In a Good Light

by Clare Chambers

  Once Aunty Barbara had been divested of this pelt and a number of interesting packages she treated each of us in turn to a bony one-armed hug. In her free hand was a smouldering cigarette in a tortoiseshell holder, like the back end of a fountain pen, which she continued to suck long after the butt was ground out in a saucer.

  ‘Donovan, have you been a massive nuisance?’ she said to her son by way of greeting.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Mum, seconding Donovan’s grunt of denial. ‘He’s been a treasure. Hasn’t he, Gordon?’

  Dad nodded vigorously. ‘He’s welcome here any time. Any time,’ he said, laying his hand on Donovan’s head.

  ‘Well, it was very good of you. I can’t tell you,’ said Aunty Barbara. ‘You’ll have to let me have your two in return some time.’ And she gave Christian and me a menacing wink with her twiggy eyelashes, while Mum and Dad exchanged glances.

  There were presents next, which was the main thing: a Mary Quant doll in a black and white suit for me, a dartboard for Christian, and a bottle of vodka for my teetotal parents, which would go straight in the box for the tombola the minute Aunty Barbara had gone.

  ‘Have you got anything for me?’ Donovan asked, when the bags were emptied and we’d said our thank yous.

  ‘Don’t be so grasping,’ said his mother. ‘As a matter of fact I have, but it’s at home.’

  ‘Why didn’t you bring it?’

  ‘Because it’s a fish tank, that’s why. Satisfied?’

  ‘A fish tank! With fish in it?’

  ‘No – with parrots in it. Of course fish, you dunce.’

  ‘Oh, cool.’

  As soon as introductions were over and Christian and I had endured Aunty Barbara’s compliments on the rapidity of our growth and striking looks, we were allowed to escape upstairs with our gifts.

  ‘She’s gorgeous,’ Aunty Barbara said to Mum before we were quite out of earshot. ‘I wish I’d had a girl.’

  In his bedroom Christian removed his framed scraper-board etching of a hedgehog from the wall and hung the new dartboard in its place. Pretty soon the surrounding wallpaper – and even the ceiling – was pitted with tiny holes, evidence of our enthusiasm and inaccuracy. Occasionally one of the darts would strike the metal frame on the board and come flying back to spear the floorboards at our feet.

  ‘Does anyone know the rules of darts?’ Christian said after a while, when he had become slightly more proficient at hitting the target. We looked blank.

  ‘Hey, Esther, you could stand against the board and we’ve got to throw the darts around your head without hitting you,’ Donovan suggested.

  ‘No way,’ I protested. ‘You can’t even throw straight.’

  ‘We’d blindfold you so you wouldn’t see them coming,’ he added kindly.

  ‘It might be a bit dangerous to use a real person,’ Christian conceded. His glance fell on my new Mary Quant doll, still in her cellophane box. I could well imagine the fate that would be in store for her. Donovan had already told me that he had set fire to his Action Men because he liked to watch them melt.

  ‘I’m going downstairs to talk to the grown-ups,’ I said, snatching Mary up and taking her with me.

  ‘Spoilsport,’ said Donovan.

  ‘Girl,’ said Christian.

  Mum, Dad and Aunty Barbara were sitting out in the garden drinking iced coffee. Aunty Barbara had the comfortable sun-lounger, which always had to be given up for visitors or the elderly. Mum and Dad were sitting – very carefully – on the lethal folding deckchairs which, we were often informed, were liable to collapse flat and amputate the limbs of the occupant without warning.

  ‘It’s good to see you looking so well,’ Mum was saying to Aunty Barbara, whose face was half hidden by a giant pair of mirrored sunglasses.

  ‘It’s because I’m working again,’ she replied. ‘I know it’s only a tiny job, this radio thing, but it’s work. And I have to work.’ She plugged another cigarette into the tortoiseshell holder and lit it, drawing deeply.

  ‘There’s always unpaid work, between whiles,’ Mum suggested. ‘You could do meals on wheels. Or prison visiting.’

