‘You’re a revolting little trollop, do you hear me?’ And Louise, incoherent and weeping but primed with righteous outrage, shouted back that Dorothy didn’t own her, that other people’s mothers didn’t … that every other teenager in the country … that this wasn’t the nineteenth century, for heaven’s sake!
Louise and Dorothy kept up a spasmodic battle about Louise’s sex-life until Louise married Tim, at which point Dorothy lost interest. Helen and Edward were an altogether simpler matter.
So far as Dorothy was concerned they had nothing to do with that sort of thing; they weren’t ‘silly’ like Louise. When Helen struck up friendships with men Dorothy moved into the offensive with a strategy of disparagement: ‘That poor young man — one wonders what he can possibly fetch up doing, with that voice and those looks.’ She was given to assessing people in terms of appearance. Girls were classified as pretty girls, nice girls and clever girls. Pretty was best; clever was worst. One could not help noting that Dorothy herself, in youth, could not have fallen into any of these categories, but then Dorothy always saw herself as apart. Not in any sense of superiority: simply as apart. There was her, and there was the rest of the world.
At first Helen was upset by Dorothy’s disparagement: ‘Just as well you’re prepared to put up with that chap’s acne — no one else would, I imagine.’ Why hasn’t anyone ever told him about his teeth?’ Then she ceased to bring her friends home, unless it was unavoidable. Eventually what Dorothy said no longer mattered.
During the long-ago weeks and months when it had seemed possible that she might be on the brink of a permanent alliance she explained to the man in question about her mother, and he appeared to understand. As it turned out, she need not have bothered.
The hall clock struck four. Edward and Helen, apart and awake, heard it. Edward remembered that he had to coach the remedial French class in a few hours’ time, always a taxing business; he turned over and made a resolute attempt to sleep.
Helen felt an odd little tingle of interest at the approach of the new day: another unusual sensation. In the Britches a cat yowled.
FOUR
‘Why are there ladders everywhere?’ said Edward.
‘Ron Paget’s men are mending the broken guttering.’
‘The house looks like some medieval siege. Do tell them to be careful of the martins’ nests.’
‘They’ve been told. Though I don’t see why the martins shouldn’t do some rebuilding. Here is Ron.’
Edward made a dive for the door, but too late. Ron Paget was already there.
‘Better to come round to the back, I thought, this time of day.
Don’t let me interrupt your tea. I heard Mr Glover’s car go past so I thought I’d just pop over and see the men are getting on all right. What about that window-frame — shall I have them see to that while they’re about it?’
‘I suppose they may as well,’ said Helen.
‘No problem.’ Ron’s glance slid around the kitchen. ‘The damp’s really got a hold in here, hasn’t it? You ever thought of having a proper damp course put in?’
‘Well …’ Helen began.
‘Tell you what — why don’t I have a look round later this week? Work out what we could do and how much it would set you back. Just to give you an idea. It’d be a biggish job, mind, but I’d make a special price — we’ve been neighbours a heck of a long time now and I had a soft spot for your mother.’
Helen and Edward looked at each other.
‘You leave it to me,’ said Ron. ‘I’ll suss out the damage and we can talk about it later.’ He turned sideways to look out into the garden. ‘Lovely place, this. Of course it’s bound to get out of hand, you’ve neither of you got the time to give to it. You know, if it was me I’d have a patio. Cut down on some of the grass — give you an area for sitting out — York stone paving, swing seat with an awning, very nice.’
The Glovers made no comment.
‘Yes. Well, of course you’ve gone rather more for the natural look, the way it is. Is that a yew hedge?’
believe it is,’ said Edward. ‘In theory, anyway.’
‘It needs the clippers taken to it, certainly. And beyond it there’s what you’d call the kitchen garden, right? Your mother did a bit in the veg line, I seem to remember.’
‘Not for quite a while,’ said Helen, wondering how to curtail all this. ‘Anyway, thanks very much, Mr Paget, we mustn’t keep you, the men seem to be. .
Ron took a few steps backwards and stared up at the house.
