by Fiona Neill
“What do you mean?” asked Tita.
“The board gave me a vote of no confidence because I refused to endorse the move toward organic. They want me to resign. What’s the point of farming half as many fish for twice the cost? It doesn’t make financial sense.”
“Dad, you knew this might happen,” said Bryony. “They’ve been talking about it for ages.”
“They’re fiddling around cultivating native sea urchins to feed on the beds below, and seaweeds to take out the nitrates and phosphates the salmon put in. And they’re introducing a fallowing system every other year. They’re not going to use antibiotics anymore, and they’ve got the endorsement of Freedom Food. I’m surprised they haven’t recruited a fucking acupuncturist to keep the fish relaxed.”
“It’s a sound plan,” said Bryony. “Why can’t you just agree with them? All businesses need to evolve. We’re about to set up a public-affairs unit to lobby government on behalf of different clients. And sustainable development is the theme du jour for investors.”
“I’m too old for change.” Foy sighed, closing his eyes. Within minutes he had fallen into a deep sleep.
“Leave him, Mum,” said Bryony gently. “I’ll get Malea to make up a bed for him and send him home in the morning.”
Bryony and Tita talked briefly about Foy’s seventieth-birthday party. Should Nick make a speech? Would the renovations be finished by June next year? Should they get Fi Seldon-Kent to organize the event? Should the grandchildren play music or do a sketch? It wasn’t the moment to ask Bryony whether she could go home for a couple of days over the weekend, but tomorrow would be too late. Ali walked toward Bryony and Tita and coughed lightly.
“Yes?” said Bryony impatiently.
Ali presented her dilemma in the most impressionistic terms (“Something has come up . . . an unforeseen event . . . My mother has summoned me home”). When she saw Bryony’s tongue twisting in her cheek, she regretted the tactic and wished she had just come out with the truth, because then she might have shown more compassion.
“It’s really inconvenient.” Bryony hadn’t raised her voice, but it took on that taut, brittle quality that Ali recognized as the prelude to an outburst. Struggling to keep an even tone and scratching at a small groove in the table that Hector had carved out, Bryony carefully explained that it would make life very difficult if Ali was to do this.
“When you accepted this job you promised that you would always put the needs of our family first. I know you haven’t had much time off, but you can take ten days at Christmas.”
“I need to help my parents with something.”
“Is there a problem with money? Because if there is, then perhaps we can help you out.”
“That’s a very kind offer,” said Ali, taken aback by the lack of imagination in Bryony’s one-dimensional response to her situation. “Thank you. But it’s not a question of money.”
“Treat it as a bonus for your first year’s work,” insisted Bryony.
“I can’t do that,” said Ali, who thought it sounded more like a bribe than a bonus.
“Could Katya cover for you?” suggested Bryony. Ali thought for a moment. She remembered the way Katya had eyes only for Thomas in the pool in Corfu.
“I think it’s a big responsibility,” said Ali. There was a long silence.
“How would you feel about the twins going with you?” asked Bryony finally. “It would be lovely for them to meet your parents and have a weekend away from London.”
Ali considered Bryony’s suggestion. Her parents wouldn’t mind. If Bryony had any inkling about her sister, she betrayed nothing.
“Is there enough room?” Bryony asked.
“It’s a great idea,” said Ali. “My parents love small children.” Bryony beamed with satisfaction that a mutually beneficial compromise had been found so quickly.
“This is what I love about you,” she said, “your ability to be flexible and think on your feet. Remind me to give you a set of Jo Malone candles for your mother and sister. What’s their favorite aroma? Lime, basil, and mandarin?” She picked up her BlackBerry and punched in a reminder. Ali was relieved that she had looked away.
She was gripped by an absurd image of Jo using the scented candle to cook up heroin in a teaspoon and had to stifle the urge to giggle by pinching her hand.