  ‘Prison visiting? Does that still go on? I thought it went out with the Victorians. Oh here’s this gorgeous creature,’ she went on, seizing one of my hands in hers and crushing it with her ringed fingers. Her flattery made me squirm: Mum wasn’t given to praising our appearance: when pressed she might say that I looked perfectly acceptable, but that was as far as she’d go.

  ‘Has she started ballet yet?’ Aunty Barbara went on. ‘I’ve still got all my old tutus in a trunk in the loft. I don’t know what I’m saving them for.’

  ‘Esther’s not really a ballet girl,’ Dad explained. ‘She’s more . . .’

  ‘Outdoorsy,’ Mum suggested.

  ‘A tomboy, are you?’ said Aunty Barbara. ‘Well. Never mind.’ She seemed to lose interest in me after that, though she kept my hand grasped in hers so that I was forced to squat on the grass beside her chair. Presently she turned to Mum and Dad. ‘You’ve heard that Alan and his new wife have just had a baby girl, I suppose?’

  ‘No, we hadn’t. We’re not in contact any more,’ Dad replied. This seemed to please Aunty Barbara.

  ‘I only found out because a letter came from Alan for Donovan while he was away and when I opened it a photo fell out,’ she went on. ‘I must say it gave me a jolt.’

  ‘Well, that’s what comes of opening other people’s mail,’ said Dad, affronted on Donovan’s behalf.

  ‘I thought it might be urgent,’ Aunty Barbara replied, waving away his objection with a plume of smoke. ‘She’s ever so fair, even blonder than Donovan was.’ She dropped my hand to reach for her handbag. ‘I’ve got the photo here somewhere. Do you want to look?’

  ‘Not especially,’ said Mum.

  Aunty Barbara produced it anyway and wafted it about, before dropping it back in the bag. ‘A new baby. At his age. Well good luck to them,’ she said, in a voice that suggested she wished them anything but.

  ‘It must be difficult for you,’ Mum said in a gentle voice.

  Aunty Barbara shook her head and smoke streamed from her nostrils. ‘I’m fine. Fine,’ she insisted, mashing her cigarette into the lawn. ‘Donovan doesn’t know yet. I’m wondering how best to tell him.’

  ‘He surely knows they were expecting?’ said Mum.

  ‘He never told me. And he hasn’t seen them for five months. She might not have been showing much then. And he’s not terribly observant,’ said Aunty Barbara, untying and retying her plait. I wanted to ask who they were talking about, but I knew from experience that the minute you reminded grown-ups you were there listening, they invariably started talking about something less interesting. It was better to sit quietly and pretend to be away with the fairies.

  ‘Perhaps you should sit him down when you get home and show him the letter and photo,’ Mum advised. ‘Maybe encourage him to send a little card or gift.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dad agreed. ‘Try to present it as something positive. For his sake.’

  Aunty Barbara nodded slowly as she digested this advice. There was a commotion from inside and Donovan and Christian came crashing through the kitchen door clutching a pair of chewed tennis rackets in wooden presses.

  ‘Can we put a net up?’ Christian asked as they approached.

  ‘Not right where we’re sitting,’ Mum said. ‘Over there.’ She pointed to the wilderness beyond the oak tree, a sloping triangle of knee-length grass and nettles. Christian rolled his eyes.

  ‘Why not just come and have a drink?’ Dad suggested. ‘We’ll be having lunch in a moment.’ He poured out two more glasses of iced coffee and the boys flopped down on the lawn beside me. In the stillness and silence that accompanied their drinking, Aunty Barbara twitched the photograph out of her bag and across to Donovan. ‘You’ve got a new baby sister,’ she said, in the tone of voice you might use to tell someone they had an earwig on their shirt.

  Mum and Dad froze, their glass
es halfway to their lips, in a pantomime of shock and dismay.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Donovan, suspicious that he was the butt of some private joke. He picked up the photo and frowned. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Your sister. Half-sister, I should say. Daddy and Suzie have had a little girl.’

  Donovan looked from Aunty Barbara to Mum and Dad for confirmation that this was true. Their stricken faces cracked into reassuring smiles and Donovan’s cheeks flared.

  ‘That’s jolly nice, isn’t it,’ said Dad at last.

  ‘You’ll be able to take her out in the pram when you go and stay,’ Mum added. ‘I’m sure you’ll be a great help to them.’

