A Lesser Evil (4 page)

She could have kicked herself for letting herself be pushed into a defensive position. Now she had accidentally revealed what she really felt. She had planned to introduce Dan to her family gradually, letting his natural charm win them over before she admitted that they were serious about each other. Now she’d blown it.

‘I suppose he’s a Teddy boy?’

‘No, he’s not,’ Fifi snapped. ‘Why would you immediately imagine he’s a lout in a drape jacket armed with a knuckleduster?’

‘If you’d brought him home when you first met him I wouldn’t need to use my imagination.’

‘I needed to get to know him myself before subjecting him to an inquisition,’ Fifi retorted. ‘I’ll gladly bring him home, but please don’t be fierce with him, Mum!’

‘I can’t imagine what you mean,’ Clara said, putting her nose in the air. ‘Have I browbeaten any of your other boyfriends?’

‘Not exactly, but you can be a bit much. Look at the time I went out with Gerald, the medical student. You frightened him off with all those questions about his father.’

‘I was only interested; his father was a top surgeon at Guy’s, after all.’

‘Yes, but Gerald felt so intimidated he didn’t want to come here again. I think he thought you’d got our wedding all planned.’

‘I can’t be blamed for hoping my daughter will marry well.’

‘I’d only been out with him a couple of times, Mum,’ Fifi said in exasperation.

‘Well, all that was a long time ago,’ Clara said dismissively. ‘Anyway, this young man is an entirely different can of worms. If he has no family I can’t ask him questions about them, can I?’

‘Why do you have to question him?’ Fifi asked. ‘You don’t question my girlfriends, you just chat. Do that with him!’

‘About what?’

‘Oh, Mum,’ Fifi exclaimed. ‘Anything – television, film stars, favourite foods, a story in the news. He’s really easy to talk to, it won’t be difficult. Just don’t act as if you’re against, or suspicious of him.’

‘You’d better ask him to tea tomorrow then,’ Clara said.

‘Does it have to be that formal?’ Fifi asked hopefully. ‘Can’t I just get him to come and collect me tomorrow evening and have five minutes with you both before we go out?’

‘You invite him round for tea,’ Clara said firmly. ‘If he can’t cope with that, then there’s something wrong with him. Now, for goodness’ sake get that cardigan hung out on the line to dry. I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s shrunk to half the size now, you’ve had it in that water for far too long.’

Fifi had a heavy heart as she hung her washing on the line. Dan would be pleased he’d been invited to tea; to him that would mean her family had accepted he was important to her. But all it really meant was that he would be on parade for her mother, who’d be giving him marks out of ten for table manners, cleanliness, intelligence, and a dozen other items that she’d decide on the day.

It would be a veritable minefield for Dan. He’d only got to stick his knife in the jam pot, pick his bread and butter up with the wrong hand or fail to use his napkin, and no matter how sparkling his conversation was, he would be blackballed.

Dan’s table manners weren’t that good, but he tried; Fifi had noticed him copying her on more than one occasion. She would have to hope he did it tomorrow too, for she certainly couldn’t embarrass him by suggesting she give him a crash course in her mother’s pet hates tonight.

It was a balmy day, and the garden looked lovely with all the blossom and spring flowers. With luck, if it was still nice tomorrow, her parents might suggest having tea out here. That would be far less daunting for Dan. He really appreciated pretty gardens, and he knew a surprising amount about plants as he used to help in the garden at the children’s home. That might stop her parents from assuming he was some kind of villain.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll be on my best behaviour,’ Dan said later that afternoon as they sat up on the Downs above the Suspension Bridge, looking at the view of the Avon Gorge. ‘I’ll wash behind my ears, put on my best dazzling white shirt and polish my shoes.’

‘Just don’t let Mum keep asking you questions,’ Fifi warned him. ‘Ask her about plants, praise her cakes, and stuff like that. Patty will be lovely, she always is. Robin is mad about rugby and cricket and that’s all he wants to talk about. Peter’s not much of a talker, but he’s interested in photography.’

‘Of which I know nothing,’ Dan smirked.

‘You don’t have to, just ask to see some of his work, you’ll be his best mate then.’

‘Are they both at college?’

