yes,’ Mrs Fletcher looks round and then places one of her elegant, beautifully manicured Germans on top of mine. ‘Do you think you could coax a teensy weensy bit more gin into my glass? I’m a rather greedy girl, I’m afraid.’ The way she looks at me when she speaks, I would walk barefoot across a sea of white hot coals to fetch her a Kleenex. I stand up and she touches my jacket. ‘Some ice would be fantastic too.’ She winks at me and I have fallen in love. To think I was really not looking forward to this evening. The best things always happen when you least expect them.
I have just wrenched the stupid bird-motif measuring device off the top of the gin bottle and poured Imogen Fletcher a generous slug when Sid moves to my side.
‘Where’s the ice, Sid?’ I ask.
‘It’s in the – fuck!’ Everybody stops talking and Sid examines the front of his jacket. He had tipped up the gin bottle without looking at it and copped the rebound from the bottom of the glass he was filling. ‘Uxbridge!’ shouts Sid, ‘Just beyond the traffic lights. You can’t miss it.’ The threads of conversation are picked up again and Sid turns to me. ‘Did you do that, you stupid berk?’ he hisses.
‘Sorry, Sid,’ I say. ‘It pours so slow with that thing in it.’
‘That’s the idea, you prat! Just leave things alone.’
‘Just tell me where the ice is,’ I plead.
‘I didn’t get any out – I didn’t have time with you arriving an hour early!’
‘I’ll try the fridge,’ I say.
Mrs Fletcher gives me a melting look that would see off any lump of ice I had in my hand and I sear towards the kitchen. Crispin Fletcher tries to catch my eye as I speed past and, rejected, turns back to Dad. ‘That really is very interesting,’ I hear him say.
‘That’s just some of the stuff we get in,’ says Dad. ‘Then there’s walking sticks and shooting sticks and umbrellas – oh yes, we get a lot of umbrellas. The last time we counted we had –’
I whip into the kitchen and close the door behind me. It does not half have a lot of gadgets. When you look around, you can see that Rosie is doing all right. I don’t reckon that Sid bought too much of this lot. I have just opened the fridge and knocked a tub of cream over three storeys of food when Rosie rushes in.
‘It hasn’t come!’ she storms. ‘Little perishers. They promised it by eight.’
‘Oh, the food,’ I say, cottoning on to what she is rabbiting about. ‘Can’t you give them a ring?’
‘I don’t have the number. I called in on the way home.’
‘They must be in the book,’ I say.
‘I can’t remember the name. You know what they’re like: Hing Pong, Flung Dung – it could be anything.’
‘If you had a classified you could find out from the address.’
‘But I don’t!’ Rosie faces me angrily. ‘What’s the matter with you? Are you an undercover agent for the GPO or something?’
‘Calm yourself,’ I say. ‘We all have our problems. Where’s the ice?’
‘In the top. Oh no!’ Rosie looks inside the fridge. ‘Did you spill that?’
‘No, it was like that when I opened it.’
‘It must have been Sid,’ snarls Rosie. ‘I’ll kill him one of these days!’
‘You mustn’t be too hard on him,’ I say, holding the ice tray under the hot tap. ‘He’s had a lot on his mind, lately.’
‘A lot on it and nothing in it,’ spits Rosie. ‘I’ll have to give them something to tide them over. Don’t let Dad have another drink what ever you do. He’s pissed already.’ She puts a jar marked ‘cheese’ on the table as I look around for something to put the ice in. ‘I’ll give them a quick fondue.’
‘You’ll what?!’ I say.
‘Give them a fondue – a cheese dip.’
‘I thought you said you’d give them a quick fondle!’
I think the misunderstanding is quite funny but Rosie seems to have lost whatever sense of humour she once had. She accuses me of getting in her way and pushes me to one side while she puts on a saucepan. It is all I can do to tip the ice into a jar before she drives me out of the kitchen. When I get back to the lounge, Imogen is sitting where she was but her lovely mince pies shelter a look of reproach.
‘I thought you’d forgotten about me,’ she says.
‘I don’t think I could ever forget about you,’ I say.
‘How nice.’ Her lips twitch again like they did last summer and I feel percy preparing for a game of ‘Launch My Zeppelin’. ‘You got the ice, did you? I’m sorry to be such a terrible nuisance.’
I make a few mumbling noises and hand over her glass. When she looks at me like that it is difficult to think of things to say. I take the top off the jar and hold it out to her. It seems better mannered to let her help herself rather than cop a mittful of my germs. If I had thought about it I could have brought a pair of tongs but it is too late now. She is still holding my glance and I wonder if she knows what is passing through my mind – I hope her husband doesn’t. Possibly, she is feeling something of what I feel. Beautiful, mature women of the world do fall passionately in love with simple working class lads like me. Half the plays you turn over to on BBC2 for the juicy bits are about it.
Mrs Fletcher sticks her mitt in the jar and – ‘Oh!’ We both look down to see that her delicate digits are grasping what looks like a cube of parmesan cheese. Oh my gawd! In my confusion I must have tipped the ice cubes into the cheese jar. ‘How frightfully original,’ says Mrs F.
Rosie appears at my side. ‘You didn’t touch the –’ She takes a butcher’s at the object between Imogen’s fingers and squeaks.
‘I think, if you don’t mind –’ says the love of my life.
‘I’m very sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean –’
Rosie snatches the jar out of my hand. ‘Are you mad?!’ she says. ‘Are you stark raving mad?’
Before I can say any more, the front door bell rings. ‘It must be the nosh – I mean, food,’ I say. ‘I’ll let them in.’
As I head for the door, I hear Rosie explaining that both Sid and I have been under a lot of strain lately. It is noticeable that when she talks to the Fletchers her voice is a lot more refined than it is when she is parleying to the family.
‘– a hundred and forty-five with broken spokes. Of course, with them it’s touch and go as to whether they were lost or abandoned. That’s something only experience will tell you –’ Dad’s voice is still droning on as I open the front door.
‘Solly about delay. Go to wong address. Very tlying.’ The little bloke with the pile of containers is behind me before he has finished his sentence. I look out into the street in case there is any one else but there is only a large black cat running as fast as its legs will carry it. ‘Where you want?’
‘Well, I think everybody’s quite hungry now,’ says Rosie looking at Dad anxiously. ‘Can you lay it out on the table, please?’
‘Chinese food? How lovely!’ Imogen Fletcher drops the cheese-covered ice cube into an ashtray and rises to her feet.
‘Those cats were Kung Fu fighting,’ croons Dad. ‘I don’t reckon it myself, you know. I mean, look at him. He doesn’t come up to my chest.’
‘Neither does anyone else if they got any sense,’ says Mum. ‘Come on, Walter. Get a grip on yourself.’
The Chinese bloke is laying out lots of little cardboard