The Great Godden

by Meg Rosoff

  I tried drawing a picture of Gomez asleep in the grass, choosing him because he was the only live subject likely to stay still for any length of time. I’d been working for ages, concentrating so hard that I didn’t notice I had company sitting ten feet away.

  He cleared his throat and I looked up.

  ‘Well?’ said Hugo.

  ‘Well what?’ He was so bloody weird.

  ‘You have a strange way of looking out for your sister.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about the fact that you’re getting quite cosy with my brother.’

  ‘I am not getting cosy with him.’

  He looked at me and snorted.

  I didn’t want to be having this argument. ‘We’re friends.’

  ‘Friends?’ He gave a little mirthless laugh. ‘Kit doesn’t do friends. He does sex.’

  ‘Not with me he doesn’t.’

  Hugo shrugged a little.

  ‘You don’t even know me.’

  ‘Nope.’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t need to.’

  A case of sibling rivalry? Hugo jealous of his brother’s … everything? I didn’t blame him. I would be.

  ‘What are you doing here anyway?’

  ‘I’m drawing you drawing Gomez,’ he said, and I saw that he had a tiny sketchbook and a pen. And I thought, What sort of idiot sketches in pen?

  ‘Let me see.’ I held out my hand, rude, abrupt, and felt surprised when he didn’t hesitate, just walked over and handed me the open page. The sketch was scratchy and eccentric but also funny and accurate.

  ‘I didn’t know you could draw.’ The more I looked at the little sketch, the more I saw in it. It made me obscurely angry. ‘I can’t draw like this.’

  He shrugged again. ‘You draw how you draw.’

  I flipped through the rest of the sketchbook. There were portraits of all of us – immediately recognisable pictures that made you laugh and cringe at the same time. And tiny landscapes with unexpected elements: a flying tortoise, an obscene fossil.

  ‘Oh.’ I felt wrong-footed on the subject of talent and annoyed that he hadn’t bothered to reveal it before. There was I, going around making a show of sketching and talking about going to art school and he shows up with a notebook filled with stuff like this. Drawn in pen.

  ‘This is so typical of you,’ I said.

  He seemed genuinely taken aback. ‘What?’

  ‘You didn’t tell us you could draw.’

  He stared. ‘You didn’t ask.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’ He studied his hands for a moment and I was surprised to see they were trembling. I couldn’t read his expression, which wasn’t surprising because I could never read his expression.

  ‘Have I done something to offend you?’ he said at last. ‘You act fairly sane with everyone else.’

  ‘Offend me? As a matter of fact, yeah. You have. You hate it here. You don’t talk to anyone. You creep around—’

  ‘Creep!’

  ‘Yes, creep. Like you’d rather be on death row than here. You don’t even like Hope or Mal. All we’re trying to do is have a nice summer. You’re like the bloody snake in the Garden of Eden.’

  He gaped at me, outraged. ‘I’m the snake? Oh, perfect. I bet you all wish I was more like my brother.’

  ‘I’m not going to say that.’

  ‘How very polite.’ His voice was icy. He stood up, snatched his sketchbook back and stormed off. I felt like stamping my foot in frustration. I’d never met such an infuriating person.

  I went after him. ‘Why do you hate it here so much, anyway? You hated it even before your brother hooked up with Mattie.’

  He appeared shocked. ‘I have nothing against Mattie. She’s fine.’

  For a minute I thought he might burst into tears. We were both trembling with emotion. Neither of us knew what to say.

  ‘Look,’ I said at last. ‘Let’s just forget it.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Come and draw with me sometime.’

  ‘That’s what I was doing today.’

  Oh for Christ’s sake. ‘Another time.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He looked at the ground.

  We stood in silence, Hugo flushed, blinking back tears.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

  He hesitated.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, but he didn’t move so I reached out for his arm.

  He flinched, violently. ‘Don’t grab me!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Hugo. I didn’t realise you hate being touched.’

  ‘I don’t hate being touched.’ He was nearly shouting. ‘I hate being grabbed.’

