Where We Belong

by Anstey Harris

  My grazed face hurts from smiling.

  *

  Leo and I have laid up the picnic table with silverware from the kitchen drawers: the WI ladies have wiped the smoke away from each knife and fork individually.

  Araminta has joined us and, although she’s a bit quiet, she’s chatting with Leo and Sophie: talking about the one thing we all agree on – how incredible today has been.

  When Curtis arrives, he is surly but noble. He doesn’t want to make eye contact with me and he doesn’t want to talk about what happened.

  On the end of a lead in his hand, he has the ugliest dog I have ever seen: even up against our hyenas. She is a tiny wire-furred terrier with an underbite that shows the end of her pink tongue. She wears a blue-and-white spotted ‘dress’ and a hair clip to match. ‘Candy missed you,’ he says to Leo, who is already scooping up the hideous little dog to his lap. She wags her stumpy tail and drools on him with happiness.

  Sophie tickles the dog under the chin. ‘Oh, it’s 100 per cent true what Leo says. Not that Leo would ever tell a lie anyway. You are the most beautiful dog. You’re perfect.’

  Curtis wears a grunting heroism, utterly reluctant. It was born of his own sense of duty, to the museum he has loved since he was tiny, and to his dear friend, Leo. And in no small part to Araminta, an old lady who was kind to him when no one else was: I am not arrogant enough to miss that.

  I hadn’t noticed before how much Curtis says through body language. He is upright, confident, when he speaks to Leo, Sophie or Patch, curled in slightly at the shoulders in his interaction with Araminta, and crouched – cowed – when he responds to me. It’s my fault, and it isn’t going to be healed unless I make it happen.

  We eat without ceremony, reaching over one another to take what we want, the two young men talking with their mouths full. The food is hot and good and, as usual, we have over-ordered: Leo and Curtis do their best to solve that problem.

  Not counting the occasional awkward silence when I ask Curtis a direct question and he hesitates before answering, there is more noise and chatter than there has been here in some time. Each word, every laugh, pushes the bad things that have happened back across the grass, make them edge into the house and away from us.

  ‘Leo and Sophie, will you come and help me see if we can get to the freezers by the shop? We can take Candy with us.’ Araminta looks at me as she says it. ‘I feel like ice cream after that lot and I don’t think anyone would begrudge us one or two.’ She makes a face, ‘Although they might be a bit old. Curtis, do you have a favourite?’

  ‘Anything chocolate.’ Curtis can smile at her. He goes to get up and go with them but she shoos him back down, gestures that she, Sophie, and Leo can manage, that they’re going without him.

  ‘I’ll get some more beers,’ Patch says and walks towards the kitchen.

  It is clever of Araminta to leave us this pause, smart of Patch to pick up on it. I wonder if they collaborated. I have to apologise properly to Curtis – it’s up to him, entirely, if he chooses to accept it.

  ‘We owe you a huge debt.’ Even as I say it, I know it’s too poncey, too ‘up-myself ’ as Richard would have said. ‘Sorry. I mean, I just mean . . . I’m sorry. I’ve been a cow.’

  A tiny flicker lights the side of his mouth, it is gone in a moment; back to the alabaster silence of his face.

  ‘I judged you and I was suspicious of you. And you’ve only ever been kind to Leo.’

  ‘Leo’s my friend.’

  Another mistake. I’ve hit a nerve. ‘I didn’t mean to be patronising. I mean because he didn’t know anyone and you’ve been great for him. You’ve even helped him get a girlfriend.’

  He shrugs. His head angles slightly upwards. ‘She’s not exactly his girlfriend yet. They haven’t had The Chat.’

  I hope that Patch and I are too old to need ‘The Chat’: I hope that sleeping together nails it at our age.

  ‘She’s nice, Sophie. She’s good for him,’ he says very quietly.

  I smile. ‘I completely agree. Look, everyone knows what you did – the whole town – you saved this place. You saved the animals. All of them: you saved the museum.’

  Curtis curls his fingers round the frayed cuffs of his hoodie, still uncomfortable.

