually do? It’s right up Mom’s street, it’s like, the ultimate home birth.” He snorted, pleased with himself. Gwen giggled.
After a few moments hunched over his phone Nathan announced, “Myrrh opens up the heart chakra.”
“So says the wisdom of the Internet.”
“No, so says Mom, I texted her. ‘Good for making one accepting and nonjudgmental.’”
“I’d need a hell of a lot of myrrh not to judge that utter horseshit,” James told him, and then looked to Iris, regretting the obscenity, but Iris was nodding in firm agreement.
12.
“A success all round I’d say,” said Iris, coming up behind Julia. She was already in her coat, and pulling on long, tangerine leather driving gloves.
“You’re a lovely hostess and this was perfect, but Philip Alden’s terribly tired now, so we’ll take our leave. He’s used some sort of minicab application—a gentleman called Stu is, so I’m told, four minutes away.”
Together they peered through the doorway into the living room. James and Philip sat talking on the sofa, Saskia had sprawled in an armchair with a magazine, and Gwen lay on the floor sketching Philip’s profile on a lined legal pad. Nathan was also on the floor, sitting at Saskia’s feet reading the same copy of Swann’s Way that he’d been carrying around the house for weeks, unopened until today. As they watched, Saskia’s phone rang.
“Hi, Mom . . . I don’t know. Dad, is there any sherry? Mom’s going to be driving past on her way back from lunch; she wondered if she could come by for a glass of sherry.”
“That’s pretty specific,” James muttered, excusing himself from Philip and standing up. From the doorway Julia called, “Of course Pamela must come for sherry.” Behind her she heard a heavy breath.
“This is presumption.”
“We hadn’t said we’d see her today, but I suppose it’s nice she feels so comfortable.” Julia spoke softly to encourage her mother-in-law to do likewise.
“Oh, what tosh,” said Iris in irritation, pulling at the fingers of her left glove. It came away, exhaling a rich, musky puff of Chanel No. 5. “It’s an imposition. Cancel Stu, please,” she commanded Philip from the doorway, as if barking orders at a court attendant. Julia watched Philip, unquestioning, reach into the inside pocket of his corduroy jacket and fumble for his phone.
“You don’t have to stay.”
“Oh for goodness sake, don’t be so na?ve, we most certainly do. It’s why she’s coming, to inspect us all. Philip Alden shall simply have to have an espresso and look lively.”
? ? ?
IRIS HAD REACHED the limit of her forbearance with these strangers and to extend it was almost unendurable. But Gwen had described Pamela in vivid detail, and it would do Gwen no good to see her mother trampled like a doormat once again. It was quite enough to suffer that cheery, insipid American so conspicuously failing to make his presence inconspicuous, but to have his ex-wife arrive and wreak unchecked havoc was insufferable. She would not have the Aldens so outnumbered in their own home.
All afternoon she had found James terribly trying, with his earnest smiles and reflexive nods of agreement as he danced attendance on herself and Philip like an obliging houseboy, his urge to be hospitable hampered by an obvious anxiety to avoid seeming proprietorial. Feigned imbecility did nothing to conceal the unpalatable fact that he now had the keys to, and possession of, Daniel’s house. James was so bloody sensitive, and careful, and several times during lunch she’d wanted to smack him. Christ alive, man, she’d thought, you’re screwing her upstairs every night, don’t pretend you don’t know where she keeps the ground coffee.
In the last years Iris had counseled Julia to put herself about a bit—she herself had always been a believer in the therapeutic powers of sex, and the nourishing balm of male attention. Men were necessary and had been necessary to Iris, often in the plural, for much of her life. What had stung, an unexpected betrayal, had been this insistence upon cohabitation and the intermingling of lives—love, she supposed they would call it. She had always suspected Julia would be too insipid to take casual lovers; still, it would have been more tactful, and less disruptive for the rest of the family.
But at lunch she’d been kept in check by Philip Alden’s cautionary frowns, which she felt across the table like the soft glow of a heat lamp. His warning glance alone was enough to lower her blood pressure, and the monitoring eye he kept on her behavior at all times relieved her of the burden of self-censorship. His silent reproof soothed her irritation, for she felt understood. I know, he assured her; I see.
? ? ?
SINCE PAMELA’S PHONE CALL they all sat arrested in expectation of her arrival. Saskia’s magazine was in her lap. Gwen had stopped drawing and was on the floor beside Nathan, inspecting her split ends. Philip still wore his scarf and jacket. Julia, who had only just relaxed after hours of managing the afternoon’s social lubrication, began to clear the debris and to gather in the colony of glasses and mugs that had taken over most surfaces. Foil chocolate wrappers and crumpled napkins decorated the spaces in between them, and beside Gwen was a square of kitchen towel piled high with tangerine peels. Nathan had recently made himself a third cream cheese bagel, a postlunch snack, and his discarded plate was also on the floor. Balanced on the arm of Saskia’s chair was an empty Oreo packet. Rowan, an old school-friend of Saskia’s, had come over on Christmas Eve, a tiny, angular, and white-skinned girl with severely cut black hair and impeccable manners. She’d presented Julia with a tin of amaretti biscuits, and the wrappers from these, printed with text in rose pink, had accumulated on the coffee table like a drift of flushed magnolia bells. The house looked like the celebratory aftermath of precisely what it was, a gluttonous and pleasurable family Christmas and also, to the new visitor, a bloody mess.
Julia turned out every kitchen cupboard and had not unearthed a bottle of sherry, a foregone conclusion as she had never known a bottle to be in the house. But she had hunted nonetheless, if only to show James her attempts to be hospitable. He had been nothing but charming to Iris and Philip today, which meant she did not feel she could say, Why is your mad ex-wife descending upon my house?
“Gwen?” she called, lightly. “Would you like to make some mulled wine for when Pamela arrives? We’ve got cloves and I’m sure there’s some star anise somewhere. You could look up a recipe online.”
Gwen mumbled something to Nathan beside her, who laughed.
“I’ll help if you like,” he offered, “you may not be aware of it but I am an excellent mixologist.”