Chapter 33
Fulham, autumn 2015
‘ HAVE YOU LEARNED ABOUT Margaret’s eccentric aunt yet?’ Maggie’s father asked, helping himself to a spoonful of peas. ‘Dodgy genes there. You want to look out.’
‘Dad,’ Maggie chided, embarrassed by the implication.
‘Yes, apparently she’s a sublime chef,’ Mungo went on smoothly. ‘We’re thinking of going out there for a long weekend, aren’t we, darling?’
‘I’m not sure we need to discuss my sister right now. Please pass the cabbage.’ Veronica glared at her husband over the Spode tureen.
For months, Maggie’s parents, or more specifically Maggie’s mother , had been asking her to bring Mungo over for lunch. Really, ever since she’d mentioned that she was dating him. Maggie had ignored these pleas for several weeks, then made excuses for a few more weeks until her mother had asked whether he was an ‘imaginary’ boyfriend on the phone.
‘No, he’s real,’ she’d replied. ‘We’re both just busy with work, but if you like, I’ll see if he’s free this Sunday?’
Maggie had only ever introduced two men to her parents before: Lewis, who she’d briefly dated in the sixth form, and Marco, an Italian chef she’d slept with, on and off, for a few months when they were both working in the same restaurant. Neither lunch had been a success. Lewis had talked so enthusiastically throughout that small particles of food kept raining down on the tablecloth, and Marco had repeatedly reached for the wine and refilled his own glass. Both times, Maggie had seen instantly that her mother disapproved, although she knew it wasn’t just their table manners that she’d disliked; she suspected it was also their accents.
Consequently, she swore she’d never bring another boyfriend home. Not until her mother pestered and pestered and eventually Maggie relented, so that, now, the four of them were gathered around the dining room table in Fulham, politely passing bowls of overcooked vegetables to one another. Unlike her sister, Veronica had never understood the carnal pleasure of food. To Veronica, mealtimes were a ritual designed to display one’s manners – using the right knife and the right fork, never referring to it as a ‘serviette’ – instead of something to enjoy. As a result, she was a functional cook, not a good one, and today’s roast beef might as well have been roast wellington boot.
‘Delicious beef,’ Mungo said, swallowing a piece that he’d chewed twenty or thirty times.
‘Thank you, Mungo. Now, tell me, what exactly is it you do? Maggie mentioned property?’
‘She’s right, as in all things,’ Mungo said, and Maggie felt his hand on her knee under the table. ‘It is property but I wouldn’t want you to think I’m an estate agent.’ He made a mock shudder. ‘Awful rogues, estate agents. No, what I do is source properties that haven’t come on to the market for more discerning clients.’
‘By which he means rich people,’ Maggie joked.
‘Including the Russians?’ asked Peter. He’d worked in the City for nearly four decades and was extremely suspicious of the recent influx of Russian money.
‘I don’t particularly like dealing with Russians,’ Mungo ventured carefully.
‘Quite right,’ growled Peter.
‘I’ve got a few American clients right now. Some Saudis, and the odd French buyer. They like it round here, the French. Close to the Lycée.’
‘And where do you live?’ went on Veronica, more interested in finding out about Mungo than the vulgar foreigners who seemed to be invading their city.
‘Battersea. Not as grand as here, obviously,’ Mungo said, smiling at Maggie’s mother, ‘but my little house suits me.’
‘A house in Battersea? Goodness, how impressive,’ Veronica replied, widening her eyes at her daughter.
Maggie wanted to crawl under the tablecloth.
‘Not nearly as impressive as this place. My god, to have original fireplaces,’ Mungo said, glancing towards the end of the dining room. ‘I could sell it in a heartbeat if you liked?’
Veronica let out a tinkling laugh, which made Maggie frown. Why was her mother laughing like that? Was she … could she be … did she think she was flirting with Mungo?
‘No no, we’re very happy here, thank you, Mungo. Such a unique name. Tell me, are your family Scottish?’
‘I had a Scottish grandmother, but we’re not technically Scottish. More the sort of Brits who travelled north every summer and pretended to be Scottish for a bit. Kilts and reeling, stalking and fishing, all that sort of thing. But originally we were Normans who came over with William the Conqueror; that’s why my surname’s pronounced Le mon .’
