Party, Party

3

Party, Party

    Dan and Margot Prince were having a dinner party. Just a small one—close friends and neighbours. Possibly the object of the exercise, Bob Masters reflected silently, accepting a poisonous-looking glass of something or other—pre-Christmas cheer, perhaps?—from Dan, was to get Dan’s sister and his brother-in-law together: Jessica and Margot had certainly had their heads together for days. Jessica had panicked because there were apparently no reliable baby-sitters available in the whole of Greater London, but Margot had jacked up Dan’s old aunty to baby-sit the three Prince kids and Damian, plus little Jennifer Winters, at the Masterses’ place. They’d never met her before, but Jesus, they were right next-door—all right, Jessica, you had to go round the block, but they were right over the back fence—and she looked completely reliable! Aunty Pippa, as they were all urged to call her, must in fact be Dan’s great-aunt: she certainly looked like your mental picture of the perfect great-aunty or grandma: a little, plump woman with a mass of white hair, and a round face, rather a tanned skin—very like Dan’s, which also took a tan well, lucky bugger, Bob himself turned bright red and peeled—and rosy cheeks. Imagine a sweet little pippin with a mass of white curls, and that was Aunty Pippa! She positively radiated “reliable baby-sitter”, for God’s sake!

    Jessica of course had nothing to wear. No, she couldn’t wear her new green velvet dress, that was for Christmas Day! Instead of that special dress she usually wore? What was he talking about? That? No! That was a robe, was he blind? YES, a Christmas robe! Bob at this point crept along to his brother-in-law’s room and asked meekly: “Do Americans all have special Christmas dressing-guh—um, robes?” To which his bloody brother-in-law, looking down his nose in that superior way of his, replied: “Doesn’t everyone? What planet you been living on all your life?” Bob crept back to their room, reflecting glumly he’d been living on Planet Britain, where people did not rush out and chuck away megabucks on rubbish to be worn once a year. Added to which, this’d be the third Christmas she'd worn it, so it was doubtless due to be replaced at extreme pain to his hip-pocket. She’d decided to wear her good black dinner dress. Hopelessly out of date an’ all as it was. Something wrong with the draped bit across the bust, was that it? It outlined the tits okay, Bob couldn’t see anything wrong with it: in fact the busty female TV announcer had been wearing a thing just like it, only in blue, just the other day. A point he didn’t make, he had acquired some sense of self-preservation over half a dozen years of marriage. Bloody Ben had upped and said: “They still wearing that style over here?” That had really helped.

    His brother-in-law, looking superior as usual, was now seen to be refusing to touch that muck of Dan’s. Bob had always known Ben was made of sterner stuff than him: he watched sourly. Sure enough, Dan amiably awarded the bugger a Scotch instead. The mixture in his, Bob’s, glass, was kind of pinkish yellow, if you could imagine that. Layers. With froth. Sighing, he tasted it. God Almighty! Jessica’s grandmother’s special peach eggnog recipe was bad enough—slime, was the word that came to mind—but this!

    Jessica had already knocked back a quarter of hers. “Ooh, isn’t it lovely, Bob? It sort of tastes like roses, I wonder what’s in it!”

    Not enough alcohol, for a start. Scent, with froth and glug. In short, muck.

    Then it was, out of the corner of her mouth—did she imagine everyone was deaf, or that the Princes’ sitting-room had suddenly expanded, or something?—“Doesn’t Isabella look lovely? Know what she reminds me of? A dear little snowdrop!”

    Yeah, well. The girl was wearing a kind of tunic thing. One of those waists high up under the tits, not a bad effect in itself. Mind you, hers weren’t as good as, say, Angelina Jolie’s. Just as a for-instance. White. Over those daft tights the girls still seemed to be getting around in, the sort without feet in them. Hers were green. With little green suede slipper-like shoes, Jessica had already pronounced those to be “to die for.” Very well, if a fair-sized girl with good but not gi-normous tits and a great deal of fluffy black hair could look like a dear little snowdrop, that was what Isabella looked like. Well—white top, green stalk. Good one, Jessica.

    Sarah Winters was wearing something blue which Jessica declared bitterly to be brand-new. Okay, so be it. With very silly shoes which Jessica declared bitterly to be the latest thing, everybody was wearing them, Never-Heard-of-Her had been wearing them on TV just the other day, was he blind? And, as he opined meekly that the dress looked sort of familiar, Yes! It would be! Kate had been wearing one just like it when she— Bob stopped listening and merely contemplated the possibility of shoving her off onto some other moo.

    “Sorry, darling, what?”

    “I said,” said his helpmeet, scowling horribly, “go talk to Ben! Ginger him up or something, he's doing that superior thing of his again!”

    Didn’t he always? He certainly did it when they had any of their friends round, so why wouldn’t he do it— “I’m going.”

    “Hullo again,” he said glumly, coming up to his superior-looking brother-in-law’s very superior-looking elbow. Armani, was it? Probably. But if he asked it'd turn out not to be, but something even more up-market and outrageously expensive that he should have heard of.

