The Girl Who Came to Stay Read online

  ‘Maybe we should go down and see your father,’ I suggested tentatively. ‘Will he be alone for Christmas?’

  ‘He wouldn’t want to see us. He never wanted to see me particularly when I lived at home. He’ll go to the golf club. He’ll be okay.’

  ‘But he’ll probably be lonely. We could go down easily. It wouldn’t take much more than an hour.’

  Clare shook her head, but I persisted.

  ‘Look, he won’t want to see me, but why don’t you go? Take the car on Boxing Day. I’m sure he’d be pleased to see you. Christmas can be very lonely when you’re by yourself.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Benedict, can’t you let it drop. I’m not bloody well going near either of them. I’ve sent my cards and my presents, now do you mind if I get on with enjoying my Christmas?’

  ‘All right. Fuck you, then.’

  Clare hated to be sworn out, and had sulked for a couple of hours. But that had been last night. Tonight was a happy, busy and domestic scene: the geese are getting fat, please put a penny in the old man’s hat. Mistletoe in the hall hanging from the Chinese lantern, holly on the front door, stacks of free drink, provided by the generosity of record and film companies; and now there’s Tibby at the door. Been round to the Hungry Years hamburger place in Earls Court Road and thought we might like one each. Almost like real American hamburgers, which go very well with a glass of Nuits St Georges each (‘with love from Suzy’).

  All now peeling tangerines, and Clare adventuring with a box of chocolates. Tibby, outrageously fashionable as always, grabbing me under the mistletoe in the hall while Clare wasn’t looking and giving me more than a sisterly peck—which I thoroughly enjoyed—and then talking loudly with her mouth full of tangerine and shoe-nuts: Tou are coming on Christmas Day, aren’t you? I forgot to tell you, I think. Stella Levigne’s having a sort of brunch thing in aid of some environment project of hers at twelve o’clock on Christmas Day, and we’re all going. It’s a tenner each, and the proceeds to go to some preserve for lame ducks or something.’

  Clare looked at me, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘Oh, thaf s a pity. But we’re already going out somewhere else. To see a friend of mine.’

  ‘Oh, well, never mind. You probably won’t be missing much anyway. It sounds like the most snobbish thing you ever heard of. She’ll be ringing you, anyway, so you can apologise to her. Not that apologies are necessary, really. Come on. Give us another drink. I’m getting drunk tonight.’

  I poured her another glass while Clare pointedly averted her eyes from both of us, wiping a crumb of hamburger meat thoughtfully from her lower lip. Then she poured another drink for herself. And then another for all of us while Tibby chattered on.

  ‘Did you know that Paul and Stella Levigne were supposed to be going into business together? Well, they’re not now. Apparently they couldn’t agree on the decor of the shop. Supposed to be some sort of cheap place in the East End or somewhere, it was, but Stella wanted everything to be very plain and common looking and Paul insisted that they have some of those tiny panes put in the windows. You know, Old Curiosity Shop sort of thing. She came in the shop tonight, Clare, after you’d gone, and had a big showdown with Paul. Calling him a jumped-up, common little exploiter of his own social class, and all sorts of things like that. Then having said some terrible things she calm as a cucumber invites him to her Christmas party. And he, calmer than cucumber, if you like, accepts.’

  ‘Do we really have to go to Timothy’s, Benedict?’ Clare cautiously testing the water.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But, I mean, if he has all those children to look after he’ll hardly miss us.’

  ‘Of course he will. Anyway we’ve said we’re going and that’s it. And I want to go. Surely you can’t fancy the idea of some miserable do with Stella Levigne and every rich halfwit in London.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Tibby bright and chatty. Oblivious to the thunder clouds.

  ‘We’ve agreed to go down to Wimbledon to have our Christmas dinner with a couple of friends of mine who have an orphanage. I went last year, and they’ve invited us to go this year. I had a good time. I’m sure it would be better than some trendy do for those who have nowhere else to go.’

  ‘I always thought orphanages were for those with nowhere else to go.’ Clare was surprisingly pithy, and taunting.

  ‘Benedict was an orphan, weren’t you, Benedict?’ Tibby, slightly drunk, still didn’t recognise the complexion of the situation.

