by Clare Boyd
Dad grabbed me by my belt loop and held me back. ‘Why is he glad?’ he whispered.
‘Dunno,’ I said, shrugging, looking down at my feet and hurrying to follow Lucas to the old barn.
We stood in a line in front of it, my breathing rapid as though I had been running. I was in the middle of the two men, feeling giddy, sensing right to my bones the different energy of both, the power emanating from them; recognising their lifelong influence on me.
I chewed the side of my tongue and admired the picturesque old barn, holding back a rising glee, hoping my father would not ask too many questions later.
Lucas checked his watch again, sighing. ‘Elizabeth will be here any minute.’
The magazine photograph of her came into my mind. After years of imagining what she was like in person, I felt suddenly impatient to meet her and frustrated that she was late.
We went around to the back of the barn, where a man was up a ladder chipping out loose mortar from between the flint bricks. But I was distracted by an abandoned camper van parked under the shadow of a crooked tree. The vehicle was incongruous, an irregularity in the grounds, and I was quite shocked by the sight of it. It was run-down and lopsided due to a flat tyre. The windows were green with moss and grime. Then I noticed a pair of black boots next to the fold-out steps up to the door, and I felt uneasy. I did not want to believe that this heap was the camper van my father had talked about this morning, where Agata and Piotr lived. Surely the Huxleys would not allow anyone to sleep there while there were spare rooms in the huge, luxurious house a few yards away.
‘Hello, Piotr! When d’you think you’ll be done with the repointing?’ Dad called out.
At first I thought Piotr was hunching over, until I realised his shoulders were set in a rounded, cowed hook over his narrow hips, like he had been carrying two heavy pails of water all his life. His baggy T-shirt did not hide his sinewy arms.
‘Hello,’ he said in a thick accent, ruffling the stiff spikes of his hair. ‘I spend … London … two night … I finish this next day … no, no, sorry … the week next.’
Lucas looked to my father, who said, ‘You’re working two days in London next week, is that right? So you’ll be finished with this next week. Yes?’
Piotr studied my father’s lips as though they might offer up the answers after they had stopped moving. Finally he said, ‘Yes.’
‘Great. Thanks, Piotr,’ Lucas said, looking at his phone. ‘Great work. So, once he’s finished the pointing, you can get on with the borders. Elizabeth has some—’ he began. Then, ‘Elizabeth! Darling!’
From around the corner, Elizabeth appeared. She was smaller than I had imagined, much shorter than Lucas, but their colouring was alike: a blond, blue-eyed brother and sister rather than husband and wife. Her short gold-spun hair was swept into a side parting. A sea-wave curl across her forehead was lacquered, tamed and tucked behind her delicate ears. Her diminutive soft features and sleepy eyelids gave her face an old-fashioned prettiness. She didn’t seem to belong to real life. More suited to a black-and-white film or a Man Ray photograph, there was something watchable about her, something that made me stare, something that caused a sting of terrible envy, and fascination.
‘Tell them about your vision,’ Lucas said, gazing at her. ‘She’s going to transform this shit-heap for the Seacarts, aren’t you, darling?’
Elizabeth offered her hand. ‘Heather. Hello, I’m Elizabeth Huxley.’ She held a smile for me, with seeming effort, but her fingers crushed my knuckles together. ‘Bo and Walt Seacart will be staying here as our guests at the summer party,’ she explained.
‘Ah,’ I said, imagining I should know who the Seacarts were.
‘Do pass on our warm regards to your mother. We miss her here already.’
‘Thank you, I will,’ I replied, but I did not feel her warmth.
‘Right, I’m off,’ Lucas said. ‘I’ll be in my study if anyone needs me.’ He sped away, tapping at his phone.
As soon as he was gone, Elizabeth dropped her smile and Piotr climbed back up his ladder.
‘Tell me what you want in these beds,’ she said. Her manner was disinterested enough to be rude.
My father’s arms remained crossed over his chest. ‘Lucas told us you had some ideas, Mrs Huxley.’
