Chloe. Freya North

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СКАЧАТЬ Chloë’s entire effects would have taken but a couple of hours to pack, it really did not seem an appropriate activity for Christmas Day. It could wait. Tomorrow, perhaps; Boxing Day after all. The easiest way for Chloë to block out the lack of Jocelyn was to travel backwards and pore over memories of Christmases past. Yuletide celebrations at her godmother’s had been peppered with good cheer and sumptuous refreshments, and peopled by the most colourful of souls. Chloë customarily took a place in the background, happily overshadowed by the mosaic of eccentricities that surrounded her. She was oddly comfortable with her shyness when at Jocelyn’s, surrounded by a host of fantastic characters scattered liberally through the house. There was the white witch, the man with the panama and the macaw, the Russian with the balalaika, the ageing French actress. But best of all, the septuagenarians, Peregrine and Jasper; made up to the nines and immaculately coiffured. (‘We’re the real Queens of England, we should be on the telly at three, don’t you think?’) Some called her Cadwallader, the white witch absent-mindedly called her Cleo, Peregrine and Jasper called her ‘Clodders’ as they had since she was small. She did not mind at all.

      Chloë would watch with awe as Jocelyn swirled around her guests, distributing drink and food, compliments and witticisms with grace laced with abandon. Eyes dark with kohl bought in Petra, enviable cheekbones dusted with rouge from Paris and nut-brown skin bathed in Mitsuko, Jocelyn breezed about enveloped in velvet or swathed in chiffon, bejewelled extravagantly, bestowing on all her immense gift of effortless hospitality. Everyone was swept along on the tide of her countenance. Every so often and without making a scene, she would swoop down beside Chloë, usually squeezing next to her on the armchair to lavish kisses and furtive winks and nudges; ‘I’m Jocelyn jostling!’ she would pip in her ear. Chloë felt treasured indeed.

      Mr and Mrs Andrews had been there too, ensconced in Notting Hill, in Jocelyn’s glorious house. With pride of place over a faux-Elizabethan fireplace, they looked benevolently down on all from the gilt-edged confines of their elegant world. Of course, it was not the original – yet nor was it a standard print such as Chloë’s. Jocelyn had commissioned hers from a young Chilean painter whom she had befriended on a coffee appreciation trip to South America in the seventies. She had brought Carlos back to London, sat him in the Tate and National Galleries, the Courtauld Institute and the Wallace Collection until he had quite mastered the Masters before sending him to Paris where she had an old friend who had known Matisse. Two years later, he enjoyed the first of many sell-out one-man shows. Now New York had him and he dressed in Gaultier and had a boyfriend called Claude whom he called ‘Clode’.

      But he came to Jocelyn’s funeral, and wept alone and at length before disappearing.

      As Chloë gazed at her own Mr and Mrs Andrews, she wondered what would happen to Jocelyn’s. There, Señora Andrews sometimes appeared to be winking and wasn’t there just a drift of something positively libertine about Señor Andrews?

      Chloë decided if she visited the house, she would see if she could take the painting home. But where was home to be? Wales? Ireland? Scotland, perhaps? Wasn’t home just a concept? Was it attainable? Really?

      Because it would not have crossed their minds to call her, Chloë rang her parents just before the Queen’s Speech to thank them for their perfunctory cheque. Two time zones away, they were just on their way out to cocktails with the Withrington-Smiths before a bash at Bunty and Jimbo’s so could it be brief? Yes, yes, Merry Christmas to you too, Chloë. Mother sends fondest! Must fly, bye!

