Jump! (5 page)

‘Off the wall, in the kitchen.’

Etta, who’d woken five times in the night only to find there was no longer any Sampson to turn, had leapt out of bed dripping with sweat, terrified his breakfast wouldn’t be ready on time.

Carrie found her mother mindlessly stirring porridge in the kitchen, gazing at bumblebees glutting themselves on the winter honeysuckle. She had odd shoes on her feet.

‘I am so sorry, darling.’ Etta tried to hug Carrie, who shook her off.

‘Don’t, you’ll get me going.’

‘You must be tired. Would you like to lie down or have some breakfast?’

‘I’ll have Dad’s porridge since you’re making it,’ said Carrie, then, as Martin and Romy joined them: ‘Where’s Dad’s body?’

‘In the Chapel of Rest,’ replied Martin. ‘I spent most of yesterday afternoon with the undertakers. They were delightful but by the time I’d filled in all the forms, organized the service, the cars, the coffin and the music, I could have been dead myself.’ He laughed heartily.

‘We decided on a wickerwork basket instead of a coffin,’ he went on. ‘Romy’s offered to decorate it with flowers. She’s so artistic.’

‘Won’t that look a bit cheap?’ snapped Carrie.

‘Certainly not.’

Etta stopped stirring the porridge and, with a rare surge of dissent, cried, ‘Sampson should have a proper coffin. Oak or yew. He deserves one.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Martin crushingly. ‘Dad wanted to save the planet and you know how he hated wasting money. Now if he’d lived longer …’

‘I’m sorry,’ muttered Etta.

‘You’re burning that porridge,’ said Carrie.

Having topped up a bowlful with treacle and cream, she dragged Martin into Sampson’s office.

‘Is there nothing to be done?’

‘Nothing.’

It took Martin and Carrie only five minutes to work out that ravishing Bluebell Hill would have to be sold to pay the massive estate duty. Sampson, like many philanderers, had been unable to bear the thought of his friends moving in on Etta. Aware of her hopelessly generous nature, he hated the idea of her squandering his inheritance on lame ducks and had handed everything over to Martin and Carrie with the proviso they looked after their mother.

By the afternoon, Carrie had conjured up an estate agent who valued the house at between three and four million.

‘If it’s going to reach top whack, we should get all those rails, stairlifts and hoists out of the house,’ mused Martin.

He and Carrie had also in their peregrinations noticed herbaceous borders dark brown with un-cut-back plants, sculptures hidden by overgrown shrubs and trees, ground elder on the rampage, and agreed the romantic garden was too much for Etta.

Their mother was clearly over the top, rushing around making beds, cooking for everyone, trying to answer the letters of sympathy that poured in: writing three times to some people, chucking other letters in the wastepaper basket still in their envelopes.

‘Get some cards printed, Mother,’ ordered Martin, ‘then you can top and tail them.’

Drummond, meanwhile, trailed after his mother assessing loot: ‘If you have the Rossetti, can I have the stairlift and the reclining chair?’

While Carrie worked on her BlackBerry, Martin was kept very busy planning the funeral. If they held it at three, they could get away with canapés, sandwiches, cake and champagne, just a glass, and lots of interesting teas, which he and Romy had discovered on a visit to China. Then they wouldn’t have to provide people with lunch.

Determined to ensure a working funeral to launch his new career as a fundraiser, he had seized Sampson’s address book and files and bought a book of remembrance, so every celeb and captain of industry could sign their name and be tapped for donations or personal appearances later.

What a tragedy, observed Martin and Carrie, that Dad had bought a shredder advertised in the
Daily Telegraph
and spent so much time at the end destroying letters from illustrious mistresses and business acquaintances.

‘Family flowers only,’ said the announcement in both
The Times
and the
Telegraph
. Sampson would have been delighted that there were enough spring flowers to be found in the garden to decorate both the church and the house, so no one would have to fork out for florists.

‘Such a pity cow parsley isn’t out,’ sighed Romy, ‘so pretty and so cheap.’

The only thing Martin needed was for his literary brother-in-law Alan to dig out a few poems so they could get the service sheet printed, but he was still ostensibly interviewing monks up north.