16
So Ali ended up spending her first weekend at home in more than a year with Alfie and Hector in tow. And, at the last minute, Izzy, who announced that she didn’t want to stay in London playing gooseberry to Jake and Lucy.
“What about me?” Jake had asked as they left the house for the train station on Saturday morning. Ali laughed until she realized he was only half joking.
“We’re going for lunch with my sister and brother-in-law,” Lucy reminded him, linking her arm with his. “We’re going to see their new baby.”
“You could spend the morning in Hatton Garden,” Izzy called back to Jake as they left the house.
“What happens there?” Ali asked, as they climbed into a taxi to take them to the station.
“It’s where people go to buy wedding rings.” Izzy giggled. “She’s got him by the cojones.”
When they arrived in Cromer in the early afternoon, Ali’s father was waiting for them at the train station. Jim Sparrow was hunched over against the wind and wearing a pair of trousers belonging to an old suit that Ali hadn’t seen for years and a jacket with leather patches at the elbows. The latter she suspected had been hastily purchased from the rails of one of the secondhand shops on the High Street after her late-night phone call to warn her parents that she wouldn’t be alone.
Ali felt a pang in her stomach for the effort he was making, particularly given the fact that Izzy was in one of her more outlandish ensembles, involving a pair of heavy platform lace-up boots, fishnet tights, and a very short miniskirt with suspenders. Not that her father would react. This was a man, after all, who had once gone to the squat in Norwich, where his oldest daughter was living; found Jo semiconscious, lying in a pool of her own vomit; and carried her in his arms back to his car like a small child. He had walked past the group of spotty, sunken-eyed junkies who watched him without saying a word.
Moreover, Jim Sparrow was a nonjudgmental man. “Never assume anything about anyone until you know what’s going on beneath the surface” was one of the few pieces of advice he handed down to his daughters. He used the example of the sea. Just offshore of the Devil’s Mouth was a chalk ridge that stretched for miles along the coast with a network of sea life that supported a whole ecosystem of marine creatures, some of which had never been identified. He had seen it with his own eyes. On a still October morning the sea might appear leaden and dull, but beneath the surface was a hidden world waiting to be explored. Human beings were no different.
It was an attitude that had helped Ali to blend in with the Skinners. She neither passed judgment on their life nor was impressed by it. Their wealth, their complicated relationships, their topsy-turvy morality all washed over her like the sea over that chalk ridge. It was this quality that came to define her life with the Skinners during this middle period, because if she hadn’t been so open perhaps they would have been less inclined to drop their guard with her.
Jim gave Ali a quick hug. He smelled of cheap aftershave, mothballs, and crab. She clung on to him even after he let go.
“I’ve missed you, Daddy,” she said.
“It’s good to have you home, girl,” he said gruffly.
“She’s coming back with us,” said Hector, holding on tightly to Ali’s hand. Jim smiled at his vehemence.
“What’s your name, boy?” He bent down to Hector’s height.
“What’s that on your face?” Hector asked suspiciously. Jim gave his daughter a quizzical look.
“It’s a beard,” explained Ali.
“There’s a bit missing,” said Hector.
“It’s called a chinstrap beard,” said Jim.
“Balbas,” said Alfie and Hector at the same time.
“What are they saying?” Jim asked Ali as he stood up.
“They sometimes have their own words for things,” she explained.
She introduced Izzy, who was trying hopelessly to stop her hair from blowing about in the wind. “Thanks so, so much for having me to stay. I’ve always wanted to come to Cromer.” The enthusiasm was an affectation. It was the same tone Tita adopted if Ali made her a cup of tea or read Foy stories from The Telegraph when he dropped in for coffee, the politeness reinforcing the inequality of their relationship. As usual, Izzy’s purple lipstick had smudged, so she looked even more like a child experimenting with an adult world. Ali gestured for her to wipe her lower lip. Izzy got the cue but ended up spreading it across her chin.
“Now Izzy’s got a chinstrap beard,” said Hector.
