Chapter 8 Cheesed #2
‘Did you say you were working on a different project during the retreat?’ he asked, and I was surprised he’d remembered that.
‘I am, and it’s non-fiction, so I don’t mind talking about it,’ I said, suddenly conscious that Rhys on my other side had turned in my direction and was listening in, as were the twins, but looking resentful rather than interested.
‘I’ve lived in a remote Bedfordshire cottage for the last ten years – living the good life, you might say – but I’ve now suddenly had to pack up and leave it.
I want to celebrate my life there in a series of books and I have lots of material to base them on, so I’ll be sifting through all that and planning them out while I’m here. ’
‘I love that kind of book; sounds like a great idea!’ enthused Toby.
‘That’s what I told her,’ said Evie, leaning forward and breaking in. ‘And she can get down to searching the internet for a new home while she’s here, too, because she’s been forced to leave her old one by the new owners of the estate it’s on.’
‘It must have been difficult, having to leave your previous home after so long,’ Rhys said with unexpected sympathy, so that I forgot about giving him the cold shoulder and instead turned to him.
‘Yes. It was a lovely place to live and work … and I have so many happy memories, not least of my cat, Mrs Snowboots, who inspired my first children’s books.’
‘I didn’t know she was a real cat!’ exclaimed Cariad. ‘Where is she?’
‘I’m afraid she died of old age only a few weeks ago. She just slipped away in her sleep,’ I said gently.
Cariad digested this. ‘Was she black all over with four white feet, as if she was wearing white wellies?’ she asked.
‘Yes, just the way she looks in the books.’
‘We’ve got a black cat called Pompey, but he hasn’t got white feet,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t like lots of people, but I’ll show him to you tomorrow.’
‘Thank you, I’d like that.’
‘Aren’t there going to be any more Mrs Snowboots books now?’ she asked.
‘Oh, yes, because I’ve got millions of photos, drawings and paintings of her to work from.’
‘You might find another Mrs Snowboots, but I suppose that wouldn’t really be the same.’
‘Well, I’ve never seen another cat with four perfect white feet like that, and you’re right, it wouldn’t be the same. I think I’d like a kitten, but I need to find a new home for it to live in first.’
‘Then that’s our after-dinner entertainment sorted over Christmas,’ Evie said, slightly sardonically. ‘We can all hunt the internet for your next isolated hovel and a new cat, darling.’
‘Where exactly do you live, Toby?’ asked Opal beadily, and he began to look hounded again.
Rhys said quietly, so only I could hear, ‘You know, you don’t resemble your mother at all. If you hadn’t told us, I’d never have guessed.’
‘I’m not like her in any way, especially in the brains department,’ I confessed. ‘The women on my mother’s side of the family are all tall and fair, with aquiline noses, like Evie.’
‘I confess I’m glad you aren’t like her,’ he said, and I looked at him in surprise. ‘I don’t think this party could take another clever, assertive and imposing woman, do you?’
He nodded to my right, where Evie and Kate now appeared to be having a verbal sparring match, with Timon as the reluctant referee.
Cariad, who had been behaving impeccably, now said, looking fixedly at Kate, ‘Uncle Noel, what do Gorgons eat?’
I saw Rhys cast her a frowning look, but Noel said, innocently, ‘Gorgons, dear child?’
‘Those women you told me about, who turned people into stone with one look. I wish I could do that.’
‘Well, I’m not saying some people don’t deserve it,’ he said in his slightly high, sweet voice, ‘so long as you could turn them back again, if you regret it.’
‘Uncle Noel knows some great stories,’ Cariad informed the table at large. ‘I was telling Mel about that one about an orgy in a stables this morning, when I had to help her muck her pony out.’
Into the sudden silence Rhys said, sounding amused, ‘I think perhaps you meant the Augean stables, Cariad.’
‘That’s what I said, Daddy. They kept mucking it out, but it never got clean. And it’s just the same at the Prynnes’ stables, because they need mucking out all the time!’
‘Is that what you have been doing today? Little girls do seem to enjoy messing about with ponies,’ said Verity, and Cariad scowled at her.
‘I’m not a little girl, and it’s Mel who’s pony mad, not me. I don’t mind riding, but all the mucking out, cleaning tack and brushing horses is a pain. I only did it because Mel said if I did, she’d carry on helping me with my excavation.’
‘What are you excavating?’ Toby asked, fascinated.
‘The Victorian rubbish pit at the end of the vegetable garden. But it was a swizz, because by lunchtime the ground was frozen too hard so I’ve covered it over till it thaws again.’
Evie looked at her with more interest than she usually accorded to children. ‘You’re digging up a rubbish pit?’
‘It’s a proper archaeological dig. I’m writing down everything I find and taking photos,’ said Cariad seriously. ‘Uncle Noel told me how to do it properly. So far I’ve found three broken clay pipes, a pot lid with a castle on it and all the pieces of a broken Spode serving dish.’
