Chapter Twenty-Three #2
‘Oh, look – cake!’
To a cry of delight around the table, a large zabaglione cake was being brought in on a huge silver platter, held aloft by two waitresses, with a third carrying a large jug of cream.
Behind them, a young woman in a pale pink satin dress trailed in, a fur coat slipped over the shoulders.
She had long straight-ironed hair, honey brown, ears peeking through.
A pretty face, retroussé nose. And she walked right over to Leo.
‘Surprise!’ she said in a soft voice.
Leo’s face broke into a smile. ‘Cressie! I wasn’t sure if you were going to be down!’
‘The lure of lamb and good zabaglione . . .’ Cressie had grey eyes the colour of huskies, and pale lips that had no edge.
‘This is Cressie,’ Leo said to Olivia. ‘Cressida. She’s the daughter of Dad’s best friend, Robert. And we practically went to school together.’
‘Well.’ Cressie smiled, showing milky teeth. ‘Different schools, same street. Leo was at the boys’ school. I was at the girls’. Let’s just say there were several explosive joint discos . . .’
Leo laughed. Cressie laughed. She was the kind of girl that the more casual she dressed, and the less make up she wore, the more beautiful she’d look.
Like she should be on a hay bale in a checked shirt – and Olivia wondered if she ever had been with Leo.
She suddenly felt wildly unsuitable, not quite pretty enough, no shared history with the son of this grand house except one night huddled together in a flat with some grief, two hundred balled-up tissues and an empty bottle of limoncello.
‘And you are . . . ?’ she asked of Olivia.
‘This is my friend, Olivia,’ said Leo. ‘We drove down from London together.’
‘Delighted to meet you.’ Sweet, supercilious smile.
‘How are Patricia and Robert?’ Leo asked. ‘Your dad’s not here, is he?’
Cressie arranged her face into a pretty frown. ‘Oh, he’s in Dubai, looking at property. They’ve had one of their mild falling outs, I believe. He and Isaac. Something and nothing. I expect they’ll be back on the golf course together next week.’
Cressie seemed shy in Leo’s presence. Paper thin, like a coin of that plant, Honesty, in winter, stretched so delicately between its monocle frame a person could push their finger through.
‘Where will you sit?’ Leo asked her. ‘We can make some room . . .’ He grabbed either side of his seat and made to shuffle.
‘No, I’m not sitting,’ Cressie said, to Olivia’s relief.
‘Or eating. Despite the call of the lamb . . . I’m just here drinking with some friends in the salon.
’ Olivia wondered if the ‘salon’ was the first room they’d been in and how much of an open house this affair was tonight.
‘I just thought I’d pop through and say hello.
’ She bent down and gave Leo a kiss on the cheek. ‘See you soon.’
‘She’s lovely,’ Olivia said, once she’d gone.
‘Yeah. My dad’s always trying to push the two of us together.’ Leo chuckled. ‘Cressie’s old man is richer than God, and Isaac’s always badgering him to invest. He thinks if I marry Cressie then it’s a solid deal for life.’
‘And do you think you will marry her?’ Olivia pretended she was asking lightly.
‘God, no. She’s lovely, but she likes ponies.’ He frowned. ‘Oh, no,’ he muttered. ‘Balth’s here.’
There had been a sudden shift in the room. A pulsing of new energy.
‘Balth!’ A cry from Caroline at the head of the table, rising from her seat. ‘Our Balthazar! Welcome, welcome!’
Balth was blond, tow-headed, in faded jeans and a white cricket sweater. Olivia could already tell he had freckles and buckets of entitled charm. She watched as Caroline gave him an effusive hug.
‘The prodigal.’ Leo frowned. ‘Don’t run off with him!’
‘Why on earth would I do that?’ But Olivia had to admit he was quite arresting, in a completely different way to Leo.
If Leo was a dark-haired prince of Sweden, Balthazar was a tousled, preppy golden boy of the meadows of New England.
He was Ryan O’Neal in Love Story, Robert Redford in Out of Africa .
. . Had he landed his biplane on the lawn?
‘He’s irritating.’ Leo stood up, as a seat was found for Balthazar next to Caroline. ‘Let’s go to the kitchen and find something less vintage to drink.’