“I’m really looking forward to going out in your boat,” said Izzy.
“So you’ll be up at three o’clock this morning, ready to go and check the crab pots, will you?” Jim asked. “I can see you’ve brought the right gear.”
“Where’s the car?” Ali asked, as they walked through the empty parking lot onto the main road.
“It’s in the garage,” he said. “Jo had an accident. She reversed into the neighbor’s van last week. I can’t get it mended yet.”
“How is everything?” There was a long pause.
“She says she wants to have another go in a clinic. But if she goes on the NHS she has to wait six months. It will kill your mother if she moves back in with us until then.”
“How about going private?”
“We can’t take out any more money against the value of the house. I know it’s a big thing to ask, but we were wondering whether you could help, Ali?”
He was shouting over the noise of the wind and water as they turned the corner onto the street that led to the promenade. The question was carried away out to sea. Instinctively, everyone bowed their heads and huddled closer together. Of course this was why they had enticed her home, thought Ali. She was always an adjunct to Jo’s needs.
“We’re going to be blown away,” yelled Alfie, gripping Ali’s hand.
“Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz,” agreed Hector.
At the end of the road they stood for a moment and narrowed their eyes to stare at the sea. Sea and horizon blended together in smudged gray tones. The waves broke restlessly as though unable to agree on a rhythm. Some were faster moving and swallowed smaller, less decisive breakers as they came into shore before angrily spewing their double load on the beach. In the summer they sometimes broke between the sea defenses in a single continuous line. Today they were messy and confused. The wind must be coming from the northwest.
“Every wave is unique,” she shouted. “Each one has its own shape, its own speed and height.”
“So there aren’t any twins?” shouted Alfie. Everyone laughed.
“Shall we count the waves?” asked Hector.
“Let’s do it from inside the house,” Ali suggested, pointing to a row of red-brick fishermen’s cottages at the end of the seafront.
“Can you really see the sea from your house?” asked Izzy.
“You can watch it from your bedroom if you like,” said Ali’s father. “Ali’s window looks onto the beach. You’re all sleeping there together.”
“That is completely brilliant,” said Hector.
• • •
Ali tried to see her home through the twins’ eyes. It was obviously much smaller. In fact, she was pretty sure that the basement kitchen at Holland Park Crescent took up more floor space than the fisherman’s cottage where she had grown up. There was a single room on the ground floor: a kitchen at the back that looked onto the street and a sitting room with a view out to sea. The black-and-white linoleum floor was worn through in parts, especially by the kitchen sink and the cooker. This was the area where her mother walked backward and forward like a polar bear in its cage, waiting for Jo on the nights she failed to come home. Ali bent down and touched the holes, and for the first time, instead of feeling anger she felt something more like pity.
“What are you doing?” her mother asked.
“It must have been so hard for you,” Ali murmured.
“And for you,” her mother said, quickly turning away from her to open the fridge door, even though the milk was already sitting in a jug on the table.
Ali’s mother had disguised the worst of the damage with a rug that wrinkled and slipped every time someone trod on it. The Formica worktop was peeling, and her father’s attempt to stick it back down along the seams had failed. Everything needed exfoliating, thought Ali as she stood up again. It was a drab space.
The twins focused only on the floor, which delighted them because it resembled the outsize chess game in Holland Park. But Ali could see Izzy eyeing the double-glazed windows, the net curtains, and the place mats and knitted doilies, and measuring the distance between Ali’s life and her own.
“I can give you the money to pay for rehab,” said Ali, doing a quick calculation in her head to work out how much longer she would need to work for the Skinners to clear her debts and subsidize the clinic. “But I’m not going to get involved.”
Ali’s mother held her in a silent embrace and returned to the business of preparing lunch. She had added an extra leaf to the dining room table and put on a white embroidered tablecloth. There were china cups and saucers from a cabinet in the sitting room and a small plate of sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Ali hugged her back and thought she felt smaller and more fragile beneath one of the thick jerseys that she wore in rotation throughout the winter months.
