Chapter 47
Xavier
The Ghost of Christmas Future is well and truly in our midst today.
We are eight for lunch in the dining room at Belvedere: Ma, Flora, Benedict, and me alongside my fiancée, her parents, and her much younger sister, Octavia, home from boarding at nearby Hartwell House.
Octavia appears to have been even more of an afterthought for the Wentworths than Flora was for my parents, and far less cloaked in affection, from what I can see.
Given that Pa is bedridden and largely being fed through a tube these days, I have taken his seat at the head of the table, flanked by my fiancée and Constance, her mother.
The table is certainly grander than it’s ever been before, as are the decorations throughout the ground floor.
Ma deemed it ‘good practice’ for Selena to start making her mark on Belvedere, especially given the flawless dress rehearsal of this summer’s Tatler shoot.
And so the turkey and goose and ham lie nestled between miles of greenery and endless tapering candles and countless crimson and gold trinkets, while, beyond the double doors, the drawing room is resplendent in twinkling white and gleaming gold.
Thus it is, and thus it shall be for years.
And years.
And years.
Is this how duty really feels: an interminable death by suffocation, as surely as if Ma and Selena and Constance were to hold their hands over my mouth and nose? Is Pa’s seeming ambivalence towards his own mortality merely a function of him having stopped living properly a long, long time ago?
I glance around the table as I pop a sliver of truly excellent goose from the estate into my mouth.
My fiancée, looking every bit the future duchess and Wentworth brand ambassador in a long scarlet dress that leaves me in no doubt as to her fine gene pool.
Her mother, an elegant woman and, presumably, further testimony in favour of said gene pool.
My mother, stoical and aggressively cheerful as always. Ma’s social style may be more cart horse than tinkly and thoroughbred—unlike the Wentworths—but she gets the job done.
Selena’s father, David, growing pink in the cheeks as he partakes in an excellent Pomerol from the de Veres’ cellars. We’ve almost made it, I can imagine him thinking to himself. We’ve got our feet literally under the de Veres’ table. This is in the bag.
Unfair, perhaps, but I’m not exactly at my most charitable.
My sister, radiant in a cream blouse and, as always, a beacon in the dark fog for a man like me who has, almost certainly, lost his way in grand style.
Selena’s sister, who must be a couple of years older than Ivy’s sisters.
She looks so sophisticated—no doubt she’s wearing the family label today, like the rest of them—and I can’t help but contrast her studied world-weariness with the endearing lack of filter I observed in the twins, albeit briefly.
And, finally, my brother. Not for the first time, I thank my lucky stars for Ben.
He’s the life and soul of a lifeless, soulless party, sitting on Selena’s other side, his flirting as relentless as it is harmless while he also manages to stroke David’s ego in a way that requires energy and skill I’m frankly lacking.
As the conversation drones on, our eyes meet from time to time. Are you sure you want to sign yourself up for a lifetime of this? his say. Mine reply, mostly over the rim of my claret glass, I am not remotely fucking sure.
Is this how it will be for the rest of my life: turgid, shallow, forced conversation, Christmas after Christmas, with the family of a woman I don’t love?
It strikes me that the only possible blessing, the only reprieve, I can hope for is children.
Lots of children, running around, spilling their drinks all over the table, high as kites on presents and sugar and excitement.
I don’t even care whose kids they are—mine, Benedict’s, Flora’s.
And in this moment I don’t even care what I’ll have to do to get Selena pregnant.
All I know is that only kids, with their lack of fucks given and loving natures and pure, unfiltered joy at the littlest things, can save us from this mirthless, loveless dynamic.
All day, I’ve tortured myself with thoughts of what Ivy’s doing.
How she’s doing. When I pressed her in Venice, she admitted that she and the twins were planning on having a quiet one at home, aside from a short visit to see Dawn.
My only, small, consolation is that the nurses and doctors at Good Vibes will look after their patients admirably this Christmas.
At least Ivy won’t have the heartbreak of seeing her stepmother spend the festive season in a desolate, ill-equipped home.
Still, I’m sure our Christmases are polar opposites.
Here, there is an excess of food, of presents, of luxury. Old masters jostling for attention with metres of fresh garlands and picture-perfect trees.
There, an excess of love—and not much else.
I grow increasingly morose as the afternoon draws interminably on.
