“He sounds almost as much hard work as you.”
Evie threw a pillow, giggling as it ricocheted comically off Clem’s head. Clem collapsed dramatically onto the carpet, laughing too. It was refreshing to be a teenager again. As the taper of Clem’s dress reached the stairs, her dark wine left tidelines up the inner slopes of her glass.
The Swarsbys and the Dallas’s shared a car west across London. Evie wondered how her mother had been promoted to this social stratum. In all the time her parents were together, they seemed only to mix with other low-level party members and civil servants. Bram was as high as they ever got. He and Clive were at Brasenose together, although the way Bram treated her father◦– Evie grew to realise◦– made the friendship seem like more of an act, an avuncular benevolence on Bram’s part. Yet here was Evie’s mother, living in luxury and flirting with millionaires.
Evie wasn’t sure if the venue they arrived at was Archie Wethered’s house, or if the property had been hired for the occasion. Either way it looked fit for a ducal residency, a stately home garlanded by magnificent wisteria, an enormous glass cupola protruding above the lobby and significant acreage for grounds.
Duncan led the way towards the main doors. He looked very grown-up in his dinner suit, striding along the rouge carpet fastened down by brass runners, up the stairs to be greeted by the staff.
They were served champagne and directed towards a marquee around the back of the property. Orbs of light were strung gaily from the pine trees, crystal balls that told no future. The band played swing-time even though it far was too early for dancing. All the women were layered, lithe and shoulder-draped. They held large purses and let their necks show, their men tucked and pressed, crisply defined in black and white.
Far less shapely than Clem, Evie had snacked before departing but was terribly aware of her conspicuous bones, her exposed clavicle. The chicken fillets felt strange against her breasts, fleshy beneath the turquoise dress. She ate a ruthless number of canapés, partly to compensate, and partly because she was so bloody stoned. It was also, in part, for the anonymity of purpose, to give herself something to do, because being high made her feel like everyone was looking at her. It made her think that they knew the things only she knew about herself: the things she had done that made her dislike herself the most.
She touched her hair. It was crunchy. She had another drink. Thankfully Duncan was coming this way, because there, down the other end of the shingle path, was Bramwell Guiseley.
Evie ducked behind a bush that had been clipped into a double spiral. Bram wore a cummerbund similar to the one in that bloody photo that was still cracked after the break-in back in March. Evie swallowed her wine; it was sharp. She turned to face her brother.
“What are you doing behind the topiary?” said Duncan.
“There’s Bram.”
“So he is.”
“Do you think he knows we’re here?”
“Mummy told him we were coming.”
“You’ve spoken to him?”
“Course I haven’t.”
Evie would never cry over Bram, but something nearly happened as she monitored him now. Pallid as winter, even in summer, she had never been paid attention to before, never truly considered, not until Bram. He had given her books and blended compliments into their conversations. He had listened to her, written expansive letters in response to her own juvenile salvos, offered her his opinion on intimate matters, his advice, crediting her with the sort of intelligence she had not known she possessed, making her think of herself and regard herself, become aware. And then there were those times at his clandestine flat, Bram’s hot tongue upon her neck mere moments after she first put her hand on his knee. She had been more grown-up than ever, a woman who knew her own mind. The skrike of gulls on the Thames. That single white hair sprouting amid the otherwise dark thatch on Bram’s chest.
Evie realised Duncan was staring at her, and knew that she had revealed a part of herself, a visible wound, and that her brother had no respect for people who gave away everything.
“You’re on something,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“When are you going to stop letting this family down, Evie?”
She didn’t know.
It was a short walk to the toilet to cover her mouth and scream. The swing doors fanned her face and then she was entering the end cubicle under the frosted window. Feeling this way about Bram, it was as if she’d been mugged and couldn’t go past the spot where it had happened. A consensual fling should not result in such self-loathing. Sex Evie had occasionally instigated, even if she never finished it, was still under her control. She rested her head on the cistern and breathed. Developing feelings was crude and childish, becoming entrammelled with the first person that ever made her feel understood even more so. How obvious she had been. Clemmie and the other girls took lovers. They were never taken themselves.
She returned to the garden. Everyone was clapping as Archie Wethered finished his welcome speech and stepped aside so the auction could be set up. Glossy programmes had been arranged on a nearby lectern. The auction lots included vintage posters from victorious Conservative elections gone by, a luxury chalet holiday in Austria, a grouse hunting trip to Scotland, a night’s exclusive use of a private members’ club in West London, a bronze statue of Winston Churchill and numerous items of jewellery. Evie was interested to see that activities with various powerful government officials were also on offer◦– afternoon tea, dinner dates and shopping trips◦– all of them available to the highest vested bidder.
After that would come dinner, speeches and dancing. The menu had been displayed on a side table: grapefruit stuffed with crab and avocado, consommé, roast sirloin of beef, Norfolk turkey, breaded lamb cutlets, cider-glazed gammon and vol-au-vents. Green salad, tomato salad, Waldorf salad, French bean salad, sweetcorn salad, something called pilaff, new potatoes, the whole lot followed by a dessert of orange sorbet, strawberry gateaux and black cherry flan. After that came cheese and biscuits, tea and coffee and wine, wine, wine, wine, wine.
Another drink, another, why not? Evie watched the auction proceed and thought of the world she had left behind, a place where the cloud canopy never seemed to part for very long. Every day in Yorkshire there were processions of police vehicles on the pit road near Threndle House, battalions of urgent white and blue heading towards the locals who stood together outside of their place of work and other pits like it. These picketers staged protests and held their banners aloft. They claimed to fight for their jobs when, for the most part, it wasn’t even their pits that were being threatened. It seemed absurd that these people would put themselves through that for one another. Although that was the immensity of it, Evie supposed, the power of collective action. No wonder the government wanted to stamp it out.
One day she and Duncan had gone to spy on the miners and their families queuing for their meals at the welfare. It was surprising how chipper everybody seemed. The news outlets reported dawn raids by pillaging miners, hoodlums damaging public property and carrying out violent raids on the police, causing trouble both in the centre of the country and its extremities. Yet they were just people; Evie knew that now. She had also realised that there were twin planes of reality in this country, and the closer you looked the more blatant their divergence seemed to be. She swooped upon a platter of food then helped herself to more champagne. Ahead was a marquee and in front of that was an ice sculpture of a hand with a torch. It was the Conservative herald.