It's not long before Li becomes part of the Innisfree household. She slips water-fluid into their routine, as she did back at Trinity House. She bickers amicably with Una over the kitchen, and comes along to the bookshop more than once. She likes to test Martin Swallow with impossible requests that he grumbles good-naturedly rival Una's Essays in Idleness. She wants the Chinese fairy-tales she brought Iris up on and the poetry of her girlhood. The philosophers she introduced to Carl, not that he ever remembered them. She wants the beautifully-illustrated Indian folktales Frenny Razdan gifted Iris in infancy ad richly-embossed copies of a poet she says loved cats almost as much as Una ever did.
As the books appear Li says of Martin Swallow, 'I like him. He can stay.'
Una dignifies none of this with an answer. But she writes to Emily and Joan to tell them they are in excellent company when it comes to matchmaking.
St Aiden's Hospital, 1953,
Glad to hear it. I was pinning my hopes on Robin and Iris as a military arm, and possibly Kiki. Haven't rejected them, but suspect Li will be slightly more light-footed about the whole thing. You don't half take your time about a thing, do you? There's a poem for that somewhere – Marvell? Emily would know better.
Signing off before you find a way to plot murder by remote control. Dr. Liz Merrick and some of the others here have bets on whether you or Miss Christie work out how that's done first. Though the bet used to be re your useless consul, not family…
Kiss Robin for me (assuming still allowed!)
Dr. J. Makori
Inisfree, 1953
Joan,
You're thinking of vegetable love. It is indeed Marvell. Emily can elucidate, I'm sure. Or possibly that colleague of yours – Liz Merrick? She knows her way around these things, doesn't she? If not, there must be a library nearby. Find a quiet moment and look it up. Even you cannot possibly work all the time, Dr. Makori.
As you ask, happened to have hands full the last few years managing variously a bookshop, Robin, Kiki, Robin again, and assorted missing persons. Make haste slowly seemed the order of the day.
Mind – I don't put everything in letters. You and Emily can have a proper inquisition as soon as we're in the same room again, and I'll decide then how much I tell you, shall I?
Robin always allows of kisses from aunts. She's like Elise that way, not me – generous with them.
Li, when not alternating between haranguing and vetting unsuspecting booksellers, works in one of the Chinatown shops. You'd find it fascinating – remember my slippery pulse technique when Muriel fell pregnant? This is the sort of place I picked it up. It's all hookworms and herbs. Expect it will keep you and Dr. Merrick in much more interesting gossip anyway. For at least 48 hours.
Have no desire to attempt murder by remote control as yet. Would much rather hear you tell Emily I told you so over the timing of this second pregnancy.
Love ever,
Una
In summer of 1953, Li sits lotus-fashion on the floor of Larkrise's siting room, Una at her elbow, observing with half an eye as half a world away a woman too young by half ascends the throne. They come to be in this position, lotus fashion, on the floor, because Carlisles, Swallows, Lovalls and assorted Blythes are foregathered in a room never designed to hold so many. Robin, Isobel and Iris sprawl cat-graceful and indolent upon the floor, crushing elegant gowns and squealing when Yesterday scarpers along spines and claws at their carefully-coiffed hair. Christopher and Emma Blythe call round with their babies, she in rose-coloured linen, he atypically smart and their children tumbling and wrestling like the dachshunds they aspire to be.
Helen pulls one of the chairs from the spindly-legged table the wrong way round to watch the black-and-white perambulation of royalty, but with half an eye herself, Una notices, because one eye is on her knitting and the other half her eye on Ben Carlisle, who alternately unwinds her wool for her and teases Kiki with the same. Sometimes he pretends to drop the wool and uses the interval to kiss an exposed spot beneath Helen's ear and above her string of corals while Helen feigns obliviousness badly. Every now and again the stone on Helen's finger catches the sun as she click-clacks her needles at speed, and Ben grins like the cat that ate the pigeon. Other times it snags her wool and susurrates the ruby-red of her repurposed Sunday best, its yellow yoking a sunburst of colour.