  ‘He sometimes behaves as though he still is.’ Clare’s jibe like a finger in the eye.

  ‘Anyway, I’m sure you won’t be missing anything, Clare. I’d far sooner go with Benedict to an orphanage than spend Christmas at Stella Levigne’s.’

  ‘Oh, I suppose so.’ And Clare dropped the subject for the rest of the night, until eventually at half past midnight I hailed a cab and, propping a drunken Tibby up in the back seat, went back inside to face what I knew to be an inevitable show of force. Clare was waiting for me in the kitchen; rinsing glasses; washing and drying plates; asking me if I’d like a cup of Oval tine. Or Horlicks. What about cocoa? Why did we have to go to Timothy’s?

  Even before the beginning of the fight I was weary. Wishing to God that Timothy had never come into my life. That Clare was going to spend Christmas with her parents like any normal girl.

  ‘Because I promised.’

  ‘Did you promise for me, or just for you?’

  ‘All right. You don’t have to come, if you don’t want to. Go and give your ten pounds to the Levigne fund for lame ducks, and go and flutter your eyelashes at every cocktail party bore in London. I’m going to Timothy’s. And no, I want neither Horlicks, cocoa, tea or coffee.’

  This time I remembered to make an exit of some style, and, sweeping through the doorway and back towards the stairs, I turned, just in time to see a whole row of Christmas cards, a merry line of robins and stage coaches, snowmen, and Virgins with Child and donkeys, go toppling off the top of the mantelpiece in the gale created by my annoyance. When the wind blows the cradle will fall, down will come cradle, baby and all.

  Stella Levigne called just after eleven on the morning of Christmas Eve. Clare was at the shop and I was eating nuts: cracking walnuts with the heels of my boot on the kitchen floor, then scouring out the fleshy parts from the corners with a pen-knife. Nuts were the best thing about Christmas, I’d always thought. And remembered how my mother had told me that the only time she ever had an orange was in her stocking on Christmas morning.

  ‘Benedict, Stella Levigne here. I take it you’ve heard. Well, you are coming, aren’t you? Or are you going somewhere else equally dull?’

  ‘We’re going somewhere else. But thanks for the thought.’

  ‘Oh. A pity.’

  ‘Yes, we would have loved to have come.’

  ‘Well, if you find yourself with a change of arrangements perhaps we’ll be seeing you both after all. Anyway, happy Christmas.’

  ‘Yes. Bye bye.’ The hurried click of the line going dead had ended the conversation before I could put the phone down. I’d heard and that annoyed me. That was my trick.

  Well, that settles that, I thought, and began opening a last pile of cards, just delivered on the second round of the day, and counting them. That makes two hundred and fifteen in all. Forty-eight more than last year. Clearly I’m getting more popular by the week. Here’s a sealed one with handwriting I recognise. A line-picture of two doves. Black upon white. To Benedict. Love and thanks. From Clare.’ For several minutes I held the card. I hadn’t thought to post mine to her, nor to bother buying anything quite so elegant. But the dainty middle-class touch was Clare all over, somehow robbed of meaning by the simple neatness of the card. ‘Love and thanks.’ Almost as sterile a message as the others, from the film company PRs. How many loves and thanks have I got this year?

  Clare came home at lunchtime. For an afternoon Christian brotherhood had conquered over capitalism and Paul had closed his sh
op, that his staff might do some last-minute shopping— if anywhere was still open. Neither of us had spoken since the night before. There’d been no tea in bed for me this morning, and though I wanted to, I hadn’t had the face to get up and go down while Clare was getting ready to go out. But anyway I’d already decided. If Clare wanted to go to Stella Levigne’s that much, then we’d go. Even when I’d turned down Stella’s invitation on the phone an hour ago, I’d known inside that it was now Clare’s decision. Timothy would always be there, but I’d no way of telling with Clare. Was I on borrowed time now? For nearly two months I’d lived for her. And spoiled her. She had held the reins. Silly to ruin our last moments together, when I dreaded the final moment so much. I had no doubt that she would go. That she would leave me. I loved her, but there was no way that I could delude myself into believing that she was ready to settle for me yet. Probably she was just too young.