‘There’s a bit of re-pointing needs doing up there, too. We’ll see to that. And I tell you what, Miss Glover, I’ve had a thought.
About your garden. Our Gary’ll come in for a couple of hours, Saturday mornings.’
‘Gary?’ There were several Paget offspring. Gary must be the adolescent, from marriage number one.
‘He’s a big lad now. Fourteen. Muscles on him like nobody’s business. You can put him on to the rough work — dig over the vegetable garden, that sort of thing. Give him one fifty an hour, that’ll be quite enough. Maybe two quid by Christmas, if you think he’s worth it.’
‘But we don’t grow vegetables,’ said Edward.
‘I’m surprised, Mr Glover.’ Ron sounded quite censorious. ‘I thought everyone was doing their own veg these days. Nouvelle cuisine and all that. Mangetouts and yellow zucchini — that’s what I’m into this year. Fantastic. I’ll tell you the varieties to go for.’
The Glovers, intrigued by this unsuspected bent, gazed at him. Helen suddenly thought — well why not? It’s absurd the way we waste the garden. Never mind yellow whatsits but new potatoes would be nice. And he could clean up that old mower and do something about the grass. ‘All right. Maybe it’s not a bad idea.’
‘Oh,’ Edward began. ‘We’d never. .
‘Tell him to come on Saturday,’ said Helen.
Ron grinned. ‘Spot on, Miss Glover. You won’t regret it. And I’ll drop by myself and have a think about your damp. Cheerio for now.’
‘What was all that about?’ said Edward, when he had gone.
‘Falling over himself to be so helpful.’
The Britches, of course.’
‘He never gives up, does he? But do we really want this boy messing about?’
‘Might as well.’
Edward shrugged. ‘If you say so.’
Life was reasserting itself. Days had trundled by and it was now two weeks since the funeral. Helen, going into Dorothy’s room, saw that it had become dusty. Her presence was still loud and strong, but patchily so; there were occasional moments when she was not there at all, when it was possible to walk up the stairs or into the kitchen without expecting to see her. The black holes were becoming grey; Helen could see the substance of the house behind them, as though brick, stone and wood were extinguishing her mother.
She began to manifest herself in other ways.
‘At least get new curtains,’ said Louise. She had come down for the night, for purposes as yet unclear. ‘These are all of thirty years old. They’ve got moth and mildew. I’ve always hated them.
They’re the precise colour of pee.’
‘Mother made them.’
‘I know mother made them. That’s why the hems are uneven.
That’s why they’re such a nasty colour.’
Remnants, thought Helen, from a sale at Elliston & Cavell’s in Oxford, which is no more, subsumed into Debenham’s. I helped, if that is the right word, mother to buy the material. Stood about, in actual fact, while she yanked bales of stuff around and hectored shop assistants. I murmured things about the colour at the time. She pointed out that the fabric was cheap and serviceable.
And indeed here it is, still serving.
‘And another thing,’ said Louise. ‘The downstairs loo. Cloakroom, as mother called it. Something must be done about it — there are strata, quite literally strata, of defunct raincoats in there. There’s stuff of father’s. Do me a favour and clear it out.’
‘It’s part of the ambience,’ said Helen.
‘The what?’
‘This house feels so established.’
‘What’s all this about? Who’s been giving you that sort of crap?
Here …’ Louise rummaged in a carrier bag. ‘I brought a bottle of plonk. What are we eating? And where’s Edward? Don’t tell me he’s sloped off somewhere — I want to talk to both of you.
Tim’s at a weekend conference, so I damn well didn’t see why I shouldn’t have a break myself. God knows what I’ll find when I get back, but still.’
‘Edward’s in the Britches putting up some nest-boxes that came this morning, and we’re eating a sort of stew.’
‘Mail order nest-boxes!’ said Louise. ‘I don’t believe it!’ She wandered around the kitchen opening cupboards. ‘I hate these glasses — where are those green ones? Ah, there … You need a proper corkscrew — this kind is hopeless. Here — let’s take a drink through to the sitting room. It’s perishing in here.’