    Ben eyed the muck in his glass down that straight nose of his, and pointedly didn’t speak.

    “Okay, I let him foist the muck on me!” hissed Bob angrily.

    “I never spoke,” he drawled.

    “No,” replied Bob with some satisfaction, “and that’s why I’ve been deputed to come over here.”

    “Uh—she wants us to chat nicely?”

    “Very funny, Ben. No, she wants me to urge you to socialize nicely with our neighbours.”

    Ben shrugged. “About what? Those two guys are talking about ride-on lawnmowers.”

    “Yuh—uh—” Harry Winters and Ken Sheldon. Well, they both had large lawns, and Ken’s wife had sacked their gardener, he never turned up when supposed to, and did turn up at extremely inconvenient times like Sunday afternoon when she was hosting an elegant drinks party, or Saturday afternoon in the middle of little Miranda’s birthday party. –The reason Miranda and Jane were not being baby-sat by “Aunty Pippa” being that her mother had come for Christmas. Bob looked at Ken Sheldon with considerable sympathy. “Um, yeah. Well, they’ve both got lawns, Ben,” he said very, very weakly.

    Ben looked down his nose and let the silence lengthen. Then he drawled: “I haven’t.”

    “No, okay, we all know you’ve got the glossiest New York apartment ever seen outside of that Goddawful Sex in the City bilge!” hissed Bob, turning purple.

    Ben swallowed a sigh. Why did he always rub Bob up the wrong way? “Bilge is a good word for it. The gloss is down to Tracy, not me. Look, Bob, guy, put yourself in my shoes.”

    “I couldn't afford your bloody shoes!”

    “Yuh—uh, very funny. Half the price of anything of Tracy’s in the shoe closet, I do assure you.”

    Shoe closet? Did the man ever stop and listen to himself? Bob could count the footwear he himself owned on the fingers of one hand.

    Ben waited, but nothing seemed to be happening between Bob’s rather large pink ears, maybe it was the effect of that frothy muck of Dan’s. Quick-acting. “Imagine it’s you at a goddamn New York party with, uh, well, just as a for-instance, Kyle Bannerman or Cy Goldschmidt from the bank going on about their kind of consumer junk!”

    “Theirs and yours, isn’t it?” replied Bob sourly.

    Ben blinked. “Well, I guess I do conform—yes.”

    “And a half! I’m not even asking how much that hunk of gents’ jewellery on your wrist set you back! –All right, I’m putting myself in your place. Um, what would they be talking about?” he ended on a weak note.

    Ben sighed. “Last party I was at, it was cellars—not that sort,” he said as Bob involuntarily looked in the direction of their feet. “Refrigerated cupboards, right temperature for your wines, see? And some new sort of juicer.”

    “Juicer?” he groped.

    “Uh-huh.”

    “I thought only women bothered— Are they gay?”

    “No, Bob,” he said heavily. “That’s New York for you. Manly chat about juicers. The favoured brand is recommended as dealing best with your wheatgrass for your morning health shake.”

    “You mean wheat germ,” said Bob confidently.

    Ben eyed him drily. “No, I don’t. Wheatgrass.”

    “Look, pull the other one, Ben, you’re not funny!”

    “No, he didn’t mean to be,” said a soft voice. Isabella ranged alongside, smiling shyly at Bob. “They whirr it up in those funny machines to make a drink. The wheat grains have to sprout, you see, and when the leaves—I’d call them leaves, not grass,” she said, smiling again, “are about four inches high they cut them off and pop them in the machine.”

    Bob’s jaw sagged. “The human digestion,” he croaked, “is not constructed to digest grass.”

    “I've seen chopped wheatgrass on salad,” replied Ben in a bored voice.

    “Well, is it?” he snapped.

    “No. That’s why juicers, Bob, they extract the juice,” he said kindly.

    “Right! Now tell me it’s delicious!”

    “I know a cow called Red Daisy who thinks it is,” volunteered Isabella, smiling like anything.

    “What?” said Ben numbly. Bob just stared numbly. Well, okay, the girl had deliberately put the bugger down, good for her, but know a cow?

    Suddenly Margot appeared at her sister-in-law’s elbow. “A friend of ours has dairy cows, you see, and hens as well, and they buy wheat for the hens. So when his wife read about wheatgrass in a magazine—you can get it here—well, she decided to try sprouting some of the wheat. It worked okay, but the juice was so horrible she gave the lot to the cows! Red Daisy positively lapped it up, didn’t she, Isabella?”

    Isabella beamed and nodded. Ben, Bob was glad to see, was now looking rather foolish. And all he could produce by way of sparkling New York repartee was a very feeble: “I see.”

    “There you are, then,” said Bob with considerable satisfaction. “Anyway, for God’s sake go and talk to them, lawnmowers or not, or she’ll never let me hear the last of it.”

    “Go on, Ben,” said Isabella, smiling that irresistible smile of hers at the lucky bugger. “They’re dying to ask you about your coat, if you give them half a chance.”

