Page 28 of Annabel and Her Sisters

‘Hello, darlings,’ she said breathlessly, ‘how lovely to see you.’

‘Mum– are you all right?’ I was shocked.

‘Yes, yes, just a bit tired– didn’t sleep too well– but right as rain.’

‘But why the glasses?’ asked Ginnie anxiously.

‘Well, it’s a bit bright, isn’t it? And my usual ones got broken, so Clarissa lent me these– she welds in them.’

Of course she did. And I remembered seeing her in them, sparks flying in some outhouse, looking like the bonkers farrier we had years ago. Definitely not the girl in Flashdance . After we’d kissed her– God, she was thin– we turned her gently around and walked her inside.

‘Where are the dogs?’ I asked. My mother, like the late Queen, always had a sea of canines circling her feet.

‘In a stable, like they were at yours, Ginnie. Derek thinks it’s best during the day.’

‘With a run? Some sort of paddock?’ Ginnie asked, concerned.

‘No, they had nothing spare, but his are in the kennels too, so it seemed only fair. And Brown Dog had a bit of a set-to with one of his Ridgebacks.’

Ginnie and I stopped on the threshold, appalled. ‘Brown Dog’s OK?’

‘Oh yes, just got a nip, but Hippo fared rather worse, so she’s at the vet’s.’

My mouth dried, as I knew Ginnie’s did too. There were no words for this appalling news. Clarissa came rushing to meet us wearing a boiler suit over her clothes. I wanted to hit her. No wonder she’d felt the need to take Mum to Oxford.

‘Why are the dogs in a stable?’ I asked, without greeting her.

‘Because five dogs plus ours is a lot, Annabel– you wait! Ours are penned up, too, which they hate, frankly.’

‘And how is Hippo?’

‘Fine, coming home later today. I’ll pick her up on my way to the slaughterhouse.’

Nice for Hippo, I thought. To go with the pigs to the slaughterhouse. Hear them squealing. I hoped she wouldn’t get tangled up and end up in the sausages Clarissa made herself in some rank-smelling shed.

She turned and marched through the back door, down the corridor to the kitchen.

As usual the house was chaotic: scuffed lino, newspapers everywhere– the Racing Post , mostly– stains on the sofa, where her dogs would normally lie, saddles and bridles on racks by the sink where she was cleaning them.

‘Well, it’s clearly not working,’ said Ginnie without thinking. ‘So Annabel and I think Mum should come home with me.’

There was a silence as Clarissa digested this.

‘Oh, you do, do you?’ She turned from where she’d banged the kettle down on the filthy Rayburn, damp washing hanging all over it. Her eyes glittered dangerously. ‘Well, I’ll have you know Mum is quite happy here with us.’

‘Yes, yes, very happy,’ said Mum anxiously. ‘Honestly, girls, it’s lovely here, we’re all getting along famously. I’m loving it.’

I gently removed the glasses. Her eyes were red-rimmed and watery.

‘Hay fever,’ she said quickly. ‘Which I’ve never had before, but apparently can come on in later life. And of course, I’m used to London.’

‘Which is why we went to see a pharmacist yesterday, in Oxford,’ Clarissa said carefully.

‘Oh good,’ I said quickly. ‘What did he say?’

‘She…’ Clarissa raised an eyebrow and paused, never missing an opportunity, ‘said what Mum has just said. Hay fever. And she checked her sinuses in the cubicle and said they were pretty good for her age. Is this a social visit or an inquisition?’

‘A social visit,’ I said quickly, before Ginnie could speak. ‘Honestly, Clarissa, it’s lovely to be here, I haven’t been here for yonks.’

My mother’s face relaxed and Ginnie saw and realized in an instant this was the way forward. If the sisters were happy, our mother was happy. Falling out would make things much worse.

‘Yes,’ Ginnie agreed with difficulty. ‘And the house looks… great.’ We gazed around at the confusion and my mother gave a weak smile, a glimmer of her old self returning.

‘Doesn’t it? And Clarissa’s so busy it’s a wonder she’s got time for it all. Excuse me, darlings, I must just pop to the loo.’

Clarissa hadn’t got time for it. She never had.

There was a tottering pagoda of washing-up in the cracked old butler’s sink, clothes draped on radiators as well as the Rayburn, cats sleeping on the counter by the open butter dish which had teeth marks in it.

Clarissa, as ever, had a cigarette on the go and two inches of ash hung over the mugs of tea she was making.

As she turned, the ash dropped in some soup in a pan on the side which smelled foul.

Pheasant, probably, but off. Very high. I shut my eyes, aghast. Ginnie was finding this even worse than me: her house was spotless.

