The Feast (37 page)

But that, she complained, would force her to join the picnic. And she rejected impatiently his plea that she should do so. It would bore her, she said, quite as much as it bored him. She wanted to go home to bed. They stood on either side of the wine basket, disputing,
unsettled
. Duff was afraid that she might guess his real reason for returning to the house. She shrank from
revealing
her real reason for avoiding the Feast, and that she would have fallen in with his plan if Evangeline Wraxton had not been up there. They were growing quite angry when a frightened cry among the bushes startled them:

‘Oh … oh … a snake!’

It was Blanche Cove, who had been hurrying along the path as fast as she could.

‘Oh, Mrs. Siddal. Take care! There’s a snake….’

‘It’s all right,’ called Duff. ‘It’s only a grass snake probably. There are lots about this evening. They keep slipping up hill across the path all the time. They won’t hurt you.’

Blanche appeared, breathless and frightened, in a pink kimono.

‘Oh, I was trying to get back to the house without anyone seeing,’ she said. ‘To get the wine. They’ve
forgotten
the wine. We noticed just now and we didn’t want any of our guests to know … so Fred is keeping them amused while I run back….’

‘That’s all right,’ said Duff. ‘We’ve got it here.’

‘Oh, Duff! Did you go for it? How kind you are?’

‘No. My mother brought it….’

‘Oh, Mrs. Siddal! Are you quite better? We were afraid you would have to miss it. Now do come quickly because it’s really supper time.’

Blanche seized the basket and was quite distressed when Duff took it from her, because she did not think that her guest should be put to so much trouble.

‘You haven’t really missed so very much,’ she told Mrs. Siddal, as she herded them along towards the point
like a vigilant little sheepdog. ‘Only some games. All the best part is yet to come.’

‘But I have no fancy dress‚’ protested Mrs. Siddal. ‘I didn’t know I was coming.’

‘Oh, that’s quite all right, Mrs. Siddal, you can be Duff’s Aunt Jobiska. Oh, Duff … where is your lovely head?’

Very reluctantly Duff pulled his wig out of his pocket and put it on. He could see no way of escaping the rest of the Feast, now, without insult to Blanche. He yielded, as everyone else had yielded, to the power of the Coves. He was angry and frustrated, but at the same time he knew that he had had an escape. For if his mother had not met him in the road he might never have remembered that bald pate. He would have descended, wolf-like, upon Pendizack and the expectant Anna in the guise of a pobble. A mistake like that, he reflected, might have such humiliating repercussions as could ruin a man’s sex life before it had even started.

Supper had been delayed rather too long and the genial spirit of the Feast had begun to fizzle out, though all
maintained
a dutiful pretence of enjoyment. Most of the guests had arrived in low spirits. Gerry and Evangeline were over-tired and wanted to be alone together. Sir Henry’s gloom was scarcely enlivened by the cricket on his nose. Mrs. Paley concealed a tearful face beneath her hat; Paul’s contempt still had power to wound her. Caroline had been struggling with tears all the evening, for Hebe, while they were dressing, had announced that she had done something dreadful and was to be sent away for ever and ever. She would not say what it was, nor would she admit that she minded leaving them. So that Caroline was glad to hide her stricken face under
the hood of a sheeted ghost, and Hebe made a very morose angel.

Fred, Robin, the twins and the three hostesses were genuinely happy, and Nancibel’s sorrows were so deeply buried that nobody could have supposed she had any.

When Mrs. Siddal and Duff were brought into the fold the whole party was sitting in a ring singing
Ten
Green
Bottles
to Fred’s accompaniment. Nobody much liked this song except the twins, who had suggested it, but there seemed no way of escape from any of its verses. At times the chant sank to a dispirited murmur, and then, under the spur of social conscience, rose to a forced yell. There were moments when Luke and Michael sang alone:

Karoo! Karoo! wailed the accordion, between each verse.

‘Sing up! Sing up, everybody‚’ adjured Robin. ‘FIVE GREEN BOTTLES …’

Room was made for Mrs. Siddal beside Mrs. Paley, and the wine was handed to Gerry, who made grimaces of horror and apology.

‘It’s an awful picnic,’ whispered Angie to Duff. ‘The best thing we can do is to get tight. Thank heaven for the wine! But the Coves are liking it.’

‘The Coves,’ said Duff, ‘are a menace. They look like white mice, and see what they’ve done to us all.’

Karoo! Karoo!

‘Sing up!’

‘Sisters ought not to be parted,’ said Caroline to Hebe. ‘If you go away, I shall go away. Have you got a hankie?’

‘No. Blow your nose on your sheet.’

Nancibel sat on a rock looking very beautiful. The Spanish shawl and high comb endowed her with an
unfamiliar
dignity. For a moment her attention wandered from the scene and her expression was pensive. Then she perceived that Mrs. Siddal had come and her warm smile shone out.

The penance was over and they might have their supper. All the food was already set out on a white cloth, and Robin had been busy with a corkscrew during the last verses of the song. Beatrice rose, clutching her kimono, which was too large and long.