    Bob watched with considerable satisfaction as his sophisticated New York brother-in-law went off meekly to let their neighbours interrogate him about his jacket.

    “Thanks, Isabella,” he said with a sigh. “This happens every time he comes over. Claims he can’t think of anything to say to anybody and then it all turns out to be my fault!”

    “Yes, of course,” she agreed, linking her arm in his—ooh! “Give me that glass, Bob, you don’t like it, do you? Would you like some nice plain stuff, instead? –What’s that one, again?” she said to Margot.

    “Whisky, I think, Isabella,” replied her sister-in-law weakly. “Men usually like that.”

    “Um, yeah, um, thanks,” croaked Bob. “Whisky’d be great, thanks. Um, sorry, Margot.”

    Margot laughed. “Don’t apologise to me, Bob! That fruit drink was all Dan’s idea!”

    “Right,” he acknowledged with a feeble smile, allowing Isabella to tow him off, whisky-wards. “—Fruit, eh?”

    “Yes, Dan likes fruit. I think he used bananas, passionfruit, and mangoes, that mixture goes in first, you see, and then pomegranate syrup with cold milk scented with rosewater,”—Bob gulped—“and that all gets whipped up, I think with an egg white, and he pours that on top.”

    “Yeah. What about the alcohol?” he croaked.

    “Oh, yes, I forgot!” she said sunnily. “He put some vodka in the bottom layer and some cherry brandy in the top layer.”

    No wonder it had tasted so bloody vile, then. “Right,” he croaked.

    “I like it better without the alcohol, personally,” she said with that seraphic smile.

    Well, yeah, it was hard to see how cherry brandy could improve it. Bob just nodded groggily and let her pour him half a tumbler of Dan’s Glenlivet. Well, Jesus, it was there, she asked “Is this whisky?”, what would anyone have said?

    “Cheers!” he concluded, grinning.

    After that perhaps the dinner shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did. The lunches they’d had with the Princes had been relatively normal, given that Jessica was also given to trying out weird and wonderful recipes on the neighbours for Saturday or Sunday lunch. But this!

    The starters looked relatively normal in that everyone’s starters looked weird. At least these weren’t fake Japanese. Bob was up for real Japanese food, he’d been to a couple of superb Japanese restaurants, but Japurban muck was muck. –Needless to say Jessica didn’t think that his brilliant neologism was funny but Ben, give him his due, had laughed himself sick over it. And favoured Bob with his “Jumper van Damme.” Not bad. These were kind of little boats. Well, little bits of food, sitting in little boats. Some were little lettuce leaves—maybe. Well, he sort of recognised them. Only once you tasted the stuff you realised that these starters were not normally weird.

    One consolation was that Harry Winters and Ken Sheldon were looking equally flummoxed. Dan’s friend Peterkin Watt—Bob had not hitherto encountered a grown chap of thirty-odd called Peterkin, but this being the 21st century, all things were possible—Peterkin looked as if it was all perfectly normal to him, but as he’d known Dan all their lives, maybe it was. Dan had done most of the cooking. That possibly explained it. Some of it.

    Some of the little boats were little pastry boats. Sarah Winters and Melissa Sheldon discussed earnestly just what sort of pastry and what it was flavoured and/or coloured with. Some were other leaves, not lettuce, unidentifiable but the womenfolk seemed to recognise them as food. Inside them the mixtures were little cooked bits of, uh, well, anything, really. Quite spicy, but not hot. Some were sweetish. Right, thanks, Sarah, one mixture was minced nuts and dates, was it? Yes, well, weird but relatively edible.

    Then came the main course. To call it duck would be a misnomer. That conjured up a picture of a jolly yuletide feast, piles of roast potatoes, gravy, all the trimmings, in Bob’s mind. Nope. This was skinned duck pieces in a sweet pinkish sauce, sprinkled with bright pink... globules. This was undoubtedly intended as the pièce de résistance, but it was not alone. By no means. The large selection of pretty little dishes supporting little boats and dotted artfully with petals and small flowers (Dan had eaten some of the latter but none of the other blokes had), was now replaced by an almost equally large selection of larger plates, dotted artfully with—yeah.

    Bob looked round the table warily. Good, Ken and Harry were looking as flummoxed as he felt. Peterkin was helping his girlfriend, Daphne, to what he had earlier identified as: “Ooh, good, your lovely curried banana dish, Dan!” She must be used to it, she was smiling. Ben, not to his surprise, was identifying something really poisonous-looking as fried zucchini flowers, and urging them on Isabella. –Yeah, the thing must be intended to bring the two of them together, or why would Margot have put them next to each other? Isabella didn’t seem phased, but then, she was Dan’s sister, after all.

    Gloomily Bob helped himself to rice, avoiding anything that looked like a cranberry or weird nut or even a currant. Rice, if not in the form of rice pudding, was either plain or savoury. It should not have bits of sweet muck mixed into— These pink bits were square! On his Jessica-less side Sarah Winters said eagerly: “It’s so unusual, Bob! Little bits of dried papaya!” Dried papaya. Right. He’d as soon eat the ruddy flowers.

