In a Good Light

by Clare Chambers

  ‘I could delay it,’ Wart replied, too quickly.

  ‘We’ll see. I don’t know about Christian . . .’

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ I asked him, remembering my manners. It occurred to me that if Penny hadn’t been here I’d have had to entertain him alone.

  ‘No. Something stronger. Is there a pub around here?’

  ‘There’s the Fox and Pheasant on the green,’ I said, pointing in the direction of the village.

  ‘Anyone want to come?’ he offered, climbing behind the wheel of the MG. All three of us glanced at the one empty seat. Penny won’t go, I thought. Not with half her hair done. ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to give Grandpa his lunch.’

  ‘Oh, well, if you can’t I might as well,’ said Penny, jumping in beside him.

  ‘What about your hair?’ I reminded her.

  Her hand strayed to the half-dozen completed braids that swung like so many fancy bell-pulls on one side of her head. ‘Oh.’ There was a moment’s hesitation while she weighed this state of asymmetry against other considerations. ‘It doesn’t matter what I look like,’ she said, laying her hand on Wart’s hairy arm. ‘It’s only Wart.’

  He gave her a sickly smile, before flipping on the ignition and reversing the car back down the driveway, treating its bodywork to a second ordeal by flail.

  30

  I WONDERED WHETHER Donovan might offer to take me for a drive at the weekend now that his car was back in service. I had a hankering to do something civilised, like take a picnic of strawberries to Hever Castle and do some sketching. What Donovan was supposed to do with himself while I sketched hadn’t quite emerged from the fog of egotism that tended to shroud the awkward details of my daydreams. In any case, when I got up on Saturday morning I found his room empty and the car gone. I knew it was something to do with that phone message I’d given him, because on Friday evening as I was on my way to the Conways to babysit, I saw him in the call box on the green. He had his back to me and didn’t see me approach, so I was able to creep up alongside and rap on the glass, making him jump. He must have been in the middle of an absorbing conversation as he shook his head irritably and waved me off. I slunk away, mortified, feeling more than ever like a silly child.

  By Saturday evening he had still not returned, so I gave Dawn a call. She was rather cool with me on account of my recent neglect, but she soon thawed when I offered to buy her a shandy and chips with my babysitting money. We sat on the wall outside Ozzie’s Fishbar in the precinct, catching up. She told me Pam was due to have her twins any day now, and was so enormous she couldn’t get down the stairs, but sat in bed all day eating digestives and rubbing baby oil into her stretch marks. ‘I’m really looking forward to being an Aunty,’ Dawn said. ‘I can’t wait to give the babies their bottles.’

  A group of lads arrived on their 50cc motorbikes and started buzzing round us like mosquitoes, revving loudly and showing off. We recognised one as a former inmate of Underwood, recently expelled. He persuaded Dawn onto the back of his bike and took her for a ride up and down the long, straight road that formed the main artery of the estate. As they disappeared one of the other lads rode over and offered to take me round the back of the garages ‘to show me something interesting’. I declined his offer without much regret. ‘Do you want to sit on my face?’ he asked. I told him it looked like somebody already had, which caused so much hilarity amongst his mates that he ended up swinging a punch and knocking one of them off balance into another, whose bike fell over, taking a scratch on its new paintwork. By the time Dawn returned, her face a mask of exhilaration and fear, quite an impressive brawl had developed, so we sloped off to the bus stop.

  ‘Don’t call me next week because I won’t be at home,’ Dawn said, as we sat waiting in the shelter. ‘We’re going to Minehead.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Dunno. Mum doesn’t even want to go in case the twins come early.’ And she uncapped a black pen she’d been carrying in her bag and drew a little row of babies’ bottles on the bench between us.

  There was still no sign of Donovan on sunday morning. I went into the kitchen where Mum was adding up the takings from last night’s inter-church Top of the Pew Quiz between St Mungo’s and Holy Trinity, which she had helped to organise. She was wearing a rubber thimble and peeling through a pile of notes, counting under her breath.

  ‘It looks like Donovan’s done his disappearing act again,’ I said, lightly. ‘I don’t think he came back last night.’