      Owen and Torica Cadwallader: definitive ex-pats. Dictionary perfect and, as such, worthy of lengthy description or dissection in book, film or anthropological study. They whooped it up overseas, ricocheting around their vapid colonial existence; loving every minute, every year of it. Chloë had been born to them in Hong Kong and was to be their only child (a daughter – shame) who, at six years old and with a relocation to Saudi pending, had been shipped back to England to fumble her way through boarding school and other rites of passage. Had it not been for Jocelyn, she would have been quite alone. ‘Far too far to fly’ being her parents’ dictum and excuse, Chloë rarely saw them. Perhaps once every three years or so, for a day or so. If that. This year they had flown in for the state opening of Parliament but Jocelyn’s funeral two months later was ‘far too far to fly – we’ll send flowers’ – which they did, only on the wrong day.

      And yet Jocelyn remained forever discreet; she never judged them, never spoke badly about them and never colluded with Chloë who had expressed a brave indifference from a tender age anyway. Jocelyn’s sympathy and support, though unspoken and unasked for, were abundant and comforting. The unequivocal, unconditional love and respect that she lavished on Chloë made her want for nothing. Why pine for parents she did not know when she had a godparent the calibre of Jocelyn? For her part, Jocelyn had a daughter without the trials of pregnancy, labour or a husband. She had this wonderful god-daughter merely because her brother had captained Owen’s rugger team at Oxford.

      Chloë thought herself very lucky. While other parents came up to school en masse and took their daughters out for cream teas in Marlborough, Jocelyn descended by Aston Martin twice a term to whisk away Chloë, and any friends she chose, for magical interludes and picnics on the Downs replete with champagne, smoked salmon and chocolate liqueurs. She helped smuggle plenty of the latter back to school: the very stuff of midnight feasts, bribery and blackmail. Once, when the weather had not been kind, the picnic was taken indoors at Badborough Court, a meandering country seat near Devizes owned by an old friend of Jocelyn’s (didn’t Lord Badborough kiss her for ages!).

      Jocelyn wrote weekly, came to parents’ evenings, sports days and school plays. When Chloë’s maths teacher chastised Jocelyn over Chloë’s general apathy and incompetence, the visits and the picnics and the chocolate truffles became more frequent. Not as a bribe, but as support.

      ‘I’m not surprised your mind wanders off in maths, it’s insufferably boring,’ Jocelyn had said over shandy at a pub near Avebury. ‘But just think, if you pass your O level you’ll never, ever, have to do maths again! And just think, if you pass your O level you can turn your back on mental arithmetic and formulae and daft equations, to add things up on your fingers forever more! That’s why we’ve got ten of them after all!’

      Chloë gained a ‘B’ for her maths O level and has used her fingers to count ever since.

      It was watching the Queen’s Speech on the television (Chloë remained upstanding with sherry and a mince pie) that decided her what to do.

      ‘Velvet, Your Majesty!’ she cooed with reverence and gratitude. ‘Jocelyn said I may have “anything of velvet” so I shall go directly and have my pick. First, though,’ she announced, ‘I shall pack!’

      Chloë, her belongings and Mr and Mrs Andrews crossed London for Notting Hill by taxi and her sudden Christmas cheer ensured an extravagant tip on top of the seasonally quadrupled fare. Chloë grinned and waved at the familiar front door; darkly glossed hunter green, brass fittings gleaming. Hullo, hullo, hullo, she chanted, skipping up the wide steps two at a time. She had her own set of keys, of course she did. But the locks had been changed, of course they had. Feeling tearful and bewildered, she sat down on the front steps, surrounded by bags that were suddenly too heavy and bulky, wondering what to do. She thought of all the velvet items inside that were now rightfully hers, she wondered about the Chilean Mr and Mrs Andrews hoping they were still where they should be, presiding over matters in the drawing-room. Her own Mr and Mrs Andrews were too cold and cross to talk. Or was that her? She hoped nothing had been removed or even moved inside the house and yet how could she check? With her bottom numbing against the cold stone, and her lower lip jutting in bewilderment tinged with self-pity, she felt at once trapped and yet barred. Christmas Day was closing around her. It was cold.

      Wales, suddenly, did not seem a good idea at all.

      ‘Wales,’ СКАЧАТЬ