by Emma Morgan
‘But he is male,’ said Linden.
‘I think you will find that Aunt Arabella said there were too many women here, which is technically true because there are. There is only one man. We are children. Kite is a dog. QED,’ said Rowan. He started to do what looked like sums on the notebook next to his plate.
‘Do you want any more potatoes, Grace?’ asked Eustacia in her best hostess way.
‘Your potatoes are the best,’ said Grace.
‘Yes, dear,’ said Beatrice, ‘cooking never was one of my strengths.’
‘Speak up,’ said Cyril from the end of the table, ‘I can hardly hear you, Beatrice.’
‘Deaf,’ she said, ‘you’re getting deaf, dear. You need an ear trumpet.’
‘My mummy can’t cook either, except disgusting lentils and my daddy can only make hot dogs but it’s OK because our nanny knows how,’ said Augusta, poking at her food.
‘Tess doesn’t believe in cooking. She believes in macrobiotics,’ said Linden.
‘Yes, it’s an interesting set of theories,’ said Rowan.
‘You are a little bit weird,’ said Augusta.
‘That’s inaccurate. We’re not “a little bit weird”, we’re “special and gifted”,’ said Linden.
‘We’re fast tracking for Cambridge of course,’ said Rowan.
‘It’s better than Oxford for maths,’ said Linden.
‘Good God, Tess,’ Bella said, ‘Augusta is right, your children are weird. Nothing wrong with being weird of course, but they are.’
‘That doesn’t mean that Augusta is right to say that to them, does it?’ and Tess’s eyes went all fiery.
‘Would you all please calm down,’ said Eustacia.
‘Piss off,’ said Bella.
‘Tess,’ says Linden, ‘Aunt Arabella is using inappropriate language for our age group again.’
Come nightfall and ‘the girls’ were standing outside the French windows at the end of the palm house. It was cold in there because of the broken panes and the palms were all dead. They were sharing a spliff that Tess had produced, except for Eustacia who was sweeping the floor with a broken broom.
‘I worry about them a lot,’ said Eustacia.
‘Me too,’ Grace said, ‘they’re so unsteady now. One of these days …’
‘We all worry about them,’ said Tess.
‘One of these days what?’ asked Bella.
‘They’re not going to be able to manage any more,’ said Eustacia.
‘What about a home?’ said Bella, inhaling deeply and passing the spliff to Grace, who took it and said, ‘Are you mad?’
‘I did once suggest it,’ said Eustacia.
‘Cyril went mad, didn’t he?’ said Tess.
‘I can’t imagine Cyril going mad,’ said Bella.
‘He went a shade I must describe as magenta,’ said Eustacia. ‘He was furious. I mean absolutely furious, and I got a long lecture on the importance of the independence of nation states.’
‘And Beatrice said she was going to burn down the house if you ever suggested it again, didn’t she?’ said Grace. ‘And I don’t think she was joking. She nearly set Cyril on fire by overfilling the grate before we got here. Imagine what she could do if she went to it with a will.’
‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ said Eustacia, ‘but I’m afraid we must.’
‘Well, what are we going to do?’ asked Tess.
‘What can we do?’ asked Grace.
‘I don’t think very much,’ said Eustacia.
‘It’s impossible,’ said Tess.
‘Bugger,’ said Bella.
‘I don’t think that we should involve our mother whatever we do,’ said Grace. ‘Please can we all agree on that.’
‘I wouldn’t douse that woman if she was on fire,’ said Bella.
‘I think that’s going rather too far,’ said Eustacia.
‘I know that Mum’s not great but she’s not that bad,’ said Tess.
‘She is pretty bad though,’ said Grace. ‘She couldn’t care less about any of us, least of all Cyril and Beatrice.’
‘And then,’ said Bella, ‘while she burnt, I’d stand over her and toast marshmallows.’
‘Bella!’ said her sisters.
‘What?’ said Bella.
