Chapter 15 #2
‘I know you wouldn’t. I think you have the most integrity of anyone I’ve ever met.’
‘And I’m here because of my integrity?’ I laughed.
‘No, you’re here because I really enjoyed the evening we spent together the other week. The thing is, Anna, I’ve not been able to stop thinking about you.’
‘Really?’ I felt a warm glow suffuse through my whole body and found myself leaning into Theo.
‘You sound surprised?’ Theo was laughing down at me and bent to kiss my mouth.
Now, there are kisses and there are kisses and this was a kiss you read about in books and soppy magazines.
Maybe it was the champagne – I mean, it probably helped – but I’d never had a kiss that had me wanting more, wanting to float away somewhere, slide down the wall that was at the moment holding me up.
Kissing Roddy McClellan, usually in the union bar, had been a huge disappointment, his out-of-control beard and moustache getting in the way of any passion.
And, as for John Dyson, well, to be fair that had been much better, but I always felt John kissing me was something he did just to get on to the real stuff, as it were.
The starter of a bit of kissing before moving on to the main course – sex.
‘Surprised?’ I now said, once I’d surfaced. ‘Well, yes, you were very angry when you came round to the house in Leeds convinced I’d made up stories about you to the police.’
‘I was!’ Theo moved his mouth to my eyes, kissing each eyelid in turn.
‘And, to be fair, I just thought you were an utter pain in the neck… A pretty gorgeous pain in the neck but… you know…’ He bent to kiss the corner of my mouth, so gently I wasn’t convinced he had.
‘The thing is…’ He broke off as a hand was placed on his arm and we both turned.
‘You must be Anna?’ The woman now standing at our side was around my height and, like both Theo’s father and his sisters, fair with the brown eyes she’d obviously passed on to Theo.
‘Mum, this is Anna.’
‘So pleased you could join us, dear. This must all be quite different from what you’re used to in Rothersley?’
I held out my hand and Ava Mandeville took just the end of my fingers in a rather limp handshake. ‘Well, not much hunting goes on in the streets where I grew up.’ I smiled. ‘But as far as I know, South Yorkshire does hunt to hounds.’
Was that the right expression – hunt to hounds? And why the hell was I showing off about something I’d always abhorred?
‘Oh? Really?’ Ava came back at me. ‘How interesting. I’ve always assumed the Sheffield area to be nothing but steel manufacturing and… and…’ She trailed off, clearly bored with the conversation. ‘Well, I do hope Theodore is looking after you and that maybe you’ll join us for lunch tomorrow?’
‘That’s very kind, Mrs Mandeville,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure what my or Theo’s plans are for tomorrow.’
‘Do call me Ava, dear,’ she replied. ‘Or Lady Mandeville.’ She turned back to Theo. ‘Let me know, won’t you? Have you seen Mary? Could you keep an eye on her?’
‘Of course, she can sit with us. But Bridget’s with her, you know.’
‘Is she? Well, that’s good. Good, good.’ Ava Mandeville’s tone of voice didn’t validate her words. ‘Now, I believe dinner is about to be served.’
Theo’s father sat at the head of one of the long white-clothed tables, while his mother and Theo’s two elder sisters and partners were seated either side of him.
Down at the other end of this head table, Mary and Bridget had been placed on Theo’s left, with me, thankfully, to his right.
I’d have hated to have been placed away from him as – Linda had warned me as I was having my nails painted – could well be the case.
She’d read, she said knowingly, that at weddings and posh dos it was quite the thing to do to split couples up so that they mingle and make new acquaintances.
If that were the case, she’d advised, did I have several opening questions ready to grill the old buffer on my left or the dowager duchess to my right?
Hugh Mandeville stood and we all dutifully stood with him while he said grace.
‘We give thanks for the thrill of the chase, the joy of the field, and the excellent company we find at the end of it all. Bless this grub, Lord, and may our digestion and wine be as strong as our horses and our views even stronger. Amen.’
There was much cheering at this, more glasses raised and the bevy of waiting staff started offering bread rolls with silver tongs.
While the food was utterly delicious, I was so nervous about doing and saying the right thing, and so conscious of Theo’s very presence at my side, I could only eat very little.
Each place setting was littered with silver cutlery and polished crystal, but if I’d worried my table manners might be found wanting, I soon realised that the vast majority of the guests had drunk – and were continuing to drink – vast quantities of alcohol until the whole thing became a bun fight.
I sat and watched as corks from a never-ending supply of champagne popped like bullets on the Somme and glasses were refilled.
By the time a rather delicious prawn cocktail was served, a good majority of the guests were red in the face, laughing uproariously at punchlines no one was interested in hearing.
The men began unbuttoning waistcoats and then loosened ties and collars, while the more elderly women’s faces and decolletage began to match the colour of their partners’ hunting jackets.
The main course – beef – came and went and, when Theo saw me gazing across at three loud, braying men probably the same age as my dad, one of whom was patting the elderly waitress’s backside, he leaned in to me.
‘Sorry, should have warned you.’
‘No, really, it’s great fun,’ I lied. I didn’t want to come over as head prefect, but I really hadn’t expected this show of unfettered raucousness and merriment.
An old codger stood to propose a toast, forgetting halfway through who he was toasting, launching instead into a rambling, slurred ode to a horse long dead and met by a collective waving of napkins and resounding applause.
Every ten minutes or so, a chair was dragged back for an impromptu embrace, while a chorus of off-key hunting songs erupted at the far end of the table.
It reminded me of a song we’d sung in French at school: ‘Chevaliers de la Table Ronde’, and, a couple of glasses down myself, wondered if I’d fit in a bit more if I started singing, ‘Goutons voir oui!
oui! oui! while stamping my glass on the table and my feet on the floor.
By the time pudding came round, no one seemed interested in eating it, laughing and encouraging, instead, a young buck who’d climbed onto the table to dance, narrowly avoiding the centrepiece of spring flowers.
Well, this was certainly something to tell Linda. And my grandchildren.