"Oh, we decided to do chicken instead," she said sniffily, leading me through the ripply-glassed French doors, into the lounge where the first thing I noticed was a garish new "family crest" above the fake stone fireplace saying 'Hakuna Matata'.
"Shh," said Una, holding a finger up, enraptured. Pretentious Jerome, pierced nipple clearly visible through black wet-look vest, was standing in front of the cut-glass dish collection, bellowing belligerently: "I watch his hard, bony, horny, hams. I watch, I want, I grab," at a semi-circle of appalled Jaeger-be-two-pieced Lifeboat Luncheon Book Club ladies on reproduction Regency dining chairs. Across the room I saw Mark Darcy's mum, Elaine, sporting an expression of suppressed amusement.
"I want," Jerome bellowed on. "I seize his horny, hairy, hams. I have to have. I heave, I hump, I . . ."
"Well! I think that's been absolutely smashing!" said Mum, jumping to her feet, "Does anyone fancy a vol-au-vent?"
Is amazing the way the world of middle-class ladies manages to smooth everything into its own, turning all the chaos and complication of the world into a lovely secure mummy stream, rather as lavatory cleaner turns everything in the toilet pink.
"Oh, I love the spoken and written word! It makes me feel so free!" Una was gushing to Elaine as Penny Husbands-Bosworth and Mavis Enderbury fussed over Pretentious Jerome as if he were T. S. Eliot.
"But I hadn't finished," whined Jerome. "I wanted to do 'Fister Contemplations" and 'The Hollow Men-Holes'." Just then there was a roar.
"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you." It was Dad, and Admiral Darcy. Both paralytic. Oh God. Every time I see Dad these days, he seems to be completely pissed, in bizarre father-daughter role-reversal scenario.
"If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you," Admiral Darcy bellowed, leaping on to a chair to a flutter from the assembled ladies.
"And make allowance for their doubting too," added Dad, almost tearfully, leaning against the Admiral for support.
The pissed duo proceeded to recite the whole of Rudyard Kipling's "If" in manner of Sir Laurence Olivier and John Giulgud to the fury of Mum and Pretentious Jerome who started throwing simultaneous hissy fits.
"It's typical, typical, typical," hissed Mum as Admiral Darcy, on his knees, beating his breast, intoned, "Or being lied about, don't deal in lies."
"It's regressive, colonialist doggerel," hissed Jerome.
"If you can force your heart, and nerve and sinew."
"I mean it fucking rhymes," re-hissed Jerome.
"Jerome, I will not have that word in my house," also re-hissed Mum.
"To serve their turn long after they are gone," said Dad, then flung himself on the swirly carpet in mock death.
"Well, why did you invite me then?" hissed Jerome really hissily.
"And so keep on, when there is nothing in you," roared the Admiral.
"Except your nerve," growled Dad from the carpet. "Which says to you" - he leapt to his knees and raised his arms -"hold on!"
There was a huge cheer and round of applause from the ladies as Jerome flounced out slammiig the door and Tom rushed after him. I looked despairingly back at the room straight into the eyes of Mark Darcy.
"Well! That was interesting" said Elaine Darcy, coming to stand by me as I bent my head, trying to recover my composure. "Poetry uniting the old and young."
"The pissed and sober," I added.
At this Admiral Darcy lurched over, clutching his poem.
"My dear, my dear, my darling!" he said, lunging at Elaine. "Oh here's what's-her-name," he said, peering at me. "Lovely! Mark's arrived, that's my boy! Come to pick us up, sober as a judge. All on his own. I don't know!" he said.
They both turned to look at Mark who was sitting at Una's threepenny-bit occasional table, scribbling something, watched over by a blue-glass dolphin.
"Writing my will for me at a party I don't know. Work, work, work" roared the Admiral. "Brought this bit of totty along, what was 'er name, m'dear, Rachel, was it? Betty?"
"Rebecca," Elaine said tartly.
"And the next thing she's nowhere to be seen. Ask him what's happened to her, and he mumbles! Can't stand a mumbler Never could."
"Well, I don't think she was really...," murmured Elaine.