This is Violet looking at Sam
When Violet got home, Annie was out which was good because Violet didn’t feel like any more fighting. She stood in her room and looked at her clothes. Mostly they were on the floor. She took the clothes she was wearing off and put on the things nearest to her, which turned out to be red velvet trousers that were too long so she had sawn lengths off the bottom with scissors and a blue cotton top ringed with horizontal ruffles that she liked because it reminded her of flamenco dancers. Both of these things felt familiar and soft and were of comfort to her. She stirred her way through the clothes sea until she found a purple mohair cardigan that, according to the felt pen marks on the label, had once belonged to someone called Poppy. Violet wondered who Poppy was and if she had jettisoned the cardigan because she had grown out of it or because she had gone off it. Violet liked her clothes to have some sort of imaginary history. The only full-length mirror was in Annie’s room. She was tempted now to go and look in it but couldn’t make herself. She never looked in the mirror at her outfits; she never looked in the mirror full stop, apart from a quick glance at her face when she brushed her teeth and now and then when she put on eyeliner. Her energy level dipped, and she sat on her bed. Her excitement had waned. Did she even have the strength to go out with someone? Did she want to get to know a new person anyway? She considered giving up on the day and getting into bed and staying there. It would be so much easier. She could only now anticipate that the date might produce anxiety rather than pleasure. Yes, she would do that and pretend this afternoon hadn’t happened and when Annie got home she might be able to rouse herself enough to talk to her. She hadn’t the strength to cope with anything else. Her phone rang with an unknown number and she picked it up but didn’t answer. Her thoughts wheeled around in the opposite direction, as frequently happened to her. Maybe she should try something new, maybe it would be good for her. She had enjoyed the kissing, she might enjoy something more. How would she know if she never tried? Why was she such a wimp? She considered switching her phone off altogether but it rang again and this time she swiped to accept the call.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hi Violet, this is Sam.’
They went to the cinema. Then this is a real date, thought Violet, who watched the film with such little concentration that, if asked, she could have told you that it was set by the sea and nothing more. She was far more concerned about the pressure of Sam’s thigh against her own coupled with the worry that Sam would try and take her hand, which was inexplicably clammy. What if she did this and other people saw? What if the secret straight police were watching? But Sam’s hands remained in her own lap and Violet was both relieved and disappointed. After the film, Sam invited her back to her flat for coffee and Violet felt the way she had when, after a particularly good trampoline performance, the applause started, a combination of phew, I didn’t muck that one up, and hurrah, they like me.
This time they graduated from the sofa to the bedroom.
‘I don’t want to do anything yet,’ said Violet and expected Sam to sigh with impatience but she didn’t, she took off her clothes matter of factly as if she was going to bed and then got into the bed.
‘Have you got a torch at all?’ asked Violet, who had turned her eyes away for propriety’s sake, although how propriety might come into this situation she hadn’t the faintest.
‘Sure,’ said Sam and got out of bed and left the room, still naked. Violet slipped a glimpse. Sam had a white bum and brown arms the colour of tea, what her stepfather called a ‘farmer’s tan’, well, not the bum bit, and she tried not to giggle. Wasn’t she supposed to feel a frisson, because she felt nothing but a blush. Sam came back into the room and passed a smal
l torch to Violet, who had again found a profound interest in staring at the wall.
‘Could you switch off the light, please?’
Sam went and did this, and Violet got into bed on the far side, still fully clothed. She was impressed that Sam could find her way back to her bed in the dark because she never could and always banged her shins. Sam got into the bed.
‘And could you lie on your side perhaps?’ Violet asked.
‘Like this?’
Violet switched the torch on underneath the covers and lit up a cave in which Sam’s body lay on its side like an odalisque by Matisse. She ran the light up and down Sam’s body, trying to memorize it as though for a land survey. There was a mole on her ribcage underneath her left breast. Bigger than mine, thought Violet, which isn’t saying much, and with browner nipples. She had slight stubble on her lengthy legs that reminded Violet of a field of corn near her childhood home after it had been razed, and knobbly knees. She had visible ribs and a flat stomach but wasn’t painfully thin. Her pubic hair was fluffy and not wiry and was blond like her head. She might try to draw Sam when she got home. She had no memory for words but a good visual one. When she came up for air, she switched off the torch and reaching over Sam set it on the bedside table.
