Chapter 5
Five
Painted flamboyant and extrovert characters. Very different to her own personality. Teaching point: na?ve versus trained painter. Are they both valid artforms?
(Taken from Calliope Thorne’s teaching notes.)
Johnny sucked in a deep breath, rested his hand on the gate to the house his family were staying in, and girded his loins. The house rejoiced in the name Sandy Vistas and was a Victorian Gothic monstrosity. Trust his family to rent somewhere completely over the top.
‘There you are.’ Stella, his oldest sister, pounced on him and claimed his arm. ‘Come on in, darling. We’re in the garden. There’s enough champagne to sink a battleship and everyone’s getting nicely sloshed so the edge has been taken off the Starling Flock.’
He followed her to a trestle table laden with glasses and ice buckets.
Stella handed him a glass. ‘Chin-chin.’ She saluted him with her own and winked.
‘Or should I say, chin up? I know you don’t find us easy when en masse.
Speaking of which, here comes Mummy.’ She gave him a mischievous look and melted away before he could claim her for moral support.
‘Jonathan! Where have you been?’ Dorrie Starling proffered her cheek. ‘Why weren’t you in church?’
‘I was. Slipped in at the back.’
‘At the back? But we’d reserved you a space on the front pew.’
Johnny gulped his champagne feeling, as ever when in the company of his redoubtable mother, reduced to a naughty teenager.
‘I was late so didn’t want to disrupt things.
And you know how I feel about organised religion.
’ His mother sniffed disapprovingly so he changed the subject.
‘Looked like it went well, though. Baby Inigo behaved and the vicar seemed okay.’
Dorrie pursed her lips. ‘Yes well, I like a man to lead a church service, always seems more proper somehow, but I thought she did jolly well. Very highly thought of in the town, I believe.’ She gave him a little push.
‘Now go and say hello to your father. You haven’t seen him since you came back from abroad.
Why you had to disappear off and live in Stratford of all places, I’ll never know.
’ She made it sound as if it was another planet.
‘Must dash. Haven’t circulated yet.’ She waved at someone at the other end of the garden and beetled off.
Johnny watched her go, a smile creeping across his face. For someone in her mid-seventies she had more energy than he’d ever have. Grabbing a fresh glass, he made his way over to his father who was sitting on the grand old house’s terrace and looking down upon proceedings with an amused eye.
‘Johnny, old boy.’ Sid Starling patted the vacant chair beside him.
‘Come and perch.’ Johnny sat down. His father leaned over confidingly.
‘Your mother’s in fine fettle. Loves a good party.
She’s not content with just this you know.
Afternoon tea for the ladies, a luncheon and a barbecue too.
Costing us a fortune and I don’t even think Jessica and Connor wanted all this fuss. ’
‘Payback for them eloping?’
Sid chuckled. ‘Oh, most certainly. Your mother can’t abide missing an opportunity to show off her latest outfit. I have to say, though, she’s looking remarkably well today. What a splendid filly, eh?’
Johnny’s heart warmed at the thought of his father still finding his wife attractive.
His parents’ marriage, a survivor of nearly sixty years, five children and nine grandchildren, was as solid as a rock and grounded in mutual love.
He’d never found that certainty for himself.
Maybe that was why he’d chosen the lifestyle that, until recently, he’d been so careful to create. ‘She is.’
‘Cross with you though. Keep on your toes, old boy. She’s missed out on being there to see her youngest get married and she won’t do the same with her only son.’
Johnny groaned. He knew where this was going.
‘By that I take it there’s no one in tow today?’
Johnny shook his head.
‘Come on, feller-me-lad, get courting. Your mother wants to see you settled down, provide us with some grandchildren.’
Johnny surveyed the chaotic scene. The very young Starling children were dodging around the guests, Percy and Magnus were at the end of the garden putting their smart shirts and trousers at risk by playing a noisy game of football, and Stella’s older two were squabbling over something on their phone screens. ‘Aren’t nine enough?’
‘Never enough grandchildren,’ his father proclaimed robustly. ‘They bring joy to life. Trust me. And, if you settled in one place for long enough, you’d find out. What about that girl you were seeing in Bangkok?’
‘All over.’
‘And no one in Stratford?’
‘Have a heart, Dad. I’ve only just moved there.’
‘Why Stratford, old chap? Why didn’t you come back to Exeter? We’d have put you up in the old homestead for a while until you found your feet.’
Johnny patted his father’s liver-spotted hand. ‘I know you would. Wouldn’t have done much for my love life living back at home, though.’