  ‘Oh, God, they won’t want Donovan around yet,’ said his mother. Donovan’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Not right away, perhaps. But soon, surely?’ said Mum. Her voice sounded unusually high and bright.

  ‘Well, don’t you want to know her name?’ Aunty Barbara asked.

  Donovan shrugged.

  ‘It’s Pippa.’

  ‘Oh.’ Donovan gave an indifferent grunt, then seemed to become absorbed in tightening the catch on the racket press, and the subject was dropped.

  ‘He seemed to take the news okay,’ Aunty Barbara hissed to Mum as we made our way in for lunch, but Mum’s lips formed a tight, straight line and she said nothing.

  When lunch was over and the grown-ups had drunk their coffee, it was time to say goodbye. Dad went upstairs to help Donovan bring Chewy down, and I followed to check that he hadn’t left anything behind, or worse, packed something of mine by mistake.

  They were standing by the window when I walked in, and Dad had one arm round Donovan’s shoulder. ‘Don’t upset yourself, old fellow,’ Dad was saying. ‘You know you’re welcome to come and stay any time. You’ve only got to ask.’

  Donovan drew his sleeve across his eyes. ‘Do you really mean that or are you just saying it?’

  ‘Of course I mean it,’ Dad laughed. ‘Try me and see.’

  ‘People always promise they’re going to do things and they never do and when you remind them they just get cross and say, “Don’t keep going on about it!”’ He sniffed deeply, his green-glass eyes shining like wet stones, and then turned away, embarrassed when he saw me standing there.

  ‘In this house a promise is a promise,’ Dad said. He picked up the cage, the large sack of sawdust, and the smaller bag of hamster food and left Donovan to carry his case.

  ‘We could write to each other,’ I suggested. ‘I can do joined-up.’

  Donovan nodded, without much enthusiasm. From down below came the sound of Aunty Barbara revving up the car. ‘People always say that,’ he said morosely. ‘But they never do.’ And he clumped down the stairs, suitcase in hand, and out of the door without a backward glance.

  Before the dust had even settled in the lane I was peeling off a sheet of Mum’s Three Candlesticks, just to prove him wrong.

  Dear Donovan

  You see I am writing like I said I would and you didn’t believe me.

  I stopped, stuck. There wasn’t anything to tell him as nothing had happened since his departure, so I left the sheet on my bedside table, intending to add further news as it occurred, over the coming days.

  Then term started again and life seemed to change gear, and memories of Donovan and the summer holidays began to fade like the aftermath of a pleasant dream whose details can’t quite be recalled. After a while I started to use the piece of paper as a bookmark to keep it flat, and then one day I came home to find that Mum had had a purge of overdue library books, and that Mrs Pepperpot and my unfinished letter were now back on a shelf somewhere in Junior Lending, and that was that.

  10

  THE NEXT OCCUPANT of the guest room was a clergyman called Mr Spragg, an old acquaintance of Dad’s from theological college. He had a parish somewhere in the north of England, but had come south on retreat. Who or what he was retreating from was not explained at the time: Dad hadn’t been in contact with him since they were ordained, but a mutual friend, knowing of Mr Spragg’s situation and my parents’ generosity to the Less Fortunate, had put them in touch again.

  At first he kept to his room almost as much as Cindy, only venturing out to attend Matins, mealtimes, or to take long restorative walks on the common. Christian and I had no particular desire for this arrangement to change, as he was not of much interest to us, and was, besides, rather alarming-looking. He was small and twitchy, with wild, wiry eyebrows and still more of these fibres sprouting from his ears and nostrils, and a perpetual fleck of mobile saliva on his lower lip, which held us mesmerised as he spoke. Christian – always a master of the apt nickname – referred to him privately as Reverend Spitfire, and enlivened many dull afternoons imitating his twitch. Mum caught us laughing about him one day when he was out, and sprang to his defence.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so critical, Christian. He’s done nothing to you.’

  ‘He gobs at us every time he speaks.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?’ she demanded – her usual response to loose talk.

