by Beth Moran
“I’ll open the wine, if you show me where a corkscrew is.”
“I’ll fetch one. The caravan stinks of fish. It’s really bad. I mean, the fish isn’t bad. That’ll taste great. I hope. It just smells bad. I can’t stop saying bad.”
Reuben’s mouth twitched. No doubt Erica never suffered from verbal diarrhoea.
By the time we settled down to eat our fishcake starters I had begun to calm down. I pretended to have been nervous about the meal rather than the company. He seemed to buy it. Then he ruined it again.
“You look really lovely, by the way.”
I knocked over my wine glass.
After I had cleaned up the mess and picked my crab out of the wine puddle on my plate (silently praising God that it had missed my dress), Reuben took the hint and reverted back to being my cookery teacher.
“If I tell you the food is first class will you knock the pot of sweet chilli sauce over?”
“Is it okay?”
He nodded. “You must have had a mighty fine teacher.”
Oh yes. My teacher was definitely mighty fine.
My meticulously planned, perfectly practised main course of mustard chicken and dauphinoise potatoes with Sherwood Organics’ baby carrots and French beans also turned out a success. Reuben pretended to be surprised. I would carry to my grave the secret that I had eaten mustard chicken and dauphinoise potatoes every night for the past eight days.
We sat under the hazy evening sunlight, the music of crickets and songbirds far superior to anything in my CD collection. Our conversation meandered through work, the Hall, and what to do about Amanda. I shared the skin on the top of the rancid custard that is my childhood. Reuben was interested to hear I had struggled with my mother, and was quietly appalled when I hinted at how deep that fissure had run. We talked until the shadows stretched out from the treeline right across the clearing to where we sat.
Then came a pause in our conversation. Reuben poured me another drink, and in that moment an awkward tension descended over the table. Suddenly we were not two friends, a cookery teacher and his student, but a man and a woman, sitting together in the semi-darkness, alone. Every movement as Reuben leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair seemed magnified, significant. I couldn’t look at him. I could sense my skin growing warmer, and suddenly my hands were too big.
“Marion. I wanted to ask you… is this a date?”
Pardon me?
“I mean, do you want it to be a date? Because, well…”
“I forgot the lemon tart.”
“What?”
I pushed back my chair and practically ran back around the caravan and stumbled up the steps. Marion Miller – just when you thought she was becoming almost normal.
When I stepped inside the living area, I noticed my phone was lit up. I had just missed a call. And five earlier calls. Valerie burst through my front door. “Marion, why haven’t you been answering your phone?”
The lemon tart remained in the fridge.
It was a pulmonary embolism. A blood clot in her lung. Samuel had found Scarlett collapsed and barely breathing on her bedroom floor. We were allowed a glimpse of her, a brief kiss and a rushed hello, I love you and goodbye, before her doctors hustled us into the relatives’ room. They didn’t need to tell us it was serious. When a doctor in a major A & E department looks worried, you know you should be worrying too.
So we worried, and prayed, and cried, and held each other’s hands.
We called Dr Drew, who booked a seat on the next flight across the Atlantic.
We called Jake, and Katarina.
We waited.
Two hours after we had arrived, the doctor told us Scarlett’s condition was far from stable. They were working hard to break up the massive clot, but the pressure on her heart was extremely dangerous. They would have to stop her heart and restart it again. Because of the severity of her condition this would be complicated, carrying a higher than normal risk. It might not save her.
Grace, Valerie and Samuel were given five minutes to say goodbye. Scarlett was nearly invisible behind the oxygen mask, wires and drips. She looked like a little girl, wrapped inside the folds of the hospital gown. The machines beeped and five doctors checked and adjusted equipment while her family tried to find a clear space on her body to stroke her skin and whisper words to convince her to stay.