  ‘Hello.’ Clare with head bent, coming through the door, arms wrapped around the most enormous parcel man ever set eyes on, while the sound of a taxi’s diesel voice chugged away in first gear up the hill. Me going to help. The thing almost as big as Clare herself. Here, I’ll take that. All of five feet high. Yet not too heavy. These things here look like arms sticking out at the front.

  Clare was bright red, cheeks flushed, hair falling down in front of her eyes, which these days, I suddenly notice, bear the signs of late nights and cosmetic camouflaging.

  ‘What on earth is this?’

  ‘Open it. Go on.’

  Tearing the Harrods wrapping paper from the monster: a head, of black and white fur. More paper coming off. White snout, black cheeks, white bib at the front, black sides.

  ‘A panda? Who’s it for?’

  And then she became bashful and pulled me close, pushing her head into my sweater while I hung on gratefully to the moment and savoured it.

  ‘I’m sorry … I bought it for Timothy’s children. I thought we could take it down with us tomorrow. As my present to them.’

  ‘But it must have cost you a fortune.’

  ‘Yes. But I couldn’t think of what else they could all share. And I thought they probably only ever get the essentials, so it would be nice if I were to be stupidly extravagant and give them something that’s no use, but that a lot of them might like.’

  ‘That’s really nice.’

  ‘Do you think it will be all right? I mean, Timothy won’t say I should have spent the money on underpants for them all, or anything like that.’

  ‘No. He won’t say that. He’ll be delighted.’

  ‘It was just that I thought you were always so kind, and all I ever did was moan… ’

  So you went out, Clare, and drew from your little deposit account, which your father keeps happily topped up for you, although you won’t go to see him, lonely and deserted though he may be, and bought yourself a token present. But it was a nice thought. You really did mean well, and I know the children will like it. And so will Timothy and Caroligne, though something tells me that we won’t be going there tomorrow, despite all this. But now here you are, holding me tight, and I’ve just thought of a good way to spend a Christmas Eve lunch time. So would you excuse me while I just lead you up the stairs, past Chi-Chi the sexless panda, and round the corner to my room. Where, if it’s all the same with you, we’ll spend a happy hour. And I’ll dry your tears, in my pillow, and decorate your hair with holly, which I hope won’t prickle too much, and spray snow from my aerosol can around the summits of your breasts, that I might have two seasonal little mountains in bed with me. And later on, after we’ve had a sleep, we’ll peel some tangerines, and eat some nuts. And while you’re dozing I’ll telephone Timothy and say would he mind terribly, but we’re going to see Clare’s father, and perhaps we could come another day. Boxing Day? And he’ll say, no, of course not, it doesn’t matter. Boxing Day will suit us just as well. Any day you want to come, lad. And he’ll mean it. And although I’ll have told him a white lie, he would never think to reproach me, although he’ll know it’s a lie. He’s a good friend, and though I can’t tell him the truth, he’d understand. And laugh at me for being so silly. About a girl. Who may not know it yet, but who I’m sure is preparing to leave me. A girl, constantly changeable. Always unpredictable. Who bought a panda today. And said it was for the orphan children. When really it was for me.

  At somewhere around midnight Clare said: ‘Hang on a minute.’ So I stopped, while she kissed me, and wished me ‘Happy Christmas.’ And then I went back to what I’d been doing. And celebrated in my own way. And that night she didn’t do her Cinderella bit, of creeping out in the early hours. Which was the best present she could have given me.

  Her other present was a couple of shirts, bought, she said, because she felt so ashamed when I took her out anywhere, wearing those awful old frayed things which I must have got with my demob suit, which was a surprising remark, coming from a girl who could only have been about five when National Service finished. But they were pretty shirts, white with pale blue embroidery down the front. And vice versa. And she was quite right, I did need them. I’d bought her a silver bracelet.

  ‘I hope you like it,’ I said as the two of us stood, pyjamas and nightie, around the Christmas tree. I could never give anyone a present without feeling acutely awkward, terrified that it may not be right, not suitable. ‘Well, anyway, they’ll always exchange it.’