They took a circuitous route, Leo showing Olivia several more reception rooms and a peek inside a dimly lit and echoey orangery.
By the time they got there, there were quite a few people in the kitchen.
A rangy man with a hoodie under a blazer, a woman in a floor-length knitted column dress, a dramatic young couple in matching black tuxedos.
And at the far end, Cressie was talking to Balth by the fridge, his hand casual on the freezer compartment above her head.
She caught Olivia’s glance, doe eyed, then looked away.
Leo was rummaging in a cupboard. ‘Aha, here we have it. A fun drink.’ He brought out a bottle of tequila. ‘We just need some grapefruit juice . . . I’ll go to the cellar. Wait here?’
Olivia nodded. When she looked up, Balth was next to her, his cricket jumper now over his shoulders. He had on a t-shirt that said Scoundrel in disco writing.
‘Are you here with Leo?’
He did indeed have freckles, and eyes the colour of cornflowers.
‘Yes, I am. I’m Olivia.’
‘I’m Balth,’ he said. He held out his hand for her to shake, and it was cool and dry. ‘Did Leo find you in London?’
‘Like a penny on the ground?’ she queried.
‘Well, yes, I suppose so. We’ve known each other for a while, then we bumped into each other yesterday at a book signing.
’ Was it only yesterday? she wondered. She felt like she’d been living a completely different life since then.
‘We’re only friends,’ she said, but she didn’t know what they were or what they might be. ‘And you’re his brother?’
‘Stepbrother.’ Balth looked her up and down. ‘A book signing, eh? Are you a wannabe writer, too, like Leo? Dad told me all about it.’
‘Trying to be,’ she made the huge mistake of saying.
‘It’s not erotica, is it?’
‘Er, no.’
He looked disappointed. ‘Right. I knew a girl once who wrote erotica . . .’ Balth’s voice trailed off and he looked wistfully into the distance.
‘And if it doesn’t work out, will you get a real job?
’ he asked. ‘I mean, it’s a nice little hobby, but it doesn’t pay the bills often, does it?
Leo’s lucky he’s got the family dosh to fall back on if it all goes tits up and no one reads the thing.
I mean,’ he repeated, leaning down to her.
He smelled like a sixth former: the inside of a pencil case, spearmint chewing gum and hair gel.
‘I keep saying to him, you need to get a movie deal, that’s what you need to do. That’s where the big money is.’
‘Yes, it’s really easy to do that.’ Olivia smiled at him beatifically.
Balth looked to the ceiling, flickering his eyelids.
‘I’ve had an idea for a book for quite a while,’ he said, ‘about a cricketer who discovers a whole other world under Lord’s, an allegorical one, set in the past, but I’m far too lazy to do it myself, so I need someone to write it for me.
I’ve already asked Leo – you know, fifty-fifty profits and all that, if he can pull it off – but he said no, as he wants to do a different genre, but if you’re not yet set on exactly what you’re doing, maybe you could write it? ’
‘Thank you for asking,’ she replied, ‘but I’m sure if it’s a really good idea then you could make the time to write it yourself. What do you do?’ she asked him. ‘Are you in the restaurant trade, too?’
Balth threw back his golden lion’s head and laughed. ‘God, no! You wouldn’t get me inside one of those sweat holes! I do a bit of this and that, trading, commodities. I’m a qualified pilot so I fly whenever I can, as well.’
‘Is your plane on the lawn?’
‘What?’ His gaze was wandering. He was already tiring of her, she could tell. ‘What do you think of my dad and Caroline?’ he asked her.
‘Great,’ said Olivia.
He narrowed his eyes. ‘An acquired taste, I think. Although at least Caroline’s an improvement on my own mother .
. . You’re quite pretty,’ he observed. ‘If you get bored of my stepbrother, give me a call. Although, I’d be careful with Leo, if I were you.
I mean, always keep one hand on the door handle, because he certainly does. ’
‘Which door?’ Olivia asked sweetly.
Balth had clearly had enough. ‘Well, very nice to meet you, Olivia,’ he said, bringing their lovely little chat to a close. ‘Cressie!’ He yelled back over to her. Cressie waved merrily at him. ‘Now, she’s gorgeous,’ Balth whispered to Olivia before he walked away. ‘Total marriage material.’