‘Yes, Robin’s doing accountancy and Peter wants to be an architect. But don’t worry about that, they aren’t geniuses or anything.’

‘Will your dad ask me if my intentions towards you are honourable?’

Fifi giggled. ‘Of course he won’t, he’s not a heavy Victorian father. He’s rather sweet, much gentler than Mum. Are your intentions honourable?’

‘I’d give anything to go to bed with you,’ Dan said, putting his arms round her and bending her backwards over the bench to kiss her neck. ‘I suppose that’s considered dishonourable?’

‘My parents would think so,’ she said, laughing and trying to extract herself from his clinch.

‘Even if I said I wanted to marry you?’

‘Do you?’ Fifi asked, assuming it was just a joke.

‘More than anything else in the world,’ he said.

Fifi was shocked to see his eyes were swimming. He had told her he loved her after knowing her just two weeks, but in such a light way that it wasn’t possible to gauge whether he’d said it out of affection or real to-die-for passion. Yet now she was left in no doubt.

‘But we’ve only known each other six weeks,’ she said, caressing his cheek tenderly.

‘I knew on the first night you were the only girl for me,’ he replied. ‘All the other six weeks and two days has done is confirm it.’

Fifi held his face in her hands, loving his high cheekbones, his generous, sexy mouth and his chocolate-brown eyes. She felt exactly as he said he did – they were like twin souls – but she hadn’t dared even think about marriage.

‘Are you asking me to marry you?’ she whispered. ‘Or is this one of your jokes?’

‘I’ll say it’s a joke if you refuse, just to keep face,’ he said with a weak grin. ‘I wouldn’t blame you refusing, it’s not as if I can offer you anything. I haven’t got any money, not even a car or a decent place to live. But I love you, I’d look after you and I’d treasure you.’

Tears came into Fifi’s eyes then. Dan’s love was all she wanted. ‘Let’s see how tomorrow goes first,’ she whispered. ‘You might not want me after you’ve met my mother!’

Chapter Two

Fifi looked around the table and not for the first time wondered why she was so different to the rest of her family.

Her father Harry, at the head of the table, was the personification of what everyone expected from an academic: tall and thin with stooping shoulders, glasses slightly askew on his nose, and a wide expanse of forehead which grew larger every year as his fair hair receded even further back. His maroon cardigan did nothing for his pale skin, but it had been knitted by his wife and as he had a very placid nature, it would never occur to him to abandon it for something more flattering.

Despite having a very strong bond with her father, Fifi didn’t appear to have inherited anything from him, neither his looks nor his keen intelligence. She also wished he would take a stand on how he felt about family matters but he never did, just going along with his wife.

Fifi might look like her mother, but the similarity ended there. Right now Clara was poised like a graceful but ever watchful deer. She looked lovely in her best powder-blue wool dress and pearls, with her hair in a neat chignon, but the effect was spoiled by a fixed false smile. She was not a relaxed person at the best of times, but since Dan’s arrival at three o’clock she had become extraordinarily tense.

Peter and Robin, nineteen and eighteen respectively, showed every sign of ending up looking just like their father. They were fresh-faced and bright-eyed, their backs as straight as guardsmen’s now; a framed photograph of their father as a young man, in full view on the sideboard, could have been mistaken for either of his sons. They didn’t share their father’s sharp intellect, though – studying came hard to them. They were a couple of life’s plodders, amiable, gentle and without much fire.

Fifi could see that her brothers were both wishing they had a good reason to excuse themselves from the tea party. Although she doubted that their mother had confided in them her fears about Dan, the atmosphere she was creating had made these all too obvious.

Fifi felt her brothers liked Dan. They had laughed at many things he’d said during the afternoon, and now and again they’d looked admiringly at him, but they lacked the social skills or the nerve to bypass their mother’s disapproval.

Patty, a born diplomat, had done her best. Although she was usually shy with strangers, mainly because she was aware of being fat and spotty, she’d made a great effort to make Dan feel comfortable. She had done her best to bring the conversation round to subjects that would give him and her brothers common ground. She asked about the houses he was building and his relationship with the architect, and then reminded him that Peter was training in architecture. To Fifi’s disappointment Peter didn’t seize the opportunity, almost certainly because he realized Dan had far more practical building knowledge than he had. Patty brought up cricket then, and for a while all the men talked animatedly about the sport, but her mother stamped that out by interrupting and beginning to question Dan again about where he lived.