  ‘Silly man,’ she said, and slipped it onto her wrist for the rest of the day.

  Stella Levigne, at her so perfectly proportioned Georgian house in Edwardes Square, showed neither surprise nor any particular evidence of pleasure that we were able to go to her party after all. Probably she’d expected us to be intrigued enough to turn up all along, despite my regrets. Anyway, when we got there she was far too busy to be bothered about games of etiquette, playing at being the super-hostess, dressed in that all-blue gown of Arab style, and which, when worn with the head-dress up around her face, so that two streaked blonde curtains of hair fell down, allowing only her eyes, nose and mouth to peep out, gave her the appearance of a Hollywood Virgin Mary. Perhaps she thought she was topically dressed, I remarked to Clare, who didn’t answer. Clare was still very impressed with whatever Stella said, did or wore.

  As a party it was unusual. The number of people with nowhere better to go on Christmas Day seemed to me to include a remarkably large proportion of that cross-section of society that, despite myself, I moved in, and particularly that part of it concerned in one way or another with the media. There were prospective Tory MPs full of cheek, and cheeks and chat; more sophisticated Labour Members, with better pedigrees, better degrees and more esoteric conversation; a daubing of freelance journalists, all at work on this book or that; television documentary research people; and their peers; and the odd front-man looking very odd indeed in profile and full length. Here an editor, there a fashion designer, film-makers and their wives, or women, and now and again an actor, acting his heart out in order to keep afloat in the verbal quicksands and trying not to be submerged by the encyclopaedic weight of clever-clever talk; tons of beautiful girls arriving with a wealth of sharp boys from publishing, lawyering, photographing or just old-fashioned high-class poncing. Here a face from the past: there a pederast. A lively mixture. Mingling and scrummaging. Peeping. And seeking to be seen, to be speaking, in celebrity corner, that territorial delineation in the bay overlooking the garden, bounded on one side by a bookshelf, and on another by the grand piano, where those conscious of their fame or notoriety assembled that they might only talk with others in similar circumstances. Hardly a bubbling do, really, with just a single glass of champagne each, offered on arrival and not refilled, and not much in the way of a Christmas dinner, either.

  ‘This doesn’t taste like turkey.’

  ‘It’s duck.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s Stella’s idea of a joke—one piece of duck each.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Clare wandering quietly through it all. Hard t
o tell just yet whether she’s disappointed or not. Sticking close by me today. Out of her depth a bit. Hardly a word. And just the occasional half smile. To show that she understands the jokes. And to imply that she too is now a part of the magic circle. Me bored, and thirsty, and eventually corralling Stella, in a corner, behind a settee, next to a lampshade, and against a wall.

  ‘Bit short on drink, are you, love?’ Deliberately northern.

  Stella was disdainful: ‘I’m teaching all you drunkards the virtues of temperance … darling.’ Pushing her curtains of hair back from her face. Voice rasping from her lower larynx.

  ‘Your plumber friend here, then?’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘Your Harley Street abortionist.’ Clare, closing her eyes in mock and silent prayer at my bullying. ‘You know the one you told us all about in The Eye that day when we first met. Thought I’d like to see a real live Jack The Ripper, ripping into some of this lame duck of a Christmas dinner.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Benedict.’ Clare was puce with embarrassment, but Stella started to laugh—the good nature of the self-confident; of the assured; the arrogant.

  ‘No. He isn’t here. So you can’t show him up. Or me either, for that matter,’ she said, then, turning to Clare, recruited her as an ally. ‘What your friend Benedict is trying in his peculiarly stumbling way to say is that he disapproves of the fact that I had an abortion. Well, Benedict, let me tell you, so am I now. That chance was a fine thing. And I threw it away. But not to worry too much. I’ll get over it.’

  I was quite deflated by Stella’s openness. Really I should have known better, and now Clare was smiling half sympathetically and half vacantly, but mostly because no other expression would have fitted at that particular moment.

  ‘You’re quite right, of course, Benedict… I mean, to feel the way you so obviously do.’ Stella was being patronising.

  ‘What about this lame duck reserve, Stella?’ Seeking refuge from my own mortification, I tried to change the conversation.