“Thanks for coming, Ali.” Her mother smiled. “We’ve missed you.” Another stab of guilt.
“I’m going to show them where they’re sleeping,” Ali told her mother, urging the three children to follow her upstairs. The door of Jo’s room was shut, but if she were at home Ali would have known from the tension in her parents’ faces. She walked past it, wondering if the walls were still painted black and whether Jo still hid her drug paraphernalia under the mattress.
Ali’s bedroom was just as she had left it. The twins fell upon her collection of Sylvanian Families. The Underwood Badger family and the Vandyke Otters were missing, presumably pilfered by Jo and sold on eBay. They turned to the objects that Ali had collected on the beach over the years. Her mother had put them in orderly rows on the windowsill.
“Tell me what they all are,” Hector pleaded. There was the skull of an oystercatcher, murky green sea glass, driftwood, shells, stones with exotic red veins. They represented the flotsam and jetsam of her teenage years, thought Ali. Izzy read a poem framed on the wall. Algernon Swinburne’s “By the North Sea.”
“A land that is lonelier than ruin, a sea that is stranger than death . . .” Ali could remember only the first verse. It was a birthday gift from Will MacDonald. She couldn’t hang it in her room in Norwich, because everyone knew it was his favorite poem. She removed it from the wall and put it facedown on her desk.
They headed back downstairs for lunch. Izzy immediately sat at the head of the table. Ali’s father raised a bemused eyebrow but said nothing. Izzy scrutinized the sandwiches with suspicion because of her uneasy relationship with carbohydrates. Compared with the biscuits neatly circling a china plate with a willow-leaf pattern, they were the lesser evil, so she took a couple and politely nibbled around the edges. The twins filled their plates high and ate biscuits before sandwiches. They were enthralled by the view from the window.
“Can we have some more, please?” asked Hector with his most beguiling smile.
“Of course,” said Ali’s mother, piling more biscuits ont
o his plate. She ruffled his hair with her other hand. His thick curls had grown even more luscious since the incident the day of the Christmas party almost a year earlier.
“Did you have a good journey?” asked Ali’s mother as she filled glasses with orange juice.
“Great,” said Ali, looking around the room to see if anything had changed and feeling relieved when she found nothing had. There had been a period a couple of years earlier when Jo was at rock bottom (again), when objects beloved of her parents had disappeared from walls and mantelpieces overnight. The carriage clock that lost five minutes every day, the two porcelain dogs that guarded the only shelf of books in the house, even a collection of Agatha Christie novels that Ali had amassed over the years.
Ali handed over the Jo Malone candles. Her mother put them in a drawer without opening the box. She questioned Ali about life in London, and Ali was grateful for Izzy’s presence because it meant she could answer in generalities. Yes, everyone was “very kind”; it was true there were lots of women from Eastern Europe working as nannies; no, she didn’t have to do any cleaning because there was a housekeeper; yes, she could find her way around on the Underground.
“Have you spoken to your tutor about taking out another year?” her mother asked after a lull in conversation. “Have you been in touch with him?”
“By e-mail,” said Ali.
“He called me,” her mother said. Ali looked up to see whether there was any recrimination in her mother’s eyes, but could find none. “He wanted to know whether you would be available to do any babysitting over the Christmas holidays.”
A familiar sense of oppression began to settle over Ali. The tick of the new clock seemed to get louder. She remembered sitting by the old one, counting her life slipping away in the endless beat of another Sunday afternoon with nothing to do apart from listen to her parents worry about Jo, or making homework that she could have finished in an hour take the entire afternoon until the sky began to darken at three-thirty. She looked out the window and wondered whether the sea would treat her kindly if she went for a swim. Sometimes, if you broke through the capricious breakers that slammed close to the shore, you could find a different mood, especially if the swell came from the sea rather than the wind.