‘I think I could probably draw you now,’ she said.
‘Another time,’ said Sam, and put her hand on Violet’s stomach over her trousers. Strangely for such a tiny woman, hers was convex. She ran her hand down between Violet’s legs.
‘Would you like to take your clothes off or shall I take them off for you?’ she asked.
‘You,’ whispered Violet.
Violet had often been surprised in the past by the ardour of men. Their enthusiasm, their drive. The way they pushed and pulled. Sam didn’t do that. First of all, she removed Violet’s clothes slowly as though she was unwrapping a Christmas present. Normally Violet didn’t like to be naked around a man, she tried to keep at least something on, but by the time Sam pushed down her trousers she was thinking the opposite. Sam unhooked her bra deftly and pulled the straps down. Now Violet was wearing only her knickers, which were her very best ones and violet like her name. Sam started to run her fingers slowly all over Violet’s body, as though this was her way of memorizing. Violet lay on her back, her head under the covers, and Sam touched her face, her neck, the line of her arm to her fingertips and back, and then across her breasts, touching each nipple in turn, and down to her stomach. The feel of her fingertips looping over Violet was like being drawn on. After a while she stopped being nervous and started to enjoy the touching and to try and anticipate where it might go next, and by the time that Sam replaced her fingers with her mouth, all of Violet’s body was straining up to meet it.
‘Would you like to take your knickers off or is this enough?’ asked Sam.
For once it was an easy decision for Violet to make.
It was all extraordinary and yet all ordinary, Violet thought afterwards as they went to sleep. It was all artichoke and also all potato. It was nothing like she had expected and yet so familiar, because you were not dealing with the alien anatomy that was a man’s body but the same mechanics as your own. Sam did things to her and she did things back, it was reciprocal, their bodies worked in the same ways. It was easier to anticipate what Sam would like, based on Violet’s own experience. She knew not to rub a nipple round and round, harder and harder, as though it was a malfunctioning button that would finally function correctly if you managed to work up enough friction. She knew that clitorises did not respond well to the same kind of treatment either. When she came she saw colours – red, blue and green – and when, copying what Sam did, Sam came, Violet felt a sense of achievement that she had never known with a man. Now I know what my own body feels like to be touched, she thought, and I didn’t know what that felt like before. How soft we are, how intricate. You would have thought that I would have grasped this already but I never have. It was more sensual and less pornographic, less about parts and more about skin on skin, more like a painting and less like a film. Yes, it felt like a painting, as though it was a long afternoon in June in the shade on a riverbank and we had all the time in the world. And Violet remembered the book of Klimt she had at home, the women entwined around each other, and understood now how accurate that was. For once she hadn’t felt embarrassed by her smallness either; although Sam was much taller than her it had been sex between equals, compatriots and not enemies engaged in a battle for an orgasm. She had liked it very much. And she hadn’t felt the need to run away home afterwards either, quite the opposite; she had stayed the night, her back against Sam’s front, Sam’s arm around her, and she would have happily stayed past breakfast if Sam hadn’t had to go to work. I need to tell Annie about this, she thought, I must get home now and tell her, she will definitely want to know, having forgotten that Annie had left her in the park the day before.
This is Grace and the goodbye
Back down the long drive, the monstrous house receding, and Beatrice, standing on the doorstep, getting smaller and smaller. Nearly all of her family had kissed her goodbye in various combinations of single and double kisses and Grace had felt bombarded. Augusta had even hugged her round the thighs and told her she didn’t want her to leave. The twins had shaken hands.
‘Well, Cyril was much better than I thought he would be,’ said Eustacia.
