Tied Up In Tinsel

Troy said, ‘It’s hopeless asking what sort of things I paint because I’m no good at talking about my work. If you drive me into a corner I’ll come out with the most awful jabberwocky.’

And in a state of astonishment at herself Troy added like a shamefaced schoolgirl, ‘One paints as one must.’

After a considerable pause Hilary said: ‘How generous you are.’

‘Nothing of the sort,’ Troy contradicted.

‘Well!’ Mrs Forrester said, ‘we shall see what we shall see.’

Hilary snorted.

‘I did some watercolours,’ Colonel Forrester remembered, ‘when I was at Eton. They weren’t very good but I did them, at least.’

‘That was something,’ his wife conceded and Troy found herself adding that you couldn’t say fairer than that.

They finished their breakfast in comparative silence and were about to leave the table when Cuthbert came in and bent over Hilary in a manner that recalled his own past as a head-waiter.

‘Yes, Cuthbert,’ Hilary asked, ‘what is it?’

‘The mistletoe, sir. It will be on the three-thirty and the person wonders if it could be collected at the station.’

‘I’ll collect it. It’s for the kissing-bough. Ask Vincent to have everything ready, will you?’

‘Certainly, sir.’

‘Good.’

Hilary rubbed his hands with an exhilarated air and proposed to Troy that they resume their sittings. When the session was concluded, they went out into the sparkling morning to see how Nigel was getting on with his effigy.

It had advanced. The recumbent figure of a sixteenth-century Bill-Tasman was taking shape. Nigel’s mittened hands worked quickly. He slapped on fistfuls of snow and manipulated them into shape with a wooden spatula: a kitchen implement, Troy supposed. There was something frenetic in his devotion to his task. He didn’t so much as glance at his audience. Slap, slap, scoop, scoop, he went.

And now, for the first time, Troy encountered Wilfred, the cook, nicknamed Kittiwee.

He had come out of doors wearing his professional hat, checked trousers and snowy apron with an overcoat slung rather stylishly over his shoulders. He carried an enormous ladle and looked, Troy thought, as if he had materialized from a Happy Families playing card. Indeed, his round face, large eyes and wide mouth were comically in accord with such a notion.

When he saw Troy and Hilary he beamed upon them and raised a plump hand to his starched hat.

‘Good morning, sir,’ said Kittiwee. ‘Good morning, ladies.’

‘’Morning, Wilfred,’ Hilary rejoined. ‘Come out to lend a hand with the icing?’

Kittiwee laughed consumedly at this mildest of jokelets.

‘Indeed no, sir,’ he protested. ‘I wouldn’t dare. I just thought a ladle might assist the artist.’

Nigel thus indirectly appealed to merely shook his head without pausing in his task.

‘All going well in your department?’ Hilary asked.

‘Yes, thank you, sir. We’re doing nicely. The boy from Downlow is ever such a bright lad.’

‘Oh. Good. Good,’ Hilary said, rather hurriedly Troy thought. ‘What about those mince-pies?’

‘Ready for nibbles and wishes immediately after tea, sir, if you please,’ cried Kittiwee, gaily.

‘If they’re on the same level as the other things you’ve been giving us to eat,’ Troy said, ‘they’ll be the mince-pies of the century.’

It was hard to say who was the more delighted by this eulogy, Hilary or his cook.

Vincent came round the west wing wheeling another barrowful of snow. At close quarters he turned out to be a swarthy, thin man with a haggard expression in his eyes. He looked sidelong at Troy, tipped out his load and trundled off again. Kittiwee, explaining that he had only popped out for one second, embraced them all in the very widest of dimpled smiles and retired into the house.

A few minutes later Cuthbert came into the courtyard and boomingly proclaimed that luncheon was served.

II

Cressida Tottenham was blonde and extremely elegant. She was so elegant that her beauty seemed to be a second consideration: a kind of bonus, a gloss. She wore a sable hat. Sable framed her face, hung from her sleeves and topped her boots. When her outer garments were removed she appeared to be gloved rather than clad in the very ultimate of expensive simplicity.

Her eyes and her mouth slanted and she carried her head a little on one side. She was very composed and not loquacious. When she did talk she said: ‘you know’ with every second breath. She was not by any means the kind of subject that Troy liked to paint. This might turn out to be awkward: Hilary kept looking inquisitively at her as if to ask what she thought of Cressida.

To Mr Bert Smith, Troy took an instant fancy. He was a little man with an impertinent face, a bright eye and a strong out of date cockney habit of speech. He was smartly dressed in an aggressive countrified way. Troy judged him to be about seventy years old and in excellent health.

The encounter between the new arrivals and the Forresters was interesting. Colonel Forrester greeted Miss Tottenham with timid admiration calling her ‘Cressy-dear’.

Troy thought she detected a gently avuncular air, tempered perhaps by anxiety. The colonel’s meeting with Mr Smith was cordial to a degree. He shook hands with abandon. ‘How are you? How are you, my dear fellow?’ he repeatedly asked and with each enquiry broke into delighted laughter.

‘How’s the colonel, anyway?’ Mr Smith responded. ‘You’re looking lovely, I’ll say that for you. Fair caution, you are and no error. What’s all this they’re givin’ us abaht you dressing yourself up like Good King Thingummy? Wiv whiskers! Whiskers!’ Mr Smith turned upon Mrs Forrester and suddenly bellowed: ‘Blimey, ’e must be joking. At ’is age ! Whiskers!’

‘It’s my husband who’s deaf, Smith,’ Mrs Forrester pointed out, ‘not me. You’ve made that mistake before, you know.’

‘What am I thinking of,’ said Mr Smith, winking at Troy and slapping Colonel Forrester on the back. ‘Slip of the tongue, as the butcher said when he dropped it accidental in the tripe.’

‘Uncle Bert,’ Hilary said to Troy, ‘is a comedian manqué. He speaks nicely when he chooses. This is his “aren’t I a caution, I’m a cockney” act. He’s turning it on for Uncle Flea’s benefit. You always bring him out, Uncle Flea, don’t you?’

Miss Tottenham caught Troy’s eyes and slightly cast up her own.

‘Really?’ asked the enchanted colonel. ‘Do I really, though?’

Mr Smith quietened down after this exchange and they all went in to tea which had been set out in the dining-room and had none of the cosiness of Troy’s and Hilary’s tête-à-têtes by the boudoir fire. Indeed an air of constraint hung over the party which Cressida’s refusal to act as chatelaine did nothing to relieve.

‘You’re not asking me to do the pouring-out bit, darling, for God’s sake,’ Cressida said. ‘It’d, you know, frankly bore the pants off me. I’ve got, you know, a kind of thing against it. Not my scene. You know.’

Mrs Forrester stared fixedly at Cressida for some moments and then said: ‘Perhaps, Hilary, you would like me to perform.’

‘Darling Auntie, please do. It will be like old times, won’t it? When Uncle Bert used to come to Eaton Square after you’d made it up over my upbringing.’

‘That’s the ticket,’ Mr Smith agreed. ‘No hard feelings. Live and let live. That’s the story, missus, isn’t it?’

‘You’re a decent fellow in your own way, Smith,’ Mrs Forrester conceded. ‘We’ve learnt to understand each other, I dare say. What sort of tea do you like, Mrs Alleyn?’