Three more hours. I found a machine selling hot brown liquid it called coffee that smelled even worse than the hospital corridors. It is a strange thing, the weird flip between emotions that accompanies such an intense situation. We were in fits of laughter about Valerie’s description of five-hundred-pound-a-cup coffee beans found in Sumatran wildcat poo and how the hospital sold s*** coffee for one pound fifty, when the doctor returned.
She had gone.
Scarlett had spoken to Samuel about her funeral.
“It don’t matter to me what y’all do with me. Parade me through the streets in a glass coffin pulled by six white horses, or wrap me in a blanket and bury me in the woods. I’ll not be there to give an owl’s hoot. But you do what’s right for my girls, Samuel. They are what matters now. And I trust you to know what that is. As long as the ones who will miss me have a chance to say goodbye, and give each other a hug, you can figure out the rest however you want.”
So, ten days after he lost his wife, three and a half weeks since he had married her, twenty years on from giving her his heart, Samuel buried Scarlett Obermann-Waters in the depths of the forest she had loved.
We learned from Dr Drew that although Scarlett had faith in God, she had been turned away from church by her pop, a man who preached one thing from the pulpit three times every Sunday, and another to his little girl behind closed doors the rest of the week. No one doubted she would have approved of the loud-laughed Lara conducting the service, and that she did so wearing leather trousers and a bandanna.
The whole of Hatherstone turned up to the back meadow where we had set up folding chairs borrowed from the church, and hung garlands in the bright colour signifying the woman we were gathering to honour. Everybody wore a red flower, and many more were laid upon her coffin and scattered across the grass. Drew and Samuel, Archie and Reuben, Sunny and Jake bore her from the hearse to the front of the meadow as Grace and Valerie walked behind, not weeping now, but chins held high as their mother had taught them. When Katarina’s children, dressed in nothing but red shorts, sang “She’ll be coming round the mountain” (for reasons known only to themselves), we all joined in through our tears.
We followed the service with a party in the Hall barn. The one rule was that everybody had to dance for at least one song. I danced for nearly every single one. And in between songs I mingled, and smiled, and hugged, and asked “How are you?” – and really listened to the answers. That was my tribute to Scarlett.
Where on earth would I have been without her?
My conversations with Reuben had been brief and grave since our meal. The few times I had seen him it had been hard to concentrate with that unfinished sentence yelling and thrashing about in the back of my brain. Because, well… what? Because I hope that it is, and that we have many more, and finish with one long date involving rings and babies and you becoming Lady Hatherstone? Or because, don’t get me wrong, you are a nice enough girl, but I’ve just come out of a serious relationship and it isn’t you but it’s me and you aren’t really my type, and you do know I see you as a friend, but it will never be more than that and…
I was boring myself.
I got my answer when I dashed to the loo during the Michael Jackson megamix (not my thing). Reuben stood in the shadows behind the barn, Erica in front of him. He was holding her hand, speaking with his head bent close to hers. I had seen her at the service, in a white dress covered in red roses, a pair of Grace’s heels on her feet. She looked worse than she should have done, considering how well she actually knew Scarlett. She had tried to hide it with make-up, but her skin was wan, her eyes flat.
&n
bsp; I scurried past, before they saw me, and tried to smother the searing pain that ripped across my chest like a branding iron. I told myself that it was better to have found out before I made a fool of myself, and congratulated myself for running away the other night at precisely the right moment.
Erica was beautiful, successful, lovely and feminine. She would make a great Lady Hatherstone one day. And at least if she stayed with Reuben he could keep her from destroying the Peace and Pigs, if it came to it. Yes, on reflection, I thought Reuben and Erica getting back together was absolutely for the best. For the good of the campsite. Absolutely.
Another good reason to keep dancing right next to the speakers where I could hear no one’s attempt at conversation. Nor think. Nor feel anything but the vibrations of the bass.