    Those things that looked a bit like limpish uncircumcised pricks were not those bitter vegetable uncircumcised pricks like Jessica sometimes served up if she was being extra-posh, at all. Stuffed banana flowers. Okay, he gave up.

    The meal was really enlivened by ruddy Ben’s admiring the “food pree-sentation”—no, well, possibly he couldn’t help that accent, but Bob had a feeling he could if he’d try—and telling them a very long, boring story about some frightfully up-market dump in New York where you not only had to book months in advance, you had to be approved by the proprietor and then there was no choice, but about sixty tiny courses one after the other, all just beautifully presented. “Poems for the eye as well as the palate,” was the phrase. The women nodded like anything and looked eager and knowing as he tossed off the name of this bloody place, and the men looked utterly and completely blank. Except Dan, he just smiled nicely. But given he was the host and in any case a very cheerful fellow, you couldn't count him. On second thoughts, Isabella hadn’t nodded and looked knowing, she’d just smiled nicely, too. Hmm....

    Meanwhile “Aunty Pippa” was giving the children their own party.

    “You’re a fairy too, aren’t you?” said little Jennifer Winters solemnly, staring up at her.

    Rather fortunately, Mrs Masters had now left them to it—after the expected string of instructions, complete with phone numbers, assurances that the numbers of this, that and the other were programmed into the phone—both phones...

    Fairy Pippa Pippin, who had never had to use a mortal phone in her life, smiled down kindly at the plump, earnest little mortal girl and said gaily: “Yes, of course I be, me deary! Fairy Pippa Pippin, but you can call me ‘Aunty Pippa’.”

    “She’s Dad’s aunty, well, kind of,” explained Ronny Prince.

    Honeysuckle, who was about eight, took the tiny girl’s hand and squeezed it. “Everybody calls her Aunty Pippa, Jennifer. So you must, too!”

    “I call her Aunty Pippa!” added the six-year-old Petunia, jumping slightly.

    Jennifer stared solemnly at the pink-cheeked little old woman. “Where’s your wand?”

    “So you think I did ought to have a wand, me deary?” she chuckled. “Well, it wouldn’t do in front of your mummy, you know!”

    “No. Or Daddy. He said if ever there was a hobgoblin, Mr Shaw, he was it, only there isn’t.”

    “Oh, I know lots of hobgoblins, and bad fellows they be, too!” she chuckled. She reached for her wand and there it was. “There!”

    “A wand,” ascertained Jennifer with satisfaction.

    “Yes, ’course. Isabella says all grown-up fairies can have wands,” contributed Damian, who had been busy getting his anorak on. “Please can we go to Fairyland, Aunty Pippa?”

    “I don’t see why not! But first we must all join hands, children, dears, and say a little spell. A coming home safe spell, it be!”

    So they all joined hands and recited carefully:

“Circle round the fairy ring,

You’ll be safe from anything,

Toads and goblins keep away,

Joined hands keep us safe all day.

When our aunty says Come home,

Then we shall no longer roam.”

    “Come on, then, me dearies!” she cried. And away they whirled to Fairyland.

    “Very pretty, Fairy Pink, me dear,” approved Aunty Pippa, as the Fairy Pink proudly showed them the sparkling white cloth laid on the grass laden with good things and sprinkled with flowers.

    Jennifer looked at her admiringly. “She is pink,” she whispered to Honeysuckle.

    “Yes, but as well, she’s the Fairy Pink! Do you know pinks? They're rather like carnations, they smell like cloves, they’re lovely! Fairy Pink! Hither!”

    Fairy Pink rose straight up the air, wings and pink frilled skirt alike fluttering like anything, and hovered about a foot above their heads. “Yes, Princess Honeysuckle, dear?”

    “Come here and let Jennifer smell how pinks smell!”

    Smiling, Fairy Pink descended to the ground, and Jennifer sniffed.

    “Ooh, luverly!” she breathed. “Like Grandma’s bestest soap!”

    Fairy Pink smirked. “Yes, I’m one of the best-smelling fairies, dear!”

    “Don’t boast, Pink,” ordered Ronny in a bored voice.

    “No, indeed, Prince Ronny!” she gasped, curtseying. “Only telling it like it is, dear!”

    “Well, there was a bit of that in it,” he conceded. “Come on, let’s have it, quick, before Grandmother turns up!”

    And with that they all sat down quickly, party hats were quickly magicked up by Aunty Pippa and Fairy Pink from some nearby flowers, with certain contributions from an interested beetle wearing a small gold coronet and a lizard in a smart green and gold suit, and the feast was served. Everybody must eat and drink what they liked, Ronny, deary, and nobody needed to be told that this or that was the best, you just let the little girl choose! Ronny sat back looking dubious, and Jennifer tried a very blue, very frothy drink. Possibly it was only blueberries, but you never knew, it could have anything at all in it, judging by some of Dad’s creations. And that thing Damian was scoffing might look like a Christmas mince pie but it wasn't, it had mango pulp, apple blossom pollen and walnuts in it, as well as the raisins. Cautiously he took a meringue. It’d be okay if it wasn’t one of Merlin’s.

