Chapter 15
Xavier
Istand on the front steps of our beautiful ancestral home as I await my sister and her rather unconventional guest for the weekend.
I won’t have to wait long. The Range Rover has a tracker, and I may or may not have been following its journey on my phone for the past eighty minutes, ever since Flora and Ivy left the Little Venice house.
I’ve been regarding the weather app with equal intensity all week.
My sister mentioned that she and Ivy had been bonding over ‘arty stuff’ and that she’d invited her up to paint in the gardens.
That Ivy paints is news to me, but if a painterly experience is what she desires from Belvedere this weekend, then I’m determined that is what she shall have.
(Hence the weather watching.)
She’s certainly picked a hell of a weekend to indulge.
November is off to a crisply sunny start, and, above the still-lush gardens of the estate, the sky is an unbroken expanse of azure, the lake below its clearest mirror.
In a week or two, the gardeners will be faced with the back-breaking work of raking and clearing the leaves of our hundreds of trees, but for now the trees are a glory of riotous flames and softer orange.
As the Range Rover purrs up the driveway in Charlie’s assured hands, I pocket my phone hastily and widen my stance, clasping my hands behind my back.
My wishes for this weekend are several: that Ivy enjoys a pleasant stay, of course; that this break strengthens the apparent bond she and my sister have forged; that my mother isn’t too open in her horror at someone of Ivy’s social status occupying a place at the family dining table; and, lastly, that I manage to conduct myself in a manner befitting my station and at least endeavour to think with my cerebral brain and not the one between my legs.
On the last two, I wouldn’t be tempted to put money, no matter how long the odds.
Right on cue, my brother clatters out of the house and spills onto the steps beside me. He needs no tracking app to alert him to the girls’ arrival—the man’s radar for trouble and gossip is a finely honed instrument.
He elbows me in the tricep. ‘Thought you’d have made more of an effort for your girlfriend.’
‘Kindly fuck off,’ I tell him, but I can’t resist a glance downwards, a move that makes him burst out laughing.
There’s nothing wrong with what I’m wearing. I’m in my standard green wellies and checked shirt with a gilet thrown over it—I’ve been walking the grounds this morning with the head gardener.
‘Seriously.’ I turn to him as the car rounds the lake. ‘You can take the piss out of me as much as you like—it’s par for the course—but if you make our sister’s guest feel the slightest bit uncomfortable, then I shan’t stand for it. It’s not okay. Got it?’
‘Absolutely,’ he says in that jovial tone that always makes me want to clip him round the ear.
‘We can’t have her feeling uncomfortable.
Although I’m sure her memories of her last visit here will achieve that all on their own.
Do you know that Ma’s put her in the lilac room?
I love it when life serves up these full-circle moments, don’t you? It’s just so… poetic.’
I gape at him in abject horror, my brain a sudden cyclone of creamy tits and plump lips, of the fruits of my anguished masturbating splattering over ancient, lilac-garlanded porcelain.
He lets out a loud, happy sigh and trots down the steps to greet the car just as three of our working cockers, Roger, Sean, and Pierce, bound out of the house towards the car.
As ever, they’re as enthusiastic as they are slow on the uptake, and, as ever, the former more than makes up for the latter.
They may each be mad as a box of frogs, but they’re sweethearts, and their quirky naming convention is a rare reminder that my stoical mother has the occasional weakness (for Bond actors, not dogs).
One of these days, these mutts will almost certainly suffer the fate of death by stupidity, but not today, as Charlie steers the great big beast of a car skilfully around their crazed jumps and spins. They adore Flora, mainly because she indulges them far more than anyone else does.
‘Oi!’ my brother shouts. ‘Knock it off, you muppets!’
With a quiet sigh of my own, I descend the steps to join him.
We lunch in the dining room—all of us, that is, except for poor old Pa, who’s sequestered in an upstairs corner of the house in a wing that more accurately resembles a nursing home, these days.
Even with the leaves removed, the dining room table is inordinately large.
Recently, Ma has taken to having me sit at the head of the table in Pa’s former seat, a move I find to be irritating, premature, and unnecessarily macabre.
After all, I’m not the head of the family yet, and I’d rather like to hold onto my relative freedom for as long as I can.
Ma is to my left, Ivy to my right. Beside her sits my brother, while my sister sits on Ma’s far side.