‘That’s something,’ said Grace, trying to avoid the potholes, and thinking that it was unimaginable that one day this would no longer be ‘theirs’. It was impossible to think of it belonging to anyone else, impossible not to imagine Cyril and Beatrice still tottering around its draughty hallways. She remembered the depths of winter there, how they would run in layers of unravelling jumpers from grate to grate and bed down next to them with the lurchers for warmth.
‘Remember “bogging with the dogging”? What happened to that home help you got?’
‘Beatrice frightened her off as soon as she could. She thought the house was haunted.’
‘It is haunted.’
‘They need help. We need to do something but I don’t know what.’
Grace had never heard her sister sound so frustrated.
‘It’s hard to help people who think that help is the enemy. At least the horses have all gone now so there’s not that to worry about any more.’
‘I suppose so. I was thinking. What about if one of us moved in?’
‘You what? Are you mad?’
‘I’ve been thinking about it. Jeremy and I could rent our house out, move here.’
‘You are mad,’ said Grace.
‘You already said that,’ said Eustacia. ‘And I was thinking that well, you might like to come too.’
‘Then you have reached the point of insanity and I, even in my professional capacity, can do nothing more to help you.’
‘Well, there’s no way that Bella is going to move, and Tess can’t what with the farm, and after all they’ve got families and it’s too hard to uproot them. We haven’t. It’s our responsibility.’
‘No, it’s not. Well, not just ours. And it would never work!’
‘Why not? You could even bring Sam if you wanted to. I’m sure you could both find jobs somewhere. We don’t have to talk about it any more now. Just think about it. Please say you’ll just think about it.’
‘I think you’re insane. It would be like an eccentric commune.’
‘No worse than our childhood. And there’s so much room, it’s not as if we’d be bumping into each other all the time.’
‘Have you mentioned this whacked-out idea to them?’
‘No, of course not, I wanted to talk to you first.’
‘Humph.’
‘Does that mean you’ll think about it? Because honestly, Grace, I can’t think of anything else.’
Grace puffed air out of her mouth in the way of someone bamboozled by life.
‘Grace,’ said Eustacia, ‘can I ask you something else without you getting offended?’
�
�You couldn’t offend me if you tried.’
‘It’s about Sam. I haven’t met her yet and I would like to. Is there some kind of problem?’
‘We’ve just been busy, you know how it is.’
‘I know you’ve got a lot on but couldn’t you come for an afternoon? Or I could come to Leeds, we could go to that arts café we went to last time. Have you taken Sam there?’
‘No. I mean no, I haven’t taken her there. I’ll ask Sam about visiting. I promise.’
‘Lovely,’ said Eustacia but Grace felt guilty.
This is Violet and her decision to go un-operatic
When Violet got home, Annie was cooking curry even though it was only 10 a.m. on a Saturday and normally Annie would still be in bed and when she did eventually get up would eat toast like she always did. Annie’s cooking style was incomprehensible, as it seemed to involve making loads of mess for little result. The honest evaluation that Annie expected after the event could also be traumatic. She was fine when she stuck to roasts or pasta, but then she got it into her head to do things involving bok choi or pine nuts and she didn’t seem to be able to follow a recipe but always said ‘bugger it’ halfway through and started chucking in random items. Violet couldn’t understand how Annie, famed for her logic, could cook like this.
‘How come you’re cooking now?’ asked Violet. Annie ignored her. ‘Any for me?’ asked Violet, who found that she was starving and therefore willing to face the inevitable weirdness.
‘No,’ said Annie, stirring the saucepan full of bubbling things and switching off the burning rice.
‘You always make too much.’
‘Not this time,’ said Annie, spooning dollops from the saucepans on to her plate, leaving most of it behind. She got a knife and fork out of the drawer and went to the sofa and switched on the TV. She never ate in front of the TV and Violet knew that was because Annie’s mum thought it was common and that you might drop things on the carpet or God forbid the sofa. She never watched it in the daytime either.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Violet.