The Feast

An Invitation By the time the drainage consultant admitted he had used the wrong drawing, Eliza Ashcombe had already spent twenty minutes defending a parking arrangement she didn’t especially like. She had her laptop open at the end of the meeting table, with a printout of the latest site plan beneath one elbow and somebody else’s cup of tea dangerously close to the keyboard. On the screen, forty-two houses sat in orderly rows around a central green, their little gardens a reassuring colour that bore almost no relation to the former builders' yard they were supposed to replace. In the real world the land fell away towards an old railway cutting, and the houses at the bottom would flood if the drainage strategy remained as Paul had drawn it. “That’s last month’s layout,” she told him. “We took that corner out when the highways officer asked for the turning head.” Paul leaned towards his camera. He was attending remotely from a room decorated with an enormous photograph of a waterfall, which Eliza had come to regard as an unfortunate choice of backdrop for a drainage engineer. “Right. Sorry. I’ve got the revision from the eighteenth.” “Twenty-fifth,” said Tom, the graduate architect beside her. “Yes, that’s the one.” It plainly wasn’t. Eliza put up her hand before Tom could correct him a second time. Across the table, Clare Dace was regarding the plans with the concentrated patience she usually reserved for clients explaining that their budgets were more of a feeling than a number. “Paul, email me what you’re looking at,” Eliza said. “We’ll confirm the current revision and set up half an hour tomorrow. There’s no point arguing about a drawing nobody here has seen.” “I’m trying to get the cost plan out today,” said the client’s representative, a tidy man called Mercer who had arrived ten minutes late and kept his coat folded on his lap. “We’ve lost a fortnight already.” “I know. I’ll tell your quantity surveyor what we can confirm now and what remains provisional. But if we issue a cost plan based on the wrong levels, you’ll be paying someone to do it twice.” He considered that, nodded once and tucked his coat under the chair. He had a meeting elsewhere in half an hour, apparently, though Eliza couldn’t see how he intended to get there without putting it back on. The rest of the discussion went more easily once they stopped pretending everything could be finished that afternoon. They agreed the revised refuse-store positions, moved a bin collection point six metres from the nearest front door and left the contentious pair of houses near the cutting alone until Paul had checked the levels. People would eventually live on the site and drag wheelie bins over its paving in the rain. Eliza found those details harder to dismiss than the glossy views Mercer liked showing at board meetings. When the others had gone, Tom remained in his chair, turning a pen between his fingers. “I probably shouldn’t have corrected him in front of everybody.” He looked towards the open door, where Clare had paused to answer a question from Mercer, and lowered his voice slightly. “He was using an old drawing.” “Twice, though.” “He might try bringing the right one tomorrow.” Eliza squared the stack of plans against the table edge. Tom was still waiting for an answer to a question he had not quite asked. Tom laughed, then looked at her cautiously. He had been with Merrow & Dace for eight months and was still learning the difference between a genuine criticism and a conversation that could simply be allowed to end. “Did I sound like a prick?” “A little, when you said 'again'. The first correction was useful.” She began gathering the discarded plans. “If you know there’s a problem, say so. Just leave people a way to recover without having to fight you about it.” He carried the empty mugs to the kitchen while she went back to her desk. The practice occupied the upper two floors of an old insurance office, divided into glass meeting rooms and open-plan workstations by a previous tenant with a devotion to pale timber. Eliza’s desk overlooked a busy crossroads. A double-decker bus pulled out from the stop with a man still running towards it, and she watched his unsuccessful pursuit while her computer loaded the drawing register. Among the reminders about outstanding approvals was an unread message from her father. He had attached a photograph of a thick cream envelope standing on his dining table, addressed to her in the careful handwriting of somebody else. Below it he had written, Posting this tomorrow unless you promise not to ignore it. Love, Dad. Eliza smiled in spite of herself. John had been mentioning her thirtieth birthday for weeks, as though she were the one in danger of forgetting it. His most recent suggestion had involved hiring a dining room somewhere “decent” and inviting rather more relatives than she had seen at any one time since the family Christmases