‘Treasure trove indeed!’ my mother said. ‘I find your views on life refreshing and your ambition to be an archaeologist laudable. Clearly you are destined to be a woman of great good sense, like me.’
Cariad looked at her critically. ‘Was your nose that size when you were my age?’
‘Yes, and I grew into it, just as you will grow into yours.’
‘Good,’ said Cariad. ‘Then what Bronwen told me must be true.’
She turned back to Uncle Noel, and said, reverting to her original question, ‘So, what do Gorgons eat, Uncle Noel?’
He’d obviously had time to think because he said immediately: ‘Gorgonzola!’
I choked on the sip of wine I was taking and Toby broke into a sudden and delightful laugh.
‘What’s Gorgonzola?’ asked Cariad, intrigued.
‘A very smelly kind of cheese.’
‘Speaking of cheese,’ interrupted Nerys, looking pointedly at Verity, ‘if everyone’s finished, Tudor can serve the dessert, which is fruit salad or the cheeseboard.’
‘Sorry, I’m such a slowcoach,’ Verity said, but as if this was some charming foible we would all sympathize with.
‘Perhaps one or two of you could help clear,’ suggested Nerys.
Rhys was already standing up and after a moment Toby and I did, too, and followed him to the kitchen with the serving dishes. The little white dog had emerged from under the table, where I think we had all quite forgotten him, and pattered hopefully after us.
Tudor was standing at the sink, washing up, and Bronwen was putting cheese and savoury biscuits on to a large tray, next to a cut-glass bowl of fruit salad and a jug of thick cream.
‘Could I help you with the washing up?’ I asked Tudor.
‘No, you go and relax,’ he said. ‘I just like to keep on top of the things that won’t go in the dishwasher, and I thought I’d get on with it till I could clear the table.’
‘He was waiting for that Verity woman to stop her endless chewing. She’s more like a cow chewing the cud than a woman,’ Bronwen said.
‘I wouldn’t bother waiting for her after this,’ replied Rhys. ‘Just carry on regardless, or you won’t get home till midnight! I’ll tell Nerys.’
Snookums was sitting hopefully by his empty dinner bowl in a corner and a large jet-black cat with amber eyes, very much like Rhys’s, stalked over and joined him, both staring fixedly at Bronwen.
This must be Pompey, but I thought I’d wait for the official introduction.
I took out the pile of cut-glass dessert bowls and in the refectory found that the twins seemed to have started an argument with Verity on whether performance art actually was an art.
‘As Jonah Westerman said, it isn’t a medium – not something an artwork can be – so it should not be eligible for any of the major art prizes!’ Verity said in her sweet, rather plaintive voice. ‘They awarded the Kimski-Bottrell art prize to a film last year, and I thought that was so unfair!’
She turned to Nerys, seeking support. ‘Not a physical medium, such as we use.’
‘We are our own medium,’ Opal said hotly, fixing her pale green frogspawn eyes on Verity. ‘In reflecting each other, we reflect the world around us – we are about space, social reality and interaction.’
‘Codswallop!’ put in Kate. ‘Not that I know anything about performance art, but—’
‘You know what you like?’ suggested Evie, with her most crocodilian of grins, before making the argument for Verity’s viewpoint and then, while Verity’s lips were still forming the word ‘Exactly!’, and before the twins had begun to argue with her, she had turned and was debating the whole thing from the opposite direction.
She did this all the time, and it could be infuriating. Both Verity and the twins were looking baffled and slightly angry, as if they had been made fools of.
Timon, ever the peacemaker, intervened when Evie drew breath.
‘Most of you have had long journeys today, so I think we should adjourn this fascinating discussion till another time. Do help yourselves to fruit salad or cheese.’
‘Is there Gorgonzola?’ asked Cariad.
‘No, it isn’t that popular out of Italy,’ Nerys said, passing the cheeseboard up the table.
Tudor brought in a jug of coffee and set it on a hotplate on the side table while we were eating, some of us in slightly huffy silence.
‘We’re running quite late, so if you’ve all finished eating, I suggest we take our coffee through into the sitting room, where Noel is kindly going to give us his short talk on tomorrow’s Winter Solstice ceremony,’ Timon said once we’d finished.
‘Just a very brief description,’ said Noel, ‘to put you in the picture.’
‘Can I stay up for it, Daddy?’ asked Cariad.
‘You know it by heart already,’ Rhys told her, ‘and you’re practically falling asleep at the table. Say goodnight nicely to everyone and I’ll come up and say goodnight after Noel’s talk.’
‘I want Ginny to come up too. She can see my books.’
‘She can do that tomorrow,’ Rhys objected. ‘I’m sure she’s much too tired tonight.’
‘I am really tired,’ I admitted, my exhaustion catching up with me again. ‘I want to hear Noel’s talk but then, if no one minds, I’m going to bed too, so I can look in just to say goodnight then, if you like, Cariad?’ I offered.
‘OK. Daddy, you bring her with you!’ she ordered as she left the room.