The Tennis Party Read online

  For there was a village community of sorts in Bindon. Patrick and Caroline attended church every other Sunday, patronized the village fête, and were on amiable terms with the farmer whose land bordered their own. They knew the old lady whose family had once owned the manor house – and who now lived in a nearby cottage. They knew the fluttery pair of sisters whose brother had been the vicar of Bindon before he died. They knew the rather eccentric Taylors, who had lived in Bindon for generations – and probably married each other for generations, Caroline liked to add. But nowhere had Patrick found the smart, sociable, double-barrelled, Country Life families for which he was looking.

  The trouble with Silchester, he had heard another parent at Georgina’s school saying, was that it had turned into another London suburb – full of bloody commuters. Patrick, who himself commuted to London, was not offended by this remark. He knew he wasn’t the proper thing – neither was Caroline. But Georgina could and would be, if only she could mix with the right people. He was now looking seriously at moving further into the country – Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, perhaps. He had visions of a big Georgian house; perhaps ten or twenty acres. If this year went well, perhaps they could start looking.

  If this year went well.

  Patrick’s eye fell on his desk; on the paperwork he’d prepared for tomorrow. He would ask Charles casually into the study after lunch. No hassle, just an agreeable piece of business between friends. Besides, hassling wasn’t Patrick’s style. Never had been. Even when he’d been a cold-call salesman, he’d always retreated gracefully at the first sign of annoyance, playing it cool and courteous. Always courteous. Sometimes they were intrigued; sometimes he even found the punters phoning him back. When he sensed he’d got their interest, he would sometimes switch on the intimate, enthusiastic, I’m-doing-this-for-you-as-a-friend routine. But not if they were sophisticated investors – or, most tricky of all, thought they were sophisticated. Then it would be the smooth, I’m-not-going-to-insult-your-intelligence approach. Selling’s all about judging the client, he thought. There’s a way into anyone’s pocket.

  He sat down, put the folder marked ‘Charles’ to one side, and began carefully drawing out the chart for the tournament. But a doubt kept swimming around in his mind. Charles and Cressida had always managed to cancel when they’d been invited to Bindon before – an ill child; a recalcitrant nanny; once, less believably, two cars that wouldn’t start. And although he’d got Charles’ absolute assurance that they would be attending the party tomorrow, the very thought that they might somehow pull out caused distress signals to go shooting down Patrick’s spine. If they didn’t meet tomorrow, there would probably be no chance of seeing Charles for several months.

  He sat back in his chair, staring blindly at the bookcase. Was it worth phoning Charles and Cressida to check that they were coming? He rehearsed the call in his mind. A relaxed, unpressured tone of voice – ‘Charles, old boy, don’t tell us you’re going to blow us out again. Caroline will never forgive you.’ Or, if he got Cressida, some domestic query that would please her – ‘Just checking that the twins aren’t allergic to goose-down quilts.’ He reached for his Filofax and dialled the number, fingers trembling slightly.

  ‘Allo?’

  Shit. The German nanny. But perhaps Charles was there.

  ‘Hello there, could I speak to Mr Mobyn?’

  ‘He isn’t here, I am sorry, is there a message please?’

  Fuck.

  ‘It’s Patrick Chance here, just checking that you’re all coming to the tennis party tomorrow?’

  ‘Tennis party.’ The girl sounded doubtful. Patrick held his breath. ‘Yes, I think we leave here at ten o’clock.’

  ‘Good, good.’ Patrick tried not to sound too elated.

  ‘What is the message please?’

  ‘Oh, erm, no message,’ said Patrick. ‘Just checking you were all still coming.’

  ‘Shall I ask Mr Mobyn to call you back?’

  ‘Yes. Look, it really doesn’t matter,’ said Patrick. ‘I’ll see you all tomorrow, all right?’

  ‘Is that the message?’

  ‘Yes, all right.’ Patrick gave in.

  He replaced the receiver and closed his eyes. By this time tomorrow it should all be in the bag; signed, sealed and stamped. He picked up the folder and flicked through it a couple of times. But he was already completely familiar with its contents. He put it into his top drawer, closed and locked it. Then he spread out the sheet for the tournament chart and began to write the names of the four pairs across the top. Patrick and Caroline, he wrote. Stephen and Annie. Don and Valerie. Charles and Cressida.