I can’t help it, though I probably can help the amount of claret I’m putting away.
I don’t care, though. I resent all of it: the loss of my freedom as I know it in six short days; the Wentworths’ presence here today; the fact that I can’t have one last fucking Christmas without them.
I'm all too aware that on no level is this a healthy attitude to have towards the woman I’m due to marry. Intolerance towards one’s in-laws is common.
Intolerance towards one’s fiancée is decidedly more of a red flag.
Most of all, I think, I resent said fiancée’s commitment to putting a brave face on it. Does she not care that she’s six days away from marrying a man she doesn’t love? Or is she so far gone down the road of apathetic duty that she’s stopped even questioning the fucked-upness of it all?
Eventually, thank fuck, we reach the portion of the day where gifts have been exchanged with the Wentworths and they make to head home. Octavia looks bored shitless, bless her.
Selena pulls me aside to say goodbye. ‘This time next week…’
‘We’ll be in Paris,’ I finish. We’re due a short honeymoon across the Channel—just a few days—and a ‘proper’ break together in the summer.
By silent agreement, we concluded that an immediate full-length, long-haul honeymoon would absolutely pile on too much pressure, given the nature of our relationship.
We stare at each other, our smiles polite rather than excited. There’s a hint of something else: a shared what the absolute fuck are we playing at? deeply concealed. A courageous mural of truth painted over with dozens of hardened layers of etiquette and tradition and hypocrisy.
I break the moment with a stiff nod. ‘Anyway, I’ll see you in a couple of days.’ There will be much last-minute crap to do this week, and I’m not deluded enough to think I’ll escape it all.
Once they’ve left, Ben grabs a couple of bottles—claret, and the Meursault we’ve been drinking—and he, Flora, and I collapse at the foot of the huge tree in the drawing room.
One of the servants has kept the fire stoked over lunch—those on duty are getting triple time and a fuck-load of excess food today—and its flames add a much-needed jollity to the proceedings.
Ma has gone upstairs to sit with Pa and fill him in on the day while she drinks a glass of sherry, so I can finally catch my breath.
My sister hands me a rectangular gift. It’s wrapped in cheerful red paper dotted with grinning snowmen.
‘You might want to open this one first,’ she says.
I smile my first genuine smile of the day as I take it from her. ‘You’ve gone all out with the paper this year.’
‘It’s not from me.’ A dramatic pause. ‘It’s from Ivy.’
Her words act as a brake pedal to my heart. I swear it stops at the mention of Ivy as much as at the knowledge that I’m holding a gift from her. A gift she’s chosen, and wrapped, and had smuggled into this house to make my Christmas that little bit brighter.
My brother whistles, and I glare at him.
‘Sorry. Do you want to go and open it by yourself?’
‘No.’ I sigh. ‘Not sure you should leave me alone in this state.’
I tear impatiently at the gift wrap, only to find a thick layer of brown paper inside. A couple of firm yanks has that coming free too, and I stare down at the gift inside.
An oil painting of Belvedere, small and beautifully rendered.
It’s the same view that she was painting on a larger scale from those chairs by the lake, where I fed her tea and biscuits after she’d come all over my tongue in the orangery and I sat like a useless dolt, watching her paint and half in love with her already.
Her talent is astonishing. She should be studying fine arts like Flora and not slaving away in a bloody caff to make ends meet.
She’s caught that magic hour wonderfully: the way the light hits the front of the house and turns it to gold; the long autumn shadows dancing on the lawn; the flame-coloured trees framing the vista.
I swear, you can almost see the leaves swaying in the breeze.
It’s the most perfect thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.
The second most perfect.
‘Bloody hell,’ my brother says as Flora cranes her neck, gasping in awe. ‘That’s unbelievable.’
I hold it up so they can admire it properly. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘Can’t you get her a few commissions to tide her over?’ Flora asks. ‘Surely lots of our friends would want their homes painted like that.’
‘I don’t think she wants my interference anymore,’ I say, my voice wobbling, ‘no matter how warranted I think it is.’
Slowly, I turn the painting back and lay it in my lap, gazing down at it. She’s had it framed in a dark oak frame. I run my fingertips over it, knowing that they’re tracing hers.
She sees my ancestral home the way I see it: as a breathing thing, full of vitality. Not a museum to be preserved in perfect sterility.