Elizabeth visibly shivered. ‘You go first, Gordon.’
Dad began a monologue about the creative tension between the formal hedge structures and the more exuberant plantings; how the spring flowers and plants were currently being replaced by summer flowering ones; how the colour in the long borders should complement the strong shapes of the perennials, bragging about what already existed instead of helping her to decide what should be planted. In response, Elizabeth stifled a yawn. I could tell that neither of them knew what to do about the beds. There was a passive, distant tension between them that I didn’t understand, as though they had once been angry at each other but had given up actively showing it. Nervously I spoke up in my mother’s place, wondering if she had mediated between them before.
‘Perhaps some yellow colours here would look good against the brick. Something like a “Canadale Gold”, or some spiraea “Gold Mound”? And then some tall shots of colour, purple flowers maybe, to break it up, like the Lupinus polyphyllus?’
Elizabeth handed me her phone and said, ‘Show me what they look like.’
On her screen saver, there was a black-and-white photograph of her and her two children, round-cheeked and fair-haired, pressing kisses onto her while she laughed. The sparkle in her eyes surprised me, and I wondered where it had gone today.
I searched for images of each flower online and showed her.
‘Hmm. Gordon, what do you think?’
Holding my breath, I waited for my father to respond, fearing I might have spoken out of turn, undermining him on his territory. His large finger passed back and forth across his bottom lip. ‘Yes, that could work.’
‘That’s settled then. If you could price it up for us?’ Elizabeth said. ‘Obviously Lucas will have to sign off on it.’
‘You realise we won’t be able to plant anything until the renovations are finished, Mrs Huxley? When are your guests due?’ my father said.
Elizabeth looked at him and then away, at Piotr, who was further up his ladder, chipping away at the cement.
‘The fourth of July,’ she said. ‘If they arrive at all …’ Her gaze seemed to melt away.
I was already intrigued by the Seacarts, about why they commanded this level of attention to detail. Any guests staying at our flat in Rye, however loved they were, would be lucky to get an extra pillow for the couch.
‘Eight weeks away. That gives us plenty of time to order anything we won’t have time to grow.’ Dad nodded.
‘Hmm?’ she murmured.
It seemed we had lost her.
* * *
On the way to the garden centre, Dad was whistling. I didn’t want to spoil his good mood, but I had many questions.
‘What’s the story with that camper van, Dad?’
‘Put your feet down,’ he said, taking his hand off the wheel to hit my boot, prompting me to remove them from the dashboard.
‘What’s it doing there?’
‘I told you this morning. Agata and Piotr live in it.’
‘No way.’ I refused to believe that Lucas would allow anyone to live like that.
‘Yes way.’
‘You’re saying that they live full-time in that thing?’
‘Piotr works on a construction site in London two nights a week, but Agata lives there full-time.’
‘It isn’t fit for anyone to live in.’
‘Did you go inside?’
‘Course not.’
‘How do you know it’s not fit to live in then?’
‘You’re saying it might be like a wee cosy love nest inside, like a George Clarke small space?’ I cried, incredulous.
‘Who’s George Clarke?’ he said irritably.
‘Never mind
.’
Through a tight jaw he said, ‘It’s none of our business. Agata and Piotr can choose to live how they want.’
‘They’re choosing that?’
‘There are plenty of jobs for someone with Piotr’s skills. They don’t have to work for the Huxleys.’
There was a pause. ‘But why wouldn’t the Huxleys put them up in their massive house?’
‘It’s none of our business,’ he repeated, cranking the van into fifth gear. The tools rattled in the back as we charged up the motorway.
Grumpily I mumbled, ‘Lucas had better be paying them well.’
Without warning, my father’s mood turned. ‘Of course he bloody well does,’ he hissed.
Shocked by this switch in him, I clung to the side of the bench seat. The traffic queue arrived at our bumper and he slammed on the brakes. I jerked forward. We were now stationary.
‘How dare you judge those people for how they live?’ he hissed.
‘I wasn’t judging them.’
His voice grew angry. ‘Your problem is you’ve had everything given to you on a goddam plate.’
