encircling it with a kind of intimacy. And I saw how it could be, saw the stone frog spewing water from his wide cheerful mouth, saw the lily pads and the old-fashioned roses, palest pink and amber, single flowers not lasting long but scented, clambering up the wall.
From that moment it was easy. We bought it and moved in, and I knew just what to do with it, decorating most of it myself. I seemed to expand to fill the space; it started to feel right for me. And now it is all as it should be, elegant, established, with velvet curtains and tiebacks with tassels and heavy pelmets edged with plum-coloured braid. Our things look right here, in this setting, everything seems to fit: Richard’s Chinese vases and his violin, and the two ceramic masks, one white, one black, that we brought back from our honeymoon, and a little painting I did of a poppy, that I thought was maybe good enough to frame and go up on the wall; and on the mantelpiece there’s a cardboard Nativity scene, intricate, in rich dark colours, that I bought from Benjamin Pollock’s toyshop in Covent Garden. The Nativity scene was my choice, not the girls’; they’d probably have gone for something more contemporary and plastic. But I love traditional things—I’m always hunting them out, in junk shops and on market stalls: things made to old designs, or with a patina of use, a bit of history. Like when I’d decorated Daisy’s room, the floors stripped and varnished to a pale honey colour, the ceiling night-sky blue with a stencilling of stars, and I knew there was something missing. It needed something old, loved, a teddy bear to sit in the cane chair, an old bear with bits of fur worn off, like people sometimes keep in trunks in their attics. And I wondered what it would be like to have had a childhood that left such traces—old toys, photos perhaps—things that are worn with use, with loving, to store away then come upon years later and show to your own children, with a little stir of sentiment or mildly embarrassed amusement or nostalgia. In the end I found a bear in a department store: it had old-fashioned curly fur and was dressed in Edwardian clothes, but it smelt of the factory. I bought it anyway. It was the best I could do.
The women are reminiscing about their children’s toy obsessions. Natalie’s mother, who has four children, remembers Tamagotchis, these pocket computer animals that you had to feed and care for; the mothers had to look after them while the children were at school. I’m only half listening. Over their shoulders I can see Richard talking to somebody’s teenage daughter. He looks too smart for the company in his jacket and tie—he isn’t very good at casual dressing. The girl is perhaps eighteen, just a little younger than I was when he met me. She’s wearing a sleeveless top despite the snow, showing off her prettily sloping shoulders. Her arms are thin and white and her hair is watered silk and she has a big gleamy smile. I can tell he’s charming her; he comes from that privileged class of men who are always charming—perhaps most charming—with strangers. And Richard likes young women; it’s what he was drawn to in me, that new gloss. I know I’m not like I was when first we met: I don’t have that sheen any more.
Nicky is next to Richard, talking to the man with the unruly hair. She’s getting in close—not surprising, really, he’s quite attractive. Now that she’s taken off her coat, she looks like a picture from a magazine. There’s something altogether contemporary about Nicky. She loves biker boots and little tartan skirts, and she works at an advertising agency, where, in spite of—or maybe because of—the niceness and easygoingness of Neil, her husband, who is an inventive cook and a devoted parent, she exchanges erotic e-mails with the creative director. ‘You see, we’re not like you and Richard,’ she says to me sometimes, leaning across the table at the Café Rouge towards me. ‘You two are so transparently everything to each other. I mean, it’s wonderful if you can be like that—if you’ve got that kind of marriage—what could be lovelier? But Neil and I aren’t like that, especially since the kids. I don’t think I’m built to be completely faithful, it’s just not in my genes…’
She feels my eyes on her. She turns, speaks to the man again. They come towards me. Kate’s mother and Natalie’s mother move away.
He smiles at me. His eyes are grey and steady. Nicky puts her hand on my arm.
‘Meet Fergal,’ she says. ‘Our latest recruit. A tenor. Tenors are like gold dust. I love my tenors to bits.’
I smile. He says hello. I remember how much I like Irish voices.
She takes her last bite of apple-cake and licks her sugary fingers. ‘Catriona, your cooking is out of this world. I have to have more of this.’
Sinead walks past with a plate. Nicky lunges after her.
My boots have high heels and my eyes are just on a level with his. We look at one another and there’s a brief embarrassed pause.
‘I liked the carols,’ I tell him. Then think how vacuous this sounds.
‘Well,’ he says, and shrugs a little. ‘It’s been fun.’
I note the past tense. I rapidly decide that he’s not the sort of man who’d like me. I know how I must seem to him, a privileged sheltered woman.
‘Nicky’s good at arranging things,’ I say. ‘Making things happen.’
He nods vaguely. He’s looking over my shoulder—I’ve bored him already.
But then I see he is looking at my picture—the painting of poppies that I hung on the wall. It’s just behind me.
‘Who did the painting?’ he says.
‘I did.’
‘I wondered if it was you,’ he says. ‘I like it.’
I feel a little embarrassed, but acknowledge to myself that I am quite pleased with this painting. The petals are that dark purple that is almost black, yet there’s a gleam on them.
‘I don’t do much,’ I say. ‘It just makes a nice break. I can hide away in my attic and the girls know not to disturb me. I suppose it’s a bit conceited to put it up on the wall.’
‘D’you always do that?’ he says.
‘Do what?’
‘Run yourself down like that?’
‘Probably. I guess it’s irritating.’
We both smile.
‘When you paint, is it always flowers?’ he says.
‘Always. I can’t do people. I’m really limited.’
He looks at me quizzically. His eyes are full of laughter.
‘OK, I know I’m doing it again,’ I say. ‘But it’s true. And I can’t draw out of my head either. It has to be something I can put on the table in front of me. I can only paint what I see.’
‘D’you sell them?’ he says.
I nod, flattered he should ask. ‘There’s a gift shop in town that takes them sometimes.’
He turns to look at it again. ‘It’s not very cheerful. For a flower. It’s kind of ominous. All that shadow around it.’
‘Really. How can you read all that into a picture?’ But I’m pleased. There’s something rather trivial about doing paintings of flowers and selling them in a gift shop alongside scented candles and boxed sets of soap. I like that he can see a kind of darkness in it.
I realise I am happy. My body fluid and easy with the wine, my room hospitable, beautiful, this man with the Irish lilt in his voice