‘Seriously, Jonathan, you’re in your mid-forties. High time you got rooted somewhere. And with some nice girl. Your mother and I were eighteen and twenty when we married. By the time I was fifty I’d had all my children.’
‘I know.’ Johnny scrubbed a hand over his face.
‘And if I could find what you and Mum have, I wouldn’t hesitate.
Besides, things are different these days.
People settle down later. And with the job I had I never knew where I’d be sent to next, or what into.
It never felt fair to partner up with someone who didn’t appreciate the score.
’ He paused and forced his hand to stop trembling.
‘And there was always the risk I wouldn’t come back. ’
His father snorted. ‘You weren’t involved in those wars and earthquakes, son.’
‘No I wasn’t but I was reporting on them.
’ Johnny downed his second glass. ‘And I was there.’ This was why he avoided family gatherings.
Added to the jibes and teasing about his resolute bachelor state was the complete lack of understanding of how his work had impacted him.
The only one who showed any compassion was Stella and even that was demonstrated in her pure-Stella-no-nonsense style.
An explosion blasted and he jumped a foot, nearly dropping the champagne flute.
But it wasn’t a landmine, it was a waiter dropping a metal serving tray on the hard patio slabs.
Thankfully it distracted his father. ‘Oops,’ Sid said. ‘Dorrie won’t like that.’
In the confusion surrounding his mother berating the unfortunate waiter Stella sidled up. ‘Need rescuing? Come and raid the canapés with me.’ She addressed Sid, ‘Just taking Johnny for some grub, Daddy. Back soon.’
Putting an arm through her brother’s, she led him into the dining room, a vast space cleared of furniture except for parallel lines of tables dressed in snowy white cloths and groaning with food.
Blue balloons created an arch over a door, with a banner proclaiming, ‘Happy Christening Day, Inigo!’ Dorrie’s work.
Jessica would be apoplectic at all the single-use plastic.
‘Soak up some of that fizz,’ Stella ordered. ‘Come on, it’s all got to be eaten.’ She loaded a plate with smoked salmon, soft cheese, olives and crackers and handed it to him. ‘Eat up.’
‘Always so bossy,’ he grumbled.
‘The prerogative of the eldest child.’ She eyed him penetratingly. ‘So, as my oldest offspring would say, what gives?’
‘What are Euan’s plans?’
‘Excellent A-levels and a Russell Group university,’ she said crisply. ‘Or he’s disinherited. Stop swerving the question. How are you?’
Johnny put his plate down. The smoked salmon no longer appealed. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You don’t look fine.’ Stella narrowed her eyes at him. ‘You’re too thin and I’d say you’re not sleeping well. Finally given up careering around the world putting yourself in mortal danger?’
He nodded.
‘And?’
‘Gone freelance. Writing travel pieces.’
One perfectly groomed eyebrow rose. ‘So, still careering around the world, then?’
‘Don’t you start. I’ve just had Dad bending my ear. At least I’m not putting myself into mortal danger anymore.’
Stella sniffed in a way that was pure Dorrie. ‘You obviously haven’t been on some of our holidays. That last one in Iceland was quite the adventure.’
He smiled. Picking up his plate he resumed eating.
‘We were all so worried about you, darling. You do know that?’
‘Were you? It didn’t show.’
‘Yes well,’ Stella huffed. ‘You know what the family is like. Deflect true concern into nagging about something else.’
‘Like why I’m still not married and providing yet more grandchildren. Already had a bucketful of that.’
This time it was Stella who changed the subject. ‘Why Stratford, darling?’
‘It’s pretty. Good access to motorway networks and airports. I like Shakespeare and rumour has it there’s a theatre there.’
‘And it’s not too near the clan Starling,’ his sister said, knowingly.
‘It’s not too far away either.’
‘Johnny, you’re a west country boy. You simply cannot hole yourself up in the Midlands. The call of the sea gets all of us in the end.’
‘Is that why you’re in Budleigh and poor old Brian’s in London?’
Stella sipped her champagne and narrowed her eyes at him over the rim of the glass. ‘It suits Brian to commute back for the weekends and having a London pied-à-terre is so useful. I like my trips to town as well, you know.’
‘And you like your own space when Brian’s not around.’
‘It has its advantages. Only God knows what I’ll do when he retires. Under my feet all the time. It’ll be like having a third son. The horror, darling. I just hope he takes up golf.’
Her dismay was so apparent it made him laugh and jolted him out of his mood. He ate some more and said, after a pause during which he was aware of his sister staring at him questioningly, ‘I’m okay you know, sis, I really am.’