Authors: Leslie Wells
“Have a seat.” Sharon indicated a large armchair next to hers. “Jack, you’re such a liar.”
Jack was standing over a low table, piling a plate high with little sandwiches, scones with jam and cream, and cakes from a tiered stand. “What do you mean?”
“You said Julia was six-foot and blonde, with lots of piercings.”
“That was the other Julia I was seeing.” Jack added one more cream puff to the pile and sat in a chair next to his mother. “Why do you insist on these tiny plates?” he complained. Oliver stood by his side, breathlessly narrating his recent soccer match.
“—and then I almost got the ball, but this stonking big duffer kicked me in the shin—”
“You’re small, like I was at your age. But you’ll grow like a weed when you’re about fourteen,” Jack said to him. “Where’s the old sod?” he asked Sharon. I knew he didn’t care for her husband.
“Duncan’s off to a barrister’s conference in Horncastle.” Sharon frowned as she poured for me.
“Good riddance.” Jack blew on his tea.
“Now, Jack,” Maggie admonished. “How do you like the way Dilly did the parlor? Emma, leave the cat alone,” she said to her granddaughter, who was pulling its tail.
“I’ve never been too fond of chintz,” Jack said, cramming half a tart into his mouth. “Mmm, scrummy.” He fed the other half to Randall, who waddled over to me, masticating.
“You know tarts give him wind,” Maggie said.
“Here, pussy,” Emma was saying. Oliver made a grab for the cat, which hid under my chair.
“Do you have a pussy?” Oliver looked up at me.
“She has a very nice one. What?” Jack said innocently when I gave him a look.
“You’re gonna take me driving, aren’t you Uncle Jack?” Oliver insisted.
“Jack tells me you’re just out of university. What did you read?” Maggie asked, stroking the trembling Yorkie in her lap.
I placed my teacup in its saucer and tried to surreptitiously nudge Randall away as he sniffed my leg. “Oh, a little of everything. Virginia Woolf, Faulkner…” Randall gave my ankle a tentative lick.
“She means what did you major in.” Jack took a slurp of tea. “That’s what Julia and I have in common; our deep abiding interest in English literature.” He grinned and licked a smear of lemon curd off the corner of his mouth. “And now she’s a book editor, always swotting away at the manuscripts. What’s this?” He scooped up the Yorkie with one hand and held it high so we could see the lettering on its sweater:
I AM the grandchild!
“That was an early Christmas gift from me,” Sharon said as Jack dumped the dog back onto Maggie’s lap.
“Does your company publish Barbara Cartland? She’s very popular over here,” Maggie asked.
“No, we don’t have that many big fiction authors. My boss would like to acquire some more.” I was distracted by the bulldog’s lavish ankle-licking. Suddenly it reared up, front paws grasping my knee.
“Randy, get down! You see where he gets his name,” Jack said as the bulldog began enthusiastically humping my leg. “Just shove him away. Now, who’s ready for presents?”
“Me! Me!” Oliver screamed. Sharon grabbed Randy’s collar and dragged him off my leg, making him choke up the tart in the process.
“No, me!” Emma cried, jumping up.
“I may have one or two things for you both,” Jack said, getting up from his seat. “Let me just crack a window first.”
“I told you those tarts gave him wind,” Maggie said.
An hour later, wrapping paper was strewn from one end of the room to the other. Oliver and Jack were on the floor putting together a complicated racecar track, and Emma had opened her 48-piece china tea set to feed her six new dolls. Sharon had begun by weakly protesting all the gifts, but in the end she gave up as Jack brought out one box after another from the limo’s “boot,” as he called it. Maggie modeled the elegant floor-length coat he’d had shipped to her, and Sharon thanked Jack for its double, which she’d left back home in Surrey.
The women unwrapped sweaters and scarves from Jack and exclaimed politely over my gifts of candles and potpourri. Sharon gave me a lovely bottle of perfume. I pushed Randy off my leg for the third time and took the package Maggie handed me. Inside the box was a large leering nutcracker with a wild tuft of red hair.
“Thank you! This will be so…useful,” I said, opening and shutting its jaws.
“I recognize that; it’s what Dilly gave you last Christmas,” Sharon said accusingly.
“It is no such thing,” Maggie said haughtily. “Anyway, I have three of them already.”
Sharon rolled her eyes at me. “Mum can’t help herself; she always passes along the gifts. At least it wasn’t a water pick.”