Martin is there, folded against Una's other side, unruffled by the dachshunds playing Jacob's Ladder with his legs, much less their propensity to leap and scale his person like wriggling eels. He feeds them slivers of Judith Carlisle's expensive cheese less-than-covertly and squeezes Una's hand with more discretion.
All of them are dressed to the nines for the occasion, even half-wild Isobel in white georgette, even their ebullient Firecracker in a green floral Cheongsam. Adventure-chasing Robin deigns to shelve her adventures and dons the lacewing creation of Iain's wedding, its hem let down, and lounges like a placid jade-green dragonfly half-buried by the coffee-table and Kitty's God Wednesday the terrier. She sat abnormally still while Iris coiled her hair, and then lay on her stomach, quite crushing her gown, while Una and Li excavated jewellery boxes and batted choices back and forth. Li wears the iris-brooch of spun glass Carl gave her, while Una augments her fish with a dragon-and-lion brooch.
'For Singapore,' said Martin as if this was perfectly obvious, which it was, when he brought it back from his latest adventure.
Faith rustles in wine-red crepe, and Judith Carlisle is resplendent in a watered lavender silk. Mara has Scotch pearls at her throat and ears, and looks more fairy than ever in golden muslin with red-brown detail work. Li looks like the firecracker her daughter is named after in a floral orange silk. It's patterned with warm yellow blossoms and delicate white butterflies. Against it the blue of the iris brooch stands out like a coronet.
Sophy rolls her eyes at the whole ordeal, and gives a commentary that rivals the journalists doing the television patter. She's trouser-clad and long since scattered her heels to to separate corners of the room. It doesn't take a comprehensive study to see where Sophy learned her craft. Kitty Forster not only parries her, but ably splits her attention between news coverage, an atypically polished Constable Benwick's Kingsport gossip, and teaching little George Lovall, sat snug between her legs, to play chess against Teddy. She's vibrant in a gypsy-colourful skirt, all swirling rainbow patterns and blocky shapes, and a short-sleeved blouse with ruched cuffs and collar. She's stuck a red rose behind her ear for effect, and occasionally Kitty reaches up and takes it out to wave like a baton at Sophy, Benwick or little George for emphasis of a particular point. For his part, Benwick sports cufflinks shaped like typewriters and feeds Kiki slivers of pineapple-and-cheese between grumbles about murders and false alarms.
Una scarcely registers any of this. She is half a world away, hearing imagined snatches of another family's opinions.
In her ear, Cressida grumbles, Awful lot of fuss, I say. And how can she walk in that contraption? Presumably she means the train, long, velveteen and heavily embroidered in wheat sheaves that look as though they cost someone hours upon hours of their life.
Be fair, says an absent Bernice. She did her bit when the war was on, didn't she?
Cressida says darkly, Not for us she didn't! Unless you remember a different war?
Oh, leave off, both of you, says Joan. And to Una, What stitch do you suppose that is? There, on the skirt?
Obliquely, Una realizes that the other adults claim the sofas, chairs and arms of chairs such as they are, by right of seniority. She even thinks Mara and Judith swap non-ghostly opinions over the confection that is young Elizabeth's dress. Li joins in gamely; She always loved sartorial minutiae and Una loves to watch her dissect them.
Isobel recalls Una, little elfin fingers encircling her ankle. She grounds Una with inquiries into, of all things, the royal tights. A question for Mara, surely. Did they really alter the Strathspey setting step to stop them laddering when Elizabeth and Margaret were young?
She's still young, Una thinks. 27 is no age to run a country, much less a commonwealth. She must say it out loud, because Judith Carlisle hums agreement and the young girls protest gently.
Polly Wolly Doodle, says Kiki. Murrrderrr!
'Auntie thinks,' says Isobel good-naturedly, 'we should still be in pinafores.'
Shirley makes the kind of noise that fathers the world over make when trying to keep their children young. Una remembers Carl's particular permutation well. Jem hums affirmation, Geordie Carlisle and Martin Swallow not far behind.
