‘Angel, I’ve been wanting to ask you something from the moment we met, certainly from the moment I came over here with Bas after hunting. You won’t be cross with me?’
‘No, no,’ whispered Maud. She was having difficulty breathing.
‘You probably think I’m the biggest shit in the world.’
‘I don’t. I don’t. I just think people misunderstand you.’
She could smell the faint lemon tang of his aftershave as he moved nearer.
‘I’m absolutely mad,’ began Rupert.
‘Go on,’ stammered Maud.
‘About little Taggie, and she can’t stand me. Could you possibly put in a good word for me?’
‘Taggie,’ said Maud in outrage, ‘TAGGIE!’
She might have been Lady Bracknell referring to the famous handbag.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ she screamed, ‘Taggie’s eighteen, you’re thirty-seven. She’s dyslexic, which makes her seem even younger. How dare you, you revolting letch, how dare you, how DARE you?’ And, bursting into tears, she fled upstairs and locked herself in her bedroom.
She couldn’t bear it, she, who’d always got anyone she wanted, being spurned under the mistletoe by the biggest rake in Gloucestershire. And for Taggie, of all people, which made it far, far worse. Almost pathologically jealous of Taggie, there was no one in the world Maud would less like to lose a man to. Was that to be her fate, growing older and less attractive, until no one wanted her?
An hour later in the kitchen Declan was still declaiming to an enraptured group.
‘Christ, I wish I wasn’t too tight to make notes,’ said Ralphie.
‘You see why he can’t go on doing crappy interviews with the Bishop of Cotchester,’ said Patrick to Cameron.
Cameron nodded.
A woman of so shining loveliness, [Declan was saying]
That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
A little stolen tress.
He looked up and saw Maud. ‘A little stolen tress,’ he repeated slowly.
For a minute they gazed at each other.
There is grey in your hair, [he began very softly]
Young men no longer catch their breath,
When you are passing.
Maud turned away, her face stricken.
Declan dropped his cigarette into the sink and, stepping over the enraptured seated undergraduates, caught up with Maud on the stairs. Not having had anything to drink for a couple of hours, he was sobering up.
‘What’s the matter? Did he turn you down?’
Maud nodded, tears spilling out between her eyelashes.
‘I’ve seen it coming since September. I wanted to warn you.’
‘Why didn’t you then?’
Declan sighed: ‘Has there ever been any point? He’s no good for you. He’s a traveller. It might have lasted a week, a month, then he’d have dumped you.’
He put his huge hands round her neck above the pearl choker.
‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘He’s just so attractive.’
‘I know. Hush, hush.’ He raised his thumbs to still her quivering mouth. ‘Let’s go to bed.’
‘We can’t in the middle of a party.’
‘What better time?’
‘I’ve spent so much money.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Declan as they went up the remaining stairs.
‘I love you,’ he said softly, ‘and I’m the only one of the lot of them who understands you.’
‘I know,’ whispered Maud.
Declan shut the bedroom door behind them.
Caitlin, going past, heard the key turn. Removing the sign outside the loo on which she had earlier written Ladies, Caitlin turned it over, wrote Do Not Disturb, Sex in Progress, and hung it on her parents’ door.
Downstairs, the party showed no signs of winding down.
‘I love yew,’ said Lizzie, looking at a dark clump of greenery in the corner, as she danced round with Freddie.
‘I love you,’ said Freddie, giving her a squeeze. ‘Honestly, on my life and at least a bottle-and-a-half of Moët.’
It was obvious that Tony wasn’t going to be able to prise Cameron away from Patrick for even a second.
‘We must go,’ he said bleakly to Monica.
‘All right,’ said Monica reluctantly. ‘I haven’t seen Archie for hours. Where is he?’
‘Upstairs, I think,’ said Caitlin.
Monica swayed up the stairs, hanging onto the banisters. She hadn’t drunk so much since she was a deb; it was really rather fun.
Finding several rooms heavily occupied by couples, she finally tracked down her elder and beloved son on a chaise-longue on the top floor, absolutely superglued to Tracey Makepiece, his hand burrowing like a ferret inside her white tricel shirt.
‘Archie,’ thundered Monica. ‘Drop!’
Archie dropped.
‘We’re leaving,’ said Monica, ‘at once.’
Downstairs, she told Tony what Archie had been up to.
‘Christ,’ exploded Tony, ‘he might put her in the club. Get him out of this bloody house as fast as possible.’
‘I don’t know where Declan and Maud are. We ought to thank them,’ said Monica, as Archie shuffled sheepishly down the stairs.
Having witnessed the incident, Valerie gave her little laugh: ‘One must learn to be democratic, Ay’m afraid these days, Monica. Sharon, of course, gets on with all classes.’
‘Evidently,’ said Caitlin, sliding down the banisters and beaming at Valerie. ‘She’s been wrapped round Kevin Makepiece for the last two hours.’
Giving a screech close to death, Valerie bolted upstairs.
Caitlin turned to Monica, Tony and Archie with a beatific smile on her face. ‘I bet Kev a pound he wouldn’t neck with Sharon. I suppose I’ll have to pay him now.’
‘Are your parents around?’ said Monica.
‘I’m afraid they’ve gone to bed,’ said Caitlin.
‘Well, if you’d just tell them how very much we all enjoyed it,’ said Monica.
‘You may have enjoyed it,’ hissed Tony, slipping on the icy drive in his haste to get to the Rolls and the frozen chauffeur, ‘but frankly it was the most bloody party I’ve ever been to, and that child Caitlin is a minx.’
‘She’s sweet,’ protested Archie with a hiccup.
‘If you have anything more to do with any of the O’Hara children I’ll disinherit you.’
About five in the morning, having behaved just as badly as everyone else, Rupert came back into the drawing-room looking for the whisky decanter, and saw a black and white tail sticking out from under the piano.
‘Gertrude,’ he said.
The tail quivered. Crouching down, Rupert found both Gertrude and Taggie.
‘What on earth are you doing?’
‘A drunk’s passed out in my bed,’ said Taggie with a sob. ‘Every other bedroom in the house is occupied; a bloody great party, including Ralphie and his blonde are in the kitchen, so I can’t wash up, the disco people haven’t been paid, Mummy and Daddy have gone to bed, and I don’t want to be a wallflower and cramp everyone’s style.’
‘You won’t cramp mine. Come on.’ Rupert dragged her out.
An empty champagne bottle rolled out at the same time.
‘You drink all that?’
‘Nearly.’
Rupert threw a couple of logs on the dying fire and then sat Taggie down on the sofa beside him. Gertrude took up her position between them.
‘It’s been a wonderful party,’ he said.
‘It hasn’t,’ said Taggie despairingly. ‘It’s been a disaster. Patrick’s got off with Lord Baddingham’s m-mistress, which’ll make Lord Baddingham go even more off Daddy. And Mummy’s got a terrific crush on someone.’ She blushed, remembering it was Rupert, and added hastily, ‘I’m not sure who, and poor Daddy’s got to pay for it all. I tried and tried to keep the cost down, but then Mummy went off and ordered all that champagne, and invited hundreds and hundreds of people.’