“Nonsense. It only looks like the one Dilly gave me. Anyway, Julia, I’m sure you want to wash up and unpack. I’ll show you to your room. Tracy will have brought up your bags.”
“I’ll show her the way.” Jack jumped up and grabbed my hand. “What time’s supper? We’re going to relax for a bit.”
Maggie narrowed her eyes. “I’m sure Julia would like to rest after such a long flight. I’ve put her in Caroline’s old room,” she said pointedly. “And your room is made up for you.”
“We’ll just have a quick kip,” Jack said. He pulled me into the hallway toward the big staircase.
“Did you just tell her we’re going to have sex?” I whispered as I followed him up the carpeted steps.
“Well, we are, aren’t we? Don’t you fancy a bit of a hump?” Jack grinned. “Nah, a kip is a nap. You didn’t know that from your extensive reading?”
“I’m not familiar with some of these expressions,” I muttered as we reached the second floor. “Caroline was the girlfriend in your mid-twenties, right?” I felt a surprisingly sharp stab of jealousy. He’d showed me her picture once when he’d gotten out an old box of photos; she was thin, blonde, and rich. “How long did you say you went out with her?”
“I dunno, several years. It was never ‘her’ room; she only stayed here a couple of Christmases. Mum was just impressed because her Dad was an Earl or something.”
Jack led me down a long hallway with hunter-green walls, hung with dark paintings. I made a mental note to check them out later. He stopped at the third door and pushed it open. “Ah, she’s put you in Old Squeaky,” he said as we entered the room. My bag was on the floor next to a large chest of drawers with an age-spotted mirror, a fireplace, two armchairs, and a settee.
“This is really nice,” I said, glancing around.
“Take a good look, because you aren’t staying here,” Jack said.
“But your mother!” I was horrified at the thought of antagonizing Maggie.
“I’ll handle her. This is bullshit; she knows we’re living together.” Jack took off his boots and leaped onto the bed.
“What are you doing?” Jack began jumping, the bed emanating loud creaks and squeaks. He leaped higher, his hair flying. The bed juddered like it was about to break in two. “Stop—you’re wrecking it!” I cried.
“Now for the encore.” Jack knelt facing the headboard and began slamming it rhythmically against the wall. He banged it one last time and gave a loud, drawn-out groan.
My cheeks were burning. “How am I going to face them now?”
“Serves her right. C’mon, my room’s the best one in the house.”
“I hope you had a good kip,” Maggie said, eyeing me when we came downstairs a few hours later. To my horror, a hot blush crept up my face.
“Oh, it was fantastic,” Jack said with a wolfish grin. “One of the best ever.”
Dinner, which they called “supper,” was poached eggs, mashed potatoes with sausages, and toast. Apparently it was the custom to eat a large meal in the middle of the day—their dinner—and then have a big formal tea at four, followed by a light meal around eight p.m. I was starving, since I’d been too nervous to eat any of the previous spread. While I devoured my eggs, Oliver ran in circles around the table. Every time he passed Emma, he yanked her hair, making her shriek.
“Ollie, sit next to me,” Jack finally said. “Reminds me of m’self when I was that age,” he added fondly. I noticed Sharon’s exhausted expression and wondered how she managed. From what I’d gathered, her husband wasn’t around much. Emma was just as rambunctious, complaining all the while that she hated bangers and mash.
“It’s your uncle’s favorite supper,” Maggie said reprovingly. When she turned to pass the butter, Emma stuck out her tongue.
“Ahh, I’ve missed home cooking,” Jack said as he served himself seconds. “Too bad I only know how to make breakfast.”
“You don’t cook, Julia?” Maggie gave me a pointed look.
“I never really learned,” I said, chagrinned at having to explain. If Jack wanted a domestic diva, he was with the wrong girl. I hadn’t been aware that it was high on his checklist. “I was in grad school up until a year and a half ago, living on cafeteria food. And now I’m spending long hours in the office.”
“Never too late to learn,” Maggie said. “I’ll jot down my recipe for Yorkshire pudding before you leave; I’ve known Jack to eat three helpings. And treacle sponge, and shepherd’s pie—even a simpleton could make that. I stuff the pie with minced lamb and mashed potatoes.”
I felt like telling
her
to stuff it, but I merely nodded.
After supper Tracy cleared away the table, refusing my offer of help. “Save the foil!” Maggie called into the kitchen. We gathered in a capacious room that I would have called a den; there were large windows overlooking a frosty garden, a television, and several sofas and chairs. Jack lay on the floor letting Ollie trounce him at arm-wrestling, while Maggie sat in a chair by the fireplace and removed the Yorkie’s sweater. Tracy passed around tea, which was chokingly strong. As I dumped in more milk, Sharon held up her silver spoon.
