We Are Family

by Emlyn Rees

  ‘I don’t want us to work like that, though,’ Emily had told him. ‘I want to train you up as a chef. I want to be able to rely on you when I’m not here and know that either one of us is more than capable of making meals fit for kings.’

  Not that there’d been too many kings knocking on their door just yet, she’d acknowledged. Not with it looking as tacky and lacklustre as it did. But that would all change, too. Mr and Mrs Jones were now actively planning on retiring to Wales and Emily was going to buy the place from them with the divorce money left over from Buck. Then she’d be able to do it up as she saw fit.

  ‘Marinara,’ she announced now, beckoning Tony over. ‘Your basic Italian tomato sauce.’ She set a cast-iron kettle to boil and tipped several tomatoes from a rustling brown paper bag on to the worktop and proceeded to cut crosses in their tops and bases. ‘So the skins will split easily when we blanch them,’ she explained.

  Tony had loved working for her these last few weeks. She’d made him use his brain as well as his hands, teaching him different cooking techniques and recipes each day. But there was something he’d been meaning to tell her, something that he was worried might affect her plans. He liked her too much to keep on deceiving her.

  ‘You know I’m going to have to leave when I turn eighteen, don’t you?’ he said. ‘In September. You know I’m going to have to do my national service in the army.’

  Now that he’d finally spat it out, he was relieved. And if she fired him now, well, at least he’d been honest, at least it would be her letting him down and not the other way round.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ She handed him a knife and pointed at three cloves of garlic.

  ‘So why are you still teaching me all this?’ he asked, starting to chop.

  ‘Because there’ll still be a job here for you when you get back.’

  She said it so simply, but it hadn’t even occurred to him. ‘Are you serious?’ he asked.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He did; it was because he hadn’t imagined she’d consider he was worth it.

  ‘You learn quick, Tony. You’ll make a good chef. Of course I’m going to want you back.’

  She pulled a notebook from her jeans pocket and started scribbling on it with a blunt pencil.

  Tony picked up a leaf of basil and held it up to his nose to hide his smile. A chef. He liked the sound of that. So long as the army didn’t send him off to Korea or somewhere to get killed first, he considered, then maybe she was right. Maybe he could come back here and pick up where he’d left off. And then . . . well, who knew, one day he might even end up with a restaurant of his own.

  Ripping the sheet from the notebook, Emily took an envelope from the dresser drawer. ‘I need you to run an errand,’ she said. ‘But you reek of garlic, so first go wash your hands. Rub them with a stainless-steel spoon. It’ll get the smell off.’

  ‘Is this some kind of a joke?’ snapped Rachel Vale. Her cheeks were puce, like they’d been slapped.

  Her hair was straggly and wet from when she’d been washing it in the kitchen sink, before Bill had asked her to mind the shop while he helped supervise the coal delivery in the yard. An artery throbbed angrily in her neck, visible above the collar of her creased robin-red checked shirt. With her arms hanging down low and her fingers furled into fists, she reminded Tony of a comic-book story he’d once read about Calamity Jane, in which she’d beaten the crap out of two cowboys for trying to steal her horse.

  ‘What?’ Tony asked.

  She thrust the letter across the counter at him. ‘What do you think?’

  On the counter, next to the letter, was the envelope in which Tony had delivered it. Rachel’s name was scrawled across it in Emily’s slanting handwriting. He picked up the letter and read whatever it was that Emily had written which had caused such offence.

  Dear Rachel,

  I’d like to take you out on a date.

  Please meet me beneath the tower of St Hilda’s Church at seven o’clock, so we can arrange when and where.

  Hopefully yours,

  Tony Glover

  He swallowed. He blinked. He gawped. He reread the words and stared in disbelief, too stupefied to speak. A date? Emily had told him it was a shopping list. At the church at seven? Emily had told him to deliver the envelope to Rachel as quickly as possible. (‘Not Bill,’ she’d specified, and Tony now saw why.) Hopefully yours? Had Emily lost her mind? He was going to kill her. Who the hell did she think she was, messing with his life like this? Her, with her divorced husband on the other side of the Atlantic . . . since when did she become an expert on matters of the heart? He felt sick with embarrassment. Oh, Christ, what had she done?