  ‘I made assumptions and I was wrong. Colonel Hugo himself would be impressed by the things you’ve done. And I don’t think Colonel Hugo would be particularly impressed with the way I’ve behaved either. He was all about giving people chances, trying to help them. I didn’t do that.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. Everyone round here feels the same. My brothers don’t help – they’re always in trouble. And my dad.’ His voice is small and lost out here on the lawn.

  ‘That’s all behind you now. You’re a local hero. And you’re a friend to the whole Lyons-Morris family, alive and dead. I’d be so grateful if you’d think about giving me a second chance too. I’m so sorry.’

  He mutters something I don’t hear and I ask him to say it again, louder.

  ‘My mum keeps calling me “Noah”.’ And this time he does smile and it’s genuine. When he smiles, his crooked front teeth stick out and he looks so young, so defenceless.

  ‘Well, it was incredibly brave to do what you did.’ And then I tell him, I don’t see why I shouldn’t: ‘When you brought the animals out I was still unconscious and, when I woke up on the ground, I couldn’t see the people. I could only see the animals – hundreds of them – and I thought they were all alive. I thought they’d all come out by themselves.’

  ‘I like that,’ he says. ‘That’s cool.’

  ‘I’d like you to come and work with us, taking care of the animals, when we’re back up and running. A proper job. What do you think?’ I have no idea how we will pay him – my redundancy money takes another sucker-punch – but it’s one more challenge I need to meet head on.

  He nods. The blue tattoo wrinkles and releases. ‘Can I start tomorrow?’

  ‘Tomorrow’s tricky. We haven’t got any money. I mean, at all.’

  ‘I don’t mind. I just like being here. You can pay me in ice cream,’ he says as Leo and Araminta come towards us with handfuls of cornets and lollies. Patch follows her lead and comes back from the kitchen – where he has clearly been waiting behind the back door.

  Despite the work to do in the building behind us and to repair our relationships with each other, we have an easy evening of stolen ice creams and too much curry.

  Our first family meal for years with more than two people is a success.

  Chapter Twenty

  The fire turns out to have been the grand event the museum needed. We are inundated with visitors who have heard of either the attack on the gallery or the fire – or both. I am learning, the hard way, that organising a hitherto haphazard band of occasional volunteers into a group who can deal with this number of museum visitors is a full-time job in itself – before I even start to think about tours and guided visits.

  To her considerable credit, Araminta is more than doing her bit, working days as long as mine. She looks tired – we both do. I’m aware that the shock of what happened to us is still there, bubbling under the surface: that we will – eventually – need to deal with it. I can’t forget what she did but, mainly thanks to Patch, we have found a middle ground of courtesy. We both want what’s best for the museum: although we might believe in two different ways of getting it.

  Without Patch, I would never be able to keep this level of work up, not and sort Leo out too. Being one of two has made life so much easier over the last few weeks.

  This morning is another early start. The first visitor is the man from the taxidermy company, the second a journalist from a major broadsheet who is going to cover the story of the restoration, the repairs to the animals. I’m hoping it will bring in some funds: cleaning all the animals is going to be an expensive business. Structural damage to the building is covered by insurance, along with some of the cosmetic damage done by the smoke, but everything inside
is uninsured. Araminta assures me that all museums are the same, that the contents are simply too valuable – the very definition of priceless – and can’t be insured, just as they couldn’t be replaced.

  I expected someone in a brightly coloured overall, carrying an elaborate system of sprays and pokers and hoses. Instead, the taxidermy specialist is a fairly elderly man in a brown suit. He takes a notebook and a monitor of some sort out of his briefcase: other than that, he is disappointingly empty-handed. ‘Damp meter,’ he says and shuts down any attempt at conversation.

  I go back upstairs to see how Patch and Leo’s attempt to start the day has gone.

  Patch is dressed and sitting on the edge of – what has become – ‘our’ bed. Leo is sitting next to him and showing him some of the music he stores on his phone.

  ‘Lots of people know this band in America,’ I hear him say. ‘They played in England though, once, and my dad went to see them.’