  It was Reverend Spitfire who inadvertently set me on the road to becoming an illustrator. Mum and Dad had, of course, given my drawing every encouragement by displaying the best of my early scribbles and daubs on a large cork board in the kitchen. But they never took the old pictures down and replaced them, instead pinning fresh ones on top, layer after haphazard layer, until the whole structure became rather unstable and a gust of wind from the garden door could bring a flurry of pages down like autumn leaves. Sometimes the fallen pictures would lie on the floor for some days before being put back. Occasionally they would vanish altogether and, when questioned, Mum would grow vague.

  One rainy Saturday in November when it was too wet for his walk, Mr Spragg took the unusual step of joining us in the sitting room. Perhaps he wanted company, or, more likely, a share of the coal fire, the only source of heat in the house. It was getting to the time of year when the toilet bowl froze over and ice formed on the inside of the windows, and we had to keep our clothes clean for twice as long because Mum couldn’t get anything dry.

  Dad was in the armchair doing the Times bridge problem. Mum was in the window seat darning a pair of knickers and I was doing a pencil sketch (from memory) of a fox that had been slinking across the garden that morning. Christian, oblivious to the cold, was up in his room playing darts, his favourite wet-weather activity. Overhead I could hear the thud, thud, as the points struck home.

  When Mr Spragg came in Dad immediately laid aside his newspaper and challenged him to a game of backgammon. This was apparently how they had whiled away the long evenings at college when not studying. Mum put down her darning and went to make tea.

  I watched Mr Spragg set out his counters on the board, his pointed nose quivering as though he was an animal following a trail. When I looked down at my sketch of the fox the resemblance was striking: it was something to do with the muzzle. I added a pair of shaggy eyebrows and tufts of hair at ears and nostrils. Then I did a stupid thing: I gave the fox a dog-collar, just like the one Mr Spragg had been wearing on his arrival. He had told Mum and Dad he always wore it on train journeys because it guaranteed him a compartment to himself, and they had laughed. I was so engrossed, shading in the body and drawing a bushy tail with hundreds of flicks of my sharp pencil, that I didn’t notice Mr Spragg approaching the table until he was standing over me. Before I had a chance to cover the picture he said, ‘May I?’ and tweaked it from beneath my fingers. I cringed, waiting for the explosion: I knew, without needing to be told, that I had done something the adult world would see as rude, and that Mum and Dad would not be pleased. But Mr Spragg failed to explode.

  ‘This is rather good,’ he tittered, handing the picture to Dad. ‘Look at that, Gordon. She’s got some talent, this girl.’

  Dad scrutinised the drawing for a second or two, taking in the likeness
, and a frown gathered on his forehead. ‘Esther, this is clever, but it’s not very polite,’ he said, but I could tell he wasn’t really cross.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Mr Spragg. ‘I’m flattered. May I keep it?’

  I hesitated, uncertain of the polite response, and appealed to Dad for a ruling.

  Mr Spragg must have misinterpreted my hesitation as he whipped out his wallet and handed me a pound note before either of us could speak. ‘Of course, artists must be paid for their work,’ he said. ‘Or how can they live?’

  For the first time I started to warm to the man. After all, he couldn’t help having an overactive salivary gland, as Mum had explained in his defence.

  ‘You must put your signature in the corner,’ he went on, ‘so that future generations will know it is an original Fairchild.’

  My first commercial transaction as an artist unfortunately proved to be my last for some while. Although, in the first surge of enthusiasm following that unexpected sale my output trebled overnight and I produced quality caricatures of the rest of the household, they were annoyingly reluctant to spend.

  ‘I’m not doing this for fun, you know,’ I complained to Dad when I had filled an entire pad with unsold sketches.

  ‘In that case don’t do it,’ was his stern advice.

  My success, however short-lived, served at least to inspire Christian to go out and make his fortune. Having lost the argument over pocket money, and failed to fleece Donovan at cards, Christian had been forced over the course of the year to consider other sources of revenue. All our parents’ warnings and anxieties about the boys at Turton’s were proving to be well founded. Christian’s scholarship, far from being a badge of distinction, was a mark of poverty and therefore a source of shame. Every day brought fresh examples of his schoolmates’ material advantages and his own humiliation.