At the Reunion Buffet

  “Here’s Toffee,” said Isabel.

  Eleanor glanced at the badge. “Yes, that’s her. I shudder to think of the state of her teeth.”

  Isabel remembered Toffee Martinson, doubled up with embarrassment, when asked a question in a physics class, and being unable to reply because her teeth were momentarily stuck together with the clandestine toffee she had been eating. She was about to mention this incident when Eleanor pointed to another badge: Dr. Jane Durrell.

  “The only doctor in our whole year,” said Eleanor. She glanced at Isabel, the tiniest of smiles playing about her lips. “Sorry, I mean, real doctor.”

  Isabel said nothing; she rarely, if ever, referred to her doctorate, so the barb was misplaced. She could correct her and say that medical doctors were relative newcomers to the title—doctors in the early days of universities were doctors of everything except medicine. She settled for a bland response. “Well, at least we shall have medical help on hand if there’s an emergency.”

  “Actually, she’s a psychiatrist,” said Eleanor.

  “Then she could be of help if anybody has an attack of Stendhal syndrome.”

  “But, as I said, she’s a psychiatrist.”

  Isabel gritted her teeth. The rudeness she had glimpsed on their first meeting at La Barantine now seemed to have resurfaced. I am the hostess, she thought. This is my house. You do not offend the hostess.

  “Stendhal syndrome,” Isabel said quietly, “is a psychiatric condition. It occurs when people find themselves in the presence of great art. Visitors to Florence often get it. People become short of breath. They faint. They get hysterical.”

  Eleanor listened, but seemed unimpressed. “Highly unlikely,” she said.

  Isabel stared at her. Was she doubting the reality of Stendhal syndrome, or was she saying that it was highly unlikely that anybody would get it in this house? Not beautiful enough. Victorian architecture—the wrong proportions for Stendhal syndrome.

  Isabel noticed something. “Claire Sutherland,” she said, picking up one of the badges.

  Eleanor made a face. “I wonder how many husbands she’s had. You’ll see that I put a married name for her in brackets, but heaven knows whether he’s current, or the one before the last.”

  “Actually, I was thinking more of the spelling,” said Isabel. “You’ve put Clare, as in Clare College, Cambridge. Our Claire was always very fussy about her i and her e.”

  “Too late,” said Eleanor dismissively. “And it doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s clear enough who she is.”

  “Clear?” said Isabel.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  The badges were now all laid out neatly on the hall table. Eleanor took hers and pinned it on the lapel of the jacket she was wearing. She picked up Isabel’s badge and passed it to her. As she did so, she fumbled and pricked Isabel’s finger with the pin.

  She apologized profusely. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry. I’m nervous, I suppose. What a thing to do…”

  Isabel sucked her finger. “That’s all right. No harm done.” She stared at Eleanor. Suddenly they were twelve again. It was deliberate, she thought. She meant that. Eleanor met her eye, and blushed. That proves it, thought Isabel; one doesn’t blush over an accident; one blushes when found out.

  One of the caterers came into the hall to seek their advice, and they accompanied him into the kitchen. He was a young New Zealander, fresh-faced and cheerful, whose spoken sentences ascended at the end, making each a question.

  “The canapés are almost ready?” he said.

  The intonation made it difficult to decide whether he was asking or telling them something.

  Isabel decided it was the latter. “Good.”

  “But what I wondered was whether we can put the vegetarian ones on the same plate as the non-vegetarian ones?”

  Eleanor took control. “Put them together. People shouldn’t be so fussy.”

  Isabel caught her breath. This was her kitchen. “No,” she said. “I think there are people who don’t like them mixed up like that. There are more plates in that cupboard over there if you need them.”

  “Righty oh?” said the young man.

  Eleanor shook her head. “Unnecessary,” she said. “Put them together. It’s simpler. It’ll make them easier to hand round.”