  ‘No, he told me he was going away for the weekend,’ Mum said, snapping an elastic band round the roll of notes and posting it into the charity jar along with a handful of coppers.

  ‘Oh, really? I wonder where?’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t ask. To see some friend, I think,’ said Mum, with typical vagueness. Her lack of curiosity, though it occasionally worked in my favour, could be maddening. ‘I must say,’ she went on, climbing on to a stool to put the money jar on the topmost shelf of the dresser, ‘he’s much the easiest house-guest we’ve ever had. I take back all my cynical predictions about drugs and punk rock. It’s extraordinary that he’s turned out so well, given what he had to contend with. And he’s so helpful too.’

  ‘He fixed the porch light,’ I said.

  ‘Was that him, too?’ said Mum. ‘He put a new brake cable on my bicycle the other day. I can’t tell you the difference it’s made, being able to stop.’

  I was a little hurt that Donovan hadn’t bothered to mention to me that he was going away, and I was still smarting from that brush-off at the phone box, so I decided to keep out of his way on his return. Let him seek me out if he wanted.

  Resolutions of this sort are easy to make, but the execution is another matter. It took all my determination not to engineer accidental meetings on the landing, or leave myself lying about where I knew he would have to acknowledge me. Fortunately circumstances came to the aid of my faltering willpower in the form of a series of evening babysitting engagements in the village, which kept me out of the house at the critical time. By staying in bed until after Donovan had left for work in the mornings (which was no hardship to me as I was generally fast asleep) and leaving for my evening appointments before he came home, I managed to maintain my unavailability until the following Thursday without any appearance of effort.

  On that morning I was brutally awoken just after nine thirty by a tremendous mechanical buzzing, like a chainsaw, coming from the front garden. Heart hammering, I clawed back the curtain and peered down through my open window to see Donovan taking on the brambles with a motorised strimmer, which he was wielding waist-high like a machine gun, with considerable relish. He was wearing protective earphones, DMs and a pair of jeans, amputated at the knees and fraying. I was about to withdraw, pulling the window shut while I found something suitable to pelt him with, when he glanced up and saw me. His satisfaction at my dishevelment was obvious.

  ‘I hope I didn’t disturb you,’ he called, over the roar of the strimmer.

  I opened my mouth to reply, but he turned his back on me and continued to blast the bushes. Thoroughly awake now, I washed and dressed quickly in shorts and a sleeveless yellow shirt with mother-of-pearl poppers down the front, raked my hair into position with a comb, and went down to pursue the conversation face to face.

  He had moved on to the wilderness alongside the driveway, felling the shoulder-high tangle of nettles and brambles in swinging strokes.

  ‘Why aren’t you at work?’ I demanded, a parody of a hectoring wife.

  He turned towards me, spraying my bare legs with shredded vegetation before he managed to subdue the machine. It gave a last few shudders and died.

  ‘Because I couldn’t stand being down in that tomb any longer. I don’t know how I stuck it as long as I did.’

  It emerged, under closer questioning, that his departure hadn’t been nearly so high-minded. He had in fact stuffed the smoke alarm with paper towels so that he could enjoy a peaceful fag in his bunker, a
nd set off the sprinkler system, destroying most of the maps in his care.

  ‘What’s your dad going to say?’

  He shrugged. ‘It won’t change his opinion of me. He thinks I’m a useless layabout already.’ I thought this could hardly be the case, but I didn’t bother to contradict him. ‘Anyway, it wasn’t a complete waste of time: now I know I’m never going to work in an office.’

  ‘Oh, everyone says that,’ I retorted. ‘But they all end up in offices just the same.’

  He looked at me sternly. ‘You’ve been avoiding me. Why?’

  I laughed dismissively. ‘You accused me of that before. You’re paranoid, Donovan—’

  ‘I’d just like to know what it is I’ve done.’

  ‘—and very probably delusional.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I’ve just been busy,’ I said, revelling in my own aloofness. I’d never realised the power of indifference. I felt I could ignore him for the rest of my life if it produced this sense of advantage.

  ‘Is it because I went away at the weekend without telling you?’

