steering Blanche into the drawing room. ‘Mummy turned me to face the mirror the other day and said: “Who’s that?” I said, “It’s me.” “That’s the person you’ve got to look after,” said Mummy. “Put yourself first for once.”’
‘How is your mother?’ said Blanche, who didn’t want anyone put first except herself. ‘Still living in Weybridge?’
‘She’s in Ibiza,’ said Romy, ‘first holiday in years. She’s been wonderful helping out with the kids. They call her Granny Playbridge – they hardly know Etta,’ added Romy, thinking how nice that little button-back, coral-pink chair in the corner would look in her bedroom.
‘I can’t believe Sampy is no more,’ quavered Blanche. ‘So glad I saw him and brought him some comfort the day he died. The lamb was too rare. He liked it well done, and Etta drooling over Rupert Campbell-Black upset him. I can’t help thinking that if she had been more caring, Sampy might still be alive.’
Outside, the captains of industry were exchanging cards, finding customers, discussing deals. Larry Lockton had sold his supermarket.
Shade Murchieson, who had made several fortunes selling arms and explosives to the Americans to flatten Iraq, was lobbying for a multi-billion deal to rebuild its infrastructure.
Martin, meanwhile, was racing around pressing the flesh, grumbling about the snide obituaries in the left-wing papers: ‘So full of errors. Dad was in such terrible pain, there has to be a feeling of liberation, but golly I’m going to miss the old boy,’ he told everyone. ‘Please sign the Book of Remembrance, and put your email address so we can keep in touch.’
‘That dog’s got to go,’ insisted Romy as Bartlett, who had friends among the guests, left blonde hairs on black clothes. ‘Easy on the bubbly, Alan.’
The mistresses roamed round, eyeing up possible new benefactors.
‘How many horses have you got?’ Trixie, perched on the balustrade showing even more leg, asked Shade Murchieson.
‘Far too many.’
‘Who trains them?’
‘Some are with Rupert Campbell-Black.’
‘Granny’s pin-up.’
‘And the rest with Marius Oakridge in Willowwood.’
‘My parents have got a barn there. Do you think he’d give me a holiday job?’
‘He might, I’ll introduce you.’
As a man accustomed like Sampson to terrifying people, Shade liked Trixie being totally unafraid.
Occasionally bellows rent the air as Drummond, who’d been at the champagne, bombed around at crotch level.
‘Oh God,’ muttered Trixie, ‘here comes Grampy’s squeeze in pursuit of a new backer, you better watch out.’
‘Hello, Trixie, how are you?’ cried Blanche. ‘I’m almost part of the Bancroft family, Shade. May I call you Shade?’
Out in the cruel sunlight, compared with Trixie, Blanche looked like a middle-aged Barbie doll whose veneer was cracking.
*
Etta was too numb to notice or be relieved Basil and Brian Tenby were no longer squeezing her waist, fingers splaying to caress her breast, murmuring endearments. Rumour was trickling around that she wasn’t going to be a very rich widow. Penelope’s suitors were in retreat.
She was also much too busy haring round seeing the vicar was looked after, chauffeurs were provided with something to eat and introducing people, groping to remember names of those she knew really well. Her tired brain was like a biro that has to be pressed round and round before the ink comes out.
Several old girlfriends, frightened off by Sampson, had turned up and were hugging her: ‘There’s a frenzy from death to burial, darling. At first you’re frantic, everyone asks you to dinner to hear the grisly details, then silence, so do come and stay in the summer.’
‘Don’t move for a year,’ advised others, ‘until you know what you really want, you’ve made it so lovely here. Thank God you’ve got Bartlett.’
Martin had rabbited on for so long in church, and also ordered the waitresses to go slow with the champagne, that the Great and Not-So-Good were looking at their watches and muttering about leaving. Pilots were revving up. Etta, however, rushed round filling glasses, to Martin’s disapproval:
‘Go easy on the bubbly, Mother, not everyone has chauffeurs to drive them home.’
‘On sports days in America,’ Trixie told Shade, ‘they have chauffeurs’ races. We could have one now.’
In the summer house, Martin found Carrie ringing Hong Kong on the house telephone and raised an eyebrow.
‘I better warn you,’ Carrie replaced the receiver, ‘Blanche has just told me Dad promised her fifty thousand a year after he died.’
‘Don’t think there’s anything in writing. Hopefully Dad shredded it.’
‘Well, she’s told Dame Hermione, who now wants paying for today.’
‘Sampson remembered me in his will and in his willy,’ giggled Trixie, putting on Dame Hermione’s deep, deep voice. ‘Will