  ‘Well?’ The way Rachel stabbed her finger at the letter, it might as well have been his eye.

  Tony could smell the shampoo on her which she hadn’t had time to wash out. It was Silvikrin, the same as his mother used, but its familiarity brought no comfort now. ‘I can explain,’ he started to say.

  Only it then occurred to him that he couldn’t. Or rather he could. He could confirm Rachel’s suspicion that it was all a joke. He could tell her that it was Emily’s joke and Emily’s handwriting. But chances were Rachel wouldn’t believe him, or think Emily capable of such a prank. She’d think the opposite: that it was his joke, his handwriting, and that he’d done it to be cruel.

  ‘What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?’

  Tony’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. His guts clenched. Even if he stuck to the truth and Rachel did believe him about Emily having written the letter, she’d still end up hurt, thinking herself the butt of a joke. And Tony didn’t want that.

  Especially as he knew that none of this had anything to do with cruelty. It was all Emily’s crazy way of trying to help. ‘Not if you had a good enough reason.’ That’s what she’d said in the yard. And that’s what she’d given him now.

  ‘Because if you think you can just walk in here and make a fool out of me, Tony Glover, you’ve got another think coming,’ Rachel said, tearing the letter in two. ‘What?’ she scoffed. ‘You didn’t think I’d actually fall for this, did you? Don’t tell me you were dumb enough to think I’d actually turn up at the church for you and your mates to laugh at?’

  ‘I –’

  ‘Because that would never happen. And do you want to know why? Because I don’t like you, Tony Glover. Not one little bit. You’re arrogant. Stupid. And about as good-looking as a pig’s arse. There!’ she declared triumphantly. ‘So what do you think about that?’

  What Tony thought was that she was amazing. Even with what she was saying. Even with the way she was saying it. Even though she obviously wanted him dead. He felt the full power of her personality focused entirely on him, like the sun through a magnifying glass. And it felt wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that he suddenly wished he had written the letter himself. Suddenly he wanted to be every bit as crazy as Emily Drane, because suddenly she didn’t seem crazy at all.

  ‘It’s not a joke,’ he said. And it wasn’t. Not any more. He took the two torn pieces of paper and matched them up and turned them round to face her. ‘I’m asking you out.’ He said it slowly, so there could be no mistake.

  Bill Vale strode through from the back of the shop.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked Tony, his expression turned to lead.

  Tony knew then that he’d blown it. He’d never get a chance to persuade Rachel that he meant what he’d just said. She’d end up thinking it was all part of the joke. Then he remembered – and glanced at – the torn letter in the middle of the counter. He tried not to look at it, as if not seeing it himself might somehow make it invisible to Bill. But it was too late.

  Simultaneously, Bill and Tony grabbed for it. But it was Rachel who got there first.

  ‘It’s Emily’s,’ she told her brother, stepping away from him, shielding the letter with her shoulder. ‘Her grocery list. She telephoned earlier to say that she’d be sending her’ – she lo
oked Tony over with obvious distaste – ‘boy over with it. He somehow managed to rip it on the way . . .’

  Tony couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Why was she covering for him like this? All she had to do was hand over the letter to her brother and sit back and watch the fireworks begin.

  ‘Two pounds of cornflour,’ Rachel recited, pretending to read off the pieces of paper in her hand, ‘and two tins of condensed milk . . .’

  ‘Wait outside,’ Bill told Tony. ‘I don’t care who you’re running your errands for, you don’t ever come in here. Now get out. I’ll bring Emily’s order to you in a minute.’

  ‘Tony Glover,’ Rachel called after Tony.

  She was packing groceries into a cardboard box. She held up the torn pieces of paper, so that both him and Bill could see. Tony knew it. She’d been toying with him. Now she was going to tell Bill everything.

  ‘The answer’s yes,’ she said.

  ‘To what?’ Bill asked.