‘Le mon , I see,’ Veronica cooed approvingly. ‘And do your parents live in London?’
‘No, they’re in Oxfordshire. Although they have a little flat not far from here, actually. Near Hurlingham. We’re big tennis players.’
If Mungo had written a checklist of attributes to make Maggie’s mother purr with pleasure, he could hardly have done better. Good job, tick. Own house, tick. Old family, tick. Indication that he knew what Scottish reeling and stalking was, tick. Parents who owned a house in the country and somewhere in London, tick. Mention of tennis, tick. She glanced across at him and tried to decipher whether he was doing it deliberately but as far as she could tell, he was being genuine.
After nearly five months of dating, this wasn’t surprising. Maggie knew that Mungo was a genuine person – genuinely enthusiastic about matters that included but were not limited to tennis, Battersea, Georgian architecture, dogs (although not handbag dogs), skiing, wine, historical biographies, Wagner, and the Fortum and Mason food hall, which he liked visiting on Saturdays after a trip to see whatever was on at the Royal Academy. He was genuine about things which Maggie would have been embarrassed to profess any great love for because, having worked in professional kitchens, she knew that declaring she liked skiing or Wagner was likely to get her called a ‘posh wanker’. She’d tried to hide her well-to-do background for so long that Mungo’s unabashed owning of his own seemed astonishingly honest.
It was another of the things she liked about him. Or loved about him, by now. It hadn’t been fireworks. The realization hadn’t struck her like a thunderbolt. But over the past few months, she’d fallen for this genuine, funny man. She felt looked after by him, which she’d never felt in any relationship previously, and he was so charming that she didn’t worry about introducing him to anyone. A few Saturdays ago, he’d met a handful of her friends in a Battersea pub, a gathering designed to look casual and accidental but which had, in fact, taken multiple WhatsApps and excitable messages to arrange.
Afterwards, that evening, Maggie’s friend Rachel had messaged saying she loved him, and had told her to bring him to her wedding that summer. You guys look perrrrrrrrrrfect together!
‘That’s because we are,’ Mungo told her, when she showed him Rachel’s message, before kissing her on the top of her head.
There was a comforting security to their relationship; Mungo fitted in with Maggie’s life, he fitted in with her friends; and after her parents, the only person left for him to meet was Phil.
‘Where did you go to school?’ her mother continued.
Maggie cringed all over again.
‘Westminster, I’m afraid. Not an old Radleian like you, Peter.’
Her father looked up from his beef.
‘I noticed the photos in the loo,’ Mungo explained. ‘Do you still play cricket? Only that I have a spare ticket to Lord’s next month. I’m not sure I fancy our chances against the Sri Lankans but you’d be most welcome.’
‘You don’t want to take an old duffer like me.’ Maggie’s father reached for the decanter. ‘More wine?’
‘Lovely, yes please. And it would be my pleasure. Unfortunately this one …’ Mungo put an arm around Maggie and squeezed her shoulder, ‘has already said she might be working.’
‘Poor Mungo, Margaret,’ Veronica said with a tut, which made Maggie’s mouth fall open. Her mother was siding with her new boyfriend after not even an hour in his company?
But just as she was about to defend herself, and joke that she found watching cricket even more boring than watching golf (another of Mungo’s enthusiasms), Veronica stood. ‘Help me with the plates, please, Margaret.’
It was a ruse, Maggie realized, once they were in the kitchen where her mother turned on her with glee. ‘Darling! He’s wonderful. So charming and so … so … so …’
Maggie waited for the right word.
‘Worldly!’ Veronica shrieked.
‘Worldly?’
‘You know what I mean.’ Her mother pulled a pair of rubber gloves over her manicure. ‘Sophisticated.’
‘Hang on, Mum, do you mean to tell me you approve of him?’ Maggie smiled at her mother’s back as she began rinsing the plates in the sink. Her parents had almost never approved of anything she’d done so this admission felt like a trick, as if someone was trying to tell her the world was flat after all.
Her mother turned around, eyes as round as the side plates. ‘Approve? Margaret, you should marry him tomorrow. Men like that don’t grow on trees. Pass me the gravy boat.’