  ‘Oh, were you away?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, fuck off, Esther, you know I was. I had to go and see my teacher – the married one I told you about – and tell her it was all over. I thought I’d already done it, but apparently I hadn’t made myself clear enough. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You’re not the least bit interested.’

  This was ecstasy. I had been gazing serenely about me as he spoke, taking in the extent of the defoliation. ‘That’s our blackberry crop you’ve just destroyed,’ I said. ‘Now what are we going to put on our toast all winter?’

  He gave a sort of hiss of annoyance. ‘If someone doesn’t do it soon, that path will be completely blocked. Are you trying to seal yourselves off in here?’

  ‘Where did you get that thing, anyway?’ I said, pointing at the strimmer.

  ‘I hired it from a shop in Biggin Hill. It’s really quite ingenious, Esther. If there’s a little job that needs doing, you ask yourself, “Now, what tools will I need?” and if you don’t happen to have them, you go to these special shops, and for a small sum—’

  ‘All right, all right, I get the picture,’ I interrupted.

  Mum came round the side of the house wheeling her newly restored bike. ‘Oh Donovan,’ she twittered, when she saw the evidence of his labours. ‘You’re clearing those briars. What a terrific idea. Esther, why don’t you get the wheelbarrow and give him a hand?’ And she pedalled off, humming delightedly.

  I stood there for a minute, watching him work, wondering how men could be so unselfconscious about their hairy legs, until at last he turned round.

  ‘Are you going to stand there staring all day, or are you going to help?’ he asked. ‘I suppose you’re worried about breaking a fingernail.’

  I spun on my heel and strode off down the side of the house to fetch the wheelbarrow. It was parked behind the disused greenhouse, full of a foul-smelling mulch of rotted grass-cuttings. When I tipped them out I found the bottom of the barrow had practically rusted through. The front tyre was completely flat. I was about to start pushing it up the garden nevertheless, when I remembered Donovan’s earlier remarks. What tools do I need for this job? I asked myself. A pump! came the answer, quick as a flash. I found what I was looking for in a box of spanners in the woodshed, and with only mild exertion on my part the tyre was soon full of air and fixed. I felt quite immoderately pleased with myself for this accomplishment, and rejoined Donovan in the front garden, ready to demonstrate further resourcefulness if required.

  ‘You’ll be needing those.’ He pointed to a pair of cracked leather gardening gloves on the stone planter, as I dithered beside a heap of slayed nettles. He had laid to waste one entire border and was about to start on the opposite side, refilling the strimmer’s fuel chamber from a dented tin of two-stroke.

  It was only ten o’clock in the morning, but the sun was already high. There was no breeze and the air was treacly with trapped heat. Clouds of gnats fizzed above the rhododendrons. The black metal handles of the wheelbarrow were hot to the touch. He’ll burn, I thought, looking at Donovan’s bare back. Serve him right.

  The strimmer’s noise made conversation impossible, so we worked without talking. While Donovan continued his massacre in the driveway, I raked and gathered, clearing the beds and transporting barrowloads of wilting vegetation to the mound behind the greenhouse in the furthest corner of the back garden. In spite of the gloves and my careful handling, the brambles had a way of springing back to snag me with their spikes. They seemed possessed by a devilish spirit, and my inner arms were soon scored with deep scratches.

  Once the worst of the weeds had been hewn to ground level, Donovan began to dig over the soil to get at the roots, now and then going in with his bare hands for a tug of war. Even through the silence I could still hear the phantom wail of the strimmer ringing in my ears. Occasionally amidst the fallen debris I would come across something worth saving – a wild strawberry plant, or some flowering nasturtiums – and work carefully around them, marvelling at their survival in that choking darkness.

  One victim of Donovan’s indiscriminate slaughter was a single raspberry cane, hung with fruit. ‘Whoops,’ he said, retrieving it from the barrow. ‘Casualty of war.’ He stripped off the berries and offered them to me in a hand ingrained with soil. I wasn’t sure whether he meant me to take them indoors to be washed or eat them then and there. But a little dirt was nothing to me, who was used to snail shells in the blackberry crumble, and besides, I thought intimations of hygiene might detract from the spontaneity of the gesture. I helped myself, fumbling in my oversize leather gloves, and ended up squashing a soft raspberry against the front of my yellow shirt, leaving a streak of red, like a knife-wound in my chest. Donovan laughed. My hand itched to slap him, but I was interrupted by an apparition in pyjamas, trilby and anorak, walking unsteadily around the side of the house, tic-tacs rattling.