  Isabel decided that a line had been crossed. “No, separate plates please.” And to Eleanor she said, “As the hostess, I feel I should…”

  Eleanor glared at her. “It’s the reunion, really, that is the host here. You very kindly offered…”

  “…to host the occasion,” said Isabel. “So I think we’ll have separate plates.”

  The young man grinned. He was waiting for his final instruction. Isabel crossed the floor to the cupboard and took out half a dozen plates. “Here we are,” she said. “These can be vegetarian, and those can be for meat and fish.”

  She felt the young man’s eyes on her. Then, after glancing quickly at Eleanor, he began to busy himself with placing the canapés on the appropriate plate.

  “Good,” said Isabel briskly. “That’s settled that.” She looked at her watch. “Five minutes to go.”

  They were slow to arrive, even allowing for the passage of the statutory fifteen minutes. But then, almost all at once, taxis drew up at the front gate and disgorged their passengers. Eleanor and Margaret met them at the front door, showing them—rather officiously, thought Isabel—to the table where their name badge was waiting. Coats were taken by the young man from New Zealand, who said “Good evening?” to each guest as she arrived. Then they made their way into the large downstairs drawing room, where another member of the catering team stood with a tray of glasses of Cava.

  If there was any ice to be broken, it was thin and did not take long to break. The level of noise in the room rose steadily—the murmur of conversation being interrupted by occasional shrieks of laughter or surprise. As the party got under way, Isabel looked around the room. All the name badges had been collected, so everybody was either there or in the music room, which was accommodating the overflow. So Barbara Grant would have arrived, as would Claire Sutherland.

  She saw Claire Sutherland first. From where she was standing Isabel did not have a good view of her face, but she recognized her figure. Claire had been curvaceous—more so than any of the other girls—and she still was. If gravity was planning to strike, it had not done so yet, allowing her to carry off a clinging silk jersey dress to good advantage.

  Isabel crossed to join the small group in which Claire was standing. As she approached, Claire detached herself and turned to embrace Isabel, kissing her enthusiastically on each cheek. “So!” she said. “Here we all are! Twenty years!”

  “Quite a thought,” said Isabel. “It doesn’t seem like it, does it?”

  “Not at all,” said Claire. She peered at Isabel’s badge. “You’re married, I see. Is he here?”

  “Yes,” said Isabel. “He’ll appear.”

  Claire smiled. “I seem to recall that you married earlier on. Somebody told me…”

  “Yes,” said Isabel. “I had a pretty disastrous first marriage. I survived, though.”

  “As we all do,” said Claire. She pointed to her own badge. “They’ve misspelled my name, you know. I have an i and an e. People keep leaving it out.”

  “I remember,” said Isabel. “It’s annoying when people misspell your name.”

  “It certainly is,” said Claire. “But we shouldn’t worry about things like that, I suppose.”

  “No,” said Isabel.

  Isabel looked at Claire’s badge. “And you’re no longer Sutherland, I see.”

  “I use the name Ross,” said Claire. “Michael and I have been married for fifteen years now. We have three children—two boys and a girl.”

  Isabel suppressed a smile. Claire had settled down; of course she would.

  “I’ve been very lucky,” said Claire. “I found the right man.”

  After a long and active search,
thought Isabel; but reproached herself silently and immediately. “I’m so pleased for you,” she said. And that was quite true; she was.

  Claire leaned forwards. “I must confess that I was a bit…how shall I put it? I was a bit boy mad in those days.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Isabel. “We all were—in our way.”

  “Oh but I was a bit of an enthusiast. I suspect that I was the first amongst us to have a boyfriend.”

  Isabel shrugged. “I didn’t pay much attention. Maybe you were.”

  “I was a bit heady,” Claire continued. “But after I left university I settled down.”

  Exhausted, thought Isabel. And then, No, that’s unkind. So she said, “You met Michael then?”

  “Yes. We met on a kibbutz in Israel. It started there.”

  Isabel was surprised. She had not known that Claire was Jewish.

  It was as if Claire had read her mind. “I’m not Jewish,” she said. “Or, at least, I wasn’t then. I am now. I converted, you see.”