  ‘To the query on the list.’

  ‘What query?’ Bill asked.

  ‘It’s not important,’ Rachel answered, reaching up for a packet of flour.

  But as what she meant sunk in, as far as Tony was concerned, she’d never been more wrong in her life.

  Tony stared across the graveyard and up at the clock tower for what must have been the tenth time. Above it, soundlessly, bats snatched insects from the air, darting across the pearly circle of moon like minnows across the surface of a well. The leaves of the sycamore trees hung motionless on the branches, black as tar. The clock read one minute past seven: Rachel Vale was late.

  Or not coming at all. Because that was more likely, wasn’t it? That she’d changed her mind, or had never planned on meeting him in the first place? Because who was to say that she wasn’t playing a joke of her own, leaving him out here, feeling stupid and small, the same way he’d initially made her feel in the shop?

  Tony tried clinging to Emily’s advice about thinking positive, but he couldn’t manage it. Instead, he feared the worst, because, suddenly, Rachel was too important to lose.

  But why? he asked himself in the same breath. Why her? Why this desperate need to see her? Was he doing it for him? Because he’d thought he could never have her? Because having her meant he could have anything? Or was he doing it for her? Because by doing his best to make her happy, he’d be wiping away the sadness his brother had brought her? Was that what this was all about? Forgiveness? Restitution? Even redemption?

  Or was he doing it for them both? Because by being together he hoped they’d uncover a happiness within themselves which would always elude them apart?

  He shivered. The truth was he didn’t know. And now it didn’t matter. His ears strained through the night a final time, attempting to filter out any sound which might indicate her approach. But all he got was confirmation of what he already knew: he was alone.

  He was next to a cracked and mildewed wooden bench on the opposite side of the graveyard to where Edward Vale had been buried eight years before. On the day of the funeral, Tony’s mother had kept him from school, behind closed curtains at home. He’d wanted to go. He’d told her he had nothing to hide. But she’d told him it didn’t work that way, and never would. And now it looked like she’d been right and Emily was wrong.

  The long cycle ride back through the dark to his grandfather’s shack now stretched depressingly ahead of him. These last few nights, Tony had been putting off going back there for as long as possible. Like last night, when he’d stayed out at the Bay Road Snooker Club, with Pete and Arthur, until it had shut at eleven.

  It was the loneliness he couldn’t bear, though he’d told Don the opposite when he’d called round last week to see how Tony was getting on. ‘She’s feeling guilty,’ Don had told him, meaning his mother. ‘She hasn’t actually said as much, but I know her well enough to know that it’s eating her up.’ Everything which Tony had gone on to show Don – the stove he’d rigged up, the insulation and the tin bath outside – had seemed pointless from then on, like components of a childish game. If his mother had wanted him back, then why couldn’t she just tell him? Why couldn’t they just talk about it and work out their differences?

  But at the same time, he knew why not: because what had driven them apart wasn’t words, but actions, his actions.

  And that was why he had to stick it out. He had to show her that he could make it on his own. As an adult. To be allowed back, he knew he had to prove to her that he could stand on his own two feet.

  He set off along the mossy path which meandered through the gravestones towards the churchyard gate. Suddenly his body went rigid. He’d heard something.

  Snap.

  There it was again: the crack of a branch. Then came a hiss. Then another. Until, finally, he realised it was somebody whispering his name.

  ‘Tony? Tony, are you there?’

  As soon as he saw her – standing in the shadow of a marble tomb – he wanted to jump up and punch the sky. But he wouldn’t let himself, not until he knew she was here for the same reason as him. He stepped out of the shadows so that she could see him.

  ‘Here,’ he answered.

  There were other things he’d planned to say: ‘You’re beautiful’, and ‘I haven’t stopped thinking about you since we talked after the fight’; things that were true. And yet ‘Here’ was all he said, because her being here was all that actually mattered.

  They walked towards each other, then stopped. Their breath mingled in the cold night air. Her hair was combed back and pinned down by a white Alice band. She was wearing a thick, dark V-neck sweater and scarf. Her skin seemed to glow, the colour of the moon. She looked ethereal, as if she came from another, more beautiful world. He knew he’d remember her this way until the day he died.