Settling into the corner of the sofa she continued, ‘It feels so peculiar here now. I keep expecting — oh God, I don’t know quite what I keep expecting. And I keep wishing I hadn’t fought with her so much. You know I kept trying, all this last year, to …
well, to have a sort of great rapprochement… and each time she’d spoil it by coming out with … well, the things she always did come out with. You know.’
‘I know.’
‘So now I feel … Ugh! Guilty. Nasty.’
Edward came in. ‘Hello. What are you feeling guilty about?’
‘Mother, of course,’ said Louise morosely. ‘Here’s a glass and the bottle’s on the bookcase. Listen, was she the way I think she was or did I imagine her?’
Edward poured himself a glass of wine and looked doubtfully at it — not because he questioned its quality but because drink was unusual at Greystones and had connotations of ritual celebration — Christmas and birthdays. The note struck right now did not seem to be one of celebration. He took a gulp and sat down at the other end of the sofa.
‘She once threw a plate at me,’ Louise went on. Did you know that? One of those blue and orange ones. It missed.’
‘I thought they were supposed to be Crown Derby, those,’
said Edward. ‘It shows what a temper she must have been in.’
Louise glared at him. ‘I was seventeen and a half at the time.
All I could think was — other people’s mothers don’t do things like this.’
‘There’s probably more of it around than one imagines.’
Helen had finished what was in her glass. ‘Mother was the way you think she was. And the way I think she was and the way Edward thinks she was. She was demanding and assertive and dogmatic and possessive and she always thought she knew best about everything. She bullied us. She bullied everyone who gave her the chance. She was prejudiced and inflexible and opinionated. She never listened to what anyone else said. She had a vile temper. There are also other things that she wasn’t.
She wasn’t avaricious or malicious or cruel in any deliberate sense, though the result of some of the things she did was cruelty of a kind.’
The others stared at her. ‘I’m not sure you should say all this,’ said Edward rather wildly.
‘What’s the difference between saying it and thinking it? And it’s true. And it can’t hurt her now because she’s dead. Also, it doesn’t mean I feel any differently about her.’
There was a silence. Louise, eventually, spoke. ‘What did you feel about her?’
‘I loved her, I suppose,’ said Helen. ‘One does, willy-nilly.’
‘Sometimes I hated her,’ said Louise.
‘Oh, that too.’
Further silence. Louise reached for the wine bottle and shared out what was left. ‘Edward, that dog of yours is disgusting.’
Tam was sitting under the standard lamp, salivating lavishly as he gazed at a fly that wandered across the shade. Edward poked him with a foot. Tam gave a propitiating wag of the tail, licked his lips and concentrated once more on the fly.
Edward said, ‘Well, it’s over, anyway. Poor old mother. She’s not here, quite simply. We’re on our own now.’
Helen laughed. ‘Clearly that is just what we are not.’
Edward gave her a stern look. ‘Wine always sets you off. Don’t give her any more, Louise.’
Tor Christ’s sake!’ cried Louise. ‘She doesn’t get enough booze, that’s the trouble. This house has always been like some Temperance cell. Mother again — just because she didn’t care for it herself. Oh — enough, enough! Look, I came here to talk about myself, not mother.’
‘Good,’ said Edward comfortably. The sturm und drang of Louise’s private and professional life gave him all the vicarious satisfaction of television soap opera. ‘What happened over the row in your office about the new restaurant contract?’
Louise looked at him sharply. ‘My life isn’t some sort of spectator sport, you know. Anyway, it’s nothing to do with the office. It’s Phil. Classic teenage stuff, I suppose, but it’s got a bit beyond a joke. He wants to leave school, go and hang out with a bunch of down and out friends, all that nonsense.’
Edward was losing interest. ‘Talk to him,’ he advised kindly.
‘That’s pathetic!’ snapped Louise. ‘Frankly we feel more like hitting him at the moment. I have a permanent stress headache.
If! was anyone else I’d be on tranquillizers.’