  Right. Fine. A stroll through a minefield, you are, Hugo.

  We walked in silence up to the salt marshes. It was so quiet, you could hear the squeaky wings of waterbirds as they flew over. Half a mile. A mile. The tension dissipated, leaving the soft bosh of the sea, beeping birds and occasionally the faint far-off buzz of voices.

  ‘How about here?’

  It was a good place, hemmed in by reeds and clouds. A tern flickered above us. I sat down and Hugo followed, a little distance away. A rainstorm swivelled on an axis out at sea, moving away from us.

  We drew for some time.

  ‘Pssst!’ I heard.

  Hugo held up a little sketch, barely more than a few lines, and when I squinted I saw that he’d drawn me, sitting among the reeds. A long arrow rose from my inked heart up towards a tiny bird, its wings blurred.

  I looked from the drawing to his face, but the sun was behind him and I couldn’t see his eyes. Just for a second, quick as a blink, I felt a little tug of desire. I watched him, the way he held himself back, waiting.

  Under scrutiny he dispersed, like smoke.

  I didn’t sleep well that night. I kept thinking of those drawings. Subtle, funny, perceptive.

  And the person who drew them?

  14

  Mattie was surfing a wave of bliss. After her first midnight swim with Kit, the two were inseparable for about a week. They walked everywhere together, sat pressed together at meals, held hands while reading or eating, and generally made everyone sick.

  I spent a lot of time that summer observing Mattie and Kit. You have to understand that there’s not a whole lot to do at the beach; summer’s not exactly hectic. Having known Mattie all her life, I could tell exactly what she was thinking: Kit Godden wants me to be his girlfriend. When we’re in our thirties and I’m a microbiologist discovering a cure for childhood cancer, he’ll be starring in Pinter in the West End, and we’ll be the most interesting couple anyone knows.

  I felt a bit sorry for her, which wasn’t my usual take on Mattie. I had to think hard to explain it, but maybe I knew that she and Kit weren’t playing by the same rules.

  Also, maybe I was jealous.

  Mattie and Tamsin pranced around the beach in their new bridesmaid frocks, despite Mum telling them it was asking for trouble to wear them before the big day. Both of them looked fancier than Hope in identical white ballerina-style dresses, strapless with stiff tulle skirts. Not Mum’s idea of elegant. Tam’s had to be taken in to stop the top falling down; there wasn’t much there to hold it up. I appreciated Mum buying the bridesmaid outfits. She could have whipped up something much nicer in a weekend for a tenth the price, but this made them happier.

  At dinner that night Kit said something close to Mattie’s ear that made her shove him in mock protest, but he’d already tucked his fingers inside the waistband of her shorts, and she squeaked as his hand disappeared up to his wrist.

  ‘Not at the table, for God’s sake,’ Mal said, disgusted.

  Alex nearly choked. ‘It’s happening,’ he said. ‘Just like I said it would. The summer of tongues.’

  ‘Calm down, me hearty,’ Mal said. ‘If they don’t stop public displays of affection I’m going to run them through with a lance. You can aid and abet.’

  After dinner you’d stumble on
them entwined together on a sofa or trip over them on the beach or find them crammed into the hammock you wanted to lie on. There they were, head to toe, Mattie’s bare feet neatly pressed up against Kit’s ribcage.

  So had I just imagined my conversation with Kit? It was just one line, after all, one word, ‘amazing’, couched in a careful double negative. ‘Doesn’t mean you’re not amazing.’

  He thinks I’m amazing – as he lies tangled up in a hammock kissing Mattie’s perfectly shaped, slightly sandy bare feet. He thinks I’m amazing – as he sticks his hand up the inside leg of her shorts and she squirms mock outrage.

  Maybe he didn’t mean amazing. Maybe he meant fine. Maybe it was an aesthetic judgement, a sort of ‘Someone else will like you someday’ kind of comment. But that’s not how I remembered it. I remembered it with the connection between his eyes and mine, with the shrouded invitation that (may have) accompanied the words.

  One thing about Kit Godden, he did know how to construct reality in his own image.