  “Michael is?”

  “Yes, he had a Jewish mother but his father wasn’t. He took it up when he was at university and he discovered the Jewish Students’ Association. He was looking for something, I suppose, and he discovered that it had been there all along. He decided to go off to spend six months on a kibbutz and it just so happened that I had a Jewish girlfriend who had invited me to go with her. And that was it.”

  Isabel felt a sudden rush of affection for Claire. She had obviously changed: from enthusiastic promiscuity to Jewish motherhood by way of a kibbutz; it was a heartwarming story.

  “Do you do the whole thing?” Isabel asked.

  “Oh no,” said Claire. “I don’t keep a strict kosher kitchen or anything like that. We’re very liberal, very reformed. But we always sit down for the meal on Friday evening and light the candles. And it gives our lives structure. We’re very happy.”

  “I can imagine,” said Isabel. Then, in return for the confidence, she said, “I’m very happy too. Yet I sometimes I wish I had faith—in the way in which you obviously have it.”

  Claire reached out and put a hand on Isabel’s forearm. “But I don’t actually believe…No, put it this way: there is faith and faith. One form of faith is actual practice—the rituals and so on—the other form of faith involves actually believing in it. They’re different things, you know.”

  Isabel nodded. “Of course. There may be reasons to act as if something were true when you know it isn’t.”

  “Precisely,” said Claire. “And you can sink very deeply into your faith. It can keep you afloat. It does that for me, you know.” She paused. “So, you’re happy then?”

  “I wasn’t to begin with—when I was with my first husband. I was very unhappy. Now, I’ve found the most wonderful man and we’ve had a little boy, and…well, everything is just as I always hoped it would be.”

  “Men,” said Claire, rolling her eyes. “They seem to be vital to our happiness. It’s so unfair, isn’t it?”

  “Only if we let them,” said Isabel. “More of us than one imagines we could get by fine without men.”

  Claire looked doubtful. “I couldn’t.”

  “You might surprise yourself.”

  Claire made an oh well gesture. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  They talked about careers. Isabel explained about the Review of Applied Ethics and Claire told Isabel about her practice as an interior designer, but she did not get far, as they were interrupted by the arrival of another woman, who came over to join them. At first Isabel did not recognize her, and nor, it seemed, did Claire. They both looked at the name badge, embarrassed to have to do so, trying not to make their glances too obvious: Barbara Grant.

  It was difficult for Isabel. Claire was not rude—not overtly so—but Isabel noticed an immediate cooling of her manner. And after a few remarks on the passage of time and the programme for the weekend, Claire drifted away, caught up in another circle of conversation.

  Isabel smiled at Barbara. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you straightaway. You probably noticed that. You know how it is…”

  Barbara looked at her nervously. “It’s a long time, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Isabel. The mention of time gave her the excuse to study Barbara; and if one couldn’t appraise people at a reunion, then when could one do so? The years had had their impact in Barbara’s case, she thought, but there were those high cheekbones that she remembered from school days. And the eyes were the same—those eyes of intense green. They had been her most noticeable feature, and they were still there. It was those eyes, she reflected, that had probably caused more dread in her victims than anything else.

  But now it was different. The old confidence, the old sense of impunity, had gone. Why, Isabel asked herself, did they let her get away with it? The staff must have known, but were presumably indifferent to it, thinking it was just the way girls of that age were.

  “What did you do?” asked Isabel. “After leaving school? We seemed to have lost touch.”

  Barbara looked down at her glass of wine. “I went to university. King’s College, London.”

  Isabel asked what she had studied, and Barbara told her. “French.”

  Isabel nodded. “And then?”

  “I taught at a school in Norfolk. Holt. Greshams School.”

  Isabel brightened. “But that was where Auden went. He was at Greshams.”

  Barbara’s gaze remained fixed on her wineglass. “Of course.”

  “And…” Isabel faltered. She knew that Benjamin Britten had been there and one of the Cambridge spies. Who was it? Kim Philby, she decided. “And Philby.”