‘And now, Ladies and Gentlemen,’ she announced, ‘you are invited to partake of a cold collation and to imbibe some delicious hock kindly provided for us by our most honoured guest, Sir Henry Gifford.’

All gathered round the cloth where Evangeline and Robin were pouring the wine into glasses.

‘Are the children to have any?’ asked Gerry.

‘We all need it,’ said Duff, firmly. ‘Here you are, Nancibel!’

But Nancibel protested that she was Band of Hope.

‘This is non-alcoholic,’ he assured her. ‘Taste it and see. It’s white, not red.’

‘I wouldn’t know. So is champagne white.’

She took a sip and was sure that he was stringing her along. But secretly she was feeling so sad about Bruce that she welcomed stimulant and, after serving lobster salad, she finished her glass. A warm reassurance flowed through her veins. She ceased to mourn the past. A bright future beckoned through the sunset clouds.

He was kidding me, she thought. Lemonade never did this to me. I won’t take any more.

But she had to take more, for Maud Cove was proposing a toast.

‘Pray charge your glasses‚’ she cried, ‘and drink to the absent but beloved provider of the tomatoes: Mr. Bruce … Mr. Bruce … oh, dear!’

‘Partridge,’ said Nancibel, who was the only person to know.

‘Bruce …’ shouted everybody. ‘Bruce!’

A pleasant elation was sweeping over the party. Few of them had ever drunk hock before, and only Sir Henry was used to it. Angie had put very little in the children’s glasses but enough to enliven them. Caroline and Hebe began to giggle. They took the cricket off Sir Henry’s nose and put it in Fred’s salad to startle him. Gerry was telling a story and laughing loudly at it.

‘She said: “Who met a tarsal?” You did. Didn’t you, Angie?’

‘You’d think‚’ said Angie to Mrs. Paley, ‘that he’d get tired of that joke.’

‘He’ll never get tired of it‚’ said Mrs. Paley. ‘Make up your mind to that, Angie. Men have single-track minds. You’ll have to live with that joke all your life. He’ll tell it against you on your silver wedding day.’

‘What joke?’ asked Mrs. Siddal, leaning round Mrs. Paley’s hat to look at Evangeline.

It was the first time that she had spoken to the girl. Evangeline, swimming in vinous optimism, decided to take it as an olive branch.

‘Gerry was telling me‚’ she began, ‘about tarsals and meta-tarsals.’

Robin, on the other side of the picnic cloth, nudged Duff and made him look.

‘Girls are getting together‚’ he muttered.

Their mother and Evangeline both had their heads under Mrs. Paley’s hat, so that nothing could be seen of
their faces. But a burst of chuckles could be heard behind the ribbon fringe.

‘They’re all a bit on,’ said Duff.

And Caroline told Hebe that she did not feel as if she was sitting on anything at all.

‘We’re drunk,’ explained Hebe.

‘Are we? How do you know?’

‘I’ve been drunk before. Much worse than this.’

Karoo! Karoo!

Fred struck up
The
Lily
of
Laguna
,
which Mrs. Paley had named as her favourite tune when asked. It was not, and she had meant to ask for
Pale
Hands
I
Loved
,
but had got muddled. The air was taken up with gusto by the whole company.

‘I thought it had something in it about lotus buds,’ complained Mrs. Paley.

‘Don’t let the children have any more hock.’

‘Robin! No more hock for the children.’

‘I’ll have to sign the pledge all over again. I don’t know what our Mum would say to me.’

‘This is a lovely picnic.’

‘This is a grand picnic.’

‘Where has my cricket gone? Who has taken my cricket?’

‘Uncle Arly has lost his cricket.’

‘No, but Angie, I must tell you a funny story about Gerry when he was a baby. I’d left him in his pram and …’

‘I’ve got a wish bone. I’ve got a wish bone. Mrs. Paley … would you like a wish with my bone?’

‘No, Hebe. You wish your own wish.’

‘Well … I wish the Coves could be your children, and you wish it too, and we pull, and whichever gets the wish end …’

‘It’s no use wishing for something impossible …’

The Coves were too happy to sing, too happy to eat. Gravely they circled round the ring offering food and drink to their guests. Without seeming to do so they ruled the Feast and saw to it that everything should be done in a suitable manner. When the twins, who were dressed as Red Indians, evinced an inclination to tomahawk their neighbours, Blanche put an immediate stop to it by saying earnestly:

‘Oh, but we’re saving up the
tomahawks
till midnight. It’s Nancibel’s turn now. She’s going to sing about the wicked old dolphin.’

There was a sudden hush and Nancibel looked startled.

‘It’s ever such an old-fashioned song,’ she told them. ‘I don’t know how I had the face to say I’d sing it. My great-grannie used to sing it.’

‘It’s a lovely song,’ said Beatrix. ‘Nancibel sang it to us the day we were drowned.’

‘Go on, Nancibel!’

Nancibel lifted her chin and sang instinctively in the sweet, steady tone of an older tradition:

‘It’s a folk song!’ whispered Duff in excitement. ‘It’s an uncollected folk song!’
 

‘A local folk song! And we’ve lived here all our lives without hearing it.’