She watched him go. The privileged boy swagger. The entitled hair flick. He passed Leo coming back with the grapefruit juice, but they barely acknowledged each other.
‘So, you’ve met Balth?’ Leo asked. ‘Did you survive?’
‘Only just. Quite the character, isn’t he? You’re not close?’
‘No. He’s hardly ever here, thank goodness. Too busy in the south of France with his mum or lording it up in the City.’
‘He flies planes.’
‘Yes. Right. Let’s grab a couple of glasses.’ Leo handed her a cocktail glass from a tray on the kitchen table and gave her a bright smile, ‘and then we’ll head back in for some of that cake.’
They returned to the dining room for zabaglione and coffee served in thick smoked-glass coffee cups and saucers (‘How delightfully retro!’ a siren in silver satin observed), plus poppy seed crackers with slivers of blue cheese and fat black grapes.
A slice of cake was passed down to Olivia on a bone china plate, its light cream filling a whisper on her tongue.
Isaac Feu was well oiled now, a collapsing joint of meat held together with string and red wine.
He’d got to the ‘And let me tell you this!’ stage of the evening and was telling the assembled a lot of different things.
How shifty his current sous chef was. What he thought of the current London Mayor.
How he viewed the draconian health and safety measures in the capital’s eateries.
Caroline sat beside him, a blank smile on her face.
The table had been recently surrounded by extras, those from the salon, the kitchen.
The music had been turned up and some of them had started to dance, silky hair shaken, velvet arms snaking.
People began to stand up from the table, change places.
Isaac got up unsteadily from his seat and, arm in arm with a tall man in a burgundy shirt – like a lanky schoolgirl and her short friend walking home from a school disco – left the room.
Olivia went to the bathroom, which was off another door from the vast hall.
On her way back, she realised one of the buckles on her shoes was loose and stopped by the doorway to the salon to fasten it.
She could hear voices – Isaac’s and another man’s, the man in the burgundy shirt.
They were perched on low, elephant-leg stools either side of an occasional table made dollhouse small by the girth of Isaac, the big flank of his thigh, his Fabergé egg belly.
One of his thick arms was fastened right over it, his fingers clamping its far edge like he was about to croupier the whole thing towards him.
‘So, you said at the table your son’s writing a book,’ said the man in the burgundy shirt.
Olivia shifted herself nearer the doorframe.
‘Who?’ Isaac barked. Eyes bloodshot. Mouth slack.
‘Leo,’ slurred the man, his head drooping. ‘Your son.’
‘Leo’s not my son,’ Isaac replied, playing the table like a piano with his other hand. ‘I have a son.’
Olivia placed the side of her wrist on the doorframe and leaned in.
‘But you treat him like a son, don’t you?’ the man said. One of his arms dangled to the floor, his fingers grazing the carpet.
Isaac made a strange noise, a half-scoff, half-grunt. He rolled his bloodshot eyes. ‘I treat him the bare minimum, for Caroline’s sake,’ he huffed, ‘that is all. Balth’s my son, I don’t need another.’
‘Alright,’ the other man said vaguely. ‘A bit harsh, Isaac.’
Isaac grunted again. ‘What’s harsh about it? There’s no blood connection and blood’s what matters, isn’t it? I tolerate Leo. That’s what I’m asked to do.’
There was silence but for a ticking clock and the swell of distant music and laughter from the dining room. Finally, Burgundy Shirt said, ‘Alright. Got any more whiskey? I’m as dry as a dog in a dusty outhouse . . .’
Olivia moved on, buckle done up, heart unfastened and pulsing free of her chest. For one moment only she considered telling Leo, one moment in which she imagined recounting every cruel word Isaac had spoken, but in the next she knew she couldn’t, and she also knew, from this moment, she would remain utterly heartbroken for him.
‘There you are.’
He was waiting for her at the entrance to the dining room.
‘Would you like to escape for a bit?’ he asked her.
‘Where to?’ she replied, trying to still her heart, trying to forget what she had heard.
‘The attic,’ he said, and he took her hand. ‘I was wondering if you’d like to come and see my Scalextric.’