    “No, no, Merlin hasn’t come near it, Prince Ronny!” the lizard assured him.

    “Good, because sardine meringues are really horrible.”

    “I quite liked them,” he said wistfully.

    “Then you can have all of them next time, Leon!” he grinned.

    Petunia and Damian had an argument over which was the bestest best, the pale pink ice cream (Petunia: cream, sweet cherry juice and rosewater with lots of sugar), or the fluffy green jelly (Damian: pandanus leaf, cream, whipped with lots of sugar), but this was settled by Aunty Pippa’s telling them that in the Fairy Realm you could have as many bestest bests as you liked, and reciting the following:

“Sweets to the sweet and sugar to the honey bee,

Nectar is good and pollen so sweet,

Cream to my cow and milk to my babies three,

Then in the pudden they all shall meet,

All shall be well and there’s plenty to eat!”

    “They say lots of poems in Fairyland,” Ronny explained to Damian on a tolerant note. “It’s dumb, but you don’t have to listen.”

    “Yeff,” he agreed, nodding round a huge mouthful of pink fairy floss.

    And so by the time the Prince children’s grandmother arrived, most of the feast had been eaten. Just as well. Down she came in a great waft of perfume, great swirly skirts, enormous wings, huge sparkling wand in her hand and huge sparkling crown on her head, crying: “Oh, Fairy Pippa Pippin, Fairy Pink, what have you been letting these children eat?”

    When it was all over and Leon Lizard was found to be not here after all, though Ronny’s grandmother had been sure he was, Ronny confided in Damian’s ear: “Never seen a lizard move so fast.”

    Damian nodded solemnly. “The beetle, he runned away, too. Are you really a prince?”

    “Only in Fairyland,” replied Ronny calmly.

    Then Aunty Pippa cried: “Come home, children!” and back they whirled. Funnily enough it wasn't very late, and after Honeysuckle had hastily reminded Aunty Pippa that they still had their fairy frocks on and these had been vanished and replaced by their pyjamas, they all popped into bed like good little children. And Aunty Pippa told them the story of the bad hobgoblin and the dish of apples for a bedtime story. It was just as well that they were all so full that they fell right asleep, because, as Ronny muttered grimly under his breath, it was a jolly boring story. One of Grandmother’s. Didn’t go anywhere.

    Back at the Princes’ house the pudding course was greeted with cries of admiration: even prettier than the other courses. Even Bob ate a helping of crème brûlée with relish, though avoiding the other, layered thing, and the fruit thing. Ben appeared to approve of them, well, the plates were all fancy enough examples of food pree-sentation, true. Everyone had a large flowery plate, Bob personally would have called it a dinner plate. On it reposed a smallish bowl of crème brûlée, an artistic pastel mound of the layered muck, surmounted with small blue flowers and a sort of spiky spider—caramelised peel, if Sarah said so—plus a very artistic pile of fruit salad. Topped off by a large spiky thing which Melissa triumphantly identified as a rambutan, or, never-heard-of-it. When peeled it looked slimy so Bob left his severely alone. Isabella was giving hers a funny look, so presumably she felt the same. In fact her sister-in-law leaned forward and said loudly: “Just leave it, Isabella, dear!” At which she sat back with a weak laugh, poor girl, and Mr Food Pree-sentation, NY, immediately offered to peel it for her. The course was enlivened by Ben’s description of some putatively Vietnamese muck his girlfriend Tracy was in the habit of making, grated green papaya was in there somewhere, but Bob just allowed his gaze to rest restfully on pretty Isabella. After a while he became aware of a very warm sensation in his toes, which was very odd, because bloody Dan hadn’t served any booze with the meal! Well, true, it had all been on the sweet side, hard to imagine any wine going well with it, but it might have eased the agony. Then Melissa Sheldon capped Ben’s very boring culinary story with some culinary reminiscences of her own. The trip to the Caribbean, oh, God. The live large fish snatched from the tranquil waters of the actual lagoon before their very eyes, oh God. Char-grilled before their very noses, sprinkled with this, that and the other. Lime juice, eh? Even Jessica was into bloody freshly squeezed lime juice, for Christ’s sake, you saw it on Jamie Oliver every other day of the week, unless you'd remembered to shut your eyes in time. Luckily, before she could embark on the fresh coconut milk from yer actual coconut bit Isabella stopped her in her tracks by asking what sort of fish it was.

    “A dorado,” contributed Ken Sheldon, coming to and smiling eagerly at her. “Don’t think you’d know them, Isabella; they live in South American waters. Quite a big fish, with a beautiful golden gleam to them.”

    “Oh, yes!” she beamed. “I know a lovely dorado!”