The telephone rang. ‘I’ll go,’ said Helen. Out in the hall, she picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’
‘Miss Glover? Helen … May I? Giles Carnaby here. I have one or two further little things I ought to discuss with you. I wondered if you might like to meet me in Spaxton for a spot of lunch?’
She returned to the sitting room. Louise was still talking about Phil. Edward was picking burrs out of Tam’s coat. They both looked at her. Louise said, ‘That wine has turned you bright pink — it must be even more vicious than I thought. Let’s open another bottle. And your stew’s burning — I can smell it.’
When Louise was a little girl Helen had been immensely proud of her. ‘Louise is going to be the pretty one,’ Dorothy said, when Louise was about two; and said it rather too often, thereafter. In fact Louise was not pretty, but she had a quality of vibrancy that did very well instead. Nowadays, in the company of good looking women she appeared louche — her skin was bad and her hair messy. But beside most women — Helen included — she was a curious illustration of why one woman is attractive and another not. You were simply more inclined to look at Louise than at others. And as a small child she had been compelling, with her bounce, her bright eyes, her mop of hair. Helen, escorting her along a street or into shops, had delighted in it: ‘Yes, she’s my sister. Yes, she is quite a handful — come along, Louise.’
She sometimes saw a shadow of Louise in her own face, with interest and quite without rancour. Patently, the life of an attractive woman is different from that of a plain one — and not exclusively in a sexual sense: a personable appearance conditions the world’s response to most people. Louise’s looks invited attention; Helen’s did not. But, that being said, Helen knew that the gulf between her experience and her sister’s could be attributed to personality and inclination quite as much as to the cast of nose or mouth. Louise was extrovert and unwary; Helen was reserved and cautious. Louise, from the age of two, had fought their mother; Helen had propitiated and avoided confrontation.
Louise had grabbed at opportunities (and, on occasion, paid for it); Helen had hesitated, considered the pros and cons, and then found that it was too late.
She had never envied Louise; rather, she had feared for her.
She had stood in the wings, over the years, and watched with apprehension as Louise was crossed in love, had rows and reconciliations, got the sack, went broke, suffered a fallopian pregnancy and an attack of shingles and smashed up a car. She came to realise, too, that while temperament may condition experience
it also determines how we overcome it. She herself would have been felled by any of these things, she suspected; Louise shrieked her protests, and prospered. The mystery, as Helen saw it, was that two people could emerge from the same circumstances and set about dealing with the world so differently: follow the thread back and you reached, in each case, the same hearth, the same cot, the same indoctrinations, Dorothy’s uncompromising lap.
Will this do?’ said Giles Carnaby. ‘I thought of the Crown, but I can’t stand all the bucolic laughter from Rotarian lunches. And that wine bar place is too young and the White Hart is too elderly. I hoped this might fill the gap — it’s new, apparently.’
The restaurant struck Helen as unlikely to survive long in Spaxton: the menu was ornate in every sense and the prices high.
There was hardly anyone else there. It was also elegantly under lit; she had difficulty in picking out Giles until she spotted the gleam of his silver hair in a far corner. He jumped to his feet as she approached and fussed around with her coat; his hand lay for an instant on her shoulder.
‘It’s fine,’ she said.
‘Are you sure? I’ve been having misgivings about the decor.
We could always do a bolt somewhere else.’
‘Not now they’ve got my coat. And you’ve unfolded your napkin.’
‘So I have. Sheer nervousness.’ That winning smile. ‘Well, we’re stuck with it. Shall we get the rather boring business bit over first or do you want me to stow it away until the coffee?’
There was some matter of the whereabouts of share certificates, it turned out, and an explanation about probate and how long it took. It occurred to Helen that all of it would have gone nicely into a letter; quite a short letter. She sipped her sherry and thought about this.
‘There!’ he concluded. ‘Honour is satisfied. Now tell me what you’ve been doing? How is the young man with green hair? By the way — the Earl Grey has been an absolute treat. I think about you every time I brew myself a cup — not that I wouldn’t do that anyway but the combination vastly cheers up breakfast, always a slightly dismal time these days. What do you have for breakfast?
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