‘I’m sure I saw him at Cheltenham on the news just now,’ said Romy beadily.

Once the children were in bed, Martin and Romy riffled through the albums to find a suitable photograph of Sampson to put on the service sheet.

‘What a handsome chap he was,’ sighed Romy. ‘And who’s that?’ She peered at a curling print. ‘My goodness, it’s you, Etta. You were glam in those days. I can’t believe it’s you. And who’s that gorgeous woman with Sampson? Heavens, it’s Blanche – wasn’t she lovely?’

‘Lovely now,’ said Martin warmly. ‘Blanche is an awfully sweet person, and quite inconsolable. I talked to her again today.’

At supper of chicken Marengo that had Carrie reaching for the salt and tabasco, Romy tried to shake Etta out of her blank-eyed grief.

‘You must talk to Mummy, she’s handled widowhood so splendidly. Mind you, she’s got so many friends who adore her and keep asking her to stay, she never has a moment to herself. Of course, she can’t get enough of Poppy and Drummond.’ Then, as Etta gave the rest of her chicken to Bartlett, ‘Are you taking anything in, Etta?’

‘Yes, you’re very kind,’ muttered Etta.

‘It’s good to talk,’ said Romy smugly.

‘Can you possibly wash a couple of white shirts for me, Mother?’ asked Carrie.

Romy was gratified to find a disc of ancient dog sick under the spare-room bed. Martin was gratified that in bed that night, at the prospect of never seeing his father again, he cried his eyes out and buried his face in his wife’s splendid breasts, which led to them having very noisy sex.

‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!’

Etta, in the next bedroom, put her pillow over her head. On the other side, Carrie’s rage redoubled that Alan still hadn’t arrived. She suspected he was at Cheltenham.

Blond, slight and delicate-featured, Alan Macbeth was a very good writer. He was also a drinker and gambler, whose thirst for winners was only equalled by his fondness for alcohol. Carrie, who liked to project an image of a two-career family, wanted Alan to write more successfully and constantly nagged him to work harder.

In fact Alan had spent a large proportion of his married life as a househusband, enabling his wife’s career to soar. Currently writing a book on depression, Alan most enjoyed carousing with his friends and chatting up the crumpet outside the school gates so assiduously that he had been nicknamed ‘Mother Fucker’.

Those blond, delicate looks, soft voice and languid manner misled women and more often their husbands into thinking that Alan was gay. Women felt safe with him, until it was too late.

‘Being married to a workaholic,’ Alan was fond of saying, ‘gives you a lot of days off.’

Despite leaving him so frequently to his own devices, Carrie had inherited her father’s insanely jealous nature and kept her husband very short.

Alan’s arrival at Bluebell Hill the following afternoon coincided with the end of the Cheltenham Festival. Having had a good win on the Gold Cup, he brought for Etta, to whom he was devoted, a tube of Berocca, a bottle of vodka, a huge bunch of freesias and a white cashmere scarf to relieve the black of her funeral outfit.

‘Poor old darling,’ he said, hugging her.

‘I can’t get used to the quiet and him not calling for me,’ mumbled Etta. ‘So awful I wasn’t there.’

‘Trust the old bugger to depart in Cheltenham week.’

‘Is that where you were?’ said Romy reproachfully.

To his wife, brother-and sister-in-law’s disapproval, Alan got stuck into the whisky. He then produced a lovely piece of Milton, appropriately from
Samson Agonistes
, for Martin to read.

‘Dad loved Bunyan – what about something uplifting from
Pilgrim’s Progress
?’ suggested Carrie.

‘Giant Despair had a wife and her name was Diffidence,’ quipped Alan. ‘Sums up your dad and mum to a T.’

Then, when they looked disapproving, he suggested Carrie might ‘read the bit about Mr Valiant-for-Truth and the trumpets sounding for him on the other side. We could hire a trumpeter to play the Last Post.’

‘That would cost money,’ complained Martin. ‘Dame Hermione is singing “Where’er You Walk” for nothing.’

‘Drummond wants to get up and describe all the nice things he remembers about Grampy,’ said Romy, putting on a soppy face.

