Six for Sunday lunch. Me, my boy, my mother, my mother’s boyfriend Dr Lovepants, my sister, and this poised, well-groomed, long-haired chap, billed as the new man in my sister’s life. Me and the boy are a bit late and everyone else has started eating.
The new man in my sister’s life’s hair is receding at the front and long at the back and he’s got a pointy beard. I’m dying to discomfit him with searching questions. New men in my sister’s life, as a group, are normally among the most unserious people in the world. But this one looks like he’s treating the occasion with at least as much earnestness as my sister. The mien is essentially polite. The price tag on the bottle of French wine he’s brought says a whopping £6.50.
A man of immense intellect and apparently no emotional intelligence whatsoever, Dr Lovepants has already launched into his customary mealtime monologue. He’s a compulsive talker, and an ideal candidate, I tell him, for the compulsive talkers’ self-help association On Anon Anon. His failing memory means that sometimes we have to listen to a monologue that was broadcast earlier.
He and my mother have been visiting National Trust properties in Kent. At Chartwell they were shown around Churchill’s garden studio by an official guide, who kindly shared his favourite Churchill anecdote. It was a marvel, frankly, how this guide managed to get a word in edgeways. The story involves the great man himself (Churchill) and a small boy, one of Churchill’s grandchildren. Dr Lovepants acts both parts with a high standard of mimicry that is his main saving grace.
Churchill has shut himself away in his studio to study the newspaper. Timid knock on door.
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