of her childhood. She typed, If you’ve bought me a horse, I’m returning it. His reply arrived while she was opening a spreadsheet. No horse. We are down to two reliable grooms anyway. There were several things Eliza could have said about a household that still required two reliable grooms, but she had a client presentation on Friday and a list of calculations to check. She put the phone face down and worked until somebody switched on the overhead lights as the afternoon faded. At six she took the train across town to Nina’s flat, carrying a bottle of wine in one hand and a bag of screws in the other. Nina had asked her to identify the size of a missing cabinet fixing from a blurred photograph. The photograph had shown a screw, a thumb and approximately ninety per cent of Nina’s kitchen floor, so Eliza had bought three different packets on the way. Nina opened the door with a cordless drill tucked under one arm. “Please tell me you brought something useful.” “Wine and an assortment of disappointments.” Eliza held up the hardware-shop bag; Nina was already reaching for it. “That’ll do. Don’t take your shoes off.” Nina backed into the hallway to let her through, stepping around a hinge and a screwdriver laid out on newspaper. The hall was full of cardboard. Nina had been intending to replace the kitchen doors since the previous summer, but the project had expanded by degrees until it now involved two cupboards she couldn’t close, a missing length of skirting board and an unresolved disagreement with her landlord about whether a dripping tap counted as ordinary wear. Eliza followed her inside, deposited the screws on the table and surveyed a cupboard door propped against the fridge. “You’ve drilled right through it.” Eliza put a finger against the neat hole beside the hinge fitting. The damage was on the inside, at least, though there was a pale circle on the outside where the laminate had begun to lift. “I know. I was hoping you might call it ventilation.” “Only if you’re planning to store potatoes.” “I knew there was a reason I made friends with you.” They had met in the queue at the university accommodation office, where Nina was arguing about a key to the wrong room and had recruited Eliza as a witness. Later that week Eliza had found her on their shared corridor trying to open a tin of peaches with a butter knife. Nina claimed to have improved considerably since then, although Eliza had yet to see evidence of it. They had managed to remain within easy travelling distance of one another ever since, which neither took entirely for granted. Nina worked in the education department of a museum, where she spent much of her time producing activities for children and explaining to adults why the children had been allowed to touch things. Eliza found the correct screws, helped rehang the door and accepted a glass of wine in payment. The door hung slightly crooked. Nina opened and closed it twice, announced it looked professional from the opposite end of the room and ordered dinner before Eliza could suggest adjusting the lower hinge. They ate at the kitchen table, among the packets of screws and a stack of leaflets Nina had brought home from work. A school group had managed to lose a replica Roman sandal that morning, prompting an impressive argument between two members of staff about whether an artefact could still be described as lost if everybody knew it was somewhere inside the building. “I said yes,” Nina told her. “Apparently that’s controversial.” “Did you find it?” “One of the cleaners did. In the gift shop, under the display of novelty erasers. We still don’t know how it got there.” Nina reached for the wine and noticed Eliza looking at a fresh message on her phone. “Work?” “My dad. He’s become a full-time events organiser.” Eliza angled the screen towards Nina, who had to put down her fork to read it. “Ah. The birthday. Is it still happening at the family pile?” Nina had been to Hollamere twice and remained fascinated by how nobody there seemed to know who had made the toast. “He wants everyone there for the weekend.” “Define everyone.” “Everyone who can be persuaded to come. Sebastian, Aunt Dorothea, my father’s cousins. Half the people I’ve only ever met at funerals.” Eliza set down the phone. “He’s having invitations printed. Apparently he can’t trust people to read an email.” “That’s quite nice, actually.” “For his birthday, maybe.” “Thirty’s a big one.” Nina found a clear patch by the sink. “Besides, some people like being fussed over. Your father’s probably one of them.” “People keep saying that as though I’m going to get inspected.” Nina considered her over the rim of her glass. “Well, your family probably has a committee for it.” “With minutes.” “And a chairman who’s been dead since 1890.” Eliza laughed. Her father could be ridiculous about the Ashcombes, but Nina had met enough of them to know that the ridiculousness came with