A Proper Family Christmas (32 page)

“Oh yes, - that islands game!” His eagerness suggested he bore no ill will for its dietary contingencies.

“No,
not
that,” said Lesley, glaring at the insouciant Shelley, who, having done her duty of bringing the children down, was lounging in one of the sitting-room chairs.

“Let's find something we can
all
do,” said Julia. “…Gosh, there are lots of us, aren't there?”

“What about a quiz?” said Stephen.

“That's no good, - we haven't any questions,” said Lesley. “Oh dear, we should have brought Trivial Pursuit.”

“Good heavens, anyone can set a quiz!” exclaimed Leo. “It doesn't take many brain cells to look up a few reference books.”

“Good man, Leo,” Stephen took this as an offer. “There are plenty of dictionaries and things in the study.”

“Oh! …Well, all right then. I won't be long. You could be finding pencils and paper.”

“Or what about charades?” said Julia, when he'd gone. “That's huge fun, and the children always love dressing up.”

“We've got enough for three teams…” Tony began to divide them up. “Four Shirburns with William. Three Britwells plus Shelley. …Yes of course you are, Shell, you'll love it!”

“…And me, Mum and Gran, with Oliver,” Daniel finished for him. “You can be an honorary Watlington.”

“Many thanks.” Oliver came and sat beside Hilary.

“We'd better get the rules straight, first of all,” said Margery, with an eye on Lesley. One of the grudges the family had against her was that she had been taught the miming version. “We're not doing it that silly American way! …Oliver, do you know how to play this?”

“You take a word, and act out each syllable?”

“No, you've got to
introduce
the syllable into each scene, with the whole word in the last one.” Margery was a strict upholder of the version played in the Shirburn household for the past few decades.

“You're supposed to slip them casually into the conversation,” Hilary explained to him. “But it's quite difficult to find something normal-sounding. Otherwise it sticks out like a sore thumb and everyone spots it immediately.”

“We mustn't have things that are too hard for the children to guess…”

“Yes, Lesley, we're not going to ruin the game, just so Tobias can win!” Margery told her. “Come on, get into your teams and think up your words. - No more than three syllables, or it takes for ever. You can stay here, Lesley, - we'll never get William out of that chair. Julia's lot can have the hall.”

“Isn't this fun? Just like when we were little! I wonder where the old dressing-up box got to…”

“Only a quarter of an hour to plan in!” Margery gave a final order, as she led her own team towards the kitchen. “If we letting them start messing about with costumes, they'll be all day!” she added, before the door was quite closed.

Oliver thought of a word at once. “Sentiment,” he suggested, Julia's last remark obviously echoing in his ears.

“Oh yes: ‘sent' - ‘tea' - ‘meant', - that's good!” Daniel nodded.

“Hm, cheating really, using the consonant twice,” said the Authority, “but I bet they do!”

“Okay,” said Oliver, “what if you and Hilary are a mother and daughter, and we've been
sent
to tell you some bad news…”

With each of them contributing to the increasingly unlikely plot, they ended up with a melodrama, in which Oliver arrived to tell Daniel's mother and sister that he'd shot him in a duel. Despite the offender's breach of good taste in bringing the body along behind him, they still felt compelled to offer him a cup of
tea
, and he was then to assure them he'd never
meant
to do it, with a final scene in which the mother was to declare herself overcome with
sentiment
.

“…No, that's too obvious.” Daniel waved an objecting hand. “We need to make it more complicated, or they'll get it at once. Suppose this guy and the daughter fall in love?”

“…Though they ‘never meant this to happen'!” Oliver and he laughed as they chorused the words together. “And then the son, who turns out not to be quite dead after all, objects, and he's got a gun…”

“What a load of rubbish!” Margery chuckled at the finished result. “Now, where are we going to get our props from?”

Her quarter of an hour had been exceeded by about times three, when at last everyone was back in the sitting-room, ready to perform. The Shirburns went first with a classical theme.