As the evening wore on, and Samuel prepared to take the exhausted Grace and Valerie back to his farm, where they had been staying since coming home from the hospital, a man stepped into the barn. I didn’t recognize him, but a collective hiss, as half the partygoers sucked in their breath all at once, suggested a lot of people did. He was huge, towering over every man in the room, and carrying the kind of bulk that speaks of muscle gone to flab. Dressed in a black suit fitting smoothly over his massive frame, he wore a scarlet tie over a crisp white shirt.
He paused in the doorway, scanning the crowd, his expensive clothes at odds with his nervous demeanour. When his gaze alighted on Grace, she broke away from Samuel and moved forward.
The man smiled and held out his arms, and as Grace smiled back I realized who he was. She grasped hold of his arm, and turned to an impassive-faced Samuel. “This is my dad.”
He tilted his head down once in acknowledgement. “Yes. We’ve met.”
The man held his hand out. “Samuel.”
Samuel hesitated before glancing at his stepdaughter, who was pumping out a mixture of fear and hope. “Johnny. You’re late. But I guess I’m glad you made it.”
Big Johnny. Otherwise known as Jonathon Edward Tynedale, the founder and owner of JET shoes. Otherwise known as the soon-to-be-saviour of the Peace and Pigs Holiday Park.
I had to admit, since Scarlett’s death I had surprised myself by feeling grateful to have Ma around. She worked harder than Jake and me put together, scrubbing the toilet block and the caravans on changeover days as if she was washing away the mistakes and the hurts of our past. She was taller now, as though the crushing grief compressing her bones and dragging her body down had begun to lift. I’d spent many hours in Ballydown library reading books about bereavement, hoping to understand my mother. I had grimaced at the repeated description of the grieving cycle, which apparently encompasses shock, denial, anger, sadness and finally acceptance. Whatever had stuck my mother at the anger stage, whether it was me, or her illness, or her crazy family, somehow during the past year she had become unstuck. I finally began to believe she might have changed; that she no longer hated me or blamed me. I accepted that in her own strange way she had come to Sherwood Forest, to the Peace and Pigs, not to hunt me down and torment me, but to make amends.
The day after the funeral, Grace drove Scarlett’s car – her car now – to the Peace and Pigs. It was a damp, cool afternoon, and Grace hid in the depths of her purple hoody. She found me in reception. I finished dealing with a couple of ramblers checking in for the night, and came around the counter to give Grace a hug.
“I thought you’d be at Samuel’s, resting.”
She shrugged. “I slept for twelve hours last night. Sometimes I feel like I’m wearing a lead coat, and all I can do is lie on the sofa and stare at the wall. Today – I don’t know – I just wanted to come here.” Grace squinted at me. “Do you think that’s okay? Should I be crying all the time or something?”
“Do whatever you feel like doing. You’ll have other days to cry.”
“Where’s Jane?”
“Probably cleaning something.”
“Can I talk to you?”
I nodded.
“Did you see that man who came in at the end last night?”
“Your dad. Big Johnny.”
“Yes. I called him. It seemed wrong that he didn’t know.”
“Did he know your mum was ill?”
Grace shook her head. “I worried he would try to make peace with her if he knew she was dying. You know how she felt about him. I didn’t want to cause her any more pain, or stress her out. Or waste any of her last few days dealing with all of that. She would have been angry.”
“She would. And confused. She was so weak, it would have been too much if he’d come here.”
“It’s weird. Mum was so fixed on giving people millions of chances. But she wouldn’t do it for him. Someone she made a baby with.”
“I think that’s because protecting you came first. It wasn’t about him, or her. If she had let him back in your lives, knowing there was a strong chance he would have hurt you, and he messed it up, she would have blamed herself.”
Grace considered this. “She should have let me take that risk.”
“Yes. But if I know anything about mothers, it’s that they are anything but rational.”
“He gave me a cheque.”
“Really? Well, that seems only fair. He looks like he can afford it.”
Grace pulled the cheque out of her hoody pocket and handed it to me. I nearly fell off my chair.