  Charles and Cressida Mobyn were attending a drinks party at the house of Sir Benjamin Sutcliffe, before a charity performance of the Messiah in Silchester Cathedral. They mingled, holding glasses of Kir Royale, with the most eminent residents of Silchester – many of whom lived, like they did, in the Cathedral Close – together with a sprinkling of celebrities from around the area and even a few from London. Sir Benjamin’s drawing-room was long and high ceilinged, with enormous unshuttered windows looking directly onto the floodlit cathedral, and most of the guests were turned unconsciously towards the view, looking up every so often as though to check it was still there.

  Cressida was one of the few guests present with her back towards the cathedral. Tall, elegant and queenly, she seemed oblivious of its towering presence; even though she was universally acknowledged as one of the most tireless campaigners for the West Tower Fund. Indeed, her name was listed on the back of tonight’s concert programme as one of the hardworking committee members who had made it all possible.

  She was talking now to the well-loved radio presenter who would be making a speech at the beginning of the concert. The radio presenter was gesturing flamboyantly at the splendid sight of the cathedral, and Cressida, looking slightly taken aback, turned to look at it. Almost immediately, she turned back and smiled politely at the presenter. She had, after all, seen the cathedral nearly every day for the last four years. She did, after all, live opposite it.

  Charles, watching her from the other side of the room, could follow her thoughts as easily as his own. After all this time, the combination of her blinkered mind, her rangy blonde beauty and her wealth still acted on him like an aphrodisiac. When Cressida, at the breakfast table, looked up from the newspaper and asked in all innocence what they meant by privatization – or what on earth was wrong with insider dealing – he invariably felt an immediate surge of sexual energy. When she opened letters from her portfolio managers, frowned in slight puzzlement, and threw them down beside her plate, he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Contrary to popular belief, he hadn’t married Cressida for her money. He had married her for her complete indifference to it.

  The only child of a successful toy manufacturer, Cressida had been raised by her aristocratic mother to live on a stream of chequebooks, shop accounts and credit cards – all to be paid off by Daddy. Even now, she invariably carried little cash. Her portfolio of investments, managed by a blue-blooded investment management firm in London, kept a steady flow of income into her Coutts account, and it was now Charles, not Daddy, who undertook the monthly reckoning up of bills.

  The portfolio had diminished rather sharply in size over the last three years. A large chunk had gone on the house in the Cathedral Close, and another on buying out Angus, his former business partner. Charles was now the sole proprietor of the Silchester Print Centre, part gallery, part shop, dealing in prints of all descriptions. When he, Angus and Ella had run the Centre together, it had been different. They had put on lots of exhibitions of new young artists; had held printing workshops; had sponsored an annual print competition at the local technical and arts college. Now, running it more or less on his own, and engrossed with Cressida and the twins, Charles found himself veering towards the safer, more predictable end of the market. Old prints of Silchester Cathedral; prints of watercolours by Sargent; even posters of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. He defende
d this path to himself on financial grounds: the figures weren’t as good as they had been; it was time to stop throwing money around on experimental projects and consolidate. When a small voice in his brain pointed out that the figures had only got worse after he’d given up on all the experimental projects, he ignored it.

  He didn’t regret leaving Ella. Occasionally he felt momentary stirrings of nostalgia for their cosy existence together in Seymour Road. But that hadn’t been real life. This, mingling with important people in an important house in the Close, was real life. Discussing schools for the twins, instructing Coutts to open bank accounts for them, was real life. Being asked, as he had been today, to be godfather to the Hon. Sebastian Fairfax – that was real life.

  Homely, red-brick Seymour Road had simply been a preparation for the real world. He remembered it fondly and still held affection for it – but it was the same affection he felt for his childhood rocking-horse when he outgrew it. As for Ella, he hardly ever gave her a thought.

  The lights were on at eighteen Seymour Road when Stephen Fairweather pushed his bike through the gate and padlocked it to the fence. The overgrown front garden smelt of fresh evening air and honeysuckle; as he pushed open the front door, this was combined with the aroma of frying mushrooms.