Fifi could remember how when she was about seven, her mother took her to task for embarrassing another child she met in the park by commenting on the holes in the bottom of her shoes. Her mother had explained that the child’s parents were probably very poor, and she should always be tactful and kinder to people less fortunate than herself.

What a hypocrite her mother had turned out to be! She’d always claimed she would like to see an end to the class system, declaring that bright children from poor homes should be given the same opportunities as the children of the wealthy. Yet now her daughter had taken up with a working-class man, all that tact and kindness had vanished.

Just from the way her mother had looked at Dan when he arrived today, Fifi had known he was never going to be able to win her round. She took in his shiny winkle-picker shoes and his pinstriped suit with its bum-freezer jacket as if that was all the evidence she needed to know he was a bad lot.

As it was raining there was little opportunity for Dan to show off his interest in and knowledge of plants, though he tried hard enough. He stood at the French windows in the sitting room and admired the magnolia tree which was in full bloom.

If her mother was surprised he could actually name it, she didn’t show it, and almost immediately launched into an inquisition about his lodgings.

‘Is it a guest house?’ she asked.

‘The landlady certainly doesn’t treat us like guests,’ Dan replied with one of his wide grins. ‘More like lepers.’

Clara smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes, and Fifi could see she was getting agitated. ‘What I meant was, does she provide breakfast and perhaps an evening meal?’

‘No, all we get is the room, and what she calls “servicing” it. That only amounts to emptying the waste-paper basket and running a vacuum cleaner over the bits of the carpet that show.’

Clara wanted to know how Dan got his clothes washed and where he cooked meals. When he said he went to the launderette further up the road, and mostly ate in cafés, she launched into a lecture about the value of good nutrition and how he should learn to cook for himself.

‘I can cook quite well,’ Dan said. ‘We were taught at the children’s home. But I can’t really be bothered after working all day.’

Fifi was relieved that Dan didn’t reveal that the shared kitchen was overrun with mice, so dirty he could barely bring himself to make a cup of tea in there, and that the other lodgers would help themselves to any food he bought. Yet it was a shame that his explanation suggested he was bone idle.

From then on it seemed to Fifi that her mother was deliberately trying to make Dan feel gauche and ignorant. She brought up subjects as diverse as the invasion of Cuba, the building of the Berlin Wall, Ban the Bomb marches and Rudolf Nureyev’s defection to the West.

Fifi expected that, like her, Dan wouldn’t know enough about any of these things to discuss them, and her mother would be successful in making him look like a fool. But he did know something about each topic, enough at least to toss the ball into her father’s court and get him to give his views.

He couldn’t resist winding her mother up a little on the subject of Rudolf Nureyev, though. ‘It would have been handy if he’d been a nuclear scientist or something useful, but a man who struts around the stage in tights showing off his carrot and onions doesn’t seem much of a coup to me,’ he said.

The boys laughed, Patty giggled, and even her father smiled. But her mother looked deeply offended and said snootily that she loved ballet and Rudolf was the greatest dancer of all time.

‘Maybe, but I bet less than one per cent of the population ever go to the ballet, so why should he get to stay here? He probably lived like a king in Russia anyway.’

Fifi had noticed before that whenever Dan felt unsure of himself, he resorted to jokey remarks. To workmates or acquaintances in the pub this created the impression of a genial, easy-going person, but to articulate, serious-minded people like her parents, meeting him for the first time, it was more likely to come across as discourtesy.

By the time they sat down to tea, Fifi noticed that two red blotches had sprung up on her mother’s cheeks, a sure sign she was boiling up to a rage. Fifi had no idea how to defuse the situation, for Dan was doing his best to be open, friendly and appreciative.

‘Another piece of cake, Dan?’ Clara asked towards the end of tea. She had pushed the boat out, showing off with home-cooked ham and salad, scones, cakes and trifle, and now she had the silver cake knife poised above the remains of the iced chocolate cake.