She had to turn and walk away. She stopped and stared at the Welsh dresser for composure.

I followed her gaze. Amongst the midden of greasy plates and bills and torn bits of paper with numbers on them, were some old photos in frames.

One of us as children, one of Dad, and one of Mum, out hunting, back in the day, surrounded by her friends.

She looked amazing. My mother had been very beautiful, like Ginnie.

Yes, she’d got tweedy and doggy as the years had gone by, but she could still look so elegant when she turned up to a memorial service or a wedding; jaw-droppingly so.

And back then… Ginnie brought the picture across to distract us all from the current distressing apparition in the downstairs loo, no doubt desperately trying to do something to her face.

‘Lovely gelding,’ Clarissa agreed grudgingly, but it wasn’t the horse we were looking at.

I hadn’t seen this particular photo before and noticed the two men riding either side of Mum: Uncle Bob– not a real uncle, Ted and Flora’s father– and another man, good-looking with a noble, patrician profile.

Both were turning to laugh at something Mum had said, looking admiringly at her.

She’d been quite a catch, although she’d be far too modest to admit it.

But our father used to say he’d been extremely lucky to get her when he’d met her by chance, near where she grew up, when he was in chambers in Hull.

‘So you stole her from under their noses!’ I’d once joked.

He’d smiled. ‘Something like that.’

‘What nonsense your father talks,’ Mum would say quickly, but Uncle Bob would play up to it when we all went to Cornwall together, both families staying in the same rented house on the cliff, calling Dad a scoundrel for stealing the belle of the county.

‘Saved her from a life of clogs and shawls, of course,’ he’d joke, puffing away on his pipe.

‘Rich, arrogant North Yorkshire scoundrels, more like,’ Pammy would chip in.

‘Honestly, girls, the men were mad for your mother. And the parties I used to get asked to on her account!’ She mimicked my mother’s shocked tones: ‘‘Oh no, I couldn’t possibly go to that on my own!” To which they’d say– bring Pammy! ’

‘Oh, what rot, it was you they wanted. You were far more charismatic.’

Clarissa’s godmother, Pammy, was huge fun, a great one for practical jokes. Pretty, too, but not off the scale like Mum.

‘Remember you told me you both went to that house party and they started playing pass the orange under the chin,’ Flora piped up, ‘and the forfeit, if you dropped it, was to take something off, and you made fake sick in the kitchen, Mummy, and threw it on the floor with a loud retch so you could both go home?’

‘Your mother was my saviour,’ Mum had said softly. ‘Always. When I was out of my depth.’

‘And Phyllis Roberts nipped upstairs with Charlie Parker in between courses at that dinner party, saying she wanted to show him something, remember?’ Flora went on excitedly, cheeks pink.

‘And he came down later with the most enormous smile on his face!’ She and Ted always knew far more gossip about the old days than we did. We were gripped.

‘No!’ the Fanshawe girls shrieked. ‘You mean they–’

‘Cross my heart– well, according to Mummy. While Mr Roberts and Mrs Parker were both sitting at the dinner party. Isn’t that right, Mummy?’ She’d turned to her mother.

‘Oh, I clearly am a terrible old gossip,’ Pammy said quickly, catching my mother’s disapproving eye and clearing the tea table before shooing us off to play.

We gazed at the photo now, the three of us in Clarissa’s kitchen. Black and white, but quite good quality.

‘Didn’t Mum go out with someone up there?’ Ginnie asked. ‘Before Dad met her?’

‘Yes, Piers Westerham, the man riding next to her, on the grey,’ Clarissa said, taking the photo.

‘Oh!’ We wondered how she knew and we didn’t.

She gave that little well, I am the eldest smile.

You two don’t know everything. We let her have that Pyrrhic victory because Mum was coming back into the room, smiling and looking a little better, and also the atmosphere, after we’d gazed together at the photo, had changed for the better: Ginnie had relaxed a bit and looked less inclined to thump her elder sister.

Our mother was old, after all. In her eighties.

And one forgot how every year made a difference, as she always said.

Rheumy eyes were not unusual amongst her friends. Her remaining friends, she’d remind us.

Derek came in and began tidying up, effortlessly and very efficiently, after greeting us in a perfunctory manner, which was his way.

He looked at the soup, threw it down the sink and started making sausages and mash for lunch.

For all Derek’s faults he was a very capable man, and Clarissa was lucky to have him, in many ways.

When she’d just met him I’d once complained about his brusqueness to my father and he’d said: ‘Yes, but don’t forget, he’s just a bit different.

As we all are, of course, to some extent.

’ And gone back to his law tomes in the study.

‘And he’s kind,’ he’d added as an afterthought, as I’d exited the room. ‘To Clarissa.’