  Downstairs, in the cosy basement kitchen, Annie was making mushroom omelette while Nicola sat at the kitchen table, carefully colouring in a map of Africa. Stephen stood at the door watching her for a moment. His heart contracted as he saw her clenching the pen, controlling the movements of her arm as best she could and frowning with impatience when a sudden jerk sent the green colour shooting outside the black outline of the map.

  Colouring was good for her co-ordination, Nicola’s physiotherapist said. Anything that used the damaged right side of her body should be encouraged. So the kitchen table was permanently heaped with colouring-books, beanbags for throwing and catching, skipping-ropes, crayons, cutting-out scissors, spillikins, rubber rings, rubber balls, jigsaws. Next to her map of Africa, Stephen saw Nicola’s holiday project folder. ‘Africa is a continent, not a country,’ he read. ‘Zambia and Zimbabwe are in Africa. The weather is very hot and there is not very much water. Sometimes the people starve.’ Nicola had just been starting to learn to write when she had had the stroke. Now her writing was spidery, with ill-formed letters ground hard into the page. He could read frustration in every jagged line.

  She looked up then, and her thick spectacles gleamed with pleasure.

  ‘Hello, Daddy!’ Annie looked up from the frying-pan.

  ‘Stephen! I didn’t hear you come in!’ He crossed the kitchen, ruffling Nicola’s hair on the way, and gave Annie a kiss. Her cheeks were bright red from the heat and her dark hair had curled into tendrils around her face. ‘Did you have a good day?’ she asked.

  Stephen closed his eyes and briefly reviewed the last twelve hours. An early train journey into London; an hour’s wait at the department to see his supervisor for fifteen minutes; a sandwich at the British Library while waiting for the documents he’d requested; a few hours’ good work; a late appearance at a seminar he’d promised to attend; back onto the train and home . . . He opened his eyes again.

  ‘Yes, not bad,’ he said.

  Stephen was scheduled to finish his Ph.D. the next summer. At the rate he was going, it might just be possible – but still the thought of marshalling his assorted notes, ideas and theories into a coherent, substantial thesis filled him with a blank dread. Information that had seemed solid enough when he put together his thesis proposal, arguments that had seemed weighty and convincing, now seemed to have become gossamer thin, floating out of the grasp of his mind whenever he attempted to formulate them in academic English or even find a place for them in his introduction.

  At the department, at seminars, even at home with Annie, he remained outwardly confident, assuming with a worrying ease the veneer of someone who knows he is going to succeed. He never articulated his secret fear – that he simply wasn’t up to the rigours of such an ambitious project; that he should have stayed as he was: a humble schoolmaster with no pretensions to changing the face of fourteenth-century musical history.

  He opened the fridge and cracked open a beer. ‘Did I say I had a good day?’ he said humorously. ‘I must be mad. Mark wasn’t free to see me when he’d said he would be, my papers took forever to arrive, and I was coerced into going to the mad Bulgarian woman’s seminar.’ Nicola giggled.

  ‘Is she really mad?’

  ‘Barking,’ said Stephen solemnly. ‘She entertained us for an hour with her views on the music that is all around us in nature.’

  ‘Birds singing,’ suggested Nicola.

  ‘If only,’ said Stephen. ‘No, she was talking about trees, and snails’ shells, and other completely soundless creatures.’

  ‘Definitely mad,’ said Annie. Stephen took a swig of beer.

  ‘And did you all have a good day?’ He looked around. ‘Is Toby in bed?’ Annie grinned.

  ‘Yes, we wore him out with a walk on the downs. We took a picnic up there. It’s been such wonderful weather.’

  ‘And then we got everyone’s clothes ready for tomorrow,’ said Nicola. Stephen looked puzzled.

  ‘What’s tomorrow?’

  ‘The tennis party, of course,’ said Nicola in tones of amazement. ‘You must know about that!’

  ‘He does know,’ said Annie. ‘He’s just pretending he’s forgotten.’ Stephen shook his head.

  ‘No, this time I didn’t have to pretend. It really had gone straight out of my mind.’

  ‘Good thing Mummy remembered,’ said Nicola, ‘all our things needed washing.’ Stephen grimaced.

  ‘I didn’t know I had any “things”.’