    Several people blinked, wondering just how alcoholic that frothy muck of Dan’s had been, and whether the puddings had had alcohol in them.

    “Yes,” said Margot, “we do know them, we were watching that Robson Green fishing programme one night: he caught a dorado. They are beautiful, the sheen of real gold!”

    Dan cleared his throat and gave his sister a warning look. “Yes, extraordinarily beautiful fish. You’d better not have any brandy, Isabella.”

    “That’s all right, Daniello, darling, I don’t like it!” she replied with her lovely laugh. –Not gurgling, and not tinkling, mused Bob dreamily, sort of a mixture of both. Bother, that sounded disgusting. Never mind, he knew what he meant! Ooh, his toes were warm as toast!

    “My toes are warm as toast, are yours?” he said incautiously to his partner in life as they all adjourned to the sitting-room for coffee and, one could but hope, the brandy.

    “What? I’m certainly not cold. How much of Dan’s Scotch did you drink?”

    “Um, only one,” he muttered.

    Ben came up beside them. “Yeah, I saw him, it was only one.” He managed to ignore the pathetically grateful look his brother-in-law was giving him and added: “Did you say your toes are warm, Bob?”

    “Ignore him, it’s the Scotch talking,” said Jessica grimly.

    “But my toes are toasty, too!” said Ben with a laugh.

    “Then you’d better not have any brandy, either.”

    The brothers-in-law exchanged glances of desperate male solidarity, not to say alcohol deprivation.

    But it was all right, Dan proceeded to sit down beside Jessica and wind her round his little finger. Soon she was giggling away like anything and had actually promised coyly that if Dan promised to keep an eye on them, Bob and Ben could each have one small brandy. Well, he had that effect on all the womenfolk, Bob had noticed that.

    “That fellow could charm Maggie Thatcher with her fighting hat on,” he muttered in his brother-in-law’s ear.

    “Yeah, noticed that. Just as well for us, huh?”

    “I’ll say!”

    “Did Isabella go out to the kitchen?” Ben then asked.

    “Yeah. Helping Margot with the coffee. Has it worked?” asked Bob incautiously.

    Ouch, he was looking down the nose again. “Has what worked?”

    Sighing, Bob said: “Jessica’s and Margot’s deep-laid, top-secret plot to throw the two of you together. Don’t dare to claim you hadn't spotted them!”

    “Hard not to,” he drawled.

    “Yes. Has it?”

    Ben eyed him sardonically. “Apart from the peace in our time factor, why should you care, Bob?”

    “It isn’t apart from that, you moron,” he said gloomily. “Well, actually I’d quite like to have her for a sister-in-law: sweet little thing, isn't she? –Um, is your brother-in-law’s wife your sister-in-law?” he fumbled. “Well, you know what I mean.”

    “Gee, no, I don’t think I do, Bob; could you spell it out for me?” he said sweetly.

    Bob gave him a glare and went over to Harry and Ken, who were chatting about solar heating, and joined in.

    In the kitchen Isabella said with a giggle: “That wasn’t too bad, I think! Thanks so much for rescuing me in the nick of time, Margot, darling!”

    Sighing, her sister-in-law replied: “We did warn you.”

    “But it’s very hard to remember!” she said with another giggle.

    “Just say over to yourself ten times before going to bed,” said Margot heavily: “Mortals only know mortals; mortals only know mortals.”

    “Ooh, is it a spell?” she beamed.

    Margot winced. “No, but say it anyway, Isabella. And what did we say about that word?”

    “Oops! Sorry!” This time the laugh was a positive cascade of silvery tinkles, just like Margot’s mother-in-law’s. In fact Margot glanced uneasily over her shoulder, but it was all right, Titania hadn’t favoured them with a visit.

    “Boring,” Isabella reminded her, reading her mind with no difficulty whatsoever.

    Margot sighed again. “I wish you wouldn’t do that, Isabella.”

    “What? Oh—that! But your thoughts are so clear, Margot, darling!”

    “Apparently, yeah,” she said drily. “I’ll get the coffee on; could you set out the cups, ple— Not like that!” she gasped as the coffee cups and saucers appeared on the kitchen table.

    “But it saves so much time.”

    “One of them might come in!” she hissed.

    Isabella’s face fell. “Oh—yes. –I must say I don’t know how darling Daniello coped, when he first came over here!”

    “Ssh! –Well, nor do I, it was generations back,” Dan’s wife reminded her in a lowered voice. “But I gather it was pretty bad.” She glanced cautiously at the kitchen door but it remained safely closed. “One lot were gonna burn him as a witch!” she hissed.

    “Warlock, I think you mean. How silly. If he was one he’d have vanished in a flash. I mean, he would have, anyway! Well, you know what I mean, darling!”

    “Mortals are like that, Isabella,” she reminded her heavily.

    “But you don’t still do it, do you?”

    “No. Well, there may be some remote corners of the globe— No. We don't,” she said firmly. “All that stopped hundreds of years ago.”