‘Dad, please. I didn’t mean to sound like … I do know how lucky I am,’ I said.
My cheeks were smarting, as though he had struck me. I knew that ingratitude riled my father more than any other vice. A few years ago, he had taken me to watch the demolition of the Red Road flats in Glasgow, where he had grown up. ‘That was ours, at the top,’ he had said, pointing up. In the fierce wind, we had craned our necks to stare at the six twenty-eight-storey buildings wrapped in red tarpaulin, lurid against the white sky, emblematic of the social housing failures of the 1960s – and of my father’s brutal childhood. He had described the coffin-like lifts and the views to Ben Lomond from the top; the suicides, and how the asbestos in the walls had killed his mother. As the buildings had collapsed to dust, he had stared on, steely-eyed, squeezing my hand until I thought it would drop off, insisting, as his father had done before him, that the flats were better than the slums they had moved from. He had been aggressively proud and deeply sad, and for the first time, I had understood the deprivations of his upbringing.
‘Then remember this: we’re a whisker away from living in that thing with them. Get it? Your mum and I are too old to look for other work. We’ve been there too long. We couldn’t cope with the upheaval of starting on a new garden. Or working on smaller gardens. It’d be back-breaking for us, especially for your mum.’
‘The Huxleys would never let you go.’
He ignored me, continuing on one track. ‘Your mum loves that garden. It’s her whole life.’
‘I know that.’
‘And there isn’t a damned thing we can do about that Polish couple. They have food on their table and a roof over their heads. I’d call that a good start.’
‘Sorry.’ I stared out of the window. My hands were sweating. I squeezed up against the door. The landscape blurred through my tears.
He parked up outside the garden centre. As I sat there fiddling with the elastic of my jacket, he put his arm around me and kissed me on the side of my head with a clumsy burst of affection. He had not embraced me for years, and I tried to appreciate it, but my return hug was stiff. I felt dirtied by his attempts to woo me back, and as off-kilter as that camper van had been.
He opened the van door and turned back to me before jumping down. ‘Don’t look so glum. I know you mean well, love, but Agata and Piotr do all right, believe me.’
My thoughts rewound, and I contemplated Elizabeth Huxley. Having met her, I wasn’t so sure about her. She had been cold towards my father today, and oddly separate. Money changes people, my father had said. Perhaps he didn’t like her and was protective towards Lucas, whom he had seen grow up in that garden. As an adult, Lucas had been loyal to him, and as far as I was aware, my parents had been treated like family members.
And then there was me. How had he treated me?
A lost image came to mind, of his torso, blue-white from the water, gliding through pockets of air as he twisted to the surface. I closed my eyes, trying to hold on to the memory, see more than the flash of him.
‘The camper van’s probably nice inside,’ I murmured, deciding I might check for myself tomorrow, hoping there would be a cosy, well-maintained interior, clinging to my certain belief that Lucas would look after his staff properly.
If I discovered otherwise, I feared it would cast shadows over my deeply settled understanding of who Lucas was; and I didn’t want to doubt him, as it would call into question what had happened between us all those years ago, when I had been a starry-eyed girl who had hung on his every word.
Six
With the phone at her ear, Elizabeth listened to the series of long beeps from the States, and her stomach fluttered. This was the vital first phase of Project Party. Droplets of water rained down on her. She looked on from her sunlounger at Isla and Hugo playing in the pool with Agata.
Bo answered. ‘Elizabeth, honey, can I call you back in two?’
Elizabeth’s heart sank. It was the third time in as many days that she had tried to get hold of Bo. If she couldn’t talk to her today, Lucas’s dream of getting the Seacarts to come to their summer party would be over.
‘Sure, sure, I’m on the mobile,’ she said, and hung up, unwrapping a sweetie and placing it on her tongue.
Without Bo, there would be no point to a party. If there was no party, there would be no deal. If there was no deal, Lucas would be angry with her. If Lucas was angry with her, Isla would go to boarding school in September. If Isla went to boarding school … Piotr came through the gate, halting her catastrophising. She brought her knees up to her chest. Damp patches formed under her arms.
