‘They fill the seats, Mama, they fill the seats. Now, why don’t you go back to that turgid drama you’re angling for a part in, and I’ll see if I can persuade Julia to eat with me.’
‘Sorry, other plans,’ Julia said coolly and Connie laughed.
‘Keep it up, darling. Having you around for a month is going to be handy in controlling that puff-ball ego of his.’ She rose and gathered up her script, ordering imperiously. ‘You may see to the cups, Richard, it might give your hands something else to do.’
A little later, having helped Richard with the few dishes, Julia peered out the window.
‘Has it stopped raining yet? I really must be going.’
She was whirled into a close embrace. ‘Don’t run away, my darling! Don’t try and fight this thing between us. Come back to my flat and have a jug of wine and a loaf of bread with me.’
‘No thanks, I’ve meals to cook … and this thing between us is a damp towel. Let me go, Richard, I can’t breathe!’ Richard wasn’t broad but he was tall and Julia’s face was buried in his chest.
He released her, chanting mournfully:
‘ “I burne and cruell you, in vaine
Hope to quench me with disdaine.” ‘
Julia was unimpressed, having heard him use exactly the same quotation before an audience of several hundred a few weeks before. Still, he did have a beautiful way with words. In spite of her striving to be practical, Julia possessed a strong streak of romanticism that was constantly getting in the way. Perhaps that was why she hadn’t fallen in love with Richard, he was too free with something she considered should be private and special between two people.
‘Oh well,’ he wasn’t discouraged. ‘I’ll have you at my mercy in August.’
‘You and the rest of the family,’ Julia pointed out.
‘Mmmm.’ He paused, his hand on the door-knob. ‘Have you seen Steve lately?’
Julia shook her head and he frowned. ‘Nor have I, not since before his Australian tour. If it wasn’t so silly I’d say he was trying to avoid me. He didn’t look too wonderful.’
‘What’s the matter?’ Julia tried to remember the last time she had seen his twin perform. It was on a local television show. The group, Hard Times, was excellent, but it was Steve’s distinctive voice as a lead singer that lifted them into chart-topping ranks. It had a harsh, gravelly quality, very attractive, very sexy. Julia had thought Steve looked thin and his red hair had accentuated his pallor, but it was a look he had cultivated.
‘I don’t know,’ Richard answered. ‘I don’t think he was looking forward to the tour, for one thing, although he didn’t say so. He and the group have been pretty constantly on the road for a couple of years now, and there’s been a bit of disagreement. Steve seemed very edgy … uptight.’
‘Maybe a month of peace and quiet in Coromandel is just what he needs, then,’ said Julia, as they walked down the rain-slick driveway to her car. To her surprise, Richard, after a moment, began to laugh.
‘I was just thinking,’ he explained, seeing her puzzlement, ‘peace and quiet … that’s one thing a certain member of the family is going to find elusive down there.’
‘You mean your father, with his writing?’
‘No, no …’ Richard looked furtively over his shoulder. ‘Hugh!’
‘I don’t understand.’
Richard was grinning widely. ‘He’s going to be down at Craemar with the rest of us.’
‘But Connie said he wouldn’t be. I thought he didn’t like family get-togethers.’
‘He doesn’t know! He’s been over in America doing some legal research. He doesn’t know that Mother darling, in her infinite wisdom, has disorganised us all with her plans. He’s writing this legal text-book you see, for the university—he lectures there sometimes—and he’s decided to do it all in one go, without distractions … at Craemar. He’s burnt his boats quite thoroughly by letting his apartment to a visiting American professor and his family and he won’t be able to come back up to the town house because Connie’s having the decorators in with a vengeance while we’re away. What a gory, glorious scene it’s going to be!’
Julia, usually attuned to Richard’s sense of humour, and tolerant of his practical jokes, was at a loss. ‘I don’t see what’s so funny.’
‘You don’t know Hugh! Individually he likes us, but he needs a good few months’ notice to psyche himself up to endure the family en masse. Our Hugh is not a social animal, why, even at Christmas he can only stand us for a few days.’
‘Maybe he gets enough excitement in his work,’ said Julia, doubtful of this unlikely sounding Marlow. ‘Lawyers must have to socialise with every man and his dog.’
‘Ah, but then he’s not your kind of legal eagle, darling,’ Richard explained with a grin. ‘He’s not a blood and guts and “where were you on the night of the thirty-first” lawyer. He’s a party-of-the-first-part lawyer, a dry-as-dust commercial lawyer. Nothing so untidy and unreliable as human emotion for our Hugh.’
Julia felt a tug of curiosity. ‘Don’t you like him?’