‘The Founding of Rome', with Tobias as Romulus cuddling
near
to his mother under a fur rug as the she-wolf, led to some giggles from the audience. William played the eponymous hero in ‘The Death of Caesar', letting out a series of passionate ‘oh's, as he was stabbed with the poker by his treacherous consul, Stephen. Tobias then returned in a towel for a toga, and waved his hands rather ambiguously about in the air, - a mystery solved when in reply to the question: “What are you doing, Nero?” he explained that he was fiddling while Rome burned.

“Good God, you can't use obscure proper names!” exclaimed Margery in horror, even though no one had had much difficulty in guessing the word.Julia's team had inevitably spent more time on their costumes than their script, which featured a fairy with the unlikely name of Chris, who kept begging her nanny not to ‘muss' her hair up. Hilary was amazed to see a show-off like Shelley freeze into wooden immobility, when called upon to deliver a line she might have uttered every day in normal life.

“You needn't bother to do the third scene!” said William rudely, but Tony went ahead and re-enacted Oliver's role as Father Christmas, using enough of the original costume to produce outraged accusations of theft of intellectual property from those who had helped devise it.

“Right, it's our turn!” said Margery, with the air of someone who was going to show others how things should be done. “Where are those shawls?”

She and Hilary sat by the fire, telling each other how cold it was, - a red herring suggested by Daniel. There was a knock on the sitting-room door, and Oliver announced that he'd been sent - by whom, wasn't clear - to tell them the bad news that their ‘son-stroke-brother' was dead. “…In fact,” he admitted, “I'm afraid I killed your son-stroke-brother in a duel, in a rather sneaky way.” He twirled imaginary moustaches at the audience, who booed obligingly.

When he opened the door to reveal the corpse, even Hilary gave a little scream. That wretched boy must have run off and found William's ketchup bottle, for he was now smeared in horribly realistic gore! Margery's polite offer of a cup of tea at that point nearly brought the house down.

She left the stage, and, apparently uninhibited by the presence of the corpse, the daughter and the villain declared the passion for each other that they'd ‘never meant to happen'.

So far according to the script. What Hilary hadn't bargained for, was that Oliver then took her in his arms and kissed her. Totally taken by surprise, uncertain what to do, she kissed him back. Thoughts fluttered through her head. Surely he couldn't be acting this? How should she respond? Dear God, she didn't appear to have any choice in the matter! It was a kiss that demanded a response from her whole body. And everyone was watching. What would they think? …After a moment or two, she didn't care. This was where she should be, the right thing to be doing.

It seemed an age before Daniel the Corpse came back to life, told the offender to take his dastardly hands off her in an uncomfortably apposite way, and produced an imaginary gun and ‘rid the world of a despicable scoundrel'. Oliver had the presence of mind to clutch his chest and die at artistic length. Hilary's reaction of dazed shock was luckily appropriate, and Margery returned to speak her line.

The audience cheered as if they'd never stop. Was it the spectacle she and Oliver had just given them? All Hilary's self-consciousness returned, and she found she couldn't look at them, or him, or her son.

They were having surprising difficulty in guessing the word. Eventually William got it, to renewed cheers.

“You're awfully noisy in here!” Leo came in, bearing a long sheet of paper. “It took a bit longer than I said, but I've finished the quiz now.”

CHAPTER 20

Frances drifted into an uncomfortable sleep at last, and woke to hear Lesley still arguing. …No, not Lesley, - that was Julia's voice. What a relief! She was talking to Tony in their room next door. It was comforting to think of them so near by.

“Well, we've got to do
something
!” she heard Tony saying. “There'll be another set of those bloody bills waiting when we get home. I can't stall the bank for ever.”

“If only you hadn't invested in that stupid web-site thing!”

“Yes, well, they seemed like perfectly sound blokes, and one of them was in IT…”

Had Julia and Tony got financial problems then? She'd assumed they were pretty well off. …She was trying not to listen, but the wall was so thin, they might have been sitting beside her.

“It would be an awful shame to have to sell the house.” There was a creak that suggested Julia had flopped onto the bed.

“Wouldn't do any good if we did. It's all owed to the mortgage company.”

“…I suppose Posy could drop ballet, but she's doing so well.”

“It'll take more than the odd ballet class, I'm afraid!”