  At this he was clearly no amateur. He’d smile, talk, make jokes, throw his arm around my shoulders, all in a perfectly friendly, slightly impersonal way until I was convinced I’d imagined the words, or maybe not the words – the intonation, the implication that amazing meant amazing. And the instant he saw me ready to spit out the hook, he’d give the line a little tug, and hey presto.

  I thought about what Hugo had said, about Kit and sex. With all the gaslighting going on, at least I could reassure myself that he didn’t just want to be friends. That he found me sexually and intellectually alluring enough to consider as a lover. Didn’t he?

  After a few days, by sheer force of will I stopped thinking about him and went back to things I wanted to do. I even dared, after midnight, to do a quick sweep of the beach from my tower, terrified and expectant that I’d see him skulking back to the house pretending he wasn’t having sex with my sister.

  But there was no sign of Kit or Mattie, or anything else interesting for that matter. Until at the other end of the beach I passed something unfamiliar, went back, focused, and once more found myself looking directly into Hugo’s eyes.

  What the hell?

  I lowered the telescope and with my naked eye saw a figure standing a quarter of a mile away, facing me, but much too distant for me to see, or for him to see me for that matter. He was certainly too far away to have any clue that I was looking at him. This time there was no doubt about it. No lights on in the tower, no possible way a person could even know I was awake.

  Picking up the telescope, I lifted it cautiously. He was still there, his eyes trained directly on mine, as if standing a few feet away. He could have been in the same room staring straight at me. It freaked me out.

  Did he stand staring up at the tower twenty-four hours a day on the off-chance that he might catch me looking out? It didn’t seem likely, somehow.

  As I watched, he walked back up the beach and disappeared into Malanhope’s. The house was dark.

  Was I going crazy? Was he?

  I coined a new series of collective nouns. A plague of Goddens. A murder of Goddens. A conundrum of Goddens. A siege of Goddens. A pounce of Goddens.

  A chaos of Goddens.

  15

  The wedding was taking shape. Alex was happy with his bats. Mal obsessed night and day about Hamlet. Tamsin was forever in love with Duke, and Mattie with Kit. Kit seemed to like Mattie back. Mum was sewing and Dad was doing whatever it was he does all day. It was all as boringly predictable as if Tuesday had decided to follow Monday.

  And then Kit became elusive.

  If you could be bothered to draw a graph, you’d see Mattie’s passion continuing to curve upwards like the GNP of India while Kit’s stalled somewhat, like China’s, giving every indication of tailing off and heading downward over the coming fiscal period.

  You might even say that Kit began erring ever so slightly on the side of aloof.

  This set off a reaction that involved Mattie spending most of the morning trying to run into Kit, failing, then returning to the house to try on five different outfits, each as adequate as the next but none precisely right enough to compensate for the empty feeling of not being with him. Having chosen one, she’d spend half an hour brushing her hair into a ponytail that looked casual but wasn’t. Once she’d got the hair right she’d realise the shorts were wrong, then the shoes, storm into the kitchen in trainers and run out again, return in flip-flops, then barefoot, in ballerina flats, flip-flops again, over and over as if shoes were the key to Kit’s heart and if she could only decide on the exact right pair he would love her the way he had last week.

  Only he wasn’t playing the shoe game. One day he didn’t show up for lunch or dinner. Headache, Hope said. Poor boy. And Mattie didn’t just look disappointed, but deflated and grey, like she’d been punched.

  Then the next day he had work to do. And the next, he read all night, so slept for most of the day.

  The following night, when Kit did show up, Mattie avoided him, sitting with Alex on one side and Mal on the other. But it didn’t work because she hadn’t reckoned with the puzzled look, the hurt look, the why-are-you-shunning-me look, the I-will-undermine-any-confidence-you-have-in-your-own-instincts look. That last look turned her into the sort of girl who doubted the evidence of her own moderately competent brain.

  Sometimes I caught him looking at me and I felt a flash of triumph. He’d tired of her, just as I’d known he would. Now all I had to do was wait.

