‘No, I’m on my own. I’ve been helping Brenda out with the arrangements.’
‘Ah. Right.’ He was glad he had placed her. ‘Well, let me introduce you to some people.’ James Baxter turned to a couple who had just come in from the hall. ‘Evening, Barry. Evening, Pomme. I’d like to introduce you to Carole . . . er, Seddon, wasn’t it?’
The expression on Barry Stilwell’s face was one Carole would treasure forever. Indeed, in subsequent moments of low spirits she would often try to cheer herself up by recapturing the image.
He looked like a fox who’d mistakenly gatecrashed a Hunt Ball. His eyes bobbled like frogspawn in a jar and his thin lips trembled. ‘Ah. Ah. Carole . . .’
‘Good evening, Barry. And you must be Pomme.’
Anyone who described Barry Stilwell’s second wife as ‘statuesque’ would have to be thinking, not so much of the Venus de Milo, as of the Statue of Liberty. The idea that she spent every Thursday evening line-dancing was mind-boggling. God had been very generous to her with all of His gifts except, from the expression on her face, a sense of humour.
‘You know each other?’ she asked in the manner of a matron summoning small boys to cold showers.
‘Er . . . yes,’ said her husband, in a voice as thin as his lips. ‘We did meet once.’ Then, with a ferociously pathetic flash of his eyes, he pleaded, ‘Didn’t we, Carole?’
She could see the relief flood his body as she confirmed that this was indeed the case. Carole had no intention of embarrassing Barry Stilwell further. The pleasure of watching him squirm was quite sufficient; she didn’t need anything else. Since the attraction between them was all in his mind, she felt emotionally untouched by the encounter. But she was amused by the speed with which he left her and moved on to greet other Pillars and their womenfolk.
For Carole, the crowning glory of the moment was Pomme’s dress. Its inspiration was vaguely Spanish. Under a tiny scarlet silk waistcoat, her huge body was swathed in frills and swirls of a midnight-blue material, braided in red piping from which dangled fluffy red bobbles of wool. Yes, it was actually true. Pomme was wearing pom-poms.
Brenda Chew approached, with an anxious-looking Sandra Hartson in tow.
‘I think we’d better go through to the dining room. I’ll tell people. You’d have thought the hotel staff’d do that, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone here.’ This was characteristically unjust, since Carole had heard Suzy Longthorne offering the service.
‘I don’t know where Bob’s got to,’ said Sandra. ‘He was bringing Kerry.’ She looked at her watch. ‘He should be here by now.’
‘Don’t know where Donald’s got to either. He’s drifted off somewhere.’ But Brenda Chew didn’t sound very concerned about her husband’s whereabouts. She’d said she didn’t want him around if he was drunk, so Donald Chew had made himself scarce.
Brenda started shepherding Pillars and womenfolk through to the dining room, so Carole followed Sandra out into the hall. ‘Did you say your husband was picking Kerry up?’
‘Yes, from her flat. Ridiculous, isn’t it, a girl of her age having her own flat in Brighton?’
Interesting to hear this common first reaction being voiced by the girl’s own mother. ‘But presumably you’re not far away?’ suggested Carole. ‘You can keep an eye on her.’
‘Yes, one or other of us drops in most days. Well, Bob more often than I do, I suppose . . .’ Sandra Hartson seemed to lose her way.
‘I’m surprised to hear Kerry’s coming this evening.’
‘Not her usual idea of entertainment, I agree. But we needed to make up the table, and Bob asked her. At first we got all the adolescent whingeing about how she’d be bored out of her skull, but when she heard that Rick Hendry was going to be here . . .’
As if cued by Sandra’s words, at that moment her daughter came in through the hotel’s front doors with her stepfather, whose arm was draped lightly round the girl’s bare shoulders. Kerry’s little black dress showed how much easier it was for a woman to look stunning at fifteen than when she reached the age of the Pillars’ womenfolk.
Only a step behind father and stepdaughter came the unmistakably lanky figure of Rick Hendry. His evening dress was entirely conventional, except for the grey silk of his shirt.
‘Where’ve you been?’ asked Sandra Hartson tautly.
‘It’s all right,’ her husband soothed. ‘We got delayed. Geoff’s parking the car now. We’re fine, don’t worry.’
‘You’ve missed the reception.’
‘But we’re here in time for the dinner,’ said Rick Hendry, with a laid-back open-palmed gesture, ‘so no problem.’
Sandra gave the old rocker a small smile of acknowledgment. Clearly they’d met before.
‘Yeah, don’t get all uptight, Mum,’ said Kerry. ‘Stay cool.’
Her mother suddenly became aware of Carole’s presence and remembered her manners. ‘Oh, this is Carole Seddon, who’s been helping with the organization of the evening.’
Rick Hendry nodded an uninterested nod, but, as he shook her hand, Bob Hartson repeated her name, and gave her a piercing look. Then, with a hearty chuckle, he put his arm round his stepdaughter’s waist, and followed Rick into the crowd.
For a nanosecond Sandra Hartson seemed to freeze, watching them. Then she too went through into the bar.
Carole looked around the comforting calm of the Hopwicke House hall, and wished that, rather than going through to the dining room, she could spend the whole evening there – or, even better, back at High Tor with Gulliver and the television. She wasn’t looking forward to what lay ahead.
She took a deep breath and went through to join the Pillars of Sussex and their womenfolk.
Chapter Thirty-Three
To Carole’s relief, Brenda Chew had not sat her at the same table as Barry and Pomme Stilwell. Throughout a whole dinner, the humour of his discomfiture might have palled.
Although she wasn’t feeling at ease, Carole could recognize what a good dinner Max Townley had supplied. The Pillars of Sussex had conventional tastes, but, as with the Sunday lunch, the chef had worked subtle refinements on the traditional. Whether he had the personality to project himself on television Carole did not know, but his cooking skills were certainly up to the mark.
She had been put at the same table as the Chews, though only Brenda was in evidence. At the beginning of the meal, she had said, with what sounded like callous disregard, ‘Oh, Donald has probably dozed off somewhere. Don’t worry, he’ll turn up.’ And that was the last time he had been mentioned. Though his chair remained empty, no one else on the table thought this worthy of remark, and his wife hadn’t time to worry about him. She was too occupied buzzing from table to table, ‘double-checking’ and demonstrating how much hard work she was putting into the evening.
The other couples at her table didn’t do a lot for Carole. When introduced to the editor of the Fethering Observer, she was hopeful of his having fascinating ‘stories behind the news’ to share, but he proved an extremely dull dog, only interested in counting down the days to his imminent retirement and a life of uninterrupted sea fishing.
Then there were a Mr and Mrs Goodchild – Carole didn’t catch their first names. He was a tall man, apparently a police officer, whose talk was all about golf.
Another couple were very excited about the preparations for their daughter’s wedding, and, once she’d established that her son was also getting married, Carole managed a bit of conversation with them. But the incredibly detailed knowledge they could bring to the subject of their daughter’s plans only made her realize again how marginalized she was in the lives of Stephen and Gaby.