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LADY RUTH
I circuit round my house, checking on partygoers, making sure everyone’s got something to eat and drink and someone to talk to. Or to save them from talking, if they look trapped. Andrew and I used to host as a team; now I do it alone.
The young people have taken over one end of the drawing room—all except for the Pitch boy, who sits apart, staring glassily into the fire. I saw him earlier, taking his eggnog refills with a determination too grim for one so young.
I crowd him on the settee. “Why don’t you tell me all about it?” If he doesn’t want to talk, he’ll find a polite way to tell me bugger off.
He looks at me but doesn’t speak. (Crowley, the boy is plastered.) Instead, Natasha Pitch’s son turns his face into my shoulder, and I feel it crumple.
* * *
“And what did he say?” I ask young Basilton, who told me between heaves that he prefers his middle name. I rub slow circles between the lad’s shoulders.
We’re in the loo off Andrew’s study. (I still call it Andrew’s because it still is.) I sit on an embroidered footstool. Basilton kneels at the toilet. With the door propped open I can keep an ear on my guests and can shout for Wellby if the boy needs him. I think he won’t.
“He—he—hyuunhh.” I sweep his hair away from his face as he retches again. “Said m’disgusting, never love me.”
“Did he really?” I hand him a glass of water, and he takes a small sip. (Good, he’s learning. His earlier gulps did not go well.) “Were those the words he used?”
“Use your words,” he hiccups.
I pat his back. “Were they, Basilton?”
“No.” He tries and fails to sit up, slumping elbows on the toilet seat. “He said … said m'hiding something. S’gonna find out.”
“Sounds as though he finds you rather interesting.”
He exhales wetly, mumbling "hates me."
“Why don’t you tell him how you feel?”
That’s how I started things with my Andrew. Actually, I just took Andrew by the back of the neck and kissed him. He got the point. From what Basilton has told me, this roommate of his is completely obsessed with him.
He shakes his head, then groans from the movement. “Wouldn’t work. M’a boy.”
“So? He’s a boy, and you like him.”
He twists round to me, head loose on his neck, out of sync with his body. He beams in my general direction while his eyes focus at two different points behind my head.
“Is a boy!” he slurs, as if having this thought for the first time.
“Yes, dear, he is.” I pat his hand. This child is much easier to love than he thinks.
“Maybe I—we—” He doubles forward and heaves again.
I always say a party dress isn’t a party dress until someone’s been sick on it. He'll be mortified if he remembers, but he won't.
“You’ll bring this young man of yours to visit me someday, yes?”
“Yes, Lady Salisbury," he groans into my skirts.
"Good. I hope he likes sandwiches."