“If you're suggesting we should send her to that ghastly little state school…” The bed creaked again, angrily.

“All I'm saying is that it's a bloody shame your father has to mess everybody about. He's sitting on a gold-mine here, but it's no use to anyone at the moment.”

“I'm sure we'll be getting it all eventually. He can't still mean Stephen to inherit Haseley, after everything we've done to show him what a bad idea that would be!”

“
Eventually
's no use. We need that money now. It's no good seeing off all the other contenders, if we can't get him to put pen to bloody paper!”

“But even then, we'd have to wait till he dies,” Julia pointed out. “Or are you suggesting we murder the poor old thing?” She gave heartless little giggle that made Frances's blood run cold.

She couldn't be hearing this! She must be still asleep, having one of those awful nightmares where one's nicest of friends turn into monsters.

“Once he's signed that will, we can get Power of Attorney,” Tony was explaining. “And then if he still refuses to move out, it shouldn't be too difficult to get him sectioned. Everyone knows how eccentric he is, - and Stephen might co-operate, if he gets a bit of a sweetener. There'll be plenty for all, once the house is sold.”

Frances slipped her legs out from under the covers, and gingerly tried her ankle on the floor. She didn't know what she was going to do, but she couldn't just lie there.

“Well let's give it another try now, before supper. Where did you put that form?” Frances heard the bed creak again. Julia was getting up, about to go downstairs and make poor William sign his life away…

“
No
!”

“Frances! Aren't you supposed to be in bed? Good lord, you look as if you've seen a ghost.”

“Her room's right next door,” Tony gave a rueful grimace.

“Oh, - did you overhear some of what we were saying? I'm sure you must have misunderstood.”

Frances shook her head. There had been no possibility of misunderstanding. She wished there had. If only she could have convinced herself that it
was
a nightmare, or the two cruel strangers with Julia and Tony's voices had turned out not to be them after all!

“Now, Frances, come and sit down.” How often had Tony beguiled her with that sympathetic tone? She leant against the wardrobe to take the weight off her foot, rather than rest it with him beside her. “You must know that we only want what's best for William. He'd be far better off in care.” This from the man who'd been banging on about the evils of retirement homes!

“Of course he would! Much better than living all alone in this horrid great house.” Seeing her face, Julia tried a different tack. “…Look here, darling, let's not beat about the bush. We all want this money. You were hoping Daniel would get it, weren't you? Well, you're wasting your time there. I'm afraid Daddy and Margery are the most awful snobs, and neither of them would think of leaving him anything if he marries a nanny. - I'm sorry, but there it is.”

Frances stared at her in disbelief. …What had Shelley been saying? Had she poisoned their minds with her ridiculous accusation, - or was it they who had put it into Shelley's head? Surely Julia and Tony couldn't possibly believe she was so mercenary… Oh, she didn't know what to think any more!

“You're not going to say anything silly to Daddy, are you?” said Julia, as Frances turned away in despair. “I'm sure we could come to some arrangement if you're really hard up.”

“She can't get down the stairs, remember? You go back to bed, Frances, and rest that ankle of yours.”

It was true that her foot was hurting, and all she wanted to do was to go and bury her head under the covers. Frances hobbled out of the room and shut the door behind her.

No one was really in the mood for a quiz, but they felt rather guilty that Leo had got left out of the charades, particularly in the knowledge that they'd had much more fun without him. Shelley took the children upstairs, when it was clear they hadn't a hope of joining in, and Julia and Tony had soon given up and gone off as well, leaving the rest of them to struggle with a set of questions which would have given University Challenge a run for its money.

“Come on, Hilary, you must know this!” Leo was beginning to show signs of irritation at her ignorance, but it was difficult to bend her mind to obscure events in Emily Brontë's life, when it was so preoccupied with recent events in her own. She was still reeling from Oliver's kiss. One thing was for sure, - that man wasn't gay! He had meant it when he kissed her. The touch of those strong lips had been sensuous and demanding, and she was shocked at the uncontrolled passion it had awoken in her. Wasn't she supposed to be beyond such heights, at her age?