“Do you think they’ll want it back?” she asked Jack.
“They probably do. More’s the pity,” Jack said.
I looked inquiringly at Sharon. “Jack and his friend Ned got into a lot of scrapes when they were young,” she said.
“Julia wouldn’t be interested in all that,” Jack said. “Ah, you’ve beat me again.” His arm whumped to the carpet beneath Ollie’s full weight.
“I imagine she’d fancy this story.” Sharon smiled. “Jack and Ned were always up to some barmy doings. They once got the notion to make a prank call to our local funeral parlor. They told the director that their uncle had died; he’d choked on a spoon that morning. The man got very worked up when they said they had him on ice in a large bin in the basement.”
“That wanker,” Jack said. “He’d complained to the cops just because we nicked one jar of his precious formaldehyde.”
“Why’d you do that?” I asked.
“Thought it would get us high.” Jack glanced at Oliver, who was soaking in every word. “Don’t get ideas, young man.”
“But tell her the kicker,” Sharon said.
“Well, the director said he’d get a driver over right away to fetch the body,” Jack resumed. “He seemed anxious to remove the ‘remains’. So I said, ‘But we can have the spoon back, right?’ ‘You want it
back
?!’ he asked. I told him, ‘Sure, but it’s part of a set!’” Jack wound up, laughing.
“You always were up to no good,” Maggie said. “Bringing home insects, lizards, terrapins, and the like. I never knew what I’d find when I went to draw a bath.”
“Tell her how you’d make the calls about the phone bills,” Sharon prompted.
“We were just being kids.” Grunting, Jack pretended to press back against Ollie, then collapsed on the carpet.
Sharon leaned toward me. “When he and Ned were around fourteen—their voices had just changed, so they sounded like grown men—they’d stay up late and look up people’s numbers in the phone book. They’d ring them up in the middle of the night. Jack would get on the line and tell them there was a problem with their phone bill, and they needed to fetch it so they could go over it. The poor sods would be rummaging through their desk drawers, desperately looking for their paperwork at two in the morning.”
“More like three,” Jack said.
“Then when they came back on the line, Jack would make them go through each itemized call, one by one. He’d say they hadn’t paid their bill. They’d insist that they
had.
Then he would tell them that a mild electric shock would be sent through the phone if they didn’t pay what they owed by nine o’clock the next morning. If they really gave him a hard time, he’d put on his ‘supervisor’—Ned—and drag them through it all again.”
“One guy got so mad, I thought he’d have a stroke,” Jack mused, scratching his chin.
“That’s awful.” I tried to hide my smile.
“Remember when you two burnt down Mr. Atwater’s shed?” Maggie looked up from combing the Yorkie’s topknot.
“That wasn’t Ned. That was Peter.” Jack sat up and crossed his legs. Ollie scooted next to him and crossed his legs in mirror imitation.
“How did that happen?”
I’m getting the real inside scoop, here in England
, I told myself.
“We were just having a smoke. A spark caught one of the hay bales,” Jack said.
“How old were you then?” I edged my ankles away as Randall came sniffing around.
“He was twelve. The whole thing went up like a Guy Fawkes bonfire.” Maggie pulled the sweater over the Yorkie’s head, making it squeak. “I had to go and plead before the magistrate. Lucky thing he wasn’t thirteen, or he would’ve been sent away to the delinquents’.”
Wow, he had a wild childhood
, I realized.
I guess that makes sense, given what he was up to in his twenties
. I tried shoving Randall away, but he reared up on my leg again.
Jack grinned. “You still remember, don’t you, old boy?”
“Look, he’s dancing!” Ollie cried. “Tell her about shooting the fish!”
“That’s enough,” Jack said as he pulled Randall off me. “Dredging up all this useless stuff about the past.”
“I’d like to hear about the fish.” I used the linen napkin to discreetly wipe saliva off my knee.
“All I did was fire one off a roof,” Jack said.
“You never cared for Reverend Northrup.” Maggie took a dainty sip of her tea.
“One Sunday Jack got in trouble for carving B-O-L-L-I-X into a pew,” Sharon chimed in.
“Northrup was a tosser. He always had it out for me.” Jack scratched Randall’s belly, making his leg twitch. “And his curate, Carter, was a window-licker.”