In the middle, around the front door, was a circular porch with pillars either side, ivy knotted around them. An old-fashioned pram with a large hood and silver wheels was parked to one side.
The door opened. ‘Welcome, my darlings,’ cried a woman in a purple kaftan. Her white hair was plaited over one shoulder and she was barefoot. Eccentric dressing clearly ran in the family, I thought, suddenly feeling very urban in my jeans and ankle boots.
Rory stepped forward first. ‘Hi, Mummy,’ he said, kissing her on both cheeks, before looking over his shoulder. ‘This is Florence.’
I smiled and walked around the other side of Rory to greet his mother, trying to avoid Merlin and ignore the fact that my boyfriend had just called his mother ‘Mummy’.
‘Good to meet you, Mrs Dundee.’
She waggled a finger at me. ‘I can’t bear being called that. It makes me feel so old. Elizabeth, please.’
‘Sure,’ I replied, awed by her elegance. Up close, Rory’s mother looked like an old Hollywood star. The corners of her blue eyes crinkled when she smiled but her skin still shone like butter.
‘Come in, come in,’ she said, ushering us through the door. ‘Are you hungry? Lunch is ready. Goodness, what a big bag. Are you staying all month?’
‘No, sorry, I just wasn’t sure what to bring so OH MY GOD…’ I jumped as the door swung closed behind us, revealing a looming polar bear standing on its hind legs.
‘Ah yes, that’s our bear. Bi-polar, we call him. My great-great grandfather shot him on an expedition he made to the Arctic in 1894. Rory, take Florence’s bag upstairs and we’ll go and see about drinks.’
‘Right-o,’ said Rory, making for a curved staircase which ran up from where we were standing. I gazed around me. The hallway looked like a posh junk shop. Under the curved staircase was a dusty grand piano. Against the opposite wall was a grandfather clock, ticking but telling the wrong time. And in between, facing us, was a large fireplace puffing clouds of grey smoke. It made me feel cold. If possible, it was colder inside than it had been outside.
‘This way,’ Elizabeth beckoned me. ‘The kitchen’s warmer.’ She moved like a ghost, gliding through a doorway into a large kitchen which looked out on to the lawn behind the house. Her three cats were lying on the kitchen table in a patch of sun.
‘Your cats!’ I said. ‘What are they called?’
‘Pablo, Claude and Frida. After the artists. We give everything very silly names here, I’m afraid. There’s a peacock stalking around the garden called Salvador. What would you like to drink? I’m making a jug of Bloody Mary.’
‘Lovely.’ The kitchen was warmer but it was also an Aladdin’s cave of crap. Beside an Aga was a laundry basket exploding with socks and shirtsleeves. Silver dog bowls and saucepans dotted every surface as if catching leaks. I glanced upwards. There was a brown watermark shaped like France on the ceiling. On one side of the sink was a stack of newspapers piled so high it looked in danger of cascading to the floor at any second. On the other was a fruit bowl which contained only brown fruits. Brown apples, brown pears, withered grapes and bananas that seemed to have passed the brown stage and gone black. I sniffed. Above the smell of overripe bananas and dog, I could also smell burning.
‘Right, what can I do?’ said Rory, coming through the doorway. ‘Where’s Daddy?’
Daddy? Oh no.
‘Shooting,’ replied his mother. ‘And you can fetch the sherry for me, then take the partridge out of the Aga. Killed only last weekend!’
‘Lovely!’ I said again, trying to sound enthusiastic.
An hour later, I was still hungry. Rory had been right about the eccentricity. Having served us each a tiny, charred bird on a plate with nothing else, no vegetables, Elizabeth fetched a lump of cheese from the fridge. Next, she’d retrieved two bottles of red wine ‘from the cellar’, blew the dust off them and set them down on the table.
As a result, I felt that discombobulating sense of being drunk while it was still light outside.
‘I’m going to walk the cats,’ she announced, standing up.
‘Florence, my darling, feel like a stroll?’ said Rory.
‘You don’t want to walk with me,’ replied Elizabeth. ‘Why don’t you show her round the garden?’
The mystery of the pram was revealed while I stood under the porch minutes later, trying to slide my feet into the wellingtons. It was a challenge after four glasses