There are no lights on as the Bomb crunches to a halt on the gravel outside Whichert House. Martin gingerly lets them in by the back door then puts his fingers to his lips and takes Nancy’s hand and tiptoes towards the living room, feeling like a conspiratorial child about to steal some chocolate.
The living-room fire is still glowing in the grate. Martin puts on another log, takes Nancy’s coat and switches on the lamp by the fireplace, then searches for something to cover the lampshade. He picks up a shawl, drapes it over the lamp, plunging the room into shadow.
‘Better not set Aunt D.’s shawl on fire,’ Nancy jokes.
Martin pours two nightcaps, then goes over to the gramophone, takes a record from its sleeve, lays it on the turntable and drops the needle. There’s a brief hissing, then a piano refrain, light and delicious, like champagne. Little trills on the high keys; the plunk of a double bass; a strumming guitar; warbling trumpet. Fats Waller. Today’s musical theme.
Her waist is smaller than his encircling hands, and he feels for a moment she’s so delicate she might break in his arms. But she presses into him, emboldened by the promise of a shared future, not fragile or porcelain, but a flesh and blood woman dancing in his arms, laughing uproariously as he mimics Fats Waller’s throaty growl.
Everybody calls me good for nothing
Because I cannot tell the distance to a star
But I can tell the world how wonderful you are
I’m good for nothing but love
Night and day they call me…
Nancy holds her finger to her lips, worried they might wake Aunt D.
‘…good for nothing,’ Martin croons.
‘Yes, yes!’ she repeats with him, hamming it up with Fats, laughing.
Then she pulls his face towards hers and kisses him hard on the mouth.
The weeks have raced by with a scramble to finish end of term essays, a round of boozy Christmas parties and the final hockey matches. But, finally, it’s the vacation again, he’s back in the bosom of his surrogate family at Whichert House and, most importantly, he can see Nancy almost every day.
But, as a cloud of snow sprays from the tyres as the Bomb screeches to a halt outside Blythe Cottage, he doesn’t feel his usual heady sense of anticipation. Instead, his nerves are as taut as piano wire. The time has come to introduce Nancy to his famously unpredictable mother.
All the way from Wiltshire, after picking her up from her nursing home, Molly had been nothing but negative about the person Martin now cares about more than anything in the world; the person who, as he walks towards Blythe Cottage, its windows and gables picked out with fresh snow, appears at the door ensconced in a fur muff, with fur glove warmers and a fur-trimmed coat, like a character in a novel by Turgenev, then races down the path and into his arms.
‘What do you think?’ she says, doing a little pirouette in the snow.
‘You look enchanting.’ He kisses her. ‘Ravishing.’ Kisses her again. ‘Bewitching.’
Laughing, they clamber into the Bomb. Even though it’s cold, he’s got the top down. It’s only two miles. ‘Don’t expect too much, carissima,’ he says, honking at a lorry. ‘She’s a terrible snob and likely to go on the pot about the von Rankes, Uncle Robert . . . ’ He rolls his eyes and laughs.
He has explained the convoluted genealogy typical of an upper-class British family and even drawn a family tree: how his mother is Robert Graves’ half-sister, from their father’s – Alfred Percival Graves, also a poet! – first marriage; how Robert is from the second marriage, to Amelie von Ranke. ‘She loves that von!’ he says, shifting gear. ‘Even though, as someone recently reminded me at a family funeral, we’re really only . . . half-Graves.’
He glances over at Nancy. How will his fiery redhead handle his mother? Will Molly be rude and condescending? It’s enough to make him turn the Bomb around and escape back to the middle-class comforts of Blythe Cottage and Peg’s knitting needles.
‘I brought her a gift.’ Nancy pulls a small parcel out of her bag, beautifully wrapped in pink tissue paper.
‘A book?’ Martin reaches down and touches her leg tenderly. ‘You really are determined to educate us, darling.’
‘Well, you are only a half-Graves.’ She reaches over and kisses him on the cheek. He revs the Bomb, so the Riley’s eight-cylinder engine throbs beneath them.
The driveway at Whichert House is lined with Chinese lanterns that glow in the murky half-light of an English winter day. As they walk inside, he sneaks a kiss, then straightens up, shoulders back, like a soldier about to go on parade. ‘Ready?’
The family is gathered in the living room. A Norway spruce stands in the corner of the room. A log fire roars, casting a reddish light on the wood-panelled walls and ceiling.
‘Mother, I’d like you to meet Nancy Claire Whelan.’ He touches Nancy’s waist as reassurance.
Molly reaches out a black-gloved hand. She’s swathed in a heavy, dark velvet dress, the sort of thing Martin associates with séances or midnight mass. A rope of enormous pearls hangs between her equally impressive breasts. She raises an ivory-handled lorgnette to her eyes, and peers at Nancy as though she is some exotic, and rather dangerous, animal. ‘So this is the girl who has you all topsy-turvy?’
‘It is, indeed!’ Martin’s arm is secure around her now, where it belongs.
‘Martin has told me so much about you . . . ’ Nancy enthuses.
Molly doesn’t reply but looks Nancy up and down again, like a trainer appraising a racehorse. Martin has the queasy feeling that, any moment, she will ask to see Nancy’s teeth.
‘Darling!’ Roseen rushes forward to rescue them, kisses Nancy on the cheek. Since their brief encounter in the pub in Knotty Green in October, they have become fast friends, meeting up in London for drinks, going to the theatre, or taking long walks through Kensington Gardens. ‘You look chic as ever.’
‘I love those colours on you.’ Nancy admires Roseen’s black and grey outfit. ‘You look like a Cubist painting!’ She hugs Roseen then moves along to Aunt D.’s two unmarried sons, Tom and Michael.
Nancy has caught glimpses of the two brothers in her visits to the house. But this is her first, formal introduction. Martin has prepped her, explained how, though they are in their thirties, they both still live at home. How Michael has Down’s syndrome and can’t work, except to help in the garden or fix machines; how Tom, the elder brother, commutes to London to the family law office with Uncle Charles. And how adored they both are by Aunt D. and the rest of the family.
Tom tilts his head, like a heron, then shakes her hand, formally. ‘Happy Christmas.’
Michael steps forward. His face beams, innocent and eager to please; his glasses are as thick as the bottom of a whisky bottle. He pumps her hand. ‘You smell . . . like roses!’
There’s an awkward silence. Tom glowers at his brother. Then everyone bursts out laughing. Everyone except Molly, that is.
‘Michael, that’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me all week.’ Nancy kisses him on the cheek.
Martin watches her move among his family, shaking hands, kissing cheeks. The people he loves most in the world all together in the same room.
‘Nancy, dear, come and warm yourself by the fire.’