'I think,' says Una, 'that you, Miss Mannering, would stand five minutes of being Queen before you missed the thrill of skinned knees and laddering your tights in time to music.'
'Spoken by someone who knows you, Cricket,' says Shirley.
Iris laughs.
Li says, 'You're no better, Firecracker. You'd suffer two minutes before you were found up a tree, gorging on guavas.'
'I don't think England does guavas, Mama,' says Iris.
'I think two minutes is exceptionally generous,' Una says.
The television crackles static, and Holst, then Elgar, then Behold O God, Our Defender as set by a man called Howells blares fuzzily across time and space. Rosemary should be here, Una thinks, as she peruses the latest photos of little Bobby Blythe. She should be sat at Una's elbow, opining on modern music and vying for glimpses of Iain Blythe's wee boy, here charming otters on the Trinity House veranda, there grabbing at Hiltrude the goat's beard. Carl should be here, too. He should be leaning against Li's shoulders, as Ben leans against Helen's. He should be teasing Iris about the young boys who dare to dance with her, and handing Robin pineapple chunks to tease Kiki one-handed. His other hand, naturally, is unpinning Li's hair unasked. Bernice should be there, laughing at how bloody English – Bernice's phrase – Vaughn Williams never fails to sound, while Cressida says caustically, Well what did you expect? The Marseilles? Una wants Emily, half-leaning against her shoulders, talking herself and Li through the photos, and Joan opposite offering a running commentary on the baby's health, and Robin's too, and Iris's. It's too much and not enough. Una touches a hand in unlikely Trinitarian gesture to white poppy, Singaporean brooch, and finally, the silver fish at her throat. Nevertheless, she prays, not my will, but Thine be done.
Li leans her sleek dark head against Una's shoulder, and Martin lifts her fingers to his lips. In the moment, she finds that oddly enough.
On cat-languid afternoons, Li and Una teach Iris and Isobel to cook. Robin and Kiki join them in an observatory fashion. The narrow galley kitchen is not nearly wide enough for so many, and Kiki proves the point handily by getting into everything from white sauce to curry and trekking it across the counters and worse. Una would call on Martin to seize the bird for an afternoon, except it's obvious Kiki's misadventures are half the fun. They conjure Puck for Una, whisking eggs with his tail or pouring out tea. Robin hangs from the rafters chatting at them until the parrot-feet blossom into orange or green or white across the countertop as the case may be, and then manoeuvres acrobat-easily onto her feet and chases after her with a towel.
If all of the dishes are meatless and more than half Asiatic, Mara Blythe never bats an eye, not that it stops Isobel trying to scandalize her. Eight years on, Una's pet theory is that you can't shock Mara Blythe, and she says so.
'The way I understand it,' Una says, 'your mother and that theatre company of hers got up to all sorts at your age. I hardly think exotic cooking registers.'
'Mam's Catholic, though,' says Isobel. 'They shock easily.'
'Una,' says Li, 'is nominally Presbyterian. You can see how that turned out.'
Una elbows Li's ribs with the handle end of her wooden spoon. It's Frenny Razdan's Lentil Dahl today, the kitchen full of the golden-scented smell of creamy sauce and turmeric. Robin giggles girlish hysterics that climb ever higher up the scale and flirt with but never quite skitter into whistle register territory. Iris's laughter does. Mozart's Queen of the Night is no match for their Firecracker. Isobel's red hair tumbles riotously over her shoulders as she tosses her head, also laughing. Half her cupful of lentils skitter under the hob and across the counter when she aims for the pot. Kiki chases after them. Robin never even tries to stop her.
Una sets the spoon aside to sweep Isobel's long, ruddy hair high off her shoulders.
'Da always uses Auntie Una,' Isobel says, 'as an example of staunch Presbyterianism that isn't by-the-book.'
'Shirley would,' says Una. 'But hardly a stone he can cast, with Romans for relatives.'
Isobel grins that half-wild goblin-grin of hers. 'He loves us really,' she says. 'And so do you, Auntie.'