I sit stiffly as one of the butlers fills my water glass and, as I have done since we sat down, I attempt with all my might to find a natural-seeming balance between not staring at Ivy while affording her the basic courtesies I’d extend to any guest.
Thankfully, as soon as Ben and I had greeted them, Flora dragged her off for an overly exuberant tour of the main parts of the house.
Alas, my brother and sister are going out for a mandatory hack this afternoon with Ma, so it has fallen to me to agree to show Ivy the gardens and the various noteworthy places dotted around the estate—the aviary, the orangery, and so forth.
Should be interesting.
I thank John, the butler, and glance around the table.
Ma, who was not present for Ivy’s arrival and has only just met her, is staring across the tasteful autumnal floral arrangement at her as if she’s somehow lost her way and wandered away from the servants’ quarters.
Ma is already in her riding gear: her equivalent of a suit of armour.
Ivy, on the other hand, is in jeans and a cream cable-knit sweater with a Ralph Lauren logo that I’d swear belongs to my sister. My brain produces a narrative where she was sufficiently intimidated about her visit to want to borrow some clothes, and I feel a pang for her.
That’s not all I feel.
Her astonishing strawberry-blonde hair is soft and straight today. Her astonishing eyes are as wide and blue as always. Her astonishing little pink mouth is perfectly luscious, and her astonishing breasts strain like a pair of mischievous puppies beneath the knit of her—
Nope.
Nope.
I clear my throat.
‘Do you ride, Ivy?’ Ma drawls, apropos of very little. Of all the ways to demonstrate zero emotional intelligence, this must be right up there.
‘Er, no, I’m afraid not, Your Grace,’ Ivy replies with a fleeting, startled look at me. ‘I’ve never even seen a horse in real life, except for police horses.’
While I’m horrified at my mother’s lack of ability to read the room, I’m unfeasibly pleased that Ivy’s instinct is to look to me for guidance. I suspect my sister has instructed her on the proper way to address my mother, but I hope Ma lets her off the hook on that front. I hold my breath.
‘Oh, it’s Charlotte, please, dear,’ Ma says, gratingly benevolent. ‘You’re a friend of the family, after all. We’re very informal in private.’
‘A very good friend of the family,’ Benedict pipes up with a smile bright enough to signal sincerity to anyone who’s not me.
Flora, the poor innocent, grins at him. ‘Exactly!’
I glare at him and he avoids making eye contact.
‘Okay, thank you, Charlotte,’ Ivy says. She sounds tentative, like she has no idea whether this is a trap, and I don’t blame her.
But it’s a welcome concession from Ma, even if it’s the minimum of what’s to be expected.
It would be terribly gauche of anyone in our social circle to address our parents—or any of us, for that matter—by our actual titles behind closed doors.
‘And you’ve never seen a horse? Good God! You’ll have to take her down to the stables later, Flora darling, after the hack. She can feed them some polo mints.’
I almost laugh at Ivy’s look of utter alarm.
We pause the conversation as the staff serve us our shallow bowls of roasted tomato and red pepper soup. Along the middle of the table, punctuated by floral displays, sit platters of what Ben calls ‘posh ploughman’s’: excellent pork pies, scotch eggs, sliced ham and pickles.
‘How’s Pa?’ Flora asks once the staff have bowed in our direction and taken their leave.
I can’t imagine what sense of dissonance Ivy must be getting from this strange and innately unnatural juxtaposition of bowing staff and purposefully low-brow food.
It’s even odder, seeing it through her eyes—like throwing a black-tie picnic.
‘Your father is perfectly comfortable,’ Ma says, her smile and her tone both falsely bright.
She gives my sister a tight little nod. We don’t air our dirty laundry in front of strangers, especially when that laundry comprises issues of ill health and, God forbid, vulnerability.
‘And you? How did you girls meet? Your clever brother hasn’t filled me in on just how he found Ivy for you. ’
My sister’s gaze meets mine. She’s going to let me field this one.
It’s all a bit of a mess. Telling Flora that Ben and I had met Ivy through a waitressing gig was the closest we could get to an appropriate version of the truth, but obviously, it’s not the ideal story of origin with which to hit Ma.
She would, I know, have expected a far more robust vetting process.
To my right, I can sense the tension practically radiating off Ivy. Three of the five people around this table know the general truth of how I ‘met’ Ivy, and only two of us know the, er, finer details of that truth.
She called me sir.
My dick was so close to that plush little mouth of hers.
Holy fucking Christ.