  The more agitated Mattie grew, the more Kit screwed with her, ‘forgetting’ that they were supposed to meet up, arriving late, going off for long walks with Mal (‘With Mal? But why didn’t he ask me?’), or inviting someone else along, someone who had no idea he was being used, like Alex. And then just when Mattie was starting to feel so angry and upset that she might stop caring about the self-obsessed ghosting bastard, he’d show up with his fatal smile, his burning eyes and soft low voice, and he’d put his arm around her waist and nuzzle her neck and say ‘Where have you been?’ when it was perfectly obvious where she’d been, given how hard it was for him to avoid tripping over her.

  That’s when Mattie’s excuses began. ‘If you had his mother, how would you be about relationships?’ and, ‘You might not believe me but he’s weirdly innocent about women.’ That was harder to believe because Kit was many things, but innocent didn’t appear to be one of them. ‘He’s not like other boys,’ she’d say. ‘He lives in his head.’ Or, scathingly, to me or Alex, ‘You wouldn’t understand someone as sensitive as Kit.’

  ‘Did you ask him why he didn’t show up last night?’

  Mattie looked away. ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why can’t you?’

  ‘I just can’t. Anyway, no one’s really supposed to know about us.’

  Everyone within a fifty-mile radius knew about them.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  I thought about this for a minute. ‘No,’ I said.

  But she just shook her head and walked away, and I was left feeling bemused that over the space of a few weeks, Mattie had been transformed into a person who couldn’t ask Kit why he didn’t show up when he said he would.

  I, on the other hand, increasingly found myself on the receiving end of his attentions. Nothing concrete, no groping in the pantry or guilty kisses on the stairs. But whenever I looked up I met his eyes, and whenever I made some comment under my breath he alone managed to hear it and huff a short laugh.

  I am aware of you, his attention said. I’m interested.

  And then there was Hugo, exactly his usual polite, withdrawn self, not really talking to anyone, just managing to be there and not there. Our drawing expedition hadn’t tipped us over to friendship, but he and I had achieved a momentary truce, and there seemed a possibility of building on it.

  He appeared at the house one afternoon when I was doing not very much and at first he just stood the
re, like a ghost.

  This is your chance, Hugo old boy. Hello would be a good start.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, his usual brilliant conversation opener.

  ‘Hi.’ He didn’t follow up, so I took another turn. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Your mother wants someone to pick samphire for dinner.’

  Anyone else on the planet would have added, ‘You wanna come?’ but not Hugo. The amount this annoyed me was disproportionate. I waited, saying nothing. The silence seemed to go on forever.

  ‘You wanna come?’ he said at last.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, like rewarding a dog for figuring out what ‘sit’ means.

  Hugo turned to go without waiting for me and I sighed. We headed out across the salt marsh, him leading, a canvas bag with scissors flapping by his side. The tide was out, so we had no trouble finding the stuff and no trouble reaching it, though the mud climbed up over my ancient flip-flops and dragged the rubber stems through the holes with every step. I gave up and took them off.

  Pulling up a particularly toothsome branch of samphire, I offered it to Hugo.

  ‘Put that back!’ He was outraged. ‘You don’t pull up the roots, for God’s sake.’

  I knew that, but he was the only one with scissors.

  ‘Why don’t I hold the bag,’ I offered pleasantly.

  He shook his head in disgust, squatted down and started snipping carefully. ‘They won’t grow again if you pull the roots out.’

  ‘They’ve been growing here as long as I remember. Anyway, what exactly do you know about samphire?’

  He glared at me. ‘California isn’t the moon. We have plants.’

  ‘Sorry to underestimate you.’

  Hugo snorted. ‘Why stop now?’ he said, and we were back to square one.

  He cut samphire for some time in silence, handing me the bag eventually and then the bundles, which I stacked carefully. It was not a strenuous job. I found a moderately dry place to sit. Neither of us said anything for some time.

  ‘Are you OK?’ He asked this without looking up.

  I blinked. Why did everyone keep asking me that?

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Lots of reasons.’

  ‘Like?’