After he had disappeared into the pool shed, she loosened the scarf around her neck and watched her children play. She could not expose her own body in a swimsuit yet. The bruising on her neck was at the yellow stage, looking worse than it had when it was at its most painful. If the children saw the marks, they would ask her how she’d hurt herself.
The pool water moved and shone, but under the surface many of the mosaic tiles were missing and the grout was mouldy. The children didn’t care. Their glee rang through the air as Agata sprayed them with the water gun. Elizabeth noticed her beaming at Piotr when he emerged from the shed with a circular saw, and she realised it was the first time she had seen the girl smile in three days.
Piotr said something to her in Polish, and she wiggled her hips at him. Her belly-button ring jingled in the hollow between her hip bones. Elizabeth watched Piotr’s eyes on his girlfriend’s body and remembered Lucas’s comment about her weight. Was it normal for him to notice? How much else did he notice about her?
Her mobile chirruped, saving her from her thoughts. She took a deep breath, heady with relief, and picked up.
‘Hello?’
‘It’s Bo. Sorry about that, Elizabeth. My dog-walker just arrived and I had to pay him.’
‘No problem at all. How are you?’
‘Actually, super-positive at the moment. How about you, honey?’
Elizabeth watched Hugo lose his balance on the loose paving slab at the deep end. The dilapidation of the pool was her fault. They had not been able to afford to renovate it after the overspend on the house build. Forgetting she was on the phone for a second, she sucked in her breath, ready to dart over to him. Hugo corrected himself and performed a perfect dive.
She let her breath out. ‘Quite well really.’
‘You don’t sound so sure.’
Elizabeth smiled. ‘I’m quite sure.’
‘I can never tell with you British.’
She decided to broach the subject of her call straight away. From the handful of times she had met Bo, Elizabeth had gleaned that she did not like sycophants, and she would be too astute for rambling diversions.
‘I was calling to find out your plans for London. I heard horrible rumours that Walt might be cancelling his trip in July.’
Bo’s accent took
on an English twang. ‘Tell me about the weather first.’
‘Quite lovely. The sun is out for a change and the kids are back from school and swimming in the pool. I’m going in for a dip in a minute.’
‘Oh, you’re so cruel. I’m stuck in the hot city when we should be by the ocean.’
‘Why are you still in the city?’
‘One of Walt’s functions.’ Bo sighed. ‘He’s being such a jerk about it. I’d have kicked up a stink if I didn’t have to catch a friend’s exhibition anyhow.’
‘There’s a Basquiat exhibition on at the Barbican in the summer. It’ll be worth seeing when you’re here. You and Walt are coming to the UK, aren’t you?’
There was a pause.
‘We’re not clear on that yet.’
Elizabeth’s chest tightened.
‘You got our summer party “save the date” email, didn’t you?’
‘I did. But most years we go to the Hamptons on Independence Day weekend.’
‘Maybe we’ll have some red, white and blue fireworks in your honour.’
‘Sounds fun,’ Bo murmured.
‘Benjamin Healing will be there,’ Elizabeth coaxed, wondering if someone like Benjamin Healing could ever be persuaded to leave E7.
Bo laughed. ‘Will your brother be there?’
‘Of course. They’re still great friends.’
Elizabeth had first met Bo at a Benjamin Healing exhibition sponsored by J. P. Morgan at the Max Wigram gallery in London. Bo had attached herself to her side and fired off questions about her brother, Jude, whose talent she had recognised when she’d seen his oil painting triptych exhibited alongside Healing’s work. That night, Jude had sworn too much but had spoken about his work with elegance and intensity, and Bo had liked how handsome and socially awkward – and how poor – he was. Elizabeth’s hope that the Seacarts, who were renowned collectors, might buy her brother’s work had been dashed when Bo had put her little red dot next to one of Healing’s paintings. It had disappointed her that Bo had bought into the dealers’ hyperbole about Healing and bowed under pressure from Walt.