genuine generosity. When Eliza qualified, John had arrived at the ceremony early, saved seats for Nina and her parents, and later bought drinks for most of the graduating class. He had never understood why an architect needed so many years at university, yet had listened attentively whenever she explained what she was learning. Sometimes he remembered the details better than she did. “You could just tell him you want something quiet,” Nina said. “You’re allowed.” “I have. He agreed. Then two days later he rang to ask whether I’d rather have thirty people or forty.” “Which did you say?” “I asked how many were available.” “Eliza.” “I know. It was a mistake.” Nina wiped a spot of sauce from the table with the edge of a paper napkin. “You don’t have to go just because he’s organised it.” “I do want to see him. I just don’t particularly want to spend two days having Sebastian tell people I used to bite him.” “Did you?” “Once. He deserved it.” “There we are, then. Sounds like an excellent speech.” Eliza picked a loose screw out of the tablecloth and rolled it between her fingers. The other difficulty with family occasions had never been the number of guests, or the rooms, or Sebastian’s appetite for retelling a story until everybody knew where to laugh. There was always the small, awkward matter of her mother, whose absence had somehow become both old news and something nobody could discuss without making it worse. Millie had left when Eliza was fourteen. In the years immediately afterwards, her father had alternated between offering explanations that sounded rehearsed and changing the subject altogether. As Eliza got older, she stopped asking. They had settled into a comfortable relationship built around work, films, visits to restaurants and the parts of family history that did not involve a woman who had apparently decided to live elsewhere. Nina knew the story. She had heard several versions of it over the years, depending on how angry Eliza happened to be. “Your dad been all right?” she asked now, without looking up from the takeaway cartons. “Yes. He’s good. Lonely, I think. He won’t admit it.” John had begun telephoning about matters that could easily have been settled in a message, including whether the weather in her part of town was as poor as it was at the estate. “Then perhaps he’ll enjoy having you there.” “You sound like an elderly neighbour.” “Thank you. I’ve worked hard on it.” They moved to the sitting room, where Nina put on a television programme she claimed to be following and promptly talked through. Eliza stayed until nearly ten, by which point the kitchen cupboard had been opened another four times for the pleasure of seeing it work. On her way out, Nina pressed the spare packet of screws into her hand. “For your own home improvements.” “I’m renting.” “Then for when society collapses and screws become currency.” The train was nearly empty. Eliza found a seat by the window, took off her coat and answered two work emails while the carriage hummed through the suburbs. By the time she reached her stop, another photograph had arrived from John. This one showed the invitation open on the dining table, with its formal lettering and generous white margins. Her name was printed in the centre, carefully and unnecessarily. The Ashcombe family requests the pleasure of your company to celebrate the thirtieth birthday of Eliza Ashcombe. She could picture her father asking Mr Hembury whether the wording sounded too stiff and Mr Hembury saying, with exquisite tact, that it was entirely suitable. The thought made her smile. She stood under the station canopy while a small crowd pushed towards the exit and typed her reply. All right. I’ll come for the weekend. Please no speeches lasting longer than a quarter of an hour. John rang before she was halfway home. “Darling. Wonderful. I’ll tell Dorothea. She was threatening to telephone you herself.” He was talking quickly enough that she suspected he had been waiting for her reply. “That sounds like a threat worth taking seriously.” “She’s very fond of you.” “I know. Dad, honestly, nothing elaborate.” “Of course. Just family.” At Hollamere, that could require enough cars to fill the front drive. Eliza could hear voices behind him and the soft clatter of crockery. He was probably having his evening drink in the drawing room, with someone clearing away a late supper. She stopped at the pedestrian crossing and waited for the lights to change. “I mean it,” she said. “No surprises.” “None at all, sweetheart. We’ll make a proper weekend of it.” He asked about work, and she told him about the wrong drainage drawings. He listened with more interest than most people could be expected to summon for a rainwater attenuation tank. By the time she reached her flat they were arguing amiably about whether forty-two houses counted as a small development, and Eliza had forgotten to be irritated about the invitation.