  Patch nods, not ready to interrupt Leo’s enthusiasm. He looks up at me and mouths, ‘hello’ without speaking.

  Patch nods as Leo talks. He is leaning back on the bed, propping himself up on his flat palms, his legs are long enough to touch the ground.

  ‘Are you going to get dressed?’ I suggest to Leo and he ambles past me towards his room.

  My fingers are halfway across the duvet to curl round Patch’s thigh when Leo pauses in the doorway. I jump back like a teenager caught by her parents but Leo changes his mind and goes to his room.

  Patch catches my hand and circles it with his. ‘It’s okay. You’re allowed, you know.’ He leans forward and kisses me despite my having one eye on the door. ‘You’re allowed to be happy.’

  I scramble across the bed and sit up against the pillows. I lean into him. The room is warm, the smell of pollen and blossom comes in through the open window, birds are squealing and chatting under the eaves. I once longed for this life.

  ‘What shall we have for supper?’ He pushes his shoulder against mine. The curtain waves once, gently, at us and breaths of summer fill the room.

  ‘More than anything else,’ I say, ‘it’s those words that sound like heaven.’

  And then I push my head back onto the pillow and squeeze my eyes tight: I have a sudden desire to cry.

  I know that Richard was ill, that he couldn’t help the things that happened, and I appreciate with every longing atom of my soul that it wasn’t what he wanted, but that only makes me feel more guilty in moments like this. Moments when I’m so angry at him for leaving us. We should be two parents, shoulder to shoulder, squeezing each other’s hands as we watch our child becoming a man.

  In the drawer beside me is the photograph of Simon and me edging closer to each other as we pushed Richard away. I should judge Simon less: Richard wasn’t the only one who made rash decisions based on emotion. In the middle of all of this is Patch and the place he has taken up in my heart. I cannot see how to fit them all in: when they will ever snap into place together, jigsaw pieces no longer puzzled.

  Patch sees that I’m trying not to cry. He puts his hand on my shoulder, reaching across me and pulling us together. ‘Is it too much? Am I being too full-on? Tell me if I am – I need . . .’ He drops his voice. It’s so soft, almost a whisper. ‘I need to get this right.’

  ‘It’s completely right. Someone walked over my grave, that’s all.’

  ‘I haven’t been home in three weeks – I was worried I’d out-stayed my welcome.’

  I was going to talk to him about this. ‘Look, my funds are limited – as you know – once my lump sum runs out, I’m buggered for another ten years until I get my pension. We need to save every penny. It seems silly for you to shell out on Pear Tree Cottage and, to all intents and purposes, live here.’ I hope I haven’t gone too far. The walls of the bedroom don’t pulse or shiver, saying those words out loud hasn’t altered the fabric of the building.

  ‘I couldn’t agree more. But I’m in a contract – I have to buy it out if I want to leave.’

  I knew it would be more complicated: that’s always the problem with being an adult.

  ‘It’s only two months but, well, I’m a bit strapped too – I squandered my savings many years ago.’ He shrugs. ‘And I’ve not been in my teaching job long enough to build it back up.’

  ‘How much can it be? Fourteen-hundred? Fifteen?’

  ‘I can’t let you pay it anyway.’ He stands up and pulls me to my feet. ‘We’ll sort it somehow. It’s only money.’

  ‘It’s only money unless you haven’t got any,’ I say. ‘I remember the constant sick feeling of that.’

  ‘I love us,’ he laughs. ‘Sitting in a gigantic stately home and not enough money between us to pay off the rent on a tiny cottage.’

  ‘Like proper aristocracy: poor as church mice.’ I put my palm on his cheek, feel the short stubble on his skin, the strength of his jawbone beneath it, until Leo comes in with arms full of T-shirts and needs us to say which one looks best.

  *

  The journalist is a nice young woman. She looks like I imagine I did when I was young and enthusiastic and lived in a vibrant city. She wears a floaty summer tea-dress, this year’s style, and lace-up canvas sneakers. I was never that trendy.