    “That’s good. Shall I clear the table for you, Margot, darling?”

    “No!” said Margot in alarm.

    “Oh, dear; no! What do you do?”

    “Remember that time we had the Masterses to lunch?” she said heavily.

    “Oh, yes! –Doesn’t there have to be a tray?”

    “Uh—yes. Help,” she muttered, “where on earth—”

    Isabella collapsed in an agonising fit of the giggles.

    “We haven’t used it since then; well, it seems silly, with Dan around,” Margot admitted limply.

    “Yes!” she squeaked. “And Ronny: he’s getting really good!”

    “Yes, well, that’s a bit of a worry,” said Margot with her head in the pantry. “Blow, not there. –He does have to cope as an ordinary boy, you know.”

    “He’s got sense; and if he makes a mistake and the other children tell the teacher, she won’t believe them. Look at poor Jessica and Damian!” she said merrily.

    “You’ve got a point,” said Margot, smiling at her. “But I do worry.”

    “Well, darling, it was you who decided they should have the chance to live as mortals.”

    “I think it’ll be easier for them later on, if they decide to stay,” she explained.

    “Yes: they won’t have a sudden impulse to introduce Donny Dorado into the conversation!” she squeaked, collapsing in giggles again.

    “Mm. Or Red Daisy. Not to mention being about to peel fruit without picking it up.”

    “Was I? –Oh, yes, so I was! Thank you so much for smoothing it all over, darling!” More cascades of giggles.

    Margot smiled weakly. In a way it was great having Isabella here, because she didn't have to mind her tongue with her: she could talk about Dan and the kids quite freely. But she knew so little about the mortal realm, it was quite a worry.

    “I dunno where the dratted tray’s got to,” she confessed. “You'd better just bring them in a few at a time, in little piles.”

    “Little piles,” repeated Isabella obediently, going out.

    Margot looked after her dubiously. That might work. But you never knew how a fairy might interpret what you said. Thank goodness she'd decided that the kids had better be brought up here!

    In the living-room Bob, Harry and Ken were immersed in an intense discussion of the merits of rival golf courses and the fees thereof. Dan’s buddy Peterkin was entertaining Mrs Winters and Mrs Sheldon as well as his own girlfriend, he was about as much of a charmer as Dan, actually. Dan was still entertaining Ben’s sister. Ben swallowed a sigh. At least Jessica’s neighbours weren’t into suburbanite wife-swapping, but gee, it might have been a lot livelier if they hadda been!

    He wandered out to the hallway. Presumably Isabella was still playing Kitchen. Damn. Well, sort of damn. She was entirely delightful, but very young and naïve. And did he really want a holiday fling? Well, yeah, on one level, sure, he wasn’t unnatural. But in his experience the younger they were the sillier they were: Cy Goldschmidt from work had made the mistake of getting mixed up with a silly little bimbo in her early twenties who fancied herself madly in love with him and sent him a Valentine to his home address; it had very nearly busted up his marriage. It had cost him dearly: not only in the recriminations and the reminders that tended to crop up with horrid regularity, but also financially: his wife had gotten a trip to Réunion out of it, reliably reported to be the dearest holiday resort in the known universe, followed or maybe preceded by a heavy gold necklet set with a large sapphire plus and a complete set of matched Louis Vuitton luggage for the said trip. Ouch. He’d had to take out a second mortgage on the house. Frowning, Ben wandered through to the dining-room.

    “Oh, hi, Isabella,” he said on a weak note.

    “There you are, Ben!” she beamed. “Would you call this a little pile of crockery?”

    Ben winced. It was a little pile that was set to end on the floor, or his name wasn't Ben Anderson. “It doesn’t look too steady: hang on.” He removed the large plate surmounted by a small bowl that was precariously balanced on a small stack of other small bowls, placed the stray bowl neatly on top of the others and set the plate underneath the lot. “There.”

    “Thank you, Ben!” She smiled into his eyes.

     Ben’s knees went kind of weak. “Yes,” he said idiotically. “I mean, it’s no trouble,” he added idiotically.

    “Now one carries them through to the kitchen,” she explained.

    “Uh—yeah. Oh—sure! Let me give you a hand!” He gathered up cookery and glassware and followed her out to the kitchen.

    “Oh, good, you managed— Oh, hullo, Ben,” said his hostess on a weak note.

    “Ben’s helping. It seems men do,” said Isabella, smiling sunnily.

    “Um, yes. I mean, thank you, Ben, you don’t have to, you’re a guest!” gasped Margot.

    “No sweat; there’s just a few left. Come on, Isabella.”

    He was aware of his hostess collapsing limply on a kitchen chair as they went out again. “Your sister-in-law seems tired: she been overdoing it with this dinner party?” he said cautiously as they re-entered the dining room.

    “No, Dan did it all,” replied Isabella simply.

    It had all been too sweet for Ben’s taste, really. But beautifully done. And of course the presentation had been delightful. “He’s certainly a great cook.”

    “He likes food,” she replied with that smile of hers.