  ‘Grandpa,’ I said, intercepting him in the driveway. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’ve got to go and meet Roland.’ (His brother – long dead.) ‘I must go or I’ll be late.’ He stared, perplexed, at his watchless wrist for a moment or two. ‘Where’s the Norton?’

  ‘We haven’t got one,’ I said. I hated it when he got like this. It always seemed to happen when I was in charge. ‘Roland’s dead,’ I added, for good measure.

  ‘What?’ He gave me a hard look. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘I’m Esther,’ I said, as he set off again, doddery but determined.

  Donovan, who had been leaning on his fork, watching this, came over and took Grandpa’s arm, and gently but firmly turned him round.

  ‘I don’t think it’s time to go yet,’ he said.

  ‘Not time?’ said Grandpa. ‘Am I early?’

  ‘Yes. And if you go, there’ll be no one to keep an eye on the foxes.’

  ‘Those foxes, yes. Have they been giving you any trouble? They’re vermin, you know.’

  ‘Yes. They need watching.’

  Grandpa relaxed for a moment, then a thought struck him. ‘Is it time to go now?’

  ‘No.’ Donovan led him back into the house, and soon had him installed in a chair overlooking the garden, where he could guard us from the depredations of vermin.

  ‘You’re a good lad, Christian,’ Grandpa said, patting Donovan’s arm. ‘But that ladyfriend of yours,’ he added in a confidential tone, ‘is a trollop.’

  ‘What on earth did he mean by that?’ I said, when we were in the kitchen, enjoying long drinks of water. We were still laughing about it half an hour later. Every time I composed myself, Donovan would rasp ‘trollop!’ in a menacing voice, and that would set me off again.

  By mid-afternoon, the front garden was transformed. The driveway was cleared and wide enough to admit a truck unscathed. The weed beds were dug over, and the whole area was bright and open. I could have done with a rest, but Donovan had the bit between his teet
h now. While I forced the rotary mower over the patch of overgrown lawn between the rhododendrons and the gravel sweep, its blunt blades gnawing at the long grass and scalping the bumps, Donovan disappeared with the barrow on another errand. He returned with it laden with old bricks. ‘There’s a whole pile of these behind the shed,’ he said. ‘Do you think they’re being saved for anything?’ He had taken the opportunity to stick his head under the outdoor tap, and his wet hair clung together in spikes, dripping clean trails through the dust and grime on his chest.

  I gave a snort. ‘I doubt it. They’ve probably been lying there since whatever they used to be fell down.’

  ‘Good. I’m going to use them to edge the flowerbeds. You can go and get another barrowful when you’ve finished that, if you like.’ And he started unloading them in a neat criss-cross stack.

  A moment later we heard the sound of a car engine, and the yellow Mini came bouncing up the drive towards us, raising clouds of dust. Penny jumped out, looking pristine in a mint-green halter dress and white sandals. She had the sort of even strapless tan that results from regular devotions on a sunbed. Someone else had completed the braiding job I’d begun on her hair: the beads clattered like distant applause as she walked. ‘Wow!’ she said, surveying the results of our labour. ‘What a transformation.’ We fell back, grubby serfs, to let her pass. ‘I’m just going to pick up some things of Christian’s,’ she explained, heading for the house. ‘Don’t let me interrupt.’

  ‘A goddess has come amongst us,’ I observed, not entirely ironically.

  ‘Trollop!’ Donovan hissed, rolling his eyes wrathfully, and I had only just mastered my giggles by the time Penny reappeared, carrying Christian’s swimming gear and a change of clothing.

  ‘God, I don’t know how you can work in this heat,’ she said, watching my exertions with the lawnmower. ‘I’m good for nothing when it’s over eighty.’ She got back in the Mini, yelping as her bare legs contacted the simmering vinyl. She solved the problem by sitting on Christian’s shirt, and drove off, spraying gravel.