  I walk her through from the front door – she’s here long before the ticket office is open – so she sees the museum the wrong way round.

  I can see her wondering what all the fuss is about and then growing ever more fascinated as we walk through the rooms: she gasps, like they all do, when we get to the dioramas at last. I tell her the story as we walk from room to room, everything that has happened since we got here. I tell her about Patch.

  I’ve left the book I found in the kitchen, with the old photos of Hatters, open on a desk in the library. I leave her there to look at it while I go and make us both a coffee.

  When I come back, she has the book open on the same page that fascinated me: the line-up of the family in the house.

  ‘This is fab,’ she says. ‘Do you think we could recreate this? With the modern-day family? With Ms Buchan and your boyfriend?’

  I think about how little Araminta has aged since the original picture, how strange – mystical even – that will look. ‘Sure, it’s a great idea. My son will love it. How long have I got to sort them out – and put some make-up on.’

  ‘The photographer’s due in about forty minutes. Does that work?’ I nod that it does and leave her there to make notes while I go round up the others.

  *

  Araminta is coming down the stairs as I go up. ‘The journalist, Janet – she’s very nice – wants to take pictures of us in front of the house. Would you mind?’

  ‘Of you and Leo?’

  ‘No, all of us. You.’

  She shrugs and nods. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘I found the other picture, the one in the book in the kitchen. You’re in it.’

  She looks away from me. ‘Yes,’ she says and tells me nothing.

  ‘But why? How come? Your mother isn’t in the picture.’

  She runs her fingers along the smooth wood of the banister, closes them round it. ‘I told you: the Colonel and Lady Harriet were very fond of me as a child. They included me in everything: every Christmas, every family outing. My mother couldn’t have done anywhere near as much for me – she didn’t have the money. She had a hard life, a difficult life.’

  I feel guilty now for pushing her. I’m about to make a half-baked apology when she speaks again.

  ‘There used to be a huge Christmas tree, here in the curve of the stairs, from the floor almost to the ceiling, right up past the first floor. I could put my fingers between the spindles and touch its leaves. It came from the estate, each year, the gardeners would chop it down and bring it in.’

  Another part of Hatters that I took for granted in my own life. Why did Richard never tell me?

  ‘Richard used to insist on a ridiculously big tree, every year. Always a real one.’

  She dips her head, coughs s
lightly. ‘It’s the smell. Nothing like it.’

  But I don’t think she is thinking of the smell, imagining the scent of pine needles isn’t enough to make silent tears well up the way hers have: only thinking of people you love does that.

  *

  Leo, predictably, is over the moon about being photographed. He goes straight to his room to dig for clothes in the bags that have come back from the cleaners – his original choice of T-shirt is now insufficient. I know he will wear his chequered trilby.

  ‘I don’t want to be in it.’ Patch is adamant. ‘I won’t. Sorry.’

  I’m surprised. And slightly hurt. ‘But you’re part of the story. Our story.’

  ‘I have to get to work. I don’t want to do it. I hate things like that. There are a million reasons.’ His face is set – he is bordering on angry.

  ‘It’ll look weird without you when you’re in the article.’ I’m annoyed too. This is for the house.

  He picks up his car keys. ‘Don’t keep asking me. Stop. I’m – not – going – to – do – it.’

  ‘You’re really overreacting.’

  ‘Am I?’ He pulls on his jacket. ‘I’ll see you tonight – with supper. Tell Leo to walk down to the centre when he’s finished. I’ll give him a lift home.’ Patch walks – stomps – down the corridor towards the stairs, leaving me – and the wide-eyed family portraits – wondering what on earth just happened.

  *

  The photographs are sweet. Araminta, Leo and me, standing in a row by the porticoed door and squinting slightly at the sun. It is a much smaller group than the original, depleted; an echo of how hard the museum finds it to survive without Colonel Hugo at the helm.

  At the end of the session, as he leaves for the art club, Leo announces that he has invited Sophie for dinner tonight: a tiny flicker of hope that – one day – our group might grow larger, that we are not the end.

  *