  ‘Old white shorts and an aertex,’ said Annie briskly. ‘And your racquet’s just about OK. A string’s missing, but . . .’

  ‘But someone with my talent doesn’t need the equipment,’ said Stephen. ‘I know. What about you?’

  ‘Well actually,’ said Annie, blushing slightly, ‘Caroline very kindly said I could borrow some of her things. I think she realized . . .’ She tailed off and her dark eyes met Stephen’s green ones. For a moment, he felt a flash of anger. He knew Caroline’s sympathetic, slightly too-loud remarks; her appraising looks; her complete incomprehension as to why anyone would chuck in a perfectly good teaching job to do more studying, for Christ’s sake. He would be aware of her no doubt kindly meant gesture all day. But to say any of that to Annie would be unforgivable.

  ‘Very good of her,’ he said lightly. ‘Pity Patrick’s such a fat bugger. Otherwise I could have swanned around in his Lacoste. Perhaps I will anyway.’ And, hoisting his rucksack onto his back, he went out of the kitchen and up the stairs to put away his books.

  Chapter Two

  Caroline woke up the next morning to the sensation of Patrick’s warm breath on her neck. Keeping her eyes closed, she registered first the fact that a brightness, which must be the morning sun, was penetrating her eyelids with a red glare. Then she became aware that Patrick’s stubby fingers were roaming over her body, under her nightdress, stirring her unwillingly into a pleasurable wakefulness. Still she kept her eyes closed, mimicking sleep, or at least inertia.

  Even when Patrick pushed his way into her, with the unmistakable enthusiasm of the early-morning fuck, she managed to keep her face impassive. She focused her attention on what she was going to wear that day, then forced herself to wonder whether she ought to pluck her eyebrows, until suddenly, with an involuntary cry, her concentration was overcome and she surrendered to pleasure.

  When Patrick had exhausted himself he collapsed beside her. ‘You enjoyed that,’ he said in an accusing tone. Caroline ignored him. ‘Didn’t you?’ he persisted. She shrugged.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘So why did you pretend you didn’t?’ He raised himself on one elbow and looked at her. Caroline smiled lazily. Her fingers were tingling and she felt benevolent.

  ‘I don’t know
,’ she said. ‘Probably to piss you off.’

  They lay in silence for a few minutes, then Patrick heaved himself up, avoiding Caroline’s eye. He wrapped an unnecessary towel around himself and disappeared reproachfully into the en suite bathroom. Caroline, staring after him, couldn’t quite summon the energy to call after him. Once upon a time she would have followed him into the shower; kissed and made up under the powerful blast.

  But this morning she felt indolent and heavy limbed. She could barely bring herself to scrabble for her cigarette case, let alone leap up for a repeat session. She stared up at the white ceiling, at the white muslin curtains, translucent with morning sunshine, and wondered vaguely why she could no longer bring herself to respond to Patrick’s lovemaking. She certainly wasn’t frigid, and he certainly hadn’t lost his touch. Perhaps it was just that she didn’t want him to feel pleased with himself.

  She sighed, reached for her lighter and, without moving from the pile of broderie anglaise pillows, lit up a menthol cigarette, inhaling deeply and blowing clouds of smoke up into the canopy of their dark, oak four-poster. She could hear the shower going; it wouldn’t be long before he came back in, probably still with that wounded look. Well, today he would just have to remain wounded. He would soon cheer up. And he should count himself bloody lucky that they still occupied – even if not always in perfect harmony – the same bed. She could think of couples who had experimented with single beds and separate rooms – never to return to the cosy familiarity of a shared duvet.

  But when Patrick came in again, hair slicked back and chest gleaming with droplets of water, he was actually whistling. Caroline peered at him suspiciously through the haze of smoke and waited for him to say that smoking in bed was a fire hazard, but he briskly threw open his wardrobe, pulled out pristine white socks, shirt and shorts, and began to get dressed.

  ‘Why are you so bloody cheerful?’ she demanded, as he tucked in his shirt. He ignored her, and began to comb his damp hair. Then he pulled open the curtains and thrust open the window. A breeze billowed the curtains, and Caroline, warmly cocooned in the duvet, scowled as the cool air hit her face.