was beginning to perish made me feel sick.
‘It’s the Conservative lunch on Wednesday,’ my father had said at breakfast towards the end of the fifth week. ‘As your mother refuses even to look at the wheelchair provided for her at enormous trouble and expense, you’ll have to stand in.’
We were alone as usual so I knew he meant me, though he did not look up from his boiled egg. I cannot think quickly first thing in the morning. Irrelevant thoughts went through my mind. The wheelchair was on loan, gratis, from the Red Cross and had cost him only the telephone call I had made to order it and the cupful of petrol I had used when driving to pick it up.
‘You don’t mean you want me to go with you?’
‘There isn’t anyone else.’
‘Well, thank you for such a flattering invitation but on Wednesday I’m taking the kitchen sofa covers into Worping for dry-cleaning, then I’m dropping the Wolseley at the garage to be serviced and while that’s being done Oliver and I are going to the cinema. Mrs Treadgold’s agreed to stay later to look after Mother.’
‘You can do all that any day of the week. Your mother was tremendously relieved when I said I’d take you. You don’t want to set her back, do you?’
‘Please!’ said my mother later as I poured her a cup of tea the colour of white wine and buttered wafer-thin slices of toast. She had protested she was too weak to do her own buttering. ‘Please, for my sake, go to that ghastly Conservative lunch with him. He has to have a woman on his arm. If he’s on his own he feels as naked as going without trousers. He’s threatening to make me go in the wheelchair. As if I could! If you knew the pain I’m in. All the time. It’s relentless.’
‘Honey or marmalade?’
‘Marmalade. Sometimes I think I’m going to take all my painkillers at once and finish it for good. When your father starts hectoring me I absolutely make up my mind to do it. If he mentions this beastly lunch one more time, I shall.’
Brough, wearing his peaked cap and a cheap grey suit from the Co-op which was his chauffeur’s uniform, drove us to the Carlton House Hotel in Worping where the lunch was to be held. I had offered to drive so that Brough would not have to kick his heels, throwing stones at seagulls, for two hours but my father was adamant that we should travel like important dignitaries in the back of the Austin Princess, hoping perhaps to excite envy and admiration in the breasts of his political brothers.
Attempting to reverse into a space before the hotel’s porte cochère Brough crushed a plastic ‘No Parking’ sign and from the accompanying crunch of metal I guessed something had happened to the rear wing.
A man in a tail coat and striped trousers came running down the hotel steps. ‘You can’t park here. Didn’t you see the sign? This space is reserved for the mayor and the brass hats.’
‘I am a brass hat, as you put it,’ said my father, getting out of the car.
At that moment the mayor’s car drew alongside. It was of a size and magnificence to empty the rate-payers’ pockets before anyone had even considered street lamps or drains, and all traffic came to a standstill.
‘There was a time when the damned peasants knew their places,’ said my father with feeling. ‘I blame the Welfare State.’ He strolled up the steps and disappeared into the hotel.
I saw that we had already drawn a crowd who were watching Brough’s attempts to disengage the rear wheel (which had become wedged against the kerb) with unconcealed amusement. ‘I’d better go in,’ I said. ‘See if you can find a space in the car-park.’
I opened the car door in time to hear one of the witnesses to our humiliation say, ‘Who was that pompous idiot?’
‘That’s Major Pickford-Norton,’ said his companion. ‘The sort of man the Conservative Party needs like a hole in the head. Blimpish, bloated with self-consequence—’
‘Oh-ah-ha-a!’ said another, whom I vaguely recognized. I think he had once been to our house for a shooting lunch. He threw me an embarrassed glance. ‘Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you. This is Miss Roberta Pickford-Norton.’
There was an uncomfortable silence. None of this was my fault yet I felt myself blush with mortification.
‘Miss Pickford-Norton,’ said the one who had called my father a pompous idiot. ‘I apologize for my unparliamentary language. Will you let me try to make amends by buying you a drink?’
He put his hand under my elbow and I found myself being borne upwards into the hotel foyer. He ushered me into the dining room, which was already nearly full. Several men and women surged towards him and began conversations, while others waved and tried to catch his eye.
‘Hello, Lottie, how are you? Yes, I know, but you must excuse me for a moment. Good to see you, Herbert, talk later? Hello, Mrs Cholmondeley. No, I hadn’t heard. Really? Let’s talk about it after lunch.’
He tightened his grip on my elbow and steered me into a side room, which was comparatively empty.
‘Just a minute.’ He went away and reappeared almost immediately with two glasses of white wine. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘I hope you like speeches and being bored to hell and drinking’ – he sipped his wine and shuddered – ‘something you could clean paintbrushes with because you’re in for it now and no mistake. And in addition you’ve had to put up with my unforgivable rudeness. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to stamp off in a rage. In fact’ – wheeling round to look about him – ‘if I weren’t the most selfish of men that’s exactly what I’d advise you to do. It’s going to be unmitigated hell. But I hope you won’t. If you can find it in your heart to forgive a blundering idiot – I mean me – I’d be grateful because I can see at a glance you’re the only person here I want to talk to.’ He grabbed a bowl of peanuts from a nearby table. ‘You look hungry. Won’t you celebrate a truce with a friendly nut?’
He had dark eyes that slanted upwards at the outer corners. Despite his repentant tone and the solemnity of his expression I could see he thought it was funny. My parents never found anything amusing and Oliver was usually in the toils of creative agony. My own sense of humour, having fallen into desuetude, revived. I took a few nuts to show there were no hard feelings.
‘I forgive you,’ I said. ‘I’m not tactful myself. But you’ve confirmed my worst fears. I didn’t want to come. I hate politics and I loathe politicians. Particularly Conservative ones.’
‘I quite agree with you. About politicians, anyway. A worse lot of crooks, egomaniacs and shysters you’ll never meet. Though I think the Labour Party’s just as bad. Superficially they appear more altruistic but mostly it’s cant. Individually they’re just as greedy and dishonest. All politicians have had to cheat and connive and flatter to get their seats. Another nut?’ I shook my head. ‘However,’ he went on, ‘I like politics. I think it’s exciting to feel you can change things for the better.’
‘That would be satisfying, if you really thought you had. Improved things, I mean. But so often what politicians do seems to result in nothing more than manipulating statistics.’ I looked at my watch. ‘I only came to please my father. Perhaps he won’t notice if I go away for an hour. I could creep back at the end when the worst is over.’
‘That would be the wisest course.’ He lifted his eyebrows. They were dark, in striking contrast to his white-blond hair. I thought of the hero of Amazon in Lace, s, whose sardonic eyebrows worked overtime. The absurdity of this thought made me smile. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Clearly you have a forgiving nature. I wish I could come with you. It’s years since I saw anything of the English seaside. We could have walked along the promenade and looked for shrimps and anemones in rock pools and I could have tried to impress you by skimming stones on the waves. Why don’t we have tea—’
‘Latimer! Dear chap!’ A man with a large curved nose like a puffin’s beak placed an arresting hand on my companion’s shoulder. ‘Well, well, well! This