    “Yeah, good reason for learning to cook!” said Ben with a grin. “Well, I like food myself, but I can’t say I’ve ever managed much more than a steak with some steamed broccoli.”

    “Broccoli? Oh, yes, I know. Very green.”

    “Yeah, lots of people don’t care for it. I just like the ordinary broccoli, y’know? Don’t like that stalky stuff—what’s its name, again?”

    “Bertie?” replied Isabella solemnly.

    Ben gave a startled laugh. “No, worse! Uh... broccolini! Brutus Broccolini, huh? It’s brutal stuff, all right! Tracy’s keen on it, never buys the ordinary stuff. Hardly ever lets me eat a plain steak, either,” he added glumly. “Come to think of it, never: only time I get to eat steak is when I’m out with the guys.”

    “I see. This would be beef steak, would it? ‘I like a beef-steak too, as well as any;’” she quoted carefully.

    “Uh—yeah. Byron?” he croaked.

    “Yes. It’s a poem about England and Italy,” she smiled.

    “I know,” said Ben groggily. “So you read Byron, Isabella?”

    “Yes. Only the short ones, I don’t like the long ones.”

    “No, me neither. Well, I have waded through Childe Harold, supposed to be auto­biographical, but I couldn’t see it myself. I like the more amusing ones with the political comment—he can be very funny.”

    “Yes. But sometimes very pretty, too.”

    “Yes. ‘She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies,’” said Ben, staring at her. “My God, Isabella, that just is you!”

    Isabella went pink and gave a confused laugh. “No, Mother says that was another lady!”

    “Hard to imagine there could ever be two of you. No, well, it’s the hair—well, the contrast between that dark cloud of it and the skin and the eyes—sorry, am I embarrassing you? See, the poem works in the image of the dark, and then the light of the stars. Dark and light,” said Ben with a smile. “He carries on with the same imagery: ‘And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes.’ I’ve loved that poem for years.”

    “Yes, me, too,” she admitted shyly.

    His eyes twinkled. She didn’t have all that many years to her credit! “How old are you, may I ask?”

    She turned away to pick up a couple of plates. “Oh, age-old, Ben!” she said gaily.

    Yeah. Well, they usually avoided that one if they were very young or a lot older than they wanted you to think and his money certainly wasn't on the latter. Shit. He gathered up crockery blindly.

    Isabella went over to the door, paused, and turned her head. Ben’s heart thudded wildly: that profile was just so exquisite!

    “But I’m very young at heart,” she said seriously.

    Maybe if she'd said it flirtatiously or giggled or— But that serious look of hers was irresistible! Ben’s reservations flew right out the window. He was dimly aware of it, and dimly aware that should Tracy get to hear of a fling with a pretty girl in England she'd half kill him; and aware, too, that it couldn't go anywhere. But somehow none of that seemed real.

    “Hold on, Isabella,” he said as she turned for the kitchen. “Could we—could we see something of each other, do you think?”

    “We are seeing something of each other,” she murmured.

    “Uh—no, I mean, well, this evening’s been real pleasant, but not in a group, I mean. Well, lunch tomorrow, maybe? Or just a coffee? Just you and me?”

    “Drink coffee together?” she replied on a dubious note.

    Hell, didn’t she like him after all? “Yeah, sure! Why not? We’re both on holiday!” said Ben with an anxious smile. “There must be some decent coffee shops in London, surely!”

    Isabella nodded slowly. “You’d like to go to a coffee shop with me?”

    He swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

    “That would be very nice. Thank you, Ben. When shall we go?”

    “Well, tomorrow morning? Pick you up around ten-thirty? That not too early?”

    “No, I don’t think that’s too early. I’ll ask Margot.”

    Ben gave a puzzled smile, but followed her into the kitchen. Well, maybe she wanted to make sure her sister-in-law didn’t need her to help out in the house, or some such.

    “Margot, would around ten-thirty tomorrow morning be too early for me to go to a coffee shop with Ben?”

    “No, ten-thirty would be fine, Isabella, dear. If you're sure you want to?”

    Isabella nodded the clouds of dark hair earnestly.

    “Yes,” said Margot with an odd little sigh. “That’s nice. Take care of her, Ben, she’s not used to—” She broke off.

    “London?” said Ben with a smile.

    “Mm. Well,” she said limply, “just not used to city life, really.”

    Ben laughed. “That’s okay, I’m used to the Big Apple!”

    Isabella was looking at him in surprise.

    “To New York; yes, of course you are!” gasped Margot. “You—you can tell her about city life, then.”

    “My pleasure!” he grinned. “Come on, Isabella, shall we take these coffee cups through?”

    They went out with the cups, and Margot sagged. Help! Big Apple? It was plain as the nose on your face that Isabella had thought he'd meant a real one. Well, he’d never guess the truth. But ten to one he'd end up thinking she was some kind of simpleton! Oh, dear!

Next chapter:

https://isabelladowntoearth-anovel.blogspot.com/2022/11/not-starbucks.html