  “Yes,” said Barbara, flatly. “Auden and Philby.”

  “I gather there’s a monument to Auden,” said Isabel. “In the school grounds. What’s it like?”

  “Oh, it’s not very big,” said Barbara. “It records the fact that Auden was there. That’s about it.”

  “There’s that Britten monument in Aldeburgh, isn’t there? That wonderful steel scallop on the beach.”

  “There is,” said Barbara.

  Isabel took a sip of her wine. This was the reality of the great bully: a rather dull woman with a markedly passive attitude. She must…She stopped herself. It was not Philby who had been at Greshams, but Donald Maclean. Like Philby, Maclean was a diplomat who passed secrets to the Soviet Union. He had been at Greshams and his name was still there, she had heard, on one of the honors boards. He had won a prize for something or other and his name was on a painted board in the school hall, along with Britten’s and Auden’s.

  Barbara had started to say something. “I wasn’t at Greshams for all that long,” she said. “Four years. Then I took a job with a finance company in Glasgow. I met somebody there. He was Scottish, but he had just been offered a job in Australia.”

  Isabel nodded. “Oh yes, I think I heard you’d gone to Melbourne.”

  Barbara seemed taken aback by this, and looked defensive for a moment. But then she relaxed again. “We still live there, actually. But Iain, my husband, is an academic and has a full year’s sabbatical. So that’s why we’re here. We’re spending part of it Scotland and part in…” She trailed off.

  Isabel waited, but Barbara did not finish, at least not immediately. It was as if she had forgotten where they were to spend the rest of the sabbatical. That was odd, Isabel thought.

  “In France,” said Barbara at last. “In Par…in Lyons.”

  “I see,” said Isabel. She was still wondering why Barbara had confused Philby and Maclean, and she realized that it was probably for exactly the same reasons that she herself had done so. But then Barbara had taught there—she would have known far more about it. Was she for some reason making up the story of having taught at Greshams? Isabel could think of no possible reason for her to do so—it was confusion, pure and simple: confusion brought about by the emotional demands of the reunion. After all, if Barbara had enemies—and that seemed to be the case—th
en she could well be expected to feel anxious about attending a reunion of her victims; anybody in that position might well confuse one spy with another, particularly British spies of that period who were almost all from the same mold, which was half the problem thought Isabel: conformity—a uniform of accent, dress, assumptions—was the perfect cover for the nonconformist, the rebel, the spy.

  The serving of the buffet supper changed the tone of the occasion. The high volume catch-ups over sparkling wine and canapés were replaced by more reflective conversation between smaller groups. People gravitated to old friends and talked together quietly, plates of food from the buffet balanced on knees. There was plenty of room to sit down, Isabel having borrowed extra chairs from the bedrooms and from neighbors. Jamie appeared for the meal, and was lionized by a number of the guests.

  “So!” whispered one to Isabel,“you’re the dark horse, Isabel Dalhousie! Where did you find him?”

  Isabel laughed. “I met him through my niece,” she said. She did not mention that Jamie had been Cat’s boyfriend—discarded, of course, as all of Cat’s boyfriends were; people would have enough to gossip about without adding that titbit.

  “Lucky you,” said the guest.

  There were speeches, one from Eleanor that went on for twenty-three minutes—Isabel timed it—and a shorter one from Margaret, the other organizer. Eleanor was nostalgic, mentioning each of their teachers some of whom would join them for the lunch at the museum restaurant the following day. Every one of the teachers was described as “an inspiration,” with a favored few being “both an inspiration and a pillar.” Isabel stared at the ceiling: What had happened to Lot’s wife? Was she not turned into a pillar of salt? Imagine her class reunion: So sad that Lot’s wife isn’t with us today, but she’s been turned into a pillar of salt, as you may have heard. So sad.

  The evening came to an end shortly after eleven. Taxis had been called in advance, and they were waiting. Isabel said goodbye to the last of the guests and spoke briefly to the caterers, who were still clearing up in the kitchen.