“Apparently, when Mum refused to take him back, or let him have anything to do with me, he opened a bank account and began putting in each month the amount he would have given us if Mum would have taken it. Even when he was just working on Hatherstone market, he still put in thirty per cent of his earnings, hoping one day he’d have the chance to give it to me. This is all that money.”
“Grace, this will pay for you to go through college! In style. It’s incredible.”
She fidgeted on her seat. “You think I should take it?”
“Of course you should take it! Why wouldn’t you? It’s only a shame you had to wait this long because of your mum’s pride. Take it, with pleasure, and enjoy every penny.”
Grace scrunched her face up. Two tears tumbled out of her eyes and washed twin streaks of eyeliner down her cheeks. I put my arms around her and wiped her face with a tissue.
“It feels as if I’m saying Mum wasn’t good enough; that what she gave me wasn’t enough. All those years she worked so hard, looking after me at the same time, all on her own, and now Big Johnny swoops in waving his fat cheque book like a magic wand.” She swallowed hard. “I don’t want him to look after me, to make it all better. He hasn’t earned that right. I want my mum. If he cared about me so much, why didn’t he fight harder to see me? Why did he let Mum stop him?”
“It’s never simple, or easy. And people change. Perhaps he only realizes now what a mistake he made, never knowing you. And you know his money can never replace what your mum did for you – who she was.”
Grace blew her nose and pulled her hood up again. “If I keep it, does that mean he’ll think he’s paid his debt? That he has the right to a relationship with me now?”
“You wanted that too, remember? You ran away to find him.”
“And he spent one hour showing me around his precious company, his real baby, before flying off to some important meeting, leaving his secretary to drive me to the station.”
“Oh, Grace. I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t want some lovey daddy-daughter reunion. I just wanted to meet him. To see for myself. I didn’t think Mum had the right to make the decision for me about whether or not he was worth knowing.”
“I thought he taught you how to make shoes?”
She sniffed. “He told me a bit. Some assistant showed me a bit more and the rest I learned through the internet, and trial and error.”
“Well, you know it isn’t sensible to make any big decisions at the moment. He was wrong to give you the cheque now. Don’t rip it up just yet; think about it for a while. And much as you love your mum, remember you need to consider your
life now. She would want you to be secure.”
“I know she would. Thanks, Marion. I’m going to the blue van to blob for a bit.”
“See you later.”
Life was never simple. I prayed Grace would take the money. She would need all the help it could buy her, to make it through the next year.
A few days later, Grace and Valerie decided to move back onto the campsite. My mother spent every spare moment in the blue van looking after them. I tried not to think about a seven-year-old girl curled up on the kitchen floor, too weak to cry about the empty cupboards all around her. I got that she was doing for them what she couldn’t do for me then. Even so, I still sometimes wanted to screw my thumbs into her eyeballs. I worried about how to find a way to forgive her. I knew it was the only way to let it go.
I had just kicked a chicken out of my way (not hard – she could take it) when I looked up to see Erica, the woman I currently least wanted to see behind my mum, and possibly Amanda, skipping down the steps of the blue van. She looked horribly pleased with herself. I was instantly on my guard. Grace had no idea about Fisher’s plans for the Peace and Pigs. I suspected a game play. As much as I wanted to avoid Erica right then, and as much as it was like a stake in my gut to see her perfect hair, wearing the kind of skimpy dress that would make my curves appear like a baby elephant’s, and to imagine her and Reuben’s make-up kisses as they laughed about the ridiculousness of him ending up on a date with me, I found myself in her path.
“Hi, Erica.”
“Hello, Marion. How are you doing? Managing to keep everything ticking over?”
“I’m fine, thanks. What are you doing here?” I didn’t care that I sounded rude. I was angry, and the wounds on my heart and my pride smarted. I was glad I felt too hacked off to be polite to Erica.
Her smile vanished. “Don’t worry, Marion. I was just visiting Grace.”
“Why?”
“I had a business proposition for her. One that would help pay for her to get through college.”