  ‘You managed to get away, then?’

  ‘I told Mum and Bill that I was popping round to Pearl’s to borrow a school book . . .’ She was breathless, excited, or scared . . .

  ‘You think I’m crazy, don’t you?’ he asked.

  Her eyes danced with excitement. ‘Isn’t that why I’m here?’

  ‘What? Because you like crazy people?’

  ‘Or because I want to be crazy, too . . .’

  Bill . . . Keith . . . Everything Tony had planned on saying about them, about how they’d affected his and Rachel’s lives, he no longer wanted to discuss. He didn’t want their brothers hijacking this moment. He wanted to keep it theirs.

  She stepped in close to him and looked him over so intently that for an insane instant he became convinced she was going to kiss him.

  ‘You look weird’ was what she actually said, flipping his tie up over his jacket.

  He laughed. And as he did, some of the tension eased from his shoulders and the frown flattened on his face.

  ‘I don’t mean you look bad,’ she said. ‘You don’t. You look older, that’s all. It’s probably the tie.’

  She said older, but he guessed she meant boring. He knew it had been a mistake to wear the tie, but he’d had no choice. ‘It’s a present,’ he explained. ‘From Emily.’

  Emily had had it waiting for him when he’d got back from seeing Rachel at Vale Supplies that afternoon. So he didn’t look like he’d been sweating in a kitchen all day, she’d said. She’d told him to go and use the bath upstairs and had lent him an ironed blue shirt to wear, too. He’d clipped his nails, combed his hair and polished his shoes till they’d gleamed like quartz. He’d made Emily promise to tell no one that he was hoping to see Rachel Vale. And never – no matter what came of it – to tell Bill Vale a thing.

  ‘Are you two friends?’ Rachel asked.

  Were they? He hoped so. ‘As much as we can be, seeing as how I work for her,’ he said.

  ‘I wish I had a job,’ she said.

  ‘One day you will.’

  She shrugged, grinning. ‘Not necessarily. I might marry someone rich. Or, better still, end up rich myself and retire by the time I’m thirty.’

  ‘
You might.’ He knew she was only teasing, but he remembered now how she’d stood up to him in the shop that afternoon. He thought she could probably do anything she put her mind to.

  ‘Do you like your job?’ she asked. ‘Do you prefer it to school?’

  He’d never thought to compare the two. ‘There’s not much difference, I suppose,’ he said. ‘It’s all about learning and getting enough knowledge to get you to the next place.’

  ‘And where’s your next place?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ He smiled. ‘You ask a lot of questions, you know.’

  ‘I’m just trying to work you out.’

  ‘Is that why you came?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t be here at all.’

  ‘Neither of us should be.’

  Her expression turned serious. ‘We can talk about why not,’ she said, ‘until we’re blue in the face. I thought about that on the way over here.’

  ‘What else did you think about?’

  ‘That it took a lot of guts to do what you did this afternoon. To walk in there and ask me out.’

  With a little help, Tony thought.

  ‘And we wouldn’t be here, either of us, unless we wanted to be,’ she continued.

  They stared at each other in silence. He could feel the moment slipping away, but couldn’t think of what he might say to stop it.

  Rachel shivered. ‘I’m going to have to get going soon,’ she said. ‘Or Mum and Bill will start asking questions . . .’

  Tony felt crushed, miserable. He avoided her eyes. ‘So, I’ll see you around, then, I suppose . . .’

  Suddenly, she tugged at the lapel of his jacket. ‘Kiss me,’ she whispered urgently.

  Before he knew it, before he’d even consciously moved his head towards hers, their lips were touching and they’d started to kiss. He closed his eyes and it was like soaring through space.

  She broke away from him with a start, like she’d been jolted, or shocked. Stepping back, the heel of her shoe clipped a cracked flower vase, half hidden in a clump of wilted daffodils. From its perch on a nearby gravestone, a white owl watched them unblinkingly.