Assembly(13)

‘It’s lovely to have you with us,’ she says.

Opened up like this, the kitchen is big, limitless: the entire garden, the hills beyond, even the pale sky is within reach. The floor is tiled slate, and there’s a large island with a hob in the centre. Over on the back wall, oak cabinets display old-fashioned decorative plates and glassware. The son is upstairs still, sleeping. I probably should have stayed up there in the bedroom and read, or just lain beside him, and waited.

‘Toast?’

She sets four slices into the machine and clicks it down. Peanut butter, Marmite, jam – she lays the spreads out, placing each on the counter as she names it, next to our mugs. I squint at the handwritten labels on each jam jar, then choose one that looks like apricot. Toast on plates. She’s efficient with a blunt knife, working butter thinly across the charred surface. Like a monk refusing to enjoy the ritual, or succumb to any excess. But then she bites, and chews. And her eyes close as if to better taste and smell. I watch her swallow. Then sip tea. Bite again, chew. Swallow.

Everything feels suspended.

The mother, oblivious to this sudden slowing of our time, bites once more. Her jaw grinds rhythmically, bulging and elongating; tendons, emerging taut, flicker up past her ear and into greying wisps of hair. By her temple, a bone or cartilage or some other hard aspect of her bobs and strains against the stretched-white skin. The entire side of her face is engaged in this elaborate mechanical action until, climactically, the soft-hung skin of her neck contracts familiar and the ground-down-mushed-up toast, saliva and butter, worked into a paste, squeezes down; is forced through the pulsing oesophagus, is swallowed.

She lifts the mug to her mouth, and drinks.

Metal drags against metal as the men join poles together, forming abstract outlines. Blunt and earthy: the striking thuds and grunts reverberate as the men tether the structure to grass. The mother purses her lips – oo – as she listens. How long will it take the lawn to recover? From these posts and poles hammered, driven in. And soon the guests; their bodies weighing down on to it, heels puncturing it, as they wander or mill around.

‘Ellie will be down soon,’ the mother says. ‘To give me a hand with all this.’

She waves at the busying scene in front of us. A few other people, catering staff I guess, carry boxes or chairs or bundles of long-stemmed flowers over from somewhere left of view.

‘Oh, no,’ she says, when I offer to help. ‘Ellie’s coming.’

She dusts the crumbs from her hand on to the empty plate and tells me about a friend of her son’s, something of an old flame, actually. All that is ancient history, she assures me. I’m not to worry. Still, she says, this friend often pops by early on these occasions, to lend a hand.

‘I’m positively overrun with helpers.’ She makes a gesture of mock exasperation.

I mirror the mother’s amusement, recognizing her practised enunciation; how deliberately she forms consonants around laboured vowels. She is wholly illuminated, in this moment, here, in her stunning kitchen. Then she clears the plates, and we return to our performance of host and guest. We make small talk, absently, until I hear at last the warbling approach of the baby with Ellie, as promised. Ellie responds matter-of-factly to the baby’s ambiguous noises, as though they’re engaged in a real, and tiresome, conversation. Brisk – she finger-waves a greeting to me, then mother and daughter huddle to talk logistics. Where the cars will park, what time the band will arrive – things I assume must have been considered already and agreed weeks prior. The baby reaches out to me, fussing, leaning over and wriggling out of the daughter’s arms. She parks him in a highchair – a stylish, walnut contraption. He kicks, then swings, his little feet. Again, his hands reach out towards me.

It feels like a touch from the mother, her gaze cloying and silky as spiderwebs against my skin. I turn to look at both, mother and daughter. The elder’s face stretches into another smile.

‘All this party talk,’ she says, ‘you must be bored senseless.’ Before I can answer, she points me to the solution: a garden stroll.

‘Fresh air is so invigorating,’ she says.

So I cross the kitchen and pass through, out into the garden, careful not to disturb the staff arranging tables and decorations. The lawn extends in all directions into geometric eruptions of flowers and leafy plants. Further back, stone steps lead down to a mossy fountain, framed by hedges and still more flowers. It’s all beautifully cultivated, with just a touch of overgrown wildness. Presumably achieved via attentive gardening. I look back at the house, up at the sweeping, creeping ivy grandeur. It’s a mansion, really. Toad of Toad Hall – my embarrassingly childish frame of reference surprises me. But it’s true, this place looks like the delicate, sprawling watercolour illustrations I remember from childhood. And somehow I’ve stepped into it. Here I am, on the inside.

Ey-hey. Pretty lay-day.

One of the labourers, carrying a large folded table under his arm, calls out from a few metres away. When I look over, he stops walking, sets the table down and leans against it.

Pretty lady, you think it’s fair? You stroll in the sunshine while I work, eh? What a world!

His sing-song voice rings sour. He’s older – maybe late forties. Damp hair sticks flat to his brow even as he shakes his head.

I wonder, who else in this household would he say that to? In his preferred social hierarchy, his understanding of fair, who is allowed to walk, to breathe, to enjoy a Saturday? He has bluish bags beneath his eyes and pronounced jowls. His entire body slumps as he stands there, waiting for his answer. He disgusts me, I realize. His impotent anger, his need to assert himself – to tell me who he thinks this world belongs to. I turn away, and start towards the steps at the back of the garden.