‘Shouldn’t take long,’ murmured Alan, looking down his list. ‘And for you, Romy …’

‘I prefer to source my own material. I’ve found this lovely piece about only being in the next room.’

‘I love it,’ said Martin, crinkling his eyes engagingly. ‘“Call me by my old familiar name.”’

‘Stingy old bugger, in Sampson’s case,’ muttered Alan, who’d detested his father-in-law, a dislike that had been reciprocated.

Carrie often vanished to work in Sampson’s office, but she and Martin also kept sloping off round the house earmarking loot.

‘Don’t they remind you of the Walrus and the Carpenter,’ Alan remarked to Etta, ‘sobbing over the oysters? Boo hoo, I can manage the Sickert if you can accommodate the Nevinson.’

Etta didn’t laugh. Getting ice out of the fridge for Alan’s whisky, she proceeded to drop four cubes into Bartlett’s water bowl. She was haunted by a memory of Sampson sitting on the edge of the bed looking bewildered, not knowing where he was, like a torch battery running out. She shouldn’t have left him.

Alan wandered upstairs to talk to Hinton, the gardener, who was dismantling the hoists in Sampson and Etta’s bedroom. He and Ruthie, he said, though shaken and worried about their own future, were determined to look after Etta as long as possible.

‘Poor soul’s pushed herself too far. I wish she’d rest. The boss made her use teabags twice. He was so tight with money.’

‘I’m tight without money,’ sighed Alan, aware that he’d overspent at Cheltenham. Wandering downstairs and finding Romy and Martin sipping sherry in the drawing room, he poured himself another large whisky.

‘If you’re writing that book on depression,’ said Romy beadily, ‘perhaps you could counsel Etta. I’m drawing a blank. She’s selfishly refusing to listen, and I’m such a good listener.’

‘All roads lead to Romy,’ observed Alan and received a scowl from his brother-in-law.

Alan wished he hadn’t embarked on the bloody depression book. The advance had all been spent. Observing his wife, brother-in-law and Romy, however, Alan didn’t feel any of them were suffering from depression, more like suppressed euphoria. They were at last free of Sampson’s domination and anticipating riches to come. It was as though Saddam Hussein’s statue had crashed to the ground like a felled oak.

Alan, however, was desperately worried about Etta, who’d been bullied into a gibbering wreck by Sampson and, if her children got their way, would swiftly exchange one tyranny for another. He must protect her.

On the way to bed, having turned on Teletext to look at tomorrow’s runners, Alan noticed that one of the expected guests at the funeral, an arms-dealing billionaire called Shade Murchieson, had a good horse in the 3.00 at Ludlow. Swaying upstairs, he found his wife already in bed, wearing a red wool nightshirt, working on her laptop, and went into the bathroom to clean his teeth.

‘So what’s the form?’ he asked.

‘We’ll have to sell.’

‘Poor darling Etta.’

‘You always stick up for her. She can’t be left rattling around in a huge house with only her memories.’

‘Particularly when you’re going to get four million for it.’

‘Someone’s got to think about money in our house,’ snapped Carrie and regretted it. In blue-striped pyjamas her husband looked about fourteen.

‘I don’t believe you’ve been interviewing monks,’ she snarled. ‘Romy saw you at Cheltenham.’

‘Yes, yes, yes, yes,’ came sobbing confirmation from next door.

‘Jesus!’ cried Carrie, who also longed to be made love to.

‘Death always makes people randy,’ grinned Alan, snuggling under the duvet beside her. Next moment he was asleep.

Hell, I shouldn’t have nagged him, thought Carrie. Unclenching her fists, she slid one hand between her legs.

Alan, who’d only been pretending to go to sleep, thought how nice it would be to see their daughter, Trixie, tomorrow. He’d missed her terribly since she’d been packed off to boarding
school by Carrie, who’d been fed up with him chatting up the day-school mums.

Trixie at thirteen was alarmingly aware of her lethally emerging sex appeal. Like a principal toyboy, she had inherited her mother’s ragged dark hair and her father’s slenderness and delicate features. She was also clever. Alan often left her reading a book in the drawing room at night to find her still there finishing it in the morning.